A guest post by fellow dog Rich Lacampagne

The year 2023 started out with a somewhat unexpected end to my working career after pretty much working non stop since 1976.  I had been planning to retire in 2020, then 2021, then 2022, but then continuing to work.  With the layoffs at Google in January of 2023, I had a good opportunity to leave with a significant exit package.  OK, then what?  You retire and what are you going to do with the rest of your life?  I had been bike commuting the 18 mile round trip to work for over 7 years (with some break due to Covid).  So I was used to road biking most days and mountain biking on the weekends.  It seemed logical to keep a good exercise program going and continuing to ride.

My daughter Lisa bought me a Garmin Edge 830 bike computer and had me sign up for Strava.  For someone that is very numbers focused, this is a BAD combination.  Since I was riding fairly consistently I thought I would set a personal goal of riding 3,000 miles for the year.  By late spring I was consistently riding 5-6 days a week and in August I hit 3,000 miles.  Spurred on by some Strava enablers (Lisa Lacampagne and John Pucek), I reset for my yearly goal for 4,000 miles.  Well, by October I was blowing past 4k and again was (self) coerced (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!) into another reset for 5,000 miles.  I finished the year with 5,574.8 miles on 233 rides (that is an average of about ~24 miles per ride). 

Monthly totals:

Month	Mileage
January	187
February	172
March	166
April	373
May	375
June	456
July	650
August	802
September	684
October	630
November	637
December	444
Total	5,574

Most of my riding was in the South Bay area of the greater San Francisco Bay Area.  I also had some great rides in Switzerland with Lisa and Freddy.  About 85% of my rides were road bike trips, the remainder were mountain biking, with a few gravel bike excursions.  One of the highlights was the 2023 “Tour de Crappuccino” century that John Pucek organized in early August doing a big loop around the Peninsula and South Bay.  I will continue to try and ride a 100 miler every year!  Lisa and I also had a great gravel/road ride along the Rhine river in Switzerland and Germany.  It’s been a lot of fun riding with friends and catching up with them.  It was also nice to ride by myself and listen to podcasts.  The mountain bike rides were done on my Santa Cruz Highball carbon hardtail and the road bikes on my Trek Domane AL-1 aluminum road bike and my Fuji Team RC carbon road bike.

So what’s on tap for 2024?  As previously mentioned, I would like to do another century.  I am also looking into a longer bike touring vacation, possibly in Europe.  I will continue to do my normal 20-30 mile fitness rides during the week and hopefully find some different routes to try.  Will I hit 5k miles in 2024?  Who knows.  It takes a lot of dedication to consistently ride multiple times a week, even if you don’t have to go to work.

Best Pictures: