Tag Archives: exercise

Arbor Hills and Carrollton Blue and Orange

Posted on by Bill Chance

The overlook at Arbor Hills Nature Preserve in Plano, Texas.

Slowly, I am able to ride farther and farther on my bike. I’m still slow – I am riding an old, inefficient mountain bike (which does have the advantage of being able to go anywhere). I have my ancient road bike which I’m trying to get into rideable condition… but I am struggling with mystery flats. When it is fixed I should be able to up my speed and distance. Right now I am limited not so much by my fitness but by time and the amount of water I can carry. I drink an amazing amount of water in this heat.

What I like to do on weekends sometime is to load up my bike in the back of the Matrix, fill a cooler with bottles of iced water, and set out across the city. I use GoogleMaps on my phone, with the Bicycling option turned on – showing up the bike trails and dedicated lanes bright green. I look for long stretches or connected clusters and give a shot at riding somewhere I haven’t been before.

On Sunday, I headed northwest and the first place I came across was the Arbor Hills Nature Preserve. This is a large Plano park which I had seen a couple years ago when I made a wrong turn leaving the hospital where Candy was getting surgery. It had an odd parking lot, beige rock buildings, and a big ol’ mess of hilly woods. I looked it up online and had wanted to pay a visit ever since.

It was an interesting place to ride a bicycle. First – it does lack distance – only a couple miles of paved trails (I wasn’t in the mood for hitting the dirt). It isn’t a very good place for speed either – the trails are lousy with clots of people wandering around and others walking their dogs.

What is nice, though, is its hills. There are a lot of wooded nature trails in the Dallas area, but almost all of them are located in worthless river bottom floodplain and are as flat as a pancake. Arbor Hills has a good bit of ups and downs – not enough to make it too difficult or even unpleasant, but enough for a good workout.

The trails all wind around and rise up to a stone lookout, a nice destination, a pretty place looking out over the trees and scrub fields with only a hint of the millions of rooftops rising along the horizon – a reminder of the fact that you are not really in a wilderness, but merely a forgotten pocket of vegetation left over somehow when the world was paved over.

I looped around a couple of times, then packed my bike up and drove on. I wanted to go down to Carrollton and check out their trails. I had read about how they had been doing a lot of work on extending their hike/bike trail network. I did a circuit of their Orange and Blue trail routes, about ten miles total.

I applaud their work, and some of their trails are nice… running beside some swampy ponds and wild green creeks. They need to do more to access the network, though. It was fine for some exercise, but the pavement doesn’t really go anywhere – it would not work for commuting to work or shopping.

Sitting at a little shaded bench I gulped down my last bottle of cold water and knew it was time to head back to the car and go home. There is always tomorrow, and more stretches of pavement in a different direction.

Don Draper is Such a Card

Posted on by Bill Chance

I’ve been riding my bicycle for fitness – about ten miles a day, about five days a week. If I don’t commute home from work, I drive to a trail on the way home or at least go out in the evening in the neighborhood. I want to change myself into a morning person and get in a quick little ride at dawn, before work… but this old dog doesn’t learn new tricks without a lot of pain.

I need to increase my options for when I can’t ride outside. I am dealing with the heat with a lot of ice water and ibuprofen but soon the days will be getting shorter and I’m not sure I can ride in the dark without getting killed.

A while back, I did a project where I installed a computer screen on my recumbent bicycle… and that worked well for a while. I’m getting stronger now, and the recumbent is good for some easy work, but I need something more strenuous. I wondered if I was getting strong enough to ride my spin bike (an Ironman 112 I bought off of ebay a few years ago for a hundred bucks or so) which has been gathering dust out on the porch for a long time. I was surprised at how well it worked out.

So I cleaned the thing off and dragged it into Club Lee (he’s in New Orleans for the time being and doesn’t need his room). The last time he was home he carted his big television back to the Big Easy and left the crude wooden stand I had built for it. It was the perfect height for what I needed.  I dug out a monitor and a sound system I bought at a thrift shop – set it all up. I can bring in my laptop and hook it up to the monitor and sound system.

My Spinning Bike setup.

So now I try to ride the spin bike when I can – especially when I don’t get in an outside ride. I’m watching stuff on Netflix and on Hulu Plus (mostly the Criterion Collection) while I ride. I don’t have time to watch what I want to… so much entertainment and so little time.

Mostly though, I’m working my way through Mad Men on Netflix. Two episodes back to back is a good workout on the spin bike.

