Author Archives: John P

Shinrin Yoku

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Via Maine Bike Works on Instagram, a heck of a good read on bicycling in a less competitive, less focused way. This has been, and is, very much my goal on the the bike – get myself back to that carefree feeling I had when I jumped on my crappy wonderful Sears Sting Ray knock-off as a kid.

At one time, Jacquie even thought about starting a male version of WOMBATS, and had “already dreamed up the acronym, which is M-A-N-A-T-E-E: the Male Auxiliary Non-Athletic Testosterone-Enhanced Enthusiasts! Just a silly retort, because it’s this giant thing that’s, of course, going extinct, but sort of a pleasant animal—and obviously not up to any seedy tricks.”*

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Stateless Stochastic Automatons

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…is my krautrock band name. Seriously, while driving to NYC last weekend, I finally started listening to Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders’ podcast, Our Opinions Are Correct – specifically, ep. 18: Alien Minds. It was so good that I listened a second time on my way home; strongest possible recommendation. The episode addresses alien minds in 3 big chunks: alien aliens (little green men/BEMs), AI/created minds and aliens that live on the planet with us.

The outer space alien portion focused partly on communication (my sweet spot) – it caused me to add Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis series to my TBR list and made me think about a couple of my favorite aliens. The Ariekei/Hosts of China Miéville’s Embassytown speak with two mouths driven by one mind and their “Language does not allow for lying or even speculation, the Language reflects both their state of mind and reality as they perceive it”.* There are a bunch of interesting things going on: language/mind feedback, the destabilizing effect of new ‘technology’ and, for me especially, the Fall (of Babel/from a state of language perfection) as the Hosts learn to lie. The other aliens that sprang to mind were the Wang Carpets from Greg Egan’s Diaspora. I honestly don’t remember whether communication ever got established with the Carpets, but they were a great stab at building an intelligence that was barely recognizable.

[A] voyaging ship has found the first example [of alien life] on planet Orpheus, large “carpets” submerged and slowly moving through an ocean. The carpets hardly seem candidates for sentient life, each one being comprised of a single long carbohydrate molecule. But it turns out they are behaving as a Turing Machine made up of Wang tiles (renamed Wang’s Carpets by the human clones who discovered them).

Wang tiles are a mathematical system proposed by Hao Wang in the form of a conjecture that [simplified version:] square tiles with differently coloured sides can fill an plane, and if so in a periodic pattern. Hao Wang argued that if the such a tiling exists that would imply that there is also an algorithm that would decide if such a pattern exists. Wang’s student showed that there is no such algorithm and the tiling problem is undecidable.

The Wang Carpets on Orpheus are doing that computation, but instead of the simple two-dimensional case proposed by Hao Wang, in this story the carpets occupy many levels in the ocean and thus an immensely powerful computation is going on (and can be visualised by Fourier analysis). An intelligence comprised of a multidimensional Turing Machine. *

The AI minds portion was excellent as well – encoded biases/non-neurotypical AI minds/&c, but I’m going to just tell you to listen. I’m going on longer than I wanted and am going to cut to the chase; the portion where Newitz and Anders talk to Lisa Margonelli about her book, Underbug: An Obsessive Tale of Termites and Technology. Most of my exposure to eusocial insects is via the Hymenoptera as a beekeeper and as a lover of both Uncle Milton and Six legs Better. Termites are different critters entirely. They’re most closely related to cockaroaches and rely on their gut biota to digest cellulose. A superorganism with symbiotic protists, which in turn have bacterial ectosymbiotes? Hell yes. What really got me going was the discussion (35:27) of what I am assuming (bought the book, haven’t cracked it yet) are Macrotermes colonies.

Macrotermes colonies host a remarkable symbiotic relationship with a basidiomycete fungus, Termitomyces. The termites cultivate the fungi in a fungus garden, comprising a few hundred fungus combs, structures built from chewed up grass and wood, and inoculated with fungal spores. Each year, these fungi produce a crop of large mushrooms (pictured at left), known locally as omajowa, which are highly prized as a delicacy.

