rojagato asked about an appendix for this series, so here it is broken into sections for your reference --

Training Notes
My general training regimen can be classified as 'commuting + weekends'. I am lucky to have a 14 mile commute to work, that can be attacked in both a flat-and-easy or tough-and-hilly fashion. So, often, I would mix and match those programs as I saw fit, and the commute, by itself, formed the bulk of my training during the fall, winter and early spring. As I mentioned in my final post, I made the effort to plan my ride schedule a week ahead and would only factor in early meetings or early after-work outings as reasons for me to take the car. I rode in the Valentine's day blizzard and through innumerable rainy nights and mornings, and that had helped immensely in preparing me for a wet PBP. I believe that regular bike commuting should be the cornerstone of any randonneur's training program. It doesn't even have to be a very long commute, but it should be consistent. If you can't bike commute, then focus on using your bike for other aspects of your life. Fetch groceries and run errands with your bike. Use it for visiting friends. Find excuses to get out there.

Because the application period for PBP starts at the end of June, the brevet season starts a month early so that the 600k can be completed by mid-June so your results would be available and approved when the application periods starts. So, our first qualifier was at the end of March, and my general plan was to get a century ride under my belt by mid-March. I couldn't get that century ride in due to work conflicts, but was still able to complete the 200k and proceed with the rest of the series. Despite that, if you're new or considering this sport, you should, at least, do an 80 mile ride before you even consider tackling a 200k. It would be even better if you could do a 100 mile ride.

On years in between the four-year intervals of PBP, the New England brevets start at the end of April, instead of March, so you can squeeze in a little more training if you aren't accustomed to riding in winter. But, really, get used to riding in the cold. It will only help and it builds character.

I did one brevet series this year, which was a mix of Boston and Westfield rides. In general, the Boston series is a fairly tough set, but it is excellent prep for PBP or any other 1200k. The Boston 300k, in particular, which rambles through the northeastern corner of Connecticut is a very close match to the rolling hills of Brittany. Conventional randonneuring logic says that you should do more than one brevet series before tackling your first 1200k. I think that, given a certain amount of determination and prior exposure to endurance conditions (ie. mountaineering, marathon running, etc.) you can probably do a 1200k with only one series under your belt, but more experience is always helpful.

Keep in mind that the brevet series acts both as a set of qualifiers and as a set of training rides. As trainers the capsule descriptions I have for each of the rides is as follows:

The 200K -- your sanity check and initiation. A well-designed 200K will test your general physical fitness and disposition for long-distance cycling. If you can complete a 200K you have the physical conditioning that will see you through the rest of the series. Believe it or not; everything after this point is willpower, eating and raw cunning.

The 300K -- first intro to night riding, test of eating. You can eat like crap on a 200k and still be strong enough to finish without suffering. If you apply that sort of strategy to a 300K your mistakes will catch up to you at or near the end. You can still make mistakes with diet and finish, but you will know that they are mistakes; and you should adjust your eating patterns before your 400 or you will DNF. The 300K is when you ought to narrow down what sort of foods you should be eating. Real or tech? Sustained Energy or Cytomax? Ham sandwiches or Clif Bars?

In New England, the 300k's traditionally have a 4am start, which means that you'll have 3 or so hours of night riding to start off, which is a good chance to test your lighting rig. Even if the rig proves to be suboptimal, you can still struggle along by riding with others who have brighter lights until sunrise. You will, of course, need to fix this before the 400k, where a solid lighting system is pretty much required to complete.

The 300k is also when the subtler problems of bike fit will begin to become apparent. The saddle that is just a little too uncomfortable on a weekly 40 mile ride will be unbearable after 180 miles. You will be introduced to hand numbness, toe tingling and other wonderful examples of incipient nerve damage. Again, address these before you do the longer rides.