That Don Draper is such a card.

“The reason you haven’t felt it is because it doesn’t exist. What you call love was invented by guys like me, to sell nylons. You’re born alone and you die alone and this world just drops a bunch of rules on top of you to make you forget those facts. But I never forget. I’m living like there’s no tomorrow, because there isn’t one.”

Season I, Episode I

 ” Nostalgia – it’s delicate, but potent. Teddy told me that in Greek, “nostalgia” literally means “the pain from an old wound.” It’s a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone. This device isn’t a spaceship, it’s a time machine. It goes backwards, and forwards… it takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It’s not called the wheel, it’s called the carousel. It lets us travel the way a child travels – around and around, and back home again, to a place where we know we are loved.”

Season 1, Episode 13

“I hate to break it to you but there is no big lie. There is no system. The universe is indifferent.”

Season I, Episode 8

“If you listen, he’ll tell you about the time he thought he was an angel or dreamt of being perfect. And then he’ll smile with wisdom, content that he realized the world isn’t perfect. We’re flawed, because we want so much more. We’re ruined, because we get these things, and wish for what we had.”

Season 4, Episode 8

 “Every day I tried not to think about what would happen if this happened.”

Season 4, Episode 11

 “Every woman wants choices, but in the end, none wants to be one of a hundred in a box. She’s unique. She makes the choices and she’s chosen him. She wants to tell the world he’s MINE. He belongs to ME, not you. She marks her man with her lips. He’s her possession. You’ve given the gift of total ownership. “

Season I, Episode 8

 “I’m enjoying the story so far, but I have a feeling it’s not going to end well.”

Season 2, Episode 2

My Commute Home from Work

Posted on by Bill Chance

I used to tell people that I couldn’t ride a bike to work because the route wasn’t safe. The streets I drive on have a long, blind, fast curving stretch that would be fatal for a slow bicycle. But as I thought about it, I figured out that I could find a safe route – especially after the Glenville Trail that runs behind my house opened up. I thought about it for a year, then finally started to ride. It seemed like a big deal for me when I was thinking about it and when I rode the first time, but now it’s routine.

I don’t ride to work… there is no way for me to take a shower and I sweat like a stuck pig in this summer Texas heat – so I get someone to drive me in to work in the morning and I ride home. This has another advantage of taking away any time constraints so I can ride as slowly as I want. Friday I loaded a point and shoot into my handlebar bag and took some shots along the way.

Near my work I have a couple routes through the parking lots of an extensive area of small business parks. Looking at these businesses – of a tremendous variety – is always interesting to me. I admire and am fascinated by entrepreneurship and these strips of cheap space are the heart and birthplace of new industry.

Magrathea

Magrathea Incorporated? What a cool name. I looked them up – they are on facebook – they’re in the business of restoring classic old cars. A bit of a fall from making entire custom ordered planets – but still pretty interesting.

Wood World

Wood World – a neat store with all sorts of rare and useful wood raw materials, tools, and pen kits.

I emerge from the industrial parks and cross Spring Valley at a busy intersection next to the DART station. It’s a long, long light – then I play chicken with the transit busses turning left in front of me.

Here’s the hardest and most fun part of the ride. When you drive around Dallas, you think it is as flat as a pancake. But there are hills that you can notice on a bicycle – when you have to expend the energy to get up them. There’s this alley that I found – almost a mile long, and a slow steady uphill the whole way. When I first rode, it was a struggle riding that stretch. Now I barely even have to downshift. It’s a shock how quickly that changed.

Bike Lane on Grove.

The City of Richardson has started designating the right hand lanes on many of their neighborhood thoroughfares as bike lanes. It’s working out well – the bikes like it and it helps control the traffic. The only problem is making left turns out of the right-hand bike lanes – there is no way to do that safely.

One surprising barrier to bicycle transport are the rail lines. This one cuts right through the city and there are few routes across it – and they are narrow, busy roads.

Glenbrook Trail

The last mile and a half of my commute home is on the Glenbrook Trail – which starts out running under a power line right of way. It was supposed to go farther, but they could not get permission to cross the railroad right-of-way (see above).

The Glenbrook Trail crossing Beltline road.

The trail crosses the very busy Beltline Road (everything in the suburbs of Dallas is on Beltline Road) a block west of Plano Road. It’s a nasty intersection – when I went to meetings on the planning of the Glenville Trail they said they were really struggling with this section – there is simply not enough room.

