First things first: I’m totally fine.  As I write this my shoulder is a little stiff and it’ll be a few nights before I sleep on my right side, but my friend Katie the MD has given me an excellent prognosis, explaining in terms I barely understood and am less able to recall how nothing is broken, everything will heal, and I would do well to enjoy a little ibuprofen now and again in the coming days.

It happened while I was biking across the city of St. Louis¹ to meet friends out for pizza and go see The Avengers.  As I crossed Grand Avenue at Magnolia in the pedestrian walkway while having a green light, an oncoming car made a right turn on to Grand right into me.

I don’t know if this is characteristic of all being-hit-by-a-car instances, but for mine there was this 2 second window in which you know that the hit is going to happen, and there is nothing you can do about it.  A time during which your thoughts are “Oh-crap-she’s-not-seeing-me-she’s-headed-right-for-me-this-is-totally-happening.”  Well, you get those thoughts rattled off in your head in a fraction of second (because thoughts are really fast like that),  which leaves you with like 1.7 seconds left to express yourself while catastrophe is imminent.

I choose to fill my 1.7 seconds with profanity.  Loud, unabashed, you-rarely-get-the-chance-to-swear-in-public-quite-like-this profanity.  I think at the time it was my hope against hope that it would be heard to make my presence known and stave off disaster.

As I rolled on to the hood of that red Eagle Talon convertible I knew it didn’t work, but the uncertain motion of collision suddenly ended and thus my need to pontificate on the worst and/or tuck-and-roll protocol was suddenly gone.

I got up and in a flash pondered in earnest curiosity: so how is one supposed to act right now?  All pissed off?  Sheepishly cool and walk it off?  Get all legal and demand insurance papers?  Find humor and grace in that it could have been much worse?  The last option seemed most fitting as I was gratefully still able to walk with no substantial pain.

“Are you alright?” the 40-something red headed woman yelled out from her car.  “Um… yeah, I think so–a little stiff here and there…”  I don’t remember exactly what I said next, I recall gesturing her ahead to pull over so we could talk.

That’s when she drove off.  Which was a little bitchy of her, methinks².  But in fairness, I reckon within the looseness of my dazed, unclear communication she would somewhat understandably glom on to an interpretation of my words in which I were suggesting I was fine and she should just go on about her day.

Thankfully though help came right in the car behind her in that fateful turn lane.  A lovely woman yelled out “We saw the whole thing, are you ok?  Do you need any help or a ride?”  Turned out my bike was not in riding condition at this point, so my answer was yes, a ride would be fantastic.  It was then my great pleasure make the acquaintance of Ana and Richard, a nice pair of professors from SLU whose car had an ample trunk for stowing my huge-framed bike.  No doubt noting the foot-plus I had on her, Ana was even kind enough to offer me up the front passenger seat.

Surprisingly clear-headed thinking reminded me of a bike service shop on the south end of the park about a mile away, so that’s where I asked to be taken.  Once there they were kind enough to help me get the bike out and walk me over to the shop to be certain that I get well on my way.  Turns out the shop is closed on Sundays, at which point I asked: “Might you possibly do me one more favor and take me to the Central West End?”  With immediate bike service out of the question catching up with my friends was the next best thing.

Like the awesome people they were there was no hesitation to grant my bike and I a second ride.  We got to talking about travel on our way and I had the rare chance to practice my French with them–lovely folks for sure.  Just a few blocks shy of our destination I noticed the car dash clock read 3:56.  “Hey, I don’t know if you guys are big on irony, but thanks to you I’m going to be right on time to meet my friends for 4pm pizza!”

From there we parted company with a hearty handshake, I being super grateful.  Their help made a rough situation way way less burdensome, and following the drive off of my unwitting vehicular assailant they did swiftly rekindle my love for and faith in humanity.

In the end all was well enough: a few bruises and a stiff shoulder marked the entirety of my battle damage, and $390 for new tires and crankshaft has my bike back in working order.  For my swiftness to forgive and forget, and willingness to say things like “Man, if one had to get the “Get hit by a car” item crossed off the list of things to do before you die, it couldn’t have gone better!”, I’m told I’m being a little too light hearted about it³.  Even Tracy I think was more upset about me getting hit by a car than I was (can’t blame her–after all, her property did get injured).  And while I delight in the poetry being laid down by friends who would be my avenging angels (words like “She’ll get hers in karma”, “Oh my god, I would so mess her up–driving off after hitting my boy like that, nah-uh!” and my personal favorite, “I’ll shank a bitch”), I think any attempts of exacting vengeance, even cash for my bike fixin’, would be super draining and not worth it.