The 400k -- serious night riding, eating and intro to sleep deprivation. Unless you're an exceptionally strong rider, you will likely finish your 400k within 20 to 24 hours. That means that you will need to ride for at least 6 or 8 hours in darkness, and you will likely be starting at some ridiculous hour like 1 in the morning. Keep in mind that riding in the darkness can be a significant mental challenge, especially when faced alone. I would gladly accept 100 miles ridden in the day time for 50 miles ridden at night. Night riding is isolating and discomforting, and the bugbears of doubt and morbid imagination are more likely to rise in your mind when you are out and alone on a desolate country road. But, the night can also hold moments of intense beauty and peace and your challenge is to find more of these moments than the lonely ones. By this point, you should have addressed any lighting problems that were discovered on your 300K and you should know what sort of diet works for you. If you don't have this settled, you can still finish, but your chances of DNFing are greater.

The 600k -- your final exam. Here is what it all comes together. You should trust your bike and have the utmost faith in its ability to carry you over any distance. You should already be comfortable with all of the aspects of training from the previous rides: physical conditiong, lighting, food, etc. Now, you're going to be expected to use all of those lessons for a ride that spans two days and possibly deal with sleeping and having to get up the next day to continue riding. People who have their minds set on a 1200k will often ride the 600 without sleeping to simulate the level of sleep deprivation that you're going to have at the end of a 1200. I haven't done this and can't comment on the wisdom of it, but I can say that it is important to acclimatize to dealing with compressed sleep schedules as well as getting back on one's bike after a sleep stop has forced your muscles to cool down and made your body aware of all of the sore points.

Last year, when I started randoneering, I had an intimidating 200k that kicked my ass, a 300k that was even harder on me but also reassuring because finishing that ride made me realize that I could take the rest, my 400k was where everything started working and the 600k was just a brilliant capstone on a great summer. This year, the 200k was a promising start, but the 300k reminded me that even with experience and a new bike these rides can still be rather tough. My 400k was a reminder of how debilitating the night could be, and my 600 further reinforced this point.

In particular, the 2006 and 2007 600k's were pretty much the same route, but the planner, Bruce Ingle, chose to move our sleep stop 60 miles further down the route, meaning that we had to ride an extra four hours and complete 400k before sleeping. This made the first night rather tough for many of us, but in retrospect, it was also a stunningly excellent replication of the struggle to get from the start to the sleep stop at Loudeac. Anyone who plans to do PBP and sleep in Carhaix to skip the crowded clusterfuck of Loudeac should train by doing their local 600k without sleeping.

Beyond commuting and brevets, my only other training was to try and fit in at least one century every weekend. A typical 100 mile loop would be a jaunt out to Worcester that incorporates more than 3000 feet of climbing (though Bikely tends to underestimate climbing numbers). On days when I couldn't take the time to do 100 miles, I'd opt for a 30 or 40 mile ride that basically went for every hill in the vicinity.

The brevet series finishes in June and Paris is in the end of August, which gives one a month and a half to maintain conditioning and build strength. Counterintuitively, you do not need to ride a double-century to train for a 600k. One hundred miles on the road is good enough conditioning for brevets, any more is just wearing out tires. What can be good training above and beyond long rides is doing long rides back-to-back. I always aim to do a pair of back-to-back rides (80 mi Saturday / 60 mi Sunday) a weekend or two before my 600k.

I hoped to turn in 200 mile weeks through July and on this goal, I failed miserably. Part of this stems from hubris and the Great Mass Getaway. The GMG was a two-day charity ride to raise funds for multiple sclerosis. The MS charity rides have been, in many ways, my gateway to long distance riding, and for anyone who hasn't done a century ride yet, I believe that the MS rides can provide a great introduction. Part of it is that, as far century rides go, the MS 150s are relatively easy. The Great Mass Getaway is a rather flat ride with century and 75 mile options, it's well-supported and draws a decent crowd. Coming fresh off a 600k, I had hoped to do the century route in less than 6 hours and rode it very hard, but also wound up messing up my right knee from the effort and despite the fact that I always had the option to bail and hitch a ride to the finish, I had too much pride to take that option. I wound up developing tendonitis in my right knee and lost two weeks of training while sorting out issues with bike fit and muscle therapy.