The other day, while I was waiting for the light to turn, a woman in a VW made a left and a huge SUV was coming way, way too fast and she turned in front of him. There was a screech of brakes, horns, and skidding tires – the SUV went up on two wheels and swerved right past me – in the end nobody hit anything, though it was close. I stood there watching it thinking that if the truck hits the VW it will bounce off and crush me standing right there, four feet away, on the sidewalk with my bike.

The whole thing was over in three seconds.

The intersection is lousy with surveillance cameras and I wondered if I had died a sudden spectacular death would it be captured on one of the traffic cams. Would my demise make it onto Youtube? Texas bicyclist crushed by careening Tahoe. Would I go viral?

Plano Road crossing

Where the trails cross busy roads without lights (this one is on Plano Road) they have these S-Shaped islands. At the planning meetings it was explained that this design forces bicycles and pedestrians to stop in the middle of the crossing and then turn and face oncoming traffic to see and wait for a gap to continue across. It actually works really well – I feel safer at these crossings than I do at the lights (see above).

The ponds at Huffhines.

The last part of my commute is the easiest part – the trail goes through the ponds in the park at the end of my block. This is on the bridge over the ponds next to the new Huffhines Recreation Center.

Wal-Mart panniers.

I bought these panniers on clearance from Wal-Mart, believe it or not. They are not the best quality in the world – I wouldn’t go on a cross-country cycle journey with them, but they are handy and work great for clothes and whatever work I have to take home.

I Need a Victory

Posted on by Bill Chance

This is the one year anniversary of me starting up my blog again. I’ve gone one year, posting every day. Actually, according to WordPress, I’ve published 369 posts. It was leap year… I know I published two in one day on one occasion… I wonder what the other extras are?

My first post was on the Monk Parakeets that live in a power yard near my house.

My goal was to go a year publishing every day and now I’ve done it. I think, going forward, I’m going to relax a little and be willing to skip a day if I don’t have anything. I want to go for quality, rather than quantity I want to write more and photograph less. I want to try different things, write out a few more ideas and push it more.

Any comments, opinions, or suggestions would be appreciated.

Pack Straps

My bike with an experimental bag I tried out. The panniers work a lot better.

I carry a notebook (at least one) around with me always, along with a quiver of fountain pens, ready to record any fleeting thoughts that creep into my thick skull, on the off chance one might prove useful someday. Things… things have been tough lately and last Friday I wrote down, “I need a victory.” Then I followed this observation with a short list of attainable goals I’ve been working toward. I perused the list, crossed a few off, then circled the item “Ride my Bike to/from work.”

First, I scribbled through the “to.” I have come across a possibly insurmountable obstacle to riding my bike to work – there is no place to take a shower. I’m working on that, but it will take time, politics, and a budget from somewhere. However, there is no reason I can’t ride home after work.

I have been working on a route to/from my work for a long time now, and have it figured out. The route is important because my goal does not include me being killed and ground beneath the wheels of unstoppable traffic. However, I have found a route made up of paved bicycle trails, wide sidewalks, empty residential streets, quiet alleys (I have to be careful there – cars can back out unexpectedly) and parking lots.

One weekend a while back I did some extra work and was rewarded with a gift card. Looking around, I found a surprisingly inexpensive set of panniers from Wal-Mart and bought the things. They are cheaply made, but well designed and they fit on the rack on my old crappy bombing-around-town bike. I can haul any work I need, plus stuff extra clothes in them.

On Saturday, I decided to test my route. Loading up the panniers with a dummy cargo, I rode from home all the way to my workplace, about 5.2 miles, along my chosen low-danger route. I looped around the parking lot and rode back home. No problema. So I knew I could make the distance.

Candy agreed to drive me to work on Monday morning, with my bike in the back of the car. I set it in the rack (there are about a dozen other folks riding bikes – a pitifully small number) and carried the panniers to my desk. At the end of the day I changed clothes, clipped the panniers back on the bike, and headed out.

My bike needs some adjusting and lubrication, I need to work on the pannier mounting (my heels clip the bags every now and then), and I look like a complete ridiculous idiot… but otherwise I really enjoyed the ride. The bicycling itself is the easiest part – the difficult thing is the logistics of it – what to take, what to pack, getting this here, making sure that is there…. Everything is too complicated.

Once I was on the bike and moving, it felt like freedom.

