Out of Exile

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Greetings faithful blog readers. You may have noticed that it’s been well over two months since my last post (except for the 2010 Tour de France Contests post). In other words, I’ve neglected my blog, my riding, my readers, and so on. I’ve been busy though.

The ‘E’ word…Excuses

Most of you knew that I was moving back to Florida at the end of May. That was only the start of the journey as the last two months have been a whirlwind of events. I’m not going to bore you with the details but some of the highlights include:

• Driving from Texas to Florida.
• Starting back at my old job.
• Moving into a new place.
• Getting re-acclimated with living with the family again. Living apart for 18 months tends to make it strange.
• Getting our oldest graduated from high school and the associated drama.
• Spending time with the family.
• Enjoying saltwater fishing again. You wouldn’t believe the fish story from this weekend. And we didn’t even land the fish!
• Two significant medical emergencies. One in my wife’s family and one in mine. Thankfully both family members are doing much better.

While a few of the excuses above are very good, a few are a stretch. But who wouldn’t be happy about kicking one of the kids out of the house? Just kidding. Seriously though, the past two months have been a whirlwind of activity and has really taken a toll on us. Some days it felt good just to be able to sit down. But I think we’ve turned a corner and I’m ready to start riding again.

Even though we’ve moved to a new place, I still have access to the good roads/routes I had from our old house. That’s a good thing. It also looks like I’ll be moving back to riding in the morning before traffic gets bad because in the evenings the traffic just doesn’t subside until really late. Our new location will also allow me multiple route options so I shouldn’t have any problems with routes getting ‘stale’ either.

The ‘C’ Word….Commuting (by bike)

I’m also seriously considering converting my hybrid into a commuter rig. I’ve even mapped out, and driven, a potential route to/from work. One-way is a very manageable 10.5 miles which would make it 21 miles for the daily round-trip. We’ve got shower facilities and secure bike storage here at work so those two large obstacles are taken care of. I have looked at some bike rack/pannier options as well since I’ll need those. I could probably make do with a backpack at first if I wanted to. I’m still early in the planning of this but I do believe it’s something I want to do. Back in my early Navy days I rode my bike to/from work for a period of time. It was only 8 miles round-trip but it felt great to do it.

Thanks for the Emails

Since I’ve been away several of you have sent emails asking how I was doing. I really appreciate those emails. I think it’s awesome how these blogs help us grow a good network of friends even though we may not live in the same city, state, or country.

Photo courtesy of tonyhall.