Hi, Folks!!  I just wanted to give you a quick update on my cycling plans.

To make a long story still kind of long-ish, I was able to do the first of my two planned events -- the 100-mile "America's Most Beautiful Bike Ride (AMBBR)," in Tahoe -- but then ran into some obstacles regarding the second event: the 205-miles-in-one-day ride from Seattle to Portland, known as STP.  People usually do STP in two days, but my TNT teammates, being such bad-asses, decided they wanted to cover the distance in half the time.

So after AMBBR, I continued training with the (much smaller) group that was going to do STP.  And what emerged is that I was too slow!  One reason I've been able to bike for long distances is that I've found a pace that's doable for me; but that pace (around 11 miles an hour, when all is said and done) was not going to cut it for a one-day 205-mile ride -- especially seeing as the STP folks were going to shut down the course at a particular hour.

So that still left me with the possibility of doing STP in two days -- though, of course, not with my teammates.  This felt pretty daunting to me, since I'd always ridden with my wonderful teammates and coaches -- especially my amazing head coach, K.Sue Duncan, whose idea this one-day 205-mile thingie was.  In the (I think) six TNT events I've completed so far, all the planning has been done for me -- pretty much all I have to do is keep pedaling (oh, and hydrating).

But while I was considering that fall-back, two-day plan, I got a really, really nasty cold that was going around -- and it knocked me out, pretty much, for over a month!  So that as STP approached, not having cycled or done much of any physical activity for weeks, I didn't feel up to riding two miles, much less (more?) 200.

This was bumming me out big-time, but then my wife, Sara, made a suggestion: What if I did my own ride -- say, the "Josh Kornbluth Invitational"?  I could do it in and around our adopted hometown of Berkeley, so Sara could swing by in her car with any needed foods or fluids; and my bike and I wouldn't have to travel anywhere!

So that's my new plan: a 200-mile, two-day bike ride in and around Berkeley -- I'm thinking on the weekend of Oct. 29 & 30.  I need to figure out the routes for each day, but my general plan is to make the first day pretty hilly and then the second day kind of a tour of cool things in the East Bay -- places where people have done political organizing, sites that have meant a lot to me in my time here ... oh, and also as many Peet's coffee shops as possible.

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See you on the road, maybe!!