Review: Growing up Human

 Growing Up Human is written by an archaeologist. The question behind the book is to ask why childhood takes so long for humans, and how the various pieces of it comes together. The early part of the book is fairly straightforward and no doubt you've heard about how puberty onset is affected by body fat. The details are interesting:

A study carried out by Taipei Medical University researchers found that for every extra gram of animal protein eaten a day, the age of a girl’s first period moved forward two months. This is something of a cycle, it seems, as mothers who hit puberty at an earlier age go on to have bigger children – and they are more likely themselves to have an earlier puberty. Somewhere in us is an insistent little voice telling us to accrue fat – so we can have more babies...Not only do we have critical levels of body fat for reproduction, we need much, much more fat than other primates. Our female rhesus macaques from the lab hover between 8–18 per cent body fat; human females struggle to reproduce with less than 17 per cent. (kindle loc 1054-1064)

There's quite a bit of section devoted to debunking the recent fad behind attachment parenting and all the baggage that goes with it, as well as an interesting factoid about how your teeth effectively have a scar in there which indicates your growth line:

 Being born is sufficiently traumatic that a baby’s body sort of stop-starts normal growth, and that stop-start shows up as a neonatal line, which is a scar through the inside of your teeth where all the little cells had their moment of existential panic. It exists in all of your kiddie teeth and even in ones you have as an adult – the first big chunky adult chewing tooth that comes in was actually forming before birth, so you can see the scar there too. (kindle loc 1933)

Brenna Hassett has a good sense of humor, especially when it comes to methods of baby carriage and how the body wrapping fad doesn't mean much:

 Babies who have gone on to lead full and happy adult lives have been positioned strapped to chests, strapped to boards, hung on walls, in their parents’ arms, in slings or even – and this is a personal favourite – strapped to a board and then hung on a wall. (kindle loc 2068)

There's a huge long section about breast feeding. She debunks all the myths about how easy breast feeding is, and notes that even macaques have difficulty with it:

It’s not just humans – research has shown macaques struggling and many monkeys are just, quite frankly, very bad at babies the first time around. But the rather cruel thing is that human mothers are made to feel particularly bad about it.

Mammal milk maven Katie Hinde and anthropologist Brooke Scelza were able to discuss breastfeeding with Himba mothers from Namibia, where every single mother was able to breastfeed, something that certainly isn’t true in most Westernised cultures. The authors picked out two key factors that accounted for this remarkable success rate: the support of other mothers, and the absence of any taboo or stigma associated with breastfeeding in public. The things that inhibit breastfeeding in other societies – like working hours or social rules that prevent frequent feeding – are simply not a part of Himba life, along with the stress or even the guilt associated with not breastfeeding. (kindle loc 2458-2465)

 I loved the section about the invention of grandmothers:

While male strategies for reproduction appear to consist of both making a bloody mess and captivating primatologists, the more subtle strategies of the female have often been overlooked. Some strategies aren’t even that subtle. While the rest of our primate relatives have been merrily living out the spans dictated them by sensible models of energy in, energy out, and fitting appropriate periods of dependence and maturity into their size-appropriate life spans, humans have been busy developing a world-changing evolutionary female adaptation. Something so radical that it may be single-handedly responsible for our reproductive success and the subsequent overrunning of the planet; something so unlikely so as to be almost unbelievable: grandmas...An incredibly small number of animals live past the ability to reproduce – even our own species’ males maintain some generative capacity until nearly the end of their lives. Here are some animals with grandmothers that are done having babies: Orcas, short-finned pilot whales, us. Here are some animals without grandmothers: every other animal in the world.13 There are plenty of species where some animals don’t reproduce for whatever reason – perhaps they are not the dominant breeding pair, perhaps their mate has died – and continue to live without reproducing, but this is a very different thing to what we (and those whales) do, which is to live past our biological capacity to reproduce. (kindle loc 3001-3025)

There's even a casual debunking of why human males are slightly bigger than human females:

 We might actually be mistaking the reason human males are a teeny bit bigger; perhaps rather than trying to become an ultimate fighting/loving champion, males are just bigger because females are smaller. And females are just smaller because they stop growing earlier so they can put that energy into babies because, as you may have picked up from the theme of this book, babies are important. (kindle loc 3307)

 The last part of the book covers the effects of poverty on childhood:

if poverty was ever classed as a cause of death it would be number one in the world – in every country. Poor children are more likely to suffer preventable childhood diseases, more likely to have growth falter and to die before they reach adulthood. When it comes to childhood, there is just the one real difference to reckon. It is the one that was there between the snarky schoolboys of Aristophanes and the slaves that served them, and it is still present today, and that is the time we give it. (kindle loc 4818)

The book points out that the history of human evolution is our gradually increasing investment in childhood, and the recent trends in American society to de-emphasize education and childhood is an aberration.  I read this book and highlighted many sections of it. It's definitely worth reading.

