Like everyone else my bike touring plans went out the window this year because of the pandemic. I really enjoyed the journals of those who wrote about their local rides during the lockdowns, particularly in Iowa by Susan Carpenter and in Bedfordshire by Jon Ayling (Scott and Rachael Anderson are of course in a league by themselves). Iowa and England are as foreign to me as Antarctica so their rides interested me no end.

Since we are in the midst of the terrible winter wave of the virus, we're back in lockdown and I'm sheltering in place for the duration. It looks like we'll have a relatively dry winter here, so I'll probably have a lot of days I can be out riding in order to keep my sanity.

I'm going to emulate Jon and Susan and show you around my neck of the woods. I live in Silicon Valley, which is considered a strange country even by those who live here. A ride around here will almost always involve some site that has a tech association. Kind of obvious but there's no way to get away from Silicon Valley's influence if (a) you live in the valley and (b) you worked in tech for a long time. My wife was a software engineer and technical instructor for nearly 30 years. I had non-technical jobs in software companies but eventually succumbed and became a technical writer.

Just like in Bedfordshire, I'll show you our "ancient" pathways, once-fertile fields, "lightly" traveled lanes, charming villages, and sites of wonders and magick. Plus strip malls and highways and parking lots. It's also really beautiful here once you get away from all that - I'll show you some of that too.