Goal met! Clear morning
Crunchy frost along the roads
Just 34 miles.

Now where’s the snow?
Got out the door by 6:30 and almost wanted to do a longer ride, but decided on moderation. Glad I still have to go to the ban, ’cause I tallied up the past 7 ddays and it totals 399.65 or some such thing! Never thought I’d do a 400 mile week in the winter time 10,002 logged for the year. Of course, Clyde & Rickey do that without the fanfare or the grand finale!

(Of course, the question remains: what *would* I have done with these hours… shopping? knitting? housework? Saved the planet? I shall never know.)

eighty-eight miles Sat
seventy four more today
thirty four to go

Saw two or three other people on bikes today. Tomorrow’s supposed to be pretty nasty but I hope I’ll have time to finish before nasty stuff hits. It was flurrying when I finished today’s (tho’ I will have maybe another mile or two with a trip down the street).

I have one Power Grip on with a zip tie instead of a screw. I figure I don’t want to put the otehr one on because that’s the side I take my foot off first and there’s that mandatory learning process.
I am not sure about the things – it wasn’t too weird when the actual shape of the contents did not match the pictures in the directions. I could figure out how to adapt the directions. However, I’m supposed to put a screw through a hole in the strap … only there are no holes. I guess I get to make them myself. These things should have been half priced as “seconds.”
The way it’s set up now my foot wants to set on the pedal in a bad way (as in, too far to the left so I’m hanging off the pedal and it’s sticking into… and my feet aren’t **that** big). However, I think if I poke a different hole closer it will move everythign back and it will work better. On the third hand, I just might go back to toe clips.

Think ahead to February 2 and the Illini Chill in Saint Joseph!

Registration and a teensy tinesy bit of informatin is at that link.

I will get to be there this year. Which bike ??? Schwinn? Gazelle? Xtra? (prob’ly the latter unless studs are called for, tho’ I didn’t use studs when things were *really* bad that one year and the Schwinn did just fine!)

Another metric
It’s drizzly cold and damp
Didn’t work too hard.

Yesterday I saw the mounds and mounds and mounds of trash out waiting for pickup. Amazing. If people *thought* about that stuff, maybe we could do a holiday without quite as many tons of debris. So much styrofoam, looking for a home!

Today Champaign CYcle was open so I could swing by and spring the Trek for 27 miles. Wasn’t *that* much easier, but I suspect that’s just because the 34 on the Xtra toasted me, though I had … yes… before the twelve days of Christmas were up… taken the tree down. I figured when I leave it at the shop to get its brake rotor (which I didn’t do today) that’ll be a little easier without the decorations. Couple of customers were admiring the carbon fiber bikes and saw me & said “What the hell do you haul in that thing?” and I said, “oh, anything I want!” and as they gazed, I said, “Just took the Christmas tree down this morning.”
“Oh, right away thne! (laugh) Too much air drag.”
“yea, I did 75 yesterday and it was a lot of work. I’m taking it easy today.”
Bet they’re still wondering…

seventy-five miles
ALL OF THEM on the Xtra
That babe is heavy.

Or… I hope it is!
Hope when I get on the Trek
12 won’t be mean speed

Sixty Miles A Day
That’s what’s needed for 10K
Six whole days to go!

… tomorrow’s plan (like today’s until I realized LBS wasn’t open) is to do *some* a.m. miles then pick up the lighter steed.
I might, just might… take off the tree. I picked up the decorations I’ve been resisting buying at their half-price (some stockings and a santa I can ductape to the snap deck and a sleigh I can tie down, and four more little light strings that I”ll use right away). Now, if I could find something good for January commemoration…
I snuck across the Curtis Road Interchange Christmas Eve. It’s almost finished (and I was looking for every tenth of a mile to nudge to 40 in the ferocious winds… yes, I *did* average over 12 today thanks to less wind, but hills are a BEAR. Hmmm… perchance I should have Scot put the brake rotor on when I switch out the bikes tomorrow, as he says it contributes to drag, too. Hey, I gotta be getting strong, though! DON’T TELL HOWARD I’m sneaking up on him again … the weather is, despite its fickleness previously, being kinder to me than to him! )

NPR is doing this blurb on blogging and implying that it’s “its own thing,” as in a unique literary experience. They never used the word ” diary” or “journal” which have been around for how long? The difference is these are public, but it was even acknowledged that blogs are often written as if nobody else ready them.
Of course, none of the blogs featured were cycling blogs so obviously those folks are just out of touch!

Check out planet bike
Now they’re using solar juice
Ain’t that peachy keen?

http://www.planetbike.com/blog
Duly note that I
start to think in haiku time
Every time I blog.

Shall I start to speak
Words and lines, sevens and fives
Let the meter flow.

(It is a little like when I was writing about Flash the FIsh for a structured phonics reader – I used a lot of one-syllable words. It did not vex.)

Metric Century
Took up most of Saturday
I did not go fast.

Wind advisory
Big sticks falling from the trees
No long ride today.

Tomorrow is cold
But just ten-to-twenty winds.
Who knows what I”ll ride?

my mother’s favorite Christmas song was “I heard the bells on Christmas Day.”

IT was written by Longfellow; originally it had verses about the Civil War which don’t get included in the “Christmas song” versions of it, but I think bear inclusion in times of war.

Let us not let the cannons’ black, accursed mouths silence our carols.

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Till ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;
“There is no peace on earth,” I said;
“For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men.”

I don’t ride for a cause; I ride for effects