Happy New Year!

Ah, 2011.  We live in the future.  Where’s my jetpack?

Not much has been going on in my motorcycling world: winter means busyness, travel, cold, and rain…none of which is very conducive to riding.

I did have a great Christmas, mostly because we went to Ohio and spent the week with my in-laws.   Therefore your photo-before-the-cut this time is chock full o’ Biermans.  I married into a gorgeous family, no?  Too bad I can’t plunder their genetics.

OK, so after Christmas we got the week off of work, so I was able to find a day sunny enough to get a few miles in.  Unfortunately my back is acting up a bit — more on that in a sec — so this was a short 13 mile jaunt close to home.

I started off by swinging by the health clinic in Redwood Shores as I needed a TB test to volunteer at a local nursing home.  Duly tested and recorded that, despite my many other physical foibles, at least I don’t have consumption, I set off to explore a small part of Redwood Shores.

This area of the peninsula’s future claim to fame will be falling off into the Bay when the big earthquake hits.  Nah, not really.  Well, maybe.  No one’s quite sure.  The bay fill that it’s built upon handled the Loma Prieta quake in ’89 without a lot of liquefaction, but I’ve read reports of new home disclosures in the area warning against 2.5 feet of settling over the next 50 years.  Yikes!

OK, anyway.  Redwood Shores has lots of marshes and bay views, but the area I went to had very few places to park one’s motorcycle near said marshes and views.  Here’s the best I could do:

Awww, ducks!

After my quick jaunt around Redwood Shores, I headed to the Sky Kitchen restaurant at the San Carlos airport.  It was busy, sadly, so all the tables overlooking the runway/airplane parking were full, but my seat way in the back at the counter still had good diner food.

A few plane pics on my way out and then it was time to head home.

So that was my one whopping big ride for December. 😉

I had hoped to ride more this week while I was out of work but my back has really not been cool with that plan.  I don’t know if I just overdid it while we were in Ohio, or what, but I’ve had a lot of pain and nervous system symptoms over the past couple of days.  Friday afternoon, it was at the curled-up-crying level of pain, which was not really what I’d had in mind for the evening, but copious amounts of ibuprofen and resting has it now just to the “wow, this is annoying and it sort of hurts to do anything” level.  If it’s still annoying tomorrow, I’ll call in for my buddy the Medrol pack o’ steroids.

I really wish I could see into the future and see that, someday, I’d be riding hundreds of miles per day and touring again.  That would make this easier to deal with.  I think in the back of my mind, I’m still terrified that I won’t be able to ride more than 50 miles per day again and that my touring days are over.

But! It’s a brand new year now, and I can still ride, even if it’s just a few miles at a time.  I rode about 380 miles in 2010 (that’s horribly depressing, actually, but moving on…) and the goal is to ride more than that in 2011. 🙂

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