I was mountain biking last Friday and feeling pretty good about my efforts when my smartwatch started freaking out and barraging me with alerts because it’d detected some sort of regional incident. Since I was currently descending a section of trail ill-suited for stopping, I had to finish getting to the bottom before I could… Continue reading Incident Detected
Do you ever find yourself with an abundance of extra money and/or free time? Then I highly recommend learning to maintain and repair your own bicycle. To get started, you’ll just need a few simple tools, a can-do attitude, and access to a good internet debugging proxy. Here’s the step-by-step guide I recently used to… Continue reading Give Me a Brake
My wife let me go to my six-week post-op visit without her today. This meant I got to ask the doctor all sorts of interesting things. For instance, I now know that bones start to calcify and crumble when they reach 1600°F, and that the melting point of stainless steel is 2500°F. This means the… Continue reading Souvenirs
I have some bad news. I crashed while mountain biking with a friend near Mount Rainier on Friday and ended up breaking 6 ribs and my right clavicle. Stay with me because that isn’t the bad part. After conducting a thorough trail-side wellness check (“Dude, has my collar bone always jutted out from my shoulder… Continue reading Costly Mistake
I ran into a tree while mountain biking today. With my face. I don’t remember the specific details that led up to the incident, but I imagine things unfolded like this: First, I was riding along and my face wasn’t hitting any trees, then, quite unexpectedly, it was. Physics and poor judgement are cruel mistresses.… Continue reading Scary Fast
I’ve historically had bad luck with mountain bike rentals in Arizona. The last two intentionally tried to kill me by lurching into sharp rockery and another one broke down and left me stranded seven miles into a solo desert ride. So this time I rented a "premium" model – a 1x11, full-suspension bike with *working*… Continue reading Dessert in the Desert
Eating My Way to the Top 