Ditto the last two mornings. Clear, calm, cool, with a hot sun.

A moment of panic on the ride home yesterday, riding downhill on a hard dirt trail on my skinny tire fixie when I ran into a pile of soft dirt. I guess a gopher dug a hole right next to the path and kicked all the loose dry dirt onto it. Things got a bit squirrelly for a second or two and I thought I was going over, but somehow managed to keep the rubber side down.

And that concludes my regularly scheduled broadcast. School starts next week, so I'm back to drop-off (and occasional pick-up) duty. That's my life right now, and will be for the next three years, assuming my family continues on our current life trajectory. I may still get a few commutes in fall while the weather is nice, but it'll be sporadic. Boy, the summer sure is short.

Have a great weekend, everyone.

Did not make it for a 2nd lap yesterday. Chemo clinic did not meet their schedule and then their pharmacy boned up the scrips. While I was trying to get that figured out I had to abandon, as our nanny called out. Our nanny is great, but her grown kids and their neighbors have the kind of drama that winds up trading restraining orders, and she had to attend a hearing.

Unremarkable lap today. May go home early to get doggo from her semiannual checkup. I swear everyone in our family but me and my daughter are always going to the doctor.

Edit: 2nd lap after doggo

That was pretty soothing to watch.
What's your camera setup? GoPro on the helmet?
...and what app do you use to edit the footage?

I had my daughter this weekend, did some utility biking, if not actual commuting:

• On Saturday, I got a coffee ride in with the local group, ~ 30 easy miles and a bunch of nice camaraderie. This was on my gravel bike, whose chunkier tires handle our cracked-up pavement better than my road bike. {Here's the first half of it}
• Later on, I had my daughter join me on an eBike ride to the grocery store and back, for dinner ingredients. Two big packs of chicken legs from Aldi, $5 apiece. I grilled them up and fed two dinner guests plus the 5 of us, then had enough left-overs for several more meals. After dropping off my daughter, I went another 10-15 miles and checked out Cheeseapalooza and a car show with over 1,000 cars. Being in Kenosha, AMC was well-represented. 20 eBike miles total. {Strava Link w/pix}
• Sunday, we spent the afternoon in a local park called Petrifying Springs park. I threw my folder in the back of the car. My wife sat and read a book and went for a short walk. (her hip is still messed up from the car accident 3 months ago) I got two rides in, one 4.7 miles, the other 3.4 miles.
• Yesterday, we went to the beach. Daughter mostly played on her phone and rode in the car there with my wife. Wife read and walked again and we soaked up some low angle sun. I went separately on my gravel bike, and got a 9.7 Zone 2 ride in.

Back to work this morning, 4 miles commuting on the eBike to save my legs a bit for tonight's ~20 mile Turtle Tuesday club ride, which I'm leading. I think we'll do some gravel, maybe 50%.

Frustrating morning. I took the car intending to drive down to the oncology pharmacy, and stick my wife with fueling up the never-satisfied pickup. Then I was going to drive it home and ride back to the office. This nearly happened, but she called me when I was halfway down the freeway - her office keys were not in her purse, they were in her cupholder, sure enough. I turned back. So then I still took the bike. I noted one of the kids did not take his bike today, apparently wanted to walk. Huh. It's only half a mile

Apocalypse-light weather. Smoky from some nearby grass fires, rain but not enough to get out the slicker or wish for fenders, gusty but not too bad to ride in, dim overcast but could see blue sky off to the west, too warm for 930am but not hot. There was a fairly dry thunderstorm back around dawn that might have sparked the fire. Of course the sprinkles peaked during my ride.

Who'd have guessed rain in the morning and heat index 104 in the afternoon? This continues to be a weird summer

I thought I would be late for work but I ended up being early.

I need to recalibrate. It will be a while before my routes are refined, as usual for a new job. I'm trying to decide if I like the Manhattan Bridge or the Brooklyn Bridge better. They're right next to each other. The Brooklyn Bridge was very scenic when it was a combined bike and pedestrian path. But now they've carved out a 2-way bike lane out of one lane from the roadway. It's not scenic anymore but it's functional. The Manhattan Bridge is the one I always thought of as "all business," and that's sometimes what I want. But it has the trains running on them, some right next to the bike lane. This morning I realized that the noise is so loud that it's stressful. So now maybe the Brooklyn Bridge will be my preferred one.

This morning I took the Manhattan Bridge and this afternoon the Brooklyn Bridge, and that's how I had the thoughts above. Also, a cool breeze crossed the bridge in the afternoon, and it felt lovely.

It's a Drift Ghost XL mounted on top of my helmet. I edit on Adobe Premiere and have been experimenting with various levels of stabilization in the program. In the past I've edited with Final Cut, KDENLive and Light works. This is my 3rd camera...it does not have stabilization itself.

I run the camera on my helmet to document the ride in case of trouble...it seems what I see and I can easily face to the side or rear. If I were to record for style and smoothness I'd use a chest mount go-pro style camera or bike mount or following drone.

