I'm Kathleen, she's my beautiful wife (aka MBW), and only recently have we started to ride together. I've bike toured a few times over the years and have been riding pretty much all my life, but MBW is only recently back on a bike since her undergraduate days many moons ago.  

I like to do 10-25 mile rides, done 99% by myself. I enjoy the solitude and the meditation. I poke along on my recumbent at my own pace, checking out the wildflowers and the roadkill.

Two years ago we bought MBW a Sun EZ3 USX recumbent trike. It's a 65 lb monster, but it's comfy and fun and just right for someone with bad back, bad knees, etc., and who doesn't want to worry about that balancing thing. When she was just starting out, riding around the cul de sac for 5 minutes was a triumph. Now she's ridden as much as 12 miles at a crack.

When MBW felt ready to venture beyond the cul de sac, it was a treat to be able to finally ride together. I had always left her to her own devices when I went off on my bicycling adventures, but now we could have some adventures together.

Of course, that meant adjustments to my riding. Having always been able to enjoy the conversations in my head (I am hilarious), it's been hard to adjust to chatting with someone else while riding. MBW and I are always making comments on the passing scenery but we forget that the person riding behind can't hear those pithy comments. So then there's shouting. And misunderstandings. And more shouting. And lots of "forget it"s.
Yet we persist, and slowly we have made longer trips.

I was getting itchy to do a tour after slobbering over so many bike touring journals. But I didn't want to spend an extended period of time away from MBW because I'd done enough of that lately. So I thought I'd do a ride around San Francisco Bay. Be gone maybe a week. Do it for my birthday in March.

And then . . .

...then we got the Hitch Rider rack for the trike. And bigger vistas have now become available to us. And MBW said, why don't I come with you? I can drive with the trike on the car rack and ride parts of the route with you. FABULOUS! Great idea!

And so, we ride.

We luckily have many friends and also-transplanted-from-the-East-Coast relatives strategically sprinkled around the bay so we can mooch off them - er, visit. Really, they're happy to see us this time because for once we're not asking for donations. Besides doing a tour together, visiting them is the best part.

Of course, one's tour should have a focus, something to make you glad to get up every morning and ride. After serious consideration, we have chosen cupcakes as our focus. When not too far off our route, we will find bakeries with cupcakes. (Apparently they're trendy just now. Had no idea.) We will report on the relative merits of the cupcakes we encounter so you can be jealous. We reserve the right to substitute other baked goods during our quest.

Because MBW is her own person, and because she's going to have a very different experience of this tour, you might be interested in what she has to say. Links to her own blog are posted at the end of each day's entry on this journal.