My goal now is to ride home at least twice a week. On the days I can’t do that I might get up a little early and ride for forty five minutes around the neighborhood at dawn – that would be nice. I can go to the store too, those panniers will work well for groceries.

Sounds like a plan. Sounds like a little victory.

A Bit of Dappled Shade

Posted on by Bill Chance

The looping trails through the Spring Creek Natural Area converge on a little footbridge over the creek. There is a nice bench there - a good place to rest and get away from the city for a few minutes.

This is the time of the year full of those rare North Texas days of cool mornings and warm afternoons. I can feel the killer heat of summer crouched on the horizon, ready to pounce. But in the meantime, it is so nice, so much of a shame to be cooped up in a cubicle for so many hours. When the whistle sounds, I want to be outside – to capture as much of this time as I can in preparation for the blazing oven season ahead.

There is this spot – the Spring Creek Natural area – where the concrete bike riding trails enter some thick creekbottom floodplain woods and loop around to give a bicycle rider the illusion of being outside of the city for a few minutes.

Candy and I have swapped cars for a few days. The car I have now is a tiny hatchback – much smaller than the one I drive on most days. With the back seats folded, however, I discovered my bicycle can fit in the back without even taking either wheel off. Maybe I’ll keep driving this car and carry my bike with me – get in some quick rides in different parts of the city. Maybe I don’t have to spent my money on a folding bike.

Candy was worried about leaving my bike in the car. “I bought it for used for ninety dollars twenty years ago,” I told her. I remember now, I was saving to buy a bike and then found this one at a pawn shop. I figured it could get me by until I saved enough for a decent one. I guess I have my money’s worth. “You’ve put a lot into it, though,” she said. Well… not really. Tires and tubes, of course. I had to buy a new brake lever/shifter set – but I found that on clearance and paid less than fifty dollars for it. I need to buy a new chain – but those are cheap – the thing has been slipping cogs if I push too hard and I think the chain is worn.

The bike is a hunk of crap – but I’ll take it apart, clean and lube it… one more time.

I rode around the Spring Creek woods, taking it easy. I’d stop every now and then at a place with a bench and read a story on my Kindle. Sometimes I’d check the baseball scores on my phone. That’s a nice way to waste a day.

After hanging out in the dappled sunlight of the woods for awhile, I thought about how nice it would be to have other people do this. We could ride along the central trail along 75 to Eastside and grab a burger, maybe a cold beer, then ride back. Never happen, but I rode the route anyway, just to see if it was doable. A nice little ride, actually. It’s a shock to leave the deep, muffled forest and be suddenly along a screaming eight-lane highway, though the trail makes the ride easy. I didn’t get anything to eat, but sat on a bench at Eastside for a bit, watched the folks come and go before cruising back down into the woods.

A Little Bike Ride

Posted on by Bill Chance
Pack

My old bike. I bought it for sixty bucks at a pawn shop over fifteen years ago.

I’m finally feeling back to my normal mediocre self and Texas is having its handful of decent weather days so I’d like to get some bike riding in. It’s tough during the week because I’m so tired when I get home from work that, even though I might have a few minutes of sunlight, all I can think of is to fall into bed and decompress, even if I don’t fall completely asleep.

Well, in this modern age, you have to try and do double duty in everything. There is no time left – it feels as if it has all been used up. Not only do you have to be doing something all the time, you have to be doing two things if you don’t want to fall further behind. In that spirit, we were out of milk. So I decided to ride my bicycle to the Target Superstore and buy a gallon plus a few other sundries that we were in need of.

That’s doing double duty. Shopping and exercise. It isn’t very far – about a mile, plus no real traffic – I can ride the new trail down to the park and then cut over on a little-used feeder road. Then across the back mall parking lot. Our neighborhood strip of big boxes sits where a big ‘ol traditional mall used to squat. For years it was declining, used more as a foul-weather walking route for elderly folks than as a place to fleece excited shoppers. At any rate, they bulldozed it, leaving the anchor tenants on the end and filling in with a row of familiar warehouse-style establishments. The food court was replaced by a line of fast-food slinging eateries strung along the main road like a string of pearls before swing.

But behind this capitalist extravaganza the huge old mall back parking lot remains empty and immense, used only to give motorcycle lessons on weekend mornings – two-wheeled newbies slowly winding between long groupings of red plastic cones. Today, though, it was deserted except for some guy out in the middle changing his oil, an occasional truck coming in to pull and replace a smelly dumpster, and one pair of isolated cars – probably teenagers hooking up. It’s easy for me to cross this vast desert of asphalt – the only thing to look out for are a few drainage grates with long, wheel grabbing slots, always facing the wrong way – parallel to the direction I’m riding.

