Farewell 2008

Today is the last day of 2008. It will certainly go down as one of the more interesting years in recent memory, what with the soaring gas prices followed by plummeting gas prices, a soaring economy followed by a plummeting economy and one of the most exciting political campaigns in anyone's memory. And The Phillies won the World Series!! And the bicycle achieved a place in the public discourse because it touches and is touched by these aforementioned subjects. They even got to lead out the Phillies victory parade.

Personally it has also been a very exciting year marked by Yoshi's wedding and the impending birth of our grandson in the next few days. (Technically that makes that part of next year's story, but grandchildren are relevant to any discussion.) Meanwhile, through it all we rode. Annie and I rode in the Freedom Valley Ride, The Harlem River Valley Ride, The Lancaster Covered Bridges Ride; I rode in Bike Philly without her because she had to be out of town, and we probably did another ride or two that I am forgetting. And of course, we rode almost every morning on our usual route around the river. Which brings me to my mileage for the year. It was a beautiful morning for a ride today, about the same temperature as yesterday, a bit colder perhaps, but almost no wind (which has since picked up to howling this afternoon) and I was sorry that I'd made a relatively early appointment to have my second Apple One-To-One. And since I stayed up late to watch a really exciting Flyers game from Vancouver last night, I didn't get out at my regular time. It was nice to ride in the light and I managed to push harder and ride over 17 miles to end the year. That brings my yearly total to 4701.4. Two hundred miles above goal, three hundred miles less than last year. A well chosen goal. I'll stick with it for the coming year: 4500 miles.

Meanwhile, January should get off to a rocky start riding-wise. The baby will be born in the next few days and for a good couple of weeks we will be either staying up in New Jersey or going back and forth a lot. Even if we take the folders with us, given the winter weather, miles may be hard to come by. But when things settle down I will be on Sabbatical and expect to at least maintain if not increase my normal riding patterns. As you may remember I hope to begin working in my local bike shop as soon as things do settle down. I will try to document my experiences there on a separate blog that will link from this one starting in a few days. It will be called Mussar and the Art of Bicycle Maintenance and the link will be up soon. Till then. Ride safely. Happy New Year.