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One of my favorite things about Mastodon is the extra flavor people add to their image alt text. More like sALT text, amiright?
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“When public health works, it’s invisible. But there are a ton of people working their butts off.”
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Finished reading: The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders 📚
A strange universe made relatable by fun writing—recommend!
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Regular island biking stuff.
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Finished reading: Endless Night by Agatha Christie 📚
Twisssssst: Jim Morrison’s been quoting William Blake this whole time!
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Finished reading: Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo 📚
I’d read more of this! Also: First paper book I’ve read in forever.
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Come for this really lovely hot-dog-eating graph, stay for the gentle sense of nausea you’ll get from reading the rest of the article.
www.washingtonpost.com/sports/20…
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Finished reading: Sweet Lamb of Heaven by Lydia Millet 📚
“Beautifully written fever dream” is one of my favorite types of books to read!
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Avatar: The Way of Water, 2022 — ★★.  This guy loves water, like, sooooo much. James Cameron: Lord of the Deep!
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Tressie McMillan Cottom on student demand for DEI-type courses at colleges: “…student demand outpaces faculty expertise in race, class, gender and disability studies…These are courses often created because students want them. They want them because they live in a mediatized, global world. They watch K-dramas and listen to TikToks about histories they did not learn in school, and they realize that they need cultural competencies to live and work in a complex world.”
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Brains are weird.
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Sometimes, after washing my hands, my Apple Watch will go, “Nice one!” which I think is just the weirdest thing to say to someone who just finished washing their hands.
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Nothing makes me feel more finite and mortal than season three of Star Trek: Picard.
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There’s always room for beers in the panniers
I wanted to do a trail journal of my big bicycle adventure into the Blue Ridge Mountains, but, turns out, 1) there is almost no cell phone coverage in the middle of the forest (duh), and 2) climbing mountains all day on a bike sent me to bed before I had a chance to write anything out. Here’s some of what I remember!
We based our route on the Blue Ridge Wrangler but cut out some of the sketchier single-track sections and some of the climbs—which seems unbelievable as this three-day ride totaled over 16,000 feet of climbing. I’d never ridden my bike up a mountain before, let alone several mountains one after another after another. We hit about 5,500 feet each day; it was a lot of up hills. But! I rode it all, spinning for long sections—like the endless 13-mile climb on day three, “the easiest day”—creeping forward at four miles per hour.
After almost every climb, you’re rewarded with some sort of descent. Sometimes it’s a mindblowing, absolutely incredible ripper down the Blue Ridge Parkway (where I hit 36 miles per hour, don’t tell my mom); sometimes it’s a fun, soft forest road covered in pine needles; and sometimes it’s two miles of horrible, chunky gravel. I lack the experience for the latter, and it’s definitely my riding weakpoint—my wrists are still sore from squeaking down mountains with the brakes jammed on full.
The weather treated us well, and the handful of times it rained felt perfectly timed to cool us off after brutal, hot climbs. I think I could have even left my hammock’s rainfly at home (which is heavy and irritating to set up). I’m a full-on convert to hammock camping: As a side-sleeper, it’s miles better than sleeping on the ground with a sleeping pad.
I think this trip may have been the most physically challenging thing I’ve done—certainly as an adult—and it was a blast. I’m proud to have accomplished it, and I’d do it again in a heart beat. I know it’s not everyone’s idea of a good time to take enough food, water, and camping gear to survive three days in the woods and haul it up and down endless mountains and ridge lines, but! you could definitely line up a series of breezy day trips and get a lot of the same experience. Virginia is beautiful, and you should grab every opportunity you have to get out there and explore it!
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The adventure begins! #notthebrw
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The bicycle adventure begins! #notthebrw
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From the RTD this morning: “Lucas vows ‘no compromise’ on Petersburg casino”, promising to support Richmond’s here-we-go-again Casino 2.0 vote.
From an eight second search of VPAP: Urban One, Richmond’s casino vendor of choice, donated $75,000 to Sen. Lucas this past May.
Would have been nice to have that mentioned in the story.
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Couldn’t remember where the lyric “you always smell the same” came from. Apple Music search, Google, and Duck Duck Go all failed. Kagi, a paid search engine, had the genius.com page for Poison the Well’s “Lazzaro” as the top result.
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You’re three times more likely to try and fix a thing if you buy an awesome old toolbox from eBay, fill it with some decent tools, and keep it in your living room.
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Wearing jeans at the pool. 👖
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I will fix any child’s flat tire; it is my duty as a bicycle dad.
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Dang, I deeply emphasize with this Goodbye Post from the maker of Apollo. Made me feel feelings reading it this close to RVANews’s 7th deathiversary.
Will you sell Apollo? Probably not. Maybe if the perfect buyer came along who thought they could turn Apollo into something cool and sustainable, but I’d rather the app just die if it would go to a company that would turn something I worked really hard on into something that would ruin its legacy.
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I’m looking for day lililes that are either red or yellow, if anyone has extras they’d like to pass along at the end of the season!
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Someone should write about the Great Northside Bamboo die off.
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Three Thousand Years of Longing, 2022 — ★★½.  I looked at my phone for like 25 seconds and entirely missed the part where Tilda Swinton suddenly decides to fall in love with Idris Alba—I mean, not that I can blame her.
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