On top of that, silentq and I decided that we would move at the end of August, two days after returning from France, so our weekends were also occupied with apartment hunting, which also curtailed my riding. Finally, delays with passport processing due to the new identification rules between the US and Canada forced me to make a side trip up to Montreal to get a new passport.

In the end, I maybe did two centuries on my own after the brevet series finished with a few 40 or 60 mile rides on top of that. With commuting I was putting in 150 miles or 175 miles a week, but maybe only posted one 200 mile week.

It was a relatively sloppy, washed-out July that had me anxious about starting PBP, and while I can say that one can do a 1200k with only one brevet series, a semi-regular 28 mile commute, and a few weekend rides of 60 or 80 miles, I don't think one should rely on that relatively minimal level of preparation. You should ride as much as you can, in as many adverse conditions as you can tolerate. However, you should also ride because it is fun and because you want to do it. Don't make it a chore, otherwise you'll quit before even attempting a 1200. I structured my weekend training rides around visiting my friends in the suburbs and would call up thelittlebeast, jasonlizard or eeyrg to see if I could drop by and mooch a glass of water from them. Conveniently, most of these friends lived about 40 miles away from my house.


The Bike



The bike that I rode on PBP was a custom-made ANT Club Racer. It was designed, from the outset as a randoneering bike and as a commuter, and is best described as a sport tourer. It has long enough chainstays to sustain a pair of full sized panniers on the rear rack, but it was not intended to haul a full touring load and is a little lighter than a dedicated touring bike. However, like a touring bike, much of the Club Racer was designed with a bias towards easy field serviceability. This includes the choice of shifters (bar-end instead of Ergo or STI), the wheels (conventional spoke design) and steerer (threaded stem for on the fly height adjustment of handlebars)



The bike has a Schmidt SON dynamo hub on the front wheel to provide power to two Schmidt E6 headlights mounted on a custom designed lighting bracket that places the light just beneath the crown fork. It has braze-ons for two water bottles, but in retrospect, I wish that I had spec'ed a braze-on for a third bottle on the downtube. It is important to carry sufficient water for the distances between towns, especially at night when stores are closed the prospect of resupply is dismal, and I found that a few times, it was extremely handy to have a third bottle lashed to my rear rack.

For baggage, I have a Carradice Super C saddlebag for holding most of my gear, a Bento box on my top tube for holding some food and electrolyte tablets, and a map case on my handlebars for the cue sheet, phone, wallet and brevet card.

I brought the bike to Paris with a Trico Iron Case that was rented from Wheelworks. Packing precautions included wrapping the frame in sheafs of newspaper (though seasoned tourists who fret about the finish of their tubes tend to go for foam pipe insulation) and for lack of having spacer bolts to keep the rear triangle and fork from being damaged in transit, I instead substituted a roll of toilet paper on the front fork and a small bottle of Pedro's chain lube on the rear triangle. This worked out splendidly. I had to, of course, remove the fenders, light bracket, stem, seat post and pedals while packing the back. These all went into the case, along with my toolkit and pedal wrench. All the rest of the gear went into a duffel. Lufthansa charges 50 euros / 75 USD for a bike case that weighs more than 50lbs. but less than 70lbs. and my total package came out to just shy of 60. I wasn't charged on the outbound flight, but did pay 50 euros on my return; which was reasonable.

