Joined At The Lugs?

Before you know it, Spring will come...

Oh, right, it is Spring now.  I guess it's a month late:  We've got March winds, but it's April.  I guess we'll get the showers in May and the flowers in June.

And what about the weddings?  Will they be in July?

Not that I'm planning on having one.  For now, I'm still living by Carrie Bradshaw's maxim, "Friends don't let friends get married."  Sometimes people give the best advice before they break it!  

Anyway, I not only don't plan on getting married, I haven't been invited to a wedding.  Not that I'm complaining.

But if I have to go to a ceremony, I wouldn't mind being summoned to it by this:

From Kristen Archer

Apparently, the bride-to-be designed this invitation herself.  She even had a bicycle-themed bridal shower!

I can think of one couple in particular for whom the invitation would have been most appropriate:

They are, of course, Harriet Fell and the much-missed Sheldon Brown.

If You Can't Do Iditarod

Last month's running of Iditarod was said to be one of the most difficult and dangerous in the history of the annual race, maninly because a key section of the race was all but snowless.  So, instead of sliding along white trails, competitors rumbled and bumped along rocks and dry earth.

That was not a problem for Dan Burton of Saratoga Springs, Utah.  You see, he didn't compete in Iditarod.  However, made another journey that some of his famly members and friends thought was even more Idit-iotic than the race in Alaska.

In February, he became the first person to ride a bicyle from the coast of Antarctica to the South Pole.  Although large chunks of the continent's coastal ice shelf are breaking off and floating and melting away, Burton did not have to contend with rocky ground.  However, he had to pull himself out of a crevasse and be careful of all sorts of other hazards not easily seen in the ice and snow.

Dan Burton with his bike.

One thing that makes his journey truly remarkable is that he did it solo:  No team backed him up.  When his wheel needed repair, he fixed it by himself.  And he pulled all of his supplies--including the freeze-dried meals he cooked--in a sled behind his bike.

Speaking of meals:  Most of the time, he cooked in his tent, as it was more fuel-efficient.  And, yes, he slept in that tent every night of his trip.

In all, he says he covered 730 miles in 51 days of cycling, although he's not completely sure because he lost his GPS. Thirteen miles a day may not sound like much,  but it's quite a feat when one considers that he spent much of his time pedaling into headwinds and rode through temperatures of minus 30 degrees.  That's a bit worse than the coldest morning commute I ever had.

Let's hope the climate doesn't change so suddenly or dramatically that Burton is the only one to cycle across Antarctica to the South Pole.  I think he's happy with the distinction of being the first.

Naked Bike Ride In Portsmouth

I have cycled up several Alpine and Pyrennean peaks, as well as mountains in Vermont, Pennsylvania, California, Nevada and upstate New York.  And I am not boasting when I say that I've done other things most people wouldn't try.  As a result, some people say that I have courage.

If I do, it has its limits.  You see, there's something I'm not quite ready to do yet:  a naked bike ride.

Naked bike rides are held all over the world.  However, one place I think I'd like to take such a ride is Portsmouth, England, which will host one on 24 May.

Portsmouth is on the south coast of England and is the only island city of the UK.  According to some surveys, it has the largest percentage of LGBT people of any city in the country.  And it's also considered, perhaps not coincidentally, as one of Albion's centers of environmental and "green" movements.

That last fact has a lot to do with the ride:  Its organizers want to call attention to unsustainable fossil fuel use as well as other practices that are ruinous to our planet.

I love the idea although I'm not sure, exactly, of what a naked bike ride has to do with environmentalism.  Maybe it has to do with riding in our natural state.  Then again, the riders paint their bodies and wear things we don't bring with us into this world. 

Anyway, I wish all the folks in Portsmouth a good ride!

N.B.:  The photos in this post are from last year's Naked Ride in Portsmouth.