Feb 1 - a new beginning

Nope, not as dramatic as it sounds.  It's a new month. 

Appropriately for the new month, it was hot.  In the a.m. I had the heat on, by mid-day the A/C was on. 

The bulk of the day was taken up with the memorial service and get-together for Norm Himes.  The service was held just a mile away at the Presbyterian church; the lunch at the SYC.  The church was filled almost to capacity.  Norm's two children and his sister spoke.  It was tough.

There were a number of the Philadelphia crowd there as well, some having traveled down and others who winter in Florida, mostly the Naples area.  It was old home week for some of these in the NCUML -- Newcomers Club of the Upper MainLine.  Some I had met; others not.  A few couples came over to our house afterwards, at Sandy's urging, just to see, not to stay.

By the time we got home, Sheryl and Jim had left for their condo in Ormond by the Sea.  We've only found two things that they left behind -- their water bottles -- I'm sure that we'll sort that out soon.  If the wind wasn't coming from the south today, I could return them on my bike ride.

I did some puttering around the rest of the day, still nailing down some features of the new-to-me X5 and packing away items in the car that had come out of the old car; throwing away some stuff too.

We've got a few days of hot weather ahead of us.  I'll be catching up on my riding.  I've been going to the gym regularly, working on my upper body but also with the leg press.  It's time to get serious !

The first 300k that I'll be doing is next Saturday in Gainesville.  I missed the Central Florida 300k which was yesterday, which means that I'll do the South Florida 300k later in the month.  400k rides are in March; 600k in April.  I've put all of them into the Blog Schedule.

Onward !