February 02, 2024
A month on our bicycles, unsupported, spanning the entire isle of Great Britain. Three countries. Five major cities. Tens of thousands of feet of incline. 800ish miles. Literally millions of sheep.
If you missed the previous post, you can find Part 7 here.
In this post, I reflect on what went well -- and what went not so well -- in our first big international bike tour. And to finish things off, I'll float some ideas about what might come next.
August 17, 2023
A month on our bicycles, unsupported, spanning the entire isle of Great Britain. Three countries. Five major cities. Tens of thousands of feet of incline. 800ish miles. Literally millions of sheep.
If you missed the previous post, you can find Part 6 here.
In this post, we'll cover our experiences in Bristol, Bath, London, and our journeys between those cities.
August 14, 2023
A month on our bicycles, unsupported, spanning the entire isle of Great Britain. Three countries. Five major cities. Tens of thousands of feet of incline. 800ish miles. Literally millions of sheep.
If you missed the previous post, you can find Part 5 here.
In this post, we'll travel from some tiny horses we met in Wales all the way back into England, to Bristol. We found the bicycle infrastructure between Cardiff and Bristol... wanting, though we were pleased to discover a very large bicycle path on a very large bridge. More on that later.
August 12, 2023
A month on our bicycles, unsupported, spanning the entire isle of Great Britain. Three countries. Five major cities. Tens of thousands of feet of incline. 800ish miles. Literally millions of sheep.
If you missed the previous post, you can find Part 4 here.
In this post, we'll travel from Manchester, England to some tiny horses we met in Wales. We took a bit of a shortcut from Manchester to Wales, but all is fair in love and stroads.
August 08, 2023
A month on our bicycles, unsupported, spanning the entire isle of Great Britain. Three countries. Five major cities. Tens of thousands of feet of incline. 800ish miles. Literally millions of sheep.
If you missed the previous post, you can find Part 3 here.
In this post, we'll ramble around the countryside of England in the vague vicinity of Northumberland and the Yorkshire Dales. This leg of the journey begins at Sycamore Gap in Hadrian's Wall and finishes in Manchester.
August 07, 2023
A month on our bicycles, unsupported, spanning the entire isle of Great Britain. Three countries. Five major cities. Tens of thousands of feet of incline. 800ish miles. Literally millions of sheep.
If you missed the previous post, you can find Part 2 here.
In this post, I'll cover our journey from the English border to Hadrian's Wall. Did you think Hadrian's Wall was located on the border with England? You thought wrong! Enjoy a bunch of words and photos proving just how much land exists between those two things.
August 06, 2023
A month on our bicycles, unsupported, spanning the entire isle of Great Britain. Three countries. Five major cities. Tens of thousands of feet of incline. 800ish miles. Literally millions of sheep.
If you missed the previous post, you can find Part 1 here.
In this post, I'll cover our journey from Glasgow, Scotland, to the English border across quite a few miles of breathtaking, sheep-filled Scotland countryside.
August 02, 2023
A month on our bicycles, unsupported, spanning the entire isle of Great Britain. Three countries. Five major cities. Tens of thousands of feet of incline. 800ish miles. Literally millions of sheep.
In this post, I'll cover our journey from Syracuse, NY, where we boxed up our bikes and hopped on a plane, to Edinburgh, Scotland, where we unboxed our bikes and rode right out of the airport to our hotel, to Glasgow, Scotland, where an old friend saved us a lot of time and effort by showing us around the city.
May 13, 2023
Meg's mom visited us for Mother's Day weekend to continue the tradition of the Meg-Lyneé National Golf Championship. This year, they're touring in two previously-unseen states: Vermont and Maine. Since any good golf tournament includes beers afterward, I latched onto the tournament as an opportunity for Meg to dump me on the shoulder of a random dirt road with my bicycle, Bill the Moonshiner. Ostensibly she hoped to see me at Hill Farmstead Brewery later that day; practically speaking, she was abandoning me on the side of a random rural dirt road.
