Too Much Driving

My apologies for being away from the blog for so long. There hasn’t been much cycling for me lately, so I haven’t had too much to say. Instead, I’ve been spending the last week or so road tripping around.

There was some excellent hiking in western Virginia, then out to Norfolk, up through Pennsylvania, a night in Rochester, and now, one last weekend in Cleveland. All told… that’s a lot of driving! So much driving!

My shiny, red Trek FX is resting up for some serious miles in her temporary home in Wisconsin while I’m off tooling about. The downside of such is that — excepting some very nice hiking in Virginia — I’m growing a bit restless with all this sitting in a car.

Life has been strange in other regards, with some personal troubles here and there, but all of that just has me more ready to go. I look forward to the mind-clearing opportunities of the upcoming 3,000 mile ride. So much of this summer is a disentangling of the head and reset of many aspects of my life through the intense mental and physical struggle of the trip as well as the beauty of the experience.

At the moment, though, I’m getting to relax, surf the web, and take in some food porn. Several years ago, when I ditched cable television, I was very happy with the decision; I did not really miss anything from cable television, except for one thing. I miss the Food Network. Thanks to my friends here in Lakewood, who are letting me crash with them for the weekend, and who have cable, I’m able to veg out with some food television for a while.

Hopefully, I’ve only 500 miles of driving left ahead of me in the near future as I head back up to Wisconsin this weekend. My car is surely in need of some rest from the road as well. In the last four months, I’ve racked up over 10,000 miles of driving. My legs are getting stiff just thinking about all that time in a car… Whew… Time to go for a stretch.

All goes to plan, I should be able to set out by the summer solstice. We’re almost there…