Packing List
Core (always have this on any ride)
Alien multi-tool
Fiber-fix Spoke Repair Kit
Two spare tubes
One tube patch kit
2 tire levers
Zipties
frame pump

Cell phone
Wallet
Keys
Sunglasses

Rain jacket
Leg warmers
1 handipack of tissues

Ziploc bag for brevet card and cue sheets
6 to 8 packets of Gu or Clif Shot
5 scoops of Sustained Energy per 200k
2 Clif bars
1 apple
Endurolyte tablets (three tablets per two hours)

300K
Reflective vest
Reflective ankle and wrist straps
Headlamp
2 spare bulbs for headlights
Spare AAA batteries for tailight and/or headlamp

400K
Chain lube

600K
Sleeping bag
Second jersey
Second pair of bike shorts
Second pair of socks
Camp towel
Toothbrush
Spare toothbrush for scrubbing out Sustained Energy bottle
Eyeglasses

1200k
Spare Tire
Second fiber fix spoke repair kit
2 more spare bulbs

lightweight First Aid Kit
600 mg Ibuprofen
Three doses antihistamine

Third jersey
Third pair of socks
Eyeshades
Inflatable pillow

For reference, the bike with the fenders, lights and empty bags weighs in at about 28 lbs. I have not weighed the 1200k gear, but based on the fact that my duffel was mostly this gear plus a couple of bike locks, I would guess that it was somewhere around 15 lbs.

Yes, it's relatively long list and folks should not be daunted by it. You can certainly do brevets with less gear and pare it down to, say, food, night clothing and basic repair tools, but I tended to believe that while I would not DNF a ride because I was being bogged down with a spare tire, I could certainly DNF if the tire on my bike was somehow shredded and I was too much of a weight weenie to carry a spare. Keep in mind that almost every 1200k that's out there offers some sort of drop bag support, so you don't have to carry everything with you if you don't want to. Spare clothing, food and parts can go in your drop bags, but you should be sure to carry enough gear to get you from one controle to the other. A common strategy is to use the drop bag for staging sleep gear, but this commits you to sleeping in a certain location, and I personally preferred to have the flexibility of choice.

I should also say that after my 600k, I made a point of doing all of my training rides with all of the equipment that I was planning on taking with me to Paris. So, that meant a few weekend 60 mile rides with a sleeping bag, three changes of clothing and a whole lot of uneaten food sitting in my saddlebag. Yes, it was initially frustrating and tedious to be hauling around that much weight, but it kept me strong and got me used to the load. Having to unpack and repack that kit multiple times also burned into my mind the location of all of my equipment, so I wasn't fumbling around in a sleep deprived haze, trying to remember where I put the chain lube on my fourth day.

Looking back over this list, I can't find too many items that were obviously overkill. My lighting system was completely solid during this event, and I never had to use the spare bulbs or batteries, but that doesn't mean that they were dead weight. Same goes for the first aid kit. I used both spare tubes and the spare tire, and the patch kit would've been used if Jake had not loaned me his own tube. The second fiber fix spoke was probably overkill, and I mostly packed it out of paranoia that my wheels might have been damaged/weakened after being packed for flight, but the weight of a spare spoke was relatively negligible and I'll probably keep it in the kit for the foreseeable future.

What is missing from this list?
Spare chain links -- If I broke a link, I would've shortened the remaining chain and sacrificed one or two gear combinations, but I would've greatly preferred to have another link to use as a substitute.
Third and fourth pair of shorts -- preferably with a different chamois pattern to distribute patterns of ass trauma.
Arm warmers -- my rain jacket was a decent insulating top layer but I would've preferred to have something that kept me warm on the dry but cool periods of night and early dawn. A long sleeve wool jersey would also have been nice.
Waterproof socks -- silentq offered me the use of her Sealskinz and I turned it down mostly because I didn't want to take responsibility for what would happen to them after four days of constant use. What this means is I should just buy my own so I can destroy them without guilt.
Spare main light -- The only other mechanical nightmare that I was anticipating beyond breaking a chain was some kind of cable failure between my headlights and my generator, rendering both useless. I had an HID light that I used on last year's brevets with a mediocre but functional battery and I opted not to bring this because it was heavy and the dynamo lights were still working very well, but I still occasionally worried about that decision up until dawn on Friday.

