Almost Summer!

Summer solstice comes this weekend! We've had our first heat wave and Ken's allergies are no longer keeping him off the bike, and he has been figuring out some quick routes that he can ride before going to work a couple of mornings a week. Due to his intense work schedule, its been really hard for him to find time to ride. Although, you know, it's light out until 830pm or so. But if we were to ride that late, we'd be going to bed around 1030pm, and we get up around 5, which isn't really enough sleep.

We had a lovely cool & misty ride last evening - the tops of the hills were all foggy. It was just beautiful. Four hundred feet of climbing. We came across a red fox in Berlin - it crossed the road in front of us (this was about 715 pm), and was sitting in the woods, watching us, as we climbed a hill.

Karen has found a new group of ladies to ride with in town on the weekdays, and they seem to be a good match. Last Friday, I (Karen) went out with some women in town and did this ride. One of the really nice thing about riding with new groups of folks is the learning of new routes and being able to look at the same old roads a little differently. Doesn't hurt that the weather was absolutely beautiful. 523 feet of climbing.

Once Ken is able to get a few shorter rides in during the week, we should be able to start increasing our weekend mileage. Which would be good & very much necessary. Ken's been topping out at a painful 35 miles on the weekends - I'd really rather see us at a pain-free 45 or 50 mile weekend ride by now. But with this shoulder of mine (the nagging shoulder injury is back, and it seems to have brought reinforcements this time), who knows... Its acting up around the 7 mile mark now, which is just ridiculous. I'm doing heat/ice rotations, advil, icy hot, and even took half of a muscle relaxant last night. Working on some massage therapy and chiropractic help. It'll get there. But the idea of riding another PMC with pain like that is really, really depressing.

Stats up until now (at least the rides I've managed to record - I forget sometimes):

• Almost 12 hours total on the bike (you should be laughing at this - its very sad)
  
• 300+ miles traveled (laugh here too - I would do it myself, but I'm a bit disappointed)
  
• 13,344 calories burned (thats the equivalent of about 27 Big Macs... not that we EAT such junk, but thats ok - it's for comparison only. Or 96 cans of coke, which we don't drink either.)
  

We're coming upon that magical time of year when hopefully the mileage will start to really add up (quickly). I had hoped to have significantly more hours & miles logged by now, but life has this annoying habit of getting in the way.