Review: Existential Physics

 Existential Physics is Sabine Hossenfelder's book about what is or is not scientific. Her beef with physicists is that sometimes they speculate without actually explicitly saying that they're doing so, and that some of those speculations have no evidence in support of them. There's chapter after chapter of this relatively short book where some of these questions (such as what happened before the big bang) are explored, and the answer is probably somewhat boring, but it's very likely that she is right --- there's so much that we don't know, and the scientific evidence only takes you so far. Past that, you get into the realm of religion or philosophy, and Hossenfelder points out that scientists aren't better equipped than the typical lay person to speculate in those realms.

The book is short, and it explores things like AI, quantum physics, cosmology, and math. One interesting insight is that it's kind of pointless to try to translate mathematics into plain English, because if it was easy and possible, then there wouldn't be a need for mathematical notation. So your best bet for actually understanding those topics is to dive into the math. But of course, not everyone has the time or inclination to put in that much time into math, so we end up with these stories that attempt to translate say, the Schrodinger Wave Equation into English, which then has the problems she describes, people stretching those analogies into talking about what the actual science doesn't say.

When I was going through this book, I kept saying to myself, "What she's saying is obvious. Why does she have to write it down?" After I finished the book I realized that what she saying wasn't always obvious, it's just that she said it in such a way that you see the reasoning. That's the hallmark of a great teacher, which makes this book worth reading. Recommended.

Review: Pixel Stand 2

 I've had a few friends buy the Pixel 6a over the holidays using my Superfans code, which grants both them and I a $100 coupon from the Google Play Store. The coupons aren't stackable, so you can't stack 3 of them to get yourself a free phone or anything like that --- they pretty much either get you a Pixel Stand 2 or a Google Pixel Buds Series A for free (or a $100 discount off say, the Pixel Buds Pro).  Unfortunately, the coupon is a discount off the regular price, so sale prices, etc do not apply.

The Pixel Stand 2 comes with a 30W charger, and can charge your Pixel phone at either 21 or 23W depending on whether you have a Pixel 6/7 or Pixel 6/7 Pro. The reason to use wireless chargers over regular wires is that the USB-C port is the first thing to go on most phones, and if you get your phone wet, it's not a good idea to plug it in. The standard Qi charging standard is set at 10W, which means the Pixel Stand 2 charges twice as fast.

In practice, you don't get the fastest charging speed unless your phone is below 50%. But that's fine. Even above 50% it's still faster than my old Qi charger. There's a fan in the stand which spins up to cool the phone (or maybe it's the charger that needs cooling). If you're in an office (for those of us who still visit offices), the Pixel Stand is great --- you'll drop it in for the time between the meetings and your phone charges as fast as when you plug in a wire, but without the hassle.

As a bonus, the stand lets you pick Google Photo Albums to display as a screen saver. Using Google Photo's face recognition feature, you can pick members of the family you'd like to see displayed and you'll get a random selection of those photos. This is especially great for me since I stopped using Google Photos as a data sink a few years ago when Google started charging for photo storage, so my screensaver only shows me pictures of my kids back when they were tiny.

At full retail price of $80, the Pixel Stand 2 is too expensive for my taste. But if you're looking for a good use of the Superfans coupon, I think this one is awesome! Recommended.

Review: Chivalry

 Chivalry is Collen Doran's graphic novel rendition of the Neil Gaiman short story of the same name. The story predates Doran's rendition of it by several years, and Doran reveals in the end-notes that it was her pandemic project, discussing how she envisioned it originally as an illuminated manuscript before giving up after many technical difficulties to render it in a more conventional format.

What is to Doran more conventional is for anyone else simply an amazing piece of comic book art. The book juxtapositions conventional side by side panels with entire full page (or in many cases an entire spread) illustrations that overwhelms the eyes with richness, detail, and story. Your eyes could linger on multiple details that serve the story while reading, and the story while simple (and short!) is charming and perfectly set off by Doran's illustrations.

The story is well worth your time, as is the amazing art. Recommended.

