I miss writing, and I miss what operating an actual blog feels like. So it’s time to do something about it.
Dig up the old login credentials, reset my password, enable two-factor authentication like a good IT guy should, aaaaaaaaand we are BACK here on Bike Like a Brewer.
Smells a little musty in here, don’t it? Here…this air freshener should do the trick. Let’s open a window, get a fan going, and…ah yes, sit down at the keyboard.
A lot has happened since I last wrote on here. My last post was a longform impassioned plea to the residents of Centralia, Washington — the town that I call home — to urge their City Council to vote down what would have been a bad investment of public money into a pool. That effort succeeded, and just a few months later I decided for file for City Council when I heard the person who served in Position 1 At-Large decided not to run again.
Shoot, now I had to run a political campaign, make signs, and advance through the primary in August. I did that, then won in November with 58 percent of the vote.
As of the time of this writing, I’ve been on City Council nearly five months and I’ve been learning a LOT, spending a LOT of time meeting with folks about various things, and thinking a LOT about the future.
Suffice to say, I haven’t been on the bike nearly as many days as I have been in years past up to this point. However, I’ve still pedaled more than 2,500 miles and I’m on pace to still hit my annual 6,215 mile goal. How am I still pulling this off?
Fewer but longer rides. And some of them have been absolutely bonkers.
I did a virtual Everesting ride on Zwift in January, amassing 29,409 feet of elevation gain in one ride. That went for about 13 hours and it hurt the next day — and it hurt even worse the day after. But that put in my heart a burning desire to do some long and challenging rides in the next few years.
A ride I’m planning this weekend, the Megawillapa, aims to be part of that preparation. We have the beautiful Willapa Hills Trail right in our backyard, just 7 miles from my house to be exact. On Sunday, I’m riding it from Chehalis to South Bend and back again, all glorious 113 miles of its span in both directions.
I may be stupid. But it’s all good fun. I did this same ride twice last year: once in May to get folks excited for the annual Ride the Willapa event, and once in October to channel my inner Forrest Gump after a breakup. (Only I didn’t keep riding for months and months, I stopped at 8 p.m. that night.)
Which brings me to the ultimate point of this post now that we’re somewhat caught up: instead of being only a cycling-centric website, this will be a blog about much more than biking. I’ll include such topics as public policy, music, longform stories about this life, and much more.
You might also see the format has changed to resemble something looking like a newsletter. Hopefully the site’s a bit cleaner than it has been in the past and reads well especially on mobile.
It’s a bit late over here, but I’ll just say I’m thrilled to be back writing again here on my own website. I extend a warm invitation to you to join me on the journey, essentially a road trip to see wherever we may want to go together. Come along, it’ll be fun (they said).
Sound Museum Track of the Day, 5/21/24
“Paranoimia” by Art of Noise feat. Max Headroom (Extended Version)
This track is a bit odd, but great fun. Max Headroom, a fleeting figure of the 80s, is brought into the Art of Noise track “Paranoimia” to introduce his “band”: Peter O’Toole, Cher, the Pope, and Martina Navraraaa—uhhh, ok (“she should get married,” he says).
It’s a perfect track with which to kick off the feature we’ll call Sound Museum that appears at the end of every post. Enjoy.
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