There is nothing as stupid looking and pitiful as an old fat man riding a bicycle. I feel so idiotic and silly, but I have had a lifetime of experience ignoring my ridiculousness, so I pedal on.

I had a surprisingly difficult time getting there. It’s a bit of an uphill slog coming up from the creek and then, crossing the lot, I ran into a strong headwind. Off to the west was a black roll of approaching storm cloud and the humid south wind was spinning into the complex, feeding the tempest. Still, I caught my breath, downshifted a cog, and kept on going.

Locking my bike and backpack to a steel bench out in front (the nice thing about having a fifteen year old piece of crap bike is that I don’t need the highest security lock) I went in to get my gallon of milk and other stuff. I noticed that once I stopped pedaling and started walking around the cool store, my shirt became spotted in sweat. I looked extra stupid amongst other, car borne shoppers. The Next time, wear a dark t-shirt – mental note.

So I stuffed my gallon of milk into the backpack (it fit easier than I expected) and headed home. I guess I underestimated the wind, because I was able to get almost all the way back without even turning a pedal – propelled by the brisk breeze at my back.

Buoyed by my success, I made a list of close in destinations I could ride my bike to. Along this route, there is the big box variety/grocery store, two hardware stores, a couple of Pho places, tons of fast food, an office supply store, and a haircut place. The other way is the big Vietnamese shopping center – and I can get there without leaving the trail. If I want to go a little farther, I can cut through an industrial area and get to the DART rail station, library, and a whole complex of diverse ethic eateries.

Jeez – if the weather was nicer for more of the year I could get rid of the car.

I’m still pretty stupid looking, though.

What I learned this week, January 13, 2012

Posted on by Bill Chance

Holy Triskaidekaphobia, Batman!

I’m trying to find good stuff to watch on Netflix while I ride my recumbent bicycle. Paste Magazine has these daily lists, and two good ones are 20 Great TV Shows to Watch on Netflix Instant, and 20 Great Documentaries to Watch on Netflix Instant.

I have always been a map fanatic. With the advent of the web and GPS and all the cool digital mapping applications available now, paper maps have sort of fallen to the wayside. But still…. man, I want one of these, real bad.

Here’s a Slate article on the map.

And you can buy one here.

How to write a novel using the snowflake method.

A Project

Posted on by Bill Chance

My greatest weakness is that of procrastination. I have so much to do I never get anything done.

One project I have had on my mind for a long time, long too long, was to find a way to watch movies on my recumbent exercise bicycle.

If you go to a health club, or purchase a high end exercise machine, they will have built-in flat screen televisions to help with the inevitable boredom of pedaling or running like crazy, but not getting anywhere. I have seen quite a few of these, and all of them work like crap. The reception is fuzzy and intermittent, the sound is tinny, and the selection of programming is inevitably as boring as watching the sweat drip off your own nose.

I have a cheap recumbent exercise bike I bought off of ebay years ago for a song. It works well, but it doesn’t have a video screen. I wanted to change that… and I wanted to put on one there that actually worked, worked well, and didn’t cost an arm and a leg. Actually, it couldn’t even cost an arm.

My first idea was to mount an old laptop to the handlebars. I could watch Netflix, Hulu, and DVD movies while I rode. There are a lot of instructional ideas on the Internet on how to do that, and I did my research. I designed a contraption of aluminum bars that would support a laptop… but it seemed awfully complex and flimsy.

Then I realized there was no reason to actually mount the laptop. I wasn’t going to be able to type – I only wanted to watch. All I had to do was to mount a screen and then connect it to my laptop with a cable. I keep my laptop on a stand next to where my bike is… easy peasy.

I bought a used monitor down at the computer sale for thirty bucks. I thought about it for a long time, long too long, and came up with a simple way to mount the thing.

The metal clip that attaches to the back of the monitor screwed to a piece of two by four.

I removed the metal plate from the monitor stand and screwed it to a block of wood I made from a two by four. A heavy angle iron went on the other side of the block. The use of the wood block gave me a little space between the monitor and the handlebars and made it easy to attach everything – screws in wood are a lot easier than bolts in metal.