May 07, 2023
Our latest adventure took us across half of the state of Vermont: from St. Johnsbury to Stowe, and back. This trip gave us a chance to try:
April 15, 2023
A year ago today, we moved to Littleton, New Hampshire! It's been a wild ride, and this weekend might just be the wildest yet. Biking with skis, skiing, biking, mountain biking, and skiing again. It had it all!
Thanks to several days of unexpected 80+ degree heat, mud season has been postponed. The snow is (almost) all gone, the roads are clear, the trails are bone dry, and the skies are vivid blue. This weekend, we celebrated the amazing weather and the anniversary in style.
March 23, 2023
2022-2023 was the first winter season Meg and I spent living in remote, scenic, sometimes-snowy Littleton, New Hampshire. Join us on a recap of the highs, the lows, the adventures, and the silliness that happened this season.
October 07, 2022
Meg and I once again completed our longest self-supported bike tour yet: seven days of dirt roads, singletrack, surprisingly nice Vermont corner stores, and Heady Topper. I'm dividing this journey into seven posts, one for each day. This is day 7.
October 06, 2022
Meg and I once again completed our longest self-supported bike tour yet: seven days of dirt roads, singletrack, surprisingly nice Vermont corner stores, and Heady Topper. I'm dividing this journey into seven posts, one for each day. This is day 6.
October 05, 2022
Meg and I once again completed our longest self-supported bike tour yet: seven days of dirt roads, singletrack, surprisingly nice Vermont corner stores, and Heady Topper. I'm dividing this journey into seven posts, one for each day. This is day 5.
October 04, 2022
Meg and I once again completed our longest self-supported bike tour yet: seven days of dirt roads, singletrack, surprisingly nice Vermont corner stores, and Heady Topper. I'm dividing this journey into seven posts, one for each day. This is day 4.
October 03, 2022
Meg and I once again completed our longest self-supported bike tour yet: seven days of dirt roads, singletrack, surprisingly nice Vermont corner stores, and Heady Topper. I'm dividing this journey into seven posts, one for each day. This is day 3.
October 02, 2022
Meg and I once again completed our longest self-supported bike tour yet: seven days of dirt roads, singletrack, surprisingly nice Vermont corner stores, and Heady Topper. I'm dividing this journey into seven posts, one for each day. This is day 2.
October 01, 2022
Meg and I once again completed our longest self-supported bike tour yet: seven days of dirt roads, singletrack, surprisingly nice Vermont corner stores, and Heady Topper. I'm dividing this journey into seven posts, one for each day.
June 26, 2022
Meg and I just completed our longest self-supported bike tour yet: three days of dirt roads, singletrack, surprisingly nice Vermont corner stores, and Heady Topper. It was a lot of work, but such an incredible way to see small towns and forests across Vermont. There's so much out there that we've missed every time we've whizzed across the state in a car.
On bikes, it's so much easier to pull off to the side of the road to dip your toes in a beautiful stream, or engage in a staring contest with a deer or a porcupine, or debate eating a not-quite-ripe wild strawberry. You end up seeing an area through completely different eyes.
June 21, 2022
... silly fun. But honestly it is a slightly ridiculous use case for a bicycle.
May 24, 2022
We moved to New Hampshire!
In just a few days, Meg and I completed our longest move yet: Denver, Colorado to Littleton, New Hampshire. It was a long, tough journey. But we had a good time overall, and nothing went wrong. Special thanks to Meg's dad, Craig, for flying across the country to help us pack the truck... and driving across 2/3 of the country in just 2 days with a moving truck. We couldn't have done it without his help.
March 27, 2022
Meg and I are moving to New Hampshire in just a couple of weeks. We decided to say farewell (for now) to Colorado the best way we could imagine:
Special thanks to our visiting friends Whitney and Eddy, who managed to make it out for their third visit in two years of Colorado living.
