Mark Morgan surprised me with a word I wasn't familiar with: conflate. It means, essentially, to "combine into one".

I'm going to have to use this the next time I play the world's-best-word-game, Big Boggle (Boggle Master for you young'uns). Hopefully tonight.

Today is my beautiful wife's birthday!

I'm declaring it a national holiday, in her honor. :-)

Today's was an absolutely wonderful ride! I thought I had reached my second highest average for the year, but it was actually my highest: 17.46 mph over the course of a 28.5 mile ride. At the end of last week, I just didn't feel like pushing the pedals down any more, but today the fire was back and I just couldn't get enough of it.

Even better: I'd normally expect to be exhausted after a ride like that, but I'm not. The biker's high has kicked in, and I'm still feeling energized.

Unfortunately, I'm running a bit behind on my goal for the month. Somehow, I need to try to get 12 rides in the next 16 days. That's doable, but it'll be a real challenge... the weather has not been very dependable this summer, and sometimes work gets in the way of play.

Anyway, make sure you check out the performance graph on the Cyclist's Diary. That spike on 8/15 is nice!