In the end, we’re just two people whose paths crossed unfortunately and we made a little mark and experience in each others lives.  She’s alright in my book, stuff happens.  I think I’d be content as far as justice is concerned to know that I left a tidy little John-sized dent in the hood of her car.  Really either way is good with me.

As we pulled on to Santa Fe and out of my in-law’s neighborhood, embarking finally on World Tour with car loaded with camping gear and fancy bikes strapped to the back, the missed opportunity to finish the remnants of the morning’s breakfast was apparently foremost on my mind.  At the slightly-seasoned age of 32 my metabolism remains cartoonishly high, and with the road trip into Kansas ahead I sought simply to be well fed.

“Do you think we should go back?” I turned to ask Tracy with as dead-panned an expression as I could muster.  She laughed and said no, thankfully calling my bluff.

There would be no hard feelings about one or two things falling through the cracks when measured against the sheer amount of details and preparations tended to during the last 2 weeks (and really the last 4 months) by Tracy and I.  Actually when it came to getting us moved out and transitioned logistically to nomadic living it was 90% Tracy: cancelling services, selling, giving, and donating our stuff, packing the few (8) boxes with what little we kept, rerouting mail, booking flights, making the most of our miles (one free ticket to New Zealand, two business class to Peru), and more–this was all Tracy, handled with grace and wicked-high precision.

The last few weeks I spent largely getting my consultancy ready for the road: wrapping up projects, earning a little more nerd fame on Slashdot and Hacker News, setting up my stand-in for my clients’ support issues, and laying down the foundation for my next vocational adventure, version 2.0 of CoachAccountable (just the day before move-out I launched the alpha version to two people I’m coaching, who graciously volunteered to be my guinea pigs for testing and fine tuning).

So our exodus from Denver was rather smooth sailing, considering the degree of life-uprooting it entailed.

For those of you not familiar with this plan, World Tour is where we get rid of most of our stuff, put the rest in storage, and go travel & live around the world for a year.  Our first 3 months, now currently underway, constitute the US phase where we road trip around visiting friends and family and attend a few weddings.  Then on July 26th our third wedding of the summer, being held in Cancun, beckons us to fly on out for the international phase, taking us to parts of Central and South America, Australia/New Zealand, Oceana, Southeast Asia, and East and West Europe¹, and then the plan is to fly back from Ireland around September 2013 to lay down roots in Denver once again and make little people.

And it’s all in motion now.  On Saturday, April 29th we moved out of our place and transferred the things we are keeping to Tracy’s parents’ place (a bed, a dresser, a couch & love seat, the aforementioned 8 boxes, and Ozzie the kitty²). Sunday morning we rearranged the car and loaded in a big brown cooler on loan from the Lee collection.  With our car loaded for camping mode and containing all of the possessions we’d be enjoying the coming 3 months, we proudly bid the parents goodbye and were on our way.

To have the luxury of a sausage and potato snack on my mind at this point and amid these happenings suggests we were in a good place.  About 20 minutes later as we merged on to I25 to leave Denver, we remembered a few more things forgotten, including folding chairs for the camp fire with those great little beer coozies.  So we had reason enough to double back after all.

Thus the journey began, and yes, in case you were wondering the breakfast remnants did indeed make a lovely 1pm snack.

The other night I was hosting some friends for dinner and lengthy conversation ensued.  One of the facets of conversation was me fielding questions about how Tracy and I do and manage this or that as a married couple.  These friends are younger and earlier in their relationship than Tracy and I, but on their way to getting married and eagerly committed to creating and maintaining a strong and delightful relationship, one that’s built to last.

Humbled and delighted was I to learn that they look to us as a role model of a married couple, and that the way that Tracy and I interact is something they aspire to.

So we riffed about anything and everything on their mind about the matter.  I had the profound privilege of getting to play the role of guru, being asked questions about how we handle this or that and having my impromptu answers be heard with earnest curiosity.

It’s no secret that I love me doing some coaching: the opportunity to contribute to someone just by offering up questions to ponder, places to look, things to put attention on, and new perspectives to consider is just rad–super satisfying by itself and even personally enriching in the process (you just can’t coach about something without getting it yourself).

