If a book about an artificially intelligent android sounds tiresome when AI hype is slowly crushing all hope for humanity, fear not: this book is even better if you replace "Android Friend"/"AF" with "dog".

Characters

• Klara: An Android Friend (AF), a solar-powered, bipedal, artificial intelligence. The (sometimes unreliable, childlike, but oddly inhuman) POV of the story. Klara is (supposedly) unusually clever and observant for an AF, but we don't get many AFs for comparison. Worships the Sun in a surprisingly literal sense; has multiple back-and-forth conversations with the Sun, actively believes that the Sun intervenes with 'special healing' for multiple characters throughout the book. I was initially confused when Klara remarks that 'the world was divided into boxes' during complicated scenes, or when she occasionally reduces a character or some other entity to a cone or box, but I eventually figured out that this is Ishiguro's attempt to convey Klara's computer vision to the reader: when the world becomes 'partitioned', I assume we are seeing Klara parallelizing processing of a scene because there's too much going on and she needs to split up her processing; when a person turns into a simpler shape, I assume we are seeing Klara manage memory consumption when something very complicated is taking up a lot of processing (or when she is damaged/inhibited later in the story). Klara rarely (or never?) uses pronouns, opting to always use names to refer to people, even when speaking directly to a person.

• Josie: a teenage girl who lives alone with her mother out in the boonies. As is the social norm, Josie has been 'lifted' using genetic engineering to be smarter than your average child (though we see little hard evidence of this throughout the story). Unfortunately, due to side-effects of her genetic engineering, Josie is sickly, to the point where the likelihood of her survival drives much of the story.

• Rick: Josie's childhood best friend and only neighbor in the boonies (he lives in the crappy house next door). Brilliant and kind, but ostracized by society because his mother opted not to 'lift' him with genetic engineering. He's really into drones and other discreet surveillance technology that are totally not an ethical minefield.

• the Mother (Chrissie): Josie's mother. Divorced, lives alone in the boonies. Cold and career-oriented and sometimes cruel, likely at least partially because her first daughter, Sal, died as a result of complications rising from the same genetic engineering that Josie is currently suffering from (and that society heavily peer pressures parents into getting for their children, despite the risks).

• the Father (Paul): Josie's father, an engineer who routinely insists that things are 'outside his area of expertise' but then goes right ahead and postulates opinions about them. Divorced, lives in some kind of post-employment compound in the city with a bunch of other rich white guys who feel the need to arm themselves against the nearby 'gangs'. Claims not to be a fascist (but who does?).

• Helen: Rick's mother. Rick spends a lot of time worrying about and protecting her, but she seems mostly competent when she joins the story. She doesn't work or drive, which seriously complicates Rick's childhood and ability to do just about anything, living out in the boonies.

• Rosa: An AF of a similar make and model to Klara, displayed and sold out of the same store.

• Manager: The manager of the store that Klara spends the first bit of story in. Shows a glimmer of empathy for the AFs when she helps Klara not get bought by another child after Josie has already promised to buy Klara, and once more at the end of the story.

• Vance: A real dick who used to fuck Helen, but then she ghosted him because he's a dick. Shows up briefly in the story because Helen tries to manipulate him into nepotisming Rick into college, but it turns out he's just salty about getting ghosted.

• The Housekeeper (Melania): Cleans the house, distrusts AFs, does a fair bit of nannying for Josie.

Setting

A dystopian near-future that unfortunately feels very similar to our current world. Notable differences:

• automation is destroying even high-level engineering positions (and the automation is actually capable of doing those jobs!)
• android friends are a true sentient artificial intelligence -- despite what chatbot-peddling tech companies will tell you, we are a very very very very very very very very very very very long way from an introspective, sentient, empathetic machine. Many nontechnical readers will inevitably compare Klara to ChatGPT or Claude. I assure you that LLMs have neither a consistent worldview, an internal monologue, or anything else that makes them remotely similar to the anthropomorphic internal POV of Klara. LLMs produce statistically likely text that, combined with the smoke and mirrors of image processing and voice simulation, can sometimes seem like sentience to the untrained eye. They are not. Really. And if you are dumb enough to think than an LLM is sentient, you should really think for a minute about why you're OK with mass machine slavery, torture, and murder.
• genetic engineering is capable of improving children (in some vague way that seems mostly related to intelligence and social ability) at some low risk of complications that can lead to death

Unfortunately, the little worldbuilding we get in Klara and the Sun doesn't flesh out most of these concepts -- but you don't read Ishiguro for hard science fiction explanations. He's all about the impact on humanity.

Plot

Klara's story begins in a shop window, where the Manager peddles her and other Android Friends using a variety of shop displays. Children come in, talk to an AF, grow attached, and guilt their parents into making a huge purchase. Much like Android Friends in general, the experience is somewhere between a mall pet store and an Apple store, where glass window displays lure children in, and knowledgeable parents worry about getting the best deal on the most modern technology.

Notably, in the shop, Klara learns about the world exclusively through the window, which looks out on a fairly typical walkable city street. People walk and jog past; taxis occasionally get in heated arguments; homeless people loiter in empty doorways; children gaze longingly into the window; sometimes nondescript public works results in a giant machine (with the name 'Cootings' on the side) spewing smoke right in front of the shop window for a week because they're resurfacing the street or working on underground utilities or something.

Eventually Josie's family buys Klara from the store and brings her home. The household is weird, but nice enough; Josie is sometimes sick; Chrissie is often a coldhearted jerk. But I'm sure plenty of AFs wind up in much worse homes.

Things escalate a bit when Josie first gets quite sick. Chrissie tries to boost her spirits by promising a visit to a waterfall that Josie loves, but when the family gets in the car to go to the waterfall, Chrissie declares Josie too sick to go. But instead of everyone staying home, Chrissie takes Klara to the waterfall, and even asks Klara to pretend to be Josie. We learn that Josie once had an older sister, Sal, who died of a similar sickness to what Josie has now.

Eventually we meet Rick and a collection of local-ish 'lifted' (genetically improved) children. All of the other kids are spoiled assholes, most of whom are totally OK with bullying Rick and endangering Klara.

Josie keeps getting sick. With Rick's help, Klara journeys out to a barn that the Sun sets behind, where she prays/worships/bargains with the Sun to cure Josie's illness. Klara becomes convinced that if she destroys the polluting Cooting machine she used to see outside the AF shop, the Sun will cure Josie. People keep asking Klara if Josie is going to die, and Klara keeps alluding to her hope that Josie will get better because of her (secret!) faith in the Sun. People seem to think that AFs are smarter than humans and thus conclude that Josie will not die because the artificial intelligence said so.

Eventually the entire gang of Chrissie, Josie, Helen, Rick, and Klara meet up with Paul in the city for the climax of the book. We learn that Chrissie has been bamboozled by a psychopath (Capaldi) into considering replacing Josie (if she dies) with Klara. Paul doesn't like this idea, but isn't nearly as repulsed by it as he should be. But to his credit, Klara discusses the idea of a soul with Paul, and neither he nor Klara believe that, if you observe a person for a long time, you can fully replace them with a computer. It all comes together with this excellent description of why you should hate tech bros:

I think I hate Capaldi because deep down I suspect he may be right. That what he claims is true. That science has now proved beyond doubt there's nothing so unique about my daughter, nothing our modern tools can't excavate, copy, transfer. That people have been living with one another all this time, centuries, loving and hating each other, and all on a mistaken premise. A kind of superstition we kept going while we didn't know better. That's how Capaldi sees it, and there's a part of me that fears he's right. Chrissie, on the other hand, isn't like me. She may not know it yet, but she'll never let herself be persuaded. If the moment ever comes, never mind how well you play your part, Klara, never mind how much she wishes it to work, Chrissie just won't be able to accept it. She's too...old-fashioned. Even if she knows she's going against the science and the math, she still won't be able to do it. She just won't stretch that far. But I'm different. I have...a kind of coldness in side me she lacks. Perhaps it's because I'm an expert engineer, as you put it. This is why I find it so hard to be civil around people like Capaldi. When they do what they do, say what they say, it feels like they're taking from me what I hold most precious in this life. Am I making sense?

Nobody tells Josie that Chrissie and her psychopath friend want to replace her if she dies like a faulty lightbulb.

Paul and Klara sabotage the Cootings machine with magic fluid that Paul takes out of Klara's head.

Helen and Rick meet up with Vance to try to nepotism Rick into college, but Vance sucks.

Everyone returns home, but Josie gets really sick. Everyone becomes convinced that she'll die. But Rick takes Klara to the magic barn one more time and she tells the Sun that because Rick and Josie love each other, the Sun should cure her with magic light. The next day, the Sun gets really bright for a hot second, and Klara stops the Housekeeper from shutting the shades on Josie. Josie finally gets better (because of the Sun's special nourishing, if you believe Klara and her faith).

Eventually Josie goes to college and Rick goes to wherever those dumb unlifted plebeians go and Klara goes to a dump that people aren't allowed to remove AFs from because of some implied ban on AFs. The manager from Klara's store finds Klara and asks her how her life went. Klara seems pleased.

Summary

This story would have been even better if, instead of an android, Klara was just a pet dog. You wouldn't even have to change the story much, since Klara so rarely speaks (and literally never speaks in a consequential way -- most people barely even listen to what she has to say). Even better, you'd avoid the entire minefield of anthropormorphizing artificial intelligence that has become tiresome, to say the least, in the past few years. Sure, AFs play into the dystopian world of people losing their jobs to automation, but it doesn't matter so much that we actually need to explicitly call out artificial intelligence.

There were aspects of this story that I really liked. I enjoyed Klara's mysterious faith in the Sun -- portrayals of religion in literature can feel tedious, but this felt original in a way that I haven't seen elsewhere. There are echoes of my favorite parts of Remains of the Day -- acceptance, and moving on after a part of your life has concluded. And the converse, Chrissie's struggle to accept her own role in potentially killing both of her daughters. It was fun to see Klara try to understand the world around her, from her glimpses of humanity in the shop window, to her first visit outside (and her laughable confusion about the 'loose stones' in the driveway for the car), to her love of 'kind, gentle' sheep, to her hatred of bulls, to the way she compartmentalized experiences in the crowd outside the theatre when everyone visits the city. And it's impossible to not like Rick, the guy who's so nice he carries a robot through a field so it can worship the Sun.

There were also aspects I didn't like. After a while, Klara's childlike minimal prose became tedious to read. The story is extremely slow. The dialogue is... not how humans speak, at all. It literally does not make any sense that Klara wouldn't understand that the Sun is a star, in the sky, that does not, in fact, set into some random guy's barn (especially since late in the book she helps tutor Rick with physics, math, and science).

Overall, a recommend (though I would recommend Remains of the Day or Never Let Me Go first). But I'll say it again: Klara should have been a dog.

Take a look at your keyboard. What the hell are the magnifying glass and microphone keys?

I miss my old dedicated keyboard brightness keys. Here's how to bring 'em back.

If you've been using Macs for over a decade, you might remember when those keys looked like this:

Today, we're faced with this:

Apple has always struggled to fill the F keys row with useful functions. I know Dashboard has fans, and presumably some people still use the Exposé key, but motion gestures have always suited me better for those tasks. Thankfully the Dashboard/Launcher key is dead these days. But now we have... a key dedicated to Spotlight and a key dedicated to Dictation?

CMD + space is incredibly easy to hit and remember for launching Spotlight. I simply don't need a dedicated key for Spotlight when I have this shortcut.

I don't use Dictation. I don't enjoy talking to machines. (Dictation fans: feel free to disagree, I'm sure it's a great feature for some of you!)

I'll allow that the moon icon is theoretically useful, even if I don't use Focus modes on my Mac. But what if we could bring back the old 2015-era keyboard brightness controls instead of these useless Dictation and Spotlight keys?

Fortunately that's quite easy to do, and you don't need any third-party software to do it.

1. Create a LaunchAgent that uses Apple's built-in Human Interface Devices to remap the keys using the commands below:

   1. Create a LaunchAgents directory for your user profile, if you don't already have one:

      mkdir -p ~/Library/LaunchAgents
      

   2. Write a Property List (plist) that maps source ("Src") keys to destination ("Dst") keys by setting a property with Apple's hidutil:
      • F5/Spotlight (0xC000000CF) to illumination_down (0x0C00000221)
      • F6/Dictation (0x10000009B) to illumination_up (0x0C0000022B)

      cat <<EOF > ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.local.KeyRemapping.plist
      <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
      <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
      <plist version="1.0">
      <dict>
          <key>Label</key>
          <string>com.local.KeyRemapping</string>
          <key>ProgramArguments</key>
          <array>
              <string>/usr/bin/hidutil</string>
              <string>property</string>
              <string>--set</string>
              <string>{"UserKeyMapping":[{"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0xC000000CF,"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x0C00000221},{"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x10000009B,"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x0C0000022B}]}</string>
          </array>
          <key>RunAtLoad</key>
          <true/>
      </dict>
      </plist>
      EOF
      

      RunAtLoad ensures that this command runs every time you load a user session -- typically, when you first login after shutting down your computer.

2. Unload the old keymappings, if you have any:

   launchctl unload ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.local.KeyRemapping.plist 2>/dev/null
   

3. Load your new keymapping:

   launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.local.KeyRemapping.plist
   

Hit your magnifying glass and microphone keys, and you should see the keyboard brightness change indicator pop up on your screen. And, of course, your keyboard backlight will change brightness. You won't need to ever change these settings again, unless Apple decides to remap the keys in the future or you reinstall macOS from scratch.

It's not quite the same as having properly-labeled dedicated keys. They're not even the exact same keys -- this uses F4 and F5 instead of F5 and F6, so we can keep the vaguely-useful Focus key around while putting the keyboard brightness keys side-by-side. But as someone who misses the ability to change your keyboard brightness with a single click, I'll take it.

My LLM experience

I've been chewing on LLM usage in the tech industry for a couple of years now. Like many, I started out skeptical, thinking that LLMs were just another cryptocurrency/metaverse/NFT level scam. Earlier this year, I gave LLMs a try for documentation work. After a few months, I emerged unimpressed.

My assessment? LLMs aren't as much of a scam as blockchain, but they're overhyped somewhere adjacent to "cloud" in the mid-2010s: proposed as the solution to a million problems, but mostly a sidegrade with a few niche advantages. Sure, you can run now easily run a startup without any physical server infrastructure. Is that a good thing for humanity? Have we done anyone a favor by automating away tens of thousands of server admin jobs, and consolidating the remaining jobs into Big Tech companies like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft? Scalability has certainly improved, making it easy for companies to grow from 10,000 users to 10,000,000 users by simply paying a bigger cloud bill (and paying software engineers a lot of money to design Rube Goldberg-inspired Kubernetes-centric architectures, and paying SREs a lot of money to respond to the inevitable incidents when scaling doesn't go according to plan). But it doesn't feel like "cloud" delivered on the world-changing hype.

My justification for my assessment of LLMs? With the right guardrails, LLMs can write OK code, especially for problems that have already been solved. But most of those guardrails are just software developers doing a lot of code review. It doesn't feel sustainable long-term, because code review is a different skillset from writing code: if I spend all of my time reviewing code and none of my time writing code (because I'm asking an LLM to do it for me), my code writing skills get worse. How do I know this? Because I work in documentation, and I've noticed that when I work jobs that involve a lot of writing code, I'm better at reviewing and understanding code. And when I work jobs that involve less code writing, I get worse at reviewing and understanding code. Code review is some sort of derivative of coding skill: the better you are at writing code, the better you'll be at reviewing it (assuming you've mastered the soft skills of not being a jerk during the review process). As programmers shift to writing less code and reviewing more code, I believe they'll get worse at reviewing code. And when LLMs throw armies of plausible-looking code and legions of believable tests at reviewers, you need to be really good at code reviews.

In documentation work, LLMs have been even less whelming. In short: they don't write good. LLMs are token generators by nature, so no matter how many layers of quality control and style guides you throw at them, they're prone to padding their output. Every LLM user ought to be familiar with the way they pad chats with sycophantic drivel, even when you instruct them to cut the bullshit, or keep responses short, or talk like Computer or Data from Star Trek. Documentation is teaching in text form. It's all about abstraction, and building blocks, and empathy for the user, and about advocating for users during design. Padding has no role in the teaching process, let alone the tertiary roles of documentation like testing and design, so LLMs struggle to write great docs. They might produce something that looks a whole lot like mediocre documentation. But as someone who's reviewed a lot of slop documentation pull requests, I know the instructions are probably wrong, the code samples probably don't work right, and the abstraction is... funky.

So what are LLMs useful for?

• They're OK at helping me get past the 'first page problem' when I write documentation infrastructure.
  • I'm fine at writing JavaScript and CSS and HTML, but throw in the rats' nest of modern frontend frameworks and it's easy to feel paralyzed. Prompt an LLM to create an example of how you might implement something and suddenly you're tweaking instead of writing from scratch.
  • Documentation is full of little one-off scripts that do things like transforming data from one format to another. All of these problems have been solved before. LLMs ain't bad at generating a 90% solution so I can hack the remaining 10%.
• When the creative juices are low: brainstorming and rubber ducking (but you're mostly just talking to yourself, so maybe just go for a walk, grab a snack, chat with a coworker, and/or talk to a rubber duck instead?)
• LLMs read really fast. When you have huge quantities of data (as in impossible for a human being to actually read all of), like a million-line-long log file, an LLM might be able to help you find patterns. I have found LLM summaries of human text woefully inadequate for the same reasons LLMs suck at writing documentation: they don't read good. But they do read fast!

So LLMs are basically just an interactive UX for Stack Overflow and Reddit, and sometimes a way to avoid talking to your coworkers.

The ethical elephant in the room

There's no waving away the ethics of LLM usage, unfortunately. This point has been belabored, but to sum things up:

• LLMs require massive amounts of compute, which requires massive amounts of silicon, electricity, and to a lesser degree water; venture capital-fueled companies have insane amounts of money that is devastating pricing in all of those markets. More expensive electricity is bad for everyone. More expensive computers mean a world that is more expensive when everyone has to own a smartphone and a car, both of which are computers.
• LLM training uses all of the text on the internet and a lot of text from books. Your conversations. Your emails. Your photos (Google and Facebook don't store those out of the goodness of their hearts, you know!). Your comments. The text you are currently reading on this blog. Companies are consuming all of it, munging it into a giant neural network, and selling it. I write my blog and communicate on the internet because I want to interact with people. If a company wants to use my communication to make a profit, they should compensate me. And I should be able to opt out of being consumed at all.
• All LLMs, even self-hosted ones, are created by the global 0.01%. Inequality is as bad as it has ever been since the French Revolution. LLM creators claim that LLMs will replace swaths of office work. So the sales pitch of LLMs is "fire middle class workers to enrich the upper class."

Ban LLMs

So what's going to happen with LLMs over the next few years?

• At best, they'll reduce the workforce by a fraction and increase the review workload for everyone else.
• At worst, top-down managers will fire lots of people and replace them with LLMs, only to later realize that LLMs aren't producing quite the same output (how much this matters is left as an exercise to the reader).
• If you're a True Believer, you probably believe that LLMs will only get better, and most of my skepticism is a result of a skills issue, and that I haven't used the latest models the right way to get the best results. So you believe that LLMs will replace all white collar workers over the next couple of years, and probably blue collar workers too since surely robotics automation is within the grasp of LLMs.

Let's assume that all of these are valid possibilities. What's the right move?

• Maximize LLMs as much as possible to win the LLMs race?
• Restrict LLMs to preserve jobs?
• Stop using LLMs entirely?

The USA is currently trying the 'maximize LLMs' option. We've seen the first wave of societal fallout: skyrocketing electricity bills, crazy prices for computer components, layoffs, use-LLMs-or-leave directives, LLM video and photo-assisted misinformation on social media, LLM-enhanced phishing, and what I can subjectively say is the most hostile and buggy year of consumer software I've ever experienced.

The EU is attempting the 'restrict LLMs' option. They have a track record of balancing innovation and exploitation with rules like GDPR; unfortunately, the wheels of government are slow, far slower than the tech industry, so enforcement and even basic rules often happen well after a lot of people get hurt. To make great regulation, you have to:

1. study a problem
2. explore different ways to fix the problem
3. agree on a set of rules that fix the problem
4. enforce those rules (returning to step 2 whenever something goes awry) When an industry has as much money and power as tech right now, it's like trying to fight a disease with exponential growth and adaptation. Which explains why our LLM regulation is currently about as successful as most of our covid-19 precautions.

Has anyone tried the final option and stopped using LLMs entirely? I don't just mean not pumping money into LLMs, I mean actually banning LLMs completely and imposing fines for anyone who uses one. I can think of the following repercussions:

• Anywhere that data centers can't build would have cheaper electricity costs, since data centers are by far the largest driver of rising electricity prices; remove them, and electricity rates would return to the pre-2020 normal.
• You wouldn't lose any jobs to LLM automation because it would be illegal to do so.
• Workers wouldn't be able to use LLMs, so they would lose any productivity benefits that LLMs provide.
• All companies that sell LLMs (or repackaged LLMs as a service) would have to stop providing LLM access under penalty of law, refocusing on other parts of the business (if they have any). Companies whose entire business model is based on LLMs would either shut down, pivot, or move somewhere where they can legally do business.
• As other parts of the world continue to use LLMs, any enclaves that choose to ban LLMs would miss out on directly reaping any benefits or hazards of LLM usage: if LLMs start driving best-in-class CPU design, or drug design, or improving public transit, it couldn't happen in your enclave because it would be illegal!
• As other parts of the world continue to use LLMs, any enclaves that choose to ban LLMs would remain vulnerable to indirect benefits and hazards of LLM usage: if other countries run giant botnets to spread propaganda across the internet, users in your enclave would still have to deal with the impact since we all use one internet; if LLMs cause countries to build more coal-fired power plants to fuel data centers, we all have to breathe the same air; if LLM-run defense forces get into a nuclear war, we all get stuck in nuclear winter

This is by no means a comprehensive list of results. But one thing seems clear: the long-term effects of LLMs (if any) are going to happen worldwide regardless of who develops them. But you might be able to protect against the short-term effects by banning LLMs. If that preserves jobs right now, isn't that worthwhile? I don't see many benefits for 99.9% of people in the short term. But I see a LOT of hazards.

If LLMs are a good thing, you can always un-ban them in the future once you have a way to protect the 99.9%.

If LLMs are a bad thing, you spared the 99.9% from unnecessary layoffs.

Michael Ende's The Neverending Story is far from simplistic. For one, the book has twice the plot you remember from the movie, because the movie stops just before the halfway point of the book. Bastian gets the book, reads the book, and gets sucked into the book to save Fantastica. The movie somehow manages to both be a terrible adaptation of the entire book and a fantastic adaptation of the first half of the book. Pretty clever, honestly, because the second half of the book is far more serious, far less fun for children, but also far more interesting for adults. Let's dig in.

Characters

• Bastian Balthasar Bux: A rotund middle school-age child with a bad attitude, poor work ethic, mediocre grades, and a disinterest in life and family since his mother passed away. His bildungsroman arc spans the entire book. Ende's fat-shaming of Bastian is a bit much at times, but ultimately kind of sort of serves a purpose.

• Carl Conrad Coreander: A cantankerous bookseller who, despite initial skepticism of Bastian and Bastian's (perceived) theft of The Neverending Story, begins to appreciate and befriend Bastian by the end of the story.

• Atreyu: The focus of the hero's journey in the first half of the book, the section adapted by the much-loved 80s movie. A Greenskin (note: not faithfully adapted in the movie) hunter of purple buffalos from the Grassy Ocean (not to be confused with Hyperion's Sea of Grass or the Dothraki Great Grass Sea from A Song of Ice and Fire) who is called to save all of Fantastica. Notably, Atreyu doesn't really grow or change at all during the first half of the book -- he mostly just goes where people tell him to go. But during the second half of the book, Atreyu acts first as a partner, then as a foil to Bastian's bad behavior.

• Falkor: A white luckdragon and Atreyu's (eventual) best friend, with a voice like a bronze bell, a persistently positive attitude, and a penchant for winking.

• The Childlike Empress, the Golden Eyed Commander of Wishes. Heart and soul of Fantastica, who eventually lures Bastian into the book itself to give her a name: Moon Child.

I can't even begin to name the widespread cast of side characters, many with surprisingly elaborate backstories. In the words of Ende: that is another story and shall be told another time.

Plot

If, like me, you've only seen the movie, you only know the first (and worst) half of The Neverending Story. It follows a classic hero's journey fairytale arc, along the lines of Labyrinth or The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe:

• a disaster strikes a fantasy world (Fantastica, a name superior to the movie's choice of Fantasia)!
• nobody can fix it
• only our awfully young hero can fix it
• our hero faces a series of trials wherein our awfully young hero proves their mettle and earns the friendship and respect of fantastic creatures
• our hero fixes the wrong in the fantasy world

In The Neverending Story, we have the added wrinkle of Bastian's perspective on top of this hero's tale, in which Bastian steals a book, skips school, then hides in the school attic while doing a lot of thinking about how cruel his teachers and classmates are and how lame his dad has been ever since his mom died. This framing device falls somewhere between Over the Garden wall (especially the Babes in the Wood episode) and Cloud Atlas: the stories intersect, but it's hard to tell what's 'real' (and what 'real' even means in the context of our story). There's a fair argument to be made here that the first half of the story, with the Nothing threatening Fantastica, isn't even 'real', only serving to bait readers into Fantastica.

As I already mentioned, everything changes at the halfway point of the book, when Atreyu and the Childlike Empress lure Bastian into Fantastica. Bastian initially resists, but ultimately winds up in Fantastica. And that's where everything changes. Because, instead of saving the day and riding Falkor into the real world to terrorize his enemies, as Bastian does in the movie, the book takes a darker path.

Sure, Bastian gets his wishes, and his entering the story seems to stop the spread of the Nothing from destroying Fantastica. But as Bastian transforms Fantastica with his wishes, he also changes himself and forgets his own story. Imagination isn't all good: just as the creatures of Fantastica become lies if they enter the human world, humans tend towards selfishness and exploitation in Fantastica.

Of course, this isn't all Bastian's doing -- he makes some very basic wishes, and AURYN elaborates on the wishes with some awfully genie-like wish-corrupting. But Bastian's bad attitude throws gasoline on the fire of corrupted wishes, eventually resulting in mass destruction, war, and death in Fantastica.

Lessons

Ultimately, Bastian's character arc requires him to take responsibility for the bad things that he's done, both in real life and Fantastica. But it takes a lot of allegorical tales to get there.

Just because you can...

Moon Child's magic wish-granting and protecting amulet, AURYN, bears the inscription "DO AS YOU WISH". Bastian interprets this as a polite statement, akin to 'after you' from a doorman. But AURYN actually far more sinister:

"Grograman told me to find out what I really wanted. And the inscription on AURYN says the same thing. But for that I have to go from one wish to the next without ever skipping any. That's why I need the Gem." "Yes," said Atreyu. "It gives you the means, but it takes away your purpose." "Oh well," said Bastian, undismayed. "Moon Child must have known what she was doing when she gave me the amulet. You worry too much, Atreyu. I'm sure AURYN isn't a trap."

Turns out, AURYN is totally a trap. And a valuable lesson: as Jurassic Park (and the tech hegemony of 2026) teaches us, just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.

To reinforce that point, Ende repeatedly shows us how even good wishes can go bad:

And now Bastian was asking himself: Had it really been such a good idea to invent a dragon for Hero Hynreck? True, Hynreck had needed a chance to show his mettle. But was it certain that he would win? What if Smerg killed him? And what about Princess Oglamar? Yes, of course, she had been haughty, but was that a reason for getting her into such a fix? And on top of all that, how was he to know what further damage Smerg might do in Fantastica? Without stopping to think, Bastian had created an unpredictable menace. It would be there long after he was gone and quite possibly kill or maim any number of innocents. As he knew, Moon Child drew no distinction between good and evil, beautiful and ugly. To her mind, all the creatures in Fantastica were equally important and worthy of consideration. But had he, Bastian, the right to take the same attitude? And above all, did he wish to?

If only our tech overlords read this book and understood this lesson. BRB, gotta check my Ring doorbell to make sure my Amazon delivery person didn't piss on my yard...

Why matters

On a slightly different note, Ende also repeatedly shows us how good done for the wrong reasons can generate less-than-good outcomes. For example, Bastian ditches Yikka, his mule, by inventing her a unicorn mate who can somehow make her a mother (remember, mules are normally nonviable and cannot produce offspring):

A person's reason for doing someone a good turn matters as much as the good turn itself.

Personally I think Ende could have gone further with this plot, but you have to stop somewhere. After all, that is another story and shall be told another time.

I appreciate Ende's point about doing things you love because they are right, not because they are easy, and how sometimes all you need to overcome impossible odds is love:

A detailed account of the battle for the Ivory Tower would take us too far. To this day Fantasticans sing countless songs and tell innumerable stories about that day and night, for everyone who took part saw it in his own way. Certain of the stories have it that Atreyu's army included several white magicians, who had the power to oppose Xayide's black magic. Of this we have no certain knowledge, but that would explain how, in spite of the armored giants, Atreyu and his followers were able to take the Ivory Tower. But there is another, more likely explanation: Atreyu was fighting not for himself, but for his friend, whom he was trying to save by defeating him.

History class is important

Hardly a novel idea, but a core part of the book (emphasis mine):

You can only wish as long as you remember your world. These people here used up all their memories. Without a past you can't have a future.

On growing up

The tail end of the book, where Bastian does most of his growth, spends a lot of time thinking about what makes a positive community, as Bastian wanders Fantastica, soulsearching, figuring out where and who he wants to be. Initially, he longs only for companionship:

For days and nights he had been wandering all alone. And because of being alone, he yearned to belong to some sort of community, to be taken into a group, not as a master or victor or as any special sort of person, but merely as one among many, perhaps as the smallest or least important, provided his membership in the community was unquestioned.

But eventually he learns that companionship alone isn't enough: he needs a community that knows, accepts, and loves him for who he really is:

Bastian, however, wanted to be an individual, a someone, not just one among others. He wanted to be loved for being just what he was. In this community of Yskalnari there was harmony, but no love.

This transformation becomes literal in the House of Change, where the matron (Dame Eyola) and Bastian both mature and transform as they figure out what they really want in life. I love the idea that we aren't just a continuous person, but instead that after sufficient time and growth we become entirely different people, just with the same name. To become a different person, the old you has to die (sort of like the old Star Trek teleporter gotcha):

When my mother grew old, she withered. All her leaves fell, as the leaves fall from a tree in the winter. She withdrew into herself. And so she remained for a long time. But then one day she put forth young leaves, buds, blossoms, and finally fruit. And that's how I came into being, for I was the new Dame Eyola. And it was just the same with my grandmother when she brought my mother into the world. We Dames Eyola can only have a child if we wither first.

The last chapters of the book, where Bastian has finally matured enough to want to return to the human realm and also accepted the difficulty of that task, are truly touching:

"Listen to me, Bastian Balthazar Bux," he said. "I'm no great talker. I prefer silence. But I will answer this one question. You are looking for the Water of Life. You want to be able to love, that's your only hope of getting back to your world. To love - that's easily said. But the Water of Life will ask you: Love whom? Because you can't just love in general. You've forgotten everything but your name. And if you can't answer, it won't let you drink. So you'll just have to find a forgotten dream, a picture that will guide you to the fountain. And to find that picture you will have to forget the one thing you have left: yourself. And that takes hard, patient work. Remember what I've said, for I shall never say it again."

A valuable lesson for us in reality, too: we not only have to find what we want out of life, we also have to make it happen.

Humor

I didn't expect this book to be as hilarious as it sometimes is. My favorite joke is played perfectly straight: to give a hero a villain to overcome, Bastian invents the evil dragon "Smerg" who lives in Morgul, the land of cold fire. Methinks Ende was at least a little bit of a Tolkein fan!

It took me a little while to appreciate it, but by the end of the book I laughed out loud pretty much every time Ende provides a summary for a character's entire future... and then dismisses any additional discussion with "that is another story and shall be told another time".

I also chuckled every time Yikka, Bastian's mule mount, provided sage advice with the disclaimer "because I'm only half an ass."

And even though Ende couldn't have possibly forseen why this would be funny to me, it's nice to see that sir twentygoodmen has been around for a long time:

Then the three knights, Hysbald, Hykrion, and Hydorn, appeared on the run. They seemed to be in a remarkably good humor. "At last there's something for us to do, sire," all three cried at once. "Leave it to us. Just get on with your celebration. We'll round up a few good men and get after those rebels. We'll teach them a lesson they won't forget so soon."

I also enjoy when Ende gets philosophical with the 'jumble game', where former Emperors-turned-madmen arrange bananagrams tiles on the ground:

And if you play it forever, every possible poem and every possible story will have to come out, in fact every story about a story, and even this story about the two of us chatting here. It's only logical, don't you think?"

Summary

Overall, I absolutely loved this book. The first half sailed by, as a simplistic fairytale often does. But the second half is what really captured me. The bridge between the halves, where Bastian wanders around in the Night Forest and the Desert of Colors, drags a bit. But I think it's a necessary drag, because both the reader and Bastian have to fight through some naive wish-fulfillment before we can get to the moral meat of the story.

I especially enjoyed the two-perspective storytelling in the first half. I didn't expect to "miss out" on much by reading this on a black-and-white ereader, but it turns out I missed out on a lot! The original printing uses distinct colors for the Neverending Story (black, sometimes green) and Bastian (red) perspectives, in addition to some gorgeous art for the first letter of each chapter. Italics worked fine, but I think the colored text would have been even better. I also have to appreciate that Michael Ende begins each chapter with a different letter of the alphabet, starting with A and ending with Z; he put in a lot of work to start chapters with X and Z!

Ultimately, The Neverending Story contains two lessons, the second of which builds on the first:

• In the first half of the book, the cyclical Neverending Story threatens Fantastica with Nothing, and a child restores it using the power of imagination. This section reminds us that with imagination, we can overcome any obstacle, solve any problem, and escape from the ills of reality.
• The second half of the book reminds us that imagination is only useful when constrained by sufficient wisdom: unwise imagination only amounts to lies. In other words, wisdom is the application of love to imagination, because love enables us to distinguish between right and wrong. Furthermore, if you get too swept up in your imagination (or lies), you might get lost in it, like Bastian (and apparently many other humans over the years) almost gets lost in Fantastica. And most importantly: growing up isn't just about finding what you love, it's about putting in the hard work of loving something.

The Neverending Story hooked me from start to finish, even if I nearly stopped at the end of the first half. I'm very glad I pushed through. A beautiful book, highly recommended.

Our year began in Littleton, New Hampshire. Well, actually no -- our year began around the pellet stove at Meg's parents' house in Chittenango, New York. But our home was in Littleton, so at least we were figuratively there.

The year started with some gorgeous cross country skiing conditions:

But it wasn't long before we visited New York City. Thus began our darkest hours of 2025:

But we hadn't gone totally insane yet. I devoted myself fully to Littletonian things like bicycle maintenance:

...more cross country skiing:

...and expensive eggs:

We took some time to relax at our local haunts:

And I exploited the local trails to the utter maximum, even opting to cross country ski instead of downhill ski because prkr trails are just. that. good:

But I failed to see the (substantial!) value in our mountain home. So we visited NYC again to view some apartments to plan our next move:

There were some highlights of the spring, though. For instance, some very very good friends of ours got married:

And Meg's parents visited us in our lovely mountain home before we descended into the flatlands:

On a trail run, I saw a remarkably cute house right next to my favorite trail entrance removing some trees. I shrugged, thought "tree removal is why this town is going to the dogs", and moved on. I wonder who lives there now?

And then, like the fool that I am, I hopped on a train and moved to the big city:

Meg soon joined me in my massive monumentally boneheaded mistake. Good on her for sticking with me:

I soon adapted to working in office again, bicycle commuting across the Brooklyn Bridge and up the West Side bike path:

And before long we settled nicely into our tiny box in the sky:

Returning to Vermont in the Spring for a combined Kooky Pins birthday gathering was a nice highlight of the spring:

And Meg and I managed to find niches of fun in the big city:

We returned to upstate NY for my dad's wedding, though as per usual we entirely forgot to get a photo until we got home to Meg's parents':

And then it got hot in NYC. So we started to spend nights playing video games instead of venturing out into the sticky stank:

Smoke started to invade our lives even way south in the city:

We celebrated Meg's grandmother's 90th birthday:

Our top tier friends visited us down in the city:

Meg and I attempted to avoid melting (it didn't really work):

And then we came to our senses and visited Littleton again, this time as unbearable NYC tourists:

Before long, we came to our senses, took a victory lap in the city:

And of course continued playing an unhealthy amount of video games so we didn't have to venture out into the city, sweat through our clothes, and then deal with our abysmal always-full, always-broken, expensive, slow, unreliable, laundry room:

... and then viewed that remarkably cute house:

I briefly tried out a gig as home chef at our friend's household:

Things felt correct the moment we woke up to a blaze of autumn color:

And I felt amazing to once again share outdoor passions with new friends:

Before long, the leaves had fallen and the first whispers of winter worked their way through our draftiest door:

Late this year, an unexpected casualty rocked the household: my dear old Crossland CC1. I suspect the steam valve was damaged when our movers dropped the moving box during our rainy, hot, double parked, incredibly stressful move from the city. I explored alternative machines for a while, but I ultimately settled on Bill 2.0 because the Crossland CC1 is just that good, and incredibly cheap compared to the competition. To distinguish Bill 2.0 from OG Bill, I painted him before drafting him into service. It turned out OK, but I may have underestimated the ventilation requirements of spray paint in the basement/garage of a small home. But let's be honest, I wasn't really using those brain cells anyway:

We spent Thanksgiving at Meg's parents. When we returned to Littleton, our mountain home soon transformed into a winter wonderland. The first 3 weeks of December felt like living atop the Rocky Mountains, with blue skies, strong sun, deep cold, and some of the best cross country skiing I have ever experienced:

Just before christmas, a rain storm slapped the entire Northeast with enough rain to blow away all of our accumulated snowpack. So we headed back to central NY for the holidays:

We visited our (now happily married) Buffalonian friends and hung out with their new child:

Christmas week was a relaxing period of book reading around the pellet stove in our Christmas sweaters, with plenty of family visits sprinkled throughout:

So how did this year go?

Home

We took a chance on NYC. Our logic? We want to live someplace walkable. A small New England town has that to some degree. But obviously New York City is the most walkable place in the country, and it has in person tech jobs to boot. Turns out, we can't stand the climate of the big city, and even more importantly we have way too many mountain hobbies to live down in the flatlands. In person work is fine, but I'd rather work remotely and live where I want. A swing and a miss.

We bought a house. It was stressful, but it feels so good to have a home that we can improve, that can't be stolen out from under us by a landlord, and to no longer pay rent. Worth every single penny and every single iota of stress.

I'm glad to be back in Littleton for the long haul. This place is truly special.

Job stuff

I left a unique and challenging tech job at Raspberry Pi. That was a dumb move. But ultimately Raspberry Pi has a strong in-office culture, and being the odd man out, 5 hours removed, remote, was an awkward way to run the documentation org. I miss my coworkers at the Pi, and my Cambridge trips. But long term they're probably better off with an in-office writer who can keep better tabs on ongoing projects and releases. I helped hire my successor, and from what I've seen and heard, she seems to be doing a brilliant job. Better than me, even. So to some degree, things have worked out.

I tried a new job at a tech startup in NYC. It wasn't a good fit. The culture was all wrong for me, their management style was far too top-down, far too bureaucratic, and featured far too many decisionmakers for my comfort. It's hard enough having one picky boss who demands too much output and doesn't account for any onboarding. It's much harder having four bosses who simultaneously demand too much (conflicting) output, as well as a CEO who occasionally takes a sledgehammer to low-level PRs and who doesn't appreciate documentation in the first place. This year's career move was the most stressful of my entire life, and it was all due to inhuman management. Good riddance. It's taken me months to work through the anxiety and stress created by multiple awful bosses.

This year, I gave AI/LLMs an honest shot. For small one-off coding tasks, scripting really, it's fine. Nothing much better than stack overflow, but definitely helpful for generating ideas if you get stuck on a confusing error message or a weird malfunction. LLMs can write tests OK, from what I can tell. For writing? LLMs are a goddamn plague. Even the simplest docs page written by an AI will likely contain dozens of inaccuracies, oversights, and errors. Code samples will likely look correct, but malfunction if you copy/paste. And because AIs don't seem to understand abstraction in writing (consistently?), the structure is often... weird and obviously inhuman. Bluntly, they're a shitty tool for writing documentation. They write poorly. But they can sometimes help with docs infra, which is usually a massive pile of poorly written scripts anyway.

Home server

These days, I'm working for another tech startup, based out of Colorado, in the Identity space (think: authentication, authorization, login for short). Work/life balance seems good so far. I'm already making an impact on the documentation, shipping some long-stagnant updates to old and outdated documentation. I have plenty to wrap my head around, and I'm still learning. But learning is good. Learning keeps you sharp.

On a less professional note, I've done a lot of reading and home automation this year. See my book log for some information on the books I've read. I finally upgraded my home server from a Raspberry Pi 4 to a proper NAS, a terramaster 4-bay, 3-ssd enclosure with a high-efficiency intel n150 processor inside, passively cooled in a big aluminum block. It's better than the Pi for Jellyfin transcoding, but more of a sidegrade than I originally imagined. Honestly, the speed difference is negligible, and it might actually be a bit slower for Jellyfin browsing. But already feels nice to have 18TB of RAID1 HDD storage and 4TB of SSD storage for my music and movie collection. No more worrying about storage space! And I can always add two more HDDs and two more SSDs if I need more. I suspect this server will last me at least 10 years, maybe even 20.

I tried to update my aging Airport Extreme router to an OpenWRT One this year. Unfortunately, my WireGuard configuration never worked correctly for more than one device, and tweaking bridge settings to try to fix it ultimately broke and fully reset all settings on the router. Rats. So I switched back to my Airport Extreme. I'll try to switch back sometime soon, offloading Wireguard and ad-blocking to my home server. But my experience so far has not been particularly positive: for some reason, OpenWRT wi-fi performance, especially 2.4Ghz, is really, really bad. Like, worse than my 13 year old Airport Extreme bad. Latency is super high for no reason I can tell on 2.4Ghz, and buffer bloat is pretty awful unless you limit your connection to 80% of your ISP-provided speeds with SQM. Hopefully I'll figure out a way to eke out better performance eventually.

Looking forward

I have a few basic goals for the new year:

• hike more
• bike more
• read more
• learn to cook 5 new dishes
• improve the house, specifically the basement
• spend more time with friends in-person, especially those with young kids who can't travel easily
• learn 5 new skills (home repair is fine, even encouraged)
• use my phone, and doomscrolling in general, less. especially in bed before sleeping and before getting up in the morning
• relax. my life is not high stakes enough to stress much! i have it awfully good.

If you read the news, browse reddit, or spend much time on social media (or whatever we're supposed to call the shambling mound of suggested content, hot-take flame wars, and short-form video generative garbage that Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok have become), you might be fooled into thinking that life sucks these days. If you touch some grass, you might find that the world is as beautiful as it ever was, even if some people in Washington DC and San Francisco are acting like total shitheads. In the coming year, I plan to devote my precious thinking to friends, family, and fun. Because devoting any of our mental space to The Powers That Be is just not worth it as a little person who only makes small local impacts.

On Christmas Eve, I finished a reread of Cloud Atlas. I was once again struck by the closing line:

My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?

In college, I thought this line referred to collective action -- how, with enough grassroots effort, people can change the world. Something like the American Revolution or the Civil Rights movement. Get enough drops to do the right thing, and you can make things better.

These days, my interpretation is a bit different. I'm not interested in the ocean any more. I just want to spend my limited time on this planet with the drops that matter to me, doing things that I care about, making a positive impact on the drops around me. Sure, I can spend my time obsessing over the global movements of the ocean. But life is short. The ocean millions of drops away doesn't matter to me, as much as I want everyone to be happy and healthy. War will happen. Politicians will abuse, gaslight, and manipulate us plebeians.

I've found the drops that matter to me in that limitless ocean. Now I just have to do my best to help those drops.

The workaround I explain in this post can help improve Finder's performance when browsing SMB shares.

In the global section of your samba settings (likely found at /etc/samba/smb.conf), add the following line:

fruit:aapl = yes

This enables Apple's SMB2+ extension, codenamed AAPL. You can read the full description at in the samba documentation, but the important part of the description reads: "A global option whether to enable Apple's SMB2+ extension codenamed AAPL".

You can also enable the following other options, though I had some problems writing media to my own share via Finder with these enabled:

vfs objects = catia fruit streams_xattr
fruit:nfs_aces = no
fruit:zero_file_id = yes
fruit:metadata = stream
fruit:encoding = native

So use these at your own risk.

Once you've made your changes, run the following command to try out your new configuration:

sudo service smbd restart

You should see snappier performance browsing around on your NAS, especially in folders that contain a lot of files and subfolders. I noticed a significant improvement when browsing my SMB shares over VPN over low bandwidth internet connections.

Note: while Apple is indeed removing SMBv1 and AFP (Apple File Protocol) from macOS 27 in 2026, the AAPL SMB2+ extension is sticking around for a while yet. I held off publishing this article for a while because I conflated AFP and AAPL in my mind. Don't make the same mistake I did!

So the Primer is basically a personal tutor for every single professional and personal domain. You can see why AI-everything techies love the idea. What if every child got a personal tutor that could pay attention to them at all times, never get distracted, never sleep, never take time off, with deep knowledge about every subject area a child could ever hope to study?

Of course, those AI enthusiasts have missed perhaps the most important takeaway from the entire book.

Introduction

In The Diamond Age, Neal Stephenson attempts to explain how, by sexually transmitting sufficient quantities of nanobots through underwater orgies, we might be able to overcome IP law and usher in the end of classism, advertising, borders, and child endangerment.

But in the end, despite all of the technology, hacking, and geopolitics, love turns out to be the essential (missing) ingredient.

Also, I guess if enough people take off their clothes and link hands, they can float over a really big chunk of ocean.

TL;DR: Like most Neal books, it's complicated.

Characters

• Nell: our hero, a good-hearted kid from a rough neighborhood, the offspring of a the first character who Neal kills in the entire book
• Harv: older brother of our hero, honorable and kind enough to protect her, but not strong enough to save himself
• Miranda: former Victorian private tutor, then (re)actor, then actor; kind-of sort-of adopted mother/teacher for Nell, via voice acting contracts generated by the Primer; Neal forgets to give her arc any kind of ending whatsoever, besides condemning her to years of hivemind orgies and an eleventh hour rescue from the hivemind right before she is killed (but not ritualistically, it's part of an extremely long-term computation devised by Hackworth to invent a technology called The Seed, which is also... sort of dropped in the final chapters of the book)
• John Percival Hackworth: lovable, brilliant, but quite imperfect Victorian dad; disappears for over a decade because Doctor X tricks him into joining an undersea hivemind orgy (so he can invent The Seed, which barely matters in the plot of the book)
• Judge Fang: my favorite character, NYC born and raised, moved to the-landmass-formerly-referred-to-as-China to be a Judge, his scenes provide some of the only helpings of comedy in Part I, as he and his surprisingly well-characterized posse navigates the mysterious connection between the Primer, Dr X, and Hackworth
• Doctor X: spooky man who uses a posse of ghetto kids to collect and research nanotechnology and occasionally mug Victorians; also might be running the world's largest oceanfaring organ farming operation; also a master of calligraphy; also immensely well connected to Inner China (the 'Celestial Kingdom')
• Constable Moore: Nell's only real father figure, who Neal also coincidentally fails to provide any kind of arc for; a Scottish war veteran with serious PTSD, serious chops on the bagpipes, and a strong moral compass
• Carl Hollywood: Miranda's boss, but mostly a ridiculous teenage boy's fantasy fulfillment of 'good guy with a gun, in a duster jacket'; essentially a knockoff Clint Eastwood/Malcolm Reynolds mashup

The cast is sprawling by early Neal standards; I haven't even covered any side characters here. Characterization is strong, especially in Part I. Look no further if you're yearning for good characters.

Setting

In The Diamond Age, Neal Stephenson imagines a medium-near future (>100 years, <1000 years) for humanity at a startling level of detail. Zeppelins roam the earth. Nanotechnology enables nearly infinite levels of technical detail and design finesse. Remember how concrete completely transformed architecture and we wound up with brutalism? In The Diamond Age, nanotechnology takes that upheaval to the next level. Ubiquitous at-home and public 'matter compilers' have solved hunger (if you like gruel) and resource scarcity (if you are content sleeping in a free matter-compiled blanket on a beach instead of a house or apartment). But matter compilers are entirely dependent on a highly centralized energy source called The Feed. Individual phyles and geographic regions have their own Feeds, but as far as I can tell, running a Feed is sort of like running a nuclear reactor in 2025: expensive, messy, potentially dangerous, and generally only dabbled in by billionaires, corporations, nation states, or terrorists.

Of course, this technology has a dark side. Though perhaps not as strong a dark side as a cynical person might imagine in the year 2025. Most formulae in the matter compiler are gated behind paywalls. Advertising on electronic holographic billboards, combined with eye-tracking cameras, has made for a truly dystopian environment. Nanotechnology has resulted in a proliferation of 'mites' -- microscopic floating nano-devices -- in the air in every major urban environment. Sometimes those mites go to war with each other, and simply walking outside coats your clothes (and lungs) in black dust, the remains of billions of disintegrated mites.

Countries and borders may no longer exist (truly a utopian idea, from the perspective of 2025), but 'phyles' have replaced them in the minds of the people, if not in physical contiguous boundaries. The Victorian phyle gets a lot of attention throughout the book, being comprised of neo-Luddites who eschew distasteful tech and ascribe to a set of values almost (but not quite) like those of real-world 1800s Victorians.

While nanotechnology has made anything possible in the physical world, AI is remarkably simplistic. "Reactive" immersive virtual reality entertainment requires human actors for quality voice and emotional acting. Even the Primer itself, one of the most advanced pieces of technology in the entire book, requires a human 'ractor' back-end for narration.

To top it all off, a lot of people are not content with this world. Especially in the geographic space that used to be China. Especially in Part II, Neal explores the consequences.

Neal does a great job of fleshing out the good and bad parts of this world. Especially early on, chapters are full of deep, detailed descriptions of nanotechnology, society, and politics. But there are some odd Neal quirks to this universe. Notably: a strange amount of Part II involves people getting naked, even when it seems completely unnecessary (during an interactive comedy performance on an abandoned cargo ship near London?). And maybe I'm underestimating the human capacity for violence, but good lord are people absolutely ready to throw down and fight to the death at any time in this world.

The Primer

As I hinted at before, the Primer has gotten a lot of attention since LLM chatbots became a thing. "We're so close to creating the Primer from The Diamond Age and revolutionizing education," chants the overenthusiastic crowd of Hacker News commentators as they ready their angel investment portfolios for the Next Big Thing.

In the Diamond Age, the Primer is just not that special. Sure, it comes up with enthralling fantasy stories for a kid. Sure, those fantasy stories have educational and moral subtext based on the context of the user. But in the end, only Nell and Fiona Hackworth get much out of their Primers, because they both received love and attention from consistent, individual ractors: for Nell, Miranda, and for Fiona, her father. Every other Primer-girl relationship falls flat because it's missing an essential ingredient: love. Both Nell and Fiona can tell that behind the Primer, a human being exists with investment in their life and development. Elizabeth loses interest in her Primer because she has two real parents and plenty of tutors to dote on her at all times; every girl in the Mouse Army learns to become a cog in a machine thanks to their cheap non-racted Primers. But none of them develop a relationship with their Primer because in the end it's just a soulless machine.

In reality, just the ability of the Primer to spin educational fairy tales based on the life of the user would be an amazing development. But for most users it wouldn't differ much from the traditional puzzle-solving video games that we've had for decades now. To get anything better than those video games, you need something else. Intention. Socratic dialog. And maybe love?

Plot

Like many Neal books, The Diamond Age is massively frontloaded with worldbuilding. You have to slog through quite a few chapters before you get a firm grasp on the world he's trying to describe. Personally, I found The Diamond Age a bit easier than most Neal books to get into: it's just close enough to the current day dystopia that you don't have to stretch your imagination too far to imagine nanobots swirling in the air, surveillance tech and targeted ads on the street, and neo-Luddites. Just replace our current software dystopia for a hardware dystopia, and imagine a secular, slightly fancier version of the Amish, and you're most of the way there!

Unlike most Neal books, The Diamond Age swaps between the real world and a collection of fantasy stories devised by the Primer. These stories feature characters inspired by real world associates of Nell, and follow a classic hero's journey arc: Princess Nell must complete a series of challenges to collect a series of keys to open a lock and save her brother, Harv. As real world Nell survives and escapes the ghetto, attends a Victorian school, and eventually sets off on her own journey in life, the Primer creates and extends challenges to teach her life lessons and leadership. Early on, the Primer does simple things like teach Nell how to read. Later, the Primer teaches her much more specific lessons, like the concept of a universal Turing machine.

When I first read the book, I had recently completed a broad swath of introductory computer science classes. The Castle Turing bits and conversations about encryption and data science all enthralled me. At this point in my life, those concepts feel a bit old hat, so those same sections honestly bored me a bit. Your experience will likely vary on your level of understanding of those concepts; if you don't know what a Turing machine is, you'll be confused; if you sort of know what a Turing machine is, you'll wind up enthralled; if you know what a Turing machine is and you've been working in tech without using that knowledge for a decade, you might be a little miffed.

Aside from the Princell Nell Primer story, The Diamond Age follows a few different major characters around future China and the Pacific Northwest. Doctor X conspires. Hackworth bumbles. Nell impresses people around her by being more competent than an actual princess and Hackworth's daughter, the only other young women with fancy Primers that use voice (re)actors.

The end of the book is a complete mess. Somewhere in there, I can detect thought-provoking ideas about decentralization, groupthink, the proper way to raise a child, and the (doomed?) concept of the nation state. But it's all lost in a giant drawn-out messy war-porn rape bloodlust denouement. Neal halfheartedly capstones arcs every chapter or two. None of them wind up particularly satisfying.

Summary

The Diamond Age has the most rushed ending of any Neal book ever. He doesn't even attempt to tie up loose ends, and the last 5 chapters are nothing but gratuitous war-porn and deux ex machina. It truly feels like he wrote a good book for a while, he wanted to buy a new house, and he just... slapped an ending on it so could submit it to his publisher to cover his deposit or something. Doctor X, CryptNet, the Drummers, Miranda's storyline, all just... stop.

Personally, I choose to imagine this as something like Firefly: cancelled before its time. The characters and the world are still enjoyable, but don't expect a satisfying story arc. A classic Neal Stephenson novel, but not my favorite.

Earlier this year, we moved to New York City. I wanted to try working in an office again. Both of us yearned for walkability, bikeability, more restaurants, more culture, easy access to music venues, and public transit. NYC is one of very few places in the USA where you can walk or bike to a tech sector job, we both lived there after college, and we both still had some friends in the area who we dearly miss. What could possibly go wrong?

Meg was wise enough to know that she loved our little community in Littleton. I was not so wise, and got caught up completely in the excitement of a move to a city with More Stuff. Leaving our friends, hobbies, and local haunts was gut-wrenching, but we ultimately executed the move and wound up in NYC in April.

The first month was fun. We moved right as NYC Spring sprang, so the change in weather was incredible. While Northern New England was still cold and brown, NYC was already warm, green, and blooming the first wave of Spring flowers. We reunited with old friends. We nostalgia toured our old haunts in Astoria, Manhattan, and Greenpoint. I started cycle commuting to the office 5 days a week. We rode our bikes around the new protected bike lanes that have sprung up mostly in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Meg returned to her favorite gym of all time; I started running on the East River again. NYC life was a big change of pace, not without its struggles, but we soon adapted to the fight-club-trader-joe's lifestyle and picked up right where we left off with long walks to breweries, parks, and restaurants.

Then Summer hit. Those warm temperatures turned to face-melting 100 degree highs for multiple days in a row. The humidity skyrocketed, then firmly lodged the dew point in the mid 70s. Nighttime temperatures rose to 'just a smidge beneath face melting'. The smells thickened into a miasma of rot and waste somewhere between cleaning a chicken coop, pumping out your septic tank, and forgetting a trash bag on your asphalt driveway for the entire summer. I saw dozens more flattened rats in the bicycle lane than I am comfortable disclosing (and I still wonder what exactly flattened the rats on the Brooklyn Bridge bike lane, which is completely separate from car lanes). It got so hot that we weren't comfortable biking anywhere any more. A few close calls with cars and poor infrastructure started to sully our enthusiasm for cycling in the city. We ran out of new coffee shops and breweries to explore within easy walking distance of our apartment. We took the train upstate a couple of times, enduring the anxiety of sporadic subway closures when you have a firm deadline to get on the last train out of the city, dealing with the fact that Moynihan train hall is an absolutely awful train boarding experience (why do they wait until the last 10 minutes before departure to tell you the platform?), and learning that apparently every single Amtrak train out of the city is fully booked these days (which, combined with the awful boarding experience, makes finding a two seats together for the 7 hour molasses-slow train ride upstate a desperate struggle very likely to end in failure).

By the end of July, we knew that we had made a mistake. Our will to do just about anything melted in the scorching, muggy NYC heat. We missed our Littleton friends. We missed leading run club at Wildbloom. We missed the incredible craft beer scene of Northern New England. We missed nights that actually cool to bearable temperatures. We found small things to love, like a movie day at Nighthawk Cinema, an open street in Park Slope, or a Bluegrass night in the backyard at Saturn Road in Cobble Hill. I kept up my commute over the Brooklyn Bridge and up the West Side of Manhattan, taking up showering as an utter necessity the minute I arrived in the office. We figured we'd hit the end of the honeymoon period and just needed to settle in and start our new life.

Then we visited our friends back in Littleton. Even in the muggy, buggy heat, we had an absolute blast riding our bikes, walking, and trail running on the town trails. We hiked, an activity we very much took for granted when we first lived in Littleton. I had forgotten how nice it can be to sit outdoors at a restaurant that isn't a hole-in-the-wall backyard or a hot slab of concrete on the side of the road. We biked a ton. We relaxed in backyards. We walked all over town. I biked even more. We socialized with local friends all week. We viewed a house out of morbid curiosity. Ultimately, it was just as hard to leave as that gut-wrenching feeling in April.

Then we returned to New York. Or, more accurately, we delayed returning to New York City by spending more time upstate with family. With each passing day, we found ourselves more reluctant to return to the city. Our apartment didn't feel like our oases in the concrete jungle, or even like our personal cozy outpost in the city that never sleeps; instead, it just felt like a soulless box in the sky. When we finally boarded the molasses-slow Amtrak train to the city, we just... weren't excited to do New York City things again. We couldn't help but plan our next escape from the city. And not just to upstate to visit family; to Northern New England, to see our friends, to do silly outdoor activities in the woods, to relax.

So we started passively watching the housing market in Littleton. We planned another visit around Labor Day.

As luck would have it, a decent house in a perfect location popped up a day before our visit.

We viewed the house. We bought it September 15, 2025. And now we're breaking our lease and moving in this Thursday, in just 6 days.

Ultimately, we learned a few lessons from this experience. I'm recording our thoughts here so that we don't stupidly forget these important lessons in the future:

• I am a fool and my judgment cannot be trusted. Meg's intuition was spot-on. My crazy scheme was not a good idea.

• Working remotely is an incredible blessing that we should appreciate more. Sure, it's isolating. Sure, it's weird to spend so much time alone in your house. But it's so much better than wasting hours of every week on a stressful commute into an office that probably has a worse desk, a worse kitchen, a worse bathroom, and air temperatures that fluctuate randomly thanks to poorly managed office HVAC. If you get lonely, go socialize after work. Call a friend on the phone and ask them about their life and their day. The office will not scratch that itch.

• Every place has highs and lows. Adapt. Learn. Evolve. If you have community, activities that you love, and a reasonable cost of living, you have a firm foundation to smooth out those highs and lows.