Review: Gorewear Shakedry Cap

 

I was so impressed by the Gorewear Shakedry Jacket, that when the Shakedry Cycling cap went on sale I bought one.  Little did I know that I would use it almost right away as a series of atmospheric rivers arrived during the California winter. I used this under my helmet, and one time I made the mistake of putting on the cap and forgetting to put on the helmet --- the feel of the cap means that I can't really feel any ventilation of the helmet when I'm wearing it!

As you can see from the above picture, water beads up nicely on the helmet and it doesn't let any water in. This is perfect since the Shakedry jacket does not have a hood. The brim of the cap doesn't quite protect your glasses from getting water on them, but on the other hand, there is a little bit of shielding. When worn under a helmet it can get hot if it's not raining, but if it's raining you don't mind. If it's not raining, don't wear the cap!

At full price no way would I consider this worth the money, but at the current $33 discounted price I consider it a reasonable purchase. It's light enough that I will carry it on tour.

Recommended.

Review: Anker Nano 3 511 Charger

 Chargers are unsexy technology, to the point where smartphone makers no longer ship them in the box because your'e assumed to have a billion of them at home. The Nano 3 511 Charger, however, is exceptional. I bought one over the holidays for $18, and it's tiny. 30W is more than sufficient for most smartphones, but what amazed me was that I plugged it into a Dell XPS 13, and it would charge that as well while it was running! If you do reboot the XPS 13 while plugged into the charger, it would complain about being plugged into a not very powerful charger, but it would still boot, run Windows Updates, etc. The charger does get hot, but what charger doesn't when maximum load is being pulled from it?

The charger is light enough that even when plugged in upside down it doesn't fall out, and the foldable prongs prevent damage when travel. These are way better than the 18W bulky chargers that came with previous iterations of Pixel phones. Well worth the money.

Review: Lamy Toothpaste Squeezer

 If you squeeze toothpaste out of a tube, you know that it's a pain to deal with different people squeezing different parts of the tube so you always end up having to squeeze it from the bottom again when it's your turn. The toothpaste squeezer solves this issue.  This particular one also turns into a stand for your toothpaste, which means it dispenses nicely. It also has a key that lets you get toothpaste out by turning a key. I tried it and it really works. Recommended.

Review: Far Sector

 When I saw that Far Sector was written by N.K. Jemisin I checked it out of the library. It's a green lantern novel, but about an unusual lantern with an unusual ring. This green lantern is a black woman, and is investigating the first murder in 500 years in an alien city far from home.

The setup is unique, but unfortunately, the alien civilization doesn't feel very alien --- it has all the conflicts and power struggles of contemporary New York, and the injection of cyberspace with some bitcoin jargon as well as the introduction of the default state of being emotionless (with a counter-drug to alleviate that) not helping things along. We don't get a good explanation of how people can be motivated without emotions (or even how society would reproduce), nor are the characters and power groups within the society interact well enough to get invested in them or believe that they are real.

The protagonist, Jo Mullein, is much more fleshed out. Unfortunately, we don't get any idea as to why she was selected to be a green lantern, nor do we get a good understanding of how committed she is to the green lantern corps.

Part of this is the high expectations I had coming into the comic. Consider what Alan Moore was able to do with the green lantern corps in 23 pages, and I expected far more from Jemisin in a 12-issue run. It's probably very good compared with the standard writers the green lantern books get nowadays, but it's far less interesting than anything by Alan Moore.

Review: Nulksen Tire Inflator

 The battery on my costco purchased jump starter (bought in 2014) is dying to the point where it couldn't even inflate one tire when fully charged, so it was time to get another one. The Nulksen Tire Inflator was on sale for $40 during the holidays, so I picked one up.

It came with a cloth case, a hose for Schraeder valves, a pin for balls, and a couple more weird nozzles for whatever other thing you might want to use it for. The hose screws into the device, and I immediately took it out of the box and air'd up all 4 tires of the car with no problems. The device vibrates while doing so, enough to move the inflator and scratch it on the ground, but otherwise it worked.

The USB C plug recharges it using USB C which is very nice, and it can act as a flash light as well. I tried the ball inflator and it worked, and I even tried it on my wife's e-bike in Schraeder mode, and it checked out with decent accuracy. I don't dare try it for high pressure presta tires, since I already have good floor pumps for those. Besides, exercise is good for you.

For $40 + tax, getting something that works well is fine! It's way lighter than what it replaced!