I'm grateful to have had a routine commute yesterday.

Monday (Labor Day) I woke from a post-yard work/mowing nap with a sharp, painful catch on the righhad my t side of my left knee. The kind and natural of the pain had my brain conclude that this would be a major, ongoing problem for the rest of my life. I drove with my wife to do some shopping but had to cut it short due to the sharp pain every time I put weight on it.

I had a long video shoot on Thursday where I stood for 5 hours (not too unusual) and both knees pretested with light, dull pains (unusual), but nothing terrible.

So I planned on driving yesterday, but when I woke up, the catch in my knee and the pain were gone. I rode to work without pain or incident. Had a 2.5 hour shoot including loading lights and equipment into the company vehicle, then out at the location, then standing and loading back up and then out at the office, with a bike ride home and no pain, no tenderness, nothing.

I'm 63 and have been blessed without regular joint pain so I was a very concerned.

The ride itself was nice, clear and 50F-58F for the morning and 72F in the afternoon, taking lightly trafficed surface streets.

One other thing you might try is riding with ear plugs.

I use Cat-Ears always, and on windy days I also wear ear plugs. For you, maybe it isn't the wind as much as train & traffic noise. They attenuate what you hear by around 20-25 dB, but you can still hear everything you need to. Our ears/brain boost our hearing up to accommodate, rather than creating street in dealing with excessively loud noise.

You can still hear everything you need to in traffic. Conversation can be a bit difficult at times on a group ride, but traffic sounds are no problem.

Things were slow at work so I thought I'd cut out an hour early instead of straight home for 20 minutes to meet the kids after school. I could maybe do the 3/4 lap around Lake Natoma, or at the very least go 20 minutes in the wrong direction before turning back. I filled up my Camel with cold water and even, for hubris, started my GPS. After summiting the Col du Pont Piéton, it was clear that I'd forgotten to take my heart meds. I went on a little longer but dreaded the next climb. I went back to the office and traded the camel for the laptop bag, which let me bring home a bunch of leftovers bins. In the end with the stop and the pace the entire process took 3/4 of an hour anyhow.

I wear Apple Airpods Pro with the noise cancellation enabled. You could argue I shouldn't do that, and you might be right, but it's what I do. And yes, it's the sounds of traffic and especially trains. Our trains are of the old designs, not made with noise in mind at all. They are horrifically loud. And I've become more sensitive as my hearing decays. I've come to understand that a hearing loss isn't like everything turned down. Background noise is turned up to the same level as foreground sounds.

My wife's newest earbuds came with a raft of accessibility features that made them into super powerful hearing aids that cancel white noise while amplifying specific sounds like speech. They are explicitly a hearing aid, per se, thru this software. This ought to have broken a monopoly by the medical device people who have been stagnant and charging rents. But no - they did their boardroom collusion. So now it's said to be a budget-friendly, accessible option, "generally considered entry-level solutions and do not replace the comprehensive capabilities of traditional, prescription-grade hearing aids." To me this sounds just like the most infuriating load-of-crap hobby marketing. Teaching FOMO for hearing aids! jesus wept

Mine are not so great but do have active noise canceling, very nice on airplanes, and a "thru" setting that's basically the opposite of noise canceling. They play your music and the ambient noise together. I don't have a use for that but I can see how someone could.

So much driving today for errands. I rode in on the 3rd visit to work. I chose the pink FS MTB for the first time in a long while. Hopefully will have a good ride home. I noticed about a quarter mile from home that the shock could use some more air but didn't choose to turn back

I used to use the pass-through feature of the Airpods Pro earbuds. Maybe I still should, but I get overwhelmed with sound, so now I use the noise cancellation.

I know what you mean about the industry. Missouri may have shaken things up because their law (last I heard) says that hearing aids shall not cost more than $500. When I told my audiologist about this, he accidentally blurted out, "But that's barely more than I pay for them," which exposes how much profit they make. I feel divided on the issue. I think the profit margin has been too big, but I also think audiologists should get paid for what they do. What they do isn't obvious. Basically, they made it seem like their work is easy but it isn't.

But now a big portion of hearing aids is software, and it can be done with fairly inexpensive, nearly generic hardware. That is going to cut profit margins way down. Or it should.

Just as an example of why audiologists deserve to make a living, I gave myself a hearing test with an iphone app and took the results and entered an audiogram into the airpods' configuration. That kinda-sorta made it into cheap hearing aids. But while the frequencies I was missing came back, it didn't add clarity to the speech I was trying to hear. I think it's because I'm not an audiologist and don't know how to do it properly.

Medical insurance should cover this stuff. It's insane that it doesn't in the US. Same for dental and eye care. They are medical needs.

This morning was the first day of school for the kids in NYC. I was very excited, and I rode to work extra vigorously, and my travel speed (as reported by my app) was quite fast.

