January, 6, 2026 Update: Bad Weather, Too Much Work, and COVID

After a pretty quick start on my "120 Counties" project in November, I didn't ride in any new counties at all in December. On the days I had time to ride, the weather was terrible, and on the handful of nice days, I had too much work to do.

Then I got COVID at Christmas while visiting Joy's family in Iowa. It's the second time I've had it, and like the first time, the fatigue was terrible. This time, though, I started taking Paxlovid immediately and a couple of days ago I tested negative.

I felt pretty good today (January 6). I checked the Yellow Bike Touring Website for the first time in a while, and saw that its ridiculous owner had published more of his self-pitying rants. I have a semiserious philosophy that is basically this: "Do the opposite of what that guy would do."

So, instead of sitting around feeling sorry for myself for getting sick and getting out of shape recently, I went for a ride in the nice, 60F, sunny weather.

I hope to have enough good riding days in January to knock off some more counties.

Here are some photos from today's 35 mile ride. They're nothing special, but I found a few new things that amused me.

I encounter a surprisingly large number of mailboxes without lids while riding my bike. Sometimes the mail spills out of the box, and is waterlogged from the rain. The owners of these mailboxes have a much different philosophy about checking the mailbox. I check ours assiduously, even though 99% of the time it contains only junk.

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Rich FrasierAny philosophy that gets you out on the bike is a good one! Looking forward to more counties.
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