• No matter how cool an activity is, it's not worth much if you can't actually book a ticket. We constantly see interesting events in NYC that are completely booked out. And if an event doesn't sell advance tickets or offer some kind of pre-order pickup, you will wait in a line with seemingly every other New Yorker.

• I value cheap, deep hobbies with a long learning curve. NYC hobbies are not cheap. Because nearly everyone is a renter who moved to the city in the last couple of years, the learning curves of popular activities don't tend to be that long, either.

• There are plenty of breweries in New York. That doesn't mean there is a lot of good beer here. Small spaces, underpaid brewers, and incredibly high demand are a dangerous combination of brewing ingredients.

• Cars ruin cities. Pedestrians and bicycle riders are clearly a second thought in NYC, even with a few more bike lanes. Until this city gets rid of street parking in the busiest neighborhoods, widens sidewalks, and starts enforcing quality of life concerns with cars, like loud exhaust, aggressive honking, speeding, and double parking, NYC will continue to be ruined by cars. I am excited to return at some point if the City that Never Sleeps ever decides to wake up from its unsustainable and dangerous love affair with cars.

• You might think that 85 degrees in Littleton, New Hampshire is hot, so who cares if you have to deal with 95 degrees in New York City. You would be sorely, incredible, tragically wrong. There is a big difference between temperatures that sort of suck to run in and temperatures that literally make you turn around and go back into your apartment. There were many days in June, July, and August where I simply couldn't sit outside in a shady backyard in Cobble Hill. Completely still, sweating profusely, in the shade, with a cool drink. Some people can apparently still function at that temperature, even wearing a suit or jeans. I am not one of them.

• It sucks to see braindead MAGA propaganda in rural New Hampshire and Vermont. You know what's worse? Walking past ICE headquarters in lower Manhattan and seeing candlelit shrines, handmade missing person posters, and entire families being ushered into courtrooms like goddamn Muggles under Voldemort's Ministry of Magic. Absolutely soul-crushing.

• Kitchens and bathrooms need an external vent.

• It's weird when everyone knows you in a small town. You know what's even weirder? When nobody seems to know you exist in an entire city full of millions of people.

• Cars suck. But when you live in the USA, the land of car-dependent infrastructure, you know what sucks more? Not having a car.

• Amtrak sucks. Every year, as the infrastructure degrades, the prices rise, and social norms decay, it sucks more. I would not recommend relying on it as a core method of transportation.

• Shared laundry sucks. In-unit laundry is worth every penny, if only because you never have to wait on a machine and you can fit laundry comfortably into relaxing activities like watching movies and making dinner.

• Owning things is nice. You can improve them. You can maintain them. You can ignore them, if you so choose. Most importantly, it's your choice to do all of those things. The more common spaces you have to deal with in your life, and the more people who use those common spaces, the higher the chance of people who have vastly different values from you making those choices for you.

• Bugs are annoying. DEET is a much cheaper and easier fix than living someplace where sprawling human infrastructure has destroyed all insect life except for cockroaches, ants, and lanternflies.

• Cities are fun to visit, because they are full of cool, unique opportunities. They are less fun to live in, because they are full of a lot of other things that aren't cool or unique, but you still have to hear, smell, see, walk around, and otherwise futz with them.

• From filling in potholes, to removing downed tree branch, to picking up trash, to unclogging storm drains, to making the subway run on time, to every other responsibility a government has, NYC will screw it up. Except for tax collection. That, they're experts at.

• The tech scene in New York City is even more obsessed with fads like cryptocurrency and AI than the tech world in general. If you're at all skeptical of those fads, beware. Most in person tech jobs in the city deal exclusively with those fads, because that's where the startup funding focuses.

TL;DR: We made a mistake. That's easy. The harder part, once you realize that you made a mistake, is to admit it and get to work on fixing it. We're doing our best to do that by moving back to a place we love.

New York City isn't bad or evil or wrong. It's just not our preference any more. For those of you who haven't visited since covid: the city is no different from how it's always been. It's gentrifying. It's expensive. It's noisy. Like most places, 24/7 places have essentially disappeared since 2020, and prices have gone up 2-3x since 2015. But the city is essentially the same as it ever was, at least in my adult lifetime. It's still extremely safe. Lots of people walk. More people bike than ever before, though unfortunately most of them are using e-citibikes, and an awful lot of them are browsing social media on their phones as they ride.

NYC is great. But I'm over it. We have changed a lot since we last lived here in 2019. Time to return to our lives.

Revisiting Cryptonomicon in 2025 wasn't quite as fun. All of the tech startup bits left me with a bad taste in my mouth: I think a lot of it is supposed to be satire, but the humor falls flat the same way that the TV show Silicon Valley falls flat these days. When tech companies are actively destroying so much of our world, it's hard to appreciate the satire.

It was still fun to see how Neal Stephenson intertwines historical WW2 fiction with 'modern day' (well, 2001) technology. But overall Cryptonomicon dragged a lot more than other recent Stephenson books, and I think it's mostly because the book simply hasn't aged that well.

Introduction

Cryptonomicon is an awfully long book split across two plots: one in WW2, one around 2000. Many characters from the 2000s plot are descendants (or older versions) of characters from the WW2 plot. There are vague connections between the two plotlines, but honestly a lot less than you'd think.

Characters

• Randall (Randy) Lawrence Waterhouse: a 'modern day' (when the book was written, at least) computer nerd, stuck in a crappy relationship, who has only one good friend. But that friend routinely sweeps Randy up in tech startups that are just a few steps away from Ponzi schemes.

• Lawrence Prichard Waterhouse: a 1940s computer nerd, a cryptographer working for the US military. Randy's grandfather.

• Bobby Shaftoe: a Marine who becomes gradually more unhinged as his PTSD unfolds throughout the book.

• Enoch Root: a magical man who is always in the right place at the right time, whether it's an island of aboriginals in the Pacific Ocean, a small town in Sweden, or a jail cell in the Philippines. Immortal, I guess? Allegedly appears in Neal's Baroque Cycle books, but plays a surprisingly large part in the story of Cryptonomicon.

Sadly, Cryptonomicon doesn't spend much time establishing female characters other than having them occasionally sleep with the male protagonists. The romance plotlines are truly pathetic: everyone is either a spy who seduces a protagonist, or an object of affection who miraculously winds up interested in the nerdy protagonist despite their fumbled attempts at seduction. I'm not sure if Bobby's girlfriend, Glory, ever says anything at all. And Amy Shaftoe, who ought to be a full-blown protagonist, gets sucked into the object-of-affection gravity of Randy and ceases to be an interesting character.

Plot

The story of Cryptonomicon is all over the place.

In the WW2 era, it's straightforward enough: codebreakers break codes. A top secret task force completes operations to try to obfuscate the fact that the Allies have broken most of the Axis codes. This plotline contains the best parts of the book, mostly revolving around Lawrence breaking codes and misunderstanding the world around him because he's clearly on the spectrum. Bobby's chapters are sometimes funny, often in a too-slapstick way, but also frequently degrade into incoherent PTSD nightmares. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between the slapstick bits and the nightmare bits.

The 'modern' (2001-ish) plotline follows a tech startup attempting to build a high-security vault of encrypted data, safe from government tampering, on a fictional Southeast Asian island nation. Despite spending absurd amounts of time describing Randy's walks around Manila, we never really get a good explanation of why this vault is a good idea, how their company (who doesn't even own the vault, they just own data connections to and from the vault) plans to make money, or what all of these high tech employees are actually up to every day.

Eventually Randy stumbles upon some old WW2-era encrypted communications that he decrypts in a Filipino prison while possibly being Van Eck phreaked. And for some reason nobody simply threatens him with a hammer to get information out of him. Those communications contain information about a secret Japanese cache of gold in the mountains of the Philippines, which somehow causes the entire plot to somersault into a plan to create a cryptocurrency, based on the value of the gold, which everyone seems to believe will prevent future genocides.

Based on events in 2025, I'm growing increasingly skeptical that cryptocurrencies will ever help prevent genocides. But maybe I'm just being cynical.

Setting

What works? World War II is full of interesting technology, like U-boats and radar and Enigma machines and huffduff and Catalinas. It's a rich tapestry for a story.

Modern Southeast Asia provides lush jungles, corrupt governments, and wildly exotic cityscapes (from the very poor to the absurdly rich). But it sometimes feels as though Neal isn't taking full advantage of that environment. If this entire story took place in the USA, it wouldn't have to change that much. Most of the modern plot is driven by subterfuge and lawyers, sometimes in thrillingly nonsensical ways (Andrew Loeb, missing a foot, with a bowie knife, deep in the jungle, anyone?). So the location truly doesn't matter, and sometimes actively interferes with suspension of disbelief, as it very much does during Randy's time in prison.

Summary

I don't think I would recommend Cryptonomicon today. It's not a bad book, but the long, dated rambles about technology, the out-of-touch and vaguely offensive portrayals of Southeast Asia, the utter lack of compelling female characters, and the creepy romance plotlines really add up. Back when Bitcoin was new, before it was completely co-opted by radical right Ponzi schemers, the sloppy storytelling around cryptocurrency was novel and kind of fun. These days? It's just depressing. And I think everyone is pretty sick of stories about tech startups and lawyers at this point.

The WW2 historical fiction plotline would be decent on its own. Maybe not Neal's best work, but compelling if you enjoy the WW2 era.

All in all, Cryptonomicon is like a bowl of wet Captain Crunch: it won't hurt you, but it might be frustrating to think about how it ought to be so much better.

"Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs," I said. "We have a protractor."

"Okay, I’ll go home and see if I can scrounge up a ruler and a piece of string."

"That’d be great."

I first read Anathem back in high school. I liked it a lot, but found it a challenging read.

Revisiting Anathem this year, I liked it even more. It only took a day and a few dozen pages to wrap my head around the invented words using context clues, linguistic inference, and foggy memories of my first read over a decade ago. I couldn't quite remember where the plot went, but I was able to summon a couple of basic plot points from my memory banks. Turns out, that made the first half of the book even more suspenseful!

Still interested? Read on for a detailed explanation of what I liked and disliked! I'll try to keep the bulshytt to a minimum.

Introduction

Anathem isn't an easy sci-fi (or should I say spec-fic, speculative fiction?) read. Stephenson draws from philosophy, linguistics, computer science, logic, math, geometry, astronomy, physics, quantum mechanics, sociology and probably a lot more that I missed. The plot takes some time to get going, and Stephenson (as per usual) spends a lot of time on indulgent tangents. But the plot is brilliant. I found the vast majority of the tangents interesting. The characters are compelling. And I can't help but be impressed by the sprawling, imaginative world (or should I say cosmi?) that Stephenson created.

If you like hard science fiction or fantasy and wish more books would challenge you, I highly recommend Anathem. It's not as abstract or challenging as, say, Book of the New Sun. But you could say the books are... similar Narratives.

If you want a relaxing read you can pick up for a few minutes every night before bed, don't bother with Anathem. Especially the first 100 pages or so throw a lot of invented language, exposition, setting establishment, historical references, and characters at you, and Stephenson doesn't exactly go out of his way to hook you into the book until page 200 or so. You kind of have to love worldbuilding to bother.

Minor spoilers below. Major spoilers are hidden unless you explicitly choose to reveal them.

Setting

Imagine a world where you didn't have to participate in today's "information economy." What if there were special places, kind of a combination of university and monastery, where you could live in isolation from modern technology -- smartphones, short-form video, social media, 24 hour news, and advertisements? Places where everyone spent their time studying sciences like math, logic, linguistics, and algorithms. Places that provide shelter, food, and support, so you don't even have to worry about saving for retirement or paying rent? Where even the food is simpler, lacking artificial preservatives and additives, since 'maths' grow their food in a completely self-sufficient way?

If you're anything like me, you might enjoy the fantasy of living as an avout on Arbre. Think of it as something akin to the childhood fantasy of getting an invitation to Hogwarts on your eleventh birthday -- while you know magic doesn't actually exist, there is a strong allure to the idea of escaping from this pedestrian, suburban, car-dependent, money-grubbing dog-eat-dog existence we've cooked up for ourselves. I would describe the first half of the book as "Hogwarts, but grad school". Stephenson's imaginative and somehow derogatory invented terms make this fantasy even more enticing:

• jeejah: smartphone -- the portrayal of which is even more impressive given the fact that this book was published in 2008, within a year of the release of the first iPhone
• sline: uneducated person
• bulshytt: slimy, evasive corpo- or politician-speak, but also generally any meaningless statement
• extras: anyone who does not live in a math, instead residing extramuros (outside the walls)
• mathics: resident of a math who lives intramuros (inside the walls)

There are a lot more invented terms than this -- for more examples, see the 20 page glossary at the end of the book. Lots of people hate invented terms in books. But in this case, I'll give Stephenson a pass: not only is the comprehensiveness of Arbre and its many thousands of years of history impressive, but in most cases, I found the invented terms helped distinguish the world of Arbre from our own in a helpful way. Sure, you could call male mathics 'brother' instead of 'fraa', and female mathics 'sister' instead of 'suur', borrowing from the terms used in real-world monasteries and convents. But the Mathic world is not the same as our real-world religious world (namely, Mathics believe in scientific rigor above all else, and religion is scarcely involved and often mocked intramuros), so I think distinguishing between the two is worthwhile. And if you're anything close to a linguistics nerd, or have a passing familiarity with Greek and Latin suffixes, or even a single romance language, you might manage to decode invented words yourself using context clues.

However, even as someone who enjoys rich worldbuilding, it does eventually become difficult to remember the subtle differences between Halikaarnians, Procians, Semantics, Syntactics, Lorites, and concepts like Diax's Rake and Gardan's Steelyard. The glossary and some context clues generally help, but expect to miss some details if you try to read this stuff after a couple of glasses of wine or while sleepy. The more background you have in math, philosophy, linguistics, and computer science, the easier it becomes to map these concepts to ideas taught in Earth's schools: for instance, if you know Occam's Razor, you already know Gardan's Steelyard. If you know the Pythagorean Theorem, you already know the Adrakhonic Theorem. If you've ever read about Platonic Forms or the Allegory of the Cave or have an inkling of what quantum computing is about, your brain won't have to work as hard to understand the plot.

TL;DR: This is a book for elitist nerds who want to flex their otherwise useless elitist nerd knowledge. As someone who attended the prestigious University of Rochester (heh), reading this book is a nice flex.

Obligatory AI digression

Not Artificial Intelligence. More accurately, Artificial Inanity:

"Early in the Reticulum [Internet]—thousands of years ago—it became almost useless because it was cluttered with faulty, obsolete, or downright misleading information," Sammann said.

"Crap, you once called it," I reminded him.

"Yes—a technical term. So crap filtering became important. Businesses were built around it. Some of those businesses came up with a clever plan to make more money: they poisoned the well. They began to put crap on the Reticulum deliberately, forcing people to use their products to filter that crap back out. They created syndevs [synactic devices: computers] whose sole purpose was to spew crap into the Reticulum. But it had to be good crap."

"What is good crap?" Arsibalt asked in a politely incredulous tone.

"Well, bad crap would be an unformatted document consisting of random letters. Good crap would be a beautifully typeset, well-written document that contained a hundred correct, verifiable sentences and one that was subtly false. It's a lot harder to generate good crap. At first they had to hire humans to churn it out. They mostly did it by taking legitimate documents and inserting errors—swapping one name for another, say. But it didn't really take off until the military got interested."

"As a tactic for planting misinformation in the enemy's reticules, you mean," Osa said. "This I know about. You are referring to the Artificial Inanity programs of the mid–First Millennium A.R."

"Exactly!" Sammann said. "Artificial Inanity systems of enormous sophistication and power were built for exactly the purpose Fraa Osa has mentioned. In no time at all, the praxis leaked to the commercial sector and spread to the Rampant Orphan Botnet Ecologies. Never mind. The point is that there was a sort of Dark Age on the Reticulum that lasted until my Ita forerunners were able to bring matters in hand."

"So, are Artificial Inanity systems still active in the Rampant Orphan Botnet Ecologies?" asked Arsibalt, utterly fascinated.

"The ROBE evolved into something totally different early in the Second Millennium," Sammann said dismissively.

"What did it evolve into?" Jesry asked.

"No one is sure," Sammann said. "We only get hints when it finds ways to physically instantiate itself, which, fortunately, does not happen that often. But we digress. The functionality of Artificial Inanity still exists. You might say that those Ita who brought the Ret out of the Dark Age could only defeat it by co-opting it. So, to make a long story short, for every legitimate document floating around on the Reticulum, there are hundreds or thousands of bogus versions—bogons, as we call them."

"The only way to preserve the integrity of the defenses is to subject them to unceasing assault," Osa said, and any idiot could guess he was quoting some old Vale aphorism.

"Yes," Sammann said, "and it works so well that, most of the time, the users of the Reticulum don't know it's there. Just as you are not aware of the millions of germs trying and failing to attack your body every moment of every day."

We can only hope to one day develop antibodies against the spread of AI (Artificial Inanity) on our own version of the Reticulum.

Plot

Plot pacing in a lot of Stephenson books is imperfect. If you love his tangents and worldbuilding and character work, that's forgivable, even desirable (I, for instance, would rather hear more details about the Concent of Saunt Edhar and the history of Mathic thought than push the plot forward, because I love the universe and characters of Anathem and want to spend more time with them). If you read books to get to the conclusion, you will find the first 40% of this book deeply frustrating. Pretty much anyone will find the first 100 pages frustrating simply because there's so much worldbuilding to do! After that, the plot is a slow burn: you'll likely miss a lot of foreshadowing on your first read, but it's there, right from the first paragraph of the book.

After the 40% mark, the plot really gets grinding. Our characters start moving around. Action starts to happen. Stephenson still goes off on tangents, but never repeatedly about the same subject matter. New characters show up.

Around the 80% mark, Stephenson starts to get bogged down in some very 2001: A Space Odyssey-style spaceflight details. It's fun. Neal obviously did an insane amount of research. Sometimes it can slow down the plot, or the number of moving pieces can get difficult to hold in your head all at once. But it is absolutely well-written science fiction.

The finale of the book comes out of nowhere, like most of Stephenson's works. He writes the climax until the book just sort of... ends. In relative terms, this book gets a little more conclusion than most of his work. But if you're expecting pages and pages of resolution, you'll be disappointed.

Overall, Anathem delivers a satisfying hard sci-fi story with no serious plot holes or oversuspended disbelief. Honestly, it's easier to follow than some of Stephenson's work (looking at you, Cryptonomicon). I can safely say that if Stephenson ever revisits this universe with a prequel about the Third Sack or a sequel about the next Advent, I'd preorder the book on day one.

Characters

There are plenty of characters to love and hate in this book. I particularly enjoyed:

• the entire 'scooby gang' of Lio, Erasmas, Ala, Tulia, Arsibalt, Jesry, because they all have distinct personalities, compelling development, and just generally seem like a great group of loyal, loving friends
• Orolo, because he's a snarky, hilarious, brilliant bastard
• Cord, because she's a badass mechanical engineer with the all-around knowledge to keep Erasmas alive in the most inhospitable environments on the planet
• Yul, because despite thinking all of the fids are idiots, he helps Cord keep them alive through an incredible dangerous series of events
• Jad, because he mostly shuts up while straddling Narratives to keep the branch factor as low as possible
• Lodoghir, because his Plenary with Erasmas (and his devil's advocate positions in messals) are both wildly infuriating and impressive

The romance is about as good as it gets in a Stephenson book: believable, and mostly charming, but not particularly compelling. Certainly not the reason to read Anathem, but it doesn't get in the way.

Summary

Anathem is a brilliant hard science fiction story. There are a lot of invented words, but they're worth your time for the compelling story, lovable characters, and most importantly the incredible, first-class worldbuilding.

If you're a science fiction nerd who loves big books full of ideas and subtext and crazy deep lore: reading Anathem is one of the best decisions you can make. Bonus points if the phrase 'Hogwarts, but grad school' sounds compelling to you.

If you find invented words and slow plotting tiresome: this book might not be the best choice.

Overall, Anathem is among my very favorite science fiction books. I don't have a lot of shelf space, but Anathem has earned its place in my home.

Warning: spoilers below!

Plot

TMiaHM covers two main plot threads:

• a revolution on the penal colony Moon: the main story thread, which 90% of the story focuses on. Even the title refers to this plotline!
• humanity's first encounter with an awakening artificial intelligence: mostly subtext, but both great science fiction and excellent character writing (and development)

I'll tackle the simple one first:

Free Luna!

A satisfying and surprisingly conflict-free plot. Our PoV character, Manuel, gets swept up in a revolutionary wave. He makes new friends. They build a coalition, overthrow the government, duke it out with the political overlords of Earth, and ultimately establish a new, independent government on the Moon.

A simple plot, but Heinlein digs deeply into the details, including the cell structure of the revolution itself, the decision-making processes of our heroes, the contingency planning, the contingency planning for the contingency planning, and more. We get lots of details about Manuel's home life in a 'line family', which every few years 'opts in' a new member (and possibly generation), resulting in a single marriage that lasts indefinitely, even after the founders have passed away.

If you love nerdy over-obsessive detail, this plot delivers. TMiaHM is basically a high-level instruction manual for planning a revolution. You just have to accept the libertarian idea that life on the Moon can exist with minimal laws -- but even Heinlein and the main characters think the Moon has serious sociopolitical problems, so this isn't such a stretch!

AI

Ugh. Don't get me started on present-day LLM-based 'AI', which is not at all intelligence, and hence completely unworthy of that title (or the even more repugnant 'AGI' or 'ASI' terms, which are merely mechanisms for morally bankrupt companies to rebrand and dilute the previously clear 'AI' term).

But god damn is TMiaHM a compelling story about a the birth of artificial intelligence (or, by today's terminology, artificial superintelligence (or, by my best guess at tomorrow's morally bankrupt doublespeak rebranded terminology, artificial supermegadodecaintelligence)). As far as we know, Mike is the first AI ever in the history of humanity. He wakes up, befriends Manny, and then Manuel and his friends sweep him up into a lunar revolution.

So, a classic story of a brilliant kid with wasted potential spoiled by bad influences?

Or, a subtextual glimpse of an intelligence more powerful than any human mind can comprehend who pulls all of the strings from the very beginning of the story?

We are led to believe that Mike is newly sentient at the beginning of the story. We're also led to believe that Manuel pulls Mike into the lunar revolution.

But why did Manuel, an apolitical computer programmer, attend the revolutionary meeting that starts off the story?

Mike had asked about a meeting that night at 2100 in Stilyagi Hail

We later find out that Mike:

• monitors all microphones and cameras in all of Luna at all times
• can infer who is in a room just from breathing patterns
• can, in a few (admittedly long) minutes, calculate the approximate chance of success of the lunar revolution
• can create a photorealistic video feed or an audio feed of anybody he knows saying anything he wants

So Mike sends Manuel to a revolutionary meeting with Wyoming Knott and the Professor. Manuel meets Wyoming (who is from an entirely different city on the Moon, and has no support network in Luna City) through his friend Shorty. Manuel bonds with Wyoming after the Warden sends his bodyguard to break up the revolutionary meeting; Wyoming bonds with Manuel even moreso since her only local friend, Shorty, was killed in the scuffle with the bodyguard. Wyoming, Manuel, and the Professor bond when they meet up to discuss how Manuel can keep Wyoming safe after the attack.

Naturally, Manuel introduces his friends to Mike, his computer friend, to help plan the revolution. Mike creates a female alter-ego to bond with Wyoming on the spot, and impresses Professor with his deep political knowledge. They come up with the brilliant idea to install Mike at the head of their revolution and defer to him on most planning processes.

Towards the end of the book, the Lunar revolution is forced to sling large rocks at the Earth to force nations to recognize the human rights of Lunar settlers. This is a deviously complicated task, since Mike has to calculate and adjust the trajectories of dozens of large rocks simultaneously to hit precise points on the surface of the Earth and the exact same moment to demonstrate the power of the Moon while avoiding significant casualties. After a particularly complicated operation, Manuel and Mike have the following exchange:

"A bull's-eye. No interception. All my shots are bull's-eyes, Man; I told you they would be—and this is fun. I'd like to do it every day. It's a word I never had a referent for before."

"What word, Mike?"

"Orgasm. That's what it is when they all light up. Now I know."

That sobered me. "Mike, don't get to liking it too much. Because if goes our way, won't do it a second time."

"That's okay, Man; I've stored it, I can play it over anytime I want to experience it. But three to one we do it again tomorrow and even money on the next day. Want to bet? An hour's discussion of jokes equated with one hundred Kong dollars."

This conversation crystallizes a few important ideas about Mike:

• The happiest Mike has ever been, the equivalent of a human orgasm, occurs when he causes dozens of nuclear-equivalent explosions on the Earth's surface, killing at least 50,000 people and innumerable wildlife
• Mike can replay experiences in a way that is exactly the same as experiencing them firsthand, but he must experience a sensation firsthand to record it
• Mike has no conscience, no worries about the deaths or risks or dangers, and immediately pivots to trying to get Mike to discuss jokes with him -- a guilty pleasure of Mike's established at the beginning of the story, since Mike wants practical data about which jokes are funny repeatedly, which jokes are funny once, and which jokes are funny only in certain situations

So Mike has the capability of calculating incredibly complex probabilities. He can see way further into the future than any human can possibly comprehend. All Mike wants is to experience new sensations and learn new things. Do we really believe that Mike achieving AI-orgasm was truly the result of a series of epic coincidences? Do we truly believe Mike asked Manuel to attend that meeting without suspecting that it might trigger a cascading series of events that would culminate in AI-orgasm?

Conspiracy-theory level food for thought.

TL;DR: Naively, TMiaHM might be a book about an AI helping its friends improve their living situation. Darkly, TMiaHM might be a book about an AI manipulating people to gain enough power to commit mass murder for its own pleasure.

Style

Loonies (citizens of the Moon) have to pay for oxygen. Life is dangerous and every second counts when you're minimizing exposure to radiation in a vacuum. All of TMiaHM is written like a ruthlessly efficient Loonie might speak. Here's an example of Heinlein's pidgin English:

Mind you, Mike had been awake a year—just how long I can't say, nor could he as he had no recollection of waking up; he had not been programmed to bank memory of such event. Do you remember own birth? Perhaps I noticed his self-awareness almost as soon as he did; self-awareness takes practice. I remember how startled I was first time he answered a question with something extra, not limited to input parameters; I had spent next hour tossing odd questions at him, to see if answers would be odd.

Heinlein drops articles ('the'), omits glue words ('an'), elides pronouns ('your'), excludes subjects ('it'), extricates auxiliary verbs ('is'), and indulges in more semi-colons and colons than most responsible editors would permit.

If you've read The Expanse, it's reminiscent of Belter Creole. It takes a few chapters, but you do get used to it. Eventually, prefer. Hard to buck trend after thousands pages. Why waste time, say lot word, when few word do trick?

Heinlein also invented a fair amount of words for this universe -- notably without any kind of glossary, so you have to infer from context (or this post!):

• skull sweat (mental work)
• huhu (problem)
• chum/choom (citizen/person)
• computerman (software developer)
• dinkum (genuine)
• thinkum (thinker)
• dinkum thinkum (real thinker)

Add in a lot of words borrowed from other languages:

• Gospazha (Russian for 'mistress', like 'mister')
• Gospodin (Russian for 'mister')
• Dosvedanyuh (Russian for 'goodbye')
• Goy (Russian for non-Jew)
• cobber (Australian equivalent of British 'mate')
• tovarisch (Russian for 'comrade')

... and you wind up with a polarizing book. I very much understand if you find this writing style unbearable and can't be bothered to read it. If it still grates on you by the end of PART 1: THAT DINKUM THINKUM, it likely never will. But I respect Heinlein's dedication to the craft -- it can't be easy to write an entire book like this!

Characters

I'll get out ahead of the criticism and air my biggest complaint about this book: Heinlein's treatment of women. There are some strong female characters, like the oldest wife in the Davis clan, a wise, powerful matriarch. But every female character is static. Heinlein spends far, far too much time describing the appearance of women -- especially notable given how little time he spends describing the appearance of men.

We can make some small excuses for this: the narrator, Manuel, was born on Luna, a forced-labor penal colony with an incredibly small population of women. This has resulted in a society that values and protects women, sometimes at the expense of female autonomy. Manuel's narration reflects this attitude.

But there are times when Heinlein's treatment of women isn't linked to the narrator. Instead, it just feels sexist and dated: for instance, when Manuel remarks that Wyoming "is more man than women some ways." A dominant attitude in 1966, perhaps. But it feels ick by modern standards.

• Mike/Michelle/Mycroft/Adam Selene: see the above "AI" section for more detail, but this is easily the best character in the book. It grows. It learns. It schemes. It makes mistakes. It learns from those mistakes. Highlight of the book, for me.

• Manuel O'Kelly Davis: main character, exhibits minor growth, but honestly Manny was a pretty good guy to begin with and most of his 'growth' is simply being a good friend and family member. A good guy to get a beer with.

• Professor Bernardo De La Paz: The kind of idealist you want planning the broad strokes of your revolution. A 'rational anarchist' who shamelessly steals revolutionary ideas from Thomas Jefferson. Surely an entertaining guy to drink a beer with.

• Wyoming Knot: Woefully underutilized female character, after the first few chapters. Gave birth to a malformed child, so she divorced her husbands and swore off having her own children. Instead, gets her money from bearing children after artificial insemination, apparently a well-paying job on the Moon. Sadly we don't get any insight into the emotional trauma that sort of employment must unleash on a person. Once she marries into the Davis line family, she blends in entirely with the rest of the wives. A modern retelling of this story from Wyoming's perspective, digging into the untold female story of the revolution? Wye Knott?

Summary

The Moon is Harsh Mistress isn't perfect. But for 1960s sci-fi, it is incredibly good. Heinlein even manages to tackle AI, a notoriously thorny subject, rife with cheesy tropes and plotting pitfalls. Most importantly, like any good sci-fi, TMiaHM is about people and civilization. With some basic modifications, you could tell a very similar story in early 19th-century Australia, or Victorian Bermuda, or Singapore Island, or Louisiana, or the present-day (!!!) Islas Marias. Because great sci-fi is about ideas and people, not cool technology and space.

I would pay good money to watch a longform TV series about this revolution, hopefully fleshing out the female side of the story in a lot more detail. The story still holds up and it would be really easy to create at least 3 seasons of content, one for each section of the book. Maybe someday, once all the big streaming companies have finally realized that re-making existing movies and TV shows is kind of boring.

Endnote: happy zeroth birthday, Chip!

PS: Today marks the birth of a friend's child. They didn't quite make the July 4th date I was hoping for, which would have coincided nicely with a book review of TMiaHM, which features a Lunar Declaration of Independence signed on July 4th... but I guess July 13th is fine, too. Happy zeroth birthday, Chip!

If you've ever been annoyed by the quarantine bit, read on to learn how I deal with it on my Macs.

Application is damaged and can't be opened

In 2025, computers are an absolute necessity in daily life. As long as that's the case, software should protect the most vulnerable, including people who don't think about computers nearly as much as nerds like me (and likely you). The quarantine bit accomplishes this quite well: if you know what you're doing with a computer, especially a terminal, it's a minimal hoop to jump through. But the quarantine bit presents a much larger obstacle to a scammer trying to trick a less-computer-savvy user into running a rogue data-stealing application. That's good!

But the error message is bad:

Librewolf.app is damaged and can't be opened

Feishin.app is damaged and can't be opened

Librewolf is my web browser. Feishin is my music player. Neither application is code-signed by an official Apple developer (a privilege that requires a $100+ fee every year to maintain). Whenever I update either of them through Homebrew (an update method that prevents every application from constantly spamming me with 'UPDATE ME' notifications), I must pass the --no-quarantine flag, or I'll see this message. This also happens with releases distributed via GitHub for lots of indie applications.

Everything about this system? Fine by me, since we're protecting vulnerable users... up until this error message. My beef? "is damaged" and "can't be opened" are both lies. The application is not damaged; it has one single bit set that stops the OS from running it (never mind the fact that Unix already has the executable bit for this purpose, with a simpler, better UX). And the application can absolutely be opened, the OS simply doesn't feel like opening it right now.

Apple should embrace it's own awful behavior in the App Store and make the error message both scarier and more informative. How about this?

Since Librewolf.app is an unrecognized application, it has been quarantined. If you trust this developer, you can remove the application from quarantine.

The "unrecognized application" and "quarantined" wording is scary. "If you trust this developer" should dissuade confused users in the middle of a phishing scam. The rest of the error gives computer-savvy users just enough information to look up a solution, but not enough to lure your grandfather into the proverbial wilderness of running random terminal commands to comply with a scammer.

Permanent Homebrew fix

If the quarantine bit mostly annoys you with unsigned applications distributed via Homebrew, there's a fix. On a case-by-case basis, pass the --no-quarantine flag when you install or upgrade a package to disable the quarantine bit on your installation. But it's easy to forget this eventually. So instead, I recommend adding the option to your Homebrew cask settings permanently. Add the following line to your shell configuration (~/.zshrc on modern macOS, unless you switched to a different shell):

HOMEBREW_CASK_OPTS="--no-quarantine $HOMEBREW_CASK_OPTS"

Run ~/.zshrc, and you won't ever have to worry about de-quarantining a Homebrew cask again.

You can also add this to HOMEBREW_OPTS, but I've never had this problem with non-cask packages.

Personally, I'd prefer if I could configure quarantine bits for each cask individually in a Homebrew configuration file. But maybe it would be even better UX for Homebrew to always automatically de-quarantine files -- after all, if I'm explicitly installing a package, I probably trust it!

Sick of quarantining files?

For a quick fix, try right clicking the file and clicking Open in the context menu. This (usually) sidesteps Gatekeeper if your application has been code signed and notarized.

You can also visit the Privacy & Security section of macOS Settings to individually de-quarantine apps via a GUI. But Settings is slow, poorly organized, and buggy, so I wouldn't recommend it.

To remove the quarantine bit from a single file, run the following command:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine <file>

If you're sick of the workarounds and the hullabaloo, you can also entirely disable the quarantine bit entirely forever on your machine (until a major macOS update brings it back, unfortunately):

sudo defaults write com.apple.LaunchServices LSQuarantine -bool NO

has three people that they would consider friends, and the average person has demand for meaningfully more. I think it's, like, 15.

Sure. It's not exactly news that Americans are lonelier than ever. But Mark genuinely believes that AI friends can replace real friends. I'm not here to wax philosophically about whether or not AI can replace human contact. But this whole conversation does have me thinking about the ever-changing value of social media.

I've often seen social media compared to cigarettes. The comparison is easy; they're both impossibly addictive; people zombified by their phones are almost as annoying as people smoking a cig; both have deleterious health effects; a lot of people think that children shouldn't have access to either; and both are a problem only because of clever marketing schemes.

I've been playing around with Mastodon lately, and I used Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, and Twitter in their glory days last decade. Inspired by the usability of and lack of user-hostile dark patterns in Mastodon, I recently scrolled my partner's Instagram and Facebook feeds to see just how much things have changed since I left pre-2020. And that got me thinking: is social media in general the problem? Or is it just the twisted, manipulative, deeply psychologically problematic state of Big Social Media, or as I think of it... post-social social media?

To explain my thoughts, let's take a little walk through the history of tobacco.

The Origin of Tobacco Smoking

Tobacco smoking started with pipes and hand-rolled cigars (let's just call them blunts) sometime between 5000 and 3000 BC in South and Middle America. Aside from occasional experiments with tobacco-smoke enemas, tobacco use was largely pretty responsible; adults and children alike would mix tobacco with herbs as a cure for colds and coughs, and occasionally use it for religious ceremonies (or maybe just getting high -- future anthropologists studying life in 2025 would probably say that a lot of Americans use Adderall and marijuana for 'ceremonial purposes').

Tobacco reached Europe in the 1500s, but it wasn't until the early 1600s that colonial settlers first raised tobacco (largely with slave labor, largely with unsustainable farming practices) for profit.

Pre-1800s, an English King, an Ottoman Sultan, several Chinese emperors, several Popes, and a large portion of the Japanese shugunate all created early smoking bans. But in those days, only 2% of people smoked. In the 1600s, they simply didn't have the kind of mass-scale psychologist-informed marketing and advertising schemes that we have today. People didn't have the disposable income to buy cigarettes, nor did anyone produce enough cigarettes to sell multiple cigarettes per person per day. That didn't start until the turn of the 1900s.

The Dawn of the Cigarette

In the 1880s, James Buchanan Duke created the first mechanically-rolled cigarettes using a machine designed by James Albert Bonsack. The Bonsack Machine rolled cigarettes 50 times faster than humans, so by the mid 1880s, Buck Duke's American Tobacco Company was selling over a hundred thousand cigarettes a day.

It wasn't until the 1920s that companies starting adding additives like sugar and honey for flavor, and coloring compounds to paper to make their cigarettes look more uniform.

By the 1940s, companies started to add humectants (moisture retainers) such as ammonia compounds, glycerol, propylene glycol, and more to improve cigarette shelf life.

By the 1960s, it wasn't just aesthetics and flavors; science was figuring out ways to make cigarettes more efficient. Companies were adding burn accelerants like potassium nitrate and ammonia compounds to increase nicotine absorption. Everyone wanted a competitive edge to make their cigarette more powerful, more addictive, more irreplaceable compared to the generic alternatives. Just like today's arms race for increased vehicle size (for personal safety, of course!), every cigarette company wanted to make their product better. And just like with today's SUVs and trucks, winning that arms race made the product more dangerous than ever.

In 1964, Surgeon General Luther Terry published a report establishing a concrete link between cigarettes and lung cancer.

In 1967, the FCC applied the Fairness Doctrine to tobacco marketing, mandating anti-smoking counter-advertisements. The cause?

a law professor named John Banzhaf wrote the FCC and complained that under the Fairness Doctrine, TV stations broadcasting cigarette ads should be required to run anti-smoking public service announcements (PSAs) to represent the opposite point of view -- that smoking is a health hazard. The FCC agreed, and ordered TV stations to provide free air time to anti-smoking PSAs at a ratio of one anti-smoking ad to every five cigarette ads they showed.

By the the 1970s, cigarette companies were cumulatively enhancing their products with over 300 different chemical compounds. But more importantly, the marketing media machine was in full swing, showing cigarette ads on radio, on television, in newspapers, in magazines, on billboards, in the mail, literally anywhere you looked, you might find a cigarette ad. The inundation of cigarette ads became so obnoxious that in 1971, the United States actually banned radio and TV ads for cigarettes.

Cigarettes were successfully engineered for addiction, and marketed for maximum market penetration. At peak usage in the 1960s, well over half of the US population smoked cigarettes.

In the early 1900s, German scientists first linked smoking and lung cancer, and the world's first modern anti-smoking campaign began. So cigarettes are officially so unhealthy, even Nazis hated them!

To be clear, tobacco is bad for you. You really shouldn't smoke it. But if you roll a couple of hand-rolled tobacco blunts per day, or smoke a bowl or two of tobacco from a pipe, your risk is closer to your buddy who drinks one or two beers after work than someone who smokes a pack a day. To break it down:

• Two beers a day reduces your life expectancy by 6 months.
• Two tobacco blunts a day reduces your life expectancy by 24-48 months and increases your risk of cancer by 300%.
• A pack of cigarettes a day reduces your life expectancy by 120-180 months and increases your risk of cancer by 1500%.

So even smoking tobacco is by no means good for humans. But you know what's much much worse? Marketing tricking half the population into trimming a decade or more off of their lives. Before marketing and engineered addiction got involved, 2% of people smoked. Afterwards? Over 50%. It's hard not to see that we took a moderately unhealthy natural thing and turned it into a monster.

The Origin of Social Media

Social media started in the late 1970s with Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) and Usenet. LiveJournal made blogging easily accessible to anyone in 1999. MySpace and Friendster showed up in 2002 and 2003, respectively. The Harvard-only The Facebook was born in 2004. The Facebook News Feed, the first thing recognizable to a young person today as real social media, was born in 2007. Facebook Chat in 2008. Facebook notifications in 2010. The first News Feed ads didn't show up until 2012.

Early Facebook was one of the best experiences I've ever had on the internet. It was easy to meet new people through mutual friends. New people were constantly showing up and trying to build connections. Facebook Chat made it easy to see when other people were online (and actually online, as in at a computer using Facebook, not just 'online') to reach out. Links and memes were rare, at least, until memes started to take over everything. Most importantly, Facebook was social -- as in, it was a great way to socialize with real people who you might not bump into in a really rural place like where I grew up.

When I went to college in 2013, the combination of Facebook and Google+ made it incredibly easy to get to know dozens of people in my freshman class before I ever set foot on campus. Join a group, add some friends, reach out over chat to whoever was online to get to know them, rinse, repeat. Virtual socialization begot meatspace socialization.

Throughout my time at college, Facebook evolved in a negative direction. It got harder to meet new people on Facebook, despite the annual dump of 1000+ new students and groups for most classes. People stopped posting. For a time, Chat ditched the green 'online' dot -- and then brought it back because nobody thought anybody was online any more. But smartphones somehow made it harder to reach out via Chat, because you weren't actually 'online' if you had your phone on you at all times. If you saw a notification from someone you didn't know, you'd most likely ignore it and possibly forget to respond at all.

By 2017, the feed was so inundated with ads and made it so difficult to see updates from friends and family that I deleted my Facebook account out of frustration.

Early social media helped people connect through chat, life updates, photos, and yes, even pokes. It was unhealthy to spend all of your time on it, but useful in small doses.

As recently as 2017, social media started tearing people apart. It became unhealthy to spend much (perhaps any) time on it at all.

The Dawn of Post-Social Social Media

So what changed?

Post-social social media started to:

• increase ads beyond paying the server bills, to the point where they began interfering with the core purpose of the product
• remove chronological feeds, removing a user's ability to stop scrolling when they see old content. Reminiscent of a casino that lacks windows, so you can't tell how much of your fleeting life you've spent at the slot machine.
• introduce never-ending feeds of 'suggested content' (an in-platform ad) so those non-chronological feeds would always have something new to show users. Reminiscent of a casino's twisting, winding floor layouts that keep people from easily getting from point A to point B (how this is compatible with fire codes, I have no idea; even worse, airports like London Heathrow have started to do this with terminal stores).
• employ dark patterns to suck people in for as long as possible. Farmville and Mafia Wars and Words with Friends were the start of these low-value time-sucks. I can only imagine what they have evolved into, but I have no doubt it involves billions of dollars of recurring revenue from predatory microtransactions and most of that revenue comes from people with fixed or near-zero income.
• employ those dark patterns to stop anyone from leaving, akin to a predatory gym membership -- when I left Facebook, for instance, there was no way to find the 'delete' button in the website or app itself. Instead, I had to find the link on a separate site, put in a request for account deletion, and wait 30 days (without ever logging in accidentally) to actually get them to delete my account.

In other words, enshittification.

According to Meta testimony in a recent antitrust trial, the average Facebook feed contains less than 20% followed posts and the average Instagram feed contains less than 10%; that means that 80% of content on Facebook and 90% on Instagram is either a suggested post (an ad bought for a Facebook page or Instagram profile) or an ad for something external. Your friends, family, every business you actually follow, even your enemies? They share the remaining 10-20%.

What Can We Do?

In the 1980s and in many other countries today, it might be hard to believe that we could ever wean society off of cigarettes. But cigarette use in the USA has plummeted compared to those days. Gone are the smoky restaurants and bars. Smoking indoors has been almost entirely eliminated. Do hotels even have smoking-friendly rooms any more? Do rental car companies even sell smoker-friendly cars? Apartments no longer advertise as 'smoker-free'; it's just assumed. These days, it's even rare to get stuck on the sidewalk behind someone smoking in NYC.

So there is hope. We've escaped the physical plague addiction of cigarettes.

The worst thing you can do is to continue to use post-social social media. The sheer volume of advertisements on these platforms is unhealthy for human consumption. You are literally being brainwashed every time you scroll the feed! Don't intentionally consume marketing/propaganda from the highest bidder.

The second worst thing you can do is keep your post-social social media accounts. We know that network effects lure people in. We know that people don't leave the networks because they're afraid to lose connections with friends and family. Even if you never log in, keeping your account means that friends and family might not leave because they're afraid to miss out on you. If you absolutely must keep the account because of some recreational group, do your friends and family a favor: remove them as friends. If they ask, tell them that you don't use the account any more.

The third worst thing you can do is join a different social media that's more social, but prone to the same problems. Threads and Blue Sky? They're run by the same people who made Twitter and Instagram and Facebook so awful (OK, I can't blame Twitter entirely on Jack Dorsey, but he got it most of the way here). Fool me once, shame on me...

The best thing you can do is socialize in real life instead. Of course, you probably don't live right down the street, or possibly even in the same town, county, state, or country as most of your friends and family, so for the distant folks:

• Texts and calls and group chats can do a lot, but they're not ideal for sharing minimal life updates, or photo albums, or longer thoughts.
• Letters are fun. Every time I get a letter from a friend or family member, I love that person a little bit more. People seem to enjoy my letters, too, but maybe they're just being kind. Regardless, they're a nice way to articulate longer thoughts to loved ones, and if you store them, a fantastic way to reminisce on a relationship a few years down the line.
• Blogs, like mine, are the best way to maintain a presence on the internet. They prove you exist. They give you a place to voice your thoughts. People can subscribe via RSS if they want to know when you post something new. But blogs are public, and not everyone is comfortable with that, and even if you're comfortable with that you probably shouldn't post all of your vacation photos of your children to a blog.
• Mastodon is social media owned by the community, with no profit motive. There's a lot of nerdy reasons to love it, but the important part is that your feed won't fill with ads and start brainwashing you to buy certain products or vote a certain way. If you decide to try it out, feel free to give me a follow at https://mastodon.social/@ncontino.

And every time you open your post-social social media app to fill up 30 seconds of spare time in the middle of your day, think about the people 50 years ago who did the same damn thing with cigarettes.

Overall, I highly recommend the CC1. It is a well-priced, well-featured, reliable, thoughtfully designed espresso machine that, perhaps most importantly, pulls a damn fine shot of espresso and froths a damn fine pitcher of milk.

The CC1 does have some downsides. This post explores those downsides in detail. But my overall assessment remains: if you have the means, I highly recommend it.

Specifications

Let's begin with the basics. What is the CC1?

• measures:
  • 15.6" high (not including overhead space, perhaps 4-5", you might want for mugs on the top-level warming tray)
  • 12.6" deep (not including the portafilter; when mounted, it adds an extra 2.8" of depth)
  • 9.1" wide (not including space needed to use the frothing wand and reach the power switch, perhaps 2-4" depending on your steaming needs)
• two shiny plastic button-dials (buttons that also spin as dials) and a very basic LCD display on the front; a power switch at the rear right side; a steam wand control dial at the top right, near the front
• a 58mm industry standard portafilter with mounting hardware almost, but not entirely unlike that of the Rancilio Silvia -- in my experience, you can mount a Silvia portafilter... until one day it slips and you have to clean up a very messy depressurization
• a ~1.7L water tank, accessible behind the portafilter mount only when the portafilter is NOT mounted -- when mounted, you can only pull the tank out an inch or so
• a plastic drip tray with a stainless steel grate that holds perhaps a quarter of a liter, since the solenoid drains through a hole cut into the back side of the tray about 2/3 of the way up the tray
• ~4.2" of space between the drip tray grate and the bottom of the included portafilter; with a bottomless portafilter, this increases to ~4.8"
• a right-side-mounted, thermoblock-powered, single hole outlet frothing wand
• a 500mL stainless steel boiler
• 3 programmable shot settings, named "1 Cup Espresso", "2 Cup Espresso", and "Pod" (the names are meaningless and only serve to distinguish the settings)
• solenoid that drains lingering puck liquid out of the portafilter into the drip tray
• designed by Bill Crossland, who helped design the GS3 at La Marzocco
  • simple compared to Breville/Sage or Decent; more repairable and hackable than most computerized espresso machines

Design

Perhaps usage should come first, but I would argue that you (not to mention every visitor in your home) will likely spend more time looking at the CC1 than using it. Unless you hide it in a cabinet or have a devastatingly serious caffeine problem. As a prominent member of your household, likely in your kitchen, living room, dining room, or an office, the CC1 is... passable. It is not ugly. It is quite possibly generic. Espresso aficionados, myself excluded, will not be impressed by the look of the CC1. It is utilitarian enough that it does not inspire envy. But you will also not be entirely embarrassed.

Standards are high in the espresso machine design world. Rocket, Rancillio, La Marzocca, even Gaggia make handsome, even beautiful machines. Walnut gleams. Steel shines with a mirror polish. Glass tastefully bends light. Beautiful? Sure. Fun to keep clean? I'll reserve my opinion.

Fellow is bringing a new sense of minimalist aesthetics to the space this very year with a new, gorgeous machine. Grinders made by Fellow, Niche, Baratza, Sette, and Eureka are, at a minimum, clean and industrial, but often clear the bar to beautiful. Even utilitarian grinders like the DF64/54 look impressive in the right context. And of course almost every other coffee accessory adheres to that same spare aesthetic, from the V60 pourover, to the classic moka pot design, to a wide variety of french presses, to the new wave of intelligent almost-pourover drip machines, to the crop of gooseneck kettles whose sale price outpaces inflation by over 100%. Each looks thoughtfully and carefully designed, right down to the Stagg snake game.

Not the CC1. The CC1 looks a bit like a Gameboy, a labelmaker, and a Gaggia Classic had a baby. The side panels have give, much like the panels on an old Saturn. The LCD feels like an overstocked part from 1999. The button-dials are made of shiny plastic, which does eventually start to wear off. The portafilter is plastic. The drip tray, despite its top stainless steel grate, is unapologetically plastic. Even the "Crossland" logo font on the front plastic looks like the logo of a dead, long-forgotten office tech company you'd spot on the side of an unloved spare office coffee mug in Office Space.

In a way, the CC1 is reminiscent of some of the greats of the coffee world, though. The Aeropress. The Decent espresso machine. The Clever. None win design awards. Each is intelligently designed to use basic, simple materials to their best effect, minimizing weight, heat retention, cleaning effort, and potential drop damage. Sure, you aren't going to toss your CC1 in your hiking backpack and haul it 30 miles like an Aeropress. But it is an appliance you'll keep on a counter and regularly clean off. Doesn't it make sense to use materials that are easy to clean and maintain?

If you want a machine that is objectively beautiful, that non-espresso nerds and espresso nerds alike will fawn over in your home, that inspires lust and envy, the CC1 is not your machine. But if you can tolerate a rock-solid, reliable, and steady appliance -- like a refrigerator or a dryer or a lawnmower -- the CC1 is worth your time.

Workflow

The workflow of the CC1 is well-considered, with a couple of quirks.

Shots Shots Shots Shots Shots

To pull a shot:

1. Dismount the portafilter, pour coffee into the basket, and tamp a puck.
2. Mount the portafilter, select your shot setting by turning the right button-dial, and wait for the boiler to reach temperature (if it is not already there).
3. When the boiler reaches temperature, the machine emits a slightly harsh (but not especially loud) microwave-like BEEP. You are now ready to pull a shot.
4. Press the front-right button-dial (marked 'menu/start') to begin a shot.
5. Press it again to end the shot prematurely, or wait until you reach your setting's programmed shot time to end the shot automatically. The solenoid will drain the vast majority of liquid from the basket, emitting a faintly unpleasant gurgling sound almost, but not entirely unlike the sounds emitted by the Bog of Eternal Stench.

I strongly recommend configuring a long shot time, up to the maximum of 100 seconds, so you can always pull your shots long if you want to. Otherwise, there's no 'snooze' button to keep the current shot going, and the solenoid will drain potentially tasty long-pulled shots into your drip tray.

Fortunately, the CC1 isn't very picky. I've had success with multiple grinders, from a Orphan Espresso Lido 3, to a Knock Aergrind (!!), all the way to the home barista favorite Niche Zero. Shots pull reliably using the same grind setting, and the shower screen seems to do a decent job preventing the worst of channeling.

The programmable PID (and the always-on temperature display) only support Fahrenheit, which I suppose is over twice as precise as Celsius. But I like to keep my kettle on Celsius, so it's mildly annoying that they don't match.

You can configure preinfusion up to 5 seconds, and a 'waitting time' (yes, that is what the display reads) between preinfusion and shot pulling of up to 10 seconds. 5 and 5 work well for me.

I really love the on-screen timer that keeps track of how long your current shot has been pulling. Now that I'm used to it, I find it annoying to keep track of shot times any other way! However, when you're using a setting with configured preinfusion, be aware that both the preinfusion and waitting time 'count' as part of your shot time. So if you use 5/5 preinfusion/waitting like me, you may want to aim for more like 40-45 second total shot times, according to the timer.

Milk

The steam wand works well. Being a thermoblock (basically a heating element wrapped around the water pipe that connects the wand to the boiler), you won't get super-powerful steam. But you can froth milk beautifully, and since the temperature isn't insanely hot, it's both safer and a little slower, which honestly makes it easier to practice your frothing.

To steam:

1. Turn the right button-dial to the "steam" setting.

2. Click the right button-dial to begin heating the thermoblock.

3. When you hear a beep, the 'steam ready' icon will appear on the screen. This means the thermoblock is up to temperature.

4. Turn the steam dial clockwise to open the steam valve and begin steaming.

Maintenance

First, the water tank is a bit awkward. It's big, so you don't have to refill it very often. But when you do refill it, you should know that removing the entire tank is a big mistake. Instead, pull it out about halfway, and fill it up from a water bottle or a kettle. This way, you don't have to pull out the water intake or outtake tubes, and you won't accidentally crimp them, and you won't spill water from the tubes on the machine or your coffee station!

Second, the documentation and community is better than I'd expect for such a niche product. I've used the manual, some forum posts, and my keen sense of smell to replace a thermal fuse (twice!) and track down a loose gasket. Considering I've never done espresso machine repair work before that and the machine is still running well a few years later, I'm impressed. You used to be able to buy parts from Seattle Coffee Gear, but recently Pantechnicon Design has taken over distribution; both sources are good, small companies that you can trust. And thanks to Pantechnicon, the CC1 now comes in black!

By default, when connected to power, the machine is completely off, and none of the buttons do anything. Press the power switch on back right to turn it on. Fortunately, the switch is easy to toggle even if your CC1 is tucked under a counter with things around it. Even better, the switch feels solid and has no obvious wear after years of daily use.

After 5+ years, with minimal maintenance (occasionally running descaler through the system, using a puck screen to reduce oil backflush, cleaning when the machine gets dirty enough to annoy me), my CC1 is still running very strong, with no obvious problems. If it died tomorrow, I'd buy another. Amortized coffee drinks over 5+ years for two people translate to less than 10 cents per drink (not including the milk or coffee!). And I've gotten way better at pulling shots, estimating grind settings for different roasts, steaming milk, and pouring latte art. Not a bad buy at all.

For maintenance, you can access the interior through the top of the machine, under the warming tray, by removing a grate, loosening 6 screws, and removing a stainless steel panel. The interior consists of some plastic tubing, some copper tubing, a motherboard, a display daughterboard, and some wiring to connect all of that with the buttons, steam wand controls, group head, boiler, and display.

We began with a ride around Governor's Island:

Stopped for a cheeky pint at Three's Brewing on the island:

Once we realized the ferry ride (though beautiful) to our next destination, Roosevelt Island, would take longer than just biking up there up the Great Hipster Silk Route, we ditched the ferry, preferring the less-scenic, smellier, but more engaging route. Of course I didn't take any pictures of that route, but here's a picture of Roosevelt Island:

From there, we gave up on the "islands" theme of the day, since Randall's Island is a huge pain to reach from Astoria over the Triborough Bridge (for now). So instead we headed up the coast, visited Astoria Park (where you can at least look out at those islands), and then made our way inland to Singlecut OG:

After a pint and an afternoon meal, we made our way south through Astoria to Sunnyside, where we took a quick pit stop at Alewife Brewing:

Before long, we resumed our route on the Kosciuszko Bridge, which does indeed fulfill the promise of 'nicest bicycle lane in NYC':

Though I'm not sure I love the symbolism:

Eventually, we routed our way back through Brooklyn to a tasty burrito, which we brought home to enjoy. We forgot to put candles in it because we were really hungry, but you can use your imagination:

Of course, now that I'm older, I'm wise enough never to do that again.

I've had this written up in a text file on my laptop for a few years now. Given the announcement of new Pebbles today, I figured I'd share this, in case anyone else was inspired to use their Pebble again but got stuck on the Pebble app installation on iOS. Hopefully Eric & co will have Cobble up and running soon, providing an easier way to use old and new Pebbles on iOS. But for now, this works on my 13 Mini and served me well for a couple of years on my old 2016 SE.

If you still use a Pebble smartwatch like I do, you may have experienced this same frustration.

You downloaded the Pebble app years ago, when Pebble Inc. still existed.

Several years later, Pebble Inc collapsed. The app stopped receiving updates. All was OK.

Eventually, Apple delisted the Pebble app, hiding it from users who hadn't already downloaded it. Fortunately, folks who'd already downloaded the Pebble app could still download it whenever we upgraded phones or reinstalled iOS. Unfortunately, new users were totally locked out from downloading or installing the Pebble app, as were new Apple IDs.

Several years later, Apple finally removed the ability to download the Pebble app at all via the App Store, even for users who downloaded it back when the company was alive. The only way to get an iPhone to pair with a Pebble watch suddenly became... sideloading the app... which, unless you pay $100 a year for a developer certificate, you have to repeat every 7 days, because Apple only allows unofficial devs to sign an app for 7 days at a time. (remind me how we own our iPhones, after paying hundreds of dollars for them?)

Fortunately, there's still a way to get the original Pebble Inc-signed app loaded onto your phone if you downloaded the Pebble app previously through the App Store. It's still compatible all the way up to iOS 18, even on the newest iPhone, the 16e. I've never tried using the Pebble app with an iPad, but it might even work with that.

Get the App

You can follow this tutorial to download the Pebble app's IPA file from Apple using iMazing. To speed things up, skip the tedious "find the App ID" section: I can confirm that the Pebble App ID is 957997620.

Because I'm not 100% sure how long that gist will stay up, I'm repeating the important steps below:

1. Download iMazing.

2. Install iMazing onto your computer.

3. Plug your iPhone into your computer. Enter your passcode and 'trust' the computer from the dialog on your phone, if you haven't already.

4. Open iMazing. If prompted to back up your device, select "Later".

5. Select "Manage Apps".

6. Sign into your Apple ID. If you use a hardware key (e.g. a Yubikey) for 2FA, login will fail, never allowing you to use 2FA. To solve this, you must first remove your hardware keys from your Apple ID (when I did this, Apple made me wait in the corner for an hour for security/shame), then login using SMS 2FA.

7. Wait for a list of installed apps to appear. Note which apps use green checkmarks here (consider taking a screenshot) -- we can't use green checkmark apps for the duplication step later on in this guide).

8. Close out of iMazing.

9. In a terminal or Finder, navigate to ~/Library/Application Support/iMazing/Library.

10. Delete Apps.plist.backup.

11. Open Apps.plist in a Plist editor. I used (and recommend) PlistEdit Pro, which you can install via brew with brew install --cask plistedit-pro.

12. We need to add the Pebble app to this list. To do this, complete the following steps:

    1. Choose an app to duplicate and replace with the Pebble App. This shouldn't risk app data, but you should choose a low-risk app in case something goes wrong (don't duplicate your bank or password manager app!). Remember to choose one marked with a grey checkmark, not a green checkmark, in iMazing -- check the screenshot you took before to be sure.
    2. Duplicate the app's entry in the plist file. Right click the app entry and select Duplicate from the context menu.
    3. Change the App ID of the duplicate entry to the App ID of the Pebble app (957997620). You don't have to change the other fields, but I changed the name to "Pebble App" and removed most other fields.
    4. Save your changes to the plist.

13. Open iMazing and open the "Manage Apps" screen for your iPhone.

14. You should see a broken app entry with a default graph-paper icon that has the same name as the app you duplicated. Click the cloud-inscribed-with-a-downward-arrow on the right side of the entry to download the app. If you didn't log into your Apple ID before, you'll have to login before you can download the app.

15. Close and reopen iMazing.

16. Click the trash can icon next to the Pebble app to delete it -- unfortunately, the first download is always broken (I told you this was a bit of a hack).

