Numbers post

Two years ago, I was posting about numbers. A lot. The numbers in question had to do with a "personal record" season of cycling--I nudged out a bit more than eight thousand miles of bicycling in a calendar year. Things changed the following calendar year.



On January 1st of 2012, I rode what was to be my last ride with the Louisville Bicycle Club. At the time, I didn't feel any animosity toward the Club, but there was some sadness that the Club had not been as supportive of Bluegrass Bicycle as we had hoped. I was stepping down as VP Education, after three years in office, as I wanted to spend more time on my house and more time with Jenn (it may or may not surprise one or two who read this that some of the projects I envisioned for that year have yet to come to fruition). Since I no longer had the responsibility to participate in the Club education program, I no longer felt compelled to ride to Iroquois Park for the New Rider Clinics, or to the Clinics Jenn and I hosted in St. Matthews or at Waterfront Park. After a disappointing experience or several in long-distance cycling, I realized that I didn't have the interest in that sort of riding I once had.

About five months later, my job at Bluegrass Bicycle came to an end. With it, roughly 5600 miles of commuting went away.

Oh, I bought a bike to pull a trailer so that I could do handyman work, and even did some actual work.

I spent the year after the closure of the bike shop fighting off some level of depression, though. My bike mileage suffered, which correlated highly with my mood suffering. The direction of the causal arrow is not certain.

Since then, I've taken a part-time job at a megacorporate retail chain. At some levels, it is as the pay suggests: a soul-sucking servitude to some corporate big wig who makes more money off me than I make. There are things about the work that I enjoy, to be certain--helping folks figure out just what it is they seek in a store that has forty thousand or so SKUs, and how to make that bit of hardware or lumber do what they want to do is gratifying.

I'm still doing some home repair stuff, too. I'm not being aggressive enough about going out for the work, but some work is coming my way, and I'm enjoying much of it. Again, it's helping customers solve challenges.

In the process of all this, I've remained true to my email signature, a quote from Sir David Attenborough that reads, "If I can bicycle, I bicycle."

And I've put almost four thousand miles on bicycles over the last twelve months. I've spent more than three hundred hours on bicycles over the last year--132 of them on my newest bike (the Surly Big Dummy). Just over a third of those hours have been spent commuting. I used my Raleigh for a bit more than forty-three hours, WAY up from 2012, but down from 2010, when I used it quite often for errands and some commuting (which was also before I bought the Globe bike).

The year isn't quite over. I still have time to ride that last hundred or so miles to make it to four thousand miles for the calendar year. Maybe. If I'm really worried about that number.

I'm not as concerned about it as I was a couple years ago.