So this was that.  We riffed about divvying up chores, communication and misunderstandings, love languages, job satisfaction, long term game plans, having shared goals and dreams, and so on. With every question I got I just directed my attention inside, listened for an answer without ego to muffle it, and spoke whatever popped into my head.  It was fun and gave me a shiny and fresh appreciation for how Tracy and I roll.

By their reaction it looks like I gave them some useful things to chew on–a lot of ahas, a lot of interest, a lot of inspired glances thrown about.  The best was when she said at one point “Wow, you’re like the nerdy Dali Lama.”

Wow, what a fun title.  I’ll take it.

Actually that was the second best.  The best was when he suggested I should be giving a TED talk.

“Seriously, either in any of the philosophical stuff we’ve been talking about¹, or from the stuff you write about on your business blog, you could totally come up with a talk worthy of a TED talk.  I’ve got some friends who are organizing a TED event next Tuesday in Oregon.  It’s short notice so probably not feasible, but something for you to consider.”

Something to consider indeed!  I’m going to let Tuesday in Oregon go, but, dang–that fits in really nicely with my current game to become a famous nerd making massive contributions to the world.

Notes:

(We figure this is a very good thing because if you’re going to spend seven decades with another human being, you’re way less apt to get sick of them if they are constantly changing in the direction of becoming more rad.)

So when our friend Nick told us he was doing The Artist’s Way, a book by Julia Cameron whose sub-title is “The spiritual path to creativity” and which takes you through a 12 week process of exploring and unfolding it, we were quickly game to take it on ourselves.  (Kudos and thanks to Lee, who first introduced me to the book when I visited her in San Francisco back in November ’05: I was intrigued then which made me quick to jump in now).

The Artist’s Way has two core activities that you do regularly over the 12 weeks: Morning Pages and Artist Dates.  Morning Pages mean the practice of writing out, long hand, 3 pages of whatever is floating around in your brain first thing in the morning, every morning.  Stream of conscious, just keep writing until you’ve filled those three pages.  Artist Dates mean once a week do something, anything, that nourishes your spirit, and do it by yourself.   Without interruptions and anyone else to please, take time for you and no one else.

The act of keeping up Morning Pages alone is well worth the price of admission¹.  For me they started feeling a little cumbersome but quickly turned into a delightful and downright practical ritual.  Things swirling around in my head got quickly sorted as simply what’s going on (with suddenly zero added anxiety or concern for how it will turn out).  A vague sense of what I should be focusing on (which for me is apt to creep in between contract jobs) turned into a clear path of to-dos and compelling motivation.  Dreams and visions and purpose for my life got created and refined over the weeks.

Purpose and vision got created regularly on a smaller scale as well: at about halfway through the second page I would often start to create exactly what I wanted to accomplish in my day, and with brain well primed with all the great things I wanted to do by mid-page three I could hardly wait to get on with it and start kicking ass in my day, armed with purpose, clarity and excitement.  (If you’ve never experienced this phenomenon on a regular basis, say, daily for a week, you really might want to try it.)

Artist Dates were a treat, too.  The author challenges you to actually make time and space for such indulges, and invites you to experience how much push back to doing so you will likely put up.  Among other things I took myself out to Peruvian restaurant for dinner and a big glass of Malbec, saw an improv comedy show, took a walk through downtown on a snow day and made snow angels in the park, holed up in a coffee shop reading Heinlein with a decadent hot chocolate, and took a field trip to the science museum.

The author is right: these were things I just wouldn’t have organized for myself without the external prompting.

Regarding going through the twelve weeks with someone else: a very good idea.  Tracy and I regularly compared notes on how it was going, the insights we were gaining, and things we were creating.  It was a shared experience that added depth to our relationship.

And the end result?  I’ve got big dreams worth playing for which constitute purpose and direction for the next few years (put simply I want to be a famous nerd, following in the footsteps of the thought leaders and contributors in my craft who make the world a better place).  The coding work I do is now thoroughly recognized and related to by me as artistic creation, and bringing my art to my work both shows in quality and elevated enjoyment in doing it.  I’m reconnected to my roots as being the art guy as a kid (it’s strange how thoroughly I’d forgotten) which just feels good and grounding in a way that is hard to described without getting all woo-woo.  My month between my tenure as CTO of DealNation and the next big project was flush with purpose and accomplishment, and tangibly sowed seeds of awesome for what was next.

Finally, through the experience and growin’ I am indeed a more interesting and rad person to my love, thus fulfilling more on the promise.

At about 10 hours per week, this was twelve weeks and $18 very well spent.

