On the Bike of Madness

For the life of me I will never understand why I agreed to this, but Chip persuaded me to join Team DeLorme for the Trek Across Maine. Though I used to commute two miles to work, when I worked in Portland, I have probably never biked further in a single trip than ten miles. Now, owing to my stupidity, I have to manage to bike at least sixty miles per day for three consecutive days. Fortunately, Tandy, the triathlete wife, has agreed to help me out by taking the sixty miles in day two. My other saving grace is that soccer is going to start up next week, which goes a long way to building up my stamina.

The first task is to come up with a decent bike. I am planning to borrow a bike from Chip, but I realized I have a nice Schwinn up in the attic of the garage. I will probably take it down to Back Bay Cycles for an evaluation. If they think the bike has potential I am going to replace the handlebars and make a few other changes.

The state of things is best summarized as "excited, but nervous."