Myrna CG Mibus - Idyllwild

I love to travel.  I love the adventure of going somewhere new, of finding fun little places for a cup of tea or perfect pastry. I enjoy meeting new people and exploring areas that are off the beaten path. Traveling gives me a chance to see the world and how other people live and come back home with a fresh perspective. I'm hardly lacking when it comes to travel adventures. I get the chance to go on a big trip to our Short Wing Piper Club convention each year ( like our trip to Utah last summer ) and have gone many, many other places and have been on amazing adventures. But the silly thing is I have this tendency to compare myself with people who get to travel more than I do. And when I compare I start thinking that I don't get to go anywhere. And that's a total lie. I've realized a few things lately: I've gone more places and seen more things than most people I am so lucky and truly blessed to have had so many great opportunities to travel! I have a great...

Well, it's time for the fourth round of 30 Days of Biking and I'm doing it again. If you don't know what 30 Days of Biking is it's, in short, a challenge to ride your bike every day for 30 days. It was started by two guys from the Twin Cities who challenged their Twitter friends to ride their bikes every day. The challenge went viral and several hundred people from around the world participated in the first 30 Days of Biking. I was one of them. I rode my bike every day in April 2010. And, though it sounds over-dramatic to say this, 30 Days of Biking changed my life. I became a much more active person. I realized I could do things that seemed impossible. I met a bunch of positive, fun people. And I really started "loving the bike," as my friend, Darryl from Loving The Bike likes to say. Since that first challenge there have been two more and I've done them all. Owen and the kids joined me for Round 2 last September . Owen joined me for Round 3 in ...

The kids are out of school. It's summer. You'd think a person would have time to do things like ride a bike. But no. Things aren't working out that way. Why? Well the weather has been yucky for one. Rain. Lots of it. And I've been busy working on getting ourselves ready for our Short Wing Piper Club convention vacation. And other things that I won't get into right now. I've ridden very little in the last two weeks. And I'm frustrated. But I will survive and will get back on the bike and logging some miles soon. So, in the absence of real riding, take a trip back in time with me to April when I took part in not just 30 Days of Biking but the 30 Days of Biking Team Loving the Bike challenge against Team Bike Radio. Each day of the challenge team members could take pictures from their rides to earn a point. The picture from each day that earned the most "likes" earned another point for the team member. One of my pictures won one day - it was a pic...

It's Day 21 of #30daysofbiking and, despite the crazy Minnesota weather, I don't think I'll have any trouble finishing my third round of 30 Days of Biking. I certainly am not logging many miles this time around but I am, save for one day when I rode a stationary bike on vacation, getting outside every day and riding a bike. That means that when it snowed last week I was out on my bike. And when it rained yesterday I was out on my bike. And today, even though I'm kind of grumpy, I'll get out on my bike. Why? It would be easy to quit and think that no one is paying attention to whether I ride or not. But people DO notice if I don't ride. Gravel road I rode on yesterday's ride. Because I'm part of a the 30 Days of Biking community of people. And for this round of 30 Days of Biking I am also part of a team - Team Loving the Bike. Darryl of Loving the Bike created a challenge with a group of bicyclists at Bicycle Radio . The deal is team members r...

Guess what? I'm going to do it again - The third round of 30 Days of Biking starts up on April 1st and I signed up to ride my bike every day for 30 days. I'm crazy like that. I can honestly say that 30 Days of Biking has changed my life for the better. I suppose that sounds overly dramatic. But it's true. I've become a more active person because of 30 Days of Biking. I've never thought of myself as an athlete, still don't, really, but I certainly have changed my activity level and I exercise almost every day now. That's a pretty big deal for me. I even think exercising is kind of fun. I certainly think bicycling is fun - though I'm not yet fond of going uphill. I'd like to believe I've also become a more positive person - probably because of the wonderfully positive people I came to know through the challenge. People like Darryl of www.lovingthebike.com who shared his bicycling knowledge and encouraging words from the moment we connected ...

Well, the 30 Days of Biking challenge is over. I'm happy to report that I did, in fact, ride my bike "Every. Friggin. Day." (quote from the 30 Days of Biking website). I even made it 32 days straight. I'm feeling pretty good about that because I don't think I've done anything for 32 days straight - other than brushing my teeth and getting dressed and things like that. I certainly haven't done any sort of challenge, especially something exercise related, for more than a few days before running out of steam. So, I'm proud of myself for sticking to something I didn't think I could do. Here I am after biking 22 miles on the Root River Trail last Sunday, May 2nd Here's some information to recap my 30 Days of Biking experience: I biked every day for 32 days straight. My shortest ride was 3/4 of a mile. My longest ride was 31 miles. Fastest ride averaged 14.4 mph Total miles biked in 32 days: 154 I biked in the rain at least once. Biked in ...

To finish off my 30 Days of Biking challenge in fine style, Owen and I are heading down to Lanesboro, Minnesota, to ride the Root River Bike Trail and celebrate our 17th wedding anniversary. At the moment, though, we are sitting in Tires Plus waiting to get two new tires on my van. That's not so fun, but it's giving me a chance to update you on my 30 Days of Biking experience and tell you a bit about Loving the Bike . One unexpected side benefit to my 30 Days of Biking experience is that I've been "meeting" all sorts of super bicycling people. I say meeting in quotes because I'm not actually meeting these people in person (though I expect I may at some point in time). Instead, I'm getting to know people via social networking tools like Twitter and Facebook. I've started following the tweets of 30 Day founders, Patrick and Zachariah (aka @patiomensch and @zachamon) and, much to my surprise, they are following mine. Another person I've met is ...