Unlike the fungi cultivated by leaf-cutter ants, which the ant colony uses as food, the Termitomyces culture in a Macrotermes nest aids in the breakdown of cellulose and lignin into a more nutritious compost which serves as the termites actual food. The fungus garden is, therefore, a kind of extracorporeal digestive system, to which termites have ‘outsourced’ cellulose digestion. *

An aside – I inoculated some logs last spring with shiitake and oyster mushroom spawn and it occurred to me at the time that what I was doing was turning wood into food with a fungal assist.

fungus comb

I’m unclear as to whether Macrotermes have the same gut biota as other termites (wait!! see below) – guess I need to read Underbug. Regardless, what a superorganism! What a community! Extra bonus – one of the species of fungus, Termitomyces titanicus, “has a cap that may reach 1 metre (3 ft) in diameter on a stipe up to 22 inches (57 cm) in length and is reputed to be the largest edible mushroom in the world.”* Termite-stuffed mushroom caps anyone (totally serious)?

By Blimeo – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=56726209

P.S. It occured to me as I was proofreading that perhaps I could do a google search on ‘macrotermes gut biota’ and yes, there are papers!

A Fungus Among Us II

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Via Justin Pickard on the tweets comes this fantastic project: Alias, a gadget that helps you take control of Amazon and Google’s small surveillance devices.

We looked at how cordyceps fungus and viruses can appropriate and control insects to fulfill their own agendas and were inspired to create our own parasite for smart home systems. Therefore we started Project Alias to demonstrate how maker-culture can be used to redefine our relationship with smart home technologies, by delegating more power from the designers to the end users of the products.*

I’ve never been tempted by Amazon Echo or Google Home. First off, I like not needing to reboot light switches. And the privacy implications of these gadgets are stunning. There’s the obvious: if you don’t think they’re listening and harvesting data whenever they’re plugged in, you clearly haven’t been paying attention. The Alias project mitigates this exposure with a man-in-the-middle attack – it sits between you and the listening device and only talks to the listening device when you’ve told it to.

I’m still thinking it through, but Alias isn’t a panacea. All the things Google Home (for example) is asked to do: play music, turn off lights, adjust temperature, will leak back to Google and they can build an interesting model of your life using this data. That being said, a Cordycepian brain parasite for our cloud overlords’ bugs* is conceptual candy to me. (earlier Cordyceps post here)

Lots of fungal zeitgeist in my world right now. In addition to Alias, I’ve been watching the mushroom episodes of Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia, reading a Vox post on “The extraordinary therapeutic potential of psychedelic drugs, explained” and re-reading Toads and Toadstools. Next stop, Pollan’s book.

*SWIDT?

Ice, Ice Baby

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Antarctica again: a post from Barry Lopez talking about his time on a blue ice field with a field team collecting meteorites. A lot of things to love about this – space, ice, people cooperating in a tough environment, nunataks, and a mix of cutting edge and traditional technologies.

John and I share an appetite for physical engagement with the world of snow, ice, and rock beyond our tent, and we appreciate having an opportunity to work together, almost always in silence. We’re comfortable being confined in the limited space of a Scott tent. We split the cooking chores easily, and we observe the same unwritten rules that ensure each person a bit of privacy. I like the rhythm of our daily problem-solving and the hours of stories and reminiscence we share in the tent on storm-bound days, the physical and technical challenge of the work the six of us do, and the deep sleep that comes with exhaustion. Humans, I think, were built for this. We can do it superbly.*

Read the whole thing, as they say. Additionally, some of the tech tangents I zoomed off on…

de Havilland forever! I’ve flown on a radial engine Beaver; no Twin Otter, yet.

Three years before we arrived, four scientists, the first people to visit this part of Antarctica, landed nearby in a Twin Otter plane.

BAS Twin Otter

Scott pyramid tents count as middle-aged tech, I think. Though most of Scott’s experiments were a bust, the tent endures.

Nansen sleds! Designed in the 1890s, adapted from traditional Inuit qamutiiks. Lashed, not nailed, so they flex on uneven terrain. Lights up a bunch of my pleasure centers.

