Ride or Wrench? finding some balance

As I sit here looking at the partially disassembled Takara, I do love a good head-badge, I contemplate the balance of riding bikes or wrenching on them.  Ideally I could do both but it never seems to work that way for me.  If I was in a situation were I could commute by bike to work that would give me the fitness and time to ride but work has mostly been a 50 mile round trip for the last few years.  Anyway I seem to either ride or wrench but not both.  I am very happy with the number of bikes I have been able to get fixed and sold this year, 5 in the summer and 3 more this month if I am lucky but I have hardly ridden at all despite getting off to a good start with the April Tour De Lopez ride.

As I was wrapping up the the work on the 420 I was feeling a bit melancholy that with September slipping away I had barely any riding to show for the summer, lots of wrenching but not riding.   On the 25th I wrote about doing some updates to the 520, pictured above on its shake down cruise along Alki.

I had done my shake down cruise with the 520 on Alki because its nice and flat and the 520 being a cantilever brake bike means the front wheel comes off easy peasy and with the rear seats down the bike fits in my 4 door early 2000s Sentra without too much fuss.  And I got to thinking, I have a fleet so why not leave the 520 in the car and I can keep driving my out of shape A$$ to flat Alki so I can ride and not worry about hills?  The picture above is my 2nd day in a row of riding on Alki....

Day 3,  It does help that being between jobs means my schedule is flexible enough I can dodge (or try to dodge) the rain..

Day 4 -Lincoln Park.

Day 5 - oops forgot to include the bike in the shot but it was there.  Passenger ferry dock to downtown.

Day 6 - the snow capped Olympics in the back ground as we look north and west.

Day 7 - on day 2 I had this vague idea that maybe I can get to a week straight of Alki rides and throw a pic up daily in Instagram - sorry for those of you seeing repeats.

Day - 8, most of my Alki rides had been in the 4 to 7 mile range, mostly flat with a couple mild 2% grades. Pedaling, smiling, enjoying being outside on a vintage bike and the drinking in the Puget sound views, and by day 8 things had morphed into a very glacial couch to 20 miler regimen.  I decided it was time to move on to double digit mile rides so 10.5 miles on this Green river trail ride.  Sure I could have probably gutted out a flat 20 miler on day 1, but I would have been wrecked and I like my rides to be fun, not survival slog.

Day -9, I returned to my roots and rode 12+ miles on the Burke-Gilman trail which is where I started riding when I returned to cycling as an adult in 1999.  Where did 20 years go?  I figure with a couple more rides of steadily increasing distance I should get to my goal of 20 miles, hopefully before the gray sets in for the next 5 months.  And the next time I get invited on a group ride I won't politely decline due to being waaay out of shape.

Ride. And keep Riding. Smile. Repeat