Merry Christmas!

We've just opened all the presents and had a traditional waffle breakfast. In fact, for most of this day we all decided we would not just 'bend' our diets, but to blow them to Kingdom Come.

I've had a great year. This is mostly because I was able to bicycle over 1300 miles since August. (Right: my planned and accomplished rides so far in 2010.) I've done over 300 miles a month in October and November, and if current plans continue I'll roll over 300 miles in December. (How? Glad you asked: I've used spare Mileage Plus miles to send myself to Florida next week, where the temperatures are in the 60s and 70s.)

So I'm putting myself in a position to ride four more centuries (and 3000 miles) in 2011. To do this I need to:

- Ride in the cold
- Ride in the morning
- Ride in the wind
- Ride when I don't feel like it

Upcoming rides: Escape to El Paso in January (Bike & visit grandson and his family), flight to Sebring, FL in February (ride 120 miles), and wander through a Wine Country Tour in March (one week, 250 miles). First century: Tarwheel Century on April 30th. Will I be ready? Watch this space!

It's been a pleasant summer so far. I went off to Afghanistan in June. We've taken a too-short vacation at Cornell Adult University in July. We visited with old friends from college (!). They came to see us on a return visit.

In the coming month, I will travel off to Winter Park to see our condominium and meet with old friends. And, later this fall Robbie and I will take a short trip to Amsterdam to see art museums.

The World Awaits Our Empty Blog

I have a new computer. I have chosen to name my new laptop Laplace, after Pierre Laplace (1749-1827), a French mathematician and physicist. Laplace applied Newtons laws to the movement of the planets, and was instrumental in founding the metric system. Laplace was one of the first scientists to postulate the existence of black holes. Laplace also described a method of inductive reasoning and probability theory that we, today, would call Bayesian statistics.

First Posting

Hi, folks. I've decided to join the 21st century with my own blog. There are hundreds of thousands of blogs out there, so it's my job to make this one interesting.

I open this blog from my laptop computer, sitting in the dining room of our Springfield home on a sunny Saturday afternoon in early June. My lovely bride is off at a music recital, and my youngest son has returned from Philadelphia to celebrate an early Father's Day weekend with me. (I will be out of the country next week, when the rest of the world celebrates Father's Day.)

Okay, that was boring. I'll try to add more spice -- I just need to get this thing started!