I won’t call these New Year’s resolutions, exactly, but I’d like to set some cycling goals for 2008. Here are my goals, in no particular order.

• Ride 4,000 miles.
• Ride at least one century.
• Complete at least two Sub 24-Hour Overnight (S24o) camping trips. Preferably more.
• Go on tour.
• Ride with Sarah more often.
• Ride with my friends and family more often.
• Make some new friends with whom to ride.
• Run more errands by bicycle.
• Do the Brown County Breakdown again.
• Do the Hilly Hundred again (this may get traded for a short independent tour).
• Ride in some real mountains again.
• Improve my photography and writing.

The only potential problem I see is that I also want to do more hiking this year, and I’m not sure I can find time for both more cycling and more hiking. So, some cycling miles may get traded for hiking miles.

I had a great four-day weekend, since I took the 24th off and the office was closed on Christmas day. I did a fun road ride on Christmas Eve Day, once again doing the Shilo Road route of which I am so fond. That was a good length, about 25 miles. Sarah and I exchanged our gifts on Christmas Eve. Her gifts to me followed a bicycle touring theme, including a book and a backpacking sleeping pad and sleeping bag.

They are incredibly compact and lightweight, the sleeping bag weighing exactly 1 kilogram. I’ve been talking about doing a bicycle tour for a while now and I’m feeling more and more confident that I’ll be able to do one sometime in 2008. Last year, fitness would have been the biggest concern but hopefully I can stay in some semblance of shape over the winter and be in better shape next year. And now I have a lot of the gear I’ll need to do some sub 24-hour overnight trips and/or a longer tour. Thanks, hot stuff!

Christmas morning, we went over to mom’s house to exchange gifts with my family. We had a great time. Mom made lasagna for dinner as is becoming a tradition, and after dinner, I proposed a hike. The high was 47 degrees, and it was sunny — an incredibly beautiful day and surprisingly warm. After some discussion, everyone decided to come. We decided to hike the Wolf Cave trail (trail #5) at McCormick’s Creek State Park. It’s an easy two-mile trail.

Everyone really seemed to enjoy the hike, including my sister Becky, who hasn’t gone on the past few family hikes. I was really glad that everyone went and had a good time. In fact, it had been a long time since Sarah and I went hiking, and I think I had forgotten just how much I enjoy it. Here are some photos from the hike. Sarah took some of these.

Shadows

Sarah and me

Avery (my nephew) showing me a hiding place in Wolf Cave

Avery, mom, and me

Rock bridge with icicles

Avery and mom crossing the creek

Becky (my sister) and me

Becky, looking aloof

Avery, hiding in a tree

Hiking into the sun

Sarah and I have returned from our vacation to North Carolina and the Smokies. All I can say right now is that our vacation was perfect. So perfect, in fact, that I wondered out loud at one point what was going to go wrong, since no vacation is complete without some major mishap. But nothing did go wrong. In fact, our trip far exceeded my expectations, which were high to begin with.

I came up with a cool idea to make an album about the trip, with each song based on some part of it. The track listing would look something like this:

1. Road to Jellico
2. First glimpse of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park
3. Indian Tacos
4. The Blue Ridge Parkway
5. Persian food, and drinking wine from a can with a straw in Charlotte
6. Chestnut Knob (South Mountains)
7. Ditching the interstate for U.S. Highway 64
8. Whiteside Mountain
9. How to find a remote cabin on a gravel road in the mountains at night, or: “Veer right where the old Citgo used to be”
10. The Appalachian Trail to Siler Bald
11. Franklin, by bicycle
12. The one million dollar view — for $78/night.
13. Franklin locals
14. The Nantahala River (white water rafting, guided by Captain Dan)
15. Tsali Mountain Biking
16. Great Smoky Mountains National Park: Balsam Mountain campground
17. Flat Creek Trail (in the rain)
18. Clingman’s Dome
19. The Blue Ridge Parkway becomes our driveway
20. Chimney Tops
21. Mingo Falls
22. The long road home
23. A gorgeous sunset and a reminder of the local beauty

The album will probably never happen, but the track listing is a good indication of our trip. I’ll write in detail later about many of the the things on the list. I have a few hundred photos to go through, so it may take a while to write about our trip.

Once we returned home, we were hit with a barrage of small but irksome troubles. My computer wouldn’t turn on. The maintenance guys turned off the pilot for our water heater, so after days without showers, we were anxious for some hot showers, but had no hot water. Our power went out for a few hours, just as we wanted to work on sorting through photos.