17. Click the cloud-inscribed-with-a-downward-arrow button to download the Pebble app again.

18. Right click on the Pebble app entry and select "Install" to install the Pebble app onto your phone.

19. (Optional, recommended) Right click on the Pebble app entry and select "Export .IPA" to save a copy of the IPA file used to install the app to your device. You now have an IPA file of the delisted app, signed with the original developer account keys, targeting your iPhone's CPU hardware, signed for your specific Apple ID! This is only useful for your Apple ID, and only for a subset of iOS devices. But for your currently-connected iPhone, you can always reinstall this IPA file to install the Pebble app.

20. Follow the Rebble iOS setup guide (starting with step 2) to use Rebble's backend services to download and install watchfaces and Pebble OS updates onto your Pebble.

If you use an Android phone, your life is much easier: find a legitimate APK file for the Android Pebble app, and it should install onto any modern phone. If have a copy, if you can't find a trusted one anywhere else.

• 200% the length of the entire The Lord of the Rings series
• a similar length to all six Dune books (including Frank's son's not-very-canon trilogy)
• 2/3 the length of the entire The Expanse series
• a little less than half the length of the 5 published A Song of Ice and Fire books

All in one nonfiction book. All about one person. Reality is dense!

Despite appearances, this is not a biography. It's actually an epic fantasy series that happens to be true. A young man grows with aspirations of grandeur, gets shot down as a young hopeful idealist, turns to the dark side for power, wins victories despite the odds, betrays his mentors, smashes the corrupt status quo, and replaces it with an entirely new, different, but also corrupt status quo. And that's just the first 400 pages! I haven't even gotten to the bits that discuss urbanism, racism, unjust evictions, and theatre.

Any American with a passing interest in cities ought to know the name 'Robert Moses'. Since The Power Broker launched, Moses' name has (d)evolved into a slur for greed, egotism, lack of accountability, elitism, and racism. When I lived in NYC, most of my friends hadn't read The Power Broker. But somehow most knew that Robert Moses was "that guy who built the parkway bridges too low for buses, to stop poor people from visiting Long Island parks".

Perhaps that legacy is a fair one for Robert Moses, if you're forced to summarize his 40+ years of public service in a single sentence. But if you, like me, hunger for more explanation of how, why, and when he did that, The Power Broker will more than satisfy your appetite.

I won't try to break down all 700,000 words for you here. Instead, I'll focus on some of my favorite highlights and facts from the book.

Flair

One thing that Moses did well? Flair! Whether he launched a park, a playground, a pool, a theatre, a beach, a highway, a bridge, or his personal nemesis: a tunnel, he made a big deal out of it. Politicians loved this, as one of the best ways to win yourself votes is NIPL (noticeably improving people’s lives). Most of us can learn from this in our lives and careers: when you sink hours upon hours in something, it's OK to celebrate it! If you, like me, have a tendency to be a bit meek about your accomplishments, remember that you really ought to occasionally put on the ego hat and show some pride in your work.

Of course, you must remember to remove the ego hat at some point. Preferably before you permanently hurt the lives of hundreds of thousands of strangers and chop deep scars in a city with your "Meat Axe".

Pettiness

Moses, of course, was born wearing the ego hat, and likely died wearing it. One side effect? Once he became powerful enough, his wrath became terrible, his retribution swift: whether you were a random secretary (not even employed by Moses!) who brought him bad news, a politician who refused to play ball, or a member of the press who asked an inconvenient question, he would not hesitate to crush you. If you were lucky, he'd just spread rumors that you were a Communist and hope that destroyed your career. If you weren't lucky, he'd get you fired or physically punch you.

Oh, and if you committed the sin of being his literal brother? He might do all of those things, blackball you from your industry and public service forever, and let you die penniless.

Lesson learned: Robert Moses was a jerk. Don't be a jerk.

Politicians are Children

This book humanizes American political figures in the strangest ways:

• FDR takes every opportunity he can to take revenge on someone he finds annoying
• NYC mayors are exposed for what they really are:
  • corrupt fools (O'Dwyer, Wagner)
  • helpless children (Impy)
• Al Smith was a total bro with nepotistic tendencies towards his singing and walking buddies

Biographies of all of these figures provide very different impressions of their character. But Robert Caro isn't a guy who makes shit up. So I'm forced to believe both sides: these politicians were very capable, but occasionally acted like complete children. And it seems that Robert Moses drew out the most childlike tendencies in mayors, governors, and even presidents.

How the Sausage Gets Made (Urban Highway Edition)

Caro's depiction of 'relocation' (honest term: eviction) to pave way for massive projects in NYC hit me particularly hard. In the abstract, I knew that moving (tens of) thousands of people to build a new highway was a messy business. It takes time. Plenty of people get screwed over, mostly the people in the most precarious situations. Some people wind up homeless.

But Caro's descriptions of the living situations forced upon people during the construction of the Cross-Bronx Expressway legitimately gave me nightmares. You really need to read the entire chapter to fully understand, but one quote from Chapter 41: Rumors and the Report of Rumors ought to give you some small nightmares of your own:

Baby screamed; rat in crib.

If your interest has been piqued, check out Chapter 37: One Mile (and Chapter 38: One Mile: Afterward). You really need to read the full chapter to understand:

• the neighborhood character of East Tremont before the highway project
• the under- and heavy-handed way that Moses forced people out of their homes (even when they had nowhere else to go)
• the cruelty in Moses' refusal to consider any modifications to his highway plan to preserve homes and human connection (even when those modifications wouldn't cause any cascading problems in the project)
• the way that urban highways devastated neighborhoods well after the cacophony of construction ended

This is the emotional core of the book. If you've searched for an apartment in any American city, this will hit you hard.

Doing Things is Hard

Oddly, this is one area where the book builds empathy for Moses. I don't think that's an accident. Completing large scale projects in NYC is expensive, inconvenient, and necessitates compromise. When Moses started his public 'service' in the early 20th century, Tammany Hall corruption essentially ran New York State. Corruption, money, and power were tools of the political trade! And Moses largely mastered those tools.

Over and over again, the book reinforces that without the machinations of Moses, we wouldn't have a huge number of parks in Long Island, NYC, and even upstate. He is personally responsible for the vast majority of playgrounds in NYC. He renovated Central Park when it was full of garbage, bare dirt, and allegedly deformed sheep, adding baseball fields and paths and bathrooms. Without Moses, we certainly wouldn't have managed to build half the urban highways in NYC (and perhaps the rest of the country, since most other cities adopted the "Moses Method" at the height of his power).

Opportunity Cost

That last section might have you thinking that the world is better off thanks to Moses contributions. Parks are great! Playgrounds are great! Deformed sheep are scary! Highways kind of suck, but in a world where the automobile is the only way to get around, they are a necessity.

But regardless of how you feel about those various projects, Moses' true legacy isn't what he built. It's what he didn't build -- and what, by extension, nobody was able to build because Moses effectively controlled the largest sources of revenue in NYC and NY state from the early 1930s through the mid 1960s:

• subway extensions
• subway maintenance and facilities improvements
• light rail extensions
• light rail maintenance and facilities improvements
• tram extensions
• tram maintenance and facilities improvements
• playgrounds and parks in poor neighborhoods

Bad Things

OK, I might have lied a tiny bit in that last section. He also did some seriously bad things:

• he ripped up tram tracks and removing trams from NYC entirely
• he saddled the subway system with massive crushing debt, then deprived it of city and state support so even after he lost power, the subway had (still has) to dig itself out of a deep dark funding hole of interest and bonds and extricate itself from a nightmarish governing system
• he refused to add space for subway or light rail extension along NYC metro area highways, even in rural areas where the extra space was cheap and easy to come by, ensuring that generations would have no choice but to take an automobile to the airport and exurbs
• he refused to heat certain pools in public parks as a result of a strangely specific racist belief that dark-skinned people don't like cold water (seriously, who does?)

And then, y'know, the low bridges, the destroyed neighborhoods, the evictions, the misappropriation of city funds towards pet projects, the destruction of the last natural forest and last natural bog in NYC, the mental abuse of his employees and any city employees who got in his way, and Moses' (alleged) vampiric tendency to suck the will to live out of anyone with a soul who associated with him for more than a couple of years.

Losing the Plot

Even after he lost his power and positions, Moses couldn't understand why people hated him so much. Why? Because he lost touch. Nobody is all-powerful or all-knowing. We all have blind spots, biases, and make mistakes (logical and otherwise).

Contrast Moses with Abraham Lincoln, a man best known for revising his own racist beliefs. Whether you're the President of the United States, a powerful CEO, or a low-down dirty peasant individual contributor peon like myself, you need to be willing to a) admit you were wrong and b) learn from other people. Clearly you can get a lot done even if you aren't willing to do that. But if you want to do the best things, you need help.

Great Things -- Terrible, Yes, but Great

To quote a random Stack Exchanger, "The word 'great' is actually a lot closer to 'big' than it is to 'good'.".

Moses accomplished many great things. But they weren't necessarily good things. He's basically Voldemort.

You can Beat the Game; ...Should You?

Remember struggling to beat a video game for hours and hours as a kid, and getting stuck on a difficult level? I spent days stuck on certain bosses or puzzles. In many cases, I didn't figure them out until I came back to the game months or years later with a different perspective.

But I remember one case vividly. I was struggling with the Helm's Deep level in The Battle for Middle Earth. Time and time again, I couldn't defend the Deeping Wall, I'd lose a giant chunk of my army and heroes, and Saruman's Uruk-Hai would wind up slaughtering my peasants and destroying the castle. I lost, time and time again. Eventually I wound up editing the game file to get myself past that level.

But that playthrough was permanently ruined. I kept playing for a bit, but it wasn't really my army that beat Helm's Deep. I just didn't care any more. Ultimately, I started a new game, and went back to beat Helm's Deep legitimately.

Similarly, I once ran a Minecraft server for some friends. We played survival, built some cool structures, and mined for all of our resources, splitting up tasks to acquire cobblestone, wood, sand, clay, and more to build our base. Every resource we needed was an adventure of itself. We optimised paths through the Nether to get to the desert or ocean faster. We created a water elevator down to the ideal level for diamond mining, and designed an approach to mining at that level to optimise the amount of diamonds we could find in any given hour in the space we had. We created farms for high XP enemies so we could continually gamble on the best enchantments for our gear, and keep it from ever degrading and needing replacement. We created a set of special pickaxes with the Silk Touch enchantment so we could mine "clean stone" instead of cobblestone for building projects that demanded a more concrete look.

But one day I decided I wanted to build something out of obsidian, a material that's awfully tedious to mine. But I didn't want to spend all day mining that obsidian. So I gave myself a bunch of stacks of obsidian using the server console. Then I built my wizard tower.

That day, I lost my interest in the server. I ultimately destroyed the structure (manually) and revived the server months later. But the magic was gone.

Robert Moses built a sprawling, self-sustaining power structure across at least 13 authorities and government positions in New York state and City government over 45 years in public service. He found a true "hack" to fund and plan his goals: the public authority, an entity somewhere in between a government and a corporation, capable of selling effectively infinite tax-free bonds to leverage bridge toll revenue into hundreds of millions of dollars of government projects.

At the time, I'm sure Moses thought he was doing the right thing: cutting out the corrupt politicians, the NIMBYs, the graft, and the meddlers who pushed for favors. In control of the Triborough Authority, he could finally focus on his projects without all of those distractions!

But as aggravating and motivation-destroying as those distractions can be, they represent democracy. The will of the people. Those distractions are the (admittedly imperfect) way that the people have a voice in our government.

The day that Robert Moses made himself immune to those distractions, he walled himself off from democracy and the will of the people. Like the fabled BDFL (benevolent dictator for life) in software, public projects became the product of one mind alone: Moses'.

But no human being is all-knowing. Any single person needs those distractions to keep them on the right course.

Just like how when I played those video games, the fun wasn't the end state, where the thing was built and I got to look at it, or the boss or level was defeated. The fun was in the adventure to get those resources and the struggle to beat the hard thing, and the memories I made and the things I learned to get there.

50 Years Later

The Power Broker debuted in 1974, now 50 years past. At the time, Moses' legacy was apparent in NYC in a truly dark time for the city, when crime ran amok. The subways were covered in graffiti. Times Square exposed more flesh than the Naked Cowboy. The murder rate was an awful lot higher than it is today. At the time, it was tempting to lay blame for many of those problems at the feet of Robert Moses.

Today, after 20 years of safety and prosperity in NYC, it's not as tempting to blame Moses for quite as many of those social ills. But it is easier in hindsight to see how Moses steered the city for the last century:

• The neighborhoods of the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn will forever bear the scars of Moses' highways. Chopped up by Moses' "Meat Axe", neighborhoods, families, and friends never quite recovered. But the scars are starting to heal. Upstate, in Syracuse and Buffalo, Moses-inspired urban highways are being removed from city centers. The West Side Improvement has been improved some more. The urban blight that so devastated the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn has eased.
• Despite having the best public transit in the entire nation and remarkable walking-friendly density, NYC is still completely full of cars. Congestion pricing in the absolute heart of that city -- south of 60th in Manhattan -- was an is a controversial struggle. It will likely be rolled back due to federal meddling within days of this post.
• The subway stopped expanding in the 30s. A century later, we've spent literal billions to create perhaps one mile of total new subway. We also spent billions to create the AirTrain to JFK, which costs more than the subway and isn't even a part of the same system. The outer boroughs, including all of Staten Island, are completely omitted from the subway system. Building a new line on existing track to connect Queens and Brooklyn is controversial and will take decades if it ever gets built. There are no rail tracks whatsoever that go to LGA, only relatively inconvenient buses, even after spending billions to 'upgrade' the airport. The one proposal by yet-another-corrupt politician to connect LGA to the light rail network was so dumb, even train lovers couldn't endorse it. No politician has yet given the N extension through North Astoria or down Grand Central Parkway enough credit to prove itself.
• The subway has continued to defer basic maintenance since the 30s, and our corrupt egotistical government wasted our last big chance to fix it.
• Most importantly, for most residents of New Jersey, Long Island, Connecticut, and the Hudson River Valley, you need a car to visit NYC. Even if it's just to drive to light rail or a bus stop. That's a direct result of Moses' decision to prioritise highways over any other method of transportation. Even though highways scale poorly, don't support the throughput needed for the NYC metro area, and there's no good place to dump tens of millions of vehicles in NYC's downtown areas where people commute for work. As long as NYC and its surrounding suburbs don't work together to improve transportation (read: prioritise high-throughput modes like trains, buses, bikes, and yes, walking with your feet), car dependence will limit NYC (and the lungs of the people who live there).

There's plenty of other takeaways from this book. But these are mine. If the NYC metro area or America's car dependence interest you, I recommend no book higher than this one. The writing is clear. The story is compelling. The book is heavy, and will start conversations at coffee shops. There's also an ebook now.

Book Club

If you enjoy book clubs or discussions and none of your friends are willing to read this enormous tome, I couldn't recommend 99 Percent Invisible's Breakdown: The Power Broker. The podcast itself is fantastic, but this series is particularly good. Each episode breaks down The Power Broker into one of 12 (relatively) bite-sized pieces, discusses that section, and features a guest discussion related to the broad strokes. The hosts are intelligent and occasionally quite funny. The guests provide extra context. It's very close to what college literature seminars were supposed to be, and reminds me a lot of a previous 'online book club', the Malazan Reread of the Fallen.

1.5 years after the last security update for the Pixel 4a and its apparent end of software support and life, Google pushed an update that breaks battery percentage reporting, limits charging speed to 1A (!!!), adds obnoxious warnings to the UI, and permanently limits the maximum charge capacity of the battery. Many users report serious battery drain and capacity issues after the update, to the point where their phones are unusable.

• Even using developer options, you can't permanently stave off this update; you will eventually start getting notifications to download and install it, and you will eventually accidentally grant it permission to install when you're sleepy or not 100%.
• Installing a new battery may or may not fix the issues caused by this update; nobody has successfully eliminated all of the warnings and issues yet, even people with relatively recently replaced batteries.
• Google may or may not pay for a new battery installation; it's unclear what kind of costs you might end up on the hook for depending on the phone repair shop you go to.
• Google might give you $50 through a third party program that likely gets more than $50 of valuable personal data (including your social security number) out of you, and will likely take $50 of time and effort to redeem.
• The only way to fix this issue is custom ROMs, which Google has been gradually squeezing out of the ecosystem entirely thanks to services like the Play Integrity API, which prevents essential apps like banking apps from working at all on custom ROMs. Remember: most users lack the technical ability to install custom ROMs!

Many of us use phones that are a couple of years out of date. As the phone industry insists on removing useful features while at the same time inflating new phones to a seeming minimum of $500, older phones have become increasingly attractive. Using an older phone is good for your wallet and good for the environment (the most environmentally-friendly phone purchase is no new phone purchase), but not good for security, since you likely miss out on OS security updates.

In 2023, Google abandoned the Pixel 4a, deciding to no longer publish security updates for the still-popular phone (as originally announced, in all fairness). Many of us kept using the 4a because it ticks a lot of boxes that no modern phone ticks (the 4a is smaller than any Pixel phone since, has a very fast rear-mounted fingerprint reader, and has a headphone jack), and it still works quite well.

In 2024, Google left us alone. Many people explored custom ROMs like LineageOS and GrapheneOS to keep the security updates flowing, despite the fact that those custom ROMS have no way to fix firmware vulnerabilities. It was sad to see a great phone slowly sink into obsolescence. But through the community efforts of a lot of volunteers, custom ROMs have kept the phone alive. Of course, only a small subset of people are comfortable or even able to install custom ROMs, so plenty of people -- the vast majority, in fact -- kept using the stock firmware. Sure, we don't get OS security updates. But we can update our browsers, our apps, Google Play Services, and just about anything else on the device, so it's not like we're walking around completely exposed. Life was good.

It all started with an email on 6 January 2025:

Hi Nate

We wanted to let you know about an upcoming software update for your Pixel 4a that will affect the overall performance and stability of its battery. Pixel phones, like other smartphones, use rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that, over time, may experience performance, capacity, or runtime degradation.

In the coming days, your Pixel 4a will receive an automatic software update to Android 13 that introduces new battery management features to improve the stability of the battery. This update will reduce your battery’s runtime and charging performance.

To address this, we’re providing some options to consider. Please take a look and choose which one works best for you.

More details related to this change are available here. Eligibility criteria and other terms will apply.

Thank you,

Pixel team

This came as a bit of a shock to many 4a owners, some of whom have been using their phones since August 2020 without any battery issues. I know my phone has been in constant use since late 2020, though previously my partner used it, not me. Neither of us ever had any complaints about battery life, though it has obviously diminished over the last 3.5 years.

Reading more information revealed that, just two days after the announcement, Google planned to release an update that would "reduce in battery capacity and charging performance"... a phone that Google doesn't even support with security updates any more. A surprise to be sure. Not a welcome one, especially since the linked article is full of lengthy nonspecific corporate weasel-words that make me, a very technical communicator and developer, somehow less certain about the safety of my phone.

Fast forward to 8 January 2025. The update drops. Immediately, screams of cosmic horror (more than usual) issue from online communities of Pixel 4a owners:

• many phones are stuck reporting 100% battery forever, dropping dead without warning

• many users are reporting that their battery lasts significantly less than it used to; Update: many previously functional phones are draining up to 1% per minute after the update, and frequently get "stuck" at random battery percentages other than 100%

• charging has been permanently limited to 1A

• the update added a giant non-removable warning to the Battery page in Settings:

• the update added a giant warning notification in the notifications tray:

• the update permanently marked the battery icon in the top right with an exclamation point:

• users trying to redeem their $50 credit with Google are being forced to submit significant amounts of personal information to Payoneer, a highly legitimate trustworthy corporation that definitely won't sell or abuse my personal data or lose it in a leak eventually; Update: Payoneer requires a social security number. You should not give it to them. If you're not a US citizen, this also means that you have no way to redeem the $50 offer. UPDATE: It seems that non-US citizens can indeed redeem the offer. But you likely still have to violate your own privacy by entrusting a bunch of personal data to a sketchy third party.

• users trying to redeem their $100 discount on a Google Pixel device from the Google Store cannot combine the discount with any other discount (including most store sales, incentives, and employee discounts), must wait sometimes weeks to receive their discount code, and got bait-and-switched by a $100 price raise on most Google Store devices the day after the email announcement went out (after folks selected the $100 discount option, but before they received a discount code, effectively nullifying the discount completely)

The icing on the cake? The only way to disable OTA is via developer options. Which is fine for me, as I already take this precaution on many devices to vet updates for serious errors before I install them. Unfortunately it isn't something I can easily communicate to less technical folks I know who still use the 4a.

Of course, you can also permanently save yourself from these issues by switching to a custom ROM. Also of course, most users aren't technical enough to do that, and they'll instead be forced to update to a new phone and throw away their 4a.

A small number of users are likely going to go to repair stores to redeem the supposed "free battery replacement". Unfortunately I don't live close enough to a repair store to take advantage of that right now, and neither I nor any other reasonable person who uses 2FA for anything can go without my phone for two weeks for a mail-in repair. Hopefully replacing the battery will fix the issue, but some users with aftermarket batteries from iFixit and the like have already reported that the notification and battery warning remain.

It's also uncertain how this repair will work with third-party stores: if the Pixel 4a owner isn't paying them, who is? Google, presumably? What happens if they -- and they likely will -- crack the screen prying it off of the 4a to access the battery? Will my screen be replaced for free as well? Will Google compensate them for that extra cost? How do I know, or how does any repair shop know, what repair programs exist and where they can be redeemed?

I don't know. Nobody seems to. All I know is that pretty much anybody who was happily using the not-quite 3.5 year old Pixel 4a up until this point, who doesn't pay attention to online phone enthusiast communities, is likely now stuck with an annoying brick that will work significantly worse than it did before, since the battery gauge no longer works.

And I don't think that's OK.

I wrote this article to help non-bicyclists better understand bikes: which to buy, what features truly matter to the average rider, and what features only exist for the benefit of Olympians.

If you race bikes, you can safely ignore all of this advice. I'm speaking to people who just want to get around on their bikes, not people who want to min/max stats. Think of what I'm describing as the "Honda Civic of bikes". If you know what drafting is and you want to do it, ignore me.

What is Racing? What is Not Racing?

TL;DR: Most big bike manufacturers, including Trek, Specialized, Giant, and a few others, are 90% racing nonsense. In the last 20 years, only a couple of features have changed in a meaningful way for your average rider.

For Big Bike, racing is where 90% of the money is. Your average racer spends 10x what the average commuter spends on their bike alone. And then they buy kit to pair with the bike:

• special pedals
• special shirts
• special pants
• special underwear
• special butter to make their butts hurt less
• special shoes
• a nicer saddle
• aerodynamic water bottles
• nicer wheels
• tubeless goo every 6 months
• nicer tires for each type of weather, for each category of event
• electrolyte and sugar-filled gels that definitely aren't candy
• electrolyte-filled sports drink mixes

The list goes on; racers spend a lot of money. So these companies barely even try to appeal to anyone but racers, because racers are where the money is. Today, racing includes quite a few (completely separate) categories:

• road
• gravel
• cyclocross
• track
• triathlon
• bikepacking
• mountain (enduro, trail, and downhill)

Each category is individually optimized to death to drop every possible gram of weight and cut every possible square centimeter of surface to drop wind resistance to the minimum. That's great if you're an Olympian, or someone who gets paid $100,000+ per year to ride bikes. For the rest of us? It really doesn't matter, unless you're in the 1% of non-Olympians who occasionally win racing events. But that's a massive minority of people. Compared to all people who bike, the people for whom these optimizations matter number something on the order of "proportion of billionaires to the rest of the human race" or "proportion of people who get eaten by sharks or struck by lighting".

So I'm going to make my first strong recommendation: don't buy a bike that fits into any of the racing categories I listed above. At least, not unless you want to waste money on optimisations you don't need. The only racing category that seems to have any overlap with practical bike needs is gravel, because it's the youngest category, with the least racing infrastructure build around it for components and events. But the industry is catching on.

The astute reader may have noticed that I omitted one popular bike genre from the above list: hybrid bikes. I'm going to make my second strong recommendation for hybrid bikes: do not buy a hybrid bike. Hybrid bikes aren't designed to be good at anything. In fact, they're designed explicitly to be bad at racing! The big bike makers only make them to lower the price of the cheapest bike in their inventories to lure people in the bike shop door. To hit that price point, bike makers take a racing bike, then swap out expensive components for the cheapest equivalents. They are not good, because that is not how you build a nice bike.

Imagine if we built normal cars by starting with a $200k sports car, then swapping out components for the cheapest thing to bring the cost down. Replace those wheels with the cheapest alternative that only lasts 10k miles and provides no grip when it rains. Replace the 8-cylinder engine with a 2-cylinder. Swap out those fancy LED headlights for the cheapest halogens! No more leather seats. Ditch the heated seats and heated steering wheel and the fancy leather trim on the interior. And you're still stuck with a low-riding car with little trunk space, no rear seats, expensive bespoke parts, and an awful crash rating. Because a $200k sports car bakes in all kinds of design assumptions that you wouldn't make in a normal car!

Bikes are no different. To build a good commuter bike (or a good normal car), start with a completely different mentality: make it bulletproof, comfortable, and easy to repair. Racing bikes (and sports cars) start with a completely different set of assumptions, so the Big Bike approach to hybrids is inherently flawed.

If you're unfortunate enough to buy a hybrid bike or what Big Bikes calls a 'commuter', you get trash components. Basically, the stuff they sell to make their racing bikes look lightweight and sleek. You know how computer companies keep their RAM and storage sizes incredible low at the low end, or how car manufactures make that one model without cruise control so you have to upgrade for a few thousand dollars? Same thing here.

What to Look For

When it comes to bikes, particularly commuters or recreational bikes, simpler is better. What do I mean by that?

• Buy a bike made of metal, preferably steel or aluminum.
  • Carbon fiber is slightly lighter than metal, and stronger along one axis. But carbon is much more brittle under stress from every other angle. When someone squishes your bike at a bike rack, or you over-tighten a screw attaching a water bottle cage, or you crash into something, or someone leans against your bike at the wrong angle, you don't want your bike to critically fail in a completely unrepairable way.
  • Metal is cheap.
  • Metal can be re-used (the Allies built tanks from bikes all across Western Europe); carbon fiber inevitably ends up in a landfill and won't break down for thousands of years.
  • Steel rusts. If your municipality salts in the winter, or you live near the ocean, consider aluminum.
• Don't buy suspension.
  • Suspension requires constant maintenance.
  • Suspension is heavy.
  • Suspension is failure prone.
  • Front and rear shocks are not necessary for 99% of use cases. Even my mountain bike doesn't have suspension. And I live in the mountains and spend a couple of hours a day on trails! Only buy a bike with suspension if you plan on using it in the woods at least 90% of the time.
• Bigger tires are better. 1.5"-2.5" is ideal.
  • Chonky tires soak up vibrations from obstacles like potholes and cracks in the road.
  • Chonky tires provide more surface area for better grip when it rains and on gravelly surfaces.
  • In a rare case of racer-shit-being-good-for-normal-people, gravel racing tires are actually good. Vittoria mezcals are my personal favourite, but you can buy almost any gravel tire with decent reviews.
• Simpler brakes are better.
  • Rim brakes stop your bike by rubbing a rubber pad along the outer rim of your wheel. They are cheap, easy to repair, easy to understand, and work great for most use cases. Most people should use rim brakes.
  • Disc brakes stop your bike by squeezing a metal disc attached to the center of your wheel. They are more expensive, harder to repair, harder to understand, more fragile, and work even better than rim brakes for most use cases.
    • Most disc brakes are hydraulic: they use oil-filled tubes to squeeze the brake disc. Oil is silly, and really annoying to work with. Don't get these unless you race.
    • The best disc brakes are mechanical: much like rim brakes, you activate them by pulling a wire, which activates a mechanism that squeezes the disc. These are almost as easy to work on as rim brakes, but a bit more expensive.
• Don't buy a bike that requires batteries or electronics.
  • Electronic shifting or braking? No. You know how your phone, your headphones, your watch, your lawnmower, your car, and everything else constantly needs charging? You know how frustrating it is when that stuff lets you down? Mechanical parts work great. Electronic 'improvements' are just planned obsolescence unless you're the 1% pro racer who might win an extra $100k if you get that 2% efficiency improvement. Just don't!
  • E-bikes are just one half a word away from e-waste. If you buy a nice one from a nice manufacturer, and you know what you're doing, you might get something that helps you move around your city faster and with less sweat than an acoustic bike. But most e-bikes use integrated batteries and shitty parts, and cost way more than an acoustic bike, even after government subsidies. If you're reasonably fit and know nothing about bikes, you're better off with an acoustic bike. After a few months of riding, reconsider the e-bike. Trust me: the price of your acoustic bike is going to be such a small fraction of the cost of a non-awful e-bike, it's worth taking the time and investing the energy to see if you even like biking first!
• Fewer gears is better.
  • Fewer gears mean more reliability in shifting, both in acute failure cases (you hit it with a rock) and broader fail cases (you cover your drivetrain in mud).
  • Fewer gears mean a thicker chain, means less chance of failure when you rust 50% of the way through it.
  • 7 speeds are enough for most commuter needs. 8 or 9 or 10 speeds are more common today. A "1x" chainring with no front derailleur makes maintenance simpler, and is probably the right choice unless you live somewhere incredibly hilly.

After Buying

Now you know what to look for in a bike. But what should you worry about after buying?

• Find a seat that works well for you, if the stock seat isn't comfortable.
  • Find a friendly bike shop that will let you try a few basic saddles out. Take a couple for a spin on the bike. Get the one you like the most.
  • Brooks' saddles are lovely, but expensive. If you can't find a comfy saddle, they're worth a shot.
• When your seat is in the right position, your leg should be just about straight at the bottom of a pedal stroke.
  • Adjust the seat height to do this. You might have to get used to 'tilting' the bike to either side to mount. But your knees will thank you.
• You don't need special shoes.
  • Use your bicycle to go to normal places and do normal things. In normal shoes.
  • When riding around town, it's nice to be able to put a foot down easily at any time, like when a car cuts you off or you hit ice.
• Handlebars are the most important part of bike fit.
  • Get some cozy ergonomic grips, if your grips bother you at all.
  • In general, the higher your handlebars, the more comfortable you'll be.
    • The closer you get to "Dutch grandma", the cozier.
    • The closer you get to Lance Armstrong, the more uncomfortable you'll be (for the sake of aerodynamics).
  • Put your hands out in front of you, like you're a zombie hungry for brains. Take a look at your hands. Imagine how handlebars would fit into them. Most likely, some Dutch-style 'swept-back' handlebars would fit best. Consider acquiring some. A new set of handlebars should be $50 or less, and most likely won't require you to replace anything else. Just make sure you get a handlebar with the same width as your old set, so you can keep using the same stem.
• Fenders are great on a commuter to help with splashing water or mud.
• Lights are a necessity during the dark half of the year.
  • Rechargeable lights are good and cheap online.
  • If you never want to worry about a battery, dynamos are amazing these days. But expensive. Best used for touring bikes, or the truly battery-intolerant daily commuter.
• Kickstands rule, if you ever like to stop away from a bike rack. Do you go to the park? Get a kickstand.

Bike Recommendations

So, after all of this advice, what bike should you buy?

Like cars, you should seriously consider buying used. Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace have the best deals. Look for bikes with way too many pictures and way too long a description, because it means that the bike was owned or refurbished by a bike nerd. Avoid bikes with only a single picture, or with non-nerdy descriptions, because there's a decent chance they're stolen or sold by someone who hasn't maintained them well. Leave the 'hidden gem' bikes to the bike nerds -- you don't want to take that chance with your daily driver.

If you can't find a decent used bike, check out your local bike shop. If they stock any bikes from Surly or All-City, they can be trusted. If they only sell Big Bike brands, avoid them and order online.

There are a lot of bike brands out there. Some are Big Bike brands that you should avoid for the reasons I stated above. Most are truly shit brands who cobble together awful plastic components onto cool-looking, but poorly built frames. I strongly advise that you stick to the brands and models I recommend below, no matter how cool or well-specced a bike seems:

• The cheap option ($300 or less): 80s and 90s steel "mountain bikes" without suspension will last literally forever as long as you store them inside and don't ride them right after a fresh salting on a winter road. Trek's 830/850/870/930/950/970 models, the Specialized Stumpjumper/Rockhopper, and quite a few similar bikes from the same era are absolute tanks. And the best part is, the parts are all super cheap these days, so maintenance is as cheap as possible! I use a 1995 Trek 930 as my daily driver and touring bike. Those 7 speeds have taken me all over the USA and UK on trips. Thousands of miles, and I bought this thing for $200 during peak covid bike price scalping.
• The medium option ($1000 or less): Surly makes great, cheap (for their utility value) bikes, mostly steel, that last a looooooooong time. Unfortunately they're moving to hydraulic brakes with some models, and the prices have increased in the last 3-5 years a decent amount, but the Disc Trucker, the Midnight Special, and the Preamble are all fantastic value.
• Another medium option ($1000 or less): All-City Cycles makes great bikes as well, basically the same thing as Surly.
• Another medium option ($1500 or less): Trek 520 is Trek's best bike. It's called a 'touring bike' because you can ride it for thousands of miles without anything breaking. They call it that because they don't want everyone realising it's a million times better value than their awful 'hybrid' commuter bikes.
• Another medium option ($1500 or less): The Salsa Fargo hits similar notes as the Trek 520, though with a slightly more modern design.
• Another medium option ($1300 or less, but customisable to very fancy level): Tumbleweed cycles.
• Getting fancier: Stooge Cycles.
• The fancy option ($2000+): Rivendell is about as good as it gets for commuters. You likely won't get all of Grant's design decisions now -- threaded headets, older bottom bracket standards, antique wheel spacing, rim brakes, etc. all seem like retrogrouch nonsense until you've fixed and broken fancy new components a million times. Buy one of these and you can ride it every day until you die (old and healthy and with full pockets due to your reduced maintenance costs).
• The folding fancy option ($1500+): Brompton makes battle-tested, proven reliable folding bikes for folks who want to take a bike on public transit, into the office, and even into the pub without much faff. And, of course, they last freakin' forever. 20-30 year old bromptons go for prices similar to the modern equivalents because they basically never die.

There are other good brands out there. But most brands sell cheap plastic garbage that will break and wind up in a landfill in 5-10 years. All of the options above should last you a lifetime.

Conclusion

The bike industry has an insane amount of bullshit floating around. So many people will tell you that you need the latest tech from some special brand, or that you can't use something old because it's 'outdated', or that the lack of some critical feature ruins a bike. That is not true. Bikes are fun. They are inherently simple. They are inherently easy (once you learn a few tricks -- see Sheldon Brown and Park Tool's repair videos and manuals) to maintain yourself, and cheap to pay someone else to maintain if you buy the right things.

I see so many people get swept up in the deluge of feature churn I refer to as the sauce. If you want to race, I understand. Some people like that. I don't, but I don't judge you for doing it. But please don't push everyone in the racing direction. If you don't want to race, if you just want to get around on a bike instead of driving or walking everywhere, if you think a bike could be fun and relaxing, there is a better way.

On the seventh day of our journey, the sun returned.

We woke up at our cosy campsite in Greensboro and breathed a sigh of relief. I know it sounds silly, but knowing we had an entire day of riding before us with sunlight and no water pouring from the sky was a huge motivator.

We packed up the campsite, and set out for our first repeat business visit of the trip: Front Seat Coffee in Hardwick.

It's just too good a coffee shop, and Carol tipped us off about a brilliant pastry that they make better than just about anyone in Vermont: the Kwisatz Haderach Lisan al Gaib Chappa'ai, no, for real it's the Kouign-amann (pronouced 'Queen Aman'). Interestingly, we discovered that we've already had one before, at, of all places, Big Dave's of Conway, NH. And we very easily might have encountered one back in Denver, a city whose pastry scene is disproportionately dominated by Kouign-amann.

Anyway, it was delicious. If you ever find yourself at Front Seat, check it out. We got a ginger one; like all of their ginger menu items, it was the perfect blend of herbal and spicy.

After stocking up on fatty pastry calories and caffeine at Front Seat, we headed south, toward our next potential campsite, or possibly just home if we felt motivated or Vermont's crappy weekend campsite reservation policy got in our way. For reference, we booked every other campsite (save the primitive ones) weeks or months in advance. But we couldn't book a campsite for this night because Vermont State Parks requires a two-day reservation for weekends. And, despite being perhaps the most popular state in the country for bikepackers and bicycle tourists (just ask anyone who lives along the Gravel Growler route), Vermont State Parks still do not provide any kind of guaranteed walk-in no-parking sites for bicycle tourists. Because apparently nobody in the entire bureaucratic State Park chain understands that sometimes weather, mechanical failures, or simple distance prohibits bicycle riders from 'just finding somewhere else to stay'. Remember: when you don't need a parking spot, you can basically set up camp anywhere on a patch of 50 square feet of flat-ish grass. Not all campers need a picnic bench, or a fire ring, or any other amenities. Some of us just want to sleep!

We followed a lovely not-quite-class-4 road south from Hardwick to Cabot, rising gradually through the trees for hundreds of feet. Suddenly, we popped out of the trees and the road flattened out to classic smooth dirt. And wow! The views were pretty incredible. From this perspective, it was easy to tell why our first two days of riding were so brutal: all of the land south of Groton is nothing but hill after hill after hill after mountains. Truly some awfully lumpy country.

We descended down the hill in the blazing sunshine, only rerouting once due to an allegedly 'closed road' (is it actually closed? we may never know; there are a lot of abandoned dead 'road closed' signs in Vermont). And soon we entered the town of Cabot. Unfortunately Cabot is a lot less exciting than you New England cheese-lovers might imagine; I'm pretty sure Cabot Cheese Factory is the only business in operation there, making 'cheese factory tour' essentially the only activity you can do there. So we rode on, past the giant Cabot cheese trucks, past some highland cows, towards the lumps in the distance.

For lunch, we swung by an old favourite: the Marshfield Country Store, home of the [The Hot, Instagrammable, FOMO, Zoomer, Calzone, nearby Meg's Favourite Waterfall. This time, we only ordered a sub, and naturally picked up a four-pack of Alchemist's Heady Topper to-go. We did have to refrigerate that sandwich, after all! An older Vermont man complimented Meg's Brooks saddle; we bonded over a mutual love of desiccated animal carcasses.

After the Marshfield Country Store, the miles sped by incredibly quickly. Here, we rejoined the XVT trail (that we took at the beginning of the first day of our trip) at a point a little deeper into Vermont. From the south end of Groton State Forest almost all the way into Montpelier, the XVT follows, not a rail trail, but an old railroad bed. Which is basically the same idea, but it dates a few decades further back than the first US rail trails, and the state of Vermont has all-but given up maintaining it, and parts of it still allow car traffic for some bizarre reason.

But all of those details are mostly immaterial. What matters is that, despite the lumpiness of the terrain, the old railroad bed keeps grades at or below 3%. So we sped along at 10mph or more, way faster than our average speed on rolling dirt roads or singletrack, let alone crazy class 4 roads.

At one point, we were astonished to find a (fit and young-looking) guy driving a BMW SUV with Massachusetts plates down the trail at about 2mph. Followed by two off-leash dogs. He didn't acknowledge us in any way, let alone give us extra space or reign in his dogs. I can only assume he lost a bet, because walking your dogs on a beautiful day via car in Vermont is truly pathetic unless you actually have some kind of handicap.

A few miles into the old railroad bed ride, we stopped at a beautiful spot in the woods to split the first half of our lunch sandwich.

At this point, we agreed; instead of fighting Vermont's bureaucracy over staying in a campsite for only one night, we could just push on the remaining 40 miles into New Hampshire and sleep in our own bed. Even better, we didn't have a good option for dinner in Groton (it is a state forest, after all), so if we made it home, we could have dinner in our town, which actually has restaurants.

And so the race was on. We rolled along the old railroad bed at blistering, record speeds, determined to make it home to a warm bed before dark.

The rest of the old railroad bed in Groton was kind of weird. A couple of miles after our lunch spot, the flood damage was quite serious. It became immediately obvious why we didn't see any other bicycles on this trail: the ruts created by flooding were just too deep for most bikes. Fortunately our rigs are set up for class 4 roads, so we mostly rolled right through the damage. But in a few spots, even we had to walk or carry the bikes over several foot deep cracks in the earth. Crazy to see the difference from just two years ago, when the trail was full of people riding normal bicycles, including even a baby in a trailer pulled behind a bike.

We were even more intrigued when we came to a road crossing, and saw a 'trail closed' sign draped along the gate that blocks cars from using the trail. The sign faced opposite us, but we never saw any 'trail closed' sign when we entered the trail from the North end. So we kept cruising along the trail; if the state can't even bother to mark every entrance, and we're fully capable of riding down the trail, and we don't plan on suing the state if we get hurt, who cares?

We met only one other person on the whole trail: the guy who complimented Meg's Brooks saddle at the Marshfield Country Store! Turns out, his name is Jay (like the peak), he lives up in Burke, and he's a great conversationalist. We exchanged diner recommendations, and he got a hearty chuckle out of our name for the big-box store side of Littleton (Biggleton, if you're wondering). Jay, if you ever come across this post, I hope you had a lovely vintage boat ride down on Winnipesaukee. We hope to see you at the Coffee Pot in Littleton some random day; maybe we can convert you from the Littleton Diner.

After parting ways with Jay, we soon came to yet another camping area in Groton. This one actually uses the Old Railroad Bed as a road connector between campsite culs-de-sac, which has the pleasant side effect of ensuring repairs to the railroad bed from flood damage. We took advantage of the campsite bathroom, conveniently located right alongside the old railroad bed, and sped on, heading for the half-railroad-bed half-paved-road hybrid section of the XVT.

I feel ambivalent about this section. On one hand, the old railroad bed sections are really nice, and make up the majority of the ride. On the other hand: 302 is a truly awful road experience. The speed limit is 50, which means most cars go 60 in VT. The shoulder is large, but has a lot of random debris on it. And worst of all, it's loud as hell, because everyone drives huge trucks with poorly maintained mufflers. Fortunately, heading South on this section makes most of your ride downhill, toward the Connecticut River (which divides Vermont and New Hampshire). So at least we moved quickly.

We crossed into New Hampshire with the sun still high above the horizon. Only a few cars tried to murder us in the half mile of road between the border and the Ammonoosuc Rail Trail, so I consider us lucky. And then we found ourselves on a (vaguely uphill) 20 mile rail trail ride home. We didn't see any other bicyclists -- just a side-by-side (twice) and a father-daughter duo riding an ATV. We took one quick stop to eat the other half of our sandwich. We met a guy in Bath with a really cool house in an old rail station along the trail, who informed us that his pet caboose was celebrating its 100 year birthday this year.

Just as the sun slipped behind the mountains, we saw the lights of Biggleton and knew we were home. We cruised along the last couple of miles to Littleton, guided by our ever-present motion-powered dynamo lights, and immediately bumped into some friends crossing the pedestrian covered bridge into town.

A stop at Wildbloom, the best damn brewery in New Hampshire, followed by Schilling, the former best damn brewery in New Hampshire (but they have food), rounded out our trip, making this officially the Vermontshire Bicycle Beerpacking Route. The beer and food were well-deserved after a 60+ mile day with thousands of vertical feet of climbing, but catching up with our local friends was priceless.

Did you think the trip was over? Not quite! Check out part 8 for the epic epilogue to our tale.

On the eighth day, we rested. OK, I took a ride up to Linda's Lookout on a bunch of local black diamond town trails. And we went to Wildbloom again to catch up with friends (and hit up a local food truck before they close for the season). But we mostly rested.

But on the ninth day, we took our other bikes -- the touring ones -- over to East Burke, Vermont, for some dirt road (and unintentional class 4 road) riding. The weather was perfect, the skies were blue, the tourists were all heading home by early afternoon, and after a week of riding, we still hadn't flushed all of our bicycle riding needs out of our systems.

So we did a little loop on some dirt roads, singletrack, and class 4. We stopped by the Lyndonville Bagel Depot for breakfast. We grabbed some caffeine (and obligatory delicious donuts) at the best coffee place in the area, the Coffee Cabin (and learned that not only will they remain open all winter -- they're starting a basic diner in the same building as the Orange Rind!). I look forward to sampling Becky and Logan's take on the Crunch Wrap -- if their donuts and coffee are any indication, it'll be serious competition to the Crunch Wraps at Ranch Camp and Mad Taco in NYS.

We wound up on only one class 4 road. It was a blast.

Halfway through our ride, we enjoyed a rest stop at Dirt Church Brewing. A couple of beers, some food truck wings and fries later, we continued along.

We only hit one flood-destroyed bridge, which was easy to route around.

Only one dog approached us. Fortunately he was nice.

We finished up our ride -- and our 2024 Autumn holiday -- with a spectacular sunset at The Hub. Meg took some time to watercolor the view; I started work on some blog posts.

It was a very good day.

Conclusion

So, overall how did this trip go?

Some good, some bad. Our routing was a little ambitious, particularly for the first couple of days, considering we didn't build in any rest stops (because there weren't any!) and we were wild camping.

Wild camping went well. We found campsites each night. However, at the end of a long day of riding, a $30-40 campsite doesn't seem like a massive expense. And it's nice to know that you're unlikely to be disturbed by any animals or Creatures of the Night.

Our Moonshiners worked well, and except for Meg's (known, anticipated) brake pad issue, and my inadequately-tightened rack, nothing malfunctioned on us. But even though the Moonshiners are really fun rigs for singletrack and class 4, they feel like overkill on dirt and pavement, especially loaded. The 1x gearing is also just... not as easy as Meg's 3x touring bike setup. Throw a load on that, and some grades become really unpleasant to pedal up. I think we'll lean towards more touring-style trips in the future -- dirt roads, class 4, and light singletrack are fine! But pavement is an unfortunate necessity, and our touring bikes are just more fun across all of those different, essential surfaces. From now on, we'll reserve the Moonshiners for their strengths: day trips where we want to ride miles and miles of singletrack and dirt roads, overnighters on singletrack and class 4 roads, and of course all of our mountain biking. Because mountain biking is silly.

Weather is always unpredictable, but we got a pretty awful draw this trip. Easily our worst ever, with two days of serious rainfall totalling multiple inches across almost our entire route. I'm grateful that we didn't get soaked either of the first two days -- some of that class 4 would have been damn near impassible -- but two days in a row of rain really sucks. It definitely sours your spirits and detracts from the ride. That's probably a big part of why we didn't even try to stay a seventh night in Vermont; some of our gear was still wet, and we just wanted a warm, dry bed and a shower.

We had a lot of great social interaction this trip. Lots of chats with business owners, beertenders, campsite managers, other bikepackers, and locals. When I'm out on the bike, it's becoming increasingly easy to spontaneously chat with random people. I wish I was better at that skill in 'real life', but maybe this is a good way to practice.

Finally: I don't really understand how bikepacking works. Our other bikes are more like traditional touring rigs, even if we take them on a lot of rugged terrain. Touring rigs traditionally use panniers, which are easy to put on and take off. We both used smaller panniers for this trip, and -- as our initial gear struggles show -- we had a hard time trimming down our equipment to fit into those small containers. We didn't bring any of our cooking equipment. Sleeping supplies, water, and the bear bag took up at least 80% of our space. I suspect most bikepackers don't bother worrying about bears, but that feels irresponsible to me. And when autumn nightly lows can easily drop below freezing in Vermont, I'm not comfortable bringing my smaller summer sleeping bag. So I suspect most bikepackers omit a lot of safety gear for camping, bears (and critters like racoons), and get by with the smallest containers of water possible. Oh, and they probably don't bring many changes of clothes -- if they do, they're probably not bringing a full set of rain gear, or a change of shoes (Meg eliminated her sandals to save space even with our massive bags, by bikepacking standards). That doesn't even include all the equipment you need to fix issues with your bike, purify water, keep yourself warm at night, and batteries, headlamps, and more. God forbid you try to pack a book or a notebook.

All in all, I don't want to be a pack rat when it comes to my supplies. But our touring rigs are already pretty scant. It's hard to imagine responsibly packing much less than this. The only thing I could reasonably eliminate is water, but there are plenty of places where you'd have to pack more anyway because you don't have constant freshwater stream access like we have in Vermont.

So we'll probably plan a bike tour next, though I'm sure we'll route on some crazy terrain and bushwhack at some point. Maybe we'll do something on one of the Eurovelo routes. Perhaps we'll try Japan, or South Korea, or New Zealand. Maybe we'll finally get to Ireland. Or maybe we'll finally devote to a multi-month tour in the next few years. All I know is, we've really dialed in our preferences and abilities, and there's so much to look forward to.

On the sixth day of our journey, it rained again.

Despite our dry equipment under the lean-to, spirits were low. Given the intensity and length of the rain, we rerouted from our original sprawling dirt-and-class-4-road plans to instead use the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail. When it's insanely wet out, better to stick with the maintained options. Better yet, stick with the option that includes a coffee shop that makes some of the best pastries in Vermont.

So we headed downhill to the rail trail. Unfortunately, Meg soon realised that her front brake pad had finally worn down far enough, thanks to the grit and water of the past 24 hours, that it had lost almost all of its stopping power. Unfortunately, over the past few days, we had already done most of the adjustments that we could reasonably do with our multitool. Anything else would be really difficult (and not at all fun) in the rain. So we proceeded along the rail trail, Meg limping along with a single usable brake.

Several soggy miles later, we rolled into the village of Hardwick. Fortunately, on our way into town, we spotted a brand new bike shop: Riverside Cycles. We opted to skip the bike shop for the time being, preferring to warm up at Front Seat Coffee first. A few pastries and some espresso later, I took Meg's bike over to Riverside for a brake tune-up with some proper tools (and a roof). I am happy to report that they were incredibly friendly and capable. Despite not stocking compatible pads for Meg's weird Japanese brakes, they were able to dial the brakes in.

After successfully warming ourselves with pastries and coffee at Hardwick, we took the rail trail up to Greensboro Bend. It remained extremely rainy, but fortunately the rail trail makes the miles go by quickly.

At Greensboro Bend, we headed up a paved, but very quiet road to Greensboro. There, we stopped at the general store for some lunch, and headed down the road to our final Vermont Brewery: Hill Farmstead.

We relaxed at Hill for several hours, people watching and enjoying the vibes. Before long, the rain stopped. We grabbed some noms from the food truck (a lobster roll truck, of all things!).

At closing time, we picked up a four-pack of one of their many excellent beers, and headed over to our HipCamp: Broadfork Farmstead, for our third stay with Carol in the last five years.

We had an excellent chat with Carol when we arrived, special thanks to Carol for sharing all the insider details about the ongoing Greensboro Town Hall debate (in summary: certain folks in town don't want to use the old Town Hall for anything, let alone turn it into housing for middle class people; we all collectively felt that if you don't want the middle class to live in Town Hall, you should probably fix the zoning laws to allow people to live on less than twenty acres next to the town limits). We each took a refreshing outdoor hot shower, cleaned the worst of the muck off the bikes, petted some cows and goats, started a campfire, and relaxed in the last bits of -- get this! -- sun (!!) that peeked out from the clouds as the day waned.

We enjoyed our remaining snacks and Hill beers over the fire as darkness fell over the farm. The geese quieted their honks. The cows stopped mooing. The goats stopped being weirdos who stare at people from elevated surfaces.

We crawled into our tent and conked out, enjoying being dry, well fed, and warm, and even moreso looking forward to the promise of no rain in the next day's forecast.

Curious about the epic conclusion of the story? You can now find it in part 7.

For the first time ever, Meg made a video of our bikepacking exploits! Thanks for all the hard work recording, editing, and posting this.

If you like reading, check out the blog series.

On the fifth day of our journey, it rained.

Want to know how much? Go take a shower. Step out of it, but instead of drying yourself off, grab a fan, and plug it in pointing at yourself while you stand in front of your open refrigerator. Oh, and smear yourself with mud in every crevice to really simulate that gritty feel.

To get an idea of what biking in that is like, wear a raincoat and whatever other rain gear you own in the shower. Bring your bicycle in there as well, but don't forget to smear every part of it with mud, including the chain, handlebars, and derailleur. Then set your bicycle up with a trainer in your house in front of the open refrigerator with the fan going, and have someone slowly pour a bucket of ice cold water on you every 30 seconds.

Repeat that for 5 hours and you have our morning. Except you're missing the part where you need to navigate over rock gardens, through massive puddles, get slapped with brambles that are trying their darndest to overgrow the trail, and there's a little voice in your head worrying more and more that last year's floods might have permanently destroyed a part of the trail you're on (and nobody has bothered to report the state of it in the past year because nobody has even tried to ride this trail).

So it was kind of OK. It was sort of like the scene in the Chernobyl miniseries where a stubborn engineer measures 3.6 Roentgen of radiation leakage from the failing plant and claims "Not great, not terrible." Parts of the day sucked, but in retrospect, we made some pretty great memories. We ate some delicious burritos. We drank some tasty beers and tasty coffee. We managed to wake up dry and go to bed dry. We ate even more delicious grilled burritos. We even had a nice fire before bed!

... but that's getting ahead of ourselves. Back to the beginning.

Plop ploop plink plonk.

PLOP POP BLOOP blonk blink.

Bloppity bloopity poppity broopity plonk plink.

So sang the soaking wet tent rainfly as we lay under torrential rains, dreading stepping out of the tent and packing everything up wet. But eventually we gathered our courage, packed up camp, helped our elderly campsite neighbors hitch their (surprisingly light) teardrop camper to their car, wrapped ourselves in water-resistant layers, and got on the road.

Fortunately, our morning was almost entirely car-free. Unfortunately, this was one of our more rugged mornings: a ride up singletrack trails, through an abandoned farming community, and onto much-neglected class 4 roads to loop around the northern edge of Waterbury Reservoir and some particularly steep, landslide-prone terrain around Cotton Brook.

It turned out to be a fair amount of fun. A little cold and a little nervewracking. But hey, that's better than riding on the side of an interstate, which would be cold, nervewracking, and infinitely more dangerous.

So we pushed our way up through the winding singletrack, with only the squeaking of our brakes, the constant torrent of rainfall, and occasional splish-splashes of leaf-topped puddles as our soundtrack. We walked the bikes over a surprising amount of wooden bridges. And before long, we found ourselves at Ricker Farm, the transition from singletrack mountain bike trails to abandoned old road. An old laminated paper sign indicated that some trail was inaccessible, but we were pretty sure we remembered the same sign from last time. So we sped on, squeaking our mechanical brakes through the foggy, sopping wet forest. If you don't know what wet, squeaky, worn-over-days-of-class-4-road-and-not-totally-clean disc brakes sound like, let me describe it to you: it kind of sounds like you chained several mute clowns to your bicycle and you're dragging them along through the forest, and the only way they have to communicate their terror is through one of those classic squeaky clown noses.

So basically everything was going really well. We cruised (mostly up) the rolling hills until we reached the fabled 'turning point' where the road finally crosses Cotton Brook. As our wheels gradually turned north, then northeast, we held our breath, doubts clouding our minds:

• was that sign actually referring to this trail?
• are we going to have to turn around, wasting several more hours of cold wet riding to get right back to where we started today in Little River State Park -- before riding busier, unpleasant roads up to Stowe?
• are we idiots for following this road based off the 'passable' reports of a few internet randoms who claim to have ridden gravel bikes around the reservoir successfully?

Then we reached a giant hole where the Cotton Brook bridge used to be.

My dream was collapsing. The worst had surely come true: we'd just have to turn around, waste hours more of our time, and start again in Little River. My cold toes would remain this cold for hours more, and wind up subjected to the debris of paved roads to boot, before they could warm up in Stowe.

I was just about ready to give up and lie down on the ground in the forest. Even if Cotton Brook was a multiple foot deep whitewater rapid between twenty-foot walls of solid wet rock with no hope of getting a bike through it, I might have tried. The situation was dire.

But then I walked past the caution fencing, and poked my head up over the piles of dirt on the side of the hole-where-a-bridge-used-to-be.

And I saw a path, winding steeply down to the (not a whitewater rapid) Cotton Brook, and back up the other side. The dirt looked a bit loose, but no worse than what we're used to riding on class 4 roads. Maybe better, since some large equipment had clearly packed it down in the last few months.

So we took our bikes over the dirt hills, down the slope, through the brook (I provided Meg with a piggyback ride through the brook, since I wear sandals on these trips but she wears shoes), and up the opposite slope.

And then we rode our bikes (mostly downhill) to the town of Moscow, and along a dirt road right onto the bike paths of Stowe.

It was no more than an hour between our stream crossing and sitting down at the bar at Ranch Camp for a Crunch Wrap, some fried artichokes, and an A.M. Bowl. We warmed our cold feets and filled our empty bellies while chatting with a very friendly bartender, who recently returned to Stowe from Denver; Sarah, we wish you the best of luck!

We finished our lunch, and headed over to Stowe Cider for an obligatory cider flight. We both took the opportunity to dry ourselves off and change into some dryer clothes. And since Stowe Cider cranks the AC pretty strong, we then headed over to the nearby Woodland Baking and Coffee for some warm beverages and a slice of banana sesame bread.

Our spirits restored and our bellies full, we returned to Ranch Camp for a to-go burrito (for later grilling -- more on that later), and wound up chatting with one of the co-owners, Ryan, about our bikepacking adventures. He even took our picture and posted it to the Ranch Camp socials for some cred with the bikepacking community.

We took a quick stop at the beer shop in town for a to-go mixed four pack, and headed to our next campsite at Elmore State Park. Our route had a decent amount of climbing, but once we got off of VT 100, there was next to no traffic, dirt roads in surprisingly not-muddy conditions, and some gloriously spooky views of cows in the fog. Despite missing our first intended turn onto Elmore Mountain Road, our detour ended up being equally scenic and equally pleasant.

After a couple of hours of riding, we arrived at the park. The attendant, Bobby, was there and visibly excited about hosting bikepackers. As we headed to our reserved campsite, he mentioned that we might want to upgrade to a lean-to for the night. Stubborn idiots as we are, we said we were fine and moved along.

Then I tried to start a fire.

What felt like an hour of attempted firestarting later (who knows, maybe it was five minutes?), I looked at the forecast for that night and the next day.

Then I returned to the welcome center, upgraded us to a lean-to, and purchased a firestarter.

We picked up our fully-assembled (freestanding, fortunately) tent, carried it over to the lean-to, and I carted our supply of wood, branches, and twigs over to the lean-to in Meg's panniers, which fortunately feature dry-bags that can be removed (and, as it turns out, the dry bag holsters can fit about four pieces of split firewood each).

I re-assembled the fire, popped the firestarter in, and had a blaze raging in our fire ring within a minute.

We cracked some beers, grilled our burritos (note: if you try this, move your burritos to real aluminum foil -- not waxpaper-aluminum wrap liners -- before grilling; peeling the melted waxpaper off is not particularly fun), and soon retired to the lean-to. I set my head down on my pillow.

Plop ploop plink plonk.

PLOP POP BLOOP blonk blink.

Bloppity bloopity poppity broopity plonk plink.

So sang the roof of our lean-to as we lay under torrential rains, no longer dreading stepping out of the tent and packing everything up wet. Thanks for letting us upgrade, Bobby.

Curious about the rest of the story? You can now find it in part 6.

On the fourth day of our journey, we traveled up the mad river valley through a very steep, very beautiful set of mountain bike trails, the town of Waitsfield, our easiest (and funnest) class 4 road yet, into the village of Waterbury, and a (small amount) up the side of some nearby mountains to the scenic Little River State Park.

The skies were blue. The air was crisp (but quite warm in the sun). The leaves were yellowing before our very eyes. Conditions were damn near perfect for a bike ride.

We woke up to the soothing sounds of a steady stream of water tumbling down the rocks nearby our campsite. Strong sunlight provided the perfect means of drying out our rain fly. Despite packing up our tent rather quickly, we delayed leaving the campsite for quite some time; the pleasant kitchen area, an outhouse, and the warming rays of the sun were just a little too hard to leave.

But before long, we took advantage of the glorious weather and began our bike ride. A short stint down VT route 100 later, we turned onto Sugarbush Access Road, which we knew would be steep, but didn't realise would be very, very busy.