Notes:

Tracy and I want to get in as much time with great friends while we still can pre-World Tour, so back in December we created a structure by which we might do just that.

Here was the email we sent originally introducing the concept to all of our friends, subject line “We love to host.  Introducing Cafe Larson”

Hey All!

By now you all know that we are leaving Denver to start our World Tour on May 1, 2012.  While we’re stoked to get our travel on, we’re really going to miss all of our awesome friends here in Colorado.

To make the most of our next 4.5 months here we’ve decided to amp up our hosting game.  Since the most complicated part of hosting is trying to find a date and time that works for everyone, we’re experimenting with a way to simplify the process and ensure that we have a constant stream of fabulous friends hanging out at our place.

We call it: Cafe Larson.

Here’s the gist.  Every 2-3 weeks we’ll send out an email with an invite to the next social gathering we’re planning.  They’ll be things like laid back dinner parties, evening cocktails, game night, etc.  If you can make it, awesome – RSVP 24 hours prior.  If you can’t, no big deal, we’ll see you at the next one.

If you want to be on the list to get these invites you have to opt in by sending us a quick note back.  We don’t want to clog your inbox if you’re not interested!

Our first Cafe Larson will be:

Cookies and Cocoa by the Fire
This Wednesday December 14th 7pm
Join us for a roaring fire, tasty holiday cookies, and tea/cocoa/decaf coffee.
If you’d like to bring some of your holiday cookies to share, we’d love to sample them!
(RSVP by Wednesday December 14th at noon)

Let us know if you want in–the notice is deliberately short so we can get this thing started, but no worries if you are already swamped with holiday merriment.  We’ll be sending out more invites soon enough!

Don’t forget – send us a note if you want in on the email invites!  Looking forward to seeing you!

Cheers,
John and Tracy

By design we figured we’d get to do more hosting, hang with more people, and get to be more flexible for people’s schedules.  (As an added bonus we figure only good can come of our friends making friends among themselves.)

How did it work?  Mixed bag, it turns out!

While we had some great gatherings (my favorite was the Dance Dance Revolution party in which we turned our living room into a dance hall by way of projecting the screen on the wall), turn outs were way smaller than our more conventional style of doing invites had us think.  The consistency of RSVPs followed by no-shows was high, and confirmed what already intuitively makes sense: when you invite via mass email, it creates a much smaller sense of commitment and follow through than if you invite people specifically.

So for our last 7 weeks in town we’re going to go back to the tried-and-true model of specifically inviting over a few folks on a regular basis, and have as much quality face time with them as possible.  Cafe Larson was a cool idea, but we see it is indeed much more compelling to be invited intentionally than by mass email.

[UPDATE 4/15: Yep, turns out it works way better to invite people the old fashioned way!  We're enjoying being super-sociable with our awesome friends as we round out our last few weeks in town.]

Wait–when did I pass 200?  I’m pretty sure I started December at around 195.

The situation inspired immediate action: I geared up to take the first jog in about 6 months, a half mile south to the Albertson’s grocery store.  The quest was to get replacement heads for the dish washing wand (ours had just fallen off and we had a slew of dishes to wash from the small dinner party we hosted the night before).  Continuing my fit of physical activity, I jogged back up Broadway, whereat I stopped inside the Goodwill located a block from our place.

It was there real inspiration hit: I resolved to find a cheap TV modern enough to hook up a PlayStation 2 to.  You see, I LOVE Dance Dance Revolution.  I rock 7-footer songs with ease, and 8-footers out of breath (when I say “footers” I’m referring to the difficulty of song steps, rated on a 1 to 10 foot scale).  I do so with flailing limbs and upper body flourishes that tend to make even people who generally respect and look up to me laugh with mixed feelings of awe and shame for what that grown man is doing.

Don’t care, love it.

But I haven’t owned a TV since getting rid of all my stuff before moving to Argentina back in October ’09.  Ergo, I’ve not enjoyed my zany passion in over two years.  Since moving to Denver I somehow always dismissed the idea of doing so because I didn’t care to integrate a proper TV into our living room and lifestyle.

Until this fine New Year’s Day.  Whether a matter of subconsciously denying myself the indulgence, or simply overlooking the fact that I could, it hadn’t ever occurred to me that I could just get a crappy TV sufficient to play DDR on.  And that’s just what I did.

