Home from Gainesville
Our stay down in Gainesville was much shorter than anticipated. My wife’s surgery went great and she’s back at home recovering. To be fully recovered takes 6-9 months and she’s limited to soft food right now with scrambled eggs being about the limit. I didn’t get to ride down in Gainesville but did prefer the route I was going to ride and am sorry I didn’t get to. It looked to be a nice route. I’m glad to be back home though.
Read MoreRide 4 – Saturday biking starts the weekend off right
While I usually sleep in on Saturdays, I made a commitment to myself to carry my riding into Saturdays as well. That means I turned in early on Friday and got up early today to ride. While I didn’t get up as early as I do on weekdays (5:00 AM), I did get up at 7:00 AM and was on the road by 7:15. I don’t think I’ve gotten up that early on a Saturday since my days in the military. Since I’ve set out on my mission, Biking To Live, this is the first day/ride that I’ve ridden my route in daylight. Also, since it was daylight, I was able to ride the bike lane for most of the ride. Once my light comes in I’ll be able to do this for my early morning weekday rides as well.
Read MoreRide 1 – Day 1 of Biking To Live
Well, today marked day 1 of Biking To Live. The alarm went off promptly at 5:00 AM. Man is that early. I’m glad I went to bed early the night before. I was surprised at how dark it was outside. Well, I proceeded to get dressed and downed a quick bottle of water before even leaving the bedroom. It was a little more brisk than I anticipated so I went back inside and threw on a long sleeve t-shirt.
The ride, for the most part, was uneventful. Because I wasn’t sure how the traffic was going to be I stayed to the sidewalk for the first part of the ride. The sidewalk in this area is frequently used by runners but there were no other dedicated “athletes” out at this time in the morning. Maybe they were smarter and still in bed. I eventually left the side walk and hit the bike path. Surprisingly, I fell into a good rhythm and everything seemed to be going good. About halfway through my route my hands started to cramp up some and I had to shake them out every so often to get the feeling back. It was at this point that I decided I needed new gloves. The ones I had were….I don’t know….at least ten years old. I’ve also decided by this point that I need to get a flashing red light for the rear. There wasn’t much traffic, and I had the bike path, but I just didn’t feel too comfortable riding with it still so dark. I guess I’ll be visiting Nashbar later in the day to order gloves and a light.
Read MoreI’ve found a route to do my biking
This evening I went for a short drive and found my route for the morning ride. It’s an eleven mile loop that starts and ends at my garage. There are bike lanes for 95% of the route which will be nice but one section of the route is on a very busy road. With the time I’ll be riding, though, I don’t plan on running into much traffic. Another good thing is that there are sidewalks and streetlights for most of the route as well. Another handy feature is that there are a couple of opportunities to extend the route for longer rides on the weekend. It’s like this was made just for me. Thank you city engineer for taking my future riding into consideration when you constructed this pristine loop.
Today is 16-Apr. I plan on embarking on my journey to the new me on the morning of 21-Apr.
Read MoreCONNECT WITH BTL
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