Happiness

Things things don't always happen when we think they should. Sometimes they happen in their own time. Sometimes they seem impossible.

Million Meters of Milk - 1000 Kilometers in Wisconsin

"While the world spins underfoot, we start another day with wild hearts and fierce desire"*

Michele, the Great Lake Randonneurs' Regional Brevet Administrator, described the Million Meters of Milk as a 1000k where all riders would receive the same experience whether they were first finisher or lantern rouge.

New Holland 200K

It was a hot afternoon. Even now, sitting in the house as the last light of the June sunset languidly eases into the horizon, my body radiates heat. It's as if the afternoon sun soaked deep into my flesh the way summer heat soaks into asphalt and concrete and then lingers before it finally releases into cooler evening air.

The morning started off cooler. We met just before dawn. The New Holland 200K is the last 200K of the Pennsylvania 600K that started the day before. Some of the 600K riders who arrived in the night would start at 5:00 am with those of us just riding the 200K.

Muscle memory

It's easy to love from a distance.

The Rides of March bike challenge 2017

The month long March riding challenge is back and starts March 1, 2017. Let's get ready to PEDAL!!! 

   FOUR WAYS TO WIN

• "A" TEAM = 60 minutes a day  for 30 days
• "B" TEAM = 30 minutes a day for 30 days
• 24 HOUR TIME TRIAL=  60 minutes a day for 24 days
• 12 HOUR TIME TRIAL =  30 minutes a day for 24 days

Rules: Ride 24 or 30 days in March for at least a half hour EACH day (you get one day off!).

• Stationary bikes, rollers and trainers count! So does riding outside!
• Track the number of days and minutes per day.
• The riding minutes start fresh each day (no carryover from a prior day)
• The Ides of March makeup special (ride an extra day's time - two half hours or two hours) and get credit for both!)

All who successfully complete the challenge and notify me will get listed in the Iron Rider blog (First name, last initial.)

Join the conversation on Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/954089274601626/

So who's in?

First Friday Writing for Randos: Live to Fight Another Day

{First Friday Writings for Randos - A monthly post that features pieces from other writers that touch some facet of the Randonneuring experience, even if that was not the author's intent. It's stuff that's best read out loud - slowly.} This month it's an excerpt from

A Man's Life

Live To Fight Another Day

By Mark Jenkins 

We went out for breakfast, a great heap of eggs and bacon, and talked about kids and guilt and climbing and Asia. About loss and lessons. We talked straight into the afternoon. We left the cafe and went to his house in the country and sat for hours drinking tea in a living room filled with mementos from Nepal. I told him about my own shadows of Everest. And Guy told me how, in 1995, he guided a client up, Doug Hansen, to the south summit of Everest before making the decision to pull the plug. Hansen died with Hall the following year.

It was a painful subject, and we quickly moved on. But the conversation circled back. It had to. Guy Cotter had spent his entire adulthood trying to determine when to push on and when to turn around. One of his best friends had died on the crux of the dilemma. His wisdom was hard won.