Review: Fairy Tale

 Fairy Tale is Stephen King's novel of a world crossing adventure. It describes a 17-year old who in the course of helping a mysterious neighbor, discovers that the neighbor's shed contains a well which leads to another world. Like many examples of the world-crossing genre, it turns out that he has a special role to fulfill in that world.

The story builds slowly, and Charlie Reade (the protagonist) has a transparent, cheerful, interesting voice which makes for great reading. King is probably at his best when convincing you that Reade is a real person, and establishes the milieu he lives in as no one else can. The protagonist being an almost adult rather than a young child makes the book different than many other examples of the world-crossing genre, and lends the story believability.

Once the story crosses over to the world of Empris, however, a lot of the world building feels lacking. There's definitely no sense of deep history, and many set pieces or important plot points feel like superficial objects meant to act as MacGuffins rather than something real. For instance, one major motivation for Charlie to enter deep into the enchanted capital explicitly draws inspiration from Something Wicked This Way Comes, but at the end of the book the explanation is a huge disappointment.

All throughout the book are sprinkled references to Bradbury and HP Lovecraft, and there are many pieces of brilliance in the novel --- more than enough to keep me reading. It's not a coincidence that the novel is set in Illinois, the same locale as in Bradbury's novel. The climax feels like it comes a bit too easy, but the easy to read prose and moments of brilliance kept me going anyway. Recommended.

Men's Carpis

 I had a pair of Men's Capri pants I had somehow found online ages and ages ago, which were perfect for cycling and bike touring. They were light, had belt loops, and didn't extend far below the knees so you could ride in them and not worry about pants legs getting trapped in the chain. One of them completely fell apart during a tour one year, forcing me to buy women's capris when I was in Bolzano, but those were so narrow-waisted that even Arturo told me that I wasn't allowed to gain weight during that tour. (Perish the thought!)

I could not for my life of me find replacements. "Men's capris" returns crappy results. I eventually learned that the manly term for carpis is 3/4 pants! Jack Wolfskin was the first to come up with their Desert Valley 3/4 pants.  Their standard price of $70 was too much for my blood, and even at $49 on sale it was barely tolerable. I got them and they ride well, with side-pockets that are perfect for a phone and a wallet, as well as two button-up pockets on the outside of the thighs for things you don't need while riding. I like them enough, but they were so pricey I didn't think it's worth a second pair.

Amazon is full of knock-off Chinese products, so I looked on amazon, and 33,000ft has a Men's Hiking Golf Capri pair of shorts for a much more reasonable (though still expensive) $35. These come with double zipper pockets on each side. The belt loops are a bit wide (for clipping say, a badge for going to the office), but the premium feature on these are the cuffs at the bottom of the hem. There's a QR cord there for cinching them down tight so they don't rub against brake cables along the top tube while riding. These are a clear winner and it's worth getting a second pair or watching if they go on sale.

If you hike in California, there are many good reasons to wear full-length pants --- tick protection and mud protection makes sense. But those same pants are annoying to wear on the bike and frequently get chewed up by bicycle gears and chains, so for the daily cyclist, these are the pants to get. I'm glad I found them!

Review: HeCloud Diving Flashlight

 I've had poor experiences with underwater flashlights in the past, and they've never survived more than a couple of trips. I knew I was going to need flashlights for the Puerto Rico trip because of the bioluminescence tour we wanted to go to. The HeCloud Diving lights came in a set of 2, and at $27 seemed worth the risk.

I was very impressed when I saw that the lights came not only with AAA battery holders, but also rechargeable lithium ion batteries that are custom fit for the flashlight. You can't carry those in checked baggage, so be careful! But having both meant that we could carry the lithium ion batteries in carry on, and also carry the AAA battery holders (preloaded) and not bother carrying the chargers.

The lights were bright, easy to use even for Boen, and robust --- we didn't have to be careful with them or baby them. We didn't actually dive with them, but they were also light. And if one flooded, we had a spare right away. I wish they hadn't bothered with the strobe feature, but in any case these were good lights and I can recommend them.

Review: The Big Questions of Philosophy

 After listening to David K Johnson's Sci-Phi, I picked up The Big Questions of Philosophy expecting similar levels of entertainment. But I was disappointed.  This wasn't because he's any less competent as a lecturer or that the ideas he explains are wrong or badly defined, but because of how much time is spent on Religion rather than philosophy. While I get that some people who study Philosophy might want to spend a lot of time thinking about omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence, since I don't actually think God exists, that's like spending time thinking about the physics of how Santa Claus gets down chimneys.