The day wore me down. I'm a newly minted teacher. I'm a SPED teacher, and I work with an experienced subject matter teacher (Earth and Space Science). We have five sections in the day. The school goofed and put too many kids in the 7th period class. It was so crowded that it was a health hazard and also an unworkable situation for teaching and learning. We didn't even try. The school says it will fix the problem. We will believe it when we see it.

By the end of the day, my brain was fried in ways I might never have experienced. I forgot how to type, and I'm having trouble speaking. I had trouble leaving the building because gathering my stuff and not losing my keys were challenges.

I rode home slowly, not so much because my body didn't have the energy but because I was afraid to make a mistake in traffic.

Not enough space for Space!

Imagining telling kids shoulder to shoulder, "Space is big. Really big. Like you might think it's a long way down the road street to the chemist bodega, but that's just peanuts to space."

Not bad. My usual 40km Friday afternoon commute. The temperature can start dropping any time now, though. These afternoon commutes in the mid 30s are starting to really drive me crazy. 🥵🥵

Rode the DropHopper yesterday for the first time in over two weeks. Can't remember the last time I topped off the tires. They were each down in the 20s from 65psi. THe 26x2.125 smoothies take so long to pump compared to the other skinnier tires.

It was cool, clear and fast in to work on quiet downtown streets. I was reminded how similar this bike feels to the one it replaced except for the bars now being further forward and in the perfect place. I also occasionally miss having a sprung seat, just on big bumps. Since I'm in a racing position, the new bike's narrow and lightly padded seats is also better overall than the old bike's long nose with wide tail sprung seat. I still occasionally miss the slightly taller gearing of the old bike.

But what is the same is the deliciousness of building speed in a racing position on a heavy-ish low-rolling resistance bike on 2-inch, smooth tires and then hauling it all down to a quick stop with insanely good V-brakes clutching the rims.

Every once in a while it also reminds me of my mom's 1950s Schwinn 26-inch fat tired, pink, step-through Schwinn with the two-speed kick-back hub which musta weighed 60 pounds. I rode it down a man-made Chicago tobagan hill with friends when I was 11 back in 1973, flying through an old H-style football goal post at the bottom at what I can now estimate at roughly 33 miles an hour.

On yesterday's ride home it felt like I had a tailwind, but it was just everything clicking, except the rear wheel which had an occasionally half-wobble. At home I discovered another broken spoke and some other loose ones.

Friday went much better at school than Thursday. The school says they will fix the crowding problems. I have a measured amount of hope for that. I find that I'm in love with 146 kids I just met.

And I've decided: The Brooklyn Bridge is the one for me. Not only is it more scenic in most ways, the route has me riding on streets for less distance. From home to the greenway is 2 blocks, then from the greenway to City Hall Park is 5 blocks, leading me right onto the bridge. The school is only 3 blocks from the bridge.

May your enthusiasm inspire them all!

Thank you. I suspect it will help, but Earth Science seems like a tough one. I'll try to find stories that seem relevant to every day life. And I hope to make up songs and chants because those are good ways to learn and remember information.

Friday afternoon, I left work a bit early to make it to the next city north of me, about 14 miles, for a bike club buddy's book release party at the book shop. This is one of those rides I wouldn't have done on a muggle bike, as I'd have been a sweaty mess and stinking up the book shop. That went well, and I turned around and rode back 16 miles, half of it in the dark. Love that little Vektron. On top of bike commuting being cool, it was Friday rush hour and there was a block party at the Indian motorcycle dealer (where I bought my 2nd eBike at the end of COVID) so parking was a mess. My wife drove there after physical therapy for her hip, but wound up just going home as she couldn't find parking close enough that she wouldn't have had to walk three blocks and really been in some pain. Sorry she missed it, but glad I opted to attend on my eBike instead of car or scooter. So, 32 miles of eBike commuting Friday.

The usual commute this morning, though we're getting into the big temperature swing part of the season. It was lower 50s for the morning commute, but will be lower 70s for the afternoon commute. I wore a heavy fleece jacket liner and will take that home in my bag. Looking forward to the hard club ride tonight, though my legs are still a bit sore from the 53 mile club ride on Saturday...

Rode in slow. Knee bothering me. I think I forgot to eat my heart meds but that's a problem that will keep til the afternoon.

I can see how that is a challenge in the big city where everything seems manmade and all the plants and animals are human's bred companions or ineradicable scavengers

There was a Netflix show in the 2010s, "Ask The Storybots" that had a lot of science songs. It's unfortunately not high school level! It's preschool-kindergarten level. But might give you some ideas and anyhow it's pleasant and adult-watchable with famous guest stars. Now that I think about it your high schoolers would have been early-mid grade school so maybe you could lean on nostalgia
Ask the StoryBots - Wikipedia

Most of them are 10th graders. I skimmed Ask the Storybots and didn't get any ideas, but I hope to do something like what they did but of course for 10th graders.

The same thought occurred to me about living in the concrete jungle. But I've been surprised by what kids know about nature and farming, so it may not be such a stretch to get them interested in whatever else we're going to cover.

Thanks for your thoughts!