The clock, she ticks... and other news

The spreadsheet is ready to receive data and tomorrow I start developing some: The 2006 bicycling season is upon us! I arbitrarily set my riding season as April 1 through October 3 (to coincide with school quarters, financial quarters, April Fool's day, my birthday, spring, and summer) so tomorrow is the day it all starts. This year's theme is B2K: riding 2,000 miles. I figure that with a full season, and barring broken toes or other injuries, it is a reasonable goal. There are 185 days in the season, so that pencils out to just a hair under 11 miles a day, or 76 miles a week.

Tomorrow Otis and I plan to have a hearty breakfast and then hit the Burke-Gilman trail to work out the kinks (as if moving and cleaning and all that hasn't been enough work lately) on the short Gasworks Park to Matthews Beach ride. At 15 miles, we'll start out ahead of pace, for 24 hours at least.

There is a related good news/bad news deal here: The good news is that I will be able to ride to my classes at Bothell this quarter after all, so there will be one or two 30-35 mile trips per week on a regular basis anyway. The bad news is that this is only possible because my class at NSCC had low enrollment and was canceled, costing me a fair bit of income. Well, as the great Canadian bard Alan Thicke said, " You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have the facts of life, the facts of life." I will miss the money, but I won't miss working a five-day-a-week schedule, and I do have plenty of projects to keep me busy.

Some of those projects involve just getting this new place all set up. We are officially out of the old apartment, lock, stock, and shower curtain. This place looks pretty good already, but it's still hard to lay hands on paperwork and supplies and stuff that is usually in arm's reach but is still squirreled away right now. No worries, though - it's just keeps getting better, little by little.