As an update on my pursuit of riding 10,000 (which I will now brand as dan-thousand™, because I know a marketing opportunity when I see one) miles in the 2014 calendar year; I will tell you that I am now standing near the precipice of achieving that arbitrary milestone by having put 9,835.4 miles behind me so far this year. that leaves 164.6 miles to go. I’m sure there are some out there who would be tempted to finish off the dan-thousand™ with some sort of grand flourish like a century or a 9 hours trainer session, but I will continue my slow and steady pace towards the finish line.

If I manage to average 32.92 miles per day until Christmas Eve, I can be done with the dan-thousand™ before the holidays, and not have to bother riding for the rest of the year. This notion is tremendously attractive to me, a sort of“mic drop” (maybe more accurately a “bike drop”) to end the year. I have ridden my bike for every day for the past four weeks and the urge to not ride my bike is growing, and the week off will allow my body, which is coming to resemble a creaky clipper ship more and more every day, the time it needs to regenerate itself from an empty balloon to the mighty sword that the clown tied so long ago. I am also planning on celebrating my attaining the dan-thousand™ in a proper way—probably by having some Triscuits or Smart Food at my desk.

The new year will also bring a new bike. Santa Self is getting in on the team deal and will be soon astride a bike that doesn’t have 27,000 or so miles on it. Of course, since this is me we’re talking about, the parts mixture to be rigged upon the new perch will be a thrifty mix of old and even older parts. I haven’t even made the switch to eleven speed yet, in fact, I barely knew that eleven speed existed, so I’m not sure if I’m ready to be one gear faster yet, as that would require either buying new wheels or trying somehow to adapt my ten speed cassettes to eleven speed. I’m not sure I can be bothered. But nevertheless, there’s a new frame on the way, and I won’t tell you what make (it’s not the old team brand) or color it is because I really don’t want to read the inevitable comments about the bike I will be riding is inferior to this other bike which I could’ve bought for much less and so on and so on. Plus, who doesn’t like a little mystery in their life? I may just be riding a competition Brompton this coming season.

This winter my weight has, for the most part, stayed within an acceptable range, never straying too far into “Fat Steven” territory. I attribute this to lowering my beer intake. I was never a really heavy beer drinker, but in the winter, I could be tempted to have a beer or two after dinner. This season, I am restricting this activity to only once or twice a week, because “Good old trustworthy beer, my love for you could never die.”