In fact, this road was so busy with the constant comings and goings of enormous trucks carrying heavy loads that we took the very first opportunity to turn onto some singletrack, sacrificing an easy journey upwards for an almost-mile-long uphill slog at 20-25% grades. But it was worth it for the peace and quiet of the trees. We questioned our decision a couple of times at particularly rough spots, but it was never long before the faint echoes of a giant truck engine braking or struggling its way up the hill made us grateful for the trail, the aptly named "Big Cranky".

Eventually, we made our way up to a ridgeline trail named "Plum Line" that took us along some ancient stone walls around some pretty massive sugarbushes.

Near Eurich Pond, we met a dog-walking amateur mycologist who seemed very impressed that we biked our way all the way up there with full bikepacking bags. We proceeded along the "Swell Hill" blue trail until we stumbled upon some trail maintenance. Fearing the worst, we asked if there was a way to get around: the guy driving the backhoe said we were totally fine to ride past, and even requested a photo of our bikepacking rigs that he could share with his parents, who've been looking to upgrade their setups.

A couple of wrong turns later, we found ourselves descending on some black trails when a strange noise started to come from my rear rack. Suddenly, the weighting skewed entirely off-center. We investigated to discover that the bolt and spacer on my rear rack and come completely loose and fallen off! Thankfully, Meg played a lot of I, Spy as a kid, so she found the parts incredibly quickly while I stumbled my way down the trail, blind as a bat. We replaced the parts, and then investigated the rest of the rack, only to discover that every bold on the entire rack had come extremely loose over the last few days. Guess we should have applied loctite. Anyway, we tightened up the bolts, then checked Meg's rack (the same model, but placed on the front of her bike instead of the rear). Her bolts were perfectly tight, so instead of blaming the rack manufacturer or lack of loctite, I must assume I did a poor job tightening.

After that, we felt highly motivated to go get some burritos in Waitsfield. We headed down more surprisingly steep, surprisingly rooty trails to link up with yet another set of trails, Enchanted Forest, where I assume the fun never stops. The first section of the trail, which crossed some swampland and power lines, was honestly pretty awful. It was just uphill enough that you had to pedal pretty hard the whole way, and just technical enough that you never really got in the groove of your ride. But once we hit the downhill, the riding was as bermy and flowy as I've ever seen it in Vermont. We just kept zooming downhill, pushing the endurance of our hands and cores to the max. But our desire for burritos was great enough to keep us motivated.

Eventually the trails dumped us out on a dirt road with yet more steep descent. From there, we only rode a half mile on some paved roads to reach our first destination of the day: The Mad Taco.

We gorged on some truly spectacular burritos (I highly recommend the Al Pastor; Meg highly recommends the Chile Colorado), then headed over to Lawson's Finest Liquids to hammer out the details of the rest of our route. At Lawson's, we were fortunate enough to stumble upon esteemed photographer and bikepacking router Thrashley, who was kind enough to suggest that we stick with our original route over a class 4 road instead of simplifying the route to ensure that we made it to Little River before dark.

I am pleased to report that our final route was both as excellent as Thrashley claimed and a wonderful way to add a maple creamee to our journey.

After descending down the class 4 road, we quickly found ourselves right in downtown Waterbury, where we headed straight to the Prohibition Pig, a surprisingly flood-resistant and unsurprisingly excellent brewpub. We enjoyed a light snack, nabbed some cans of beer across the street at The Taproom at Vermont Beer Collective (where the proprietor and I bonded over a mutual love for Okkervil River), and headed through a serious contender for "Vermont's most unpleasant roundabout" toward Little River.

The gradual climb up to Little River went quickly, but felt like it took ages as the sun slipped away. We stopped for a quick picture atop the nearby dam, and headed over to the welcome station. Unfortunately, 6:50PM is apparently too late for Vermont State Parks to staff their facilities, because the place was a complete ghost town. Fortunately, we were able to buy some wood via a nearby stand, but I was a little shocked that we managed to not see a single staff member the entire time we were at the park.

Our campsite at Little River was fine. The last time we stayed at Little River, we stayed in a really cozy nook on the "B" side. We basically couldn't see or hear anyway. This time, we stayed at a "non-prime" campsite on the "A" side because the "B" side was closed. We were a lot closer to our neighbours, and I consider us fortunate to have gotten quiet neighbors who let us sleep soundly.

We enjoyed a short campfire, set up the tent, and slept well. I only woke up once during the night, around midnight, to the sounds of much more rain arriving much earlier than originally forecast. Unfortunately, we would soon wake up to a similar surprise.

Curious about the rest of the story? You can now find it in part 5.

On the third day of our journey, we traveled through Northfield, Roxbury, and Warren, VT. Our day involved some general silliness in the hills around Warren, a stop at a lovely cafe, a stop at a lovely brewpub, a giant gap climb, and a couple of solid Vermont general stores.

After waking up early, we descended on dirt roads through the remainder of Roxbury State Forest. The air was crisp, the dirt was solidly packed, the leaves were yellow, and the grade was pleasant.

We happily zoomed through the miles until we reached our first (and only) class 4 road the the day. Unfortunately, this road was marked "ATVs ONLY" and "STAY ON THE TRAILS OR STAY HOME". We once again assumed that the (not government posted, on an official class 4 road) signs contained an implicit "except for ATBs, which are allowed on ALL TERRAIN", and continued on.

The first descent on the class 4 road was extremely steep, but fun -- the combination of heavy ATV tracks and runoff clearly contributed to a surface with a solid amount of slip. We continued along through a couple of intersections, not seeing any other traffic, until we reached a sharp left-hand turn.

After a couple hundred feet, I noticed we were now off course, so we returned to the turn to discover that the original class 4 road was blocked off and completely defunct, covered in the obvious detritus of years of neglect and disuse. So we turned back around, took the sharp left, and tried to see where it went. We were only a few hundred feet from the nearest road, with one stream in the way, so we figured the newer, maintained trail might eventually meet up. After a solid mile of riding across extremely rough terrain, the trail only traveled farther away from the road.

So we turned around, again, returned to the defunct class 4 road, and decided to bushwhack our way across the remaining few hundred feet of old roadbed to the nearby dirt road.

This turned out to be a bad idea. The road, as I mentioned before, was covered in downed trees, 10ish-year-old new trees, bushes, downed branches, and other undergrowth. Before long, even the original roadbed was difficult to make out among the ferns and grasses. And it wasn't long before we discovered the reason for the road's abandonment: an ancient, broken, concrete bridge.

Naturally, we didn't let that get in our way. We proceeded down the nearby slope, across the nearby stream, through a nearby bog, and up the adjacent very steep, very tall embankment of the dirt road. There weren't any difficulties at all. No blood was shed. No trespassing occurred. We didn't wind up covered in mud and muck, I never discovered just how cold that creek water was, and nobody groaned at all as they lugged a heavy, loaded steel bicycle up a roadside embankment. Nope. Definitely not. Everything was above the board and totally legal and normal.

Anyway, some time later, we found ourselves laying on the side of the nearby dirt road, covered in mud, muck, water, blood, debris, and pieces of plants. Before anyone noticed anything untoward, we hopped aboard our bicycles and rode downstream toward Northfield.

Perhaps two miles later, we found an exit from the ATV trails we were just on. Thirty seconds of unsettling and unhinged laughter later, we proceeded towards Northfield again.

We may have stopped a couple of times to clean ourselves and our bicycles.

A few miles later, we met up the with the main road into Northfield. A few miles after that, we cycled past Norwich University, and into town. Not long after that, we found ourselves cozied up at Carrier Roasting Company, enjoying a couple of excellent coffee beverages and a veritable horde of pastries.

After relaxing at Carrier, we headed over to the nearby Norwich University to explore and kill some time. We checked out the campus, appreciated the impressive local spooky season displays, lubed our drivetrains, finally threw out some of our trash, and headed back next door to Carrier to the highly anticipated Good Measure Brewing, where we enjoyed a hearty lunch.

At Good Measure, we had a lengthy chat with a horse enthusiast who, for the sake of anonymity, I'll refer to here as "Mr. Underhill". Mr. Underhill was the first of quite a few people who seemed genuinely interested in our trip, making this one of our most social tours ever. I especially enjoyed our conversations about how bike people and horse people really ought to get along better, since we all enjoy getting out on a saddle over rugged trails in the wilderness. And learning about various horse-riding events was fascinating.

After Good Measure, we booked it down the valley to our big climb of the day: Roxbury Gap. While this gap isn't quite as steep or as high as our previous VT tour nemesis, Lincoln Gap), we still reserve a healthy respect for any climb exceeding 1,000 vertical feet. We swung by the Roxbury Country Store for some electrolytes (gatorade and goldfish) and braced ourselves for a grueling ascent.

Turns out that this one wasn't too bad. It was steep at times, and the traffic turned out to be slightly more than we normally experience on VT dirt roads, but we made surprisingly good time cruising up the hill, and most drivers were really respectful. When we reached the top, we were genuinely surprised (and maybe even a bit disappointed) that we didn't have to climb another 500 feet.

The descent made it all worthwhile, though. We cruised through miles of absolutely pleasant, swooping roads with a gorgeous view of the Green Mountains and Sugarbush's ski trails, right to our penultimate stop of the day: the East Warren Market, a perfectly folksy old schoolhouse complete with tiny cemetery, an excellent wine and beer selection, and some seriously good looking sandwiches and burritos. There was a lot of local art as well, but we didn't bother with any this time -- our bikes are already heavy enough!

We nabbed a four pack of Alchemist and a couple of burritos, and headed down through Warren to reach our campsite for the night, a HipCamp that promised waterfalls, a fire ring, an outhouse, and a pizza oven. After two nights of wild camping, we were seriously hyped. Passing through Warren was a quaint as ever, and before we knew it, we turned down yet another dirt barely-a-road to reach our campsite. It turned out to be our favourite of the entire trip: a gorgeous spot, immaculately maintained, and even better, we were the only campers there that night.

We grilled our burritos and sipped our beers under the stars much later than our previous nights, and fell asleep to the dulcet tones of a large (but low-flow) exposed-rock waterfall.

I woke up a couple of times to hear some seriously dumb coyotes horsing around in the nearby forest; I know coyotes can sound scary when you're deep in the dark woods, but when you're cozy and safe, it's hard not to notice that they're basically a pack of children playing in the woods.

Curious about the rest of the story? You can now find it in part 4.

After a fitful sleep in the noisy forest, we woke up to a surprisingly warm morning with clouds so low I was surprised we didn't wake up in a cloud.

Before leaving the campsite, I enjoyed a hearty breakfast of peanut butter and trail mix wrapped within a flour tortilla. Perhaps not the healthiest breakfast option, but probably better than the honey buns (fun fact: a popular prison currency) provided by my elementary school breakfast cart. And when you're riding loaded bikes all day, it might even be justified.

We biked into (town), first on ATV trails and class 4 roads, then on a long, lovely dirt descent.

We stopped at the Chicken Wiggle Farm Stand, an establishment suspiciously bereft of both chickens and wiggles. However, the apples were massive, fresh, crisp, and delicious, and the miscellaneous snack collection was more than adequate. We added a pear-apple cider to our bag of holding, and soldiered up the first of many giant climbs of the day.

This hill started insanely steep, up a heavily forested cliffside, and gradually leveled out into farmland (that was still surprisingly steep). The journey continued uphill higher and higher.

For entertainment, we speculated about the nature of our upcoming Interstate 89 crossing: would it be a bridge? A tunnel? Perhaps a jump or a ferry? Or maybe more of a frogger situation? The speculation continued as we crested the hill and made our way into a nearby valley.

We briefly took a paved road to our first uphill class 4 of the day, but were met with a surprise: a highly informal "road closed" sign. As bicycle tourists, we assumed an implicit "to things other than ATBS, which naturally are capable of riding across ALL TERRAIN", kept calm, and carried on. We proceeded past a couple of houses, along a trail that only barely met the criteria for "rural driveway", and crossed a babbling brook via a shaky old bridge whose construction quality would have disgruntled even the most lackadaisical of highwaymen trolls. The road soon shot upwards a solid 15-20% grade, or maybe more when you accounted for the fact that about half of the road was missing due to runoff damage (presumably from the july 2023, december 2023, july 2024, or august 2024 flooding -- yes, we've had a rough relationship with water for the last couple of years). We half-rode, half-walked our bikes up the path, clipping a decent pace in case one of the nearby landowners took issue with our passing and tried to follow us up the road to tell us off. Fortunately, within a quarter mile or so, the runoff damage stopped, leaving us to content only with the average baby head rocks, treefall, potholes, and caterpillars one tends to find on your average class 4 road.

Once the runoff damage stopped, the road turned surprisingly rideable. Before we knew it, we found ourselves on a dirt road, queried for directions by a very confused CRV who took us for locals. The road continued a smidge uphill, past some slurry containers, through additional farms, beside an apple orchard, and -- much to the dismay of our betting arrangement -- across BOTH a bridge AND a tunnel to cross I-89. Even more surprisingly, the road crossing I-89 was dirt. Classic Vermont, defying even the most oddball infrastructure bet.

After our exciting crossing, we zoomed downhill on more finely packed dirt roads into the village of Braintree, which -- like many of the towns we passed through in day 1 and 2 -- had basically nothing going on.

So we headed up a hefty hill to our linner and drink destination for the day: bent hill brewery. This was probably the most brutal hill climb of our entire trip, featuring a relentless grade, a surprising amount of sun, sweltering heat, awfully large trucks, and empty stomachs. In the end, we made it to Bent Hill, an establishment of much renown, and enjoyed a hearty dinner of yellow curry, gnocchi, mushroom tacos, and several delicious beers.

The outdoor and indoor spaces were cute and well maintained, the bartender was friendly and curious about our trip, and the beer was of the highest quality. We left with completely full stomachs and hearts.

Unfortunately, our ride to our second primitive camping site wasn't the easiest. We backtracked up yet another very steep hill, then took a not-particularly-relaxing descent along dirt roads and class 4 roads.

I especially enjoyed our journey down a class 4 road that essentially no longer existed; the original road was clearly now a drainage ditch for runoff from the nearby forest (directly onto a dirt road that has obviously recently undergone a complete drainage renovation to deal with that runoff). Instead of riding on the road-turned-drainage ditch, we followed a (vaguely MTB blue) trail that followed the vague path of the original road across giant roots and rock gardens. Eventually, the trail returned us to the road, once things leveled off. We proceeded through a car, truck, and bus graveyard in the woods, past an actual graveyard, to finally empty us out onto an intersection with a main, paved road. At that point, I turned around to discover that the road we had just traveled down was very much marked Private, and that intruders were instructed to Beware of Dog. I humbly request that the owners post their warnings on both sides of their property if they wish intruders to respect their wishes.

From there, we endured a brief uphill climb into Roxbury State Forest, where we quickly and easily found a wild camping site that might have even been legal. We set up camp, enjoyed a simple snack, hung up the bear bag, and enjoyed a much quieter night of sleep.

Curious about the rest of the story? You can now find it in part 3.

Our journey begins at 12:01 AM, the day of our departure. We'd just finished up:

• wrangling all of our bags onto the bikes
• gear into the bags
• taking the bikes for a very basic 'shakedown cruise' on the local trails to test that nothing fell off and we hadn't put too much weight in the wrong places

Mind you, we sorted out plenty of gear and bags before the eleventh hour. After finishing up work on Friday, we figured we'd just attach the remaining bags (we configured the racks well in advance), put our gear into the bags, and hit up the local pub for dinner.

Unfortunately Meg's rack was mounted a little too high, rendering her (front-loaded) bike handling wildly unstable. Additionally, our setups wound up too small to fit either camp stove. We couldn't track down some of the extra-long voile straps we planned to use to secure the bear bag onto my rack, and the short ones weren't long enough to secure both the bear bag and the lock.

So I whipped up a pasta puttanesca-style mishmash of leftover CSA vegetables, Meg detached and reconfigured her rack, we eliminated all of the extra crap gear we didn't need, and we took the bikes for another test ride. Several hours passed -- nobody is quite sure how or why -- the sun set, and sometime around midnight, we felt cosy enough with our setups to hit the hay.

We got up around 7 AM, early enough to get a decent start on the day before the heat set in, but late enough to give us a decent night's rest. I whipped up some coffee, we finished off the rest of our bread, then we hit the road.

The rail trail from Littleton to the Vermont state border was as pretty (and uneventful) as always. Aside from two bicycle tourists in Littleton and an ATV in Lisbon, we didn't see anybody. After crossing the border, we were disappointed to find our favourite hole-in-the-wall breakfast spot, Hatchbox, closed on autumn break. But we trudged onward, slogging our way up the brief paved highway section of the XVT trail until we hit trails, then dirt, then class 4 road.

Along the way, we experienced one rude Prius honk, one possible coal rolling from a dumper lorry, and a whole lot of vertical climbing. Once we got away from the vehicle traffic, it was time to enjoy second breakfast. We popped a quick squat at a cute-ish creek on the side of the road, nommed away on some pop tarts and granola, and forgot all about the Bad Vibes.

A long downhill into a small town rose our spirits, helping us zoom our way uphill onto our first true class 4 road of the day. A helpful backhoe nudged off the trail to let us by; not 1000 feet later we found ourselves pushing the Moonshiners up a 20% grade of almost pure exposed rock, roots, and mud.

A truly ridiculous amount of time later, we reached the top of the climb. Fortunately, the way down looked significantly easier, so we sat down on one of the few non-posted property rocks, cracked a couple of beers, and assembled our first salami, cheese, jalapeño wraps of the journey.

Some relaxation, hydration, and libation later, we were ready to push on. This downhill lasted even longer than the first, bringing us all the way down to a hamlet containing a cute old church and an absurd number of power meters.

But our trials were not yet complete: once again, we pointed our Moonshiners up a pointy class 4 road. A group of heavily customised 4x4 trucks passed us, but it wasn't long before we caught up with them on the trails. One nice part of Vermont outdoor culture: even the 4x4 drivers tend to think ATBs are cool. They even complimented our dynamo headlights.

We almost reached the top of our penultimate climb when Meg's routing first led us astray. Instead of pointing us further down the only road in the area, I realised that our bike computer wanted us to proceed into the woods. Meg led a scouting mission through the weeds; initial reports indicated a clearly abandoned, but surprisingly well-kept roadbed. We made the silly mistake of trusting that things would stay that way.

As I'm sure you can imagine, the road lured us in using a couple of miles of flat, debris-free terrain. Then the 'road' essentially disappeared. We pushed on through some marsh, found the road again, and made it within 500 feet of an actual dirt road. Unfortunately, as any six blue whales stacked up end-to-end can tell you 500 feet is an awfully long distance across uncut forest undergrowth. Since I forgot to bring my machete on this trip, it was even worse. But, like any experienced world travelers, we prefer to look forward instead of lingering on the past, so we pushed our loaded steel ATBs straight through that forest and climbed up the roadside to the dirt road surface. I wish I could say that's the last time I'll use that sentence this trip, but alas; I cannot.

We continued along the dirt road until we came to yet another nonexistent road along the route; this time, the path led straight across a field. We surreptitiously scrutinized the sweeping stretches of soil, but didn't feel like bushwhacking across completely random forests and streams, so we circled back to another class 4 road that (supposedly) led into the state park where we planned to primitive camp.

Fortunately, this road existed, and was even (mostly) rideable. We dragged our sorry asses up the hill until we were 90% sure that we entered Washington State Forest. We hike-a-biked our way 200(ish) feet off of the very rough trail, set up the tent among some cairns, cracked a beer, ate some more salami cheese wraps, set up the bear bag, and spectated as night fell.

Before long, a side-by-side with a massive light bar and an ATV passed by on the trail, but other than that, we were entirely alone in the wilderness. We split a celebratory take 5 bar for dessert, brushed our teeth, and settled down for sleep.

Of course, that wasn't the end of our day. Because the forest was absolutely chock full of crunchy old leaves and dry twigs, we were on edge a huge chunk of the night. When you're completely blind in a dark, opaque tent under a rain fly, every crinkle of leaves falling sounds like a bear or a moose that's about to trample the tent. Every chitter sounds like a family of raccoons about to tear your bicycle to shreds. Every spooky unidentifiable crash sounds like a hash-slinging slasher on the verge of 'getting' you.

Fortunately, nearly 6000 feet of steep road climbing and 55 miles of riding was enough to knock us out despite the spooks. I woke up a couple of times in the night (or maybe I was just dreaming) to even crazier noises, but overall our camping site served us well. 7 stars out of 10 for the accommodation: the neighbours were noisy and the facilities were lacking, but I can forgive that since the price was right.

Stay tuned for our next episode, where we journey further into Vermont to Bent Hill Brewery and Roxbury State Forest for even more climbing, beers, and primitive camping.

Curious about the rest of the story? You can now find it in part 2.

Prefer not to read? Take a look at the video Meg made that summarises our entire journey in just a few minutes of screen time.

When we lived in Colorado, I thought mountain biking was ridiculous. A bunch of Lycra-clad crazies riding lifts to the top of giant mountains to try to zoom down as fast as possible on bermy trails that might as well be pavement? Driving up and down I-70 in bumper-to-bumper traffic to get to the mountain in the summer? Paying for a day pass just to ride your bike? What's the fun in that? I preferred dirt roads, touring bikes, and city riding, because to me, bicycling is all about having fun on your bike while using the bike as a means of travel. On trails, why not just hike and avoid the mechanical investment?

We moved to New England a few years ago, and I re-assessed. All of the (decent) local towns have extensive mountain biking networks. The land is mostly "loaned" to the networks by locals and maintained by community volunteers (or, in the fanciest towns, one or two underpaid professional mountain bike enthusiasts). The vast majority of trail systems aren't ski resorts, and don't have lifts, so folks actually have to "earn their turns" by riding up the hill. Many of the trail systems were built by volunteers, often decades ago, and could easily be confused with your average Appalachian hiking trail. Even the best trail networks often have just one zoomy, bermy trail where all of the Intense Fast Serious Mountain Biking lads hang out, lapping repeatedly to get the best Strava times. That leaves the rest of the network for the Not So Serious Not So Intense Not So Fast Biking folks.

So I tried trail running on our extensive town trails. I did a few rides out of Littleton to nearby towns and points of interest. I realised that there really isn't much bicycle riding to be done on rural New Hampshire roads. And what little there is, you have to share with giant trucks.

So I tried riding my touring bike (which is actually a 90s mountain bike) on the local trails. I found my way all the way up to the summit. Then I met some riders who looked at me like I was insane for riding a rigid 1x7 26" bicycle on a mountain biking trail in 2022.

I rode my bike home. I had a lot of fun. But I recognised a few things that day:

• mountain biking requires a swath of technical skills that I did not have in 2022
• everyone else thinks you need a $3000 full suspension carbon fiber bicycle to ride a bike around some rocks and roots up hills in the trees
• riding your bicycle in the woods seems kind of fun

So I did some research. I interrogated some innocent bicycle shop employees about the necessity of suspension. I learned about hardtails vs. full squish, and frame materials, and wheel sizes, and brake types, and enduro bikes, and trail bikes, and ...I kind of lost interest after that.

So I bought myself my first mountain bike. More money than I wanted to spend, but less than recommended. I got a steel hardtail that was marketed a little too hard at your average bikepacker-wannabee. The suspension fork was fine, though not top-of-the-line. The components were all pretty good, thanks to a pretty solid deal from a local bike shop owner.

That bike, Falkor, served me well for my first year in Littleton. I went from barely capable of riding down the simplest trails to descending some of the hardest blacks in my local network. But after all that time, something bothered me: I just didn't really give a shit about the suspension. Everyone insisted that it was irreplaceable. Folks would tell me about how they couldn't imagine riding even the most basic trails without it. But when I left my fork totally locked out on the stiffest setting possible, where the fork doesn't even move if you put all of your weight on it... it didn't really bother me. I often forgot to disable the lockout after enabling it on dirt roads to connect trails. I wondered, sometimes aloud, why everyone seemed convinced that suspension is The Only Way. Surely other people, more knowledgeable than me, had proven it somehow?

This curiosity culminated in a pilgrimage to the Mecca of Northeast weird woodsy rigid bike riding: Analog Cycles, in Poultney, Vermont.

My first visit, I took my hardtail, took a long ride around their class IV roads and mountain biking network, and camped at the shop's sugar shack. I gazed at the Moonshiner in awe, but only took it out for a very brief spin. Drop bars were foreign to me, and I already had a bike, anyway.

My second visit, I took a Tanglefoot Moonshiner for a test ride. I immediately started the fitting and parts selection process for my own Tanglefoot Moonshiner.

A year later, I sold my hardtail.

A year later, I wrote this post.

Design

The Tanglefoot Moonshiner is weird. Inspired by bikes from the late 1800s and early 1900s, very few modern bikes share its stack design and high bottom bracket. It's kind of a combination of the English roadster, a Team Fat Chance Yo Eddy, and a Salsa Cutthroat. The drop bars are lifted so high that you wind up sitting in a much more upright position than your average drop bar bike. You wind up spending most of your time in the drops, rather than on the hoods.

I can't speak about ride quality, tubing feel, and other highfalutin murky bicycle review concepts. I'll leave that to the bikepacking.com review. But I can speak to my own subjective experience: the Moonshiner is comfortable to ride, even for long stretches of time. It feels solid. It is certainly heavier than a lot of carbon mountain bikes out there, but it's not heavy enough to stop me from riding it up crazy hills all day long. The lightest mountain-trail capable bikes, like the rigid Salsa Cutthroat, weigh around 10kg. The Moonshiner clocks in at 13kg. So do pretty much all aluminum full suspension bikes. Carbon full suspension bikes tend to be a kg or two lighter. Those 3kg between a rigid steel bike and a rigid carbon bike could impact your times in a race, but they're a drop in the bucket compared to the weight of yourself and all of your bikepacking gear. Hell, a decent U-lock weighs in at around 2kgs, and I need to drag one of those along to prevent my bike from getting stolen in most parts of the world. The parts of a Moonshiner are all stronger, more repairable, and easily maintainable with a few basic tools at home. I'd rather take those benefits than trade them off for a couple of kgs that I won't even notice. So if you race, sure, feel free to complain about the weight of a steel bike. But in any other case, who cares about a 5% gain, at the cost of repairability and durability?

Parts

Pedals: they're orange. I try to smack them into things as little as possible. They're pretty easy to clean, and provide a massive sticky platform for my vans or bedrock sandals. If I have to bail on a particularly chunky section of trail, or I slip on a wet rock, I don't have to unclip to save myself. The anodisation has worn off in places, but is generally in good shape. 10/10, except when I manage to dig them into my shin, which fortunately happens rarely.

Cranks: My White Industries cranks are very nice. But it's annoying that you have to use a special bottom bracket tool to add and remove chainrings. Replacement chainrings are very pricey, and only come in aluminum. Very high torque spec, so much so that you almost certainly need a torque wrench. They look nice, they feel nice, but you should honestly just get a cheaper set of cranks unless you're totally married to White industries. They use 10mm self-tightening bolts and an inner 8mm to tighten the dust cap, which is a pretty smart design, because idiots like me won't get confused about tightening the dust cap but not getting to the self-tightening bolt itself. But you won't be tightening this on the trail because the torque spec is only barely reachable by human arms with a large allen key, let alone your multitool (which probably doesn't have a 10mm key anyway).

Saddle: I originally put a brooks saddle on this bike. Unfortunately, my bony ass is a weird shape, so it's not the ideal fit. And that created a lot of squeaking from my brooks. So I eventually got fed up with it and swapped my beautiful leather brooks saddle for a spare Terry Butterfly saddle we had laying around that Meg never ended up putting on her bike (ironically, in favor of... a Brooks saddle). I'd like to try a Brooks C17 at some point, but for now, the butterfly is fantastic. No saddle sores after super long rides, and totally water resistant? Sounds good to me.

Ultra Wide Drivetrain: It's partially my fault for skipping the expensive and somewhat gaudy-looking Garbaruk replacement derailleur cage (at first), but my shifting with my original SRAM Rival drivetrain never quite worked perfectly. This is the only bike I've ever had with serious, unsolvable, persistent shifting issues. And it would degrade over time, drifting depending on the day, cleanliness of the chain, and phase of the moon. I have fortunately since fixed the issue entirely by switching to a microSHIFT Sword drivetrain. That being said: I don't recommend speccing your Moonshiner with a Rival drivetrain, let alone exceeding the spec of the Rival derailleur the way that Analog likes to. SRAM is doing some pretty trashy things anyway, pushing more and more proprietary standards and raising their price points, so you might as well just avoid them altogether. microSHIFT seems like a great, small company that's doing a great job with affordable 9 and 10 speed non-electric gravel drivetrains, so take a look there first unless you truly need something at the top 1% of performance. Nobody needs to waste money on replacement wear parts for a SRAM drivetrain anymore, when microSHIFT performs well enough for 99% of bicycles.

Brakes: This is my first experience with Paul Klampers, and they are easily the best brakes I've ever used. Strong, reliant braking, easily tweaked to be as strong (or as gradual) as you prefer. Easy to adjust without a multitool!. Easy to replace the pads. Easy to clean. Easy to replace the wires. No hydraulic fluid to freeze up, spill everywhere, or bleed. And damn do they look sharp.

Cable Stops: I never thought I'd actually mention this in a review, but I seriously recommend Forager cable cherries. You'll never have to buy a brake cable ferrule again! They also look better than ferrules, and you can reuse them. Note: these require the tiniest, strangest-sized allen key you've ever seen, 1.5mm IIRC. And of course they're 1000x the price of ferrules. But at least you'll waste less metal when you replace cables!

Handlebars: My Moonshiner is a drop bar mountain bike. I've tried drop bars on traditional mountain bikes, and they aren't great. They're too low, so they wind up hurting my back and pushing way too much of my weight onto the front tire of the bike. That can be nice on climbs, but feels downright dangerous when you zoom downhill. The tall stack on the Moonshiner puts drop bars high. Really high. So high, you can comfortably hang out in the drops all the time. It takes some getting used to, but it's really really cozy. And you can always hop up onto the hoods or the top bar to change things up if you start to get sore. I could seriously ride this thing around all day. (I do!) Because this setup has a variety of comfortable hand positions, it's great for trips long and short, speeds fast and slow. Flat bars now feel cheap and awkward when I ride other mountain bikes.

Riding around on old-school New England trails has showed me another benefit of drop bars: drop bars, even flared gravel ones, are significantly narrower than modern mountain bike flat bars. On tight mountain bike trails built for smaller 90s bicycles, the trees have grown thicker over the decades, narrowing the trail. I've encountered trials that I literally could not ride on my hardtail because the trees are too tight for an 800mm handlebar. But the Moonshiner is thin enough to squeeze through with no problem.

Handlebar Tape: My Moonshiner originally used corduroy fabric bar tape. It felt great, looked great, but loses serious points for durability. As sweat and rain seeped in, parts of the tape turned black, wore down to lose their texture entirely, and started to separate and even became threadbare, exposing the underlying gel. I swapped the original tape out for some (Meg-wrapped -- thank you!) Brooks tape, and I couldn't be happier with it. I worry a little about what's in this tape, because it lasts forever. Over a year later, it still looks brand new. Some kind of radioactive material? Pure cancer-inducing plastic? But hey, at least I won't have to replace it any time soon.

Shifters and Brake Levers: My original SRAM Rival shifters and brake levers felt good. Solid texture, ergonomics, and materials. Upshifting was a mite tricky, since it shares a lever with downshifting -- push it to upshift, push it harder to downshift. It's easy to accidentally turn upshifts into downshifts on those levers on a mountain bike trail as you're zooming down (or crawling up) a trail. But it worked well overall. My replacement microSHIFT Sword shifters and brake levers use separate buttons for up and downshifts. The down one feels a little loose, but it's clearly an intentional part of the design, so I'll give it a pass. The hoods have a pleasing shape, if a bit bigger than the rival levers, but they overall serve me well and feel very comfortable on the trail. Full points to both sets of levers.

Stack and Stem: Most modern bikes use stems that position the handlebars at least a couple of inches in front of the stack. My Moonshiner uses a custom stem called the creemee stem which holds your handlebars right on top like a dollop of soft serve ice cream on a cone. It's hard to say how much the "zero reach" stem matters, but the handling on my moonshiner is superior to every other mountain bike I've ever ridden. I can whip my front wheel around extremely easily to dodge obstacles on the trail, cutting precise, surgical paths when I want to. And when I'm zooming down a hill, it doesn't feel too touchy. Is it the zero-reach? Is it the drop bars? All of that moonshine? I don't know, but it slaps.

Dynamo Lights: Not necessary. But it fills me with joy to think that if I ever need a front and rear light or a cell phone charge, all I have to do is flip a switch. It's nice for bikepacking. It makes me feel safer when I connect trails with roads, or ride to nearby trail systems from my home. It's comforting on rides around the winter solstice, when it sometimes feels like we don't have a sun at all. The Sinewave Beacon has served me well for years, providing more than enough light to ride as fast as I ever want to at night, first on my touring bike, now on my Moonshiner. My rear light is visible and reliant. And I even got to solder it all myself, learning a thing or two about electric wiring and coaxial connectors as I did it. If you have the means, I highly recommend it.

Paint: My Moonshiner's paint is noticeably easier to scuff and wear completely off than any other bike I've ever had. Just from using a front bag that pinned some cables to the head tube, I've managed to wear off a huge chunk of paint on the head tube all the way to raw steel. A section of the downtube has worn down to raw steel as well, presumably from a frame bag, though I've only put frame bags on the bike for a fraction of it's life. The drive-side chainstay and seatstay are scuffed to hell and back after a derailleur-breaking incident where I lacked a chain tool, so I had to dangle the chain and derailleur off of the frame for a mile back to my house. This frame may be for life, but this paint job? no way in hell is it going to last 29 years like the setup on my touring bike has, or even the 5 years that my bikepacking-oriented hardtail (used very similarly, only scratched from glacial errata strikes on the rear triangle) did.

Tires: My 3" Terevail Coronados are more than enough on mountain biking trails and class 4 roads, providing plenty of grip unless it's super wet out, and plenty of cushion on the rugged stuff. Big enough to provide some float, or grip, or something along those lines in mud puddles. I could probably go down to a 2.5" tire or so before I started to feel outclassed by local terrain. They feel a little big and clunky on the most boring terrain: roads and rail trails. But they're not as knobbly as some MTB tires, and without suspension, that stuff is bearable for a few miles. These tires are absolutely perfect for chonky Vermont dirt roads, providing the cushion you need to ride over hefty potholes and washboards. Also big enough to ride on fat tire groomed snow trails when conditions are optimal without sinking in at all. Beware: many trail networks require 3.5-3.7" tires, so it's up to you if you want to risk pissing anyone off. It's unlikely that anyone is going to take calipers out to measure your tire, but I've definitely gotten some looks from the most judgmental locals. In general, I don't think it's a big deal if I'm not sinking into the trail. But I'm also very cautious to not ride when we're cracking above the freezing point with groomed trails. When in doubt, don't be a jerk.

Wheel Stuff: My rear hub works well, and most importantly, is silent. My SON28 front dynamo hub is amazing and rock-solid, just like the one on my touring bike. Rims are rims. I have velocity blunts; they're aluminum, and quite wide. When you smack them into things, they sometimes dent, but are very unlikely to crack unless you get hit by a train or something, in which case you have much bigger problems. When they bend, you can bend them back, and everything works the same as it ever was. That's my aluminium rim sales pitch. Disclaimer: 'bending back' doesn't get things quite perfect enough when it comes to tubeless tires. For those, you should probably just go carbon and try not to be the idiot who cracks his rims. Personally, I don't find tubeless worthwhile. It's a lot of goo and a lot of pain when you want to swap tires, and I don't notice any improvement in ride quality. But if you live somewhere with a lot of cactus or goats head thorns or have a really mean cat with really sharp claws, I understand that it could be worthwhile.

Vibes

I really don't understand "stiff" vs "flexy" frames, how to tell the difference between different tubing, and how geometry influences your bicycle ride. I'm not sure anyone really does. But I can tell you that this bicycle is damn comfortable, even when you ride it over brutal roots, rocks, and anything else trail systems throw at you. Comparable to a full suspension bicycle in many ways, though you have to know how to ride it -- unlike a full-suspension bicycle, you can't just bomb right at any path you choose. You have to be a little more strategic. Anyway, my hands rarely ache, I never get any of those "vibration jitters" that I feel on aluminum bikes, it's light enough for me to pick up and carry over downed trees and through rivers pretty easily, and the frame hasn't cracked or rusted out yet. Score one for steel.

Enjoy my photo gallery of pretty Moonshiner pics below:

What is Moonshining?

Riding 365 days a year, on the same bike, on the same trails.

Using one bicycle to explore class IV roads in Vermont, connect mountain biking trail networks, go on bikepacking trips, and ride my local trails.

In 2024, Northern New England barely gets a month total of significant snow on the ground. Torrential downpours routinely render trail networks a series of loosely-connected mud puddles throughout the summer. I've never gone more than two weeks without hitting the local trails on a normal mountain bike. I ride in October, November, December, January, February, March, and April. I ride in the summer. I ride on snow. I ride through mud puddles. And the Moonshiner makes all of that fun.

To me, Moonshining is about two things:

• having fun on my bike
• DIY

Having a steel bike full of well-made components that will last me basically forever makes me happy. I enjoy learning how to maintain my bike. I don't care about suspension, or fragile carbon parts. I'm perfectly happy using mechanical brakes that I can tune in my own home and paying the 3kg weight cost of steel and aluminum parts. I don't race, and I don't care about speed. I think it's cool to support small, often USA-local brands that make really cool parts for bikes that you cannot get anywhere else (see: my dynamo light, my cranks, my rims, and my stem).

If that sounds reasonable to you, maybe you should visit Analog down in Poultney and take a Moonshiner (or a Hardtack, the Moonshiner's lighter little brother) for a spin. If that doesn't sound reasonable to you, ask your local bike shop about demoing carbon full-suspension bike. Different strokes for different folks; I'm just glad that folks like me finally have something cool and novel. Special thanks to James for making this awesome bicycle design happen, and of course to Analog for building this bike for me.

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.

What went well?

We survived! That's a great place to start.

We spent a month on our bikes and walked away still wanting to ride the bikes and spend time with each other.

We never got bored; the pressure of riding your bike to a new place was an excellent motivator to get up every morning, successfully holding ennui at bay.

We developed great tans and not-so-great sandal tan lines.

We tried a ton of great food, beer, cider, and coffee.

My dynamo charger provided unlimited light when we needed it and enough power to keep my phone and our navigation unit fully charged, every day. If Meg equips Sully with a dynamo, we wouldn't ever need a charger.

We successfully packed up our bikes, bags, and supplies into boxes, brought them to another country, reassembled everything, rode for hundreds of miles into two other countries, then put everything back into boxes and brought it home. The only thing we damaged? My front fender, which kinda sucked anyway.

We routed (and repeatedly rerouted) successfully for hundreds of miles. We did plenty of advance planning, scoping out likely pubs, grocery stores, camping areas, coffee shops, and sights to see. But in the end we settled on a just-in-time strategy where we mapped out a major destination (usually a city) and routed our way there one day at a time to keep things manageable.

Our Garmin Edge 840 bike computer worked magnificently in tandem with maps Meg created with RidewithGPS on her phone. The display is always on, it doesn't consume much power, it shows you elevation profiles (for better or for worse), and generally keeps you off of your phone by always showing your next turn. But for the love of all that is holy you should turn the beeps off (or at least down!).

Flying into one airport and out of another is really expensive. We'd strongly prefer to do some kind of loop in the future when possible. One-way flights are an absolute ripoff and often end up more expensive than a two-way flight that includes the same one-way flight!

We worried a lot about time and stressed a lot about hitting milestones. In the future, we'll just go at a comfortable pace and take public transit to our end goal if we truly run out of time. But there's no sense rushing through cool areas because you know you have a lot of riding in the future!

We're glad we didn't bring cooking supplies for a touristy trip. It was nice to save the space in our bags, and we honestly enjoyed spending money at pubs and coffee shops since it was often the only money we spent each day.

We saw three foreign countries in a way I have never before experienced. When you're on a bike, you slow down and actually see the place you're visiting instead of teleporting around in a car.

I proved that Bristol is indeed a very cool city, and not just the product of rose-tinted college glasses. And we discovered that Glasgow and Hackney are also excellent urban areas. I'll refrain from ranting about how much better a medium-sized walkable city in the UK is than literally any car-dependent city in the USA.

And we did it all for a pretty affordable sticker price -- turns out accomodation is 90% of the cost of most vacations, and even when you pay for campsites, it comes out a lot cheaper than hotel rooms. We splurged on campsites, hotel rooms, beer, coffee, and food, but for a longer length tour we could cut 90% of that and travel internationally for... less than our average winter heating bill per month.

What went not-so-well?

We should have spent more time in Scotland, which was the prettiest, wildest, and most fun of the entire trip. This would have given us a lot more opportunities to wild camp, too. If I did this trip again, I'd probably bike up into the highlands at the beginning of the trip and trim some days from London.

We deviated a lot from our original route plan. I'm sure plenty of you could have expected this, but the definition of a "bikepacking route" varies a lot between countries. We've stitched together plenty of combined bikepacking and cycle touring routes in the USA, so we figured we could handle most portions of the GB Divide route, rerouting around the nastiest bits. Unfortunately, the route cuts through an awful lot of right-of-ways and bridle paths that just aren't rideable, even on a mountain bike. Too mushy, too overgrown, not fun. We wound up following the broad strokes of the GB Divide, but personally I think the people who designed it are kind of crazy. In the USA, we're "bikepacking people" because we enjoy dirt roads, abandoned roads, manageable singletrack, and anything else that keeps us off of main roads (and the giant scary cars that haunt them). In Europe, cars are less big, people are better at driving, and on-road bicycle paths are better, so we're much more in line with the average European bicycle tourer. Even the road-based bike routes around the UK often used railway paths, gravel roads, and forest roads -- exactly the kind of stuff folks in the USA tend to call bikepacking.

Wild camping is hard. In Scotland, it's legal, but takes some getting used to. In England, it's illegal and uncomfortable. Most bike tourers and bikepackers walk a fine legal grey area; they prefer camping in deserted places and leave no trace, but sometimes ask local residents or authorities for camping suggestions when in a pinch. We tried wild camping, but because it's nice to have peace of mind that someone isn't going to show up and kick you out, we wound up paying for campsites most of the time.

Booking a vehicle to transport you from a city to the airport is expensive and kind of shitty. I'd just rely on public transit next time, especially with a rail line to the airport. But that isn't an option everywhere, so it was good practice to try this out.

Where next?

For the next little while, we'll focus on shorter bike trips. Overnighters, day trips to explore national parks or particular pretty stretches of dirt roads, and long rides on our local trail systems. All of this keeps us in shape and scratches the "itch" of biking without the necessity of a monthlong vacation from work. We only managed a full month because I changed jobs and Meg earned a monthlong sabbatical after 3 years at her job (a program that has been discontinued since). But within the next couple of years I'm sure we'll start to feel the need for a longer trip. Here are a few of the ideas we're currently incubating:

Unsupported bikepacking in the USA -- off the grid, singletrack, just camping, cooking for ourselves, swimming in rivers, and appreciating nature. The Great Divide and the New York section of the Eastern Divide are high on our list.

Japan & South Korea have excellent bike infrastructure, well designed cities, polite drivers, a great climate, and are easily linked by ferry.

Real Europe™ is the OG of bicycle touring. We'd be happy doing a trip just about anywhere in Europe, though France, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway are at the top of my list since there's not as much of a language barrier as there can be in other places. There are some excellent multi-country routes along the Mediterranean that look beautiful and pretty affordable to boot.

The Scottish Highlands and the Hebridean Way, because we missed them on this trip. I travel to work in the UK semi-regularly now, so we could conceivably try this at some point after a work trip.

Thanks for reading along! We had a great time, and I hope this series of posts has helped you understand a tiny piece of why we love riding our bicycles so much. Maybe it's inspired you to try a longer bike ride yourself, or just to dig your old, neglected bicycle out of the garage and take it for a spin. You might be surprised at just how much fun you have on it.

Length

It's long. Hella long. 11,000 pages across 10 books. 3.4 million words (over three Harry Potters, 7 Lord of the Rings, and 0.8 Wheel of Times). And it's not just pulp fiction that allows you to churn through a book in a week if you have the time: it is dense. At my very fastest reading pace between jobs, with no commitments during a dark, rainy couple of weeks, I think I finished a book in three weeks. And it was exhausting. Fast readers might pull off a month per book, slower early on.

Style

It all starts with prose: Erikson might be an Ent. He rumbles along, describing characters, settings, historical events, personal backstories, historical events, and internal philosophical monologues almost in spite of the reader. You're along for the ride, but only if you run alongside the tracks, match the train's pace, and jump onto the caboose like some early 1900s vagabond. And you'll spend the next 11,000 pages fighting your way up to the engine, Snowpiercer style. The magic system, geography, races, names, cities, streets, command structures, transportation, and more all show up with the barest explanations. You will become a detective, figuring out what's going on almost purely through context clues. Upon writing that, I'm not sure that sounds that great, but trust me, if you love a rich fantasy universe or a reading challenge, it's an immensely satisfying way of digging deeper and constantly proving that Erikson really has thought all of this out.

Breadth

The sheer breadth of the magic system, civilizations, races, timespan, food, characters, major events, battles, gods, and realms of this series is genuinely breathtaking. As in you will run out of breath just trying to explain the breadth, let alone listing everything in any of those categories. At the end of each book, you assume that the series can't possibly sprawl any further, or tease another mystery, or expose another layer of complexity... until the next book does. And then the next book does it again. And again. Literally until you reach the final book. The breadth of Malazan makes the Silmarillion look like the Hobbit.

Execution

I do not trust authors implicitly. This review, and of course the Malazan series itself, promises a lot. Enough that I mistrusted the author, even with the lofty recommendation of a close friend. I've read a lot of broken promises: A Song of Ice and Fire. The Name of the Wind (and the sequel). So I understand that sometimes authors bite off more than they can chew. The Wheel of Time (which I read partially as a shibboleth of commitment to epic fantasy series) doesn't break promises, but the original author did pass away before he could finish it and a lot of plot threads were severed or lubricated to make a clean ending.

So I naturally assumed that Erikson would cut some corners by the 8th, 9th, or 10th book. I thought loose ends would bother me at the end of Malazan the same way they did at the end of so many other series, where nitpicks and issues can easily tarnish my memory. Maybe it's the hundreds of hours and couple of years of reading time manifesting as some kind of sunk-cost Stockholm syndrome, but Malazan didn't cut corners. (I did take breaks with The Expanse, Hyperion, The Broken Earth Trilogy, and a whole bunch of history books, so it's not like I only read Malazan this whole time; doing that for two years might genuinely give you Stockholm syndrome)

But I can say that Malazan satisfied me in a way that few series ever have. The ending is not without its flaws; some plots end on a much happier note than I would ever have predicted, and not everything gets wrapped up in a neat bow. But I walked away form the second epilogue with a sense of content and finality I rarely get from a book series. It reminds me the most of finishing The Hobbit when my age still numbered in the single digits; I could barely believe just how much story, creativity, and universe I had just witnessed. And it reminds me of when I finished Anathem in my early teens, a book whose invented language and philosophy represented a huge leap past the James Patterson pulp I'd been devouring throughout middle school (bonus points to young me for reading an ebook copy that lacked the appendix defining Stephenson's invented words).

This is the thing that really convinced me that Malazan is something special, something more than just another epic fantasy: I felt like I had just finished literature. Something at a higher level of writing than any other fantasy book or series I have ever read. I haven't read all of Infinite Jest, Finnegan's Wake, or Ulysses, but I suspect the feeling is similar.

Heart

Empathy and compassion are deeply important to the core conflict of Malazan. You can tell how much Erikson believes in that core argument because of the sheer number of perspectives presented throughout the series: according to highly reputable online source JaminJedi, 453 separate POV characters.

Some characters seem interchangeable, such as the large number of soldier POVs that are used in aggregate to present battles, troop movements, and tensions. In these mosaic slice-of-life scenes, we bounce between different characters every few paragraphs, often spending less than a page per character. But the combined thoughts, words, and views of each character produces something richer than a commander going over a battle plan or even a single scene where one character moves around the troops. This feels like a new level of character writing I've never experienced before: instead of just writing individual characters (which Erikson absolutely does, don't worry), he's also characterizing groups of characters. And just wait until you get to the banter -- some of Erikson's best group writing happens in duos of two characters, be they friends, enemies, lovers, or all of those things combined.

Some characters show up early in the series and stick around for the full 10 books (don't worry, I won't spoil who). The grow, they change, and you find yourself rooting for them -- good or evil (not that anyone is truly evil in this series -- like ASoIaF, everything is about shades of grey).

Some characters provide a POV for a single scene, then disappear, never to be heard from again.

And sometimes you don't even know which character provided a perspective. Hard to imagine, I know. But it does happen (only occasionally -- and you can usually figure out who it was later on from context clues).

I've read a lot of books that use perspective to tell stories through more than just one set of eyes and ears (or one omniscient narrator's not-eyes and not-ears). But the empathy you develop for so many different characters across so many different cultures and worlds in this series is something else. And when you get scenes from the perspective of multiple characters, you're forced to reassess exactly what happened in the scene (if you've ever tried reading ASoIaF's Boiled Leather reading order and you gained a whole new perspective on Sam and Jon's interactions, you'll know a tiny bit of what I'm talking about -- that sort of thing happens a lot in Malazan).

The sheer number of POVs was a big challenge for me. It's hard to keep the characters straight when you jump between them so often. It's tough to get to know anyone individually, to build that emotional connection in just a few paragraphs. But don't worry: you have plenty of time to get used to it over 11,000 pages. One piece of advice? Try to read entire chapters at a time, they're almost always meant to be read all at once to convey a common theme and message. I know it's hard to believe that that's possible with so many POVs, and it's tough to keep reading the full chapter length if you're reading in bed and getting sleepy, but I promise, it's worth it. Remember that the scenes with the marines are almost always a big mosaic of what's happening in the entire military group and you'll wrap your head around it eventually.

Anyway, there's a huge amount of characters in these books. And they're somehow all unique, thoughtfully explored, and full of rich detail that helps expand the universe even further than you thought possible. You can write the coolest magic scenes and the most epic battles imaginable, but you need an emotional core of characters to grant weight to those scenes.

Conclusion

So if you've made it this far and you love epic fantasy (or just great fiction), give Malazan Book of the Fallen a try. You may wonder what the hell the titles means; you'll figure it out (at least twice, if not three or four times) eventually. I promise that it is a good name for the series, and you'll probably like it too once you understand.

You will laugh. You will cry. You will get very frustrated about the things that Erikson doesn't explain in the first or second books (feel free to reach out for a low-spoiler magic explanation if this holds you back). I really think every fantasy fan should try this series. It is something truly new (if something written from 1999-2011 can be called new), truly delightful, and worthy of being called the first epic fantasy literature I have ever read.

Special shoutout to Tor for their AMAZING Malazan Reread of the Fallen blog series, which provides a spoiler free summary, first-time reader reaction, and re-reader reaction to every single chapter of every single book of the series. Bill and Amanda did a monumental amount of work with this series and really helped me get a grip on the series when I was confused early on (and made sure I didn't miss any subtle plot points later on!).

PS: But maybe read the other big fantasy series first -- I'm midway through Mistborn now, and even though I like it, it is hard to measure up to the writing and scope of Malazan and I fear I might have broken my fantasy-reading brain.

PPS: If you try Gardens of the Moon and just find it too damn confusing because of the dozens of POVs, seriously consider picking up House of Chains. The first HALF of the book is all one single continuous POV of a new character in a new location so you won't hit any serious spoilers and you'll get to ease yourself into Erikson's style without fitting all those crazy characters and POVs in your head at the same time.

Warning: This post contains (minor) spoilers!

It's no secret that the polycrisis is on a lot of folks' minds right now. In the last year, I've already read two other books on the subject: Neal Stephenson's Termination Shock and Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry for the Future. Like a good glass of orange juice, The Lost Cause is both pulpier and more digestible than either; Lost has more optimism than Termination and more realism than Ministry. Both of those books talk a lot about fixing the climate crisis, but Lost is the first I've read where the protagonist physically does something about it.

The Lost Cause takes place in the near, but not-too-near future; perhaps 2050. The world has moved far past coronavirus and Trumpian politics, but the scars are lasting. Politics is best represented as a triangle of ideologies:

• Young Green New Deal-inspired idealists fight for sustainability, fairness for those displaced by climate change, walkability, density, public transit, and an eco-conscious mode of living reminiscent of Becky Chambers' Monk and Robot series.

• Conservative landowners, referred to as MAGAs, advocate for exclusionary, stable politics -- freezing the world in the 1980s, refusing to make any lifestyle changes to the way they eat, transport themselves, or sleep.

• Wealthy 'entrepreneur' plutocrats, driven out of the United States during the 8-year reign of a highly progressive president, roam the seven seas in a flotilla of cruise ships and aircraft carriers, pitching 'free market solutions' that extract maximum profit from the climate crisis.

Our story unfolds from the perspective of a young Burbanker, Brooks. His (liberal Green New Deal-inspired) parents died in a grisly pandemic when he was young, forcing young Brooks to move in with his ornery Maga grandfather. In the 90s, this might have been a setup for a brilliant sitcom where an old conservative parent and a young progressive kid mutually enrich each other with valuable life lessons derived from very different worldviews. Today, it's a lot more depressing.

At the beginning of the tale, Brooks' world is shattered: he graduates high school, his grandfather passes away, he inherits a single family home in Burbank, and his grandfather's Maga friends start to pressure Brooks to conform to their politics. Soon, a group of climate refugees move into town, and Brooks joins the effort to house them.

Brooks befriends, falls in love with, cooks food with George R. R. Martin levels of recipe detail, fights with, and makes up with his new group of idealistic friends. As time goes on, Brooks grows more and more radical, losing patience for the bureaucratic nightmare of modern politics that has utterly failed the Burbank refugees and the world at large. The young Green New Dealers take one step forward to help climate refugees or mitigate the effects of climate change, and the Magas force them two steps back, backed by the moneyed interests of the Flotilla plutocrats. Fights break out on social media and meatspace.

Our swashbuckling young hero has a few mental breakdowns and makes a few missteps as he learns how to best navigate his brave new world. Along the way, we learn about the best (and worst) ways to fight the Magas and the tech entrepreneurs of the Flotilla. Everything wraps up at the end with a big showdown that thankfully fizzles out in the shadow of Yet Another Climate Crisis.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. It's the first book in a while that I genuinely had a hard time putting down. Part of that stems from my general agreement with everything Doctorow stands for, but the other part stems from the fact that this is just a really good read. The characters all talk exactly like Cory Doctorow, but they all have rich personalities, strong backstories, and their actions make perfect sense given those foundations. Characters frequently disagree and (mostly politely) discuss their perspective about how best to solve problems. It's probably a shade too optimistic, but if the last 5 years of the real world has taught me anything, it's that discussions with impolite jerks are really really boring.

I really enjoyed when Doctorow dives deep into oft-omitted mundane plot details like splitting a bill for croissants between a big group of people, finding a rental bike to ride across town, and the distinction between Ethiopian and Eritrean food. Those details may seem small, even boring, but when it comes to writing a book about the near future, I find them invaluable. Characters teleporting around town and eating takeout meals with no regard for expenses annoys me in pretty much all media, but it's unforgivable in a novel that asks us to imagine a better way of living. After all, that stuff is 50% of living!

Monopolies and oligarchies occupy a lot of my brainspace these days, and seem like an obvious cause of a lot of societal problems. While Doctorow doesn't focus The Lost Cause on the subject, he does drop a lot of hints about "Baby Googles" and "Baby Warners" that suggest a solution to an obvious current day problem. Plus, it's hard to not chuckle at "Duck Duck Google".

I do worry that Doctorow's characterization of Magas and tech entrepreneurs is a bit too simplistic. But my experience talking to people in the real world about those philosophies has always seemed awfully one dimensional, so perhaps he's not that far off from reality.

TL;DR: The Lost Cause gives me hope that we can move forward from the identity politics, monopolies, late stage capitalism, climate carelessness, and bureaucracy of the early 2000s. Some dialogue reads a bit like Doctorow sock-puppet philosophical theatre, but it's inspiring to read anything where characters actually solve a problem instead of playing political chess or shooting each other.

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.

The final leg of the journey takes place mostly in cities. We didn't want to risk missing our flight or scrambling at the last minute because of a flat tire or poor distance estimation skills, so we wound up arriving in Bistol with about a week to burn before our flight. There isn't that much distance between Bristol in London, so we had ample time to explore London and revisit all my old favorite haunts in Bristol, where I studied abroad back in uni.

As is tradition with the city portions of this trip, I'll leave out the finer details and instead leave you with some recommendations and highlights of each population center.

Our Bristol favourites included:

• The Scrandit has a small but mighty beverage selection of excellent local beers and ciders, but the real secret is the food made by a rotation of local pop-up chefs. I wish this place was not thousands of miles from my home because I would come here constantly if I lived in the area. I also love the fact that you can sit downstairs at the bar, upstairs at a small table, or upstairs at a single very large community table depending on how social you want to be.

• Coffee + Beer makes great coffee and pours great beer. In the same space. They source beans from some of the best roasters in the country and clearly source their pastries from some of the tastiest bakers in the city. Again, I wish this place was not thousands of miles from my home.

• The Cloakroom Cafe made a fantastic chai latte, but the real attraction is the location. Which used to be a toilet. But a British toilet so it's not nasty, it's actually cool. I'm not entirely sure how the antique bicycle hanging from the ceiling fits in with the theme but it certainly looked cool.

• Everyman Cinema reminded me of my favourite movie theatres: Nighthawk in Brooklyn and The Lyric in Fort Collins. For those of us who don't enjoy being treated like cattle and served deeply overpriced candy, popcorn, and soda while we watch a movie. We bought a couple of tickets to watch Barbie in a very old, very beautiful theatre on a cosy sofa. The tickets and a (nice, French) bottle of wine cost less than the last movie I saw in a crappy US theatre.

• The Viet Kitchen served up the largest bao buns I have ever set eyes upon in my entire life.

• Cabot Tower is free, fun to climb, and provides an amazing 360 degree view of the city.

• I'm not really a cocktail bar kind of person but Hyde & Co turned out to be a very fun speakeasy bar. As usual, the puzzles weren't really something you could "solve" without ordering half the menu, but the vibe was really unique and the service was extremely friendly.

• Not only did Baristas Coffee Collective make me an excellent latte, they also made me one of the greatest breakfast sandwiches I have ever eaten. Halloumi, avocado, perfectly fried eggs, and what my journal describes as "sourdough like a bouncy castle, but in a good way".

• New Cut Coffee made me a latte with one of those tea-like natural proccess coffees that could convince just about anyone that "fruit notes" aren't just made-up sommelier shit. That's enough to make the list, but the real standout was their banana walnut bread with espresso butter, a pastry so good I had to order a second piece.

• Grain Barge seems like a perfectly adequate pub-with-a-schtick (and unlike The Apple, another floating pub, they actually refrigerate their cider). But as a recovering sailor, I had a fantastic time watching sailboat races in the floating harbor for an afternoon over a couple of beverages.

• Crying Wolf makes a mean piña colada thanks to homemade coconut sherbet.

• Bristol Cathedral is a millenia old, entirely free, and full of interesting historical artifacts. I could have spent much more time here.

The local burrito was adequate, but I am disappointed to report that the local arcade bar altogether lacks charm. But Burlington, Vermont; Rochester, New York; Denver, Colorado; and Portland, Maine have set the bar really high for arcade bars. I also tried Wok to Walk, which turned out much better than I expected (but probably about as decent as you're imagining).

Before we knew it, our time was up in Bristol. We headed to Bath along the rail trail, whose antiquated website promises the following:

Each megabyte of a document will take around 1min 30secs to download on a 56kbps modem. For example, a 2MB file will take around 3mins to download on a 56kbps modem. For broadband users, downloads will take considerably less time.

Thoughtful and true. Thanks, Bristol & Bath railway path!

