mack_turtle

I got a little of that this weekend too. Eerie how a little seasonal allergies suddenly turn into an existential crisis these days.

YouTube channels worth watching: Seth's Bike Hacks / Berm Peak  Express (duh) Van Girl Kuka - Japanese women who lives out of a van and documents herself riding rad trails and learning new skills Dustin Klein - mostly gravel content. creative editing. Jeff Kendall-Weed - mtb pro BKCX - traveling mtb vlogger Path Less Pedaled lots of gravel/ bikepacking content Fingers Cross BMX Ruban Alcantera and Garrett Byrnes are building full-suspension 20" bmx bikes Hardtail Party dude rides hardtails and documents group rides sessioning technical trails Clint Gibbs - bike vlogger, mix of mtb and gravel content Jeff Lenosky - the Trail Boss AvE - some Canadian shop guy who tests machines with hilarious commentary. some bike content. Colin Furze - English mad engineer makes unsafe gadgets. hysterical! Chris Akrigg - absolutely my favorite cycling athlete. dude can ride anything

One of several McCarthy adaptations that didn't ruin the novel. Need to watch that again.

some of you folks are real wussies when it comes to staring into the cinematic abyss, eh? you definitely don't want my playlist.

the short term deal for Starz is pretty good. you can binge Outlander.

when I feel stressed, an episode or two of The Office always soothes my soul. simpler times.

If you don't have a streaming service (seems like most people do) or you want another choice, the Austin Public Library uses Hoopla. you can download the app and stream/ download all kinds of stuff, including movies. First Reformed A rural pastor (Ethan Hawke) fights his personal demons while trying to guide a parishioner's family (Amanda Seyfried) through a climate-change inspired existential crisis. Sounds simple but it gets dark fast. "Courage is the solution to despair. Reason provides no answers. I can't know what the future will bring. We have to chose despite uncertainty. Wisdom is holding two contradictory truths in our mind at the simultaneously: hope and despair. A life without despair is a life without hope. Holding these two ideas in our head is life itself." I have really dark taste in movies apparently. It's available on Hoopla.

this is expected to some extent this time of year, but based on what I have seen while riding around town, there's a LOT more people out on bikes they obviously have not ridden in years.

Year and Years on HBO. An ordinary English family navigates terrifyingly plausible technological changes, human migration, climate change effects, fascist government takeovers, panoptic surveillance, cultural shifts, etc, in this sci-fi / speculative fiction about the next decade of human history. It is about a year old now and some of the events in it are downright prophetic. We could only watch one episode at a time—only six for the first season. The intro music is enough to give you an ulcer. The English Game on Netflix. Julien Fellows (Downton Abbey) history-based story of English football in the 1880s. Strange Negotiations documentary about Pedro the Lion front man David Bazan. I've been following his music since I was a teenager and he's one of the few musicians I make a point to see live whenever I get the chance. I don't think it's streaming for free anywhere but worth paying a few bucks to download it if the indie music/ gen-x / American Evangelical experience resonates with you. The Leftovers on HBO. speculative fiction series. three seasons. bingeable. I won't spoil anything, but the subject matter is more relevant now than when it came out a few years ago.

I know exactly what you're talking about. One of my favorite skits. I read someone gushing about how awesome a part was the other day, with lots of emphasis on how it is made in Canada. I read the details on the website and it says "assembled in Canada." Not the same thing. I doubt very many companies get all their parts domestically, but some level of domestic involvement is a step in the right direction. also, Industry Nine's 1/1 hubs are $290 for the rear and $136 for the front. that's competitive with a lot of foreign-made stuff but made in Asheville. They don't have quite the bling factor of Hydra hubs but they didn't pull any punches with this one.

In addition to supporting a local shop, I really wish I could support American manufacturing, especially at this time. but the cost of US-made goods is a really hard pill to swallow. example: I can buy a really nice Asian-made (Taiwan?) rear hub for under $200 full retail (Boyd, Bontrager, Spank, etc). the equivalent domestic made product is over $400 (King, Onyx, Industry 9). I know stuff is made cheap overseas, but I have a hard time justifying the hit to my limited discretionary spending for something I am not convinced is twice as good. I know some of you make a whole lot more money than I do so it's not as big a deal. How do you approach the choice of bang/buck over supporting industries with better labor and environmental practices?

Maybe when e-mtbs have one of these, it won't matter.

The other day I pointed out to my wife that e-bikes have limited batteries. If nothing stops me, I'd never go riding for less than fourhours at a time because I don't have to worry about a battery running out. My battery runs out when I don't shove enough snacks in my pockets. An e-mtb would shorten those rides by quite a bit. Suddenly, my wife is interested in buying me an e-mtb.

related — https://www.pinkbike.com/news/not-so-fast-how-dropper-posts-created-steep-seat-tube-angles.html