Mene, mene, tekeli-li

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The Writing on the Ice

It’s difficult sometimes to trace the origin of a tangent. In this case, I’m pretty sure it started with the trailer for Mortal Engines, a movie I’d like to see in the theater, but who knows… The big mobile cities started me thinking about the big vehicles I’ve imagined taking part in the 2nd Miskatonic Expedition story – especially the Russian vehicle, which is a nuclear powered, screw driven monstrosity. From there it was a quick jump to watching a favorite monster movie: John Carpenter’s The Thing. Really excellent special effects; I remember a friend had a copy of Cinefex back in the day detailing how some of the monsters were created and it was fascinating. And from there it was off to the reading races. So here’s a list of the Antarctic stuff I’ve read over the past week or so, with a thought of two on each book. I’ll list them in order of publication, and indicate the order I read them in.

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (read 2nd) – Edgar Allan Poe The grandparent of all the antarctic horror to follow, this thing is a hot (cold?) mess. Poe thought of himself as a magazinist and it shows. Continuity is, um, uneven, the style and point of view are all over the place and it just stops in an “ok, we’re done now” cliffhanger (literally). But the thing that most walloped me was the racism. It’s both casual and thematic. Casual in the way Pym’s companion for the adventures, Dirk Peters, is described as having “arms, as well as legs, [that] were bowed in the most singular manner, and appeared to possess no flexibility whatever. [And a head that] was equally deformed, being of immense size, with an indentation on the crown (like that on the head of most negroes)…”*. Peters is supposed to be a “half-breed” with a Native Amreicam mother and a fur trapper (read: white) father. Early on, the brutality of the black cook on the Grampus (the first ship Pym is on) – he’s described as “demonic” – is singled out for emphasis. And thematically, the contrast between dark – the island of Tsala, where even the teeth of the locals are black – and the white figure at the end of the world is striking. With this in Poe’s oeuvre, I’m a little surprised that the orangutan is such a fraught topic:

If you’re interested in reading The Narrative, Project Gutenberg has it here.

At the Mountains of Madness (read 1st) – H. P. Lovecraft If you know anything about Lovecraft the person, you know what a virulent racist he was (yes, there’s a through-line here, beyond the southern continent). As a result, it’s difficult for me to read the story of the Old Ones vs. the Shoggoths as anything other than a slave revolt. I suppose one could shade it a bit and, per rule 1 of Horror Academia above, see it as a working class uprising, but since the Old Ones bred Shoggoths – ownership of children being a key horrible feature of chattel slavery – I’m going to stick with my interpretation. And following some of Charlie Stross’ thinking on the Lovecraft mythos, I regard the Shoggoths as sentient biological bushbots: smart and endlessly reconfigurable. RUR meets Toussaint Louverture.

Pym (read last) – Mat Johnson I discovered this satire while reading the Arthur Gordon Pym entry on Wikipedia. It’s Poe inverted and skewered: the story of an African-American professor of literature who ends up with an all-black ice mining crew in Antarctica. I need to re-read it; strongly recommended. One note – it features Thomas KinkKarvel, painter of light, which makes me wonder if there’s more to learn about Cookie Puss and Fudgie.

Still to be read is Verne’s An Antarctic Mystery, but seeing as how Mat Johnson described it as “the most pragmatic and literal sequel to The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym and also the worst sequel. This is probably not a coincidence. Still, even a failed book is enjoyable on an occasional page. Come for the novelty, stay for the unbridled racism.”* I’m in no hurry.

Richard Jay Potash 1946? 1948? – 2018

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We’ve lost an amazing scholar, actor, magician. I’ll quote myself circa 2006, “I’m a big fan of Mr. Jay’s – he fits my mental model of a perfect sleight-of-hand artist – well read, raffish, incredibly good at what he does.”

Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay is available to stream on Amazon; it gets a thumbs-up from me. Back when it was released, I drove to The Screening Room, a wee indy theater in Newburyport MA, to see it. Worth the trip.

Vulture has a good round up of clips showing Mr. Jay’s sleight of hand skills here, and I’ll leave you with this not great quality video of Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants. Goodbye, Mr. Jay – I really wish I’d had a chance to see you perform live.

