April was amazing because I was actually kind-of, sort-of back on the bike again. After decades of most months seeing me ride at least 1000 miles, I found myself off the bike far too much in 2016. The year started with pneumonia and ended with another respiratory tract infection that I honestly thought could kill me (and did kill a couple of acquaintances). In the middle were a bunch of non-cycling family-emergency type of trips that kept me off my bikes.
In mid-February 2017 I finally felt like I was well enough to look at rebuilding my health. Step one was to get on the scale and see what several months of inactivity had wrought. Wow! 212 pounds is a lot of stuff. I took some steps to control the input and started working on the output side a week later. A week into April found me back at 180 pounds (hey, only 10 more to go) and about 10% fat. (After wanting one for a quarter-century, I finally purchased one of those body-fat analysis scales. Fun toy.)
The rides have been extraordinarily short. I had to resort to riding rollers a bunch since I didn't feel up to riding in the rain with temperatures in the high 30's/low'40's F and this Spring we have had nothing but rain. On the last Saturday of April, my wife and I finally rode out to the coast range for what we used to consider a short loop but is now a long ride for us of 83 miles.
Ah! It's great to be alive again. Hopefully May will see us able to do some 300 km rides. After missing out much of last summer's riding, I feel a real need to make that up this year. Summer riding in the coast hills of Oregon are something to not be missed.