Post-Ride Reflections and Advice
One of the more fascinating and intriguing facets of randonneuring is that it does invite a wide variety of riders and philosophies. It's a big tent that includes racers who want to finish the course in the fastest time possible, vintage bike enthusiasts who use the event at as an opportunity to demonstrate the worthiness of some venerable and worthy machines, or tourists who are less concerned with minimizing time spent and maximizing time enjoyed. I can certainly say that I fall into more of the tourist camp than any other. I enjoy a fast ride, and I do seek to improve my course times, but that's mostly in service of being able to have more time to spend in restaurants, farmstands and cafes along the way. There is no one right way to ride a brevet, and there are many paths to finishing one course. Enjoying this sport is a matter of finding the path that is best for you.

I say all of this as a precaution for the advice that I'm going to give. As you may have already gathered, I don't know and can't advise folks on how to set a course record, but I'm happy to tell people how to do incredibly hard things and have some fun doing it. If you are a newcomer or an interested observer, and you're looking for tips, this is what I can provide. I am certainly no grand authority in this matter, but it hasn't been that long since I, too, was a beginner --

1. Bike, saddle, tires, lights -- that's the order by which I would evaluate all of my gear. Past this, everything else is secondary. The bike must be two things above all. It must be comfortable and it must be reliable. What that is depends on you and your experience. Some people believe that carbon fiber is inherently fragile, others believe that this is obsolete knowledge based on early failures and propagated by luddites and curmudgeons; and that the current generation of carbon fiber steeds are as resilient as any steel ride on the market. You have to decide for yourself what you trust and what you will accept, but all of your equipment must be made with the priority towards comfort and reliability, with speed or lightweight being bonuses above all of that.
   
   
2. Listen to everyone but decide for yourself -- there is no magic bullet in randonneuring, though there is a lot of fashion. A lot of people use a Schmidt generator with E6 or Lumotech lights. A lot of riders sit on Brooks saddles. The new h0tness in American randoneering circles is the Gran Bois Cypres 30mm tire which, if you believe the press, is like riding on the backsides of cherubim. There are some reasons for this. One is that a lot of the stuff really does live up to the hype. Randonneurs subject their equipment to some rather brutal conditions and a brevet can illustrate the differences between well-crafted sturdy gear and mass-produced cheap crap. Another is that randonneurs perceive relatively thin margins for error with their equipment. The stuff has to work. You don't have a support car that can give you a spare wheel or replacement bike in the middle of the route if you encounter a mishap. So randonneurs tend to look at what's worked for others and adopt those choices for themselves.
   
   There is wisdom in this and you should do as much research as you can before choosing your equipment, but make your own choice. Don't believe that just because it works for a lot of people, it will also, always, work for you or that you need to adopt their gear to be a successful randonneur. Your butt might not like a Brooks, no matter how broken in it may or may not be. You may not have the cash or resources to buy a Schmidt hub, much less build a whole new wheel around that hub. All of this gear helps, but it doesn't guarantee that you'll finish your brevets.
   
   
3. Do your own maintenance -- Field mechanic skills are a necessity for any successful randonneur. If you don't do your own tuneups on the bike, start now. If you don't know how to adjust your derailleurs, learn now. Learn to true wheels, while you're at it, and get comfortable with fixing flats. Fix a flat tire in the dark, just with the light of a headlamp. Fix a flat in the rain. Try to come up with a personal best time for tire repairs.
   
   And, sure, bring your bike into the shop before you start the season or before a 600k, just to have a professional check your work if that will calm your nerves, but always look at it as them checking your work and not them doing mechanical tasks that you can't or won't learn.
   
   
4. Ride your own ride -- there are benefits to riding with others, especially at night. Socializing makes time pass, and while randonneuring prizes resourcefulness and independence, the non-competitive nature of the sport fosters a shared sense of camaraderie that is one of its hallmarks. However, overemphasizing the social aspects of a brevet can bring its own challenges. Everyone needs to sleep, pee or eat at different times. Everyone gets tired at different rates. If this isn't synchronized properly, then everyone tends to be delayed unnecessarily. This can create tension if ground rules aren't established first and people start seeing each other as liabilities and your intimate little paceline starts turning into a velomobile version of Survivor.
   
