Mid-season, first blog

It's now mid-season here in occassionally sunny central California. I moved from northern Idaho to the Bay area expecting to have wonderful weather in the winter for some extended training and Moscow has one of the nicest and driest winters ever. Still I have to report that it hasn't snowed here, not even once. My wife is on a 6 month sabbatical at UC Berkeley and I came along, to keep her company. It's been tough trying to get licensed, as an intern (long story), not a pharmacist, longer story, and then transferring my employment status with Rite Aid in order to work here, even longer story. It's taken just over 3 months but I think I'm finally there, or at least I can believe that until the next snag comes along. In the meantime I have managed to resist getting depressed about not being able to work, which would seriously harm my training, and have been spending my time training, cooking and eating. I was worried that I wouldn't like living in California. I haven't been worried about that for awhile. We have seen a Reuben's exhibit, took the monorail (BART) to the city for dinner, and visited a famous jazz club named Yoshi's to hear Marie Muldaur... And the cycling is almost as good as riding in Tuscany. There are so many cyclist in the area that you never go out without seeing other cyclists, sometimes lots of them. Well except for that 90 mile ride in early January when it was a cloudy, cold (OK it was in the 50's but it felt cold, sort of) and rainy day.
I rode in a double century, the Solvang Double on March 26th. That's the earliest double I've ever done. I started with the fast guy's at 7:30am. I managed to stay with them for about 15 miles, just 180 to go. Ordinarily I don't start that fast or go that hard but I thought it would be good training. I hope it was worth it, I'm still not sure, because I finished over 2 hours after the 3 fastest and was really, really tired.

Bruce Almighty