Although I haven’t been quick to update the blog, I have been putting in the base miles this past week and into the weekend. Four rides in total to include:

I’ve been happy to get in the miles this season in comparison to last. Looking into the blog archive for June 2009, I see that by early June I was only on my 23rd ride and had just 480 miles on the odometer. In 2010 so far I have 36 rides and 892 miles on the New Steed™ alone. Thus, I am not only riding more frequently, but have also stretched my rides out to include longer distances. As I’ve stated in the past, I have a 2010 cycling season goal of 2000 miles – which shouldn’t be all that hard to achieve if I am able to maintain the pace that I have set.

I'm proud of the amount of time I've spent on the bike this year and am sure to meet my 2000 mile goal with ease

The rides this past week were fairly basic, but offered a few Events Of Note™ (EON™). The first came on the Memorial Day ride, which snaked its way through the hills of Medina and close to the northern shores of Lake Minnetonka. In the past, I have noted some favorable smells coming off of the lake as I road past – ones reminding me of my childhood growing up on Lake Minnewaska. Those smells were “good” – as smells generally go – and had the freshness of newly opened water as the ice retracted from the lake.

But Monday brought on a whole different smell. There was no mistaking that this smell originated from decaying fish – and lots of them. This was confirmed once I got close enough to shore to see that the entire northern shoreline of Minnetonka was layered in dead fish. I was able to catch a brief TV news story about the phenomenon that same evening to confirm that it was a problem in the lake. I don’t remember this problem on Lake Minnewaska – outside of the occasional dead carp floating up to shore.

Returning home, I always cut through the local playground with hopes of not crashing into a little kid

The ride on Monday June 7th was nice and basic. Prior to the ride, I had a quick exchange with a Facebook friend about my recent post regarding Jazzercise. Thus, I hit the road with the terrible disco-inspired song that was played along with the posted video. But, since I am now riding regularly with some music via iPod, I knew it would go away quickly.

Before clipping into the pedals, I browsed through the various podcasts that I have stored on the iPod and chose to listen to one of the Subculture Collective – http://www.subculturecollective.com/ – and had in-queue the most recent episode of the Gospel According To The Barstool Preacher. To my surprise (and joy), the show was entirely dedicated to early disco classics – not too far in style from the Jazzercise video. Thus, in my attempt to escape the horrible images of the woman leading the Jazzercise tape, I was instead bombarded with the swinging disco beat.

I’m sure I looked silly smiling away throughout the ride, as each new disco tune brought a flood of childhood memories – although more positive than the smell of dead fish along the lake shore.