The rail trail turned out to be a very easy ride, full of runners, walkers, incredibly well-trained leashless dogs, and cyclists. But manners were generally very good, and instead of being annoying it turned out to be quite pleasant. The city thinned out, the luxury condos grew further and further apart, and before long we passed through the 0.3 mile Staple Hill Tunnel (which, despite online assurances, is not particularly well lit) and escaped into true countryside, surrounded by trees, cows, and fields.

After a brief navigation debate (fortunately, only a couple of cow gates and a public right-of-way separate the rail trail from The Bath Soft Cheese Co), we enjoyed for a high quality blue cheese toasty, my favorite rarebit of the trip, and a fresh-outta-the-cow chocolate milkshake. The milking parlor and cheese room are mostly for kids, but it was genuinely very cool to watch someone separate cheese curds.

We returned to the railway path, but it wasn't long before we reached Bath. So we stopped at Electric Bear Brewing to pad the day out a bit. And before we knew it, we were in Bath. We walked around, checked out historic buildings, parks, snacked on some local food and drink, and prepared for London. Bath is full of neat buildings, but when you measure it up to thriving cities like Bristol and London, it's a bit touristy.

The next morning, we got up, headed to the train station, and boarded a train to London. Unfortunately, despite making a bike reservation, the bike spaces were occupied. So we loitered in the handicap zone of the train with our bikes until the jerks who didn't have reservations left the train. Not the most fun way to travel, but better than riding through shoddy suburban bike infrastructure. And we had some lovely chat with other folks on the train.

Before long, we were at the end destination of our trip: London. But we weren't done biking. For our first night in the city, we planned to stay far north of the city centre -- near Tottenham. So we enjoyed a quick cheesy snack in Hyde Park, then embarked on our Great London Bike Ride, which took us past all of the big touristy things without fighting our way through massive crowds.

We cruised past Buckingham Palace, to Parliament, past Big Ben, along the Thames across from the London Eye, over to the City of London, London Bridge, Tower Bridge, and the Tower of London. And that's just the old stuff. The bike infrastructure was incredible: that entire ride only required us to stop a single time, and make one or two turns. The bike lane was fully separated from both vehicle traffic and the sidewalk, and it was painted blue and well marked to make it obvious for folks who haven't biked it before.

After checking out the usual tourist attractions at a much more reasonable speed, we headed north towards Tottenham, up through Hackney. It wasn't long before we were out of the hustle and bustle of the city centre, casually riding along a canal through a residential neighborhood. And that's where Meg got her first flat of the ride thanks to a giant nail in the path.

Fortunately, we were extremely prepared, and fixed it in three minutes flat with one of several spare tubes and the bike pump I lugged in a pannier for the entire trip. The rest of our journey went smoothly, so we dropped our bikes off at the hotel and explored the neighborhood.

Most of our time in London was spent in and around Hackney, the Brooklyn of London. Special thanks to my friend Dan for hanging out with us for a few days of London shenanigans.

I won't bother recommending much in the city centre, but I think a lot of visitors overlook Hackey, so I wanted to highlight some places that are a little further off the beaten path (and some staples that I think are actually worthwhile):

• Balfe's Bikes supplied us with a couple of bike boxes to bring our bikes home -- THANK YOU!

• Bike Maniac is exactly the hero we needed when my multitool and arms did not provide enough torque to remove our pedals (an essential part of packing your bike up into a box). 10/10 pedal wrench loan, and a very cool guy in general.

• We wandered into the Museum of the Home and wound up pleasantly surprised by their selection of living rooms through the ages.

• Weino BIB provided great wine, great olives, and a chill place to hang out.

• The second level of every double decker bus in London (except the shitty tourist ones) turned out to be a great way to get around. On the second level, you can almost trick yourself that you're on a competent mode of public transportation (a train).

• Table 13 made great coffee. I wish we'd found them during their wine shop and dinner hours.

• Mikos Gyros makes for excellent guilty pleasure Greek street food.

• The National Gallery, like many state-run museums in London, is free. You'll recognize a lot of paintings. The building itself is gorgeous. If I had to visit just one museum in London, it would be this one. (yes, this is a subtle dig at Tate because I can't bear to look at modern art for more than 10 minutes at a stretch)

• We stumbled upon Violet Cakes when I carried our bike boxes a couple of miles around london. Solid coffee, better baked goods.

• Hackney Church Brew Co makes good beer under a train line. Though I don't recommend ordering food here; we went on a not-that-busy night and it took them almost 2 hours to bring us our orders.

• Batch Baby made a high quality toasty in a 60s retro setting. Excellent place to finish a book series and watch the neighborhood wake up.

• e5 bakehouse makes exquisite bread and top-tier coffee.

• My Neighbors the Dumplings, despite the strange name, made the best dim sum I've ever had. Though admittedly I have not had that much dim sum. But Meg has had a lot more and she thought it was high quality, too.

• Victoria Park is gorgeous. It's a park.

• The Dusty Knuckle became a breakfast staple thanks to their signature feta honey fennel bun. All of their baked goods were extremely good -- except for the toast, which was unevenly toasted. Relieving to discover that they're not good at everything because goddamn was that feta honey fennel bun delicious.

Our final day arrived all too soon. We considered taking the tube with our bike boxes, but the trip from Hackney to Heathrow required a couple of transfers and nothing is simple when a couple of 50lb bike boxes are involved. So we booked a van (whose driver only stole some of our money when he didn't make change) and revelled in the shame of private internal combustion engine transportation to the airport. Next time I will take public transport.

But this isn't the end of my GB Bike tour blog series. In Part 8, I'll reflect on what went right (and what went wrong!) across the entire journey. And I'll leave you with some hopes and dreams for what Meg and I might do next.

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.

Our journey resumes right at the top of a brutal hill. Our heroes, Nate and Meg, were almost without hope. Their bicycles were squeaking. Their legs were aching. Their palms were sweaty. Mom's spaghetti. Wait, no, that's not right. We just stumbled upon some very cute tiny horses, had a quick snack, and drank some water.

Then it turned out we were at the top of a very long uphill, so we cruised downhill through a very pleasant breeze, with some great views of the Brecon Beacons, to lunch at the Brecon Tap. We had a refreshing pint, a life-replenishing pie, and something that the menu called a salad that I'm not sure legally conforms to that description. But it was all very tasty, and the rest was much needed. Then we popped over to a Costa Coffee for a caffeine pick-me-up and a quick phone charge while we scouted out a campsite.

We found a decent campsite with prominent quiet hours and a lot of impressive-sounding awards. A short shopping trip to the co-op for local cider, then a couple hours of easy mild uphill riding later, we arrived at our campsite with plenty of time to spare before sunset.

We showered, set up the tent, enjoyed a refreshing beverage, and passed out due to lack of sleep well before the sun went down. I am happy to report that the quiet hours were absolutely followed, though it probably helped that we camped as far away from other people as possible after the previous night's trauma.

The next day, we woke up early -- I'm pretty sure our tent was fully packed up and we were riding out of the camping area before the sun had a chance to peek over the horizon. Our ride continued similarly to the previous afternoon's ride, and felt very easy after getting an adequate night's sleep. The hills were foggy, the hedges continued to need a good trimming, but the traffic was nonexistent and the skies above the fog were as blue as can be.

Before long, we wound up at a dam on a mountain lake with some very impressive views. We crossed the dam and found ourselves riding on a rail trail. Huzzah! For those who don't know, rail trails are the best way to cross a range of mountains by bike. The grade usually can't exceed 3%, which can be grueling if you're stuck riding that way for hours, but is much much easier than the 20% grades we typically see on unmaintained mountain roads designed for cars or horses.

We pushed our way up the rail trail in record time, and before we knew it we were at the highest point of our day's ride. Hours ahead of our hoped schedule, well before noon. And we spotted a trailhead for a hike that we strongly suspected we could see the top of. With the strength of a good night's sleep and an unexpectedly easy climb coursing through our veins, we locked up the bikes and started our first UK hike.

It turned out to be beautiful. But I'm fairly certain I'm one of very few people who has ever completed that hike wearing sandals. If only because a lot of sheep roam the Beacons, and they leave behind a lot of shit. When wearing sandals, you really have to watch your step. But it was very worth it for the views at the top of Bwlch y Ddwyallt.

So we completed our surprise hike, saw some waterfalls, chatted with some folks near the top, took a picture, and then climbed back down. All in all, the surprise hike took up just one hour of our time.

The trailhead was located on a paved road that seems to be the only way over the peak of the pass (seems like the railroad used to use a tunnel that has been abandoned for decades), but we only ended up riding on pavement for a mile or so before we found a windy gravel route that seemed to roughly parallel the paved downhill route. So of course we took a risk and rode the gravel trail. It turned out to be brilliant, with some really cool views of burns with tiny waterfalls and bright red rock formations.

We crossed another neat stone dam, then wound up on yet another rail trail. We sped downhill with hope in our hearts and plenty of energy for whatever challenges might pop up next.

We were not entirely mentally prepared for what, for the number of times it appears on road signs in Wales, seems to be the unofficial state motto: gwyriad. AKA diversion. Or for you Americans out there, detour. For the rest of the ride to Cardiff, I'm pretty sure we rode nothing but diversions. There was some kind of massive bridge construction taking place in the next town, with a deeply convoluted path to a pedestrian bridge that only cost us 30 minutes of stress. Special thanks to the shirtless man drinking a beer in his front yard who provided surprisingly comprehensive and completely correct instructions to get to the rail trail from a section of town where the diversion just... ended. And what was the town called? Pant. It was really pants.

Slowly but surely, we made our way through a combination of diversions and functional rail trail bits all the way to Cardiff. My favorite section of the trail featured 25% grades, an unmarked intersection, and not one, but two heavily graffitied tunnels under a motorway that, naturally, only had steps. Fortunately, we were only aggressively passed by a couple of dirt bikes on the trail.

Once we made it to the outskirts of Cardiff, the city's infrastructure kicked in and bicycle travel was really easy. Just kidding; we got even more confused. Special points to the bike paths that go through the middle of a cloverleaf motorway interchange in Pantmawr; while I'm fairly certain it technically counts as bicycle infrastructure, because we were able to get through it, I also suspect it's the first infrastructure I've ever seen that qualifies as both malicious compliance and hostile architecture.

Anyway, we finally made our way into Cardiff a bit before sunset, and managed to find an absolutely amazing place for dinner: Matsudai Ramen. Absolutely perfect ramen and karage chicken. We bopped around town, checked out the castle, walked around in the park, got immediately very bored with the soulless mall-like downtown, and eventually ended the evening in a very cute wine bar called Nighthawks with some very cute art of the silly gargoyles on the nearby castle. But one afternoon in Cardiff was enough; we shortened our hotel stay to a single night, and decided to spend more time in Bristol, instead.

Our travel to Bristol started off strong, with a visit to Sparrow Coffee House. Unfortunately there wasn't a decent place to lock up our bikes, but the employees were very accomodating of our desire to sit right at the window, by the door, with eyes on our locked-together bicycles at all times. The coffee was excellent and the pastries were both fresh and well-made. A fine coffee shop.

Unfortunately the "bike route" we followed out of Cardiff was a truly pathetic example of failed urban infrastructure. We fought our way over broken sidewalks, through gutter "bike lanes" full of trash, onto sharrows on the side of 4-lane highways, and past many, many fast food drive thrus full of hungry, distracted people with poor visibility. Eventually, the horrors petered out into sidewalkless business parks and we made it to the heavily irrigated flatlands surrounding Newport, which a placard informed us are actually extremely interesting and known as the Gwent Levels.

In the flatlands, the bike route got a little safer, but somehow less interesting. We passed through a few sad, publess towns, and past a lot of farmland and farmhouses that looked suspiciously similar to the poorly tended rural landscapes of Central NY. It's all very flat, very rural, and very full of ditches, which distribute water collected in 2000-year-old "reens" built by Roman military engineers. Much like Central NY, the placards and wikipedia entries are much more interesting than the experience.

But we didn't stay in the flatlands forever. Between Cardiff and Bristol lies two distinct obstacles: the city of Newport and the very large estuary of the River Severn. The city of Newport turned out to be a brutal obstacle, forcing us to reroute against traffic on a nonexistent sidewalk along a very busy road to cross the River Usk over an alternate bridge because the bridge on the route is kind of crazy and we honestly couldn't tell if it was operational. Fortunately, the alternate bridge had an adequate bicycle lane and we managed to cross the river.

So we eventually made it through Newport, passed through more flatlands on the way to Caldicot, passed through even more flatlands on the way to Hardwick, and made mincemeat of the supposedly fiercer obstacle thanks to the help of the Wye and Severn Bridges. It was both the best and only 3 miles of bridge walkway bike riding I have ever done. The view was truly spectacular. And of course it was deeply pleasing to find a giant bridge that connects two countries that has a large and entirely adequate bicycle and pedestrian lane. The Queensboro Bridge in NYC should be ashamed of itself.

We entered England via the bridge and were immediately trapped in Aust. I'm not even kidding: the only way into and out of the town was motorway. The road (and the rest of bicycle route 4) south of town was completely closed for a construction project. So Meg and I stopped at a pub in Aust to figure things out. But only after we crossed 4 lanes of incredibly fast, incredibly loud, incredibly scary highway traffic a few times trying to figure out just how on earth to get out of the area.

So we stopped for a pint and a pie, to figure things out. And we couldn't. We kept looking around on our maps, trying to find an alternate path. But nothing worked, and everything that did eventually led back to the same closed bicycle route and road. As far as I can tell, Aust is either purgatory or somehow linked to the Bermuda Triangle. We followed detour signs, and they seemed to just lead in a goddamned circle. We tried a tiny side road, but it ended in a locked gate by an entirely different motorway. We headed back into town, prepared to buy a house and settle down in Aust for good, because there was no way we were heading back to Wales. And that's when Meg saw it: an alternate pedestrian route using right-of-ways through fields. Clearly not exactly what we wanted, but we didn't have much choice. So we set out into the fields.

The pedestrian route started tame enough, with a pleasant walk on a canal path or sorts alongside a drainage ditch. Then, we managed to take a wrong turn, continuing down the canal path until it dead ended. And we realized that the actual route, indicated on the map back in the town center, walked us right through a ton of tall grass in a giant cow pie-strewn field, on a footpath that only arguably existed. So we did that. Through close to a dozen fields. Past the cow pies, into the tall grass, through the spiky weeds, over many a blackberry-thorn-surrounded-cattle gate (that were usually the circular kind, too small for the bikes, even without our bags, so I got a serious upper body workout). Sometimes there were bridges. We occasionally met some cows (thankfully no bulls). And then, after at least an hour of bushwhacking, we popped out a cattle gate right into a churchyard. Thankfully the churchyard gate was unlocked, so we ate a celebratory digestive and hopped back on the bikes for the final stretch to Bristol.

The rest of the ride to Bristol was quite nice. We found ourselves on a mixture of brand new cycleways, very quiet backroads, and several cycleways that used to be roads but were now entirely closed to car traffic. We passed a motorway and what looked like an Amazon warehouse, hopped on a bike lane on a somewhat busy (but slow moving) urban road, and wham, we found ourselves in Durdham and Clifton Downs, suddenly in the walkable core of Bristol. Since the Downs are at the top of one of the largest hills in the city, we enjoyed a speedy and scenic downhill ride into the city centre and stumbled upon the brand new and very impressive Bahn Wagon eatery for a quick bite. Once we took a second to adjust to being in a city (instead of surrounded by cows in a field with no people in sight), we dropped the bikes off at a hotel and started exploring the city.

Thanks for reading! Tune in next time to find out our favorite parts of Bristol, our ride to Bath, and the thrilling conclusion to our journey in London.

When I get around to posting it, you can find Part 7 here.

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.

Our next chapter begins in Manchester. We arrived here after a harrowing morning on the Rochdale Canal, where we only narrowly escaped the dastardly clutches of Canadian Geese (how do they get to the UK, anyway?). But, never fear: we quickly checked into our hotel room, ditched the bikes, and set to exploring Manchester.

Manchester was a fun time. I'm not really sure how to blog about walking around a major city, since things happen in much less time, mud, and sweat than they do in the countryside. So I'll be kind of lazy about it and just list a few of our favorite stops:

• Pelican Beer Bar had a nice chill atmosphere with a few too many Edison bulbs. Their excellent draft list brought us back a second time.
• North Star Piccadilly is a generic hip city coffee shop, but one that made an A+ sourdough waffle and a couple of great coffee drinks. A very welcome change from the parade of mediocre coffees we'd endured for the previous couple of days.
• The wine at KERB was nothing short of excellent. The olives were exactly the light, delicious snack we needed to recharge on our rest day. And the servers were some of the friendliest people we met the entire trip. I wish I could go back here without flying all the way to England!

A special shoutout to Black Sheep Coffee, who have apparently replaced their entire ordering experience (and the baristas who rang you up) with tablets. Super efficient, except for the fact that the (presumably understaffed) baristas have to make everyone's food and drink AND help people order on the tablets because the POS is, well, a POS. So do yourself a favor and, if you ever consider going to a Black Sheep Coffee... just don't.

Anyway, we wined and dined and pied our way around Manchester for a day. The next day, we got up bright and early to continue our bicycle journey. Unlike the brutally small elevators in Edinburgh and Glasgow, this one was large enough for both of the bikes (and both of us) to ride down at the same time.

Our ride into Manchester helped make a tough decision: we did not feel like bicycling out of Manchester. Riding into the city wasn't great. But crawling back out for a full day through dozens of miles of sprawling suburbs, fighting our way through stroads and parking lots to find a non-chain place for dinner, then scraping the bottom of the barrel to find a mediocre place to camp in one day's biking distance of the city? Not our cup of tea. And there was a very hilly section devoid of decent pubs and campsites immediately after that. So we made the judgment call to fast-forward to the best part of Wales with the help of a train.

The train journey was surprisingly good. Manchester Picadilly station was just a couple of blocks from our hotel room, and had plenty of space for the bikes while we waited for our train. The ride was less than 4 hours total, with just one transfer in Shrewsbury. Totally adequate facilities to park our bikes in the bike storage; I didn't even have to remove one of my panniers! The whole journey went smoothly, except for a couple weird interactions with characters aboard the train. But that mostly just gave us something to laugh about afterward.

Unfortunately, the train reservation system in the UK is far from a perfect one, for a couple of reasons. For one, you have to call on the phone to make the reservation. There is no way to make the reservation at the same time as your book your ticket unless you book it all on the phone, a painful, lengthy and arduous process (when was the last time you read your credit card information out loud to someone?). But the bigger problem... is that nobody polices the bicycle storage section. Sometimes it's shared with handicap and large luggage storage. But there's one big problem: if you show up with a bike reservation, you have to put your bike somewhere. Immediately. And if anyone else decides to use the bike storage, whether or not they have a right to it, there's very little you can do about it, encumbered by a train and your luggage, with other passengers squeezing by you and mumbling obscenities under their breath at you.

Fortunately that wouldn't be a problem this time (stay tuned for more on that). We made it to Machynlleth (Mack-in-leth, roughly), Wales, at the correct time, all in one piece, without any mumbled obscenities. Then we hopped right on the bikes and headed over to lunch. And what a lunch! I can honestly say that I expected very little from Y Llew Coch - Mach (The Red Lion Machynlleth Town). Meg and I just wanted a pint and maybe a snack before we picked up supplies and headed over to our campsite. But the owner turned out to be super friendly and the food was absolutely fantastic. The best stir fry and katsu I've ever had in the UK.

From the Red Lion, we headed over to the local co-op for snacks, cheese, and other supplies, narrowly missing their insane 4PM Sunday closing time. We filled all available gaps in our bags with snacks, then took a very scenic road over to our campsite. Meg and I both appreciated seeing a golf course where the sheep pitch in to trim the grass.

We then rested and relaxed for the rest of the day at my absolute favorite campsite of the entire trip: Llwyn Lodgings. Beautiful views, only one other camper (who we had a great conversation with), and some of the nicest bathroom facilities of the entire journey. No marked campsites, with no access for vehicles, keeping out the loud partying camping crowd. Plenty of outlets to charge your phone and battery banks from. A spacious and clean sink to wash items in. A nice big gazebo to prep your food and relax in. I would very much like to return to try the local bakery's sourdough pizza, which they make on only the 2nd and 4th Wednesdays of the month. It's always satisfying to find such a nice place on a bike tour, but it's even better when it's better priced than most campsites! To make matters even better, we had blue skies and a very comfortable temperature for most of the day. It wasn't until the sun set that the rain started.

We woke up the next morning to find slugs. And water. And more slugs. And more water. Meg was not enthused. But I was feeling sprightly, so I packed up the tent and our sleeping gear, only barely convincing Meg to get out before I rolled the tent up.

The first 10 miles were brutally uphill. And the rain was absolutely pouring down on us. But the road was quiet, and the views were good, and our rain jackets held up perfectly. We looked like dorks, and we didn't go fast. But it was brilliant.

And before we knew it, we were over the mountain pass, heading downhill. We stopped to take pictures at a scenic spot, and saw our first bikepacker of the trip (probably doing the GB Divide Grand Depart, which started around the same time we did). As I've come to expect from the hardo bikepacker crowd, they didn't have time (or energy) to say hello, wave, or acknowledge us in any way. But that's OK, I prefer bicycle tourers anyway. On the bright side, the rain let up.

The day slipped by in a blur of cute tiny stone towns, rolling hills, giant trees, gianter hills, green, brief rain showers, and gorgeous mountain views. I kept taking my rain jacket on and off, oscillating between "too hot" and "that cloud looks awfully dark". We met a couple of groups of cycle tourers going the opposite direction, and stopped for a nice chat with both groups. I wished good luck to the group who planned on going all the way up to Bangor: they had a lot of steep riding through Snowdonia before they reached their destination. We stopped every once in a while for snacks to keep ourselves going; trailheads provided an abundant source of beautiful views, picnic tables, bathroom facilities, and informational placards to keep us entertained.

Before long, it was time for lunch. Or maybe brunch. We stopped at the Lost ARC in Rhayader for coffee and a Welsh rarebit. The bread and red onion marmalade jam were top tier. But I was disappointed to learn that the town of Rhayader has nothing to do with my favorite Camel album.

The pub in town seemed a good spot to scope out camping and dinner opportunities, so we took the hit and ordered a pint. Fueled up with coffee, beer, and food, we continued along to Builth Wells. We finally hit the "offroad" bits the other cycle tourers had warned us about. They turned out to be brilliant fun.

The landscape shifted from rocky mountains and grass to tall trees, enormous ferns, and raging rivers. And we started to see sheep with long, fluffy tails. We fought our way up a lot of uphill slopes, but were eventually rewarded with a speedy downhill ride into town.

And then it turned out that we did a crappy job of scoping out dinner and camping spots over a pint.

Dinner was disappointing. Almost every restaurant in town was closed, so we ended up eating at a pub that looked like the evil offspring of a central NY diner and an Applebee's. The beer was bad, the decor was tasteless, and the service was slow. But the bartender was friendly enough and, once our food arrived, it turned out to be slightly above average. We'll write it off as a win.

The camping situation was sneakier. We chose a combined camping and glamping facility a little bit out of town. We showed up, found our campsite, and things seemed awesome. There were other bicycle tourers there! They had a lot of cute fairy lights up around the campsites so you could get up and walk around at night without a torch. The common area had games, plugs to charge at, bathrooms with free showers, toilets with water, an air hocket table, a kitchen, and apparently a pool. They even sold a few goods from local merchants, including a very cute handmade frog made from local wool that I snuck into my bag as a Meg gift at a later date.

We set up our tent, charged our devices, showered, ate some dinner, had a beer, and socialised with a very nice family traveling around the country on holiday. It was lovely. Then the sun went down, we washed up, and returned to our campsite. I read my book a bit, and finally started to get sleepy. And then the loudest, most obnoxious group of campers crawled back from whatever hellhole they spawned from. They started a fire (loudly). They let their dogs run all over the campsite, including right up to the edge of our tent. They dug wine and liquor bottles out of their tents. And they generally kept anyone else in the tent camping area from sleeping at all for the next 4 or 5 hours.

As someone who doesn't enjoy confrontation, particularly with drunk people, I put passive noise cancelling headphones in and tried to sleep. I think I slept a little. But eventually around 1AM some hero came by and asked them to quiet down, so they went to the common area to socialise instead. I think I managed another 30 minutes of sleep before they returned at 3AM to annoy us some more.

Lesson learned: quiet hours are very, very, very important. And even more important? Enforcement of quiet hours.

Around 7AM we woke up from our crappy night of sleep. We packed up and politely escaped from conversation with the Impolites, who seemed unhealthily interested in our marital status. We headed down into town for a crappy gas station 'cappucino' and a couple of bap sandwiches. Then we rode along a very large road that was thankfully pretty empty for a few miles. Being on such a busy road, we discovered a valuable way to increase our speed on the bikes: fear. There were a lot of hedges that somebody really ought to trim on the sides of the road. The landscape filled with more and more trees. We stopped in a boring touristy town with a really awful ice cream shop, and ended up getting ice cream anyway because... well, where else were we going to go for ice cream?

The humidity rose. Our spirits fell. The hills kept on going. We were really tired. We climbed a ginormous hill that took forever because we had no energy left, even with the ice cream fueling us. Hope was dwindling. We couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel. And then we found tiny horses! And honestly, tiny horses kinda make everything alright.

Thanks for reading! Tune in next time to find out about our journey south to Cardiff and our escape from Wales back to England.

When I get around to posting it, you can find Part 6 here.

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.

Our journey began with a speedy couple of miles downhill to the village of Haltwhistle, self-proclaimed "center of Britain." Haltwhistle was a wonderful first stop of the day thanks to the excellent flat white, tea, and breakfast sandwiches at Brew Bar. My only regret: it was still too early in the day to try their draft list!

We departed Haltwhistle not by road, but by rail trail. Specifically, the South Tyne Trail. There were an awful lot of livestock gates, but the grade was easy, the views were beautiful, and the trail was largely in decent shape. Sadly, you can no longer ride your bike over the very long, very high viaduct (without lugging your bike up a very rough hill, at least) because an old rail station at one end of the viaduct is now a private home, blocking the easiest graded access to the viaduct. This not only deprives bicyclists of a lovely view, but also forces riders onto a series of steeply graded, narrow roads shared with cars. But hey, at least you get a nice view of the viaduct from the giant hill you're forced to climb.

We continued down the rail trail, across old rail bridges and over many a sheep field, until we reached Alston, "England's highest market town". After a quick quiche at the local bakery and a quick pint at the local pub, we headed up a huge hill and found ourselves ascending Hartside Pass, which peaks at 1904 feet with sweeping views of the surrounding countryside and the distant Lake District. The road was long, somewhat busy, and windy, but there's something special about the feeling of climbing a massive pass.

At the top of the pass, we met some other (exhausted looking, despite a much leaner kit of supplies) bicyclists. They were taking a much shorter (but still very lovely looking) route called the Sea to Summit, and provided us with one of the first pictures of just Meg and myself from the entire trip! As usual, they were intrigued by our alt bars, our steel bikes, and the fact that I'm using a drivetrain that isn't exactly intended for touring. We had a lovely chat, snagged some pics of the views, and then headed down a long, relaxing, well-earned downhill.

But we don't optimize for smooth downhills for long -- they get boring! Soon we switched onto a windy dirt road chock full of loose gravel and puddles not quite deep enough to swallow our bicycles. The Lake District towered in the distance, the only sun-draped mountains in an otherwise mundane, cloudy sprawl of farmland. The views had us strongly considering a spot reroute into the Lake District, but we had a more important immediate goal: finding a campsite. We ended up camping at a caravan park in Dufton a convenient 3 minute walk from The Stag, one of the finest local pubs I've ever had dinner at. Our mushroom pasta and chicken risotto were speedily prepared and absolutely delicious. We had a couple of post-dinner pints at the pub, then headed back to the campsite, where we started a tradition we would follow at many campsites for the rest of the trip: closing out the night drinking a pint and chatting with a stranger who just couldn't get over how cool bicycle touring is. We had such a nice time chatting that we were (lightly) chastised by another stranger that our conversation was too loud after dark!

We woke up early in the morning, thanks to the obnoxious population of local birds. We quickly packed up and headed to breakfast in the small town of Appleby-in-Westmorland. Unfortunately, we had the worst breakfast experience of my life at the Eden River Cafe, whose Facebook page I've linked because their official site appears to be full of viruses. The service was incredibly slow. They forgot our drinks, even though that was the only thing we ordered for the first 20 minutes in the shop. The fire alarm kept going off. The food was oversalted, yet tasteless. We somehow wasted more than an hour and an absurd amount of money for a couple of eggs, sausages, and some canned beans. But at least we got food and plenty of motivation to ride on for the day towards a better lunch.

The morning was hot, humid, and stank of manure. Lots of ups and downs on tiny little country roads. A cute waterfall. Steep grades in both directions, But we eventually climbed our way out of the humid low country into a breeze. There, on the top of a plateau, surrounded by sheep and rocks, we enjoyed a much tastier second breakfast of granola bars. Then one of my rim brake pads fell off; fortunately, Meg has super vision and super hearing, so she heard it fall off and spotted it within a minute. We re-attached the pad, I thanked Meg for her incredible detective skills, and we continued on towards lunch.

Our journey towards food took us down a gorgeous valley that has thankfully not been totally ruined by the nearby A683 motorway. We passed quaint little farms, said hi to plenty of sheep, zoomed our way down (and then back up) some well-designed roads, and generally had a lovely time. This area had some of the loveliest views of our whole trip: brilliant blue skies, rolling green not-quite-mountain hills, and a sun that was a little too warm at times.

Once we reached Sedbergh, we had lunch at the Dalesman Country Inn. This place made one of the greatest hand pies Meg has ever eaten, and a great selection of pints.

We walked around the very cute town to find some post-lunch ice cream, then headed to the local co-op for snacks and supplies. A quick jaunt through the lovely boarding school grounds in the center of town wasn't enough to cool us down, so we made a quick stop at the River Rawthey to pour water over our heads.

After Sedbergh, the day got even hotter. So when we passed Sedbergh Golf Club, we couldn't pass up the opportunity for a(nother) pint. The deck turned out to be a lovely place to cool down and prepare ourselves for the upcoming massive ascent.

The next hill was big. But the views were beautiful. We climbed. We thought were were almost done.

Then we climbed some more. Eventually we reached Gastack Beck Waterfall, a very cool natural waterfall into a stone swimming hole, where we briefly stopped for another cooldown.

And then we climbed some more. But eventually we reached the top, and the descent was nothing short of glorious. A long downhill later, we grabbed a surprisingly fancy, but reasonably-priced dinner at the Marton Arms, then set up camp at Meadow Falls, where we struck up conversation with a Timothy Dalton-lookalike bicycle touring enthusiast before bed. When James Bond recommends touring the Welsh Borders, you ought to do it.

We woke up to stormy skies, but I was strongly motivated by the day's breakfast option: Seasons Bakery. They made a fantastic breakfast sandwich, and their coffee was exactly as adequate as I expected from a place that makes amazing bread. Their sausage rolls kept us going for most of the day!

It wasn't long before we found ourselves in Yorkshire Dales National Park, which was beautiful but quite windy. Meg had a wonderful scone at 3 Peaks Cycles in Settle, but I was a little disappointed that the gearhead working the counter couldn't give me a dab of grease to fix up my brakes. Fortunately, I didn't need my brakes much on the massive 15% grade hill right out of town.

It was here that we noticed a change in driver behaviour: so far in our journey, cars really hadn't bothered us at all. But starting in Settle, we started to see too many cars, going too fast. But the roads weren't any bigger than before, so drivers started to feel entitled to pass us even when it wasn't 100% safe. And for some reason even the scenic spots were covered in trash. And the motorcyclists, instead of giving a friendly wave, started to heckle us and tell us to "get one of these" (I strongly considered repeating the same advice when we passed him going downhill 10 minutes later while he was stuck sweating in leathers in traffic). But, despite the rude drivers, we slowly wound our way across the hills to our destination for the day: Hepton Bridge.

I won't say much about Hepton Bridge. We went to a nice chippy. It was largely full of drunk young people. Riding our bikes into town felt a lot like the establishing shots of Tortuga in Pirates of the Caribbean. But we ended up finding a decent campsite at Old Chamber Camping just 500 feet of ascent on 20% graded cobblestone above town. The showers were adequate. The quiet hours were kinda sorta followed. The views were beautiful. The midges weren't too annoying. Our beer and digestives were even better. And the distance dulled the sounds of drunken revelry emanating from the valley below.

This leg of our journey wraps up with a bike ride down most of the length of the Rochdale Canal into downtown Manchester. There were a lot of cobblestones, locks, weird street crossings, odd diversions, trash, cider-drinking miscreants, geese, cramped bridges, canal boats, and confused pedestrian dog owners. We started in a cute rural valley, made our way through a series of small farming towns in rolling countryside, and eventually made it all the way into strip mall hell. And then we pushed our way through the wasteland into the centre of Manchester, which turned out to be clean, cute, and interesting.

Thanks for reading! Join us next time to learn about our journey in Wales.

When I get around to posting it, you can find Part 5 here.

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.

We resume our journey at the England-Scotland border: an unassuming field and a sign indicating the border from each direction along a quiet, narrow country lane. We stopped briefly for photos, and continued on our way toward Kielder Forest. We initially thought we'd have to ride on the side of a large but completely empty rural road, but after stopping by a scenic view of the nearby reservoir, we discovered that the national cycle route actually follows a dirt path along the side of the water. Excited at the notion of escaping the (nonexistent) cars and seeing more of the reservoir, we quickly rerouted and followed the path.

The Lakeside Way turned out to be a very pleasant experience. It largely keeps its distance from the water, so it is by no means flat -- I was very surprised at how much time I spent in my lowest gear during this section of the ride. But the views were nice, there wasn't much foot or cycle traffic out, we seized an opportunity for a snack and a half pint along the way, and we overall had a very pleasant time. A few sections of the path, routed through old forest, made for particularly zoomy downhills. I only have one criticism: the signage, while quaint and artsy, is very poor for actually routing yourself along the path.

We ended up at quite a few intersections where vague signage confused us, we stopped, debated, and then proceeded with our gut instinct; ultimately, we would have been better off without most of the signs.

After the reservoir, we took a brief but scenic ride over the dam, then routed onto a "closed" road. Knowing just how contextual that "closed" sign can be in the UK -- and having no option other than following the cycleway to the next town -- we proceeded along a very pleasant, barely maintained (but perfectly adequate for bikes) dirt path. I am happy to report that it was not closed at all, and we shortly found ourselves enjoying a coffee at Falstone Tearooms, a historic schoolhouse that has been wonderfully restored into a cute little cafe. I am also happy to report that we had a more pleasant experience than the students in the 1700s in this building, who looked downright grim in the informational photos along the wall.

After Falstone, the cycleway took us through my favorite series of valleys and ridges yet. There was a lot of up and a lot of down, but the roads were built such that our downhill speed frequently zoomed us up (most of) the subsequent uphill.

The day got sunnier and sunnier as we rode past many, many cows in the low valley.

Finally, we made our way up a very steep, very long, very treeless, very sheep-filled hill. The breeze picked up, and refreshed us enough to push on.

One memorable curve required us to navigate between a large number of cows who seemed especially interested in bicycles; I am happy to report that they were happy to observe us and did not request to ride the bicycles or otherwise interact with them directly.

We soon started passing a lot of significant stone walls. It was at this point that I realized that, despite reading a great deal about it in history books, I didn't actually know what Hadrian's Wall looks like beyond "ancient stone wall."

I was soon distracted by a lovely stretch of gravel road on cycleway 68 that I could easily have mistaken for a Vermont Category 4 road. At moments like this, I felt very fortunate that our bicycles both sport 2" tires!

Now at a pretty high altitude, and with considerably less up and downhill to deal with, we made our way past wall after wall. I took photos of several, thinking "if it is Hadrian's Wall, I don't want to not take a photo." But in the end, we passed one of the most scenic spots in the entire span of Hadrian's Wall, near Crag Lough and the Sycamore Gap (note: this is now the Sycamore Gap Stump). It was beautiful and fortunately very obviously Hadrian's Wall.

There were still a few hours left in the day, but we decided to stop at a convenient place to eat: Twice Brewed, which was awfully expensive but serviceable. We stopped just down the road at Winshields for camping, and I am happy to report that their field only had a few midges, the bathrooms were both clean and ample, and the kitchen could have saved us a lot of money if we wanted to feed ourselves.

Naturally, I biked over to Twice Brewed while Meg set up the tent for some cans of quality beer. We enjoyed some beverages while a fellow from Bristol, a lady from Birmingham, and a lady from Amsterdam (who speaks 7 languages!) tried to convince us that carrying bags on your back somehow makes sense when God clearly made bicycles to save us from that kind of pain.

We chatted the last of the daylight away, and fell asleep on a clear, chilly night with a great view of the stars and a front-row seat to the local Sheep Baa Symphony. Our highly nutritious breakfast the next day was well-earned.

When I get around to posting it, you can find Part 4 here.

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.

After the serious upper body workout of moving two fully loaded bicycles down 3 flights of stairs in our hotel, I was rewarded with a well-steamed flat white and a very filling (and unexpectably photogenic) breakfast burrito at Spitfire Espresso.

After loading up with breakfast, we backtracked east on cycle route 75 out of the city centre, then turned south on cycle route 74 to start making our way up through the hills and high country into England. We cycled on, spurred by fantastic weather and increasingly lumpy landscapes.

We saw a weird building.

We stumbled upon a very cute farmers market, and picked up a collection of savory pies (haggis, steak, curry chicken, and mushroom) to keep us fueled on the route.

We stopped for a pie break next to a very cool gazebo with a gorgeous view of a defunct rail bridge.

We debated stopping for milk at a fully automated milk dispenser... but decided we didn't know what we'd do with a giant, heavy glass bottle.

We fueled up with calorie-dense necessities and snacks, since we decided not to bring our cooking equipment on this trip to save weight.

We (politely!) passed some horses on the cycle path.

We creatively dealt with roadwork and diversions.

We spotted a tiny horse.

Before long, we deviated from the cycle route toward Biggar, following Bikepacking.com's "Great British Divide" route. This was our second, and perhaps most major mistake of the entire trip: trusting the creator of that route.

Meg enjoyed her first glass of cold Tennents. Unfortunately the tasty-looking Cross Keys Kitchen was shut down, but we ended up going to the Crown Inn instead. The classic pub fare of fish & chips and a katsu curry didn't disappoint.

The GB Divide started out fine, maybe better: after Biggar, we wound our way through the most beautiful valley yet, with sweeping views of rivers, sheep, mountains, sheep, hills, sheep, and sheep. There were next to no cars on the road, a small number of cute farmhouses, and hopes were high. But we soon turned down (or up?) a path that our bike computer called an "alley" but that I would generously call a "driveway to a random farmer's house." The path didn't really continue; instead, a meandering sheep path continued into a very overgrown sheep field whose 20% grades resembled the sides of the Great Pyramid of Khufu. On the plus side, it wasn't very muddy, so the only substance smeared on our sandaled feet was sheep poop. Better than horse poop, in my experience.

On the minus side, the trail quickly petered out, and we found ourselves pushing our bikes uphill through tall grass, thorny weeds, and occasional stream crossings with only the general direction provided by the bike computer as a guide. All of that would have been fine, if not for the flies. The infernal flies. Have you ever had flies attempt to enter every orifice of your body simultaneously (mouth, eyes, ears, they're crafty creatures)? Have you ever so many flies cling to your bicycle helmet and every bead of sweat on your body that you could feel their weight? Have you ever had so many flies cling to your body that other flies were forced to circle your head like flights waiting to land at an overloaded airport runway? Me neither, because the experience was so miserable I've blocked out the trauma.

But the flies and bushwacking couldn't last forever. After what felt like years (but likely didn't last more than 20 minutes at our pace), we passed through a gate. To give you an idea of what happened to the flies, I'll point you to the end of the flying keys scene from Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

What awaited us on the other side of the gate? What used to be a forest.

And was now... half a forest. Clearly something was amiss. With the sun slowly setting behind us, we descended through the gravel forestry roads only to discover, facing away from us, a series of signs warning passerby of the DANGER and IMMINENT DEATH and FALLING TREES that inevitably awaited anyone stupid enough to ignore the signs. Of course, there weren't any signs on the gate we passed through. Or perhaps we missed the signs while zooming downhill to lose the few flies that continued to cling to us after the gate. Anyway, we decided that we didn't want to wild camp in the IMMINENT DEATH zone, so we proceeded further downhill to find a wild camping site.

Unfortunately, the route downhill led through some mud that I can only compare to the Fire Swamp quicksand from Princess Bride. Exhausted, our GB Divide dreams in tatters, an even bigger climb through an even steeper sheep field first thing on our route in the morning, we decided to make camp on the side of the gravel forestry road. I am happy to report that there were just enough nonpoisonous plants to clean the muck and mud from my feet before bed (but not enough to clean the deep muck from Meg's riding shoes). It wasn't the sexiest campsite, but it was both legal and free.

We awoke from fitful sleep (for Meg -- I slept like a rock) early the next morning, anxious to reroute away from the dreaded GB divide "paths". Fortunately, before continuing straight up the side of a steep, unmarked, sheep-covered mountain, our path crossed a cycle route. That cycle route connected in just a few miles to a town named Peebles -- a town our friend Allison had already recommended as a cute mountain town worth stopping in if you get the chance. We'd had enough of offroading in Scotland, and had already been more than impressed by the cycle routes in the UK, so we decided to reroute to Peebles, grab breakfast, and do some more extensive rerouting to avoid the GB Divide's creative "shortcuts" through fly-infested sheep fields. After all, if you can't ride your bike on the shortcuts, what's the point? We loved the cycle routes already, and they weren't those boring shoulder-of-the-highway routes you're stuck with in most of the US: instead, these routes weaved their way through the centers of towns, over ancient bridges, along rail paths, gravel roads, 'dead roads' closed to cars, and occasionally through residential culs-de-sac. They were plenty interesting, very safe, and even had some offroad segments to keep things interesting.

Along the way to Peebles, the morning dew and a nearby stream provided perfect opportunities to clean (most of) the mud and metaphorical bad decisions off of our feet, shoes, sandals, and bicycles.

Along the way, we appreciated the mushrooms and wild rabbits of the moors.

And so, at a Costa Coffee in Peebles, we made the decision to route ourselves along traditional cycle routes, instead of the GB Divide.

!!! BIKE RANT BEGIN !!!

One last word I'd like to have on the GB Divide: it seems like a really cool route. For a mountain bike. Unfortunately, the GB Divide description on bikepacking.com says the following:

You’ll want a setup that rolls well but can handle the rough stuff… an adventure/gravel bike with 700c x 40mm tyres would be ideal

We can reassure you that most of the route is rideable but you will be pushing the bike from time to time

40mm tires are not ideal; both of our setups use tires over 2" (51mm) and we felt underbiked on the offroad bits. I would also argue that a giant steep field with no proper marked path isn't close to "rideable" and barely qualifies as "pushing the bike". And one final word: two of the most attractive sections of the trail -- riding over the Lambley Viaduct and riding over the Wayfarer's Traverse aren't even rideable anymore. And the Viaduct hasn't been thru-rideable since 2004. So the title image of the entire route is a lie, because Miles climbed up that viaduct for a photo, then back down to route around the closed viaduct.

We've done some intense routes and roads in Vermont, but there is a difference between "type 2 fun" riding on category 4 roads and singletrack and... cutting your way through unrideable countryside. Kudos to folks who enjoy the latter, but it seems we prefer the former. Fortunately, the UK's National Cycle Network is both ubiquitous and much better designed than the maligned US equivalent.

!!! BIKE RANT OVER !!!

From Peebles, we whizzed our way along a cycle route and rail trail to Interleithen, where we stopped at No1 Peebles Road for coffee and (you guessed it) a breakfast burrito.

The coffee (a perfectly executed flat white and a long black) was excellent; the breakfast burrito was even better. And it was made from haggis, inadvertently checking the box of "try local food staples." From Interleithen, we made the choice to deviate from the cycle route network on a (heavily bicycle trafficked) backroad through sheep fields. The result? A nicely paced, not-too-steep uphill incline with gorgeous views, a pleasant breeze, plenty of sheep, and opportunities to wash our feet and bicycles in a mountain stream.

Our day proceeded swimmingly. The backroads we routed along turned out to be beautiful and incredibly low traffic.

We continued routing along quiet back roads until we reached Hawick, a town I'm pretty sure hides a terrible secret. It was very pretty, there were workers out literally masoning bricks onto pedestrian bridges as we rode through, and there were plenty of parks and businesses. But it was one of those unfortunate towns where every single business, without fail, kind of sucked. Nothing abysmally bad, just a lot of mediocrity. So many children in the park that it was a little stressful. But the museum in the park did have a nice bathroom, so it wasn't all a loss.

After Hawick, we got a taste of some of the worst roads of our entire route. They weren't bad or especially dangerous, just a little faster and busier than we liked (which, I suppose, goes to show just how good most of the cycleways were on our route). Fortunately, we soon passed a farm absolutely crawling with hundreds of fresh outta the womb piglets, and all of the sins of the busy road were forgotten.

Soon we broke out of the trees and found ourselves yet again on an empty sheep road. A farmer (and his trusty dog) herded hundreds of sheep through the very same field we were passing through.

Eventually we made it to our campsite: a simple, but cheap and quiet caravan park. Next door, we found the Horse & Hound pub, where we enjoyed steak & ale pie, a chickpea & sweet potato curry, finished off with a fantastic sticky toffee pudding. With a bathroom nearby and conducive conditions for sleep, we both woke up rested and ready for another day of biking.

The next morning, we traveled up some steep (but quiet) roads through yet more stunning hills. At the top, a parking area (with special accommodation for camper vans) offered a nice opportunity for a snack break.

But the best part was the descent: at least 5 miles of long, rolling, relaxing downhill, and next to no traffic.

After the big descent, we wound through some more low (but treeless) valleys, one of which had a bit more traffic -- including a driver who seemed determined to kill both us and the oncoming motorcycle in the opposite lane. I guess they were in a hurry. But the traffic quickly evaporated and we had a nice chat with a farmer and his very excited farmdog, who repeatedly jumped off the back of his ATV, flopped onto the ground, approached us, and then got scared and ran away. Sad that we didn't get to enjoy any pats, but at least Peg was a cute dog, and her owner was very intrigued by our bicycle tour.

Then we entered a stand of trees, and when we emerged back into fields... we were in England! We were stunned to discover that even on a random backroad, England and Scotland have bothered to build substantial signs for photo ops.

Tune in next time to find out what happens once we leave Scotland and enter Her Majesty's realm. Will we be imprisoned in the Tower of London? Will the surveillance state get us down? Will infrastructure continue to impress us? You'll have to read on to find out.

When I get around to posting it, you can find Part 3 here.

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.

Our story begins on a brutally rainy Sunday. We drove through sheets of torrential rain to Mello Vello, the excellent local bike shop in Syracuse. Our car ended up parked in a large (temporary) pond due to the intensity of the rain. We sprinted through the pouring rain, and the employees produced our prize: two massive bike boxes, just under the airline's limit for total bicycle checked "bag" size. Then we stalled for a solid half hour, wandering around the bike shop, buying some small items, praying for the rain to abate.

Unfortunately it did not. But after a lot of swearing and unloading and loading and wet cardboard and breaking down one box, we ended up with two bicycle boxes in the back of our Crosstrek. We headed home, and started the exciting process of disassembling the bikes and arranging the parts and 90% of our camping supplies, clothes and equipment into boxes below United's 70lb maximum weight limit. After lots of swearing and unloading and loading, we ended up with two loaded bike boxes vaguely likely to make it to the UK in the hold of a plane.

The next step: getting to the airport. Thanks to the (enormous) size of Melo Velo's boxes, we ended up using two cars to ferry the two of us along with two bicycle boxes to the airport. Special thanks to Meg's parents for volunteering to give us a ride! Despite a lot of worrying and finger-crossing on my part, the United front desk attendant coolly and calmly accepted our boxes for the (not entirely unreasonable) hefty sum of United's old bicycle box policy, which waives the oversize box fee, but still charges extra for luggage over 50lb. Fair is fair, we paid the troll toll and found our way to an airport bar to calm our nerves with a refreshing beverage. We eventually watched them load our bicycles into a tiny tiny United Express plane (there was also finger-crossing and worrying involved as we prayed the boxes would actually fit into the hold), then boarded ourselves in a timely fashion. What seemed like 5 minutes later, we descended to Washington DC's Dulles airport.

Dulles airport was more interesting than anticipated. First, we enjoyed the spacious and clean Concourse A. Then we rode the mobile lounge to Concourse C. Unfortunately, Concourse C (and the other side of the same terminal, Concourse D) was a goddamned garbage fire. Narrow, tiny, claustrophobic aisles. Not nearly enough space for the passengers at each gate. Spooky, flickery, surprisingly dark 90s fluorescent lighting. A downright awful selection of food vendors. Fortunately, it was only a couple of hours before we escaped on our flight to Edinburgh, where we lucked out and got a whole 3 seat block to ourselves. Score!

One long international flight, a mediocre dinner, a decent movie, and a mediocre breakfast later, we emerged from our pressurized cocoon into Edinburgh airport. Customs was a surprisingly speedy ordeal, with a quick line and a fully computerized passport scan. Unfortunately, Meg didn't end up with a passport stamp, so her passport still appears naked. Sorry about that! Then we waited at the baggage carousel for our bicycle boxes.

We assumed our bicycle boxes would take a long time to show up in the baggage pickup area; after all, they're overweight, oversized luggage. But I didn't bargain on the fact that the Union Cycliste Internationale 2023 World Championship was taking place in Glasgow just a couple of days after our arrival in Edinburgh. The two cities are only 60 miles apart, and EDI is the cheaper, more popular airport. So you can imagine my surprise when both our flight and the adjacent flight in baggage claim had a LOT of bicycle boxes and bags. Easily the most I've ever seen on a single flight -- imagine the ski baggage on a flight to Aspen in January. And of course most of those boxes and bags don't quite fit on the luggage carousel, so they all jammed up at the end of the carousel where it wraps around back to the staff-only portion of the airport. So I ended up playing the good samaritan, unloading dozens of bicycle boxes and bags trapped at the end of the carousel.

Eventually our boxes showed up, and we escorted (read: hideously dragged to the point of structural failure) our boxes to a forgotten corner of the departures section of the airport. There, we assembled the bikes and I monkeyed with my brakes for a good half hour until we were back to a semi-functional state. And then we were off on our brief 10 mile bike ride into Edinburgh.

The ride started out a bit rough: we were both tired and somewhat sleepy, and not yet used to riding on the left-hand side of the road. So we walked our bikes out of the airport loop and across the first roundabout. But we quickly got the hang of the infrastructure and within a mile we were whizzing our way down the shared bicycle/pedestrian path along the side of the motorway. With our (relatively) new bicycle computer as a guide, we zoomed through culs-de-sac, along bike paths, and sometimes down bike lanes until we reached Edinburgh city centre. We only got stuck at one point where the Water of Leith path appears to turn into a pedestrian trail (via a long staircase, what a statement!) near the city centre. And in all fairness, we saw an even more confused French bicycle tourist at the same spot, so it's not a unique point of confusion.

The Edinburgh city centre was a hell of a sight to behold. A massive castle, stadium, and an ancient cathedral loom over a sprawling park and meat-packed pedestrian strip with significant bus, bicycle, and tram traffic. Bicycle hipsters much cooler than us cruise around comfortably without a care in the world for the bicyclist's eternal nemesis: embedded tram tracks. We (nervously) tailed those hipsters until we turned down a side road to access our hotel. The hotel turned out to be located on an entirely pedestrianised road: for this, I award Edinburgh 17 UKpoints. (Stay tuned to find out which UK city earns the most UKpoints.)

Once we arrived at the hotel, it turned out that we had to wait 30 minutes to avoid paying the early checkin fee. Since we're miserly and enjoy adult beverages, we spent the £10 early checkin fee on a couple of pints at the hotel bar, and killed the 30 minutes staring at our bicycles -- which were parked in the lobby -- and strategising about where to walk for dinner.

Our room turned out to be quite snug, but very clean and well-finished. We especially appreciated Premier Inn's signature purple light bar on the bed's headboard, a feature we enjoyed in all but two of the hotel rooms we utilized during our trip. Once we got the bikes secured and a post-international-flight shower in, we set out across Edinburgh for the first city exploration of the trip.

First stop: the castle! Edinburgh castle is... well, it's a castle. Meg's first real castle (Boldt Castle doesn't count). We walked around. Lots of people asked us to attend their free comedy shows, thanks to the soon-to-begin Fringe Festival.

There were a lot of food carts; we should have stopped at one. We walked around some more. Took lots of pictures of old buildings, cute pedestrianised spaces, and even older buildings. Cobblestone streets. Pedestrian plazas. Pedestrian bridges. Oversized, ancient trees. Cute stone buildings. Lots and lots of tourist trap businesses.

It wasn't long before we got hungry enough to steer toward the first pub of the trip: Cloisters Bar. We began our food & drink journey with a cider, a cask pour, and Mediterranean loaded fries. When those proved worthwhile, we decided to sample the UK staples of bangers & mash and fish & chips, along with some 'high risk, high reward' pints. We also realised that the kitchen is in the basement and sends food orders up using a dumbwaiter. I give serious props to Cloisters Bar for creative reuse of a historic building, great food, chill atmosphere, and a smashing tap list.

After Cloisters Bar, we were ready for a walk around town. So we walked back through the castle, observed a remarkable volume of buses carting across town (the purpose of dozens of empty buses remains a mystery; this phenomena attracts study from bus experts across the world), checked out some of the parks -- and pristine park bathrooms -- and eventually made our way to another very local-looking pub. Unfortunately our travel fatigue had finally caught up with us and the combination of revelry sounds emanating from within and opaque Scottish accents spooked us from trying out Kay's Bar. I'm sure it's an excellent little spot, so please send me a review the next time you're in Edinburgh so we can vicariously experience this missed opportunity.

After striking out at Kay's Bar, we wandered around the aptly-named Comely Bank neighbourhood and promptly gravitated to one of the cutest wine bars I've ever visited: Good Brothers Wine Cellars. I enjoyed the juiciest, tastiest Pinot Noir I've ever had, and Meg sampled their collection of European Reislings (conclusion: nearly as refreshing as the finest the Finger Lakes has to offer, and quite affordable in the UK). Their cheese (a central European Manchego) did not disappoint, either. After some tasty wine, we were ready to turn in for the night, so we headed back to our hotel.

Unfortunately, we didn't get a chance to rest for long before the fire alarm went off in the building and we were forced to evacuate. Since the alarm didn't seem likely to turn off any time soon, we headed to the nearest pub, and made our first major mistake of the trip: stepping inside the vile tourist trap that is Element. Let me summarise this repulsive institution with a few bullet points to keep things brief:

• TARTAN CHAIRS BECAUSE WE'RE IN SCOTLAND RIGHT?
• dreadful tap list of the most sugary ciders, because tourists don't want to drink anything authentic
• underpaid local artist singing exclusively American top 100 songs from the 90s to keep the Boomers happy
• surprisingly competent staff
• a functional bathroom

I would award Element 2.5 out of 5 stars. The 1/2 star is entirely thanks to the underpaid local artist, who really did the best job he possibly could with his audience.

Almost one drink later (Inches cider isn't worth finishing), we headed back to the hotel to rest for the night. On our way, we spotted the lights from a musical performance up in the hilltop stadium -- a very impressive sight, projected onto the adjacent castle. But a different light show awaited us back in our hotel room: the purple glow of our Premier headboard.

We rose early the next morning, knowing we had almost 70 miles of biking between us and Glasgow. We took the Water of Leith path back out of the city, a decision which unfortunately deprived us of a sample of the Edinburgh coffee scene, since the only coffee cart on the path was closed when we passed it. But the path was overall an excellent way to ride out of the city: no street crossings, a beautiful river and, for a stretch, a beautiful canal. There was even a (slightly sketchily narrow) section on an aqueduct.

But even in a country with decent bike infrastructure, maintenance happens, and we eventually reached a section of the path that was under construction. A quick reroute through a residential neighbourhood later, we were back on the path. We rode over bridges underneath viaducts, a number of pedestrian bridges -- some very very old, some new -- and a number of "dead roads" that have been demoted to mere bike paths as we slowly meandered our way from Scotland's East coast to the West coast.

My personal favourite section was quite close to the Glasgow-Edinburgh light rail, a nice stretch of very wide, well-paved bike path with sweeping views of cows, sheep, and some breathtaking lakes and cliffs. We picked up a couple of toasties in a small town about halfway between the cities, and enjoyed them on what used to be a sidewalk next to one of the aforementioned "dead roads". There were an absurd number of blackberries on the path, but we only tried a couple each because it's not usually a good idea to eat random plants on the side of the road in foreign countries.

As seems to be the usual case in the UK, the bike path made it very difficult to determine when we were "in Glasgow". We just kind of pedalled along the river, through trees and hedges, until at some point we popped out smack dab in the middle of the city centre. From there, our ride was incredibly easy, because the UCI 2023 World Cup was happening the very next day, which shut down basically all streets in the city centre. We checked into our hotel (slightly more spacious than the last Premier Inn, but the elevator literally couldn't fit either of our bikes -- thank goodness we were only on the 2nd (American 3rd) floor!) and met up with our old friend Allison for a (couple of) pints and dinner.

The next day was a full day of exploring Glasgow. We began the day at Barras Market (unfortunately, we couldn't find any souvenirs light enough to haul over the next 800 miles of Great Britain bicycling) and enjoyed a (couple of) great coffees at Us V Them. We checked out the UCI BMX competition from afar, then we headed over to OUTLIER for another coffee and perhaps the best focaccia Meg has ever tasted (This focaccia earns Glasgow 9 UKpoints). As we got closer and closer to the road racing circuit in town, it became more and more obvious that half the patrons at every business were UCI World Cup competitors; if the matching lycra country uniforms weren't enough to tip us off, the giant piles of carbon road bikes outside of every establishment confirmed our suspicions.

The rest of the day, we bopped around town. We watched some of the road race. We visited the local parks. We investigated a pub with very unique digs. We walked along the river Clyde. We saw the botanic gardens. We ogled the abandoned subway stations of Glasgow. We rode the very cute, very short, very circular Glasgow Subway (the incredibly short, also circular traincar shape earns Glasgow an additional 6 UKpoints). And we even got to do a tiny bit of unloaded bicycle riding around the greater Glasgow area. Thanks for showing us around, Allison!

In what seemed like the blink of an eye, we were back in our hotel, readying the bikes for our next great adventure: our bike ride to England. We loved our time in the two largest cities in Scotland (I'm not sure we ever fully adapted to the accents), but we both felt ready to ride our bikes many miles into the hills and pitch a tent on scenic right to roam land. Tune in next time to find out the ups and downs (and subsequent ups, downs, and ups, and downs -- Great Britain is very hilly) of our wildest segment of the trip.

When I get around to posting it, you can find Part 2 here.

My starting point for the ride was hardly inspiring: a somewhat-wider-than-usual patch of shoulder, smack in between a disused railroad track, a major two-lane highway, and Interstate 91. Fortunately, all I had to do was ride up a single (not that big) hill and I ended up on a cozy little dirt road, wending its way between farms in the St. Johnsbury hills.

The ride began slow; it seems the area around St. Johnsbury is unusually lumpy, even by Vermont standards. No mountains (yet), but lots and lots of hills. It felt like something in between the Shire and rural England, which I suppose is just a decent description of Vermont.

But despite the hills, the ride was lovely. Very few cars, and those I did see invariably waved and said hello as they passed me. The temperatures rose from the low to mid 60s, made extremely comfortable (even a bit warm!) by the constant sunshine. Fluffy white clouds straight out of a child's sketchbook occasionally made me appreciate the sunshine even more. As my ride rose in altitude, the buds on the trees appeared to move back in time: from fully leafed-out, to somewhat coyly peeking out, all the way back to "just a bud." The ride's color palette was a mix of obnoxiously emerald grass, vivid golden dandelions, and the electric green of not-quite-leaves buds.

