I should say a word about my concept of training. In my view, training is important if you have a time challenge. You will record a faster time if you train beforehand. If you don't care how fast you go, training isn't very important. For our tour, we'll have about 60 miles to cover each day. As long as we get to our stopping place before dark, that's good enough for me. If I have to stop every hundred yards on a steep hill to catch my breath, I'll still get to the top eventually. My goal is to make the tour without breaking a sweat. I won't achieve that because some hills will be steep enough to cause sweat even pedaling slowly, but I will do my best always to stay within a comfortable pace that I can maintain all day.

Michele does not hold to that concept, however, so we took off this morning to climb about 1500 feet to Skyline Boulevard in the Oakland hills, down the other side through the aptly-named community of Canyon on Pinehurst Road, and back up to Skyline on Redwood Road and home.

There is one substantial climb on Pinehurst. At the top, we stopped to put on windbreakers for the descent and ran into four ladies who call themselves the "Babes on Bikes". They are our age or a little less young (older, if you insist upon that term). One is clearly a princess because she sports a tiara with jewels to make E. Taylor jealous on her helmet! I wish I had a photo! These vigorous ladies ride with their bike club and make tracks with their hiking club. One, Edith, has done both the San Diego to Florida tour we're planning and the New Orleans to Canada route. They're planning various European tours for this year, starting with a ride along the Danube from Prague to somewhere in Germany. They're an inspiration.