Kite Aerial Photography

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I’ve been interested in kite aerial photography almost as long as I’ve been on the internet. I’m not sure how I got there, but I remember falling over Prof. Benton’s KAP page back in the days of usenet and listservs. I’ve flown a couple different kinds of drones, but the notion of a kite as the camera’s skyhook never stopped being attractive. As I thought about camera equipment for the trip, a KAP rig immediately suggested itself. Drones are heavy and power hungry; kites are neither of those things. I got the stuff together and yesterday – a day of 20 mph+ blustery winds – was the first sky trial.

KAP requires 3 things: a kite (and line obv), a camera with some sort of automatic or remote triggering capability, and a way of hanging the camera off the kite string. I already had a GoPro; they come with wireless capabilities and a phone app to control them. The kite was easy, too. Though I already had an old parafoil kite, I ordered a larger one (for better light wind lifting) with a monster tail (for stability). The last bit, the camera/kite interface, is interesting. I’m using a picavet (or picavet cross if you prefer). It’s named after its inventor, Pierre Picavet, who came up with the notion in 1912. Side note: the history and longevity of KAP is another thing that attracts me.

Labruguière photographed by Arthur Batut's kite in 1889.jpgArthur Batut’s aerial photo of Labruguière, 1889

Here’s my picavet on its way up:

Picavet.

But I am getting ahead of myself. Yesterday was the first day that all the elements were in place: good wind, no rain and all the components rigged and ready. So off I went to a nearby (sodden) playing field complex. When I got there, I discovered that I wasn’t the only person with kites on their mind. This person was doing some dry land kite-boarding practice.

kiteboard

We spoke briefly – I wanted to make sure I didn’t get in his way – and I walked off to a different corner of the field. He left soon after; the wind was strong and out of the corner of my eye I saw him execute a nice landing after getting pulled a combined Olympic long/high jump distance by his kite.

I had a good time and came away having learned a few things: a mark of a successful outing in my book.

  • Wear gloves!
  • I need to spend more time with the GoPro phone interface. The interface is simple, but when you’re using it one handed with an angry kite in the other hand, well… And distance may or may not be an issue – again, tough to troubleshoot when one’s attention is divided.
  • I am going to experiment with more and heavier line. The kite came with a 300′ spool of 80lb line. I have a 500′ spool of 160lb line – it weighs more (boo!) but the extra 200′ will come in handy.
  • Don’t expect stable video when you are flying in a wind right at the top of your kite’s rating.

Here’s some barely-edited footage of the first flight; not great but there’s nowhere to go from here but… wait for it… up.

First flight.

Logistics note: I’m planning on posting video to both Flickr (esp after they open up the time limit to 10 minutes) and Youtube. I realize there’s angst on the internet over how SmugMug/Flickr is handling the free account downgrade. I’ve had a Flickr Pro account for a long time for exactly that reason: lack of trust in the permanence of free internet services. And so the thing I pay for (Flickr) will be the primary drop and the “free” thing (Youtube) will be there as a secondary source.

Sub-miniature Graboid

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Via Tetzoo, a critter that I would love to see on the the Big Bike Ride! Dr. Naish’s post is on speculative, “could yet be discovered” animals that are not already cryptozoological cliches – so no Nessie. The whole thing is a lot of fun but the entry for “A gigantic, predatory, limbed amphisbaenian” really caught my attention.

Among the weirdest of amphisbaenians are the ajolotes (or bipedids), the only extant group to possess limbs. These limbs are not small stumps or flaps (as they are in some other near-limbless, serpentine squamates) but well-developed, clawed forelimbs. According to some phylogenetic models, ajolotes are not the sister-group to limbless amphisbaenians but deeply nested within the limbless clade (Conrad 2008, Videl et al. 2008), in which case their limbedness – if you will – perhaps evolved from limbless ancestors. Add to this the fact that some amphisbaenians are robust-jawed, short-faced predators of vertebrates that ambush prey from beneath the surface and bite chunks from the bodies of surface-dwelling mammals and reptiles.