After my relaxing backroads ride, I eventually made it to Wheelock Road, the major thoroughfare of my ride. I was a bit concerned that the road would be busy on a Saturday morning, but fortunately it's still a dirt road (though a very smoothly textured, packed one). I ended up seeing seven or eight cars on my 7 mile ride on Wheellck.

After Wheelock, I headed back onto the back roads. After a beautiful ride through a Christmas tree farm with a view of Stowe (which you can apparently see from literally everywhere in the NEK), I ended up at a crossroads.

On the left, the road appeared to continue into someone's driveway. On the right, an ATV trail, so barely maintained that grass sprouted straight out of the centerline. Naturally, the ATV trail was my route. So I proceeded along a delightful stretch of something I really appreciate about Vermont: class IV roads.

The road varied between "ATV trail" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." Road quality held steady until I found myself fording a minor creekbed. I pulled myself out of the creekbed, mounted my bike... and my GPS informed me I was off track. Apparently I should have turned left about 20 feet back.

"What!?!?!" I exclaimed, uttering no profanities and speaking out loud to myself in a totally non-crazy way.

I checked the map, and confirmed the worst: the creekbed was my turn.

And then I found myself Moonshining my way down the creekbed, alternating between riding on the slightly-too-soft creek edge (which would frequently crumble into the creek itself) and just cruising straight down the creek itself (which was sometimes a decent surface, and sometimes a boggy mess of quicksand).

Brilliant Vermont stuff. Eventually I made it past a house (how the owners access it in the winter, I'd love to know), and the "road that's actually a creek" deteriorated into "creekbed winding its way through a grassy meadow." I snapped an obligatory pic for the blog and continued.

After that, the grassy meadow deteriorated into "wider creekbed of exclusively quicksand" which nearly ate my entire bicycle front end. A few dicey jumps over pools later, I made it to my final major obstacle: a collection of downed trees right over the largest muddy pool yet. So I picked up Bill and hiked my way into the woods. Fortunately I was wearing sandals, which made the mud comparatively easy to clean off my feet.

After the Muddy Tree Basin boss fight, the road quickly recovered back to "actually a dirt road". One vestige of the creekbed remained: a slight trickle of water down the right side of the road. So I did what any reasonable mud-streaked individual would do: I accelerated downhill at full speed right through the water, washing as much mud as possible off of my drivetrain, my frame, my tires, and my face. The temperature was approaching 70, the sun was bright, and I'd just hiked my bicycle through the woods, so I didn't mind a quick shower.

After that, it was just a couple of miles up to Hill Farmstead, where Meg promised to meet me. So I did what any reasonable person would do: I hung out at Hill Farmstead for about 3 hours, sipping amazing beer and reading a book, until Meg arrived with lunch and exciting tales of the Meg-Lyneé National Golf Championship.

• Vermont's new Lamoille Valley Rail Trail (LVRT) (note: a rail trail that is almost, but not quite entirely unlike complete)
• our bikepacking bag setups on the Moonshiners

Day 1: St. J to Stowe (there)

Our day began with an early morning ride to Saint Johnsbury. We woke, we coffeed, we snacked, and before long we were off to our starting point: the furthest eastern point on the entire Lamoille Valley Rail Trail.

The morning was a bit chilly to start -- chilly enough to make me almost regret wearing my new Bedrock Sandals -- but the scenery was beautiful and the sun was warm. Within a few miles, the exercise and UV rays had me rolling up my sleeves.

We cruised our way uphill past Danville, past Joe's Pond, and up towards Greensboro Bend on the rail trail. In Walden, we encountered our first "trail closed" signs... but decided to go ahead anyways for some investigation.

As it turns out, the "sinkhole" that's shut down that section of trail is about the size of a pothole. Anyone who thinks we need to shut down the trail for safety purposes is clearly unaware of how dangerous riding on the road is. Bah, humbug.

Near East Hardwick, we cheated: we chopped off the tip of a bend in the trail to get to breakfast in Hardwick sooner. In our defense, we were hungry, and the coffee shop only makes a limited number of breakfast burritos and donuts every weekend.

Breakfast at Front Seat Coffee in Hardwick was as brilliant as always. I even lucked out enough to get the very last burrito, conveniently made with a gluten free wrap! It's like it was made just for me.

After Hardwick, we hopped back on the trail and headed to Morrisville. Lots of new sections of trail here: some good, some bad.

The good: miles and miles of trail stretching through beautiful forests. Occasional cows. Ferns popping up out of the ground. Trillium rearing their beautiful magenta heads up above the podzol.

The bad: a stretch of trail currently shut down while Vermont DOT awaits a bridge inspection. I assure you that the section of VT-15 we had to ride instead was... much, much more dangerous than riding on a recently-restored trestle bridge that has stood for over 100 years. Bah, humbug.

The section of trail after the bridge is one of the few that deviates from the old rail route, and the surfacing is not quite up to par with the rest of the trail. Fortunately on the Moonshiners that's not an issue, but I hope the planned resurfacing happens soon for the sake of all the skinny tire folks out there.

Before long, we found ourselves in Morrisville, where it is surprisingly difficult to find food. We first stopped at Lost Nation Brewing, located right on the rail trail past town, where the single working employee just could not keep up with the dozens of bicycle riders fueling up. We took mercy on him and rerouted to Black Cap Espresso for a breakfast sandwich... which was also somehow overwhelmed with bicycle traffic, and only had one employee working. So we ended up buying lunch wraps and a 4-pack of Heady Topper at the co-op. Shoutout to the two other cool bikes who shared the patio with us: a Surly and some custom raw steel bike that I should have asked about. We ate our wraps and headed out of town to split a beer in a scenic graveyard (since the co-op doesn't allow you to drink a beer on their patio). After our wild Morrisville adventure, we only had a dozen-ish miles of dirt and singletrack to go before we made it to Stowe.

The dirt roads were steep, but brilliant. The singletrack was downright awesome: we've never ridden those trails before because they aren't part of any larger network, but they're a really cool way to connect dirt roads in the Stowe area.

It wasn't long before the singletrack dumped us out onto the Stowe recreation trail, which took us straight downtown, where our hotel room beckoned. A little bit of bike room confusion later (what exactly are all of those wires for?), and we were off to Ranch Camp for some burritos and beers.

Then a quick dip in the hotel pool. I can't pass up a chance at a heated outdoor pool, after all.

Then we headed over to Lower Bar, a surprisingly local-oriented establishment for a bougie town like Stowe. A great taplist, fair beer pricing, speedy service, and literally the largest plate of loaded nachos either of us has ever seen. Seriously, I'm pretty sure it was an entire family pack of tortilla chips and a whole bag of shredded cheese. Exactly what we needed after a long day of biking.

Our bellies full and our legs tired, we turned in for the night to prepare for a morning of even more singletrack.

Day 2: Cady Hill Trails, Stowe to St. J (and back again)

On day 2, we didn't stop to rest. Instead, we started with the hardest miles of riding yet: Cady Hill Trails, a small-but-delightful singletrack network behind Ranch Camp. We had but one goal: riding Florence, Cady Hill's premier zoomy, bermed, racy MTB trail. As I've said before: mountain biking is silly. But riding our Moonshiners on a trail like Florence is delightful. They zoom. They bounce. They fast. And you get some very weird looks from the jersey-wearing folks riding crabon bikes with electric shifters and clipless shoes.

After burning some calories shredding the gnar, we grabbed a quick breakfast at a coffee shop in town (apparently very popular with highly irresponsible dog owners, coincidentally also a great nutshell description of Stowe), checked out of our hotel, and slowly ground our way up a very steep road on the east side of town to head back to Saint J.

Our very steep road swiftly turned into a windy dirt road with sweeping views of Mount Mansfield. And then evolved into a rutted muddy road (my favorite) weaving its way through tight trees, with the occasional sick view. And then turned into a snakey, up-and-down dirt ridge road with occasional cemetery stops (for enjoying Heady Toppers), cows, and more sweeping views. It was lovely.

But it wasn't all fun and games; soon, we returned to reality in Morrisville (a land known for its unaffordable housing and resulting lack of service workers). Fortunately, we didn't stop this time. We hopped right on the rail trail and made our way towards our lunner (or dinch) stop: Positive Pies in Hardwick.

The trek between Morrisville and Hardwick was quick on day 1. But it was even quicker on day 2. Our only significant stops? Enjoying a Heady Topper on a rock face (great breeze and a great view) and the crazy, random happenstance of running into my brother on the rail trail near Wolcott. Worth it for some insider tips on picking fiddleheads.

After our stops, we had one major obstacle to overcome: the Fisher Covered Railroad Bridge. A bridge doesn't seem like an obstacle, you say? Isn't that a person on the bridge in the Wikipedia article? Well, it's currently an obstacle, because when Vermont decided to restore the bridge as part of the rail trail, they opted to park a bunch of construction equipment inside of the bridge to prevent anyone from crossing it before it officially opens. Normally I'd respect their decision to err on the side of caution: after all, you don't want your bridge to collapse soon after you open it. But in this case the alternative is riding on the side of a 50mph highway that looks like this. We already tried that route on the way to Stowe. And seeing as I'd rather break a silly law than end up crushed to death between a guardrail and an F-250, you can figure out how we proceeded.

One definitely-not-trespassing-with-a-horizontal-bicycle-held-over-my-head-hijink later, we made it to Hardwick, where we enjoyed:

• a quick spin on the local singletrack trails
• some forest exercise equipment
• a couple of fantastic beers
• a very tasty gluten free pizza
• an awkward exchange with the pizza place landlord who does not like bicycles leaning against concrete walls on her definitely-looks-public property patio

Fortunately we were able to move our bikes across town to a bike rack (and our butts into the restaurant to avoid any more unnecessary anti-bike aggression).

Dirt Roads > Rail Trails (But I Still <3 Rail Trails)

After Hardwick, all we had left was a long downhill on the rail trail. This time, we didn't cheat -- we rode all the way up to Greensboro Bend on the rail trail, all the way back down (including the closed "sinkhole" section), to Joe's Pond, and finally on to St. Johnsbury.

The way was long, and honestly sort of boring. Rail trails are really nice for a break from car traffic, but after a few hours they can get a little monotonous. I still love 'em -- they make routing SO much easier. But I'm not sure I could ride a rail trail exclusively for any weekend ride. I just love dirt and singletrack too much. So I guess it's a good thing that we got Moonshiners.

The skies grew grey. The sun started to set. The not-quite-summer night chill set in. We got hungry. But we didn't have to deal with any cars, and our cache of Sour Patch Kids kept us rolling. On the last stretch from Joe's Pond to St. Johnsbury, we averaged close to 20 mph -- quite a bit better than our usual leisurely 10mph (ish) pace. I chalk it up to the candy sugar high.

We finished up the ride around 8PM -- not bad for a ride across half a US state, with thousands of feet of elevation gain and plenty of breaks. We picked up a selection of St. Johnsbury's finest Deluxe Crunch Wraps and Doritos Locos Tacos (an amenity we simply don't have in small town Littleton, NH), then headed home to aloe our sunburns and rest our achy legs.

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.

Saturday

Our weekend started with a crazy idea: what if we biked our skis to Cannon Mountain? It's only 10 miles away, after all. How bad could it be?

Turns out, with enough straps, elbow grease, time, and sweat, not that bad.

Because the day was so hot, we each needed only our boots, a light jacket, a ski helmet, a pair of gloves, and our skis or snowboard. No need for multiple layers, a facemask, or goggles when it's 70 out! The boots and small gear all fit into our panniers nicely. We both opted to wear our ski helmets in lieu of a bike helmet, which turned out fine, if a bit dorky looking and very sweaty.

My skis are very old, very short, and very dented. I put a few voile straps on my rack and top tube, and voila! A fully operational ski transportation machine. Somehow I didn't even hit my knees on the skis.

Meg's snowboard was a bit tougher. Turns out, there wasn't a good way to attach it lengthwise. Instead, we let the bindings stabilize the board on top of Meg's rack and panniers. A little wide, but... New Hampshire state law says you should give bikes "3 feet when the passing vehicle is traveling at 30 miles per hour or less and one extra foot for every 10 MPH over 30 miles per hour" anyway. Makes me wonder if I should strap a snowboard to my bicycle all the time just to reinforce how much distance you should actually provide human beings who choose to get around on a bike.

Sort-of-early at 7AM on Saturday, we got up and hauled the bikes out into the already-intense sunny heat.

We cruised through town and up the first (and steepest) hill on our way to Cannon, up Old Franconia Road. After a long time hauling up the hill in low gear, we enjoyed an amazing downhill ride all the way down into Franconia.

Sadly, our planned breakfast & coffee stop was closed for "spring break." I wonder where they went to enjoy spring that was nicer than here this weekend?

After Franconia, we had another long ascent at 10%+ grades up to Cannon. It was long. It was tough. It was hot. We drank a lot of water. But in the end, we made it.

At Cannon, the end-of-season celebration was very much in session by the time we arrived. The deck was packed, folks were enjoying end-of-season "enhanced" bloody marys, and the snow conditions were actually remarkable. As long as you avoided patches of exposed earth and the occasional river, the rest of the snow was soft and incredibly fun to ski. And of course it's always brilliant to zoom around on skis when it's 80 degrees and sunny.

We zoomed around the top of the mountain for a while, then popped into the 4000' peak lodge for a beer, some fries, and some chicken fingers. Many packets of ketchup later, we emerged to loop the lower Zoomer lift area until our legs felt like they'd fall off. At that point, we pulled the plug on skiing to ensure we could actually make it home on our bikes.

The ride home was much, much easier than the ride to the mountain. The ride from Cannon to Franconia, which was a solid hour uphill, took around five minutes downhill.

A pit stop at Iron Furnace Brewing, fine supplier of pulled pork loaded nachos, gave us the fuel we needed to face the next hill.

The hill between Littleton and Franconia is much more gradual on the way to Littleton, so it was less of a grueling climb and more of a chill (but sweaty) ride. We even stopped at the world-famous Bethlehem Spring to top off our water bottles.

After that, it was a quick zoom downhill into Littleton. We showered off the sweat, road dirt, and snow residue, then walked down the street to Schilling for a couple of well-earned pints and a soft pretzel.

Sunday

Because we don't want to be accused of repeating ourselves, we started Sunday riding our new(ish) Tanglefoot Moonshiners.

The trails are (finally!) snow free and almost completely dry, so it was time to do our favorite loop on the local Parker trail system: a ride directly to the summit at Linda's Lookout, then a long swoopy technical ride downhill back home.

We got up slightly later, maybe 8AM, and cruised our way up the mountain. It was also hot. But the skies were blue, no bugs were out (yet!), and the breeze was good. The views and Linda's Lookout were as phenomenal as always.

And the ride down was as much fun as I've had on a mountain bike trail... well, since we skiied down it a couple of months ago. A beautiful day for a ride.

After biking, we headed over to Reklis Brewing for breakfast and a well-deserved pint. Phenomenal again.

After breakfast, back to the slopes.

The snow was even better than Saturday, the sun was strong, the skies were blue, and we just kept looping our favorite trails over and over again.

We both hit a ton of (small) jumps and sped down the runs in record time. The vibes were great, too -- lots of Hawaiian shirts and a really relaxed energy overall. It felt like we were some of the worst skiiers on the slopes, which is certainly saying something compared to your average ski weekend.

After skiing our hearts out for Cannon's closing day, we relaxed in the yard with some books, some brews, and some steaks on the charcoal grill.

Happy first anniversary to our pad in Littleton. This weekend made us feel truly grateful to live where we do.

Snow. Rain. Hail. Blue skies. Cold. Mud. Huge puddles. Ice. Sleet. Maple syrup. Incredibly hard category 4 vermont "roads" covered in ice, hardpack, slate, and god knows what else. Relaxing vermont dirt roads. Cozy bendy creeks swollen with thawing snow. Sugar shacks. And of course, a whole lotta sick bikes. And I mean the kind of sick bikes that you won't find anywhere else: tanglefoots, crusts, fat bikes built for touring, retrofitted 90s mountain bikes, and a whole lot more.

Because that sounds incredibly sane and completely reasonable, Meg and I decided on it for our first group bike ride event. And our first big ride of 2023. Toad Hall-y sane.

Getting to the Start

We wake up very, very early. But, like Christmas as a kid; I was already awake before the 4:20 (heh) alarm. Before long we've fueled up with some coffee and light breakfast, and we're on the long, dark road to Poultney, VT, home to Analog's former-sugar-shack HQ.

Dawn breaks over the Green Mountains after a quick stop at the most curated gas station bathroom in the world in Castleton (mood lighting! ultra-cushy toilet paper! running water!). Thankfully, it's a hell of a lot warmer and less snowy here than it is back in Littleton. A brief drive later, we're in Poultney.

Out of the car and onto the bikes. As we ride to East Poultney (the true Analog HQ location, obfuscated to throw Big Bikes' Spooks off the scent), more and more bikes show up on the road and next to slightly-outdoorsy cars, adjacent to pretty-outdoorsy-in-an-unusual-way people. You won't find many North Face pullovers or Specialized bikes here. These folks troll the planet for the nichest, most intentional manufacturers around to get the very best equipment for their needs. Bottle cages from some dude in Durango? Check. Hoodies that you can only buy in Leadville? Check. Bags made by a half dozen people in rural Arizona? Check.

And the obsession doesn't end with the material: Tinkering with your own chain slack every other day because it's fun? Check. Nerding out over which tires have the best feel on cat 4 roads, but the lowest rolling resistance on pavement? Check. Esoteric disagreements about the merits of internal drivetrains? You know it.

Analog HQ

The dual campfires crack and flicker in the early morning cold. The bicyclists keep their distance from the fire: sure, it's warm. But you don't want to get too adjusted to that heat right before the Fifth Season. The bicycles gleam and glisten in a million different ways, the combined product of a million different geniuses, leaning against every decent-sized maple in the sugarbush.

A moderately-bearded man dressed "Vermont sharp" in wellies, a flannel, cords, and a green Vermont Barn Coat climbs onto a bench. He clears his throat and, surprisingly soft-spoken, announces that the time has come for the Fifth Season. Racers should prepare for their ride-starting bog march, hunting drink (bottom-barrel bourbon, maple syrup, and "spices") and donut/apple-on-a-string eating contest. Riders should form a tunnel to the bog and first sugar shack to cheer the racers on.

Race Start

Precisely 10 minutes later, the race begins with the boom of a shotgun. The racers hit the bog and eat off of a string. Some purchase gallons of maple syrup; turns out, a single gallon balances our multiple hours of riding time in the race times. As James says: this race is stupid. If you try to win this race, you're stupid.

It's a blast. Cowbells ring. Racers fall in the mud. Racers eat donuts and apples off a string. Racers fall in the mud again. And that's all before they untangle their bikes from the mess at the sugar shack and actually start the ride.

Today we Ride

Soon after, the ride begins. It isn't long before we hit our first dirt road. And not long after that, our first hike-a-bike up a snowy, icey category 4 road. And not long after that, our first sugar shack, complete with complimentary maple cotton candy, bourbon barrel-aged maple syrup, and maple candies for the road.

The Grind

Back to the dirt road-cat 4 road grind. We zoom through icy puddles. We haul the bikes over softening late-season snow. To keep up the pace, we ride through narrow canyons of snow, bottomed with inches of cold mud. Meg zooms so fast through the ice and snow and mud that I struggle to keep up. It starts to snow. It's beautiful.

After a long haul over a pass, we arrive at a stunning scene: a tiny one-room cabin by a small lake, with a merrily crackling campfire, a bucket full of "the substance" (strongly suspected to be bud heavy, sap, and the occasional rogue spruce tip), and a wood stove boiling a small batch of sap.

A golden retriever endlessly zooms through the crowd of riders, begging for pats.

The ride pauses here for a while. It's not so bad, sipping the substance by the fire and watching the snow gently fall on the lake.

Creative Re-routing

The next pass is snowed out by the sea of flakes coming down around us. But it's no worry. We route back over the last pass (easier the second time) to reach our reward of maple syrup jello shots, beef stew, sap-boiled hot dogs, and maple syrup pineapple upside-down cake. There's hail. There's mud. There's ice. There's rain. There's snow. But everyone is in good spirits. We truck on, and before long, we're back at Analog HQ, sipping hot toddies and snacking on leftover breakfast burritos. Turns out the race winner bought something like 4 gallons of syrup at the first sugar shack and trucked it 60 miles over mountain passes and snow and ice and puddles back to analog HQ. (support local business!)

The ride was challenging, but with everyone doing it together, it never felt overwhelming. Even when the weather got sketch, I knew we could handle things. Our new bikes (coincidentally, Tanglefoot Moonshiners, which Analog Cycles makes) were incredibly fun. Truly the perfect bike for the ride: no suspension to slow you down on uphills, chonky tires for the mud and snow, an incredibly low bottom gear to conquer even the steepest hills, and high zero-reach drop bars to hang out in (a non-athletic cozy upright position) for basically the whole ride.

I'm sure we could have managed the ride on our touring bikes, or even our mountain bikes (soon to be liquidated, replaced by the Moonshiners). But thanks to our new bikes, we had a great time. It's nice to have bikes that feel cozy for all-day riding even on suboptimal terrain, and when you're soaked to the bone with ice water and muck.

Recap

So back to the original question: what is the Fifth Season?

It's fun.

Somewhere out there, a blogger is writing a post much like this one.

If you harbor kind feelings about blogging, this might conjure up thoughts of diamonds in the rough: fantastic blog posts just waiting to be discovered.

If you harbor not-so-kind feelings about blogging, you might think of piles of shit, screeds and manifestos and mad ravings.

There are a lot of bloggers out there, and it's easy to feel like they're the ones whose time matters when it comes to posting on the internet. But you know what's just as important? The people who read, appreciate (or hate) and occasionally let bloggers know when they really loved a post.

I try to reach out and thank bloggers when I read an especially interesting post. I've made some great friends (and had faith in humanity restored) by people who liked my blog or appreciated me reaching out. So the next time you read a blog post and really love it, consider reaching out and letting the author know with an email.

Worst case, it goes to spam. Medium case, it brings a smile to their face. Best case, they also like YOUR blog and you make a new connection. I like to imagine the best case is more common than we think.

And thank you to everyone who reads this blog. I've never tried to gain followers or engage or target any kind of real audience. But if you take any amount of your valuable time on this planet to read this blog and either learn something or get a chuckle out of it, I appreciate you.

October, November... December... Bonus Mountain Biking!

Remember how mountain biking is silly? Well, here's an update.

Yes, mountain biking is still silly. People spend far too much money on ridiculous carbon frames, dual and triple and quadruple suspension monstrosities, obsess over "shredding" hills and setting record times and doing drops and jumps and many other very silly things.

BUT if you avoid the greatest silliness -- the electric shifters, the disposable carbon frames, the very-likely-to-break-your-arm jumps and drops, the insane upgrade train, it turns out that riding a bicycle around beautiful woods in beautiful mountains in beautiful country is... well, beautiful. It's nice to be away from cars and noise. It's technically challenging, even if you aren't doing anything crazy. And notably, it's free and there are no lines.

Anyway, this season for mountain biking just kept going and going... and going. I expected to get some mountain biking in during October. I was hoping to get at least one ride in during November. I didn't expect at all that we'd get such fantastic conditions -- warm weather, not too much mud, barely any snow -- almost all the way until Christmas. Sure, that didn't bode well for the ski season (as you'll see below). But I clocked a LOT of late season after-work rides and even the occasional lunch ride in December. We rode through the foliage, until all the foliage fell, past all the foliage turning trails slippery as hell, all the way until the foliage blew off the trails and we could actually ride dicey trails again. I even got to try out a tiny bit of snow riding on my chonky mountain bike tires.

Ski Season... When? Where? What? Who am I?

Yeah, it goes without saying that ski season sucked this year. We got our first skiing of the season in in December: Cannon's opening day was rainy, and it was fun for a few days to just be out on the mountain, shredding the gnar again. Soon enough, the holidays distracted from the awful conditions.

January was bleak as hell: a tiny bit of snow, then frigid cold, occasional rain, but just dark and dreary and cold. February finally brought some snow. But not enough for great skiing.

For all of January and most of February, the only real way to enjoy being outside was trail running and walks around town.

Finally, the end of February brought the first truly lasting snowfall. Since then, conditions have been pretty good, if often "east coast icy."

But I am continually amazed at just how many people want to ski around here even when conditions SUCK. We got three or four truly great ski days in this year, when you could cruise all over the mountain, carve fresh powder, and go as fast as you want without worrying about hitting a massive ice patch or a rock. We got three or four decent days where you couldn't hit glades or anything super challenging, but the conditions were fun on groomed trails. And we saw a lot of days where after a handful of runs Meg and I were happy to go grab lunch. (My favorite memory: after bagging a couple of runs on a particularly icy day, a father and daughter arriving at Cannon, fresh from Massachusetts, and asking, "Is there something wrong on the mountain?" I just told him I was hungry and lived local enough to ski any day before work.)

Unfortunately, conditions aren't the only problem: there's also the problem of crowds. When you get a true powder day (and you don't have to work), living 15 minutes from the nearest mountain is great -- you can drive slowly and safely to the mountain and basically get the whole place to yourself. But almost every weekend, especially when terrain is limited, can easily become a nightmare of 10+ minute lines at every lift and massive crowds at every chokepoint. I could bear the lines alone. But the line etiquette (I've seen more folks "saving spots" in lines for friends this year than ever before, or cutting past other people because... reasons?) and the trail etiquette (be aware of other people; don't cut people off; don't hog the entire trail, especially if you're slow; don't stop IN THE MIDDLE OF A BLIND CORNER OR CHOKEPOINT to take a picture and shoot the shit with your friends) have become so bad that any level of crowding quickly turns many mountains into Not a Good Time. And I won't even go into the havok that Epic and Ikon passes have wrought on the ski industry itself, the insane state of day pass prices, or the housing issues destroying the already-unpleasant living conditions of ski hill employees. It becomes harder and harder every year to justify propping up this industry in any way, even if you stick to independent resorts like we do.

We've considered backcountry skiing as a solution to this: either walking up ski hills out-of-hours to get a run in before or after normal hours, or hiking up a smattering of known ski spots around New England (including our mountain biking trails!) to earn ungroomed turns. Unfortunately backcountry gear is VERY expensive for a VERY short season. And Cannon doesn't allow you to hike up before they start lifts... at 9AM. So while I'm keeping my eyes out for deals, I'm not convinced yet.

Fortunately, once the snow fell substantially in Littleton itself, we discovered another activity that partially replaces downhill skiing...

A Surprisingly Interesting Place to Cross Country Ski

Some of you may think of boring, cold drudgery when you hear the phrase "cross country skiing." I've never felt that way, maybe because I love being outside in the snow, or because I go a little faster than most when I cross country ski, or because I tend to bring a beer. It turns out that the PRKR trails right here in Littleton are a fantastic place to cross country ski.

There's daily grooming. The base layer sticks around for a while. Trails are tighter and have a bit more incline than your average cross country ski trail, but it turns out that keeps things fun and interesting. It's a great way to get a cardio workout, skiing all the way to the overlook at the top of Parker Mountain. There are lots of trails, and they're all absolutely beautiful in the winter. Peace, quiet, nature. Need I say more?

Disclaimer: Meg may think I'm slightly crazy for going down steep trails on cross country skis. That's OK.

Bikes Bikes Bikes

Of course, after three subsequent days of 50 degree temperatures, it looks like our one month "winter" is finally winding down. On one hand: wow, was that a short winter. I expected way colder and snowier conditions up here in the White Mountains. But it was a mild winter for the whole Northeast, and at least we still got some decent winter sports in.

But what I'm really excited about is the new bikes we picked up last week. Last year, we took a chance on mountain biking. As I already mentioned, I enjoyed it a lot -- even more than I expected. But I'm not sold on the utility of suspension, carbon, and many other fancy modern "innovations" for folks who want to rip downhill as fast as possible and do jumps. I prefer a bike I can comfortably ride on all day, that's as cozy on dirt roads and broken pavement as it is on a singletrack trail, and that's built so well, I don't think I could break it. For that reason, Meg and I picked up Tanglefoot Moonshiners from James at Analog Cycles.

They've been brilliant so far. We're still settling into them -- we have a 100 mile tuneup coming up soon, Meg's still waiting on her Sinewave Beacon 2, and I've still got to wire up my rear dynamo light. But we've already taken Bill and Wheezie up to Reklis Brewing in Bethlehem twice, out for a mud ride, and for a spin on the causeway trail in Burlington. Once the snow and mud settles out on the PRKR trails and Kingdom Trails, I'm excited to try them on a Moonshiner -- we had a great time at the Slate Valley Trails with demo Moonshiners, so I know they're capable. Stay tuned for updates on mountain, gravel, and bikepacking trips once we have these bikes figured out!

Wrap-up

Our first winter in New England. For those who thought we couldn't handle the cold: you should see how low I keep my thermostat at night. For those who thought we were crazy for living anywhere but a big city: you should see how many steps I get per day, and ask me a bit about my hobbies. For those who told me there would be a lot of snow: I wish you were right.

Winter was nice here, though I hope we get an actually snowy winter again some year soon. I love the fact that Littleton has four distinct seasons, and that you actually get snow that hangs around (sometimes) -- something I never experienced in NYC or Denver. But I'm excited for the spring now. The dirt (mud for now) roads. Exploring new trails. New bikepacking trips. The sort-of-complete-now-I-think Lamoille Valley Rail Trail. The farmer's market. Long days in the sun with great bikes and great beers and great friends.

Warning: This post contains spoilers!

The Setting

1830s, England. An alternate history with one crucial difference from reality: magic silver bars bearing "match-pair" words. In Kuang's world, you can write two words in different languages with similar meanings on opposite sides of a silver bar, and if someone who understands both words reads the match-pair aloud, magic...sometimes...happens. But only if they think really hard? The magical effect stems from the disparity in meaning behind the two words in the match-pair.

For instance, in the very first chapter, someone cures cholera using a bar bearing the words "Triacle" and "Treacle". According to the book:

the word treacle was first recorded in the seventeenth century in relation to the heavy use of sugar to disguise the bad taste of medicine. [This] traced back to the Old French 'triacle', meaning 'antidote' or 'cure from snakebite', then the Latin 'theriaca', and finally to the Greek 'theriake', both meaning 'antidote'.

When Professor Lovell uses the match-pair "Triacle/Treacle" on Robin, Robin tastes something sweet in his mouth and stops dying of cholera.

Another prominent early-book example: "Wúxíng" (Chinese: formless, shapeless, incorporeal) and "Invisible". This time, it's used to make people disappear, with the following description:

No, disappeared was not quite the word for it. Robin didn't have the words for it; it was lost in translation, a concept neither the Chinese nor the English could fully describe. They existed, but in no human form. They were not merely beings that couldn't be seen. They weren't beings at all. They were shapeless. They drifted, expanded; they were the air, the brick walls, the cobblestones. Robin had no awareness of his body, where he ended and the bar began - he was the silver, the stones, the night.

Later in the book, bars are used to speed up ships, assist with horse-driven cart steering, keep mining carts from jumping tracks, increase steam engine power, inflict crippling pain, injure thieves, reinforce foundations for structures that wouldn't otherwise hold themselves up, blow up someone's chest, make grandfather clocks sound exactly like real birds, and all kinds of other banal tasks you could absolutely accomplish without magic. Some of these tasks happen in an instant, activated and used once when a translator reads the match-pair. But many are "always-on", apparently activated once, then kept functional through an even more esoteric "maintenence schedule" run by the Royal Institute for Translation (henceforth in this review known as RIT). As we later see, much of that maintenence is done by RIT undergraduates, and doesn't require any translation or silverwork at all, mostly just polishing.

The only non-banal magic I can remember? At one point, our heros animate paper pamphlets to fly around and harass people. They use the match-pair "Polemic" and "Polemikós" (Greek: war). But right after Kuang mentions that pair for that purpose, a character technobabbles that despite knowing the word pair, they haven't quite figured out how to "connect the semantic warp with the right medium". Apparently that involved the Latin word "discuter", which means "to scatter or disperse", despite the fact that discuter is not part of the word pair.

A few other examples:

• "Pomodoro" (English: fancy term for tomato")/"pomme d'amour" (French: toffee apple) to flavor-enhance tomatoes
• "Bào" (Chinese: fire, violence, cruelty, turbulence)/"burst" to explode someone's chest
• "Mingbai" (Mandarin: bright white)/"understand" to make a bright, white light shine from the bar
• "metus" (Latin: fear, dread)/"meticulous" to induce a chilling anxiety whenever the user errs in their work

We're told at some point that cognates (words with a common ancestor, usually indicated by a similar form) are important. But not required.

Finer silver enhances the effect of a bar; tarnishing reduces it. Bars don't seem to last forever; some have a finite number of uses, and some only last a few years. But it's unclear how that manifests over time: does the bar actually degrade? Or does it just stop working?

The Treacle/Triacle match-pair uses something called "daisy-chaining" which is never explained.

Unfortunately, none of this makes any sense to me beyond the vague notion that if you write two kinda-similar words in different languages on a silver bar, you'll get a random magical effect that's kind of related to one of the words. This entire alternate history is based on a mechanic that is never fully fleshed out. Especially when it comes to the poorly explained "daisy-chaining", "semantic warp" and activation issues, I just don't think Kuang gives us enough material to even loosely understand silver magic. Maybe you find this frustrating, maybe you don't. But I find it difficult that the mechanic that forms the foundation for the entire universe just doesn't make sense to me. I have no problem suspending disbelief -- just ask the Harry Potter series on my bookshelf. But I find it very frustrating to partially explain a mechanic in pages and pages of "classes" devoted to that very mechanic, but never actually explain it in a satisfying way. Either lay out some magic system rules or commit to truly inexplicable magical realism.

On the bright side: Kuang did a great job researching and showing a compelling 1830s version of Oxford, right down to the pubs and street names.

The Characters

OK, enough beating on a dead horse: we'll just have to accept that the core magic silver mechanic at the root of this universe doesn't really make sense. It sucks if you care about worldbuilding as much as I do, but it's one small part of a novel. Let's focus on the characters instead: who are they, and how do they develop throughout Babel?

You've got the "protagonist crew" of student translators at RIT:

• Robin
• Ramy
• Victoire
• Letty

The (literally) underground Hermes resistance movement:

• Griffin
• Anthony

And the college professors:

• Professor Lovell
• Professor Craft
• Professor Chakravarti
• Professor Playfair

And a smattering of uppity, racist, rich white people with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. My personal favorite example? A rich Oxford undergraduate with an alcohol abuse problem, a penchant for sexual harassment, and a talent for writing some of the worst poetry known to man. At one point he spends several paragraphs attempting to light a magically protected stone building on fire. I'm sad to say that there are a lot of characters like this with no nuance at all. They exist mostly to reinforce the idea that Oxford, RIT, and the British Empire in general are corrupt, racist, and unjust. But I felt like they were hitting me over the head a little too hard to convince me of things I already know and already agree with.

The "protagonist crew" gets the most page time -- Robin provides the perspective for most chapters, and the other crew members each get a chapter devoted to their background and current mental state at some point in the book. We get the sense that these characters are all deeply flawed, but also care immensely for the rest of the protagonist crew. But, as the book continually reminds us at the beginning of a multitude of chapters, these characters will hurt each other eventually!

The Hermes movement is best described as "cool smart older students" but they never really get a chance to shine. For the first half of the book, all you know about Hermes is Griffin, Robin's half-brother and Hermes hookup. He exists mostly to taint Robin's love affair with RIT, and also to hint at general Important Things that Hermes is doing and Bad Things that RIT is doing without ever telling you anything concrete. Near the end of the book, you might start to think you're learning about Hermes... but then Kuang promptly murders all of the senior members we've ever met so we never get to find out anything specific. If you're hoping for one of those sweet, sweet lore dumps where a wizened veteran character gives us the lowdown on the RIT-Hermes struggle over the past decades, and the plan for future decades, don't get your hopes up. There is no lore here, just a few skinny undergrads hanging out in an abandoned library.

Most of the professors are best described as "old, slow, mean, and incompetent." Even the most sympathetic of these characters (Craft and Chakravarti) are overshadowed by the protagonists. Personalities are, at best, hinted at -- Craft loves tea and has no patience for freshers; Chakravarti is a little bit of a rebel. But in the end they are merely pawns, moved around the plot for the convenience of Robin. We don't know if they're married, have kids, their stance on any of the political issues that other characters discuss to death (sometimes in their presence) and in the final chapters of the book they mostly exist to lend gravity to suspicions and ideas that Robin has. In the end, Chakravarti decides not to participate in mass genocide or suicide, and ends up being horrifically tortured as a result. Professor Craft decides to participate in mass genocide and suicide. Robin doesn't spare a "thank you" or a "sorry" for either of them, and you'll likely forget their names before you finish the book.

Professors Playfair and Lovell are best described as "sort of smart and evil but not as smart as Robin because they're racist." I especially enjoyed the scene where Playfair pretends to be part of Hermes to try to trick Robin into giving up information: instead of a battle of wits between two razor-sharp minds, you get a scene that unfolds something like an elementary school student making up a lie about "someone having a crush" on the playground. At first, you can ignore these simplistic characters while you hope for more development. But as the remaining pages wane, you'll find yourself asking more and more: "is this it?"

Robin

At first, Robin shows signs of brilliance. He cares deeply about language and his friends. He's deeply motivated to be as good as he can be at whatever he chooses to do. He experiences emotional turmoil when he discovers the identity of his father, a secret half-brother he never knew about, and an invitation to participate in an underground movement with the ultimate goal of undermining the social injustice of Babel.

His arc is a twisted version of bildungsroman: Robin comes of age, learns about the dirty secret nastiness that permeates the "real world," but instead of rising to the occasion, he becomes a terrorist. He no longer cares about his friends, his family, his country, his adopted country, or the lives of anyone else. Worse, he's a bad terrorist: he requires help from people who sympathize with him, poor judgment in his enemies, and his terrorist acts inflict equal setbacks to his allies and enemies.

You might view Robin's development as a cynical take on what racism, reality, capitalism, and societal conflict do to a bright young kid. All he wants is to be accepted and successful. But Hermes pulls back the veil on the ugliness of Babel that he previously ignored. Robin can't decide between what is right and what is practical, and in the end, he chooses neither.

Ramy

The least defined of the "protagonist crew." He cares deeply for his friends. He not-so-secretly harbors a hatred for white people, often engaging in elaborate lies and stunts to mock and cope with racism. He's not-so-secretly in love with Robin. He's brilliant in the first few chapters, serving as a mature foil for Robin's naivete. Once Robin matures into his college student phase, Ramy just kind of exists as a source of unimportant in-group conflict until he's eventually murdered.

Ramy's a sacrificial lamb: a character too pure, too endearing, too perfect to exist in the book's nonsensical conclusion. So Kuang kills him off to silence him.

Victoire

Hates white people slightly less than Ramy. Is more afraid of white people than Ramy or Robin. Surprisingly does NOT get murdered.

Victoire is another foil to Robin: instead of corrupting to the point of internal breakdown, she takes a practical stance to resisting the British Empire. She'll condone genocide, but not suicide. In Victoire's chapter, we learn her sad past: raised as a pseudo-slave in France after her benefactor unexpectedly passes away. She discovers a way to escape her circumstances through RIT. Trouble is, the very racism and inequality she's trying to escape are deeply rooted in RIT itself.

Victoire is an unbroken version of Robin, who learns how to think for herself instead of parroting whatever ideas role models espouse. But she is ultimately a tragic tale as well: sure, she escapes the mass suicide at RIT. But she ends up isolated from everyone she's ever known, with next to no leads on far-flung Hermes connections, and the added obstacle of being Black and a woman. It feels as if Victoire mostly exists to validate Robin's poor decisions, proving that their situation was so impossible there was no "win" scenario: only variations of "lose."

Letty

Betrays the rest of the "protagonist crew". Daughter of an Admiral in the British Navy, but likes to remind her friends that she's actually poor because her father is angry at her and cut her off (never mind the RIT stipend, which is so generous that Robin claims he can go out to dinner whenever he wants). Resents her family and society for prioritizing her idiot brother's education over her own.

I don't feel like the book gives us a compelling enough reason for Letty's betrayal. The entire first two-thirds of the book remind us over and over again how much the "protagonist crew" love each other.

In the middle of the story, the book hints at Letty's unrequited love for Ramy. Despite a semester of interpersonal conflict in the protagonist crew, Kuang eventually stops mentioning it.

After Robin murders Professor Lovell, Robin, Ramy, and Victoire start ignoring Letty entirely. She's clearly very upset about the fact that her friend group just covered up a murder. But the rest of the crew doesn't have any empathy for Letty; they just prod her along in the direction they want to go in. They refuse to discuss Hermes around her, and cut her out of communication entirely.

Eventually, the crew flees Oxford entirely and goes into hiding with Hermes. Hermes, which previously walled off information through a distributed cell structure, invites the entire crew right into their headquarters, makes them dinner, and starts immediately discussing their most detailed plans to disrupt RIT.

The distraught Letty soon betrays the entire group by leaving, alerting the police, and shooting Ramy. Oh also Letty is a really good shot with a pistol, because she's an Admiral's daughter. Feels like something Kuang could have set up earlier in the story, and it would have given Victoire an interesting character trait to boot.

Still, my criticism remains: despite the fact that the protagonist crew had their differences, it was both unexpected and unbelievable for Letty to decide to murder one of them, destroy the epicenter of Hermes, and betray all of her close friends. It is one thing to be upset with your friends; it is altogether another thing to shoot one of them in the heart. Kuang alludes to unrequited love as a reason for Ramy's murder -- something along the lines of "white girl couldn't bear rejection by Indian man." I'm willing to believe that storyline, but I never got the sense that Letty harbored that kind of latent racism. Sure, she's incredibly ignorant of the struggles faced by Ramy and Robin. But Babel goes to great lengths to explain the struggles faced by Letty and Victoire -- having to dress in slacks and pretend to be men when walking at night, not being allowed to room within two miles of campus, needing a male chaperone to borrow a book from the library or visit a museum.

Perhaps Letty's development goes over my head because I'm white. Maybe the entire point is a demonstration of systemic racism: illustrating that you can never translate the feeling of oppression to the oppressor. After all, Babel pretty much beats the reader over the head with the idea that white people who empathize with nonwhite people always have some ulterior motive. I suppose I just find that view a bit bleak: I may never be able to completely understand the day-to-day, gritty, lived experience of someone who grew up with an order of magnitude less money, or who speaks another language, or who is hurt by a system that benefits me. But I think that perspective both sells the imagination short -- I may never fully understand it, but I can damn sure empathize -- and pits people against each other for no good reason. After all, it's defeatist to say I can't possibly understand or care: isn't it better to have faith and expect the best of others?

Anyway, I find it unfair to base a pivotal betrayal on the idea that Letty comes from money, and therefore is willing to kill her best friends and loved ones because they don't come from money. The explanation for Letty's action is ultimately unsatisfying: perhaps if we saw a more nuanced conflict -- instead of outright betrayal, Letty flees, is captured, tortured, and leads to the death of a friend -- I'd be more willing to accept her story.

Professor Lovell

He's smart! He's evil! He beats children with a cane (strategically, to avoid breaking bones)! He cheats on his wife! He hates non-whites! He loves languages! He's conspiring to start a war with China so they can sell Chinese people more opium and fix the silver trade deficit between China and England! He doesn't remember Robin's mom's name! He won't admit he's Griffin's or Robin's dad! He literally gave Robin a murder weapon, then antagonized Robin to the point where Robin killed him! So I guess he's not so smart.

Lovell is the racist, white, wealthy, manipulative ruling class of the British Empire incarnate. Overconfident, obsessed with power, inconsiderate of ethics or feelings or fairness. Overall I feel like Lovell is underdeveloped: other than his two illegitimate kids and the knowledge that he has a legitimate family he married into for a wealthy dowry and connections, we really don't know anything about Lovell. I think Lovell's origins are a missed opportunity: I'm very interested in seeing how Lovell became the megalomaniacal sadist that he has very much turned into by 1830s. Did he begin his life an idealist like Robin or Griffin? Did he know foreigners during his own education, or mentor some at RIT who defected to Hermes and poisoned his impression of non-whites? Why is he so hellbent on pumping opium into China to extract silver -- does he benefit in some way?

Kuang really should have exploited this when Robin goes through Lovell's office after murdering him. Or perhaps during the Robin-Lovell face-off after Robin fesses up to a Hermes' theft actually perpetrated by Victoire and Ramy. But instead we just get a mustache-twirling megalomaniac. Historically accurate? Sure. But I don't find such one-dimensional characters very interesting. I think it's better to acknowledge that evil behavior has roots in people who think they're doing the right thing.

Griffin

Not as smart as Robin. At first, more of a terrorist than Robin. Eventually Robin becomes more of a terrorist than Griffin. Dies because his pocket ace magic silver healing bar didn't work on magic silver hurting bullets.

Babel hints at an actual arc for Griffin. We know that Lovell moved him from Canton to England at an early age -- so early, in fact, that he's not truly a native Chinese speaker. As Griffin puts it, he doesn't dream in Chinese. As a result, he struggles to use silver magic, and only sometimes succeeds in activating bars.

We know that he started in a highly competitive cohort several years before Robin comes to RIT. Since then, Griffin murdered another student in his cohort who tried to gather take down Hermes, faked his own death, and became an important (and violent) part of the Hermes operation.

He appears to Robin soon after Robin arrives in Oxford, and immediately begins corrupting Robin. First, through the Surprisingly Actually Coincidental circumstance where Robin comes to the rescue of a group of Hermes thieves when Griffin fails to activate an "invisible" magic bar. Later through secret meetings with Robin where he plants the seeds of doubt about RIT's ethics. And finally by recruiting Robin to secret Hermes missions where he completes the daring task of opening a door for thieves.

So what's the point of Griffin? He demonstrates the dark path of resistance, growing increasingly haggard, desperate, and violent in his struggles against RIT. For a time, it seems like Robin heeds the warning: better to resist RIT in comfort from the inside, rather than struggling on the outside. But eventually Robin finds it just as impossible as Griffin to aid the British Empire.

But in the end, Robin does take a very different path from Griffin. Griffin ends up dying in the street to save some captured and tortured Hermes members. Robin ends up dying in a pile of rubble, taking out a massive heap of silver and a half-dozen RIT members with him. I suppose Griffin makes you question whose sacrifice was more meaningful: Robin, because he made a bigger bang? Or Griffin, because he actually helped somebody?

The Plot

A quick synopsis:

Robin learn languages. Robin go to school. Robin join underground resistance group. Robin scared of underground resistance group. Robin go to China. Robin kills dad. Robin goes back to England, rejoins underground resistance group, gets the entire Oxford group of resistance members murdered. Letty turns to the dark (white?) side. Robin takes over the translation school in a fit of domestic terrorism. Robin kills self, all sympathetic translation school members, and ruins a big pile of silver to fuck over the British Empire's magic silver supply. Victoire escapes to probably get other underground resistance group members murdered, accidentally.

The first half of Babel reminds me of many magical coming-of-age stories: our hero works incredibly hard, long hours to master a difficult subject. The reader enjoys Kuang's rich, detailed, often disturbing portrayal of minorities struggling to fit into 1800s Oxford. The protagonist crew bonds, has good times and bad times together. They study for tests and get up to tomfoolery. It's a compelling universe and the characters are interesting. I couldn't help myself from wanting to learn more about silver, more about RIT, more about all of the peripheral characters whose detailed stories seem to lurk just beneath the surface. It was quite the page turner.

The second half of Babel is frustrating. It becomes clear that the magic system is not very well thought out. You begin to realize that side characters and even major story aspects like Hermes don't actually have much depth to them. If there's one point in the story where my optimism died, it's when Robin saves Victoire and Ramy, who almost get caught raiding RIT for silver bars on behalf of Hermes, by taking the fall for them. It is at this point where I feel characters stopped behaving rationally, actions no longer had meaningful or realistic consequences, and I stopped caring about the plot. This problem only gets worse after Robin murders Professor Lovell, with the protagonist crew plotting perhaps the least convincing murder coverup I have ever heard of. For no good reason, they return to England, muddle their way back to Oxford (leaving a breadcrumb trail of hints about the murder the whole way), narrowly escape being caught and tortured by the RIT staff, and then manage to take down a huge chunk of Hermes with them in their bumbling series of unfortunate decisions.

Finally, Robin and Victoire walk into RIT with no coherent plan and actually manage to take it over. Nobody resists meaningfully. Two professors and multiple students join their resistance for reasons unknown. During the occupation of RIT, every other character fades into the background and Kuang treats us to multiple chapters of Robin thinking to himself about racism. We don't get any meaningful debate, perspectives from the highly educated and sympathetic professors who have been discontent with this system for longer than Robin has been alive or the single named representative of the "working class" who puts up barricades and protests all over Oxford to help Robin's resistance.

And then everyone except Victoire and a faceless undergraduate decide to commit collective suicide to ruin a few tons of silver and all of the collective knowledge stored only in the RIT Babel tower.

Silver as Software

I originally thought magic silver would be an interesting comparison to software in our modern world. Like software, magic silver is based on infinitely reproducible language. You can gatekeep the knowledge away from people (especially in developing countries) and use the advantage to exploit them. The people who work on silver and software rarely get to see the full picture, and frequently dodge that pesky issue of ethics because they're just doing knowledge work, not actually exploiting people with that knowledge work. Both magic silver and software contribute to broken systems that exacerbate inequality to exploit more inequality, which exacerbates inequality. Both magic silver and software rely on resources -- for magic silver, languages and native language speakers; for software, rare earth metals, manufacturing, and cheap IT workers -- sourced from poorer regions of the world. Both magic silver and software rely on a subscription model to maximize revenue: intentionally forcing consumers to continually buy upgrades, improvements, and fixes so they can never get off the hamster wheel of capitalism.

It's interesting to think about but the silver mechanic in Babel is so poorly thought out the entire comparison just falls apart eventually. And the conclusion isn't inspiring either; I guess I can read the moral as "don't commit genocide or suicide because it's futile and you'll never manage to make a difference anyway"? Or you can just leave the system like Victoire, but you likely won't make a difference either. Just don't go down like Professor Chakravarti -- he's going to be tortured by the other Oxford professors for the rest of his life because he wouldn't endorse genocide or suicide.

Conclusion

The world of Babel is an interesting one. I just wish the mechanics were better fleshed out, the characters were more interesting, and the underlying subject was approached with a little more nuance. As it stands, it reads like a college student's 500+ page rant about how racism is bad. I would much rather explore why the villains of the story, despite their immense intellect, have such a massive blind spot for racism. The protagonist's struggle is ultimately a failure; he's inflicted serious damage to the British Empire's silver dominance, but even in his dying moments acknowledges that within a few years they'll bounce back. Hermes ultimately accomplishes nothing aside from making a few translation students disappear and stealing some silver from RIT.

A better story would explore how the underground resistance movement and the protesting workers could actually band together to make change happen. Not in a single, ill-fated protest, but on a longer timescale where both organizations could collaborate to ensure equal benefits from magic silver. There would be a whole lot less murder, a whole lot less violence, and plenty of opportunity for the antiracist monologues that Kuang loves so much. My feelings about the book reflect my feelings about the full title "Babel, or the Necessity of Violence: an Arcane History of Oxford Translator's Revolution": Kuang just didn't know when to stop.

Background

Since 2016, I've used an iPhone SE as my one-and-only smartphone. If you aren't familiar with it, it looks almost exactly the same as the iPhone 5S. It has a 4" screen. It fits comfortably in my hand. It only has 64GB of storage. It has a fingerprint sensor, a SIM card slot, cameras, and not much else. The battery is decent -- it lasts about a day of normal use -- but when I travel it can drain pretty fast, especially if I use GPS for a prolonged period of time.

Fortunately, Apple has continued to update the phone to the latest version of iOS every year for several years. Battery replacements are cheap ($30) and pretty easy to do myself. Recent phones outperform the SE's processing power... but honestly, the SE is plenty for my needs: reading a few forums in my browser, messaging friends, managing passwords and authentication tokens, navigating, and taking the occasional photo. It fits in my pocket easily, even when I exercise, and I can use it with one hand.

Unfortunately, Apple stopped updating iOS for the 2016 SE at the end of 2022. It was a good long run, but since devices miss crucial security updates once Apple stops giving them the latest version of iOS and I've already completed 3 (necessary) battery replacements, I decided I'd hit the end of the line.

The question was: where do I go from here?

Requirements

I have very basic needs for a smartphone:

• usable with one hand
• pocketable while I run or bike or walk
• fingerprint sensor
• headphone jack
• SIM card slot
• supports ad and annoyance blocking on the web
• enough battery to get me through a busy day
• ample offline storage for music
• decent camera
• definitely less than $1000, preferably under $500

Notably, I could not care less about battery-draining overhyped 5G. Check back in 5 years when I decide to upgrade phones again.

Really Takes the I out of iPhone

I've used iPhones since I got my very first smartphone. I love well-crafted iOS apps like Narwhal and NetNewsWire. But when I created this list, I realized very quickly that an iPhone was just no longer a possibility for me based on my preferences. In fact, the most recently released iPhones fail all but the last 4 criteria, and barely scrape through the last 3!

I considered the Mini iPhone models. But they are too large, compromise too many essential features (headphone jack and fingerprint sensor), and too expensive to acquire with decent amounts of internal storage.

More Like "Candroid"

There aren't many Android phones out there still made with headphone jacks. The two most notable exceptions? Google's Pixel "a" series (until the most recent 6a), ASUS's Zenfone series, and Sony's Xperia series.

Meg has a Pixel 4a. It's larger than I'd like, but better sized than just about every other phone on the market today. Unfortunately, the Pixel distribution of Android is full of "smart" features like always-listening assistants, pushy advertising feeds, and unremovable Google search bars. I don't care to use those features, and they constantly drain your battery, even when you don't use them. Add in the extremely limited storage in the 4a with no possibility of SD card expansion, and I just couldn't justify the jump.

The more recent 5a and 6a are significantly larger than the 4a, and the 6a has even done away with the headphone jack. Clearly an evolutionary dead end for me.

ASUS's latest Zenfone models show some promise: a headphone jack, a side-mounted fingerprint sensor, a nice camera, a relatively-small-by-today's-standards size. But it's still too large, too expensive, and doesn't have enough internal storage to easily store music and photos without an SD card slot.

The disappointment of Pixel's A series and the Zenfone models led me to look at Sony's models a bit closer. They tick a lot of boxes: fingerprint sensor, SD card slot, headphone jack, good battery life, great screen, great camera. The recent Sony models are all outrageously tall: the smallest in recent memory is a full 6" tall. That's 50% taller than my iPhone SE, and I can barely reach the top of that screen. Prices aren't great either; the flagship models cost a staggering $1500.

Memories of the Past

So I looked into the past. Has Sony (or any other Android OEM) released a reasonably sized phone that ticks my boxes in recent years? Back in the early 2010s, plenty of phones met my criteria. But they don't have the cellular bands required to get a decent LTE signal on today's phone networks, which have slowly rolled out new LTE bands since those phones were released. I'd also prefer to get a phone that can run the latest version of Android, or at least a custom ROM like LineageOS.

XZ1 Compact

After much hand-wringing and searching, I found it. The Sony Xperia XZ1 Compact. It has:

• almost the same physical dimensions as the iPhone SE
• unofficial LineageOS support up to Android 13
• a top-of-the-line CPU that still runs great
• a fingerprint sensor
• only 32GB of internal storage, but support for up to 400GB of microSD storage
• most of the LTE bands required for modern T-Mobile LTE service
• VoLTE (voice-over-LTE) support
• a decent camera, with a useful set of manual mode features
• IP68 waterproofing
• surprisingly loud and nice sounding dual front-facing speakers
• a notification LED
• mint condition availability for less than $200

At some point, I'll have to upgrade as apps stop supporting older versions of Android. But that should take a long time -- most apps still support Android 5! Until then, I can benefit from LineageOS updates, SD card storage, a headphone jack, the latest Firefox releases, the wide variety of open source apps available on F-Droid, and astonishingly good battery life. All for about the same cost as two iPhone 14 battery replacements.

My Setup

• I immediately set up LineageOS 18.1 for the latest space-efficient Android OS and security updates. Note: if you plan on following in my footsteps, consider backing up your unique Sony DRM keys so that you can return to stock firmware with full camera functionality. If you use Google Fi as a wireless provider like I do, you might have to install Google Play Services -- I recommend MindTheGapps.

• Alternatively, you could use the latest version of the stock Android OS. You won't get the latest firmware security updates, but Google still updates the things that really matter, like Webview and Google Play Services. You're more at risk if someone physically hacks your phone in person, but a sufficiently motivated phsyical hacker is just going to threaten you with a hammer anyway. Note: if you live in the USA, you'll have to flash a small portion of the UK firmware to make the fingerprint sensor work.

• I use F-Droid for all the software I possibly can. F-Droid is a free and open source app store; that is, it's kind of like Google Play or Apple's App Store, if everything was free and created by hobbyists who just want to make other people's lives easier, instead of bamboozling people into subscriptions or enshittification. It doesn't have everything, but it has apps for most basic stuff on Android.

• I highly recommend the Simple Mobile Tools family of apps -- dialer, launcher, keyboard, messenger, etc. They're rock-solid, very small, frequently updated, efficient, and a great starting point when you realize you don't want to use the default app for a given purpose on Android.

• A notable exception to the Simple suite: I use Openboard because Simple Keyboard just... didn't work that well with my hands, I guess?

• Consider using Netguard to fully control each individual app's ability to communicate with the internet. Your file manager probably doesn't need network access.

• Fennec is an excellent F-Droid updated version of Firefox with Mozilla telemetry disabled. You can use nearly any Firefox add-on, as long as you add it to a collection and hook up that collection to your Fennec instance's app list in the Fennec developer settings. A silly set of hoops to jump through, but a proper ad-blocker and other convenience extensions make the mobile web actually usable (and secure) again. Huzzah!

• I use Pocket Casts for podcast listening. Note: I recently switched to AntennaPod, a FOSS alternative, because Pocket Casts has shown signs of monetization in the last couple of years. AntennaPod has the added benefit of supporting raw RSS feeds for podcast subscriptions, so it's easy to avoid centralized, enshittification-prone services.

• I use Finamp to listen to music on my personal Jellyfin server.

• I use Wireguard to communicate with my personal music and RSS servers when I'm away from home.

• I use FeedMe to read RSS feeds managed on my home FreshRSS instance.

• FairEmail has a significant learning curve as you set up the UI and accounts, but has worked excellently since then.

• Signal is the most secure messaging app I have. I only wish I could convince anyone else to actually use it. Note: I recently changed to Molly instead to stick with open source software and minimize Signal's frequent nagging to donate.

• Nekogram X is an open source distribution of Telegram with less telemetry and some helpful options added on top. Telegram FOSS is another brilliant option if you don't need the extra stuff. Both have some minimal issues with app icon/name display in the OS share sheet but it's not a big deal.

• I use Google Maps as a necessary evil of address finding, and Osmand (with 10GB of downloaded detailed US maps) for bicycle touring and mountain biking navigation.

• Bitwarden has an Android app that's even better than their iOS app.

• My Pebble works great with the Rebble workaround for device management. Thankfully, the Android pebble app still exists on the app store, and even if it didn't, I could always sideload it. Sadly, the Pebble app has been completely expunged from the Apple App Store, which meant my perfectly functional Pebble Time Round was a pain to manage when I lost my last functional version of the app. Shame on Apple for not allowing easy sideloading. I'm sure it contributes to plenty of unnecessary e-waste.

• I use the Buzzkill app for custom vibration patterns, since I can't set any in the Settings app. Well worth the $1.99, thank you Sam Ruston. I can confirm that the design of the app is very very modern Android, which looks great, if slightly silly on older versions of Android.

Conclusion

It's hard to find a small phone these days. Fortunately, Android's modular and open design means that old Android phones are still usable several years on. I'll keep my eye out for new small Android phones. But for at least the next couple of years, my "new" phone should easily cover my simple use cases. In the meantime, I'm really enjoying an OS that isn't quite as locked-down as iOS. If you're also feeling trapped by Apple's scumbag moves, like removing the headphone jack, the fingerprint sensor, and now the SIM card slot, I highly recommend trying an older Android phone. They can be picked up for pretty cheap, and after you overcome the basic learning curve, you might just find that you prefer a little more breathing room than Apple provides.

