OrnothLand
If you know what life is worth, you will look for yours on earth…
250508 TSS w/Shakedown
250508 The XP Express
250508 Lil Warmup
Slushstone Memories

I write a lot of blog articles, but only about half of them ever get posted. Every so often I have to clean out my “drafts” folder, and sometimes I find an oldie but goodie that really should have been shared.
Such is the case with this puppy. Six years ago, when we were still living in Western Pennsylvania, the following map sparked a wee leetle rant:
This is a map of Pittsburgh. The green dots represent areas where the land slopes at greater than a 25 percent grade. You’d look at terrain like that and say, “Basically, that's a cliff.” Looking at the map, you might wonder why there aren’t any mountain goats native to Western Pennsylvania. You wanna know why? It’s ’cos they’re fucking scared of these hills!
If you don’t live in Pittsburgh, your city prolly doesn’t have many – i »more
Why Specialized?

For whatever reasons, a lot of people dislike the major bicycle manufacturers. I’ve ridden Specialized bikes for two decades now, and one question I haven’t talked about is: “Why Specialized”?
So I wrote this big long essay following my progression as a cyclist over time and describing all my bikes and how much I used them and… never got around to answering the question.
So instead of a multi-volume encyclopedic life history, how about I just answer the goddamned question?
Episode One: The Plastic Bullet
So to finally answer the question…
I ride Specialized because their products have been excellent: well-designed, durable, and suited to my needs as a devoted endurance cyclist.
While I’ve come to expect petty greed from big corporations, Specialized has been shockingly generous with »more
Rode to Recovery

With Pæthos in the shop for a tune, this seems like a good time for a post-op update.
On March 7, I had a metal mesh plug implanted in my heart in order to close a hole between my two atria: a possible cause for my past and potential future strokes. It’s been seven weeks since the operation, so let’s review how my return to fitness has gone… And, of course, the prognosis going forward.
Phase One of my recovery consisted of 10 days completely off the bike. I had incisions into both of my femoral arteries that needed to fully heal before I could do anything as strenuous as walking, climbing stairs, or having a bowel movement, never mind cycling! I had tenderness and a sizable hematoma in my groin, and heart palpitations that mostly dissipated over time. After a few days I started doing s »more
2025-04-24
250423 Gentil 8 Badge & Challenge
250422 Hell of the No Badge
250422 Croissant Badge
250422 The Streaker
250421 True Blue
250420 NW Hills
Freedom Fighters

Since ancient times, mankind has been preoccupied by a quest for “freedom”. Even in today’s somewhat enlightened society, safeguarding our “freedom” is an almost daily topic of conversation.
But I wonder how many of us have ever made the effort to formulate in words exactly what that term means to us. And if you don’t know what freedom means, how can you possibly successfully attain it?
For me, freedom has three main components: choice, independence, and ethics.
First is the freedom to choose between alternatives. Where a man has no choice to make, there is no freedom.
And to be truly free, that choice must be largely independent of external influence or coercion. A man who is coerced or misinformed is not able to freely choose.
And finally, “freedom” has no meaning un »more
250418 The Midday Ride
I Care About Nutrition

For reasons I’ll explain in a second, improving my diet became a critical consideration following my stroke. But I had lots of questions about the areas where healthy eating directly conflicts with sports nutrition’s best practices for endurance athletes. I decided to get answers from a professional, and this blogpost summarizes what I got out of consulting a nutritionist for the first time in my life.
This is one of those posts where it’s not clear whether it belongs on my general blog or here on my cycling-specific blog. Since I came at this from a cyclist’s perspective, I decided to post it to the latter, so that other cyclists would more readily find it. But most of this is equally relevant to my non-cycling readers.
Where I Started
The statistics say that 25 percent of stroke survivor »more
250416 Bon Voyage Badge & Lv86
250415 The Loop
250414 Pemberton Castle
250413 Truants' Route
250411 Boggy Creek Express 50k
250410 Normalized Power
250408 Three Musketeers Badge
Site News: Now on Bluesky
Added sidebar link to my Bluesky profile.
Posted Sat Dec 14th 2024