Dreaming of a Life Less Ordinary

  The distances are getting greater and the time on the bike is getting longer.  As we enter the dog days of summer, we are getting in to longer and longer mileage.  I was shocked when we didn’t get back home from our ride on Saturday until 5 p.m.  We started a little later than normal and stopped for lunch, but man we are spending some serious time out there on the bike.  So much so, that I have a grumpy dog when I got home that ignored me for the first 30 minutes upon my return home.  Sucks to be a spoiled dog when Dad’s hobby takes him away for most of the day.    Saturday was a great ride. It was also the furthest I ever went on a bike, and I felt good doing it.  I had some left in the tank when we got home and while I was tired, I wasn’t dead to the world.  I could really feel my conditioning come into play.  Now this could have been a few things, could have been less climbing than the week before or it could have been that it was about 6 degrees cooler outside.  I don’t know, but

  64.5 – Hilly, Hot, and Heroic     Ride: Saturday 8/19/2023 Distance: 64.5 Miles Duration:  5 hours and 58 minutes Elevation Gain: 2,592 feet   Saturday was just one of those rides that totally kick you in the pants and make you stop at some point in the ride and ask yourself why I am I doing this?  LOL!  Most likely because I am sadistic and a few sandwiches short of a picnic.     We (David and I) decided to ride the outskirts last weekend and try to stay out of the flow of the traffic flow of Dublin, Pleasanton, and Livermore.  I say we, even though I want to blame it all on David for pushing back on my original planned mostly flat ride, at the end of the day I designed the route and put us on a collision course with lots of going up.  Going up is hard.  David reminded me that at the end of the day I could blame him but as I said I am the creator, and therefore it was I who tailor fitted our pain.  So, lets recap Saturday’s adventure.   As most rides from Casa de Burkle, we started

  Anyone who truly knows me and I mean knows me well, knows that I am an Ice Cream loving Mofo.  We are talking about a guy who lived in The Netherlands for 6 months and averaged a scope of cream a day.  The same guy when I was at my heaviest was eating about two pints (yes you read that correctly) a night.  I love my Ice Cream.   Since, I have changed my ways and really started taking care of myself in January of 2021.  I have been off the cream, mostly.  I am not longer single handedly keeping Baskin Robbins open in Livermore.  I haven't had Ben and Jerry's in over three years.  While, I do indulge myself with a cone from McDonalds once or twice a week, I am pretty much a reformed user of the cream but it hasn't been easy and let me tell you why. Livermore is hot in the summer and I work from home.  I have since Covid blessed us with its presence.  So, every Summer since the Dawn of Covid, I have sat at my desk working diligently and every summer afternoon I hear it.  Dun

  The only picture from Saturday... Damn, there is a lot of gray! Distance: 58.79 Elav. Gain: 1,778 ft Time: 5 hours and 1 minute Saturday was a great ride. It was a long ride.  It was a hot ride, but overall it was a really great ride!   It was The Beav (David) and I and we took off at 8:30 because we knew the heat was going to be climbing on us.  We visited some familiar places and road on some new places as well.     We started off by riding our normal loop around the neighborhood.  Since it gives us a full mile, I decided we would do it twice to just to go the extra mile.  Get it!  I am so clever.  From there we headed out to Greenville.  It would be one of two times we would ride it.  It is always a good place to start a ride, and when planned right, it is a good place to finish one as well.   We took Greenville all the way out to Tesla.  It used to be my favorite place to ride.  However, I swear the hill at the end of Greenville gets longer and steeper every time I ride on it. I

  08/05/2023 Ride: 51.68 Miles 1,421 ft climbed 4h 14m duration Riders on the Tour de Burkle par quatieme as David put it on his Strava: Billy b, David the Beaver, and Mark Slow and Steady wins the race they say.  Well slow and steady was definitely my pace on Saturday.  Well if your conciser 10.32 miles per hour average speed slow and steady.  The goal was 52 miles on Saturday.  We went a little bit over, and that is ok.  Interesting enough of the three riders we all went three different distances according to our Strava's.  Saturday the 5th was supposed to be a hot one in Livermore and it lived up to that.  I think we topped out at 92 or 93.  That isn't cool.  However, the head held off for most of the ride.  Most of it, I said, not all of it. We left Kona and my house at around 9 a.m.  Of course like most mornings when I am not in a hurry, I forgot something when we took off and I had to stop and go back and get my bite guard.  You would think by now that I would know to put

  I think it is the artist in me who has a flare for the dramatic.  So, of course I title this Bak to the Urgent Care.  I want people to come in and read the works of Billy b what can I say.  This is the same Urgent Care I went to when I got the head phone piece of plastic wedge in my ear canal.  Also, the same Urgent Care (UC) I went to about a year ago with symptoms of a concussion.  Now I feel pretty stupid having to go to the UC. I mean after all the reasons I have gone there are because of my stupidity.  One pushing an ear phone to far into my ear canal.  Second falling off my bike (which honestly, I don't feel so dumb about that it could happen to anyone).  Finally, the reason I went today because I was afraid one of the incision points from my gallbladder surgery got infected.  Now who on this Earth gets an infection in an incision point from laparoscopic surgery 5 week and 6 days after their surgery?  This guy!  That is who. So, I don't know exactly how it happened.  Ev