What have I been up to?

Funny you should ask, I was just going to begin a diatribe…

I’m going to skip all the “since the last time we spoke” crap, sorry folks. If you want those details, then I’m probably long overdue to give you a phone call or send a letter… in which case you may feel free to send me guilt mail. Helen and Loyal, I fully expect yours to arrive within the hour.

For the benefit of those that haven’t heard, I am training for AIDS LifeCycle 4. In a nutshell, it’s an HIV/AIDS benefit bicycle ride that begins in San Francisco and covers 6 days and 585 miles to Los Angeles. As of this morning, I have raised $1950 of the $2500 I need in donations to qualify as a rider, and my training is going well.

How well you ask? As many of you know, Southern California has been getting some strange weather this winter. Rain, rain and more rain. In fact, more rain so far this year in LA than in Seattle, and more in San Diego than in Portland! I thought this place was supposed to be sunny and mild 3/4 of the year, sheesh! As a result, my training has been limited to my training in Tai Chi and being on a stationary bike in spinning classes at my gym… one hour a day, five days a week. The weather seems to have finally cleared up though, and today, I was finally out for a 12 mile ride before work… on an actual bike and an actual road!

I’d like to start keeping track of my training to update you all here. That is going to include a lot of experimentation early on. Let me know what you think of it.

My eventual idea with this “blog” is to make it into a “moblog”. That way, I will be able to post voice messages, text messages and photos from my Sprint mobile phone from the event, June 5-11th.

(Attention Sam, and any other Sprint folks reading: for further shameless advertising plugs, please contact me about negotiating my free lifetime Sprint service plan and corporate sponsorship of AIDS LifeCycle… I’d be happy to receive both for trade of advertising your name here)

At any rate, I will be experimenting with that too on my training rides here in San Diego.

(Attention electronically challenged family members: click on the underlined words in this journal entry to see more information about that particular word or topic)