The 2018 installment:
This year, on the bicycle....
1. 1768 miles ridden outdoors
2. 630 miles ridden indoors on Zwift
http://www.zwift.com (for those that are interested)
and a small number of rides on my mountain bike that are unaccounted for on my computer.
So, that's a total of 2400 miles for the year. Average speed for the entire (outdoor) mileage, 15.8 mph. Not bad, all things considered. My outdoor season was bleak this year. Bad weather, too much going on at work, and a lot of travel this spring was keeping me off the bike. But I've managed to keep my mileage up during the last couple of months riding indoors.
Longest ride of the season was 55 miles. Average ride was 24 miles.
3. No flat tires. yay.
4. Not chased by any dogs this year. yay.
5. One broken strand on my forward derailleur (shifter) making shifts into the big ring a bit difficult, otherwise, no major mechanical failures. I'll do some repairs and maintenance on the bike in February. The bike is now ten years old, about 20 thousand miles on it. I put an average of $75 worth of parts and maintenance into it every year.
6. Only three people to either flip me the bird or yell at me from their car window this year. One was rather comical. I normally just give them a nice friendly wave back in return. They are driving a 3000 pound weapon. I'm on a 17 pound bicycle, wearing a skin tight outfit that makes me look like a clown. Some people are very impatient drivers, however. They'll cross a double yellow on a blind curve or blind hill to pass me, only to save seven seconds of time on their drive.
7. Only two charity rides this year, and a small number of informal "meetup" rides.
Side note,
http://www.meetup.com , is a pretty cool website. I've been on it for about four years now. It's a website that helps people with similar hobbies that live in a particular area meetup and enjoy their hobby together. Virtually any hobby. If you like programming computers while drinking exotic coffee - there is likely a meetup group for that. I'm in two local bicycle meetup groups and a scuba group. it's fun.
I'm signed up for a Gran Fondo (a race) in Chattanooga in early May 2019. We cross into three states, climb 5500 feet, and ride 80 miles. I won't actually be racing... I'll just be trying to keep ahead of the sweeper truck. The 80 miles doesn't seem to bad, nor does the 5500 feet of climbing. But, put them together.... yikes. I'll be doing this event with my Brother, so that should be fun. He is much faster than me, so I'll draft off of him a lot.
I'm also looking to sign up for the "Hell of the West" event this year (September?) in Grand Junction, Colorado. For those of you who might remember, there was a bicycle themed movie in the early 1980's called, "American Flyer". Kevin Costner starred. Two Brothers travel out west to do some bike racing in the movie. The Hell of the West event rides on some of the same roads that were used during the movie. I'm waiting to see if this event will interfere with NashBro or not. The dates haven't been set yet.
That's enough rambling...