The strain begins to show. I did not wake as my best self today. Despite my desire, my mind and body were not ready to sleep last night. I saw 11:00, 12:00, 1am pass before finally dropping off. I generally have problems getting to sleep anyway, but last night I was hot, my legs were […]
Today’s theme was elevation. I’m going to show off the Strava shot first, to provide data for the story. We left town for today’s 48 smiler through Staunton, although the route did hit some new roads getting out of town. They all went up, so I got my heart pumping pretty quickly. As you can […]
Planning to be out well before nine… Riiiiight. Anyone who knows me will be unsurprised to hear that target was missed. Not by much though. By the time we were rolling it was only around 9:30. Good enough! We decided to be conservative and choose the 40 smile mile ride today, understanding that 40 miles […]
Today I awoke in a fairly comfortable hotel bed and thought, “What am I doing?” It started raining on the drive yesterday a few hours out of Staunton, which I had expected from the forecast. But it rained all evening, and having brought my road bike with the skinny, treadless tires, I was beginning to […]
Turns out the cleanliness of my bathroom depends on my travel schedule. It’s the evening before I leave for my first bike tour of the year, and 10:30pm finds me not settling down into bed, preparing for a good night’s rest, but breathing fumes while cleaning my shower. The only time I clean my shower […]
Today a dear friend of mine told me they had recently read a post I made back in April of 2021 titled One Out of 326 Million. I have a terrible memory and can’t recall the content of most of my writing by title alone, so I went back and re-read it. I told my […]
It’s me, hi, I’m the cautionary tale, it’s me. Up until very recently, I thought I could have my cake and eat it too. Which honestly, seems logical. I have cake. I want to eat it. I win. I’m looking around though, observing my friends like I do, and I have noticed something. And it […]
For a few years now, I’ve carried a torch for one man. It lit the moment I met him, the instant that I saw that face. It grew to a steady flame, then a fire, and it burns still, tarnished but bright. I carry it quite alone, and against all reason. While my affections have […]
We had comfortable sleeping weather last night, and woke up to basically dry tents. Every night has been different! Cynthia and I missed our planned departure by only 20 minutes today. We felt some pressure to get going, since I was shooting to be done by noon. No big deal though, it was easily achieved. […]
After yesterday’s 70-mile terrain packed day, today seemed pretty easy. We lagged a bit and we were out at our latest time yet at nine. It got super chilly last night, and I woke up at 3am feeling cold. Got up a few hours later to a low temp and a LOT of dew; it […]
Steffanie Is Still Here 