Fifteen minutes and twenty eight bucks later I was proudly carrying out some dusty 21-inch gem from the 80s.  At home 5 minutes later I set it on my desk, dug out my neglected PS2, dance pads, and stack of six DDR games (Max, Max 2, Extreme, SuperNova, SuperNova 2, and X), and fired up my old friend for the first time in 26 months.

Joy.  Such joy.

The winter season creates a sort of cabin fever over time, and you bet my body noticed the gradual coming down in activity since all that biking in preparation for the century ride.  To return to vigorous, fun physical activity after a holiday season laden with my mother-in-law’s fab homemade cinnamon rolls (and other attendant rich foods) was just the ticket to feeling awesome again.

I’ve played DDR almost every day this month.  That, plus a bit more yoga, a little bit of running, and about two weeks doing the Slow Carb diet (out of the 4 Hour Body) has me weighing in today at 194.  DDR in the winter: such a good way to stay active through the cold months.

I’ll no doubt have plenty of tales to tell about this experience, but before it falls to far into the shadows of memory, I’d like to first recount the origins of this vision which has steadily morphed into a “wow, this is not just a cool idea, we’re actually doing this.”

It was June 8th of last year when a friend forwarded me a notice put out by one of his associates:

I’m converting my million-dollar+ mountain-retreat in Breckenridge, Colorado back into a members-only club for entrepreneurs.
…
We’re going to open the doors in September, so I’m looking for a host-couple (husband + wife) who would like to live
there rent-free as entrepreneurs come and go / hang out.
…
This is the perfect opportunity if you are either retired of if you have an internet business.

The ideal couple would have one person with entrepreneur experience and the other person who’s a friendly people-person or host.

I was struck by how good a fit Tracy and I would make, and that afternoon we spent an hour exploring if we’d actually be game to do something that cool and adventurous.

We ultimately agreed that we were.

I reached out to the fellow looking for his couple, proudly throwing our hat in the ring.  Four minutes later I got a reply that he’d already found someone, but appreciated my contacting him all the same.

Easy come, easy go, right?

Lucky for me, my fabulous wife had developed a certain affinity for doing something that cool and adventurous as a product of our lengthy consideration of the opportunity.  That evening she broached the subject directly: “So all this talk about living in Breckenridge for a year got me thinking: I want to do something cool like that.”

“Go on,” I replied.

“Well, we’ve been thinking about a trip to Thailand, right?  And we wanna make it long as possible, since it’s super cheap once you get there and already paid for the flight.”  “Yep.”  “And there’s a lot of countries we want to go experience, pretty much all of which come with that overhead of a flight to get there and back, making each pretty expensive.”

“I’m with you.”

“What if we took a year and just lived everywhere we want to experience, without having to fly back to the US between each country?  We could sell most of our stuff, put the rest in storage, have the kitty stay with my parents, and just travel and live abroad for a year, without all the carrying costs of having a place in the US.”

(I don’t know if her words went exactly like that, but that was the gist: it all sounded immediatly so clear, simple, and above all affordable.)

“Holy shit, that’s awesome.  Yeah, we should probably do that.”

(I don’t know if my words went exactly like that, but that was the gist: I was immediately sold, and stoked.)

The rest of the night we discussed in animated fashion the vision and logistics.  We further explored the feasibility of it all.  It felt like we were somehow cheating or forgetting something important: surely there must be some loophole we were exploiting or some pitfall we were failing to consider in order for this large-scale dream appear so doable.

But no, with our mutually entrepreneurial careers, my ability to do work and earn money abroad with just laptop and wi-fi (as battle-tested in Argentina), our lack of a mortgage (fuck yes), and Tracy’s super supportive in-town parents whom we then (rightly) assumed would take the cat, this dream was our for the living if we were so bold as to do so.

We were/are.

Today, over six months later, plans are coming along swimmingly.  Everything is falling into place, and for how much of an upheaval in lifestyle this is it sure doesn’t feel stressful.  Our intended plan around the world keeps evolving.  To track it, last week I made a map with pins and string detailing the plan, which you can see here.

Super big thanks to Tom Schaff with his simple email forward that sparked all of this.