Sidenote: why on earth do we say "an elegy" but "a eulogy"? Turns out, there's a perfectly logical explanation. English is silly.
February 19, 2022
For the last week, Meg and I took a week off to appreciate Colorado on weekdays. It seems like everybody loves doing the same outdoor stuff in the mountains here, so taking a few days off to avoid the weekend crowds makes a massive difference in actually enjoying the state.
We had quite the adventure.
November 08, 2021
Meg and I returned to day touring this weekend with a jam-packed exploration of Fort Collins, Colorado: the land of bike lanes, howling cows, and horse teeth. Why such a long gap since our last post? Well, over the last couple of months, we:
... plus a slew of bike rides to breweries, virtual game nights, and bicycle slash coffee experiments. Also working, I guess.
Needless to say, the time was ripe for a personal weekend outside of the Denver area. We've also been eying a move to a smaller town, since Denver is an enormous megalopalis that we only lived in because Meg used to want to commute to a physical office.
This weekend, we managed to kill two birds with one stone: we had a relaxing time outside of Denver, and we just might have found where we'd like to live next.
September 12, 2021
This weekend, Meg and I headed out to the Finger Lakes for a biking day trip to New York State's only national forest: Finger Lakes National Forest. In this post, you'll find out about:
As a bonus, I'll also drop a couple of recommendations for a coffee shop and taproom we enjoyed in Ithaca.
September 06, 2021
The last few weeks and weekends have been busy. We:
It's been rad. But it hasn't been vacation. More "long-awaited family visits." This weekend, Meg and I finally got back into the grind of just-us vacation. Also known as the gravel grind.
July 25, 2021
This week, we took it easy since the whole state is full of smoke from bootleg fires on the west coast. Instead of doing a weekend in the mountains, we just took a small trip on Sunday on some trails in a nearby town.
July 04, 2021
This trip took myself, Meg, and two friends on an adventure around Colorado on the week of America's birthday, July 4th. We (mostly) summitted the highest peak in Colorad, paddleboarded, camped quite a lot, and summitted another peak (or set of two peaks) that was honestly more interesting and more impressive than the highest peak.
June 20, 2021
This weekend, Meg and I mixed hiking and biking instead of just biking everywhere.
June 04, 2021
This weekend's bike trip in Lake County was a little different from our past bike trips. I learned:
some valuable lessons about charging your bike lights
that Mandarb (my 1990s steel mountain bike) can handle just about any terrain I can throw at him
that a 13% grade is just about the steepest hill I can climb on rocky, muddy terrain
even if Colorado is usually sunny... that thunderstorms can still take several hours to blow over
May 22, 2021
Last weekend, Meg and I embarked on our first majority non-pavement bicycle trip. No, we didn't take the bikes on water -- we decided to give the rural dirt and gravel roads in Steamboat Springs a try.
May 16, 2021
This weekend, I tried something new. I took a bike ride down the Rio Grande trail all the way from Glenwood Springs to Aspen. Meg and I spend a lot of time biking around the Denver metro area, which is generally amazing. While the Denver metro area has a fantastic network of bike paths, pleasant flat grades, almost perfect weather for biking year-round, and a great view of the (distant) front range, it's still biking in a city. We regularly have to avoid broken glass in streets, constantly have to navigate around tourists on electric scooters, and always have to lock our bikes up if we so much as glance away from them.
November 29, 2020
Most people don't know a whole lot about espresso. That's OK -- like car enthusiasts, sailboat racers, or video game speedrunners, espresso makers inhabit a highly niche space in our world. After all, your average human is happy enough with the coffee that comes out of a poorly calibrated drip machine using stale beans that were ground months before use. Exceptionally crazy folks get into specialty coffee, purchasing expensive grinders, investing in kettles with configurable temperature profiles and goose necks, and trying out all manner of brewing methods (aeropress, french press, clever, chemex, v60, and more among them) to achieve the perfect cup. The exceptionally crazy of those exceptionally crazy get into an even more complex habit: espresso.