offtrail.guru

With every hobby there are things we love to do, things we have to do, things we can't do and yes, there are also things we simply won't do. There are a bunch of things I don't and won't do. In cycling, there's no right or wrong; some folks prefer one bike type over another, some live to bomb downhill, others rejoice in hitting hard climbs, some love to be rattled while others want squish. Ultimately it's about doing what's fun and we all achieve that in different ways. The way I roll is simply the way I roll.

Our climate is heating up rapidly; even more rapidly than climate scientists predicted. Droughts are causing mass starvation and displacement of millions in large parts of the world. Other parts of the world are going up in flames. In October 2017, large areas of the city I used to call home for ten years were incinerated and three more wildfires brought smoke and destruction in 2019 and 2020. Hurricanes are growing stronger and more frequent. Switzerland, which I call home again, is getting hotter year after year. It's not uncommon for February to feel like May. Summer months see more frequent and grueling heatwaves. Swiss summers used to be the best time to ride. Now, summers are the first season during which I often take a break from cycling.

This weekend Europeans turned the clocks back an hour and perhaps for the last time. This would totally suck because I happen to like daylight saving time. If we're not going to change our clocks twice a year, I'd prefer the time to stay on…

A couple of weeks before we moved last November, my trusted Mac Book Pro died. I took it to an Apple computer shop that was certified to do repairs, but they only confirmed what I already suspected; the motherboard was toast and replacing it wasn't worth it. In December of 2019, I bought a Raspberry Pi 4 so that I'd have a simple computer to do basic things online. I ran Raspian for several months and in the summer I installed Ubuntu Mate. In June of 2020, Chuwi launched an Indiegogo campaign for a tiny Windows 10 mini PC; the Larkbox.

Looking at the photos of all my road bikes since 1992, one very noticeable change is the handlebar, and in particular, the position of the hoods. On my early bikes, the hoods were extremely low on the bars. Thinking about wrist and arm alignment, particularly in that photo of my black Trek 5200, I wonder how it could have been comfortable. Well, I was a lot younger and rode just fine with that setup. The last couple of years, I’ve standardized my handlebar on all my drop bar bikes, and used a 44 cm wide Thomson KFC-One carbon handlebar. Before that, I ran 42 cm and even narrow 40 cm bars.