Until the next generation of little people comes along, we’re all adults and thus we’re all apt to get whatever physical stuff we want on our own.  So there’s a generally not a lot of things we need or could get excited about which we don’t already have, which makes gift giving tricky.  So we came up with a few rules to make it interesting this year:

• Stuff is out: experiences are in.  The gifts you give are to be experiences for the recipients.  An experience that you can share with the recipient is encouraged, but optional.
• Quality over quantity.  Everyone randomly picks two people to get gifts for, so it’s like Secret Santa doubled.
• No picking yourself or your spouse/spouse-to-be.  Keeps things interesting by requiring cross-couple creativity.
• Just to throw back in a dash of material goods (and to make things tastelessly teeter on the brink of over-complexity), everyone brings one gift valued between $20-50 for White Elephant exchange.

How did it work?  Really well, methinks.  It took a few tricks of logic to do the drawing of two names each where self and spouse weren’t allowed, all whilst one couple was missing (we sealed the remaining un-drawn 4 names in an envelope for them to draw from later, and had to concoct an elaborate ruse by which we could be certain they wouldn’t be stuck with a mis-draw, forcing a full do-over).

The gifts we all came up with really good–things like a weekend getaway, a snowshoeing adventure, a ride in a sail plane, a Cirque du Soleil show, and membership to the Botanic Gardens all marked the creativity put in to the theme.  What’s more, each of us left Christmas with 2 experiences to look forward to, making the fun of the exchange way more long lasting than it usually would have been.

All in all, taking the time to call time out on the standard model and inventing a new one was a big win, worth doing again both in the sense of using those exact rules, because they worked so well, as well as inventing another set of rules to mix it up yet again.

Which is good, because I think we’ve got a few more years before the little people come and make gift exchange simple again.

Sport Coat Night is when Glenn and I get dressed up in sport coats, go out to some nice lounge (or restaurant) befitting of such attire (really good appetizers are a vital qualification for venues), and talk for between three and five hours about whatever suits our fancy: politics, science and technology, business, innovation, books, philosophy, ambitions, dreams and family rank among the most common topics.

This monthly event has been the backbone my getting to know and bond with the father of my wife.  There’s a strong stereotype of having bad in-laws and the attendant malaise that comes with, so I figured there might be some serious joy and workability in being closely related to really kick-ass in-laws.  I’m delighted to report that experience has borne this out.

Sport Coat Night arose largely from chance, stemming from my lax approach to getting a suit for my wedding.  I put the task off for a few months, until finally getting around to it on Columbus Day weekend.  (Those armed with a 2010 calendar will note that that has me first seeking my wedding attire about one month prior to the event: I confess, not entirely responsible).

As good fortune would have it, the Men’s Warehouse was then having a sale named for the holiday: buy a suit at full price, get a sport coat free, and another suit for $100.  I took advantage.  While recounting the apparent karmic reward for my delayed approach to vital apparel acquisition, my father-in-law chimed in to say “Hey, I just got my suit there!  Same deal, I stocked up as well.”

What a fun coincidence.  In that moment I somehow had the stroke of brilliance to name a fabrication.  “Really?  Well heck, whaddaya say you and I go do Sport Coat Night sometime?”  I asked with such conviction even I thought that was a real and well established thing.

“Sport Coat Night, what’s that?”

Improv flowed: “Well, that’s when you and I get all dressed up in sport coats, go somewhere nice, and have great conversation over smart cocktails.  Sport Coat Night.  Whaddaya think?”  In essence I’d just invented a catchy gimmick, shorthand for “Hey, let’s hang out sometime.”

Delighted was I as the incipient son-in-law to have my offer so quickly agreed to: we would do the first ever Sport Coat Night the following Monday, and I would be surprised and delighted by how quickly 3 hours passed in one-on-one conversation.  I’m pretty sure he felt the same way, and a tradition was born.

Now, one year later, we’ve had 12 such occasions and it has been a consistent treat.  I don’t know how or by what means we’d have been able to bond without this simple structure.  It’s been the perfect excuse for getting to know my father-in-law.  Now I just gotta figure out some reason to hang with my mother-in-law (I know you’re reading this, Cindy :).

I really don’t have much of a story to tell about the 100 mile-long ride that Tracy and I undertook.  To be honest, a blog post about this is mostly for posterity: a reminder to myself that I did it.

Also a reminder to myself how, at this moment, with the physical sensation of biking miles 60-100 still fresh in my memory, I’m quite content to mark this off the list of things to do in this lifetime and be done with it. :)

My heartfelt gratitude to the party of three who stopped to help when I was pulled over with a safety pin lodged firmly in my rear tire: to the dude who took over the tube swapping operation and volunteered up one of those groovy compressed air cartridges to get me back on track, I thank you for enabling me to finish and thus be able to cross such a long distance ride off my list!