That number up there, forty-five point three (45.3!) is how many miles we rode over Saturday and Sunday. That still may not seem like a huge total to any more serious riders that may be reading this, but again, keep in mind, we just this year were at a fitness level where this is even possible.

It started early Saturday morning with a 21.2 mile first ride. For those local to our area, I'll describe the route a bit. We started by leaving home and heading towards the 231 bypass on the South side. We took that towards West Lafayette, and realized how much a hill/slope it really is! Hard to tell in a car; not so much on a bike. Luckily this was all downhill. Then we jumped on the Wabash Heritage Trail and took that almost to the R/C flying field/Golf Course area. It's pretty covered with mud, dried and rutted mud, and branch debris so we turned around and headed back to the bypass and went back towards home. Of course, now the bypass route is uphill and that was ... interesting. ;) But we made it, and didn't walk the bikes at all. We did have to stop for a rest for a minute or so, but that was near the top anyway. We finished out to 21.2 miles by traversing a bunch of subdivisions in our general area.

Then, Saturday night we went out for a shorter, 7.9 mile ride, ending Saturday at 29.1 miles. Definitely a new daily record for us, and the first ride of 21.2 miles was well over anything we'd done previously. And while we were tried from the riding, we didn't feel "dead" or anything. And it was a lot of fun!

Early Sunday, we went out for another ride. After doing 29.1 in a day, we knew this one wouldn't be ultra long, but still, we have more time on the weekends, so wanted as long a ride as we could get. It ended up being 16.2 miles, bringing our weekend total to 45.3. This was a fun, "subdivision tour" ride. Nothing overly taxing, just good, moderate speed, flat road riding through subdivisions.

We bought the two locally-written bike route books from our bike shop this weekend, and were looking through them, checking out some 17, 25, and 30 mile routes and thinking "yeah, no big deal, we can do that!" Heh. We've come a LONG way from 400 and 300 pounds and it feels good. :)

In other news, I made a decision for a LOTRO character. I got to thinking about the mid level and high levels, and what I'd wished I had when I was leveling my Lore-master and Captain before. And that was always "faster kills." Also, I was hoping for less responsibility and such later on during raids. So I decided to go with a Hunter. A Hobbit.

The Hobbit starter area in LOTRO is very different from the other starter areas, and radically different from anything most MMO players will have seen in terms of quests and such. The designers wanted it to reflect the character and personality of Hobbits and they really got it right. It's an area players either love or hate; there's no middle ground it seems.

I for one love it, and always have, even back in Beta when it first opened. I'll be honest, if you tend to make a lot of alts in rapid succession it can get tedious if they're all Hobbits, but, still, it is true Hobbit-style-questing.

There's very little fighting, compared to garden variety MMO gameplay. Oh, there's some, certainly enough, but most of the questing is focused on more Hobbity things, such as pie. And mail. And such. Remember, we're at a point in the Lord of the Rings story where The Shire is still largely isolated and innocent and safe. Oh sure, Black Riders have just been sighted on the outskirts of The Shire, but those queer Bree-folk are always coming and going anyway.

This area hasn't received any of the aforementioned revamping yet, so the flow is still pretty bad. The quests themselves are plentiful; there's probably twice as many here as elsewhere. But there's no vectoring quests to lead you to them. And there's no clear linear progression between them. But, you could say, that's its charm. ;) If you do the pie-running and mail-running quests, you'll end up in all the Boroughs anyway, and if you pay attention to your mini-map you will notice all the quests. And there are a ton!

Some favorites include helping a Hobbit defend his beehives from marauding bears, then helping him find a new wild hive to replace the hive the bears damaged, so that he can keep producing honey; escorting a Hobbit's prized pig home through bear and shrew-infested fields; clearing a library of a "ghost" (which turns out to be a squirrel - you chase it out of the library). The list really goes on.

Hunters are fun to play too. Very high ranged DPS, tracking, and eventually porting skills. Very useful. I've played them before, up to level 30 or 40 or so, so I know how they play out and I like it. Plus, Belreth is a hardcore Hunter fan so she's making sure I have nice crafted gear to help ease me through the levels. ;)

Alberic and Grace are still the scourge of Nektulos Forest in EQ2 as well. We're duoing quite well, and she's been learning how to play with her brace on and trying to find ways to use mainly her left hand. It seems to be working out ok, and we've put in quite a bit of time, and hopefully will continue to! Primordial Malice is almost a real guild again! Rhy and Prev, Grace and I, Ichor, and a couple of people that Rhy and Prev met, all combine to make a decent little guild. Now Onte needs to just get her lazy ass in gear and sign up.

As I said in the previous paragraph, our duo is working out pretty well! It was ill-advised by the folks on the official forums, but I decided to go with it anyway, as these two characters were original made, during pre-order, to be together anyway. Alberic's an Inquisitor, and Grace a Brigand. Inquisitor is a healer, and Brigand is a rogue-like class. Alb is specced for melee, though, and he puts out respectable damage. Downside is he has no "taunt" of any kind, so in order to hold aggro I have to put out damage. Brigand of course is a high-DPS class so holding aggro takes work. ;) I'm doing ok though. My backup plan is a Shadowknight that I have at level 42. Soon I'll be able to use the race change service and change him into a Ratonga, so I may end up doing that. As Grace comes up in levels and gets better gear, holding aggro gets trickier. ;) But the SK is loads of fun too, so... we'll see. ;)

As I play EQ2, I realize that with some good marketing it could really be more of a "force" in the MMO world than it is. Though, that's true of any good game, especially also LOTRO (though, of course, LOTRO is a clear #2 in subs anyway)... EQ2 has a lot going for it. 24 classes means something for everyone, for sure. No racial restrictions -- want to be an Ogre wizard? No problem, you can. A ridiculous amount of content. When people have to turn off combat XP just to get all the quests done without them greying out... you know there's a boatload of content! Lots of different things to do. Collection quests, Heritage quests, Lore and Legend Quests, racial history quests, you name it. The housing system is easily the best out there. It offers totally free item placement, item rotation and resizing, and many hundreds of different items you can use to make your house look any way you want. It's just a huge, huge game, with an amazing amount of stuff to do!