Milestones

It was a bad idea even if it did turn out well, and I won't be doing anything like it in 2009. At the beginning of 2008 I decided it would make for a good goal to bicycle 5,200 miles for the year -- 100 miles per week, which, at the time, constituted a fairly full week of riding. And miles on my around-town bike wouldn't count -- couldn't count -- because it doesn't -- mustn't -- have an odometer. Only miles on the then-red bike would count.

The goal lasted all of a few minutes in its original form. I checked the odometer's initial mileage to determine the target number and discovered that it amounted to a few hundred miles shy of 10,000 miles, so I changed the goal to do those extra few and break 10,000. In case you're wondering, the odometer is the bike's second; the first broke a few years ago with far fewer miles on it.

The reason why I say a year-long mileage goal is a bad idea is because a lot can and will happen in a year. Here are some of the highlights.

• In mid-spring I came down with valley fever. It's said that everyone who stays in Phoenix long enough eventually gets valley fever, but usually it makes the person sick for only a few days or weeks. I was sick and often in substantial pain for most of May and June and was kept off the bike most of that time.


• In July the red bike became the green bike. I had it powder coated and overhauled, and the process took three weeks. I continued to do mileage, but it was on my around-towner and wasn't counting towards my goal. By the end of July I had all but given up on the goal because I was so far behind after not riding much for three months.


• In August I went metric. This had no effect on the goal except to change it from breaking 10,000 miles to breaking 16,094 kilometers, which sounds less cool.


• Also, at various times through the year, I sustained various injuries that could have kept me off the bike. I pulled a hamstring and twisted an ankle in two separate occasions while playing ultimate frisbee. I broke a bone in my foot playing soccer. I clumsily fell through a set of bleachers at a dodgeball tournament and badly bruised my knee. A bruise may not sound too bad, but my knee was grotesquely swollen to the size of a softball. But I rode through each of these injuries. One thing I learned is that it takes quite a lot to keep a willing cyclist off his bicycle.
  

The valley fever proved helpful in the end. I recovered from it and was more motivated than ever to embrace cycling and work hard at doing it well. Also, I felt really strong when my blood oxygen level returned to normal after two months of being chronically low. At the beginning of the year I considered 150 km to be about par. By late summer par was about 250 km. By late fall it was 300 km. Some weeks I did 500 km. And with this rapid increase in distance it soon became apparent that my year's mileage goal was easily attainable. On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, on my commute to work, during the year's first winter rain, my odometer silently clicked past 16,094 km. Success.

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The term milestone comes from the physical markers the Romans constructed alongside their roads to denote distance from the capital city. A mile -- a thousand paces -- was two thousand years ago a more significant distance than it is now with our cars and our trains and our airplanes, and so passing a major milestone then marked something of an important event on a journey.

Beyond the cycling, beyond my acquiring immunity to the coccidioidomycosis fungus, here are some other milestones I passed during the year.

• Just Enough Craig. At some point it became weird not to have an Web presence, and for once I'm going with the trend. I see blogging as serving two purposes. The first is as providing an outlet for improving my writing. The second is as an opportunity for documenting my life -- the quirks, the insights, the blah blah blahs of it all.
  
  When I write source code I usually begin by writing all code and no comments and wait until I have a good idea how the code really is going to work before laying out the commentary. I see blogging as fitting a similar pattern. I think I would have enjoyed blogging years ago, but I doubt any readers would have. It would have made for a depressing site. Lately I've acquired a good idea how my life is and should be, and like a typical software engineer I'm scrambling to catch up with the documentation.
  


• Carlessness. I've blogged about this previously, yet it's a major theme here at Just Enough Craig and is worth repeating.
  
  For many years I owned a car and used it little but feared giving it up because of those last few miles -- those miles in bad weather, those miles through sickness and injury, those miles in which I must haul something too big or too heavy for a bike. It's not strange that I've discovered those fears to be unfounded. What's strange is how much my life has improved after going carless. One thing I never would have expected is how other people have taken an interest in my carlessness -- even if it is a sideshow, rubbernecking kind. And by having people take an interest in something that I'm doing, I'm discovering a reciprocity in which I'm taking more of an interest in what they're doing.



• Book Club / soccer. Is it a book club that plays soccer or is it a soccer team whose teammates all read one same book every month? Jill started Book Club almost two years ago, yet this year it became something more than a get-together once a month to discuss a good book. This year we got together to discuss bad books. And we -- well, most of us -- play together on an indoor soccer team once a week. I haven't played organized soccer since I was about five years old. Some league players may claim I still don't play organized soccer. Soccer is for me one of many sports that I enjoy because it presents an opportunity to run about wildly while exhibiting few of the specific skills expected of the players. I always look forward to Wednesday nights -- even the ones when our game is the late, late game and Thursday morning arrives too soon.



• Baptism in the Methow. Rachel and Jason were married in the Methow at Jason's parents' place in what was, I assure everyone, the most beautiful wedding of all time. Less significant is that I was baptized a few miles down the river the day before, although some readers who were present may point out that I looked like a surprised and drowning rat scrambling to climb back aboard the raft. But, dammit, this silly little incident was the symbolic turning point of the year for me. What I remember from the months prior was the valley fever, the indecisiveness, and the restless idleness that signified a general lack of fulfillment going on; what I will remember in the subsequent months are the productivity, the utility, the health and vigor and the happiness. It really is as if I was washed clean and made anew.

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These are my milestones. What are yours? I'm asking you -- yes you, dear reader! -- to post a comment and share one or a few or your accomplishments for the year. It will take only a few minutes of your time.