Thursday, March 31, 2022

Vacations, Hiatuses, Birthdays, and Thirty Days...

It's been just over two months since I've checked in here, so I'd like to say welcome back to you AND me. To be 100% honest, I haven't written here because I haven't been riding all that much! The family and I finally took a long-awaited trip to Disney that was delayed by this thing called "The Pandemic" you might have heard something about. We returned to several inches of snow that hung around through the Winter cold, so with those two factors combined, I ended up taking a few weeks off from the bike. I did stumble upon this in Disney:


We also averaged about 12 miles of walking a day while we were there...for 8 days. Despite whatever questionable culinary decisions we made, we were certainly not lacking in the exercise department. If you encounter me in a space that's NOT this blog, I have much more to say about the mostly fantastic - and dare I say, magical - experiences we had. But since this is NOT a Disney blog, I'll end this part of this post with this photo and move on (for now):


Oh and by the way, the kiddo had a birthday in that week. No big deal.

Anyway, as I mentioned I've been keeping mostly low-key on the bike riding for the last couple months, but I briefly suspended my hiatus for one glorious day on February 28th to celebrate my bike's 6th birthday. It was a perfectly timed rare Winter evening where the weather was actually quite pleasant:


Soon thereafter, our Spring work season began in earnest, and I found myself shifting my energy into a different gear. Now that we're off and running and into a rhythm, I will be riding more regularly again. As annoyed as I get with daylight saving time, it has provided some great riding evenings recently:


And just in time, because 30 Days of Biking starts tomorrow. For those of you who are unfamiliar, it's a challenge to ride a bike every day in April. There is no mileage requirement - all you have to do is get on a bike at least once a day for 30 consecutive days. Sounds easy, right? It can be, if you know what you're doing. I've successfully accomplished it every year since 2016, and I'm going for lucky number 7 this year. I have no big plans in store for it, but just like in years past, I do plan to write a blog post about whatever adventures I encounter every single day. I hope you'll join me for the ride!

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I'd like to leave you with a couple plugs that I alluded to above. My girlfriend Rae made our whole family custom bags for our Disney trip, and you can check out her work AND ORDER YOUR OWN on her website at VernaRae.com. If you're interested in more Disney-related info, check out Rae's sister Jackie's blog at JackAndBax.com, which is updated from time to time with various travels to ALL sorts of places. And lastly, one more photo of our whole group: