Doing a full time intensive Chinese language program means that you have to sacrifice a lot of things. One of the biggest has been reading. The book above is a book I've been working on for almost two years, just because I don't have that much free time.
Biking has has allowed me to catch up on a lot of reading by way of audiobooks. I load them up on my phone and listen to them during my rides. I make sure to play them at 2x speed so that I get the most "reading" done for my time.
Another great thing about audiobooks is that I end up "reading" books that I normally wouldn't. I'm highly critical when it comes to books, so I'll only read a book if i know it's extremely good. Meaning I miss out on some books that are just "good" and I miss out on books that might end up surprising me. With audiobooks i'm not so critical and have been able to read a lot of my books on my "not sure" list. Some were surprisingly good, while others were pretty bad.
In a funny twist, good books get me in better shape. A few days ago I was out riding and got quite engrossed in the book I was listening to. I didn't want to stop listening to it, so I kept riding and riding and riding. I ended up riding over 75 miles that day, just because i couldn't "put down" that book.
