Ben R. Hodges

www.velominati.com

...and no Waffle House

A map of Texas with the outline of France superimposed on top. The French map also shows France’s TGV network and largest cities.

I saw some “America is too big for HSR” discourse on Threads so I thought I’d resurface this image.

The four largest cities in Texas have two million more people than the four largest cities in France, and they’re closer together.

There are lots of places in the US where HSR would work great.

so, the point of duckduckgo (however flawed & shitty it is) was allegedly privacy and that it won’t track your shit which means every single time i open the app on my phone i have to once again select “never” show for the AI “duck assist” slop because it refuses to remember my choice?

Somebody was trained on the Hitchhikers Guide and they need to dial back the Marvin coefficient.

Rutted dirt road going up at a steep pitch with a biker pushing their MTB.

A rocky section of dirt road with a narrow smoother line to the right. The road pitch is steep and a person is pushing their bike up the hill.

More pics of climbing Powerline on Leadville Stage Race day 3. On day 1 we rode down this and it was terrifying. #bikesky

Dirt road looking downhill through a cut in the forest with a lone biker pushing his bike up the hill

View looking back about halfway up the Powerline climb of the 3rd day of the Leadville stage race. #bikesky

Biker at the bottom of a dirt road heading up a steep hill beneath a power line that goes straight up the slope without any switchbacks.

The daunting Powerline climb on the 3rd day of the Leadville Stage Race. Pitches of 15% to 20% on heavily rutted jeep road. I don't know how the pros climb this --- like all the other mortals I had a 2 mile walk. You're biking shoes need to be good hiking shoes for this ride #bikesky

Selfie of a cyclist in a helmet and sunglasses with a background looking down over Twin Lakes Colorado, which is far below.

Day 2 of Leadville Stage Race is done. Epic climb up to Columbine saddle at 12500 ft. Not a lot of O2 for us lowlanders. #bikesky

Rider on mountain bike coming in thru the finishing chute at Leadville Stage Race. Blue sky with fluffy white clouds in the background.

Day 1 of Leadville Stage Race in the bag. Two more days and 8000 more feet of climbing on my mountain bike. #bikesky

Forgot to tag #bikesky

Black Honda Ridgeline pickup loaded with 5 mountain bikes, 3 over the bed and 2 in a rear rack.

On the way to Leadville

#Bikesky Anyone able to consistently connect a GoPro to a Wahoo Roam v3?

It seems like I have to re-pair from the GoPro every time the GoPro has been turned off.

The only meaningful difference between heating homes to livable temperatures in cold winters and cooling homes to livable temperatures in hot summers is that cooling usually* uses less energy

*caveats about windows, insulation, duration of extremes, etc.

#bikesky tip for hot weather to reduce sweat in your eyes...

Rub lubricant like Merle Norman Super-Lube or Vaseline around your eyelids, below and above your eyes to the eyebrow. Sweat droplets will run off faster and are less likely to migrate into your eyes. Kind of like Rain-X for your face.

Apple Strudel pastry-making demonstration at the Schonbrunn Palace

A Gen-X short story:

Stacey's mom was Jessie's girl.

Ahh, a central Texas summer morning. It's a brisk 73 degrees out there*

*and a deadening 96% relative humidity

Panasonic AM transistor radio (hand-held size). Black plastic with a silver/gray AM tuning band.

My first tech... AM only. It was a big deal that this was a newfangled "transistor radio".

Yeah, I'm that old.

GitHub - wrightky/CoastalTXProj: Python function for reprojecting coordinates near the Texas coast into a linear, along-coast reference frame Python function for reprojecting coordinates near the Texas coast into a linear, along-coast reference frame - wrightky/CoastalTXProj

Have you ever had the extraordinarily niche problem of needing to show the entire Texas coast in a presentation or figure, but wished you could do so in a way that wouldn't take up the entire slide? No? Just me?

Well, regardless, I made a function to fix that. Here ya go.
github.com/wrightky/Coa...

Oh wow 64.4℅. The astonishing precision implied by the decimal point makes it entirely convincing and I'm wrong for thinking LLMs are the emperor's new clothes

Also, I can be quite persuasive if I'm allowed to make things up to fit a person's background like a LLM. But a sense of right/wrong prevents me from doing this.

You know who else is more persuasive than an average human? A con-man.

When grips don't go on/off easy, there's a magic way -- if you've got access to an air compressor you can shoot air under the grips as you slide on or off

My very young kids believed the music truck drove around the neighborhood in the summer to make everyone happy.

I might have had something to do with that belief.

Then a new family moved in...

That was 20+ years ago, and my kids are still outraged when someone mentions the ice cream truck.

I'm sure that 90% of people using WeatherBug (or similar) think that it's capitalism providing the weather prediction --- but all it's doing is repackaging government science.

Ha! Well, I did do the Fat Bike Worlds in Crested Butte a few years back, but Austin is kinda weak on snow. Gravel bike is being built (slowly) for the Hotter'N'Hell ride in August.

Road biking, mountain biking, fixing bikes (I maybe need to expand my hobbies)

This is high art