Wahots

My buddy started balding at 16. He held on for a number of years, but eventually we helped him rip the bandaid off and he shaved himself bald. Instantly looked younger again just because he didn't have a ring of hair at 27 anymore. Honestly, it can look really cool if you shave it.

The other thing that's kinda cool is that you get to see a bunch of people who normally are kinda invisible, but make up a considerable part of your city and life. It's incredibly fun to see people from all walks of life and backgrounds all having fun together. It makes us all stronger and more unified. It reminds me that we absolutely can do anything when we all work together as a team. Also, about 60% of the crowd there is probably running your city's IT infrastructure ;)

Gearing, tires, and geometry make all the difference in the world.

My Transition Sentinel is only geared for mountain biking. It's a terrible city bike. Tons of shock, high torque gears for steep hills, cannot go very fast. But it's insane when you need to climb or descend mountains. It has knobby, 2.4in tires.

My city bike is an ebike, and even though it's a single speed, it's pretty comfortable going between 10-30mph on that gear alone. The battery allows me to haul lots of groceries or baggage (and climb steep hills), and it's tires are wide enough to not get stuck in tram rails or gaps in the concrete road. I have knobby tires to avoid popping tires, but smoother, thinner tires will be more efficient.

Edit: if you have a shock, try locking it out if it has lockout.

I'd also recommend checking out city bikes, such as road, gravel, and upright bikes. There's an incredible amount of diversity, and a downhill mountain bike is about as far from a road bike as one can get. One can roll over a rock the size of a watermelon, the other can coast for meters off of a pedal stroke. Ebikes also are phenomenal as car replacements (or even just as car offsets), but generally cost $1,500+ with tariffs.

I lived too close to a hospital. Apparently, the road I lived next to was the road that all fire, EMS, and police used. Tons of sirens at all hours of the night and day. I toured the place on a quiet day, so it never occurred to me about the noise. That was a bit of a suffer fest.

One funny thing about that place, someone always swore consistently on the street between 17:00-20:00 each evening. It was always someone new, but it was like clockwork. Guests wouldn't believe it at first, but it became a thing, lol. Sometimes it was someone on a skateboard eating shit in the protected bike lane, other times it was a pissed off pedestrian, someone having an argument, someone having fun, or someone clearly off their medication. No apartment has had that before or since.

The book is so good, I don't know if I wanna see the movie.

Black mesa is worth it, full price. I played both the OG and black mesa back to back. Fantastic game!

Sweater weather. I already didn't like the downtempo vibe, but it got painfully overplayed back in the day. Unfortunately, I still hear it occasionally. Anything but that, please.

And the orange menace's POS daughter is attending, as icing on the cake.

Universities are like little cities. I love all the different styles they have :)

We'll get there, someday. I do hope we can tone down light pollution significantly in the coming years, and come up with something other than massive LEO constellations so that the night sky is clearer. We need clear skies for our space telescopes and creatures that need the night sky to navigate.

It also shows the strength and resilience of an area. Places like that have weathered many booms and busts. It's particularly interesting when one building has many styles, having been continuously occupied for hundreds of years. Or in some cases, even longer.

I want a conversation pit!