You can't count the miles until you ride them.

That's one of my two favorite bicycle related quotes for this season.

The other is "Only posers have clean bar tape".

But beginning at about the time I fell off my bike in Michigan and drastically curtailed my riding schedule there which resulted in far fewer miles in Michigan that I ordinarily have gotten on vacation, it seemed pretty obvious that I was going to fall short of all of my mileage goals for this season.

I got home and got back on my bike, and eureka, we had a nice September and I got respectable mileage.  On September 25 I switched back to the bicycle I built myself and went through a spurt of high motivation.  October came and unlike last year I was able to keep riding.  After a while it seemed like it was just barely possible but maybe, just maybe the goals were still reachable.  But you can't count the miles until you ride them.

November started well but then came the rain and cold.  I became pretty surely I wasn't going to make it.

The final development was the tiny window that opened yesterday and appears to have closed today.  I got out on my bicycle for two final rides.  I am pretty sure these are final rides as the forecast for tomorrow is 90 percent chance of snow.

Yesterday I reached 80 percent of what used to be my annual goal.  80 percent is a B, I am calling that good enough, still a B rider.  To reach this point I got the mileage on FirstLOOK up to 800, meaning that one fourth of all of the miles I rode this year I rode on that bike.  Here is my odometer as I prepare to roll the bicycle into the garage yesterday.

I reached 20,000 miles on the bicycle on November 10, 2010.  I then pronounced that bicycle retired.  I already had a new one that I had ridden nearly 2,000 miles that season and I just said 20,000 was enough for one bicycle.

This year I started riding it again, it is once again by far my favorite bicycle and it now has 21,000 miles.  I have posted a new crooked number.

There still was one thing though.  You can't count the miles until you ride them.

As I approached the 80 percent mark I knew that the ride that would get me there would leave me a few miles short of the number of miles I rode last year.  It didn't seem like I was going to get close anyway so I just let it go, figuring that if I actually did get close I could just ride a few more miles at the end of that last ride and I would achieve the other goal.

Well, if you check yesterday's post you can see that by the time I got home from yesterday's ride it was almost dark, not a prospective time for a few more miles.

Today was 50.  It was overcast and dark.  But it was 50 and rain wasn't forecast until late afternoon.

Today it was 1:30 when I crossed Larpenteur.  All of the cars already had their headlights on.  It was dark.

I rode a Fairgrounds loop.  At first I thought this display was in mourning for the passing of the non-snow season.

Probably there is something more serious than that.

I took a lake loop, the last lake of the year.

I could never really tell for sure without getting off my bike whether that line visible in the lake is the beginning of formation of ice here at the near edge of the lake so I don't know.

The sky was starting to spit now and again so I wasn't going to stop for a close examination.  I was too far from home.

I headed for home and made it without any serious precipitation.

I am now able to say that I rode more miles this year than last year and that means that this was a pretty good bicycle year.