   So, until you become familiar with your peers and prospective companions, don't invest too much in riding with others and always make it clear that while you enjoy riding with someone at a similar pace, there shouldn't be any hard feelings about being dropped if the situation changes. In the end, you're all there for your own particular goals, and if someone chooses to sacrifice their goal to help a friend succeed at theirs, that's a fine choice, but the choice shouldn't be forced.
   
   Similarly, resist the temptation to stay with the lead pack of brevet riders for longer than your comfort limit. Veteran fast riders will usually start a ride at a slower pace than your standard club ride, and this might lead newcomers into an early sense of elation as you're riding at the head of the pack. Unless you are, yourself, a phenomenally strong rider, you will get dropped, so if this starts to happen 20 or 30 miles into a brevet, let it happen and ride at a pace that lets you finish the next 100 or 90 miles. Don't spend all of your energy in being a hotshot in the first quarter of the ride if that means that you have nothing left for the last half. You impress people by finishing, not by failing spectacularly.
   
   
5. ride everywhere -- randonneuring is the sort of sport that rewards the car-free cyclist and the sort of person who looks at cycling as a part of their life -- not just a sport that they participate in on the weekends. To reiterate my training advice, if you can commute by bicycle do so. If you can use your bike to replace your car or public transportation, do so. If you find yourself pedaling through a rainstorm not because it's "training" but because that's just the way you get around, then you have more mental preparation than someone who looks at that rainstorm and is still thinking about putting their bike on a trainer, instead.
   
   
6. learn to climb -- it's an unavoidable fact that every 1200k will be hilly. Not everyone likes climbing, but you will have to climb if you want to finish a 1200k. Poor climbing skills are also where slow riders find themselves the most handicapped. If you live in a hilly region, find the hills that you've always avoided on your route to work and attack them. If you live somewhere flat, seek out headwinds or highway overpasses. You may never learn to love climbing (I still don't) but you can at least learn to love the descents.
   
   
7. leave your ego at home -- There will always be someone more hardcore than you. That person will usually be Ken Bonner.
   
   But, seriously, one of the most awesome thing about this sport is that you will find yourself associating with people who can do some amazing things -- ride a brevet series after recovering from a stroke, ride 750 miles on a fixed gear, ride 1200k with an amputated arm. One day you might look at other cyclists who just do a 40 mile ice cream run and think of yourself as a cycling god, then you'll check the Randon e-mail list and read a ride report from someone who completed PBP on a Razor scooter.
   
   So, similarly, don't think you're a 'more worthy' randonneur because you can turn in a sub 24-hour 600k or because you did a 1200k without drop bag support or because you finished a series with an ancient bike that doesn't have any new-fangled high-tech crutches. Conversely, don't be discouraged if you finish a 600k and you look at your times to see that you were 19 out of 20 to finish. You still finished a 385 mile ride and even if you might be slower than 95% of the riders in your club, you've endured more than 99% of the riders in your state or province.
   
   Every randonneur has their own challenge and their own goals in mind, and you can't say that your apple is shinier than their orange. All that is important is that you finish your brevets on the goals you set for yourself and that is all that is worthy of your pride. The accomplishments and failures of others should not bear on that in any way.

A lot of people have asked me if I would do this again, and I believe that I would. I wouldn't mind doing Paris again, especially if the weather in the following years were better. The entire experience, as a celebration of cycling culture and the resiliency of one's fellow human beings is worth savoring many times in one's life and not just once. There are also several 1200K's in the world -- London-Edinburgh-London, the Rocky Mountain 1200, VanIsle 1200, which also hold their own allure, but none of them have the personality and cult following that accompanies PBP. Also, when I look at some of those courses, I realize that I might be perfectly happy to ride those routes as part of, say, a one week tour, but perhaps not on a four day sleep deprivation endurance trial.

Of course, that opinion might change as time and distance reduce the harsher memories and leave the tastier ones behind. We shall see.

