Fun! Just a little over two weeks ago I looked at my cycling mileage for the year - and yes, I'm one of those wacky people who insists on tracking mileage - and realized how close I was to hitting 3000 miles for the year so far.
Close, but not close. It was August 15th, and my mileage stood at 2451. I knew that getting to 3000 miles before my trip was somewhat of a long shot. My weekly mileage over the summer has been ranging between 150 and 180 miles, with an occasional bad weather week of much lower miles. I had 3 riding weeks to go, but I also knew that I wanted a little bit of a rest before I head out on my trip. I figured that while I would certainly ride this holiday weekend (today, tomorrow, and Monday) that I would do much shorter rides than my normal weekend rides. I put in two 200+ mile weeks, and guess what - I made it! Today's ride ended with my mileage for the year so far at 3003 miles. What fun! I plan on doing relatively short rides (probably in a 30-mile range as opposed to my weekend 40-50 mile range) tomorrow and Monday, then a couple of off-the-bike days before I start my tour.
Oh, and I decided to try something different with my credit card for this trip. I primarily use a Citibank credit card that gives me American Airlines miles, and on my last two trips - my non-biking trip in Hawaii last October, and my biking trip in Maine this past June - the card was flagged as possibly stolen. In both cases I got partially through my trip and had to call Citibank to reactivate the card. Apparently traveling by bike using a credit card follows a suspicious pattern of behavior. Maybe it's the use in a different hotel every day, maybe it has something to do with not traveling too far in a day, maybe it's... well, I really don't know what the trigger is! This time I called Citibank and told the customer service representative that I would be traveling with the card. Let's see if telling them ahead of time where and when I plan to be traveling helps.
Did it work? I have no idea if my phone call to Citibank before I headed out helped, but with constant use in different towns every day, I never had the card rejected. I think I'll try to remember to call again before my next trip!