[…]

So then… where oh where are the giant, limbed, robust-skulled, vertebrate-eating amphisbaenians? By ‘giant’, I am not talking about a graboid-sized monster of several metres (though that would be nice), but a more reasonable animal of a mere 1.5 metres or so. Easily the stuff of nightmares. They could inhabit warm regions of any continent.

So what’re these ajolores? The word references 2 very different animals: the axolotl of Lake Xochimilco (endangered in the wild) and the Mexican mole lizard of Baja California – obv it’s the latter we’re interested in.

Bipes biporus is a small pink worm-like lizard with forellimbs only – no hind legs. Their scalation is segmented and used. peristaltically, to move through burrows. The big digger feet move sand out of the way (see the illustration in the Tetzoo post) and the blunt head helps in their fossorial fun.

I wanna see one!

Bipes biporus.jpg
By marlin harms, CC BY 2.0, Link

And in case ‘graboid‘ doesn’t ring a bell:

 

 

Apophenia

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Hold on tight – this is going to be more than a little tangential. After writing the Curta/Rohloff post yesterday, I was seized by a desire to re-read Pattern Recognition. So I did! When I got a hundred or so pages in, I had a little shock of recognition myself:

Pattern Recognition Cornell Box

Recognition, because the book on the top of my nightstand stack is Simic on Cornell.

Simic on Cornell

I’m moderately confident that this is pattern recognition gone wrong – and there’s a word for that!

Pattern Recognition Ch 12

Definition of apophenia 

: the tendency to perceive a connection or meaningful pattern between unrelated or random things (such as objects or ideas)*

Good for a laugh, but pattern recognition and its evil twin are near and dear to my heart. K asked recently if i was a ‘spotter’ – one of those people who see stuff in the woods before anyone else does, or when no one else sees the thing at all. I allowed as I probably was, but that I wasn’t sure if my skill extended outside of the northeastern US. I’ve written about what I tend to call ‘native vision’ before (while talking about the Blue Ant books!) ; it’s a central plot line, as far as I’m concerned, in a top 5 movie – Kurosawa’s Dersu Uzala. An aside – honing my spotter skills in different biomes is a Big Bike Ride goal.

Another bit of characterization in Pattern Recognition caught my eye, too. Boone Chu, Cayce Pollard’s computer security sidekick,has a bit of Mod fun, riding a scooter wearing a fishtail parka emblazoned with an RAF roundel*.

I ride a G.S. scooter with my hair cut neat
I wear my wartime coat in the wind and sleet

– I’ve Had Enough/Quadrophenia/The Who

Sometime during the reading I called up some tunes from Quadrophenia on the hi-fi, and noticed the title’s suffix. Because I was already thinking about apophenia, the lack of an R (it’s not Quadrophrenia!) struck me – esp since Jimmy, the protagonist, is presented as having 4 personalities. With an R:

Suffix[edit]

-phrenia

  1. mental disorder.*

Coming up with a definition for the sans-R suffix, -phenia, is a little trickier. One idea is that it /should/ have been apophrenia and the dropped R is a mistake. But I like this idea:

…if the word derives from “apo” and another Greek word, “phainein” […] meaning “to make appear,” then apophenia is correct after all.*

The suffix works nicely with Quadrophenia – it was recorded during the heyday of quadraphonic sound systems – and though apparently the vinyl was never quad, I remember a ton of pre-relase marketing noise bruiting Quadrophenia as quad sound’s full realization. “Making quad appear” works!

And finally. a chapter title from Pattern Recognition that wraps up The Who, the Big Bike Ride and pulling meaning from coincidence up in a neat bow.

Pattern Recognition Ch 16

* They’re called roundels damnit, NOT TARGETS

 

Got a match?

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I’m resurrecting a format from the past because the high-wheeler post got me thinking about cylinders jam-packed with complex bits.

The Curta calculator first came onto my radar screen as I read William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition. – a Curta is used in a swap: calculator for decrypted info. At the time, I was working at a boarding school in central NH; when I mentioned this odd calculator to a math teacher, he said, offhandedly, “Oh, I know about those! In fact I think there’s one up in the attic.” We searched, but no joy. So I’ve yet to see one in person but that has not stopped me from coveting.

