180 & 60 in Suches, GA
This is the third winter of riding for me, but it still shocks me the number of riders that park their bikes as soon as temperatures dip below 50 degrees. Anyways, last week was a bit of a wash for my commuting, not because of the weather, but because of the schedule of my kids.
While I may choose to ride regardless of the weather, I am not going to force them to do so. So, in the interests of shuffling the kids, I spent 4 out of 5 days last week in the car. That just means that by the time the weekend hit, I needed a ride. Unfortunately even that was limited to taking the bike over to the shop to leave it for a couple of days of service that I just don't have the time to do this month.
You see, I've been overwhelmed with stuff the past month. By 'stuff' I am talking about a lot of things, and it's probably about time I shared.
Those of you that know me personally probably already know this, but I am a serial entrepreneur. At any given time, I will have three or four projects going professionally, and a couple of more around the house. I don't watch television outside of my Falcons games and the occasional movie. This personality defect means that sometimes I hit stretches where I'll go weeks at a time with no 'free' time. The last month has been one of them.
First and foremost, I am a geek. Most of my projects are geeky in nature, for example, my current projects are all of a technical nature that have strange interdependencies.
By day I write software for Chapter 13 Bankruptcy Trustees. In the evenings, I split time between my pet projects, Two Wheel Junction being one of them. The one that has been consuming the free time for the last month is the one that powers this, Two Wheel Junction and my personal software business (Druware Software Designs), PostgreSQL for Mac. That project needed attention, and is slowly becoming the tail that wags the dog. So time management is an issue. I am trying a new system though. Hopefully, it will allow me to better manage my time.
That is really my goal for this winter. Working out a way to better manage my time to accomplish the things I want to accomplish.
What is interesting is that as I started this, I found that it applied to my riding as well. You see, most of my riding has been to satisfy short term whims, but there are larger goals that I want to tackle in my riding. These things take planning and time, neither of which have been things I've applied to the riding. When I sat down to build a list of tasks I want to accomplish, I found those had to be included because they feel high in my list of 'things I want to do'. So here I sit with a fresh list of to do's that include some good rides that require planning.
They also require gear, some that I do not already own, so I am not looking to have to plan and shop for some things. You are going to be joining me in that adventure, because as I try to find the best gear, I'll be posting up about it.