In 2020, in the teeth of the pandemic, I was riding my mountain bike in Pound Ridge when a woman in an SUV ran me off the road. My bike was pretty messed up so I wrote a poem about it, and I decided to buy a new bike. I went down to New Canaan Bicycles and asked the owner, Lou Kozar, if he had a mountain bike with a single sprocket on the front, a hard tail, and a 29 inch tire. Lou said that his bicycle inventory was very low due to supply chain disruptions caused by the pandemic, but he did have one bike in stock that met my criteria. The only catch was that it was pink although Lou said the color technically wasn't pink, it was "phage." I paid $1,200 for a pink Specialized mountain bike.

I've ridden mountain bikes on single track trails in 10 different states (CT, NJ, NY, VT, NH, MA, RI, AZ, PA, DE & Washington DC), but the place where I do most of my offroad mountain biking is Wilton Woods, located on Branch Brook Road off of Nod Hill Road in Wilton, CT.

Every time I ride in Wilton Woods, I do the same route which I call "The Route": I start in a clockwise direction on the blue trail; I make a right on the white trail; I make a left on the orange trail; and then I make a right on the blue trail which brings me back to the trailhead. The distance of The Route is about two miles.

When I do The Route I compete with myself by counting the number of times I stop riding by either putting a foot down or wiping out. The Route has seven tricky obstacles which I call "Tricky Obstacles." The Tricky Obstacles are as follows:

1. The rock field after the brook crossing
2. The puncheon with the large rock in the middle of it after turning sharply right off the wooden bridge
3. The steep decline with the turn in it
4. The rock ramp after the mud pit
5. The long steep rock ascent
6. The workaround for the pile of rocks I've never been able to ride over
7. The sharp left over the rock pile after the long bridge

My best ride was on 6/8/24 when I stopped riding eight times. On that ride, I was able to successfully ride through three Tricky Obstacles (#2, #3, and #6) which means that four of the eight times I stopped riding was at the other four Tricky Obstacles. The other four times I stopped riding were caused by carelessness or exhaustion. I wiped out on Tricky Obstacle #7 and cut up my left elbow, forearm, and pinky finger, and I scraped my left shin.

I've found that I perform better when it's not too cold and the trail is dry because when it's wet or icy, my traction on the rocks and the wooden bridges is much worse. I also perform better when I ride my mountain bike to Wilton Woods because I'm really warmed up when I start The Route. It's about a nine mile ride from my apartment which includes one very long, steep climb on Branch Brook Road right before I get to the trailhead. The roundtrip ride is over 20 miles.

For several years I would do The Route with my dog Ziggy. I'd let him off the leash and take off into the woods on my bike. Ziggy would follow behind me. Occasionally he would get in front of me, and I would shout the command "WAIT" and he would move to the side of the trail so I could pass him without stopping. When I finished The Route we would stop at the brook, and if it wasn't too cold the dog would jump in the brook. The water would be about half way up his torso and he would satiate his thirst with a long, well-deserved drink.

Starting in January 2024 I created a schedule for mountain biking. I try to mountain bike at Wilton Woods at least once a month.

The idea of a schedule came from my previous workout habit that I did for over 20 years. When I was 24 years old I started running regularly. My workout regimen evolved so that eventually I was doing a cardiovascular workout 53 times a year (one more time than once a week). Each year in the spring, beginning on April 1st, I would run 18 times, three times a week, never running two days in a row. I would run 2 miles twice, then 2.25 miles twice, then 2.5 miles twice, then 2.75 miles twice, and then I would run 3 miles for the remaining 10 times.

In the summer, when the pool opened on Memorial Day, I would swim laps 17 times throughout the summer doing the American crawl for half an hour. I would swim three times a week until I finished the 17 swims, and I never swam two days in a row.

In the fall, beginning on October 1st, I would run 18 times using the same format as the spring running season.

On December 1st, I would start doing yoga which included a four different yoga exercises, the most difficult of these is a half hour headstand. I do yoga three days a week every week until March 31st which winds up being a total of 53 yoga sessions for the season (which means that each year I do yoga one more time than once a week on average.

This format built in rest times. Every workout was rewarded with a day off the next day, and completing the spring, summer or fall workout season on time would give me two to three weeks of rest before the next workout season. In 2013 when I was 46 years old, I stopped running and swimming, but I've kept up with the yoga. Other activities that I continue to do on a schedule are: going skiing at least one day per year; jumping in the Atlantic Ocean at least one day per year; and hiking a Northeast four thousand foot mountain at least once a year.