Let’s hear it for our man Raz’s first TCI Friday! Read hard. Comment harder. Happy Friday. – Robot
To most people I call it my annual kick off the summer ride. To my immediate family it’s known as my birthday ride.
My birthday arrives in early June, just about the time the weather starts getting really nice in most necks of the woods. I don’t call it my birthday ride to everyone because their first question concerns age, and frankly, I don’t keep track of my age any other time of the year.
On this particular ride day, however, my goal is the number of miles to match the number of circles I’ve completed around the sun.
This year I combined the birthday ride with an actual errand, which meant going to a city that’s not quite far enough away for it to be a simple out and back. So I tried to extend the ride there, making the grave mistake of turning the first 12 miles into a gravel grind rather than just a sweet spin on the road.
Most of my rides are on gravel and those rides barely reach 30-something miles much less anything anywhere near my age. As those 12 miles drew to a close I realized the error of my ways. Going the full monte would be a challenge. Happy Birthday to me!
Once I hit the pavement with my slicks on my Cannondale ’96 Olympic Mountain Bike, the miles slipped by quickly. Then I faced the real challenge. To get enough miles in I had to ride 6 miles past my home to another city and back.
Hmmm, if I double count the gravel miles I could still get away with counting the right number of miles, and just coast home. And really, who cares other than me? But no, as I rode past my turn for home I realized what little control I actually have over things like this. Damn ego.
I eventually made it home with the proper mileage checked off.
This week’s question: Do you have any annual rituals or rides?
I try to do the same few centuries every year with one or two others for variety. Aside from that, every Fathers Day I do a long solo ride in the morning and burgers on the grill with the whole family after. The boys are grown and off on their own so I look forward to that for months.
It’s interesting how holidays change once your kids are grown. Enjoy your Father’s Day ride this weekend!
Since my birthday is in January, when we moved to NM from Hawaii I started riding my age in kilometers rather than miles as I am averse to too many hours on a bike in the dead of winter. Other big annual ride is the Summer Solstice ride, and take off mid afternoon and get back at sunset.
Oooh, I like the idea of a solstice ride! Hey, you could ride the Winter Solstice, too, and that would keep your winter miles low!
For a decade I had a first Friday after the kids go back to school ride. The route would vary. However, the intention was always the same, namely, to rejoice in a little more space and time with a few more miles.
I can relate to that from my days as a stay at home dad. Pile up the miles til ya gotta pick em up from school
I’ve had a series of traditional rides. For a while, it was the annual Tour of the California Alps (aka The Death Ride). Then it was riding a century every month. Following the spring MTB race series in Wednesday nights near my hometown of Folsom, CA, getting on the MTB every Wednesday was a thing. Doing a Saturday gravel ride featuring Old Latrobe and Michigan Bar roads near Rancho Murieta became the go-to to prep for the Grasshopper Adventure Series rides last year. I guess my traditions are semi-permanent until I exhaust one and move on to something else that hooks me.
There’s always something that hooks us …
Oddly, being a typical Virgo, I don’t have any annual rituals. This September I will right this inconsistency with a long, mixed terrain, with lunch in the middle, birthday ride of my own. Thank you for setting me straight!
Very cool. Enjoy!