This past week marked a new milestone for me, one I wouldn’t have imagined at the beginning of the year.  On Wednesday I took advantage of a warm late-fall afternoon to complete an 18-mile bicycle ride on the Gateway Trail on the outskirts of Saint Paul.  By completing this ride I have now ridden 1,500 miles this year — an amount that far exceeds anything I’ve ever done.  All those miles have been filled with new sights, adventures, and shared conversations.  The ones early in the year were done in training for the Bike Across Kansas, and the ones at the end of the summer and into the fall were for the exercise and the enjoyment of riding.  I can’t predict how many miles I’ll traverse next year, but I know these 1,500 miles have plenty of enjoyable memories to carry me through the winter and have me looking forward to new bicycling adventures starting next spring.