DF 6/12
After a few long-weekends, this one is entirely too short. Friday was for errands and tv and dreaming about new routes to try the bike I finished building this week on.
Saturday began with F1 qualifying and a nearly bike-breaking mistake, as I snapped a bolt while trying to tighten down a part. Most of the time, if you’re wily, you can recover from minor->semi-major mistakes when repairing things, but today was the closest I’ve gotten in a while to asking someone for a Dremel—a sure-fire way of admitting defeat.
Despite building fixed gears a lot when I was younger, many parts on modern road bikes still throw me off, so I just hope that learning stays relatively inexpensive and I only break the most replaceable parts.
Once I finally got out on my ride, it had cooled off a little from the rare-for-the-bay 85ºF temperatures. It was a three bottle and refill day though, as I ground up hills and down trials in Wildcat Canyon and Ridge. The highlight of the day was either a fast and wild gravel descent, or seeing a cute bunny hanging out near the trail.
This balance of joy and challenge is, I hear, the key to having a good life. If you’ve known anyone with a silver spoon or charmed life, none of this will seem surprising, but in order to be fulfilled, we need balance and tests of our fortitude.
Renewable energy sources are a step up, not a step down; instead of scarce, expensive, and polluting, they have the potential to be abundant, cheap, and globally distributed. Transitioning all of our infrastructural systems to be powered by renewable sources is about growing out the number of people who have access to more energy, who benefit from using it to meet human needs, whether as basic as cooking food or as modern as global telecommunications.
Lately I’ve thought a lot about climate change and how to organize and fight for actual change in the richest nations towards a system of energy that doesn’t mine the rest of the world for the temporary and destructive comfort of a handful of nations. The above quote is from a newsletter that lays out some solid strategies worth considering. We definitely need both governmental and corporate leadership and accountability to actually get to a better place that isn’t just embarrassing petrochemical greenwashing.
It’s also important for Americans like myself to internalize just how truly bizarre we are compared to the rest of the planet’s population. Maybe these attitudes come from a bizarre American exceptionalism, but I think perhaps it’s just a mix of prosperity gospel and centuries of selfish, myopic gold-mining attitudes. We may not be fucked but it’s likely the US needs to grow up and step way back in order to actually help.
Finally, here is one of the best artifacts of Ancient Rome I’ve ever seen. Imagine people thousands of years from now, living on a greener planet digging up a mildly corrupted JPEG that just says “BOFA”. Bless.
Links
- Rusty had some bangers lately:
Closing
Well, I’ve got a beer in my hand, and lots of Tiger Balm slathered on my legs, so it’s time to stop writing and watch something on my tv. Next week is an offsite at my job, and I can’t say I’m fully comfortable going into a building with other people all day, but at least we have testing and masking required. It will be nice to meet some coworkers I’ve only seen on a small video chat window before in person, but I wish still that we didn’t have to choose between that and avoiding a viral infection.
Until next time, keep your eyes on the pies, and aim for merely “happy,” space cowgirls~