As I mentioned earlier, I love bike riding. It is, for me, the perfect combination of workout and reward. My calves and thighs are almost rocks, I get to see quite a bit more via wheels than my own feet, and I get a much larger sense of accomplishment from a bike ride than anything else (other than literally any horse related pursuit, obviously). I’ve been focusing on stretching out my tiny comfort zone bubble via bike this year; I started bike commuting in the middle of our January freeze, and more or less kept that up for the year; I’m discovering some new routes around my town; and I’m considering an easy bike camping route later in the fall, when the smoke dies down and things aren’t so…firey.

(I just had a random thought: generally, our vehicles earn names ie, my truck is the Emerald Queen; I’ve been biking on my Gary Fisher birthday bike for 8 months now, and it’s still just “Gary”…weird).

On Sunday, I’m jumping into an organized bike ride, something I’ve never done before; The Tour de Lab is basically a bar crawl, via bike, in the morning, through inner Portland neighborhoods that I’m mostly familiar with. I’m not ready for the elevation change of the 40 mile ride (at least at any speed faster than basically walking) so I’m doing the 15 mile ride, which I know is well within my abilities…except for the 2000 odd other people I’ll have to deal with!

Thank you Tom for encouraging me to do this, will you help me tune up my bike tonight? I can’t wait to earn some puppy ears and finish line booze and hot dogs!