I used a pair of heavy worm-type hose clamps to hold the monitor to the handlebar brace.

Then all I had to do was attach the angle iron to the handlebars with a couple of worm clamps. It’s surprisingly strong, yet I can adjust it and remove it easily if necessary.

The monitor attached to the bike. I need to clean the screen.

I connected the power and video cables and I had a picture. The sound was not satisfactory, though. I wanted the sound to come from close to the picture, not a tinny laptop across the room.

A trip to the thrift store a while back had yielded a pair of small Sony Vaio Powered Laptop Speakers for two dollars. I knew these would come in handy… they would be perfect for this – I didn’t need a lot of volume and they were of decent quality.

A speaker base attached to the cross bar with pop rivets.

I removed the screw that held the base on the speakers and pried it loose. I then mounted the bases to each end of a piece of square aluminum tubing.

The speaker bar attached.

It was a simple job then of screwing the aluminum to the top of the wooden mounting block I had put in earlier. I had my speakers.

The monitor and speakers attached to the bike.

Here’s the whole setup. Actually the biggest job was cord management. There was power to the monitor and speakers, plus cables for video and sound running from my laptop – it threatened to be a tangled mess and I didn’t want any of it to get down into the pedals. If you look closely, you can see a thick black cable tube running down – I was able to cram everything into this and then wire-tie it all down.

The pictures is excellent and the sound is good, if not too loud. The bike is comfortable and this is actually a pretty good way to watch a movie or TV show. I don’t ride very hard, but the idea is to get a long cardio workout.

Now I’m trying to ride at least an hour a day for a start – some in the evening (though I am so worn out when I get home from work) and I’m working on getting out of bed earlier and riding for at least a few minutes before I leave for work. There is Netflix, and Hulu, and DVDs from the library and my kids extensive collection.

Now, maybe a little table with a wireless keyboard and mouse so I can select what I want to watch without getting up. Also, maybe some small weights on a rack nearby so I can get some arm work in at the same time….

I’m so busy I never get anything done.

A Little Farther

Posted on by Bill Chance

After my little trip down the Glenville trail and on to Memorial Park Saturday I was all stoked Sunday for another bicycle ride. I wanted to ride the same route but push on farther. I’m starting to obsess about the possibility of commuting to work on my bicycle so I thought I’d see if I could figure out a route that would bypass the most dangerous stretches of road.

I rode on to the Brick Row Urban Village. This is a new, not-nearly-finished transit oriented development next to the DART station on Spring Valley road just East of Highway 75. A few months ago I spoke at a city council meeting in favor of a new, huge, transit-oriented development proposed for some vacant land (and another DART station) at Highway 75 and the George Bush Tollway. A lot of the speakers that were opposed to that development were complaining about the Brick Row. I don’t know what their problem is – the thing is nowhere near finished. How can they judge at this point?

brick row park

The little park in the center of the Brick Row Village. A nice place to stop, rest, and drink some water.

Maybe the progress is slower than promised – but the economy (especially real-estate development) is in the dumper… some delay is to be expected. Brick Row isn’t near occupied, the retail hasn’t arrived yet, and there is still a lot of vacant land – but otherwise, it looks pretty nice to me.

Brick Row

The front of the Brick Row along Spring Valley Road. You can see the elevated DART train tracks in the background. When I rode up, a train was passing - that would have made for a nice picture, but I didn't have the time to wait for the next train.

One of the nice things about bicycling is that it is the best way to learn a neighborhood. You will see things you never notice from a car, and you cover so much more territory than when you walk. I spotted a little hole-in-the-wall Pakistani Restaurant, The Silver Spoon, that I want to come back to and try. An odd name for a Pakistani place – apparently they bought a Cajun restaurant and never changed the name.

One other thing you notice on a bike that you don’t in a car are hills. Or even slight slopes. To most people the place where I live is absolutely flat. And it is pretty flat – but on the way back I sure noticed a long, slight, unrelenting uphill stretch that I sure never noticed in a car. It’s all good, though – I need the exercise… and it is nice going the other way.

I had a busy day ahead, so I didn’t dawdle more than necessary. I had ridden within a mile of my work. The rest of the route is easy – there are parking lots and sidewalks – I’d barely have to deal with cars. I’m going to keep riding… every day if I can, until I get in shape enough to start biking to work.

Wish me luck.

Today’s Route. 7.4 miles. It was hot again today, but I felt pretty good. Let’s see how this goes. Thanks for your support.