Thanks

While the sport of randonneuring is all about developing a sense of self-sufficiency on a bicycle, it would be a misnomer for me to take all the credit for completing something as challenging as Paris-Brest-Paris. The strong and welcoming community of NERds ( the New England RanDonneuring club) was immensely helpful in preparing for the ride, and most of the credit has to go to the tough love of the Ingles, who sought to kick our asses early so that Paris wouldn't destroy us later, and in that I believe that they've largely succeeded.

The NERd pack of Bruce, Glen, Jake and Emily have always made time on the road pass faster and easier than it would have if I were alone. I owe Bruce's wife, Julie, an immense deal of thanks for giving a warm place to sleep during all three nights of PBP, and while I would like to believe that I could have finished the ride without her hospitality, I was nonetheless glad that it was offered. I am also thankful to Mike from St. Louis for returning me to sanity whenever I arrived at a control on Friday morning.

While my riding time with them has been limited, as I would usually be dropped by those folks once they warmed up, I am forever respectful and in awe of the lead pack of New England randonneurs who, almost to a man, have been kind, humble and generous in their nature and in the spirit of the sport have been just as respectful to the last finisher of a brevet as they have been to the first. In particular, despite the curse of our Fleche team, and the fact that Tom and K were clearly in another league of speed from me, I never felt unwelcome in their company and I would join them in an instant if we were to make another go of the fleche in 2008.

I was also fortunate enough to befriend the Blayleys, who have each been riding brevets and doing PBPs for longer than I've been on a bicycle. Both Pamela and John gave me a great deal of advice and reassurance in the weeks and days leading up to the ride, and I have to credit Pamela with forming my base randonneuring philosophy where riding fast just to shave 2 hours off a brevet finishing time isn't quite as fun a riding fast so that you can spend 2 hours indulging in bakeries and cafes along the route.

While I do recommend that one take on most of the responsbility for the care and feeding of their bicycle, I have not yet learned all that there is to know about bicycle mechanics. Tyler from Paramount Bicycle Repair deserves my thanks for his frank and honest advice, and his patient tutelage in wheelbuilding. Elton Pope Lance of Harris Cyclery also proved immensely helpful in providing baggage and touring advice, and I hope that he sticks with his threat of actual going out and doing a brevet in 2008. Of course, I owe an immense debt to Mike Flanigan of ANT for building a fabulous bike and being the sort of craftsman for whom customer relationships do not just end after the client hands over their check.

Beyond randonneuring, I am grateful, as ever, to silentq for being supportive, tolerant and wise when I needed her to be each of those things. I also thank her for kicking me out of bed on the mornings when discipline was faltering. While she hasn't ridden a brevet, she has nonetheless been a constant companion on every ride that I've done, and I can't ask for one better.

Eventhough he didn't finish the series, I'm glad that heatray rode with me on the Fleche and the Boston 200 and 300, and my only regret from this season was that we couldn't figure out a way to fix his knee before Paris.

To everyone who contributed to the new bike, I am also immensely grateful. While I joked that the contributions formed some massive soul debt that could only be paid by finishing PBP and where failure would've meant eternal and undying shame in the eyes of my friends, I am serious when I state that your support has meant a lot to me in the past year and that I don't think I could have, in good conscience, chosen not to do this ride in your names. So thanks to silas7, badriyaz, mrzero, tetrascian, crystain, eeyrg, belledejour, sarcasmchasm, _perihelion_, rojagato, yosh, couplingchaos, medakse, grega, dethany, mishak, jasonlizard, synaesthesia, tegin, sanguinempathy, sirendipity, xthlcm, saturniidae, labellemargaux, oftheeye, spriggan, plankton, brigid, photiq, julishka, pyrric, lepidosiren, amadea, liza31337 and thanks to everyone who has provided comments and reassurance throughout these adventures. You may have told me that I'm you're hero, but you are the wind beneath my wings, bitches.

Thanks also to my family and parents, who took me to a park to ride tricycles when I was six and implanted a seed of a dream in my mind that has taken root and flowered so well.