Recovery Blog

It's been four years since my last entry in this blog. Actually, I was surprised this site was still alive and available for blogging. Many of my favorite websites and even some of my favorite businesses have bit the dust since 2013. In the current environment, it's amazing that things remain stable for this long.

Last year was my best cycling year of my life. I rode 6150 miles, and maintained a running total above 100 miles a week nearly continuously from early spring to mid-December. I toured Normandy, Brittany, and Puglia. I rode the Lighthouse Century along the coast of California, the Back Roads Century in my home state of Virginia, and several sponsored rides in between. To be sure, in my retirement years I've shifted to doing the metric portion of each of these centuries. But I still live the adage, "A bike ride should be fun."

I had considered beginning a different blog about bicycling. But, as this site seems to be perfectly functional, why not just revive my Fifty Centuries by Bike blog.

It's fitting that I can maintain continuity through my bicycling blog because, while there have been several changes over the past four years, I am still a bicycle tourist, I still need a place to record the long conversations I have with my handlebars, and riding still frees my spirit.


I have a great year planned. My first upcoming event is the Tarwheel Century ride in Elizabeth City, NC on April 22nd. I've done this several times before. It's a great early season ride with very few hills and very little traffic. After that I have rides planned in MD, IA, NH, ID, OR, NY, and again in CA. I'll prepare a separate blog entry on the 2017 season, but if everything goes according to plan, I'll have finished over 7000 miles in 2017.

Riding is not my only bicycling-related ambition. Is there a market for a book on my adventures, with a chapter for each great ride? I've had real positive reactions from the blog entries and from the articles I wrote for the (now defunct) local bike newsletter. And, I've also begun development of a wall calendar with a century map for each month (hopefully a map of a century that still happens in that month). Then we can dream of riding as we sit in our cubicles. I'll post a few samples.

A journey of a thousand pages begins with one sentence on paper. Eventually, I have to find an agent or a publisher for the book, of course. But, before that, I'll have to live up to one of my New Years' resolutions: write more for others' consumption.

It's not that I don't write. I try to write every day, keeping personal journals about life in general or specifically about bicycling.

Meanwhile, enjoy the May page from my proposed calendar. The Horsey Hundred is offered every Memorial Day weekend. I already have a blog entry for this ride in the archive.