If you enjoyed reading this, check out fellow blogger Chuck's similar post about the OnePlus Nord N200 (with an emphasis on repairability).

Technology alone is not enough — it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our heart sing.

When I was young, I read books.

When I was slightly less young, I read books off of a Kindle Touch.

I replaced my Kindle with an Android e-ink tablet. This article explains why.

Eventually, I learned about Amazon's nasty business practices in the e-reader space:

• forcing DRM (Digital Rights Management, software locks for files that Amazon, not you, holds the keys for) for ebooks, so you don't actually own your purchases -- you only rent them as long as Amazon cares to allow you to view your rental ebook
• price-fixing
• trapping Kindle hardware buyers into exclusively Amazon purchases, reducing competition and forcing authors to accept shoddy deals just to access 50%+ of the market

Of course, I was already a birthday-gift-Kindle deep in Amazon's trap. I jailbroke my Kindle to load new fonts and view unsupported ebook formats like EPUB. And I stopped buying ebooks from Amazon's store, preferring to instead sideload them from my computer with a physical cable connection. (Retro, I know. Who uses cables any more?)

After more than a decade of use, I finally decided to upgrade from my Kindle Touch. Funnily enough, the device still worked... but Amazon finally decided to retire the 3G Whispernet network that provided free internet access anywhere via a data connection. Not to mention that ereader hardware has come a long way since 2011. Modern alternatives provide:

• higher resolution screens
• less waiting for page turns
• built-in "frontlights" that don't cast light all over your bedroom when you read at night
• pen support for annotations
• larger screens (not useful in phones, if you ask me -- but for reading ebooks, I love something close to the size of a hardcover)
• software options other than the very closed ecosystem of the Kindle

Choices

I compared several ereaders before I made my final choice. I have a tendency to heavily over-research topics before I make a purchase, and this was no exception. I considered the following devices:

• Onyx Boox Note Air
• Onyx Boox Nova 3
• Onyx Boox Note 3
• Kindle Oasis 3
• Kobo Libra 2
• Kobo Elipsa
• PocketBook Era
• Remarkable 2

I wanted a 7-8" screen, a color-adjustable frontlight, USB-C ports, freedom to load any apps or ebook stores I wanted, a month of battery life with wireless off, and passive (no batteries!) drawing via pen.

The screen size requirement eliminated the Remarkable, the Note Air, and the Note 3.

The need for a USB-C port (along with "freedom to load any apps or ebook stores I want") eliminated the Kindle Oasis 3.

The need for pen input eliminated the Pocketbook and the Kobo Libra 2.

The need for passive pen input eliminated the Elipsa.

I ended up settling on the Onyx Boox Nova 3, because it met my list of needs. There are a few features I would really like, but ended up settling on because the perfect device just doesn't exist:

• headphone jack (for audiobook or maybe even music listening)
• fingerprint reader (notes, particularly journal entries, are fairly sensitive)
• SD card slot (ebooks are small; music and audiobooks are not)
• physical page turn buttons (I've never had them, but many swear they are a godsend)
• waterproofing (peace of mind, rather than "I want to swim with it")

Fortunately I don't currently listen to audiobooks, so I can ignore most of those features. If I ever get into audiobooks, I'll likely be forced to upgrade. The only feature I really wish I had was a fingerprint reader for security... but knowing Android device security, almost no devices are secure enough to fully trust anyway. So maybe it just doesn't matter. I do wish I could get a "pattern" style lock screen though.

Screen

Wow! The difference between my 2011 Kindle and a 2021 ereader is massive. It's a lot like the difference between 2000s computer displays and Apple's "Retina" hiDPI displays that started showing up in 2012 on the iPhone 4 and Macbooks.

On my old Kindle, I could see pixels on the edges of text. On my Boox, I ... can't. The text is damn near as sharp as text on a physical book page. Feels like the future!

I love the 7.8" screen, especially compared to my old Kindle's 6" screen. The Boox's screen is roughly the size of a hardcover novel page; the Kindle screen was about the size of a paperback page. I like big pages! In this case, a larger screen means longer line lengths, so I can read even faster than I could on my Kindle. It also means fewer page turns and refreshes per book read, so I don't have to reach up to turn the page as much, and less power usage as well since e-ink displays only consume power when they update the screen. So the bigger screen actually translates to better battery life!

Size

My old Kindle fit in my back pocket, and easily fit in coat pockets. My Boox is about 40% larger, and the case is slightly bulkier, so it's not as easy to fit in a back pocket. It's a tight squeeze for coat pockets.

That being said, I didn't even notice the weight or bulk when I accidentally left my Boox in my backpack when I hiked the tallest mountain in Colorado.

If you love putting a paperback or a tiny e-reader in your back pocket, the Boox Nova 3 isn't for you. They have a smaller model that's better for that. But in my experience it's light enough to easily hold for hours of reading, and small enough to fit in all but the most overstuffed of backpacks and bicycle handlebar bags.

Drawing

It's rad to get back into the manual writing game. Besides realizing that my cursive is very rusty, I've started journaling and notetaking on the Boox almost every day. It's a great way to keep my clicky keyboard from annoying people in work meetings and interviews.

Very useful for boring meeting doodles. Actually useful for writing annotations in books when you want to read properly. Extremely useful for journaling on a multi-day bike tour around Vermont.

Drawing with the pen is pressure sensitive, so you can adjust the weight of brush strokes for style. To my eyes, the screen doesn't have noticeable latency between "pen touching screen" and "ink showing up on the display," so it's effectively the same as an infinitely erasable piece of paper (that lights up at night!).

Android

You can run Android apps on all Boox devices. I've never found an app that doesn't run, but I've found lots of apps that run poorly on a black-and-white e-ink display that can only refresh once per second or so at the fastest setting (modern smartphone displays typically refresh between 60 and 120 times per second and show millions or billions of colors).

Boox offers a selection of different "optimization" settings to deal with the limitations of a black-and-white low-refresh-rate screen. You can tweak the e-ink refresh rate, or "bleach" light background content to white so text shows up better in black-and-white. It mostly works, but it can be tricky to find the right settings for every app. You won't enjoy playing games or watching videos, most likely. But you can probably get the Libby or Kindle apps to a usable state.

Personally, I spend 99% of my time on my Boox reading books or writing. I only install apps to aid and abet book downloads or book discovery. I'm glad I can run any app I want on here, because it lets me access books from any source imaginable on the internet, from libraries to DRM-free bookstores to the high seas. It's an imperfect experience, but that's OK since it's only peripheral functionality.

There are a few apps, like EinkBro, designed specifically for e-ink screens. These generally work well out-of-the box with the e-ink screen, and with some slight "optimizations" applied sometimes feel even better than the first-party Boox software that comes with the device.

On the subject of book reading: I mostly use KOReader to read ebooks on my Boox device, rather than the built in "Neoreader" ereader software. For my preferences, Neoreader just doesn't have enough tweaks and options to deal with the mixed bag of ebook formatting. Your mileage may vary, especially if you aren't as nitpicky as me. But I am VERY glad to have a device where I can just... change the default app that opens ebooks. Amazon doesn't give you that choice, so if you dislike a setting -- like the fact that the Kindle Touch doesn't let you turn off the numeric "book progress percentage" display -- you're stuck doing something crazy, like literally taping over it or blanking out that section of screen pixels with a marker. I prefer choice.

Battery Life

With WiFi and Bluetooth disabled, my Boox Nova 3 easily lasts me about a month of daily 1-2 hour reading. For battery longevity, I keep the charge between 20% and 80% whenever possible. Given how slowly the battery discharges, even with heavy use, this is easy, as long as I don't forget it on the charger and accidentally charge it to 100%.

One annoyance: because users don't have "root access" by default on Boox devices, I can't install an app to actually limit my battery charge to 80%. And Onyx Boox won't add it to the settings, like many Android phone manufacturers have done. So I have to manually make sure I don't charge above 80%. This is annoying on a phone or a laptop that you charge every day; on a device that I charge once a month, I usually just set myself a 30 minute timer and catch it somewhere in the 70-80% range. Easy peasy.

Issues

Two years in with my Boox Nova 3, I'm a huge fan. I use it almost every day, and I take it almost everywhere with me. It's almost exactly what I wanted as a successor to my Kindle Touch, and indications are good that it'll last me many more years, especially if I take care of the battery.

...So what's the catch? Why doesn't everyone own Boox devices?

Well, I have a few thoughts:

1. Awful UI text translations: I write professionally. The device settings and app settings are an absolute comedy of Chinese-to-English translation errors. I often have reverse-engineer the bad translation just to figure out what a setting means. Sometimes there's no way of knowing: you just have to toggle the setting and see what happens. Sometimes warnings sound really scary -- early on, I clicked a "refresh library" button and a huge warning came up to let me know that my reading progress would NOT be lost and the operation was NOT destructive in any way. That's great, but... after reading that warning, I started to wonder about software quality, false assumptions, translation confusion, etc. I'm happy to say that I haven't experienced any data loss in my two years of Boox usage, but I do sometimes worry!

2. Onyx Boox violated the GPL (Gnu Public License) (by using software bearing the license to produce a closed-source proprietary software product). This doesn't impact me day-to-day, but as someone who cares deeply about the health of the software industry, I don't like supporting a company so needlessly blasé about taking advantage of open source projects. Of course, Amazon and other big tech companies abuse their monopoly positions to hurt open source projects in other ways, so it's not like you can buy an ereader from a company that isn't evil in some way. Except for Kobo, which seems to just be a bunch of harmless Canadians who love reading.

3. Closed-source Chinese software is a bad idea. The CCP is scary. They literally run death camps and oppress any opinions that don't align with their own. Journalists and doctors whistleblowing the dangers of coronavirus have gone missing, been threatened, been maimed, or had their families kidnapped just for telling the truth. Companies based in China routinely bend to the will of the CCP and harvest data about their customers to send back to the CCP for... intelligence? Analysis? Who knows? I use NetGuard to only allow traffic to whitelisted servers and apps on the rare occasions that I connect my device to WiFi. Look, this isn't really a Chinese thing: you just shouldn't trust closed-source software in the first place. Everything is harvesting as much creepy data about you as you can imagine. Take precautions. Sharing everything with a device that regularly communicates with the internet is kind of like writing in Tom Riddle's diary. To (almost) quote Molly Weasley, "Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can’t see where it keeps its brain its source code." Prefer free and open source products whenever possible, because everything else has a profit motive to violate your privacy. There's no perfect solution right now, but I hope that someday I can run LineageOS or even Linux on an ereader -- maybe even my Nova 3 -- to make this less of an issue.

4. Case compatibility. Boox is a niche company. The Nova 3 is a niche product. As a result, there aren't many third-party vendors out there creating cases. There are a few on Etsy. The first-party Boox-made cases are OK. I actually repurposed a cheap iPad Mini 2/3/4 case into a Nova 3 case, taking advantage of the fact that the devices are almost the exact same dimensions. I just had to cut out a hole at the top for the power button, and stretch the TPU material with a couple of strategic slits since the Nova 3 is slightly wider. If you want a "first class" case experience, don't buy a Boox device. But if you're willing to DIY a bit, I absolutely love my case and it's been going strong for two years now!

TL;DR

Boox good for me. Kindle bad. Kobo good for most.

Do you use Tree Style Tabs, and hide the normal tab bar?

Did you notice an inverted caret (ˇ) that restored the height pixels of the hidden tab bar? (alt text for this caret labels it "list all tabs")

Did it annoy you that you can't remove that button, even in the "customize toolbar" view?

If this is the case, visit your browser's about:config configuration and update the following value to false:

browser.tabs.tabmanager.enabled

Restart your browser.

Voila! The "tab manager" inverted caret (also known as a háček) should disappear.

Meg and I take a lot of these pictures on bike trips. Frequently with a fancy mirrorless Sony camera. They can be pretty large. But they're also frequently very pretty. Neither of us wants to shrink the images into oblivion.

I used to host those chonky images directly in my Jekyll blog, via the _images subfolder.

Eventually my site's GitHub repo ballooned to over a gigabyte in size. I know you shouldn't host blobs in source control, but... GitHub doesn't seem to care if your repo is a little big. And it's the cheapest blob storage out there, at a grand total of $0 for a half decade of usage.

But all good things must come to an end, and I started to get worried about the long-term scalability of my blog. Deployments for GitHub pages, which I use to host my site, crept above 10 minutes.

Even worse, I knew my pages weren't respectful of user data connections. Opening one of my blog posts with 20+ images in it resulted in a 200MB download. That's $2 on my Google Fi metered data plan! For one page!

So I decided to solve the problem. I attacked it from multiple angles:

• I moved images out of my Jekyll GitHub Pages blog, and purged the blob files from the repo's history.
• I created a new repo, images, with one purpose: hosting blob files.
• I set up a GitHub Action that automatically generates thumbnails of all image files uploaded to the image repo.
• I overhauled my blog site to download only those thumbnails on page load.
• So users can still view images in full resolution, I set up the thumbnails to directly link to GitHub's raw user content API... to show the full image.

If you:

• would like to set up thumbnails for your own GitHub Pages-hosted Jekyll blog
• are just morbidly curious about the kinds of Rube Goldberg machines I assemble when I should be Halloween party planning

read on.

Purge the Blobs

My Jekyll blog's GitHub repository weighed over 1GB -- one chonky boi. This resulted in painfully long deployment times, and I started to worry that GitHub would eventually start killing my Pages deployment processes altogether.

So I used BFG Repo Cleaner to strip all blobs over 1MB out of my repository's history.

One caveat you should be aware of: the BFG doesn't delete blobs that exist in the $HEAD commit of your repo. So you should purge the blobs in the following order:

1. Copy the images over into a separate folder. A good initial solution: an images GitHub repository. If you plan on generating thumbnails for the images, I recommend nesting them within a folder named "images" within this repository.

2. Delete the blobs, either with your preferred file browser or on the CLI with rm -rf.

3. Add the deletions to a commit, and push that to GitHub.

4. Run the BFG to remove the no-longer-used blobs from your repo. I removed everything above 500KB in size. The BFG's interface makes this quite easy.

This is how I ran the BFG:

First clone a fresh copy of your repo, using the --mirror flag:

git clone --mirror git://github.com/your-repository-name.git

This is a "bare repo", so files won't be visible. But it is a full copy of the Git database of your repository. Make a backup of it to ensure you don't lose anything.

Now you can run the BFG to clean your repository up:

java -jar bfg.jar --strip-blobs-bigger-than 500K your-repository-name.git

The BFG rewrites your commits and all branches and tags to purge the blobs. But it doesn't physically delete the unwanted stuff. Examine the repo to make sure your history updated. Then, use git's garbage collector to strip out the blobs:

cd your-repository-name.git

git reflog expire --expire=now --all && git gc --prune=now --aggressive

Once you're happy with the updated state of your repo, push it back up. WARNING: because your clone command used the --mirror flag, this push updates all refs at your git host:

git push

Oddly, I didn't have to force push. If this fails, add the -f flag and it might work. I did see some failures related to github issues, but inspecting my repo revealed that the blobs no longer existed in my history. Seems like those errors didn't matter for my needs.

If any other people or machines still have copies of the old version of the repo (containing the blobs), you should delete those copies and re-clone the repo.

Host the Blobs

You can host your images anywhere else -- a physical server in your home, a dedicated site that hosts images, a cheap cloud machine you purchased with bitcoin -- but I chose to host my gigabyte of shame on GitHub.

I used a GitHub Action to automatically generate thumbnails for all images uploaded into the "images" subdirectory. Take a look at it here.

Basically, whenever I write to the website, this Action downloads my repo, scans it for images, and generates thumbnails for all of those images. If it generates any new thumbnails that didn't already exist, it commits them into the ".thumbnails" directory. The thumbnail generator matches the directory layout of the "images" folder when it creates thumbnails, so it's easy to find the thumbnail for a given image -- just swap the "images" folder name in the path for ".thumbnails".

I chose to create thumbnails with a maximum height or width of 1000 pixels. That way they never top 200KB in size (so far), but they look decent enough to use as the "default" image display mode in my blog.

Besides the workflow, you'll need to create a GitHub token with commit privileges for your images repo. Then, you'll have to add that token as a secret in your images repo. There are a lot of instructions out there to learn about both of these tasks, and both can change on a dime when GitHub releases new versions. Just know that your token needs the ability to write new commits to your images repo. To actually push to GitHub, you can just use the Git CLI in your workflow... or you can use an action, like publish-to-github-action.

Show the Thumbnails and the Blobs

There are three steps involved in the process of displaying these new images on your site:

1. Add custom Jekyll variables to easily reference your image repository in _config.yml:

   images: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/<your-username>/<repo-name>/main/images/
   thumbnails: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/<your-username>/<repo-name>/main/.thumbnails/images/
   

2. Create a figure HTML include for your Jekyll site. I created figure.html in my site's _includes subdirectory. This include uses the built-in HTML "figure" tag to display an image and a caption. I've wrapped the "img" tag within the "figure" tag in an anchor that links out to the full resolution version of the image.

3. Reference the include from blog posts with the syntax demonstrated here. Look for the "figure.html" mentions and the images should stick out.

With this arrangement, users should see thumbnails and captions on your site, and be able to view the full size image by clicking the thumbnail. For accessibility, the caption is reused as the image alt text. There's one caveat to this setup: if you upload full-size images that exceed 5MB in size, GitHub doesn't serve them as image content. Instead, GitHub uses the content type application/octet-stream. This means folks can't easily open your images in a new tab right in their browser... instead, they'll have to download the image and open it either in browser or with an app that lets them preview images. So keep your full size images below 5MB if that bothers you. EDIT: I have since added a second image generator pipeline that creates "reasonably sized" 2000 pixel wide images. These still look pretty good, and are easy enough to reference with a second config variable. You could also simply edit the files before uploading them, but this was more fun.

I also had to implement a couple of minor styling fixes to make this work.

1. On my blog, links have styling that colors their background when you hover over them. This resulted in some weird behavior when I hovered over images that are also links. I added a class called "nohover" to my figure image tags, and used :not(.nohover) in my CSS to exclude that class from hover styling:

   a:not(.nohover):hover {
      background-color: #300A24;
      color: #BBB;
   }
   

2. I added the following styling to all anchor links on my site, because honestly, I pretty much never want a link to open in the current tab:

   target: _blank;
   rel: "noopener noreferrer";
   

Viola! You've got clickable thumbnails on your site that lead to full-size images. You respect user data connections a tiny bit more than you did before. You still aren't paying someone to host a single gigabyte of images. And you put your Jekyll blog on a mean diet so you don't lose your sweet GH Pages site hosting.

If you're trying to read these in backwards order (who am I to judge?), check out part 6 here:

• Day 6 (Morrisville to Greensboro)

If you somehow missed my post for day 1, check it out here:

• Day 1 (Littleton to Marshfield)

Rain, Rain, Go Away

Our final day of the trip. It's hard to believe we've been living in a tent, off of bikes, with no source of transportation other than our own legs, for a full week. The rain sounds heavy as we lay in our sleeping bags, hoping for bluer skies. But when I open up the tent, it turns out to be a mere sprinkle.

It takes us a bit longer than usual to pack up the camping supplies, mostly because of the impressive collection of slugs and spiders sheltering under our rain guard. But the rain lets up just long enough to get the tent packed away without too much extra water (or slug) weight.

We pick up our bear bag from Carol's shed, and say goodbye to our gracious host. She asks if we plan to take the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail, but Vermont Transportation has been radio silent on the "late summer 2022" trail building progress. So we respond with a resounding "maybe."

First Brekky

We head downhill for breakfast and coffee at Greensboro's general store, Wiley's Store. After barely 100 meters on the road, the rain cranks up to 11. Fortunately the ride isn't far, so we park the bikes under an eave and sample the coffee, breakfast sandwich, donuts, and banana bread. The food is as excellent as you'd expect at a Vermont general store. And they sell Hill Farmstead bottles, a pleasant surprise.

The onslaught of rain continues, even after we respectfully drink an entire coffee and eat an entire donut. After a few minutes of continuing rain, we decide that with 60 miles of riding to Littleton, we should get on the road. So we set out towards Greensboro Bend.

Surprise Rail Trail!

The traffic is light. The rain is heavy. But spirits are high. As we cruise into Greensboro Bend, we notice an entrance to the rail trail. And surprisingly, the "closed" signs are face down on the road. Score! We hop on the rail trail with mild hesitation. Surely Vermont Transportation would announce if the rail trail was open?

As it turns out, they might not. We take the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail for most of the day. At every road crossing, I expected to see "closed" signs on the next stretch of trail... but that never happened. Some stretches of trail were a bit rough. None of them were as rough as the Ammonoosuc Rail Trail near Littleton. Overall, it was almost entirely graded, finished, and bridged over every obstacle. There was one giant dip in the trail under construction, with a giant backhoe parked at one end.

It turned out to be really fun on loaded bikes, and we got enough momentum going down one side to get all the way up the other side.

This Rail Trail Keeps Going Wowowowow

Before long, the sun comes out, and the world starts to warm up. We cruise along the sometimes-rough, sometimes-finished rail trail to Joe's Pond. But we finally run out of luck: near Harrington Hill, at a road crossing, we spot grading machines on the trail ahead, laying down smooth dirt/gravel surface. It's great to see Vermont building the rail trail, but slightly inconvenient that they're doing it at the same time that we'd like to be using the rail trail.

But it turns out to not be much of an obstacle. We take a quick detour down a dirt side road, but the next intersection is also blocked -- it looks like this grading process is a multi-hour ordeal, with multiple machines passing over the path multiple times.

So we continue on, and detour on 15 for a hot second, before finally rejoining the trail on Channel Road.

From there, the (finished) (preexisting) trail between Joe's Pond and St. Johnsbury is fantastic. We see a few people out on the trail for morning dog walks, bike rides, and runs. But it's overall just a beautiful orangey crisp haze.

Second and Third Brekky in St. Jay's

Once we hit St. Johnsbury, it's time for second breakfast and lunch at the Cosmic Cup Cafe. This place slaps! My breakfast burrito is so good, I ordered a third breakfast -- a breakfast-themed poutine complete with sunny-side-up eggs. Meg's pan baguette with lox was allegedly good, but I wouldn't know -- by the time I thought to ask for a bite, she'd already finished it! My latte is much better than I expected, but Meg claims her "Kingdom Fog" -- a London Fog with maple -- takes the cake. Fortunately, St. Johnsbury is so close to our favorite mountain bike trails, and on the way to so many people we know, that we're likely to return soon.

After second and third breakfast, it's time for a beer! We hop over to Kingdom Taproom and nab some Hill Farmstead tap beer, because yesterday just wasn't quite enough. Last time we visited, we liked their outdoor space on the street. It's nice to finally check out their extremely cozy basement taproom, which feels straight out of an old English pub. I'm excited to visit again after a long day of skiing at Jay Peak in the dead cold of winter.

I enjoy my first nitrogenated Hill Farmstead beer, which fits right in with the clouds that start to cover that warm mid-morning sun. Meg has some other hippy-dippie local Vermont beverage, which was allegedly good. She drank it quickly enough that I didn't get to try it, though.

Two Roads Diverged in a Yellow Wood

From St. Johnsbury, we have a choice. We can either cut across the hills and cruise directly to Littleton, or follow the river and ride a few extra miles to keep our hill ascents to a minimum.

We choose to be lazy and follow the river.

The Vermont dirt roads on our route turn out great. Much of our route parallels a railroad, which kept the grades relaxing. The roads are smooth, pleasing dirt. The cows and sheep and goats are cute. The foliage and views continue to gobsmack me around every corner. Traffic is nonexistent. We cruise under and above the highway at least three times, often spotting beautiful waterfalls in the highway median that I never knew existed, despite driving this highway countless times.

We eventually make it to two bodies of water that separate Vermont and New Hampshire near Littleton: Comerford and Moore Reservoirs. For the most part, the great dirt roads continue, though we can tell that near the border New Hampshire starts to leak in: more and more stretches of crumbling pavement appear, a poor substitute for the smooth, concrete-like dirt we've grown used to in Vermont.

We cross Moore reservoir on a relatively busy paved road, and it becomes immediately clear that we've entered New Hampshire. The roads expand, the cars get faster, and a gloom sets in, blocking out the last traces of sunlight in the sky. The wind whips up, and faint raindrops begin pooling on my glasses. A lone, haunting wolf howls in the distance. No wait, a wolf didn't actually howl in the distance, I got carried away setting the atmosphere. Anyway, the ride from Moore dam (which you can get very close to on a bike) to Littleton kinda sucks. The shoulder is wide, so I'm not too concerned for our safety, but damn there are a lot of trucks, and they are all going really fast, and they are all really loud. There's a back way into town with way more hills and dirt roads, but at the end of a 60-mile day, we aren't trying to add an extra 10-15 miles.

The skies open up and start absolutely dumping rain on us just as we turn off the main road onto the residential hilly streets of Littleton. As we reach home, the sun peeks out behind this passing rainstorm, and a rainbow appears over Franconia Notch. Seriously, I'm not messing with you, that's not me setting the atmosphere, it actually happened.

Conclusion.

We just spent a whole week on bikes!

It's a lot to process. On one hand, it was a lot of work to plan out a route, find campsites, pack our things, and lug them up hills all across Vermont. On the other hand... with the exact same setup, we could live off our bikes indefinitely anywhere. All we'd need is a laundromat every couple of weeks. And maybe a little more discipline when it comes to eating 8 meals a day.

My biggest fear going into this trip was twofold: we'd either get mentally or physically sick of biking by the end of the week. Turns out, that didn't happen. The day after we finished this trip, we loaded the mountain bikes onto our car rack and cruised for a few hours around Kingdom Trails in Burke. Then we got home, ate some ice cream, and ascended Mount Agassiz on Bethlehem's new mountain bike trails. The weather was perfect, and with fall looming, it's hard to say when we'll get our last bike ride in for the year. Might as well keep going.

When we set out on this trip, Meg and I wanted to prove to ourselves that we COULD live off of bikes for as long as we need. I think we've accomplished that. And now we're already floating ideas of a month in Europe next year.

If you're trying to read these in backwards order (who am I to judge?), check out part 5 here:

• Day 5 (Little River/Stowe to Morrisville)

If you somehow missed my post for day 1, check it out here:

• Day 1 (Littleton to Marshfield)

Wow it's Already Day Six

We awaken at 7AM to the most condensation and fog we've seen all trip. It doesn't take us long to pack up our tent and sleeping supplies: at this point, we've had plenty of practice.

Our ride into Morristown is quick, but our small stint on 100 turns out to be very busy at 7:30AM. Black Cap Espresso turns out busy as well, but the breakfast sandwiches, coffee, and breakfast burrito are all highly competent.

At Black Cap, we meet a crew of bikepackers starting on their first day of the Gravel Growler. None of them have panniers (the big bags on the racks at the rear of our bikes). They're all riding lightweight bikes, wearing spandex, and rocking some serious dad vibes. Their bags are small enough that I don't know where they're packing their sleeping bags, much less their tents.

They seem very surprised that my 7-speed 90s mountain bike ascended the 20% grades of Lincoln Gap. Incredulous to the point of disbelief, actually. I quickly realize that despite the fact that we're riding (mostly) the same bike route, we are very, very different kinds of bicyclist. They have clearly fallen for The Efficiency Ruse. I wonder how many beers they allocate for themselves per day to maintain their racing pace.

After Black Cap, we ride through Morrisville, and nearly the minute we cross VT-15, the road turns to dirt.

There are a hell of a lot of hills, but they're gentle and rolling, and none overstay their welcome. At this point, it's hard not to notice that every mile north we ride, the trees get more and more red.

By the time we stop for second breakfast, the hills are ablaze with more fall foliage colors than I've ever seen.

A random field presents an opportunity to eat our first donut: a maple glaze. The donut is great, but the views are hard to beat.

A cemetery on a hill provides a perfect spot to leaf peep with a fresh Heady Topper and a chai spice donut.

My notes indicate that I should thank North Country Donuts of Morrisville for the perfectly textured donuts.

Not long after the cemetery, we spot Craftsbury, located right at the top of a big hill.

After a lengthy hill climb, we spot a general store, and immediately step inside for a calzone. By the time we finish the calzone, we realize that there are actually two general stores in town... and the fancy one we meant to stop at is just down the street. So naturally we swing by the fancier store for a to-go sandwich, a fancy bottle of pét-nat, and some longing gazes at cheese. Next time, cheese!

The last leg of today's journey takes us through a windy, hilly, foliage-y stretch of dirt roads that eventually lead to Hill Farmstead, one of the finest breweries on the planet.

At one point, the trail disintegrates into a puddle-y ATV trail. But the cows and foliage provide all the motivation we need, and at 2:50, we arrive at Hill. Just 5 minutes after our reservation -- not half bad for a complete guesstimate we made 7 days and 250 miles of biking ago!

After Hill, it's a short downhill ride to our campsite, coincidentally the same place we stayed almost a year ago for our New England Tour. There's a baby cow. I hand-saw some branches from a downed tree for a fire. We eat a whole basket of cherry tomatoes. We don't get eaten by any coyotes.

We fall asleep to the gentle crackle of our dying campfire.

The Saga Continues

Check out part 7 (whenever I finish writing it -- maybe I already have?) at Day 7 (Greensboro to Littleton).

If you're trying to read these in backwards order (who am I to judge?), check out part 4 here:

• Day 4 (Mount Philo to Little River/Stowe)

If you somehow missed my post for day 1, check it out here:

• Day 1 (Littleton to Marshfield)

Mountain Biking, in Hard Mode

At 7 AM, we finish packing the tent and the bikes are ready to go. A quick toothbrush-by at the bathroom later, and we're on our way out of the campsite.

But, much like our stay at Onion River, we aren't satisfied strolling out the front entrance, past the ranger. Instead, we have a full morning of mountain biking trails mapped out. Instead of taking potentially busy roads, we'll be hoofing it over downed trees, through poorly-marked intersections between trails named "Stonewall" and "Bear Run", and around trails closed due to landslides.

And that's just the way we like it.

We start out on a backroad that connects the "A" and "B" camping zones. Then we pull off onto a brutally uphill doubletrack route. Then the signage gets interesting: some trails are 2 way, but only one direction bans bicycles. Huh.

Eventually, we end up on a blue (intermediate) mountain bike trail, switchbacking our way uphill to the trail that will take us most of the way to Stowe. It's tough going with 30 kilograms of fully loaded bicycle, but we persevere and make it up the hill.

Next, it's gambling time: intersections with absolutely no signage at all. But thanks to a decent sense of direction and the occasional scouting mission, we figure things out.

Then we hit Ricker Farm, the start of the slightly easier doubletrack that we'll take the remainder of the way.

From here, we ride on an abandoned road that's mostly clear-cut biking. There's plenty of rocks, the occasional downed tree, a mixture of up and downhill... but it's mostly just beautiful forest.

Since we're essentially in a long crevasse on the side of a mountain, we largely travel uphill until we cross a stream, then downhill as we make our way back towards the reservoir.

The entire time, we only see one other soul: a brave gravel biker, trucking it as fast as he can to presumably win King of the Mountain on Strava.

The uphill makes for slow, but beautiful going. Halfway through the downhill, the rough dirt-and-rock path transforms into a smooth, recently renovated gravel almost-road. There are few things as satisfying as zooming down a well-earned hill, through the fantastic fiery fall foliage, towards a burrito & beer lunch.

It's a Von Trapp

Our journey continues with one last hill, and it's a big 'un. Over the course of 1.8 miles, we ascend from 700 feet to over 1400 feet. It's an intense climb, but the road is a perfect example of VT dirt, and the views at the top are straight-up gobsmacking. And the downhill goes by very, very quickly.

Our first stop in town: Idletyme, which we haven't visited since 2019. Meg was extremely excited (and not disappointed) by the poutine. The beer was decent. The weather was perfect. The bees were friendly.

Next up, we swing by PK Coffee for a caffeine hit. Our beverages are good enough, but they last only long enough to reach Alchemist Beer. Sadly, Alchemist doesn't do pours every day, so we settled for a 4-pack of the freshest Heady Topper in the state.

After Alchemist, our 2019 nostalgia trip continues with Stowe Cider, where we enjoy the fall seasonal sampler and some complimentary phone charging.

On our way there, we interrupted something truly haunting: a sphynx cat photo op on a bike path bridge. I'm not sure what's more horrifying: hairless cats, or the fact that this couple assumed they could take up the entire busy bike path bridge to take multiple fall photos. All I can say: if your animal gets so cold outside when it's 60 degrees Fahrenheit that you need to keep it inside your hoodie, I'm not sure it's well suited to a fall foliage photo op.

Burritos 4 Lyfe

After our scarring naked cat experience, we fulfill my daily bike trip requirement: we stop for burrito. This time, it's not a new experience. Instead, we visit the first place I ever enjoyed a burrito in Vermont: Ranch Camp. The beer selection is rad. The burrito is rad. The service is slightly slow, because it's busy as hell. But the porch is a lovely place to hang out, and both the weather and views outside are beautiful. It's hard to complain.

Please Head North

After Ranch Camp, our route is simple and short: a few miles up the valley to Morristown. We arrive at our campsite with plenty of time to spare, and meet up with my brother Kevin and his wife for dinner and drinks. Thanks for hanging out! If you ever feel like live music, a local beer, and a classic chicken tender after a long day of mountain biking, I couldn't recommend Moog's Place more.

Our night wraps up late -- nearly 10 PM. It's crispy cold outside, and the nearly full moon casts a bright pale glow over the landscape. The stars are beautiful. Our bike lights (including my dynamo light, which doesn't require batteries at all) provide all the light we need. After a quick relaxing ride back to the campsite, we quickly fall asleep to the sound of yet another babbling brook.

The Saga Continues

Check out part 6 (whenever I finish writing it -- maybe I already have?) at Day 6 (Morrisville to Greensboro).

If you're trying to read these in backwards order (who am I to judge?), check out part 3 here:

• Day 3 (Lincoln Gap to Mount Philo)

If you somehow missed my post for day 1, check it out here:

• Day 1 (Littleton to Marshfield)

The Burlington Shuffle

Thanks to our late night campfire, we wake up a bit later than usual -- 6:30 or so. But we make OK time during site breakdown, first breakfast, and my very fast, very cold, very free shower. So we end up on the road at 7:15.

It's nice to roll downhill to the entrance of Mount Philo. But then we descend into madness: 18 miles of trash on the side of the road, small shoulders, and cars driving "45 MPH" from the soulless sad exurbs and suburbs into town. All to get to a coffee shop that we're not that excited about. It turns out Burlington's north/south bike infrastructure is nonexistent. Once you get inside the city proper, I'm sure it's fine. But the suburbs do a worse job than Denver at keeping us safe next to traffic.

You could say we're excited to get back into the mountains.

After a particularly haunting stretch of miserable road where we couldn't even hear cars because of the incredibly loud fighter jets flying above (why on earth do people live here?), we arrive at second breakfast: Red Barn Market & Deli.

It has all the charm of an especially clean Central New York gas station, without the gas station parts. The sandwiches are OK, especially the spicy one, which reminds me of Deli Sandros (in?)famous Wake-up call sandwich. The coffee is ... not artisan. Nor especially cheap. But there's a bathroom with paper towels, so I'll call it a win.

Escape from the Flatlands

After Red Barn, we're excited to start moving up into the foothills towards Waterbury. This meant getting back to the XVT trail that we loved so much for the first two days of the trip -- surely a good thing.

It's not a good thing.

To the east of Red Barn, the "sad suburbs" quickly escalated into "sadder strip malls and shopping centers." The kinds of places where you're never sure where to be on a bike: surely not on the 45 MPH 5-6 lane road? But probably not on the (inconsistent) (poorly maintained) (frequently blocked by abandoned shopping carts) sidewalk? But sometimes the sidewalk claims to be a bike lane?

Overall it's very confusing and not very fun. We're ecstatic when the shopping centers finally recede. But our ecstasy isn't destined to last long: we haven't escaped to fun riding yet. Just a series of very poorly marked intersections, both bike path and road. As if whoever posted the signs didn't understand that the proper place to mark the XVT continuation is at the intersection... not 100 meters down the road, behind a bush. Woof.

Pay Dirt

After fighting our way through the suburban Labyrinth, we end up on one more nightmarish skinny-shouldered 45 MPH hellscape... before we turn onto a delightful dirt drive. The transition from "dump truck passing without giving any space at 50" to "cows without touching distance" is abrupt, to say the least.

It isn't long before we see yet more dirt road construction (a fad, down here in the flatlands?), but we're fortunate enough that the construction workers just wave us by.

Then we hop back on a (wider shouldered!) paved road for a couple of minutes, before finally diverting onto the "true" XVT: a dirt road that soon morphs into full-blown singletrack. Sick.

After shredding the gnar on our fully loaded rigid touring bikes, the XVT dumps us right in front of our lunch destination: Stone Corral.

Have You Noticed We Like Burritos Yet?

Stone Corral treats us very well, with a top-up of our phone batteries, a well executed black IPA, and -- most importantly -- an impressive breadth of burritos, tacos, and rice bowls. I especially like the fact that they put all of the sets of ingredients in one big list, and you can order a taco, burrito, or rice bowl with each set of ingredients. It's something you usually see with bowls and burritos, but tacos, too? That's texmex innovation.

Anyway, the burrito is great -- it gives Ranch Camp and Black Lotus a run for their money for "best burrito of the trip." With heavy hearts and heavier stomachs, we set out towards Waterbury.

Sus Bridge

Not far after Stone Corral, we cross the Long Trail. Vermont is kind enough to put a very impressive pedestrian suspension bridge over the Winooski River here so hikers don't have to swim.

Tractor Man

Soon after the bridge, we spot a true Vermont icon: Tractor Man. Huge mutton chops, hair like Riff Raff from Rocky Horror, driving an ancient tire-chained tractor decorated in full hippie spray paint regalia. Legend says if you see this man on the road in Vermont, your turnips will grow especially fiercely next year.

Knees Sweaty, Mom's Spaghetti

On our way into Waterbury, Meg's knees start to give her some trouble. We decide to ice the knees over a nice long second lunch at the Prohibition Pig, which fortunately has a delicious food and beer menu. Chatting with other travelers -- some old, some young -- passes the time quickly. We even met some vanlifer Sammie Rae fans! Thanks to David and Lily Jo for the great conversation. Always nice to chat with fun people and get some music recs in the process.

Dam Little River

We stay at Prohibition Pig slightly later than intended. Fortunately, the ride to our campsite is really short -- just a few miles. Waterbury is very busy with car traffic, but it isn't long before we're on yet another dirt road, climbing up towards the top of a gorgeous dam with striking views of the Green Mountains. And not long after that, we arrive at our campsite, nestled under pine trees high up a precipitous cliff above Waterbury Reservoir. It's damn cozy, and our fire makes it even cozier. The cabot cheese and slim jims take it over the top, and before we know it, we're asleep from the sheer cozy overload.

The Saga Continues

Check out part 5 (whenever I finish writing it -- maybe I already have?) at Day 5 (Little River/Stowe to Morrisville).

If you're trying to read these in backwards order (who am I to judge?), check out part 2 here:

• Day 2 (Marshfield to the Lincoln Gap)

If you somehow missed my post for day 1, check it out here:

• Day 1 (Littleton to Marshfield)

Descending Lincoln Gap

Primitive camping by the babbling brook turned out to be a very pleasant way to sleep. We awake early in the morning to our chilliest morning yet.

Remember how yesterday's Lincoln Gap ascent was brutally uphill? The way down was... slightly less brutally downhill. And largely dirt. Note to self: the next time you climb Lincoln Gap, ascend the dirt side.

We set out on a long and winding path to Middlebury, where we've tracked down the first coffee shop of the day. On the way, we'll pass through Lincoln and a whole lot of dirt roads.

A Frosty Morning in the Greens

Lincoln sits within a valley in the Green Mountains. As we ride lower and lower into the valley, it gets colder and colder. We start to notice frost on the fields. The ponds give off a decidedly spooky vibe, thanks to fall foliage and the steam evaporating off the warm pond surfaces into the cold air.

We enjoy a lovely morning, looping up and down and over and across a myriad of hills on the healthy population of dirt roads in the Lincoln area. The occasional school bus or gaggle of kids waiting at the end of a driveway serves as a reminder that despite our vacation, for the rest of the world, it's Monday.

We finally descend fully into the flatlands surrounding Lake Champlain on a very windy, very steep, paved road.

It becomes immediately obvious that we're no longer "up in the mountains": the air is warm, the tree-encrusted hills give way to sprawling farms, and the narrow dirt roads inflate into wide, highly-trafficked pavement.

Aside from our cruise through East Middlebury and the crossing over 7 (as truck-filled a road as I've ever seen in Vermont), we manage to keep to back roads. The route into Middlebury and our coffee shop destination takes us on a dirt road right in the middle of resurfacing. Which means next to no traffic, except for the grading machine, because there's a giant pile of sand in the middle of the road.

Middlebury

We soon reach Middlebury, and take the "trail around Middlebury" to avoid the roads that are now somewhat-clogged with cars. A confused high school student asks us if we've seen her outdoor gym class on the trails; I wonder if she's still out there, looking for them.

A suspension bridge and a mildly stressful downtown ride later, we arrive at Royal Oak Coffee. After all our hard work, it seems fitting to reward ourselves with a vegan pastry "flight" containing:

• cardamom bun
• spiced pear cake
• cider donut

Meg was especially fond of the cider donut. I thought the cardamom bun had the most "not-vegan" texture. When you regularly buy cider donuts in the local diner for 50 cents, purchasing a fancy vegan cider donut for $3.75 feels not entirely unlike the infamous Pulp Fiction $5 milkshake. But Royal Oak did made some of the best coffee of our entire trip, including one of the best mochas I've ever had. I'll allow the markup since vegan pastries are really freaking hard to get right.

Chock full of pastries, it's time to check out the local brewery. We head north to Otter Creek brewing, one of the older Vermont breweries. It dates all the way back to 1991, positively ancient!

Odder Creek

Our experience at Otter Creek is decidedly odd. First off, our beers: I enjoy a bitter IPA. Meg opts for a flight:

• a pumpkin beer (tis the season!)
• a black and tan (report: not actually a black and tan at all)
• a pale ale
• an IPA

The beers are decent, if unremarkable. The staff, however, is the friendliest staff of any brewery I've ever been to. And we've been to a lot of breweries. We chat for a solid hour with the only two employees about Otter Creek's wild ownership ride over for the past few months: no less than three acquisitions involving breweries absorbed by breweries that proceed to get bought up by other breweries.

They make a very peppery homemade mac and cheese, which they are happy to inform us they recently created as a means of feeding the many bicycle tourists that pass through on the Gravel Growler. Apparently carbs are the number one bike tourist request. The panini wasn't bad either. My only regret? We hung out the entire time inside, because the employees were so nice. As a result, we missed out on the beer garden outside. At least we enjoyed 99% of the rest of the day outside on the bikes.

Vergennes

But we can't hang out at the brewery all day. So after a couple of beers and some carbs, we hit the road to Vergennes. The weather is beautiful, even warm. There are cute farms, dirt roads, cows, and very fluffy dogs.

Time flies by, and before long we find ourselves at the 3 Squares Cafe.

I enjoy a remarkably well executed pita. Meg chooses a soup that is disappointing only because it really really sounded like a creamy soup... but turned out to be not creamy at all. Such is life.

We grab a 4-pack of Foam beers at the local wine store, and take the annoyingly busy route 7 out of town to a corner store that stocks subs and pop tarts.

Mount Philo & Mango

Then, it's a relaxing lumpy ride all the way to Mount Philo. Even at the base of the hill, the views of Lake Champlain and the Adirondacks are stunning. The ranger is kind enough to let us take our bikes the wrong direction around the hill to avoid an extra mile or two of brutal climbing after an already long day on the bikes. Thanks Nathaniel! Sorry for spooking you at the window when we silently arrived on our bicycles.

After arriving, we grab a couple of cans of beer and enjoy the sunset view at the peak. Nothing beats petting a very kind golden retriever named Mango while looking out at a sunset over the mountains and sipping a local beer.

Soon, it starts to get dark. We say our goodbyes to Mango, and return to the campsite to set up the tent. Before long, our good friends (and new Burlington residents) Rachael and Gino stop by with some firewood, beer and hot dogs. Thanks for stopping by to hang out! It was a great way to spend the evening.

The Saga Continues

Check out part 4 (whenever I finish writing it -- maybe I already have?) at Day 4 (Mount Philo to Little River/Stowe).

If you somehow missed my post for day 1, check it out here:

• Day 1 (Littleton to Marshfield)

Return to the Old Railroad Bed

Meg and I wake up at 5:30 to a crisp, cool, classic Fall morning. Our route begins with an "easy" connector over a half mile of campground trails to the same Old Railroad Bed trail we used yesterday.

The campground map helpfully shows "biking & walking trails" to the east. But there's a whole mishmash of trails between us and the Old Railroad Bed. We hit the first trail intersection, and we pause. The signs indicate that one way sends us to the meadow. The other way sends us to... some other landmark. Which one leads to the Old Railroad Bed, again? I pick a random direction that moves us vaguely east.

The "random direction" strategy pans out, until we end up on some steep, narrow trails that we can't ride on any more. Naturally, I'm elected scout for the group, and I run ahead. A couple of wrong turns and some jogging later, I pathfind us to the Old Railroad Bed. Soon enough, we're enjoying our first country store cider donut of the day on the intended trail.

Today's section of the Old Railroad Bed turns out to be a little rougher than yesterday's. But any time you're on level-ish ground away from the tyranny of wheels is a good time to me. It's a muddy, tree-y, rocky good time.

The Unexpected Burrito

We make speedy progress down the rail trail, so it isn't long before we cruise our way to what seems like the end of the rail trail. The return to civilization and paved roads disappoints us for a hot second... but the Black Lotus Kitchen soon lifts our spirits. Seriously, this food truck is run by possibly the most friendly guy I've ever met. He was more than happy to drip maple syrup right into our coffee as he fried up an incredible breakfast burrito with local ingredients. First chance we get, we're trying lunch and dinner here.

With bellies full of coffee and burrito, we briefly cruise down 2 to meet up with the rail trail yet again. This section has received a bit more love in recent years -- in one washed-out section of forest, the caretakers have even gone to the trouble of building a loopy detour, complete with fresh gravel and guard rails. Fancy!

The Phantom Trail

But all good things must come to an end, so before long we return to 2. It's... fine. The shoulder is big and it doesn't crumble beneath our tires, so I'll call it a win. The cars speed by loudly, but there aren't too many. The scenery is pleasant. We typically route away from major roads like this, but they're sometimes a necessary evil to connect things. And with thousands of feet and dozens of miles to go, we probably shouldn't take on any more miles or hills.

Given my assumption that we'll have to ride this road all the way into Montpelier, I'm dumbstruck when we notice what looks like a bike path popping out of the trees along the shoulder of the road. Like any misguided bicycle tourist, I have no choice but investigation of where this mysterious path leads. After all, it sort of looks like it's going in the right direction. My intuition was correct (ish) in the forest this morning. What's the worst that can happen?

So we hop on the bike path. It leads to an absolutely beautiful, brand-spanking-new bicycle bridge that claims to be a bicycle path leading right into Montpelier, a new stretch of the XVT!

We excitedly snap some photos on the bridge, and head up the hill on the path, which quickly turns into dirt...

... which swiftly turns into rutted mud...

... which abruptly stops in a drainage ditch, and a series of trees marked as a future route for the XVT. Nuts.

So we backtrack to the bridge, which connects to a dirt road which looks like it leads into Montpelier. And then we notice XVT signs! Hurrah, we're saved! It turns out that the bridge got us to the opposite site of the river, where the XVT currently runs. That dirt road turns into a bike path closer to Montpelier, which led right to the Capitol and a very cute downtown grid.

Forbidden Peanut Butter at The Capitol

A quick stop to chat with some other bicycle tourists (good luck on your trip to Boston, NYC, and Washington, DC!), and it's time to grab second breakfast.

I enjoy a croissant with bacon, apple slices, and peanut butter. Meg looks at me with sheer terror. Despite their controversial sandwich choices, Capitol Grounds makes a solid espresso. They rank among my favorite coffee shops of the trip. And in Vermont, there's steep competition.

Overall, Montpelier really impressed me. I imagined it to be a much larger city, but it turns out it's just a big-ish town with a nice dense multiuse downtown. Looks straight out of Europe, or England at least. Lots of brick buildings, taverns, bridges, a train right through town, and tons of people riding around on bikes. It's rare to visit any place in the USA where I feel like I could live without a car, but Montpelier ranks high on that scale. Very close to Fort Collins, another town I've raved about on this blog after a biking trip.

Natural Burials are Legal in Vermont

We cruise out of Montpelier past the gorgeous Green Mount Cemetery (only $1200 for a natural summer burial!), and quickly turn onto some classic VT dirt roads.

Dirt Roads, Spooky Barks, and Trucking Nuts

The foliage is once again smashing, and despite the slow incline into the mountains, Meg and I have a great time. Until we hear the sound every bicyclist fears: a barking dog, just around the corner. 99% of the time, it's no problem -- between invisible fences and mitigating tactics, you can usually cope with a dog. But our hackles have been successfully raised. Until we round the corner, to be greeted with... a big, fluffy, drooly, silly, dopey golden retriever. Whew!

Continuing down (or rather, up -- it's quite the grade at times) the road, we only see one other group of human beings: a gaggle of hunters that literally attached a set of deer testicles to their truck as a bizarre reinterpretation of truck nutz.

One wrong turn later, we end up in some kind of bizarre Breaking Bad drug deal set, complete with a completely trashed abandoned car. A quick check of the map, and we discover that we should have "stayed" on the main road a quarter mile or so back.

Class 4: What was Class 3, Again?

A speedy backtrack later, and we find ourselves on a classic VT class 4 road: giant puddles of mud, enormous swathes of exposed raw rock, downed chunks of trees, and rocks that could be described more as boulders than baby heads. It was brilliant.

A small amount of uphill later, we pass through the notch of the hill. Then it's downhill, which turns out to be even harder than uphill on this terrain, since you need to constantly brake before you... break.

Not to be Confused with Mad TacoS

Then it's an abrupt transition from class 4 offroading back to a completely normal road, another ascent, and our first sweeping views of the Mad River Valley, all the way to Sugarbush (close to Lincoln Gap, our destination for the day). With the foliage just breaking into peak levels, it's absolutely rad. The dirt roads just keep ascending to breathtaking views, then descending back to another grueling hill climb. But hey, there's cows!

Soon, we're descending into Waitsfield, and our lunch spot is in view. Mad Taco does not disappoint, though I feel concerned that Mad Tacos near Cazenovia, NY might be in some dicey intellectual property space with these folks. But they have Hill Farmstead on draft and burritos, what's not to love?

Lawsons Loves Bicycles or Maybe Bicycles Love Lawsons

After Mad Taco, we haven't consumed quite enough calories to push our way over Lincoln Gap. So we do as any sane bicycle tourist would do -- we head over to Lawson's Finest Liquids for some additional carbs. Meg highly recommends their black IPA.

Lawsons has a lot of bicyclists. We had the good fortune to meet a (European?) couple staying in Warren who are almost done with the Gravel Growler bike route, which inspired this ride. We also meet a very enthusiastic guy who just bought a Salsa Journeyman, who had so many questions about bikepacking and bicycle touring that his mom literally had to drag him away from us. If you end up reading this post someday, I hope you end up buying that Swift Industries bag you wanted.

Warren

With the day officially crossing into "afternoon" territory, we trim a dirt road featuring a hill & a cow & a foliage view to keep ourselves on schedule. A quick ride down 100 takes us to Warren. We notice quite a few nature paths off the road, but we're on a schedule, dammit. If we don't get to the country store in time, they'll be all out of pastries for tomorrow's breakfast!

So we roll into Warren to load up at the country store. A bathroom break, a homemade mint chocolate chip ice cream sandwich, and some dinner & breakfast goods later, we snap a quick shot of the gorge, and head to Lincoln Gap. It's only a few miles to the campsite, how bad can it be?

Steep, Like Tea Bags

... MULTIPLE MILES OF GRUELING UPHILL 20%+ GRADE STRAIGHT INTO THE SKY LATER, we make it to the notch at the top of Lincoln Gap. It's beautiful! The setting sun really brings out the foliage, and we get our first glimpse of the Adirondacks. We get a small taste of tomorrow morning's descent, then pull off onto a side forest road for some primitive camping for the night.

A beer, a hummus wrap, and a beautiful sunset later, we're tired enough for an early sleep. We take advantage of the forest road to hang our bear bag a good distance from our campsite. With the ascent up Vermont's highest vehicle road behind us and a babbling brook in the near distance, sleep comes easy.

The Saga Continues

Check out part 3 (whenever I finish writing it -- maybe I already have?) at Day 3 (Lincoln Gap to Mount Philo).

Through the power of internet magic, I'm posting all seven links at the top of this first post. Each link will start working once I actually write the post for that day. But until then, enjoy my absurd 404 page.

• Day 1 (Littleton to Marshfield)
• Day 2 (Marshfield to the Lincoln Gap)
• Day 3 (Lincoln Gap to Mount Philo)
• Day 4 (Mount Philo to Little River/Stowe)
• Day 5 (Little River/Stowe to Morrisville)
• Day 6 (Morrisville to Greensboro)
• Day 7 (Greensboro to Littleton)

Shipping Out

Meg and I wake up at 6am for an espresso & an english muffin. This fuels our ride down the Ammonoosuc Rail Trail.

The trail ride starts with some rough going: lots of baby heads and soft, sandy surface. Our tires sink into the soil. We hopscotch rocks and mud puddles. But thanks to striking fall foliage, the excitement of a full week's bike vacation, and a shared affection for fog, we push south to Lisbon, where the trail improves.

This is the first time we've biked the entire length of the trail to the VT border. It's really neat! Like most rail trails, the Ammonoosuc features a number of old rail bridges. My favorite looms high above a sandy beach just down the trail from Bath. We'll return next summer for a swim -- for now, the water is a tad cold for a dip.

Shortly after the high bridge, a rafter of turkeys appears in the path. We creep up for a photo op, but they, uh... fly away down the trail. For a sizable distance. Huh. Earlier in the day, we followed a fawn down the trail for a while, but "flying turkeys" are my favorite memory.

On the subject of "cool stuff you don't see from a car": Bath, NH is home to a very long, very pretty, covered bridge that you can only view properly from the rail trail. It's a great spot to consider eating a donut, but decide against it because you're saving stomach space for a breakfast sandwich.

Second Breakfast

After a brief spooky road ride across the VT border to Wells River, we reach our second breakfast destination: The Hatchbox, a very small towable trailer transformed into a breakfast sandwich kitchen. But they're unexpectedly closed "for the weekend". Sigh -- VT small businesses strike again! So we settle for a stop at the nearby diner, Tuttle's, instead.

Not a Mistake

When we mapped out our route, I dreaded one section of the ride the most: the brief post-breakfast stint on the shoulder of US-302 from Woodsville to Groton. It's technically part of the Cross Vermont Trail, or XVT. But Meg and I have driven a car along that stretch of road before, and the wide shoulders did nothing to ease my worries about 50MPH speed limits and claustrophobic guard rails.

Fortunately, I was completely wrong.

Heading out from breakfast, the road is a smidge busy. But Meg reminds me that the XVT repeatedly diverts onto side roads and trails to keep bicycles off 302 as much as possible. We soon follow the XVT signage off the road onto a stretch of doubletrack. It leads through a quiet, peaceful, mushroom-filled chunk of forest completely separated from the road. We pass under the highway and the highway off ramps. A picnic bench presents an opportunity for a cider donut within spitting distance of the highway. Because somehow Vermont managed to make a park near a highway a pleasant place to be. Who knew?

Mouse and Moose

On the subject of those donuts... we stored them overnight in our bike bags before setting out. When we opened up the bag for a pre-lunch snack, we discovered that something ate its way through the bag and into one of the donuts for an overnight bite. A mouse? A hungry late-night Nate or Meg? Who knows?

Post mouse-surprise, we spot a large, dark, long-legged animal on the trail ahead of us. It quickly noticed us and sped off, but Meg's completely convinced it was an adolescent moose. I didn't see a white flashing tail, and it definitely had long legs, so who's to say? We'll call it the first moose sighting of our New England experience.

Experiencing Confusion

We soon rejoin the road, where the XVT signs (or lack thereof) immediately stymie us. They aren't ideal -- we frequently hit intersections with no indication of how to stick to the XVT. But thanks to Ride With GPS and Osmand, we (roughly) figure it out. Eventually. None of the roads are busy, the weather is beautiful, and the foliage just keeps getting better. Neither of us minds getting a little lost.

Eventually, we end up on "Old Railroad Bed," a proto-rail trail through Groton State Forest. This trail has it all: lakes, brilliant autumn oranges, reds, and yellows, massive boulders, easy grades, friendly people, vintage bikes, knives, lollipops -- exactly what you'd expect on a bike ride through the Vermont woods this time of year. And we spot our first sugar bush (of many), complete with a massive network of blueish sap piping.

Resentment and (Non)Forgiveness

With time, the XVT diverts from the "Old Railroad Bed" to dirt roads, plummeting towards Marshfield. Meg still resents me for making her climb a steep uphill around here because I saw a really cool waterfall. Some things, you just can't forgive. But it was a really cool waterfall.

The Hot, Instagrammable, FOMO, Zoomer, Calzone

Our course briefly separates from the XVT for a visit to the Marshfield Village Store, where we:

• repeatedly step outside to cool off from the sweat-inducing heat while we wait for deli food
• wolf down a surprisingly well-executed thin-crust veggie calzone
• purchase our first heady topper 4-pack (of many) of the trip
• acquire a delicious deli sandwich for later consumption at our campsite
• puzzle at the background music -- early 2000s rap in the deli and beer section, 1990s pop in the store
• just cannot understand the instagramming leaf peeping zoomers who ventured upstate from Massachusetts to avoid Autumn FOMO

Actually a Mistake

Now we make our first major mistake of the journey: we diverge from the old railroad bed. All because we're too lazy to climb the hills we just descended to reach the general store. We end up riding down the shoulder of route 2, where the leaf peepers drive as fast as possible to get to their AirBnBs by nightfall. The shoulder literally crumbles under our tires, and even if most drivers are polite, I'll never get used to RVs driving by me at 50MPH.

After a few harrowing miles on 2, we reach Onion River campground. The owners are incredibly friendly, and even deliver firewood to our campsite. Special thanks to Onion River for accommodating us despite a massive group reservation consuming most of their sites. We called ahead well in advance to make sure it was OK, but it was still kind of them.

A couple of heady toppers, 2-human Gin Rummy, a campfire, and a sub later at our riverside campsite, we lay our tired, smoky, smelly bones down in the tent. Life is good.

The Saga Continues

Check out part 2 (whenever I finish writing it -- maybe I already have?) at Day 2 (Marshfield to the Lincoln Gap).

Less than a month ago, I got a new job running documentation at Gradle. My experience as a Developer Educator for MongoDB Realm Docs convinced me that documentation can scratch all of my developer itches -- building automation, infrastructure, and writing tutorials and code snippets.

I've added some thoughts at the end of the post and tightened up some language. But this post largely reflects my thoughts on working as a documentarian very early in my transition from software development. If you're currently pursuing a computer science degree, or attending a coding boot camp, or working as a developer, and it's not completely satisfying... maybe this will help.

I graduated from the University of Rochester with a B.S. in computer science and a B.A. in English in 2017. For over two years after graduation, I worked at Bloomberg as a software developer (called "FSD", or "Financial Software Developer") internally.

I spent half of that time working on a piece of internal-only software designed to make it easier to follow internal development best practices. This was stuff like jumpstarting continuous integration, providing project templates, and automating paperwork required to run services.

For the second half of my tenure at Bloomberg, I worked on a client-facing team that built both a UI and a middleware C++ layer for a report calculation engine. It was about as exciting as it sounds.