Type II Curta

Curta Type II

Parts and a look inside

I’m sure you saw the match coming a mile away – the second cool cylinder is the Rohloff Speedhub. Beautiful. intricate, robust and functional (it’s 14 speeds are evenly stepped – something that other internally geared hubs can’t pull off) – what’s not to love? Oh, yeah, as mentioned below, the price. Throwing caution to the wind and setting another wad of cash on fire, the ‘before’ Rohloff photo is an example with a Phil Wood hub shell. I have no idea how much the Phil shell would add to the price, but omg it’s lovely.

The Phil shell gives you spoke count options – the std Rohloff is 32 spoke drilling only

Speedhub

A repeat from the Ordinary post – Rohloff cutaway from my trip to NAHBS

And a very exploded view!

My current ‘one bike to rule them all’ fantasy starts with a Speedhub-equipped Tumbleweed Prospector frame, 27.5 Plus tires, a big basket up front for teckels, a big saddlebag in back and some sort of trailer for hauling beehives around exurban Quebec. A boy can dream… And if I went that route, I guess I’d have to budget in the money to eBay myself a Curta as well!

 

The Why? behind the Big Bike Ride

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K asked me recently whether I’d posted anything about the thinking that led me to plan a serious long duration bike tour and I had to confess that I hadn’t. I’ll remedy that with a bit of the history of the idea and some of the things I hope to do on the ride.

I’ve thought about going mobile for a long time; I was struck by Stephen Bodio’s description of prairie/basin and range grouse hawkers and their Airstreams and tipis back in the mid-80s and the urge to try my hand at technomadism has been in my head ever since. Over the past few years, a constellation of factors, personal and societal, brought the desire to a full boil. There was the heart attack that demonstrated conclusively that I’m not immortal, a different kind of heart issue that led to a period of grieving, and all the thoughts and feelings that accompany watching loved ones in cognitive decline. The larger world doesn’t supply a lot of hope either. We’re rushing towards 1.5C/2.7F global temperature increases within 20 years and a country (hint: the US) that could lead on global warming issues is led by an incompetent kleptocrat, And as a side note, news came in this morning that Brazil has elected the fascist Bolsonaro who, among other things, has vowed to open up the Amazon to commercial exploitation. That’ll sure help with climate change (true, but not in a desirable direction)! Seems like a good moment to chuck it all and travel a bit. But how to travel? I had 3 options in mind:

  • Airstream. Pros: comfy! Cons: price (esp when the tow vehicle is factored in), lack of maneuverability.
  • Van conversion. Similar to the Airstream, but less comfy and more maneuverable.
  • Bicycle. Pros: cheap! Low/no carbon! Cons: much smaller load capacity.

The bike option won. I love bike touring – I think it is one of the very best ways to actually experience the country one moves through. It can be stealthy, low impact and inexpensive. And a well set up bike can handle a huge range of terrain: pavement to singletrack. My body was also a consideration; apparently I am not getting any younger and if I do want to take a big ride, sooner is favored over later.

So a-riding we shall go! The thing I most want to do on the trip is simply to experience the landscape: rocks, rivers, trees, birds, lizards, people, bridges, stars in the night sky and everything else I can wrap my senses around. And I want to learn! I want to pick my high school Spanish back up and get way better at it. I want to write more, and more betterer. 😉 I want to learn the names of unfamiliar things, I want to improve my photography and film making chops: I’m bringing a camera with macro and tele lenses for wildlife stuff and a couple GoPro Sessions for on the bike vids and kite aerial photography. I’m going to go fishing – and swimming! And I’m going to ride where I want at any pace I feel like. The riding itself is also part of the point. I find it to be meditative and a good way to sort things out in my head. I’m hoping to spend significant time in the moment – Flow for Dummies – and I want to think about post-ride activities – how I can help my loved ones survive The Jackpot.

Pre-ride. Bundled up.

We’re now a couple weeks from departure (I hope). Soon, this space will become a travelogue blog!