Well, with 2010’s bike mileage tally, my back-to-back streak of 6,000-plus mile years did not three-peat. While 2008 saw me log 6,608 miles and 2009, 6,741, I certainly started off 2010 on track to top 6,000 again, collecting more than 2,000 miles by the end of April.
But then came May and with it my new status as a full-time telecommuter, and what went away was a 30-mile roundtrip commute between Silver Lake and Westchester, one that I’d made more than 400 times over that combined two-year stretch.
Sure I had grand plans of picking up the slack with an increase in recreational riding, but that hope was soon replaced by my oft-lamented refrain about how easy it is to ride when you have to, and how easy it is not to ride when you don’t have to. Case in point, in the eight months that I’ve been working from home I managed little more than 750 miles, ending this year at 2,769.
I’m not sure what bike mileage totals 2011 has in store for me nor am I setting any goals, but I do know that I won’t be averaging less than 100 miles a month like I did the last two thirds of 2010. The new year will see me expanding the number of group rides I’ve typically done only on Saturdays in May, so if the past paucity of the 10 Bridges Ride, or the Black Dahlia West-Adams Mosey Ride, or the Watts Happening Ride or the Frank Lloyd Wride or the Two Rivers Ride have left you and your schedule unable to attend, there will be greater opportunities to do so.
In addition, I’ll be organizing rides involving dead celebs, Arroyo expeditions, memorials hidden in plain sight, cemeteries, and such. There’ll be downtown meanderthals, Scoot ‘N Shoots, Eastside excursions, offroad explorations… Hell, on any of several given dawns during the week I’m gonna do my damnedest to be found doing laps around the Greater Silver Lake area — including the reservoir where it all began with the infamous International Association of Armed Librarians/Mobile Assault Force.
In short, there’ll be plenty of opportunities for me to get my bike on — and yours. For me it starts tomorrow afternoon with what will be the first of my regular monthly offroad rides, this one in the Verdugos from the Beaudry Trailhead up to Tongva Peak and back down.
See you out there!
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