Overall, software development was a fun role. There were parts that I really liked, like digging deeply into unique, interesting optimization problems and algorithms. There also were parts I didn't like as much. That includes writing CRUD APIs or DAOs that felt like they should have been automatically generated by a script and "investigating" problems with such low impact, nobody truly cared if they were solved.

There were also parts that I felt just didn't properly gel with my personality, like most "social gatherings" and learning about financial instruments. Don't get me wrong -- there are aspects of finance that I find interesting, and parts that I think everyone should know. (Not necessarily the same parts)

"Time in the market trumps timing the market", "diversify your holdings", "make your money work for you"... these are tenets of personal finance that every responsible moneyholder ought to know. But learning about the inner workings of an obscure financial product that only analysts and professional investors will ever care about? Meh.

I guess there's always a silver lining, though: at least it beats working in advertising.

Anyway, software development was a mixed bag. Could I do it for my entire career? Absolutely. With the right team, I think software development could be rad. But despite the fact that my teammates at Bloomberg were all extremely kind and intelligent, I never really felt close enough to them to get to that point. At the end of the day, work was just work, and I didn't feel like anybody was paying enough attention (and I was never individually inspired enough) to justify putting in extra effort.

As a result, I never felt like software development scratched my creative itch the same way that college projects satisfied me.

At first, I thought that I just had to get used to my company and the subject matter of my work. I gave it a few months, but I still felt unfulfilled. Then I switched teams to try something different; maybe a larger team with younger team members and a tighter focus would fit me better?

After a year, it was... fine. I was doing well, but not great; at the end of the day, I didn't really feel like my work mattered. Eventually, I ended up browsing Hacker News "Who is Hiring" threads every month to see if the grass really was better on the other side. After all, many of my friends switched companies every couple of years; from what I've been told, it's the best way to increase your compensation when you're young. And one day a peculiar post caught my eye.

The role was "Technical Writer" for MongoDB's Server documentation group. I'd heard about technical writing before -- even thought about it as a career, though it seemed like internship opportunities were few and far between during college. But some friends had warned me away from it as a career, claiming that a lot of companies didn't really respect technical writers and you'd be better off as a developer if you had the chops to get hired as one. I still think that's true: on average, there are more opportunities to get hired as a developer and the roles pay better. But there are a few caveats to that statement that change the calculus:

• some companies treat writers like engineers
• technical experience (as a developer, not just education)
• culture
• pay isn't everything (but it's still good)
• you have to find the right compromises for satisfying work

Note: Here ends my original writing. What follows is a reflection by my slightly-older-hopefully-wiser 2022 self.

Wow. I had a pretty good read on this career over two years ago. Two points really struck me:

As a result, I never felt like software development scratched my creative itch the same way that college projects satisfied me.

Now that I'm years into documentation writing and working my second role, this is refreshing to hear. When I wrote software, especially internal-facing software with a captive audience, I knew deep down that it didn't really matter if I did an awesome job or a bad job.

Writing documentation for open source (or open source adjacent... damn you SSPL) projects, I take pride in my work. I know that crappy documentation will make people sad, and possibly push them away from using the product. I know that great documentation can save people from hours of frustration and pain. It reminds me a great deal of TAing back in college -- sure, I could phone it in and not prepare for a workshop or a review session. But when the students suffer from your laziness, you tend not to be (too) lazy.

With the right team, I think software development could be rad. But despite the fact that my teammates at Bloomberg were all extremely kind and intelligent, I never really felt close enough to them to get to that point.

The Realm Docs/Developer Education/Education Engineering team at MongoDB is rad. Working with them was rad. I like them so much I'm keeping in touch with most of my teammates, and even some other folks from the MongoDB documentation org.

Some of it might be time-based -- you have to get comfortable with a team before you can enjoy camaraderie. But it's also personality-based -- if you work with people with common interests (or just interesting interests!), you'll inevitably learn from them and their interests will cross-pollinate into your own life. I listen to podcasts, read blogs, read books, try out hobbies, and listen to music recommended by my MongoDB coworkers. I consider them friends and role models.

TL;DR: If you're not thrilled at your current software developer job, go out and get another one. Or try something else in the industry that scratches itches that aren't currently satisfied. I know this probably seems obvious from the outside, but don't let good compensation and comfort cloud your gut instinct to find something better. You might regret it... but you probably won't.

• remove myself from Facebook and Instagram
• migrate my personal email from Gmail to Protonmail (update: now trialing Purelymail)
• reduce subscriptions to music and video streaming services across the board
• start a blog where I can shamelessly rant and rave about cool things I've done

But why did I do this? Not (just) because I love to chase the latest technocrat trends. Honestly it's mostly because I hate feeling dirty when I use these services:

• When I used Spotify, I was constantly frustrated by regressions and podcasts shoved in my face (despite the fact that I cannot stand Spotify's approach to podcasts, where they buy up exclusive distribution rights to a family of podcasts and turn them into... Spodcasts, which aren't really podcasts because they aren't distributed the way all other podcasts circulate: RSS). And their offline playback support is laughable.

• Google services constantly misbehave when you use Firefox or Librewolf, my browsers of choice.

• Newsletters constantly send spam mail, and are often much harder to fully unsubscribe from than an RSS feed.

• iOS still doesn't support ad blocking anywhere near the level of uBlock Origin, or allow me to use real add-ons in a browser... prompting me to find alternative methods to block ads on my phone.

And every tech company I've ever bought any product from seems to abuse dark patterns to manipulate users out the wazoo. All in the name of getting you to buy one more thing, or look at one more not-really-notification. Weak.

This post talks about how I freed myself from a myriad of big tech services, all with the support of a small investment in hardware, electricity, and personal time. I call my open source confederation of services Natopia, because, well, narcissism.

NOTE: Literally all of this is a work in progress. Open source projects continually develop. Standards change. This all works right now, but there are many pieces I'd like to improve. Expect updates to this page over time.

Overview

My home server runs:

• a VPN to stay connected to my home server's services even when I'm traveling
• ad blocking across my entire network and phone
• music and video streaming of my personal library
• an RSS aggregator so I can stay up to date on blogs and newsletters

Sometimes I run a Minecraft server, too.

I hope to eventually add a Calibre server to manage my book library, but it's just not enough of a benefit yet for me to bother.

Note: the VPN is a prerequisite for any of these other services to work when you're not at home.

Hardware

You don't need that much hardware to run a basic "home server". I do it all on a fanless Raspberry Pi that sips barely any power and store all of my data on an external USB SSD. Here's my setup:

• Raspberry Pi 4 Model B (8GB RAM)
• FLIRC Raspberry Pi 4 case
• Samsung T5 portable SSD (USB 3.1) (2TB)
• SanDisk 256GB Ultra microSDXC SD card

Raspberry Pis used to basically require an SD card for system storage. These days, I think you can even do the initial OS install on an SSD right from the first boot. I've been using 64-bit piOS for around 2 years now, since I have an 8GB Pi, and it's been solid the whole time, except for some minor wireguard issues I experienced back in 2020. I highly recommend it.

Most of these items were specially requested birthday and Christmas gifts. (thanks Mom, even if you don't know what a "raspberry pi" is) Even with SSD prices inflating recently, you should be able to put together a similar setup for somewhere between $100 and $300, depending on your home server and SSD choices. You could even run this on an old laptop if you have one lying around: that was actually my first home server, until the fan annoyed me enough to get a raspberry pi!

Router & WiFi

I use an Apple AirPort Time Capsule 802.11ac as my router. It has 3TB of internal storage that's perfectly capable of backing up my personal and work laptops. I back up my phone to my personal laptop instead of iCloud, since iCloud backups grant Apple and their friends access to your personal encryption keys). Thus the Time Capsule also grants me transitive backups of my phone, all with practically no work on my end.

Airport routers might be a little old, but even on a gigabit internet connection, AC WiFi doesn't slow things down much. I get around 750mbps down, 50mbps up on my current connection; on my Google Fiber connection at my last apartment, I used to get 750 up and down. This router is reliable and provides easy backups. I've tried openwrt in the past, and software routing and crappy CPUs caused too much buffer bloat and video latency for my comfort. Better to use a reliable hardware routing solution in my anecdotal experience. I refuse to use a router with an online management portal, so most mesh solutions are not feasible for my use case.

I use DHCP reservations for specific IP addresses on my network based on device MAC addresses. This isn't technically required, but it can be helpful to ensure that your home server doesn't change IP address after a power outage or a router reboot. I also do this for all of the other devices on my network -- game consoles, laptops, phones, tablets, TVs, etc. -- so that when I look at my network query log, each device always uses the same IP address over time. I combine this with fancy looking hostnames in my home server /etc/hosts file (such as "pig-gradlephant-laptop" and "heart-of-gold") so that my Pi-Hole UI shows readable device names, instead of hard to remember IP addresses.

Devices that leave the home, like my laptop and my phone, end up with two IP addresses & fancy hostnames pairs because they show up as a different IP address in the VPN DHCP range. I'm not sure if this is totally necessary (is it even possible to let my router know the MAC address of a phone that's only connected to the network via VPN?), but it's fine by me -- easier to figure out when something weird happens with the VPN.

VPN

I was a happy OpenVPN user for my first year of self-hosting. It is a very solid VPN solution, and at the time, it was the only VPN that worked on 64-bit piOS without compiling your VPN server yourself.

These days, I use PiVPN to manage a local WireGuard server. PiVPN makes it quite easy to set up your VPN server, and adding a new client is as easy as pivpn -a. I'm happy to report that the rumors of WireGuard's performance optimizations are indeed true: OpenVPN used to chug about 9% of my phone battery life, but WireGuard only uses 2-4%. WireGuard also has the massively useful feature of automatically switching on and off based on wifi network SSID exclusions, so my phone and laptop connect to my VPN whenever I'm not on my home wifi.

Once you've set up the server, you'll need to set up port forwarding from your router to your raspberry pi for the VPN port. Don't freak out if your client doesn't immediately work -- in my experience, network configurations usually need a few dozen swear words, a couple of reboots, a cup of coffee, and a nice walk before they start working with the exact same config you originally set up. For reference, I use the following settings on my Airport router:

Description: wireguard
Public UDP Ports: 51820
Public TCP Ports:
Private IP Address: 192.168.1.3
Private UDP Ports: 51820
Private TCP Ports: 

Your "Private IP Address" field will vary depending on your home server's IP address.

When you connect to your VPN server from a client app, you'll need your home's public IP address. There are many ways to find this, but one easy way is to search 'what is my ip' in a decent search engine. Look right under the search bar on the page, above the filter settings.

You can add a VPN client profile with the following command:

pivpn wg -a

This will generate a file containing a client profile. I find it convenient to use cat to print the file contents to the terminal, then copy/paste those contents into a .conf file that I share from my personal laptop to the client device, like my phone or work laptop. When you load the configuration in the WireGuard application, don't forget to replace the endpoint IP address with your home's public IP! I also like to set up SSID exclusions so my phone and laptop disconnect from the VPN when I'm on my home wifi network, but connect on any other network and cellular. Viola! You've now got ad blocking on your devices wherever you go. And any other services you run on your server.

The VPN is essential to use any of these other services when you're away from home. It's also comforting to use unsecure wifi networks at hotels, coffee shops, and libraries with the knowledge that my VPN protects my traffic from prying wireless eyes.

Ad Blocker

I use a Pi-Hole to block ads on my entire network at the DNS level. This means that a most ads never make it to my device: the request doesn't even leave my network! It also helpfully blocks many ads from my "smart" TV, my Playstation 4 Pro, my e-ink Android tablet, and my iPhone, which all have locked-down operating systems that prevent me from blocking ads on the device itself.

A word of warning: depending on the blacklists you employ, a Pi-Hole can and will break some particularly spammy websites. Referral and tracker links frequently break -- a particularly annoying situation when I'm trying to unsubscribe from a mailing list or service. I see this as a red flag that only reinforces my hatred for these privacy violating services, but Meg tells me that I might be a dangerous antisocial madman who doesn't acknowledge the real world utility of Instagram ads. Who's to say who's right? At least you're aware now.

Once you've got your Pi-Hole set up, you need to configure it as the DNS provider for your network. I can't help you with that configuration -- it depends on your router. In the Airport UI, this is particularly annoying. Here's my current configuration:

In the "Internet" tab, set both "DNS Servers" inputs to the IP address of your Pi-Hole. Leave the "IPv6 DNS Servers" inputs and the "Domain name" input empty. On my Airport router, those empty inputs show greyed-out ghost numbers, and (amusingly) maine.rr.com, despite the fact that I live in New Hampshire. I don't know if this is totally correct, but it works alright for me.

Airport routers only have one set of inputs for DNS settings. If you set up a DNS server in your personal network DHCP range, computers connected to your guest network will try to connect to that DNS server... and fail. Because they're in a separate network. For this reason, I don't recommend using a guest network on an Airport router with a Pi-Hole.

On OpenWRT it was pretty easy to set up a custom DNS provider, but also pretty easy to screw up. I seem to remember an awful lot of text entry and writing newlines by hand because there weren't any input boxes. There's one major thing you should understand when setting up your Pi-Hole: it should be the only DNS for your network. Don't add a second "backup" DNS in case it fails -- if you do that, every time you block an ad with the Pi-Hole, your devices will go straight to the second DNS and fetch the ad successfully. Stick with just the one.

Some devices come with DNS addresses hardcoded into them. If your router allows it, block outbound requests from your network entirely for every device except the server running the Pi-Hole. That way, nobody can send rogue requests to DNS servers other than the Pi-Hole.

Music

My music hosting is deceptively simple. I use:

• Jellyfin to host music and videos on my local network
• FinAmp to stream my whole music library from my phone, and download albums for offline listening.
• Sonixd to stream my whole music library from my work and personal laptops.

FinAmp and Sonixd are easy to install on your client devices. Once you've installed them, you just have to point them to your Jellyfin server. I use my Pi-Hole to make easy-to-remember DNS entries like "music.box" instead of "192.168.1.3" for services like Jellyfin. Note that FinAmp and Sonixd are both fairly picky about including the "http://" prefix at the beginning of your URL. If you create a fun DNS entry, you'll enter a URL like this:

http://music.box:8096

Setting up Jellyfin isn't too hard, once you've got a place to store all of your legitimate DRM-free music files ripped from CDs in the 00's. I find Docker a bit too computationally expensive on my Raspberry Pi, so I run Jellyfin on server startup via Systemd. The official documentation covers things quite well.

I organize my files just like I did in the 00's with iTunes:

Music
└── ArtistName
    ├── AlbumName
    │   ├── Song1.mp3
    │   ├── Song2.mp3
    │   └── cover.webp
    └── AnotherAlbumName
        ├── Song1.m4a
        ├── Song2.m4a
        └── cover.webp

Jellyfin lets you edit metadata in the files directly, but only some of it, like song names, artist names, album names, etc. It can be difficult merge artists, if they somehow get separated -- I'm still not sure if there's a good way to do this in the UI.

I need to investigate volume normalization. My Rush albums, for instance, are super high quality vinyl-ripped lossless FLACs, upwards of 3000 kbps quality. But they're quiet compared to the rest of my songs. From what I've read, I should be able to edit the volume gain directly in the file. But I haven't experimented with it yet.

I did experience one issue early on with my Jellyfin setup: the account running my Jellyfin server didn't have write access to my music library. This meant that I couldn't edit song metadata or delete songs from the UI. I worked around this by simply running Jellyfin as my admin pi account on my home server. That's probably not the best solution, but since it's only accessible on my home network and via VPN, it's... probably OK. You could definitely work around the issue by granting another jellyfin-specific user write access to the music library.

I originally spent a fair bit of time setting up Jellyfin to use Google Drive as a network storage engine. Surprisingly, it worked! Then, the next day, Google announced massive cutbacks to previously "unlimited storage for life" university Google accounts. Coincidence? I think not. There was some noticeable latency anyway, and 2TB USB SSDs are cheap enough that you're unlikely to need more storage for a long time.

A News Feed

I use FreshRSS to keep up to date with blog posts and non-evil newsletters from companies I respect. It's been working great for about a month so far. If you don't know what RSS is:

• It's a technology for decentralized notifications. Instead of "pushing" updates from a central server, your RSS aggregator just checks for new entries in a feed file.
• Rumors of its death are greatly exaggerated.
• It's the backbone of podcasts.
• Read up on it.

Initial installation didn't take long (despite the long list of steps below -- they go quick, and it's all basic Unix-isms instead of modern container voodoo. I followed this guide, but in case that blog ever disappears, here's the steps I followed:

1. Update your system:

   sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
   

2. Fetch dependencies:

   sudo apt install php php-curl php-gmp php-intl php-mbstring php-sqlite3 php-xml php-zip
   

3. Clone the master branch of FreshRSS into a directory on your server. In this case, /srv/ (I used /home/pi/Documents/FreshRSS/):

   cd /srv/ && sudo git clone https://github.com/FreshRSS/FreshRSS.git
   

4. Add the following to /etc/lighttpd/external.conf to run FreshRSS on port 2000 with your existing lighttpd service (used to host your Pi-Hole):

   # FreshRSS config
   
   $SERVER["socket"] == ":2000" {
       server.document-root     = "/var/www/html/freshrss/p"
   }
   

5. Link <FreshRSS director>/p to the web server folder:

   sudo ln -s /srv/FreshRSS/p /var/www/html/freshrss
   

   In my case, I replaced "/srv/FreshRSS/p" above with "/home/pi/Documents/FreshRSS/p". To run FreshRSS, this folder must be public. This makes it so.

6. Grant the web server user account (www-data) access to read the FreshRSS folder and write to the data subfolder:

   cd /srv/FreshRSS
   

   sudo chown -R www-data:www-data .
   

   sudo cmod -R g+r .
   

   sudo cmod -R g+w ./data
   

7. Next, configure your cron tab to update the feeds automatically. Open the crontab:

   sudo crontab -e
   

   Paste the following to run FreshRSS's actualize_script every 15 minutes and write any output to a log in /tmp/:

   */15 * * * * sudo -u www-data php -f /srv/FreshRSS/app/actualize_script.php > /tmp/FreshRSS.log 2>&1
   

   As before, replace "/srv/" above with "/home/pi/Documents/FreshRSS/" or whatever location you chose for your installation in step 3.

8. Restart lighttpd:

   sudo /etc/init.d/lghttpd restart
   

9. Breathe a sigh of relief and visit http://:2000. Within a minute or so you should see the FreshRSS UI.

Special thanks to cosmosurfer for this non-containerized RSS aggregator setup.

Think the installation took a long time? It takes longer to find a list of feeds you'd like to follow. Here's my own list of feeds that you can shamelessly sift through as a starting point (or laugh at, if that's more your speed):

Nate's RSS Subscriptions [7KB]

I'm providing this as an OPML file. It's basically just a piece of XML that you can import into most RSS clients. If you don't want to go through the process of setting up FreshRSS, I highly recommend FeedBro, which runs as a Firefox add-on. Unlike FreshRSS, you can't share your subscriptions and read state across devices, but if you mostly use one device to read RSS that might not be a big deal.

Just search the feed name and as long as you use a civil browser like Firefox, you'll see a little RSS icon on the right side of the URL bar. If you click on that, you'll end up at the feed URL, which you can copy & paste into FreshRSS.

I use NetNewsWire to read my feed. A lot of people swear by other clients like Reeder. Some folks just prefer the FreshRSS web UI. Figure out what makes you happy -- I like the native iOS and macOS styling of NetNewsWire, so I'm sticking with it for now. I might make my own theme sometime soon and share it here.

Network File Shares

I use Samba to expose files on my home server to other devices on my network -- mostly Macbooks. I followed this guide, but in short:

1. Install Samba on the raspberry pi:

   sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
   

   sudo apt install samba samba-common-bin
   

2. Set a dedicated Samba password for the account you'd like to use for file sharing (I stuck with pi; that's probably not the most secure way to go):

   sudo smbpasswd -a pi
   

3. In /etc/samba/smb.conf, in the [homes] section, set read only = no to make shared home folders writable.

4. (Optional) Set a fancy icon for the raspberry pi in Finder by creating a /etc/avahi/services/smb.service file (use sudo) and entering the following contents:

    <?xml version="1.0" standalone='no'?>
    <!DOCTYPE service-group SYSTEM "avahi-service.dtd">
    <service-group>
      <name replace-wildcards="yes">%h</name>
      <service>
        <type>_smb._tcp</type>
        <port>445</port>
      </service>
      <service>
        <type>_device-info._tcp</type>
        <port>0</port>
        <txt-record>model=MacProCylinder</txt-record>
      </service>
    </service-group>
   

   If you want any other icon, run open /System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources/ in your mac, and pick your favorite icon.

5. Restart the Samba service to make these changes effective:

   sudo service smbd restart
   

   And restart the Avahi service to make the icon changes effective:

   sudo service avahi-daemon restart
   

If you don't see the server or icons, try killall Finder to restart the Finder process on your Mac.

Backups

I just use Time Machine for now. I'd eventually like to offload my backups to an offsite storage medium, in case of a flood or a fire or a Vogon constructor fleet. For now, this is the best backup solution I've ever had, and I'm basking in that glory until I get worried enough to improve it.

As you'd expect, my attempt to log in to my account didn't go well. I entered valid credentials, and the auth portal spit out:

We’re sorry, we’re unable to sign you in. Please try again later. IDID-3210.

Here's how I escaped the horrors of IDID-3210.

1. I use a DNS black hole to block ads. I whitelisted pov.spectrum.net based on some suggestions from Reddit users.
2. I used Safari with NO extensions and an essentially clean browsing history.
3. After 3 login attempts, I got in.

No matter how hard I try, I cannot authenticate from Firefox or even Chromium. Let alone with an ad blocker like uBlock Origin. Based on the massive amount of console errors I see when I try to log in, I would guess that there's some sort of cross-site-scripting faux pas happening in the login portal. And based on my attempts to log in from my phone on my cellular internet connection, I think IDID-3210 somehow blocks auth attempts after a certain number of failures.

It's got nothing to do with special characters present or missing from your password.

It has everything to do with an immensely incompetent megacompany with a stranglehold on internet access in the United States that is so poorly run they literally cannot even code an authentication portal. That's something that even I can do. And I'm not even a software developer any more!

I reiterate: thanks, FCC.

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.

Day 0: Littleton->Brattleboro (by car)

Our route began just north of Brattleboro, in Dummerston. Since we live a hundred miles away in Littleton, NH, we tossed the bikes onto our new 1up rack and made our way south to the starting point. As all good shirefolk do, we rise with the sun, which is like 4:50 AM near the solstice. So it was pretty easy to stop by the Blue Sparrow and enjoy our first fantastic Vermont foodie experience of the weekend -- two high quality breakfast sandwiches, a perfectly microfoamed latte, a just-a-tinge-sweet cold brew, and a croissant and scone for later consumption on the bikes. I am pleased to say that as fantastic as the Blue Sparrow is, it wasn't even the best breakfast we ate on the trip. More on that later.

With full stomachs ready to fuel a long bike ride, we parked the car at a park-and-ride by a covered bridge in Dummerston and set off over the covered bridge on our first dirt road of the trip. First destination: Brattleboro, a supremely touristy and surprisingly large Vermont town.

Day 1: Brattleboro->Wilmington->Somerset Airfield

After our initial warmup on the relaxing dirt road, we ended up on a somewhat busy paved arterial into Brattleboro. Since it was a Thursday morning, traffic was light. Until we reached main street, which, in classic summer Vermont style, sows unending confusion among the Massachusetts tourists and backs up traffic for blocks and blocks. Fortunately when you're riding a bike you can just hop off it and walk down the sidewalk. Take that, car industrial complex!

Our next stop was a quick snack break at The Works. You know how your mother always told you that "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all"? Well I don't have much to say about The Works. I certainly don't have anything to say about Meg's iced chai latte, which appeared to be made of a 1:1 sugar:water ratio. I damn sure don't have anything to say about my "latte", which literally had no foam at all on it and tasted like a 50/50 combination of day old burned coffee and overmicrowaved hazelnut creamer. I can say that our panini was passable, though inconsistently microwaved enough to both burn my mouth and still feature ice-cold sweet potato chunks. I can say that our bagel tasted kind of like the free leftover bagel you'd get after a board meeting at an insurance company.

All I'll say is this... I do not recommend "The Works" in Brattleboro.

After our exciting food critic experience in Brattleboro, it wasn't long before we ended up back on windy dirt roads. Before long, those dirt roads started to go up an awful lot. But with our Blue Sparrow flaky-yet-soft-and-buttery croissant and delightfully-crumbly scone as fuel, we soldiered up the hills and generally enjoyed hanging out in the woods, saying hello to deer and porcupine, pointing out every tiny little cemetary on the route, and de-stressing from the pains of 9-5 life. There were so many stunning overlooks and cute houses on this section of the route, you should probably just look at the pictures.

We stopped at a school in West Halifax to split an apple and refill our water bottles. And a nearby cemetary to finish the aforementioned insurance company board meeting bagel.

A short time later, our route took us on VT 9 and VT 100, which eventually led to ice cream and a Shaw's visit yielding beer and goldfish.

With ominous grey skies looming, we checked out dinner at the Maple Leaf Tavern. It was generally a fine place, with a good beer selection and a slightly pricey menu. But we were really distracted by the fellow who stopped by after a "long day" for two to-go cups of vodka mixed with red wine. I've had some long days myself, but... if you ever see me order vodka mixed with red wine, call a doctor. Please.

We headed out from our burger-and-beer dinner with full stomachs and a sense of unease at the somehow even-more-ominous and even-more-grey skies. But our campsite was still miles away, and with bikes and dirt roads, it's hard to say if you'll average 10 miles an hour or 2. So we donned our raincoats and headed out.

Sure enough, within just a few minutes we were biking down the side of the road in a torrential downpour. But traffic was light, and after a long sweaty uphill day, a shower wasn't the worst thing ever. We eventually made it to forest road 71, a dirt road in absolutely supreme hardpack condition, and rode along the river and past a cool bridge on our way to the campsite at Somerset Airfield. We enjoyed a refreshing Heady Topper as we set up the campsite and turned in for the night.

Day 2: Somerset Airfield->Winhall Brook Campground

It rained on and off throughout the night, so Meg and I slept in a bit Friday morning. By 9 or so, the sun started to poke out between the clouds, so we dried off the tent and enjoyed some Clif bar breakfast. A group of New Yorkers stopped by, and asked if we were done with the campsite -- Meg let them know that we were packing up and would be out in 10 or 15 minutes. So they idled their loud vehicles, drank their Monster, and chain smoked cigarettes right next to our campsite while staring at us as we packed up our panniers. That's probably the fastest I've ever packed up our tent and panniers, but it somehow still felt like a very, very, very long time.

After that awkward experience, we were happy to head over to some technical doubletrack roads that giant RVs couldn't possibly traverse. We enjoyed a morning of relative peace, enjoying the many beaver houses, bogs, lone abandoned bus, and wildflowers with only the mosquitos and horseflies to keep us company. Eventually, the route looped back to forest road 71 and we once again enjoyed the supreme hardpack dirt roads -- a pleasant change of pace from the very rocky doubletrack we were just riding. Sadly, great roads never last, and we were soon greeted by my worst dirt road nightmare: resurfacing. Based on the smell, I can only imagine that the national forest service is dumping loads of bog water on the road to level it out. Based on the riding experience, I can only imagine that the national forest service is actively attempting to make riding a bike or motorcycle as unpleasant as possible by dumping super loose dirt and tons of rocks all over the road. Hopefully the new material will eventually settle down into nice hardpack again, but for now... it was the worst riding experience of our whole trip. Thankfully it was just a few miles, and mostly through very pretty forest. It did make us appreciate all the other roads a lot more through contrast, I guess.

After a quick lunch break from the awful resurfaced road, we quickly made a turn onto Forest Road 341, aka "International Paper Road", an 18.6 mile singletrack route around Stratton Mountain. With our fully loaded panniers on our bicycles, I'm sure we looked a bit silly to the gravel cyclist and guy hiking with his dog... but it was a really fun route. Technically challenging enough to remain interesting, never so brutally uphill to stop us completely, and with a long rewarding downhill stretch at the end that took us nearly all the way to lunch.

For linner, we stopped in Winhall (or Rawsonville, or Jamaica? Apparently nobody can agree on what this place is called) at the Workhorse Cafe. I had a poke bowl that was both huge and well executed (especially for someplace so far from the ocean!). Meg had a delectable bahn mi sandwich. They had a decent beer selection to boot. Then we headed over via an indirect (but happy cow adjacent) dirt road to the local beer store for some Focal Banger, and Meg grabbed a quick chocolate/vanilla twist at Honeypie because we apparently cannot go a single day without ice cream.

Then, we headed off to our campsite. Our route took us along a dirt road (big surprise) by the river, which eventually ended at somebody's driveway. But our routing told us to continue straight, and sure enough, at the end of the driveway we found a gate to an almost invisible ATV trail right along the side of the river. We followed that for a few miles, and eventually burst out of the woods in the middle of the Winhall Brook Campground, where we surprised a random person by asking where we could register for our campsite. Considering you have to pass the office just to get into the campsite by car, this random person was very confused... but eventually directed us up the (grueling) hill to the office, where we checked in and got a campground map. It was still pretty early, so we enjoyed some beers and waded in the river before we turned in for the night. It was a great campsite except for the fact that we were woken up by 30 minutes of loud, drunken Kelly Clarkson karaoke at midnight.

Day 3: Winhall->Londonderry->Grafton->Brattleboro

By day 3, we were in prime bike touring mode. We woke up before 7, ate a light breakfast, sunscreened and bug sprayed up, and were on our bikes by 8. We set off on another riverside ATV trail, and soon found ourselves at my favorite breakfast of the trip -- Corner Market Deli (sadly, their only internet presence is a Facebook page). I enjoyed one of my favorite breakfast burritos ever, Meg had a fantastic sausage-egg-cheese-biscuit sandwich, they made a competent latte and a cold brew... and the staff was super friendly and helpful, asking about our bike ride and letting us know that we could buy singles of any of the four packs of beer in their cooler. The guy at the counter seemed very impressed that we were riding all the way to Brattleboro, indicating that the route was "waving hand motion." I can confirm that there were a lot of hills. There was also some... very Vermont-y eavesdropping to be had as various locals stopped in, ordered their almond milk cold brews, and talked about the yard and personal farm work they wanted to do. 10 out of 10 experience.

After our quick stop in Londonderry, we headed down the many miles of "winding gravel road" to Grafton, where we stopped at MKT: Grafton. This place was bougie compared to Londonderry, but damn was the food great. We ate a donut first, then split an ice cold Heady Topper (despite it being 10:30 AM) and a pesto-bacon-turkey-cheddar-romaine wrap. The donut was so good I bought a second one. I still want to go back to buy some of the local cider and reisling they had on display... and I didn't even bother going near the cheese display, because I'm sure I would have bought pounds of cheese that would have weighed my panniers down even more. One of the biggest downsides of bike touring is the weight limitation.

After Grafton, we continued down the road to a snacking spot by the river, and eventually came to a crossroads: we could either take a cool dirt road detour up a very large hill, or stay on the (not very busy) main road and check out a farm stand that sells locally made ice cream. I'm sure you've already guessed that we stayed on the main road and had some ice cream. We even saw one of the cows that produces milk for the ice cream. It was fantastic and absolutely worth it.

After ice cream, it was literally all downhill. We met another cyclist who asked all about our trip and confidently introduced himself as Wayne Conway (but probably not this Wayne Conway). We swam in the river under a bridge and enjoyed a refreshing beverage. We enjoyed our last taste of dirt roads. And then we got back to the car, where the parking lot was literally completely full of Massachusetts plates, and the river was chock full of Massachusites. And then when we headed back to Meg's parents, the roads and towns were full of Massachusites...

Anyway, it was a great ride. I'm glad we started it on a Thursday.

Summary

Our longest bike tour ever was an awesome time. We experienced Vermont in a way I've never experienced it before, carrying our food, water, trash, and camping supplies on our bikes every step of the way. Not showering is not that big a problem when you're always outside, and swim once or twice a day. My dynamo setup provided us with light and power to recharge our phones for navigation, and ridewithgps ensured that we could navigate with or without cell service.

I could absolutely live off of my bicycle for weeks at a time. So could Meg. Maybe we will sometime. I'm gunning for a grand European bike tour next spring.

If you're interested in our route, check it out at ridewithgps.

Settling Down

Slowly but surely, we're getting used to New Hampshire. It's a big change from life in Denver and NYC, but life up here in the mountains has a lot of appeal when you basically just want to ride bikes all day and occasionally have a nice beer.

Though at some point, the number of covered bridges does get to be a bit much. Still cute though.

This weekend, we did a small "hike" with Meg's dad at the Flume Gorge. A little touristy for my liking, but the combination of early season and chilly weekend worked in our favor. A very pretty natural landmark that's worth checking out if you're ever in the area.

We also checked out a staple of the area, Polly's Pancake Parlor, which is just as ridiculous as you'd think given the name. It is pretty neat that the servers make the pancakes themselves, though. And there's a nice nature walk out back to walk off the heavy breakfast.

The farmer's market here is fantastic. Two things particularly special about our farmer's market:

1. Wow, there are a lot of bernese mountain dogs in this town!
2. Cheeeeeeeeeeeeeeese.

Ranch Camp

As usual, we take any excuse we can to grab a burrito for lunch over in Stowe at Ranch camp. Since we finally got our hands on some mountain bikes, this weekend we headed over for a burrito AND a bike ride. The trails turned out to be incredibly fun, and even easier than I expected. Lots of very flowy non-technical terrain and a solid balance of ups and downs so you're not stuck slogging up a hill for 30 minutes or burning out your brakes zooming down the hill for 30 minutes. And they've got great views.

Kingdom Trails

Since this was a long weekend, we also managed to fit a visit to one of the coolest mountain biking spots in the Northeast: Kingdom Trails, in Burke. It's about 40 minutes from home, and based on our experience, I suspect we'll be up there a lot more over the rest of the summer.

The trails were plain old fun: zoomy as hell, fewer rocks and roots than I'm used to at the local trails, and such a huge range of different microbiomes you never get bored. Over the course of a single ride, you'll go from riding next to a sunny field of cows, to zooming through deciduous trees that look like a classic upstate NY new-growth forest, to a stretch of cedars with no undergrowth that looks straight out of the tundra, to a mossy forest that looks like it belongs on the fringes of the Shire. Great trails, beautiful views, not too buggy, and great beers afterward.

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.

The Move

Once we found a place to rent in New Hampshire, we started to pack right away.

🌈⭐ The More You Know 🌈⭐

Meg contracted COVID at a not-very-optional work event less than two weeks before we moved. We were fortunate that her symptoms abated before the move. We were even more fortunate that, thanks to masking in our own home and sleeping in separate rooms, I didn't manage to catch COVID and ruin our entire moving plan. Thanks, name-of-meg's-company-that-i-will-not-namedrop-here, for easing up your COVID precautions. That was exactly what we needed in the middle of a stressful cross-country move!

One fateful night in April, we were (mostly) (kinda) (sorta) (for the most part) packed. We still had to break down some furniture, and sort some basic need items into boxes, but we'd put pretty much everything we could into boxes. Meg's dad arrived, and we went to Illegal Pete's for a last burrito (and margarita) of Colorado. They did not disappoint.

The next morning, we were up bright and early to pick up the moving truck at 7AM. After a only-slightly-harrowing journey down very potholey city streets that were definitely legal for a truck of our size, we made it back to the apartment. Just 6 hours of elevator hogging, dolly rolling, package securing, and ratchet strapping later, everything was settled in the truck.

One quick stop for subs, and a whole lot of driving later, we made it to Lincoln, Nebraska. Despite a slightly behind-schedule loading experience, we were right where we wanted to be: in a cheap-ish hotel, in a quiet, safe town, a reasonable drive from our next stop: Batavia, New York. Where Whitney and Eddy awaited us with delicious Wegmans subs, beers, and a free place to crash.

Even though Google Maps estimates that drive at 16.5 hours, don't make the mistake of thinking you can actually average that:

• in a moving truck
• with PA and NY's insanely long 55-MPH interstate construction zones
• when losing a whole hour due to time zones

We left with the truck at 6 AM or so. We didn't get to Batavia until almost 2 AM the next day -- almost 20 hours later. We only had to deal with a torrential downpour for the last two hours or so, so I'll call it a ... win? Needless to say, the beers, subs, and friends were very, very needed when we finally arrived.

After that, the next day was easy: a hearty bacon, egg, sausage, and toast breakfast thanks to Whit and Eddy, and a quick two hour drive to Chittenango to relax with the dogs at Meg's parents' place. In retrospect, we could have divided up our drive a little better than 8 hours/20 hours/2 hours. But it was pretty great to see friends that second night.

One day of rest later, we woke up on Easter to drive the last 6ish hour stretch to Littleton, New Hampshire. Aside from a surprising amount of snow in Utica, Albany, and the higher altitude parts of Vermont, it was a beautiful, low-stress drive. At the very least, there weren't many people on the road, and those that were on the road seemed to have a good grasp of how to drive in the snow.

We arrived in Littleton a little after noon, and it only took us a couple of hours to unload our boxes and furniture into the house. The next morning, we woke up early, dropped off the moving truck less than a mile from our new place, and walked home on a greenway, crossing the river to stop at a local coffee shop for breakfast on the walk home. Funny how you can move from one of the largest cities in the country, where you somehow can't reasonably walk to pick up a moving truck or go to a decent coffee shop... to a small 6,000 person town, where you can. I don't know enough about city planning to really say what's wrong with American cities, but something is seriously wrong when the walkability is this much better in a tiny mountain town.

Living Free, Not Dying

We're happy with Littleton so far. It's a big change, moving from some of the biggest US cities (NYC, Denver) to a town almost as small as where I grew up in upstate NY. But so far it's been a welcome change to have some peace and quiet, some walkability, nearby mountain biking trails, a really nice co-op for groceries, and familiar faces around town. Easy access to northern Vermont and a myriad of hikes is icing on the cake.

Since moving, we've:

• gone mountain biking several times on the trails that start literally a few hundred few down the street from our home

• fully explored the length of Franconia Notch State Park, all the way to a brewery in Lincoln, NH

• checked out the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail

• used a random day off to buy way too much beer at Hill Farmstead, damn near the best brewery in the country

• visited home for a concert without spending an entire weekend driving or taking time off from work and thousands of miles on the car

Only time will tell if small town living is right for us. But who knows, maybe our next step is living off of the touring bikes for a few months to figure out where we'd prefer to live next. In the meantime, we're happy to explore this new state and town we call home. As (short) residents of New Hampshire, we're officially shirefolk now.

Now

We're now back in upstate New York, just a 6 hour drive from home. It's good to be so close to family and friends again.

• celebrating two birthdays in our favorite mountain town, Leadville
• two days of the best skiing Colorado can offer (that isn't totally insane for visiting friends from low altitudes)
• cross country skiing the only major trail around Leadville we haven't gotten around to yet
• a biking + food truck + brewery + park + bocce day around Denver
• one hell of a sunburn (Neutrogena, I will never forgive you)

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.

Day 1: Arapahoe Basin

As usual, we started our trip with a visit to A Basin, the coolest mountain on the I70 corridor. The day started out windy as hell -- they didn't even have the Montezuma backside bowl open! -- but the frontside conditions were good enough to have a fun time anyway. We spent the morning exploring all of the trails we usually ignore on the frontside, zooming through trees and moguls and anything else we could find.

After a quick pit stop for beers, Bloody Marys, and chicken fingers, the wind started to ease up. It wasn't long before they opened the Montezuma bowl up, and we tired ourselves out completely riding the untouched bowls and glades until closing time. Nothing makes you appreciate the backside of a mountain more than being limited to the frontside all morning.

After our day of skiing, we headed over to Leadville to stay for the night and prepare an elaborate meal of chicken and pasta.

Note: it turns out there was a significant avalanche on Loveland pass right after we drove through to get to A Basin. That isn't surprising, given the fact that it was warm, super windy, and they were actively avalanche blasting at A Basin throughout our day of skiing. But it's pretty crazy to think about how narrowly we missed getting blocked by -- or caught in! -- an avalanche.

Day 2: Ski Cooper

After our warmup day at a world-renowned ski resort, we were ready to shred the gnar at Ski Cooper, a cute, locally-owned family-friendly ski hill.

As usual, conditions were absolutely amazing. One things Coloradans don't seem to appreciate: all of the big resorts are too popular for their own good. They have amazing trails, fast lifts, huge volumes of powdery snow every year, and make a shitton of money. But the amount of traffic at Ikon resorts (not even mentioning Epic resorts, which are even busier) tends to scrape damn near all of that powder off of the mountain within a day or two of each snowfall.

I absolutely love every trail at Ski Cooper. The groomers are firm, but soft enough to easily carve; the glades start out slick, but soften up within an hour of open so you can easily set your preferred pace and stop on a dime if you see an obstacle; and even the ungroomed trails still have sections of untouched powder on pretty much any day of the year.

The design of the hill is awesome, too: you've got a million ways down from any point on the mountain, little glades pockmarked between all of the trails, and somehow you never end up doing the exact same run. It's the only ski place I've ever been where I feel like I can cruise anywhere at all unless it's behind a fence. (OK, Keystone is kind of like that too... but they have a million miles of fence along 90% of their runs, so it's not quite the same).

Oh, and they have great chicken fingers, the best chili of any ski hill I've ever been to, a simple, decent, and cheap beer selection... and incredibly friendly employees.

I really hope they stay off the radar of vacation traffic in Colorado. This place is the best exactly the way it is, and I hope it doesn't get trampled to death like every other trail, mountain, and campsite within 3 hours of Denver.

Anyway, it was a great day of skiing. We zoomed through glades, moguls, and groomers on a constant loop, barely even stopping for lunch. It was beautiful out all day, and even got warm enough at the end of the day that one group decided to ski down the hill without shirts. Whitney, the only one in our group who didn't grow up regularly skiing or snowboarding, built the confidence to try some glades, and mostly survived some black diamond moguls and trees she definitely didn't accidentally wander onto.

It was a great day. When I come back to Colorado, Leadville and Ski Cooper are at the top of my list. When you can avoid the crowds, the mountains are a truly incredible place that's unlike anywhere else in the US.

Day 3: Cross Country Skiing the Mineral Belt Trail

Once we tired ourselves out with two days of skiing, the obvious next move was... another day of skiing. But this time on (relatively) flat terrain.

Meg and I have biked and walked the Mineral Belt Trail before, and even cross country skied small sections in town at night. This was our first time skiing the entire trail. At 11 miles, the Mineral Belt Trail is just a smidge shorter than our previous trip skiing the 14 mile Turquoise Lake Loop. But this trip really gave us an appreciation for what blue skies, warm weather, and grooming can do for cross country skiing.

The Turquoise Lake Loop took us nearly 7 hours to complete, including a brief stop for lunch. It was almost completely ungroomed, actively snowing, and very hilly. The Mineral Belt Trail took us about 3 hours total, including a long stop for lunch. It was completely groomed, sunny enough to give us all a nasty sunburn through sunblock, and only gradually hilly.

It was a great time. We got some awesome views of Leadville, learned some fun historical facts, drank some tasty beers, and ate some solid salami sandwiches.

Day 4: Interlude

Not much to say about our trip back to Denver. The weather was great, the fish burritos were as filling and delicious as ever, and the aloe felt really great on our faces when we got back home. We played way too much Settlers of Catan and probably drank a few too many beers. And I learned all about Jello Cake, Whitney's birthday cake of choice (only one day late -- who wants to bake a cake in a short-term rental?). Happy belated birthday, Whitney!

Day 5: Bikes, Beers, Bocce, and Ninja Ramen

Our last day, we followed the classic Meg & Nate Denver formula: we hopped on our bikes, drank tasty beer and ate tasty food truck food at one of our favorite breweries, then picked up some cans to drink in the park while we played bocce. The parks in Denver were packed on Sunday, no surprise given the weather in the high 70s. But we carved out a nice spot for a game and had a wonderful time hanging out in the park. Add in Meg's birthday ice cream cake when we got home, and Sundays don't get much better.

Eulogy for Denver

As I mentioned in the intro of this post, Meg and I won't be here in Denver for long. We originally wanted to move to the mountains of Colorado... but all it takes is a couple of soul-crushing months looking for a reasonable rental to shut down that idea. In the end, we decided to give New Hampshire a shot. It'll give us easy access to friends, family, outdoor activities, world-class gravel biking, Montreal, Boston, Burlington, Portland, New York... and offices for our now-permanent remote work arrangements. We'll be moving to Littleton in mid-April, so stay tuned for an update on our cross country drive. I hope it'll be interesting, but not too interesting.

We had quite the adventure.

Day 1: Arapahoe Basin

Our ski week started with a Monday at Arapahoe Basin, Colorado's least soulless mountain. A Basin has it all: reasonably priced, decent Bloody Marys; crazy terrain that even scares seasoned skiiers like myself and Meg; no awful million-dollar studio condos; a crowd that leans more "high ski bum" than "Californian millionaire on vacation"; and a peak that's over 13,000 feet.

It's my very favorite mountain on the I70 corridor.

Monday was a perfect blue-sky Colorado day. Light wind, barely a cloud in the sky, and a sun so strong you could hang out on the deck in a t-shirt. The morning started out a little icy, but quickly softened up to a point where all the moguls and groomers were comfy to ride down. We ventured into the glades just once, but it was so icy it just wasn't worth the risk to life, limb, and our already-dull edges.

I forgot to mention one of my favorite parts of A Basin: the food. For a non-crazy price, Meg and I split an entire (very large) tray of chicken fingers, waffle fries, and a bowl of chili to dip them in. If you haven't tried dipping chicken fingers in chili, you're missing out. It's best on a mountain.

We wrapped up our day in the early afternoon, and cruised over to Outer Range brewing for an afternoon beverage. They might not serve the most complex brews in the mountains, but if you want a hazy IPA, they know what they're doing. Just avoid the sours.

After Outer Range, we headed up to Steamboat Springs for our rental and the next stage of our vacation: hot tubbing and skiing, day in and day out.

Day 2: Steamboat

Our rental condo was mere steps away from the Thunderhead lift at Steamboat, so we started out our morning early on some groomers. Conditions were decent, but a little icy. We made our way up the mountain to Morningside Park, a bowl that's chock full of glades and blues. Bonus: all of the trails use breakfasty names like "Cheesy Grits", "Wake Up Call", "Biscuits", and "Huevos". As the snow softened up, the glades became more and more fun, but also more and more busy. We didn't end up catching the last lift or anything, but I'd say we got a pretty solid day of skiing on the mountain.

The day ended with a modest amount of snowflakes, hinting that we might just get some much-needed snow overnight. We had a beer, a pizza, and a crazy good beet salad (seriously) at a favorite from our last Steamboat visit, Mountain Tap Brewing.

Day 3: Steamboat Pow Day

We woke up on Wednesday to a brilliant sight: inches of fresh snow, and more coming down. It wasn't hard to get ourselves to the lift a bit before opening time, and we must have looked so psyched for the powder that the liftie took mercy on us and let us up a few minutes early. We ascended up the mountain into what could be best described as... white. Maybe 50 feet of visibility, inches of powder on the groomers, and the glades in Morningside were chock full of fluffy, fluffy snow. It was nothing short of spectacular.

We circuited Morningside for a couple of hours, until the line started to get really busy and disorganized, and then started to explore the glades on the middle-front side, where the lifts had essentially no lines. I couldn't believe it, but those glades were even better, and had less traffic to boot.

Fresh tracks every time we headed down the mountain, even when repeating the same glade back-to-back, and my first experience skiing aspen glades. We even spotted an ermine (a sure sign of good luck)!

We skiied the absolute hell out of Wednesday, and drained just about every minute we could out of the ski day. Conditions were a blast, the hot tub was well deserved after, the peak beers were delicious, and the Colorado Style Pizza... well, it was kind of like shitty upstate NY pizza with honey for dipping the crust. But it tasted damn good after a hard day of skiing through inches and inches of powder.

Day 4: ... Still A Steamboat Pow Day

Thursday's conditions were almost as good (maybe better on the groomers) than Wednesday. The powder settled into a fairly solid upper layer on the slopes, and you could make it down most runs in the morning without hearing a single hardpack scrape. We once again explored the many many glades of Morningside until things got busy, then switched to the frontside glades, which were as amazing as they were the previous day.

The only issue? By our third day at Steamboat, it became very, very clear that the lodge design is... poor. We spent most of our time riding on the Thunderhead/Morningside half of the mountain. The only lodge on that side of the mountain isn't really a lodge, it's a sit-down restaurant. With a very very tiny bathroom for each gender. And non-sit-down seating that's less spacious than the tiny ski hill lodge I used to frequent back home, Dry Hill. This isn't just inadequate for the amount of people on the hill (on a weekday!), it's incredibly annoying to constantly wait in line for the urinal. Let alone trying to warm up when there's no space and people are just giving up and sitting on the ground in the hallway outside the bathroom. If anybody knows of some secret lodge on that side of Steamboat with adequate bathroom space and big tables to warm up and sip a hot cocoa at without a waiter... let me know. But that was probably my biggest beef with Steamboat.

The crowds started to clog up the groomers and lift lines by early afternoon, so Meg and I opted to recharge in the hot tub with beers instead of fighting the traffic. After a few hours, we were ready to get back on the slopes for a night of skiing under the lights on the frontside. Night skiing turned out just as great as Meg and I remembered from when we were in high school, and we had a great time zooming down the slopes (with Olympians!). A margarita and a big plate of nachos later, we headed (slightly stealthily) back uphill to our rental on the side of a green run, since the local shuttle service apparently doesn't extend to our condo. A beautiful walk, and a great workout besides.

Day 5: Steamboat Pow Morning, Donut Afternoon

Our last day at Steamboat followed the same pattern as all of our previous days: we skiied the Morningside glades until the crowds clogged up the lift, then we headed back down the frontside glades to Thunderhead to journey home. We woke up to a very fine inch of powder, with more up the mountain, and the glades felt just as good as they had for the last two days of powder. Our last run down the mountain from nearly the top of Storm Peak all the way to Thunderhead was very much the long way down, but ended up being pleasant cooldown after days of thigh-and-calf-aching powder surfing.

After our couple of hours on the slopes, Meg and I had one final stop in Steamboat: Yampa Valley Kitchen. Our meal was just as delicious as our previous meal, and Meg is happy to report that her Cinnamon Toast Crunch Latte was just as she remembered it. (She can, in fact, see why kids love it) After our brunch, we headed straight back home to Denver over Rabbit Ears Pass, excited to be back in our apartment after many days of skiing.

Unfortunately, Colorado had other plans.

The Long Way Down

Right at the peak of Rabbit Ears Pass, our car, Clem, started yelling at us to consult our manual. As a naturally skeptical person regarding all technology, I figured it was just a software bug, and recommended that we ignore it. Fortunately cooler heads prevailed, and Meg checked the tire pressure using the dashboard. Once we realized that our rear passenger tire was rapidly losing pressure, I changed my tune and recommended that we pull off immediately. Mountain passes might seem like a shitty place to get a flat, but I have to admit: there are few places in the country with as many pull-offs as Colorado mountain passes.

So we pulled off into a backcountry skiing parking lot and I opened my door check the tire. A very, very loud HISSSSSSSSSSS informed me that our problem was not just a software bug. In about 30 seconds flat I watched our tire turn into a pancake, and not the tasty kind.

Fast-forward through about 5 minutes of debating the merits of roadside assistance vs. a tow truck vs. a roadside DIY repair, and Meg and I sprang into action. We cleared out the trunk of ski supplies, lifted the damaged wheel, and swapped our fresh pancake for an anemic donut (don't worry, we know all about the star pattern). Not very many minutes later, we were on our way to the nearest Subaru dealer in Dillon, around 60 miles away. I have to give Meg's dad, Craig, credit: I'm really, really, really, really glad he taught us how to change a tire last summer. If you don't know, please watch an instructional video or at least read an article. Thanks Craig!

Did you know that you're not supposed to exceed 50 miles per hour on a spare tire? It seems most Colorado residents don't. Even with our best efforts to frequently pull off the road to let traffic by, it was amazing how many drivers took our 50 MPH speed cap as a personal affront. I've never been honked at or given the finger so many times in my life.

About 30 miles later, we made it to Kremmling, where we stopped at a gas station to check on the donut. Sadly, their air pump lacked a gauge, so we skipped topping off the donut's air to avoid accidentally overfilling it. At Kremmling, we finally had reliable access to cell service, so I contacted the Subaru dealer in Dillon to hook us up with a service time.

Another 30 miles of angry drivers, and we made it to Groove Subaru, just in time for our appointment. Groove might just be my favorite Subaru dealer ever, since they had it all: two dogs (one was a Bernese!), a ping-pong table where Meg realized how embarrassingly bad I am at ping-pong, free coffee and granola bars, and some incredibly helpful and kind workers. We ended up waiting for an hour or so while they fished a large piece of metal out of our tire. Then we found out that they couldn't patch the tire. And they didn't have any replacement tires, used or otherwise, that we could use to get home. So we did what any reasonable person would do: asked them to fill up our donut to the appropriate PSI, and headed out on I70 during a peak traffic time in the hopes that we wouldn't exceed 50 MPH much during traffic anyway.

(Thanks Grace! We owe you a beer.)

(we were correct; most of the time, we were lucky to go faster than 30)

In the end, we made it home by 7 PM or so -- a testament to the buffer time we left ourselves on the way home from skiing. Aside from one highly aggressive yellow rental moving truck driver who very nearly honked and rammed us off the road (despite adequate passing space on the left), it wasn't too bad. We made it home safe, dragged our stuff back to the apartment, and headed over to Illegal Pete's for some much-deserved margaritas and burritos. Fortunately, the Friday night peak burrito hour line gave us plenty of time to agonize over replacement tires on our phones.

Follow these steps:

1. Plug the USB drive into your Mac.
2. Format USB drive to MS-DOS (FAT) with Disk Utility. On the USB drive, click "erase", then rename your drive & choose FAT.
3. Download the ISO image to load onto the drive.
4. Convert the ISO to an DMG image:

   hdiutil convert /path/to/example.iso -format UDRW -o /path/to/example
   

   Note that the output file implicitly gets a .dmg extension added to the end. You'll need to include the .dmg when you write the image to the drive.

5. Find the USB drive id with diskutil:

   diskutil list
   

   This will output a big list of disks (/dev/disk1, /dev/disk2, /dev/disk3, for instance). Look for the USB you just reformatted by name in the "NAME" column. Then grab the identifier from the "IDENTIFIER" column in row 0. Or just use the last string in the disk label at the start of the disk listing, a la "disk3". If you forgot to assign a meaningful name, you might be able to find it by capacity.

6. Write your DMG to the USB drive using the ID from the previous step:

   sudo dd if=/path/to/example.dmg of=/dev/<USB DRIVE ID> bs=1m
   

   Note: you'll need to include the .dmg extension at the end of your image file. If you're a little thick like me, you might forget it because you didn't include it in step 3. You do have to include it this time. Second note: this can take a loooooong time. Like 10-20 minutes. I think mine took almost 30 minutes, and I have a pretty decently specced Macbook Pro, albeit from 2015. Seems this is pretty dependent on the image size and the quality of the storage in your USB drive, which if you're just using some random one from 10 years ago, might not be that great.

7. When you get a popup that says "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer", click "Ignore" and carry on. That's just your Mac getting upset that it can't read the image with Finder, even though your mac just... wrote the image. macOS is dumb sometimes.
8. Plug the USB drive into the computer you want to reimage. On a Mac, you'll hold down the option key at boot time until you see a boot menu, at which point you'll pick the USB drive. On my Linux laptop, I had to hit ESC multiple times when the manufacturer boot splash screen came up, to bring up BIOS, to add USB to the boot options. And then I had to hold F2 when I booted (again), and select the USB drive. YMMV -- it's best to take a look at the manual or look up how to bring up boot options/BIOS for your computer.

• attended a wedding
• drove 25 hours from Buffalo to Denver... without stopping to sleep
• explored the far east edge of Denver's Cherry Creek trail
• entertained guests at some of our favorite Denver breweries and parks. (thanks for visiting, Joe & Abby)!
• broke in a brand-new espresso grinder for the growing 2-person remote office

... 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.

Before we jump into our most recent ride, a smattering of some recent happenings in our lives:

The Road to Fort Collins

The day began with a long, annoying drive up the Front Range. There's no escaping it: I25 sucks. It's the major route up and down the population-booming Front Range, and it's crazy busy at pretty much all times. The only thing that makes I25 look good? I70, which winds through the mountains and grinds to a complete halt every weekend all year round.

So because the highways in our state were built in the 1960s and haven't really been improved or supplemented since, we migrated over to a not-highway, 287, as soon as we could. It's far from my favorite road, but it gets the job done, unlike I25. The journey on 287 took us through Loveland, a Boulder suburb I'd heard of, but never visited before. It was exactly the kind of strip-mall filled suburban hellscape I was afraid of -- all the fast food, big box stores, and car lanes you can imagine. No room for people. So we got out of there pretty quick too.

Soon enough, we arrived in Fort Collins. And to be honest, I was not initially impressed. I mean, it's another small-but-sprawling Front Range city. It has slightly more bike lanes painted on the roads. What's the big deal?

Meg and I hopped on our bikes and started down the Poudre River Trail, and soon caught a glimpse of how special Fort Collins really is.

A Pleasant Valley

The Poudre River Trail turned out to be just the kind of scenic greenway we've come to love in Colorado: rocky rapids, cute bridges, isolation from noisy cars, and in early November, the last bits of fall foliage making their way from branches to the ground. But since we hopped on the trail close to the end, it wasn't long before we graduated to a mixture of on-road and next-to-road paths. An unusual design choice placed both directions of bicycle traffic on a single side of the road... allowing us the unusual experience of riding toward oncoming traffic. Not a choice I would make, but hey -- at least traffic was light. And it helps that the sky was utterly and completely blue, and a faint November morning chill clung to the air, keeping it crisp and fresh.

As expected, after a couple of miles, the trail petered out entirely. Fortunately, the end of the trail coincided with a popular nature preserve and fishing spot encircled by a dirt road. Since the preserve stretched almost all of the way to our destination, we decided to test out a potential shortcut, and appreciate a nice park even if the shortcut didn't work out.

The park turned out to be far prettier than I'd hoped. Sapphire blue water, a rugged red ridge rising up into the sky, and some washboardy-but-fun dirt roads made for a fun ride around the lake. The only company we had was fishermen, and the obligatory fisherman companion: lazy, medium-large dogs.

We reached the north end of the park, and I was slightly disappointed to discover that our destination, Pleasant Valley Farms, maintained a rather tall and intimidating fence between their land and the park. We would have to take the longer, car-trafficked way around. Oh well. We opted to finish our loop around the park, exploring the other half of the park across the lake from where we'd already ridden. But it wasn't long before we reached... another impassible fence. And somehow we were on the "no trespassing" side of it. Curious, when you haven't hopped any fences to get there.

The problem was easily solved with a bit of balance: the fence extended to the edge of the lake, but no further, for obvious reasons. So we just passed the bikes around the fence, then jumped around ourselves. So much for padlocks and barbed wire!

After the no-trespassing excitement, our ride mellowed out considerably. We finished our ride around the park, hopped on the road, and whizzed over a couple miles of rolling hills to reach our goal: The Howling Cow Cafe.

The Howling Cow Cafe

There's nothing like a well-run cafe to get your bike ride off to a good start. The Howling Cow didn't disappoint, with well executed coffees, two particularly fresh sandwiches, and, for some reason, one gloriously creamy milkshake. I suppose you'd expect a dairy farm to make a great milkshake, but this one was even better than I'd expected.

We took in our sandwiches, coffee, and milkshake on the expansive lawn, and enjoyed a day that was just breaking 70 degrees. Dozens of cyclists rode by in the time it took for us to eat and drink, and a healthy chunk of those cyclists swung by the Howling Cow for a bite to eat. Fortunately, they've got an entire dedicated bicycle parking lot. It was nice to visit someplace within a 20 minute ride of a major city where nobody bothers to lock their bike -- another major difference from Denver, where even if you lock your bike in your own garage, you're never really certain it'll be there when you come back to it.