Lovely Detours
Hi y'all,
This week I want to highlight my Two Minute Detour and expound upon the road (literally) less taken. Hope you enjoy.
- I'm writing this from Atlanta, GA where I'm visiting friends and doing a bike race this weekend called Fried Clay. This race will be the longest I've ever done and - at 200km distance - will certainly teach me something about myself. I'll give updates next week. That said I've been loving visiting Atlanta - a new city for me. It's lovely and I've been particularly impressed with the bikeability in town, and the fact that off of the Beltline path there are vibrant business built in human-centric infrastructure (not a car in sight). Very cool.
- I'll be listening to my trusty playlist 'Shred Gnar' on this ride - my trusty snowboarding playlist, something I wish I were doing more of right now as it's been a dry season here in Colorado (it hit a record high this week and the snowpack is at a historically low level). Hopefully we get a few more storms this season, but support Protect Our Winters no matter what.
- We've moved to a new house, the first one we've owned. We're discovering the trials and tribulations of homeownership in real time. It feels like I've picked up a new hobby called home maintenance - rewarding, difficult, joyful, and sometimes frustrating, all met with enthusiasm. I'm looking forward to writing about the experience and trying to balance the new found joy of staying. Also, This Old House videos all of the sudden really hit, and have completely taken over my YouTube feed. Tom, please. Which siding is better?
- I might need to update my Take a Walk piece as I have a dramatically new daily route. We moved from the city into a small town outside of Boulder so the walk now lacks much of the sidewalk traffic of old: the dog walkers, the commuters, and joggers that used to greet me as I left my front door. But finding a new route has been fun. It now winds through local parks, past the school, has a great view of the mountains. I'm starting to notice new patterns of life in this place we've moved to. I'll report back later.
- I'm currently reading The Terror, a novel inspired by the real-life, ill-fated 1840s British Discovery Service expedition to find the Northwest Passage. The ships became trapped in the ice and never made it out. After a long stretch of fantasy reading, including Brandon Sanderson's Wind and Truth and finally checking the last outstanding Cosmere novel, Warbreaker (which I highly recommend), off my list, I was looking for something more grounded, but not entirely. The Terror has been exactly that. It's historical fiction written by the same author as the fantasy classic Hyperion, which makes for an interesting blend. Two real ships stuck in Arctic ice, beset by the things that always plague humanity in these scenarios, and some things that don't. It's a spooky, dark inversion of the hero's story I read as a child about Sir Ernest Shackleton, and his Endurance. Horror (or horror adjacent) is new territory for me, I've stayed away because I always read before bed. If I make it through this, I might finally crack open the copy of Clive Barker's The Hellbound Heart that's been sitting on my bookshelf for five years. If you have recommendations for what to read after The Terror, shoot.
Joey
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