The Great Adventure Countdown Day 10

We shipped the road bikes on Tuesday. Now the mountain bike are coming out for the first time since  Labor Day. They were feeling neglected. Mike Prendergast came over and we took off to ride the Erie trails and single track trails. I don't do a lot of this so this was fun. We road the trail that switched back and forth up the side of the hill.

     Mike wanted to see what was happening to the trail that was damaged by the flood in September. We road til we came to the washed out bridge and found that nothing has happened yet. I told Mike that I would find out from someone who works for the town of Erie.

      At this time I would like to thank Mike for all the help he has given Rose and I. All the fancy bells and whistles on this blog are due to him. He also showed me the ins and outs of the GoPro. So thank you Mike!

The Great Adventure Countdown Day 12

Rose is writing the blog today. It’s now 12 days until we start riding and the last day for the road bikes before shipping them to San Diego.  The temp was in the 30’s with mercifully little head and side wind. It made for a very pleasant 50+ mile ride.

I’m guessing that I’m not the only one of the 44 riders who is asking myself

          Am I ready?

Perhaps a check list would help me stay focused. Am I ready to?

·         Be a cheerful contributing member of this group of 44 riders and 18 staff? Yes

·         Make new friends. Yes

·         Pay attention to the scenery and appreciate both big and small vistas. Yes

·         Avoid complaining about aches and pains. Heck, the average age of the riders is 60. Even without intense physical exercise most of us have at least one body part with an expired warranty. Yes

·         Have enough appropriate gear. Yes. Before I began biking I thought it would be an inexpensive hobby. At least it is cheaper than owning horses, or maybe boats. I do enjoy it so much that I haven’t minded cutting back on other expenses and activities.

·         Learn and use new technology, blogs, IPad, ITunes, camera, Gopro, GPS links, on line bill pay. Yes as long as the feeling of being really stupid doesn’t outweigh the excitement of learning new skills.

·         Ride 80 miles in a day. Yes. We did 13 major rides last year that were at least 80 miles. I even know how to ride with heat exhaustion and pneumonia but hope I don’t get to refine those skills.

·        

Ride 80 miles or more for 45 days, out of the 53. [The others are rest days.] Yes as long as I keep in mind what a friend said “Every day is a training day for the next day.”

    I got  home to things I have be putting off likes new tires and tubes on our bikes. I also changed out Rose's bottle racks and put a new bag on the back of her bike. When all these important things were done I went bowling.