The rest of the course is reasonable, the discussion of free will, the existence of government, and the quick tour of Rawlings and his detractors, but I wish he'd spent more time on that instead of religion.

I definitely recommend Sci-Phi a lot more than this great courses series.

Review: Troy

 Troy is the third book in Stephen Fry's Greek Myths trilogy, and to my surprise it doesn't include the Odyssey, just the Iliad. As a retelling, it's much more detailed than Rosemary Suthill's children's books, and goes into details about Achilles and the backstory in gruesome detail. The narrative voice is enjoyable, and I had a lot of fun. Recommended.

2022 Spanish Virgin Islands: Epilogue

We celebrated Xiaoqin's birthday at a restaurant with Mark Brody, with both Bowen and I having swordfish burgers, an exotic specialty we'd never had before. 

 We spent the next day touring Old San Juan's forts, where Boen and Boen got inducted as junior rangers. The weather was warm and beautiful and we got some great food in old San Juan. The condo we'd rented was in fact, exactly in between the awful first place we rented and the noisy hotel we'd stayed on the second night, but this place was quiet and had great facilities.

Our return flight was marred by an unusual snow storm in Seattle that cancelled hundreds of flights out of that airport and delayed our return to San Jose by 6 hours, but after all that we got home. Our casualties on this trip were limited to my diving mask from my 2007 dive certification, and my pair of Keen sandals.

I would agree with my wife that it was ok doing the trip once, but we felt like we exhausted all the possibilities of the Spanish Virgin Islands and had no need to return for another visit.

Review: Great Courses - The Theory of Everything

 I started watching The Theory of Everything as a bit of a lark --- Dr. Don Lincoln of Fermi Lab is an experimentalist, and I that it's a very different perspective from the purely theoretical physicists' take. The video covers everything from Relativity to Quantum Chromodynamics, Quantum Electrodynamics, the Standard Model the Electroweak Unification, and all the details therein. What it provided that's somewhat unique in terms of presentation is a perspective on the difference between (for instance) Grand Unified Theory (GUT) and the Theory of Everything (TOE). It also provides a historical perspective on physics and all the successful unifications in the past, as well as the unanswered mysteries such as Dark Energy, Dark Matter (they're not related), why we still don't have a theory of Quantum Gravity, why we still don't know what caused inflation and what topics of ongoing research are happening. The approach is light on math (though yes, equations still happen) but the presentation is engaging.

It's a great way to consolidate the lots of little pieces of understanding I picked up here and there, and was definitely worth my time. It's available on Kanopy, and therefore free to most people who have access to a library.

2022 Spanish Virgin Islands: Punta Arenas to Punta Del Rey Marina

 Waking up pre-civil twilight, I did my morning routine, making coffee for everyone, including one last pancake for Boen. By first light, everyone was awake and ready to raise anchor and set sail. Weighing anchor was easy, and raising sail was also easy because of the light wind. In fact, once the sails were up I started worrying about whether that 2.5 hour journey would end up being much longer, since we did no better than 3 knots!

Fortunately, once we cleared Punta Arenas the wind picked up significantly. It also changed direction frequently, requiring us to constantly adjust our sails and course as we tried to head up as much as we could to avoid having to come about. We got to see sunrise from the Yamuy, and constantly adjusted the auto-pilot. At one point the auto-pilot started to give CAN bus errors, and we'd have to sail manually while the darn thing rebooted itself.

To our surprise, the wind picked up and gave us 5-6 knots of speed, and by the time we rounded Cabeza De Perro, we were doing the better part of 7 knots and debating whether we had time to sail further so as not to arrive at the marina too early! We called the Sail Caribe and they said they would be waiting for us so we sailed directly to the harbor entrance, dropping sails at the last minute and then motoring in slowly to give ourselves time to mount the docklines and fender lines so we were ready to dock at the fuel dock.

At the fuel dock, we were greeted by the crew members and I was relinquished of the responsibility for the sailboat. The diesel bill turned out to be $94, surprising Arturo and I as well as the dock crew. "Did you sail alot?" asked the crew to Arturo. "As much as we could for the last 3-4 days, but we ran the generator every night to make water." It was a gratifyingly cheap diesel bill.

The crew cast off, turned the boat around, and immediately docked opposite the fuel dock, surprising me. We were plugged in with the AC turned on and told that the dock taxi would be here to pick us up 15 minutes before our taxi arrived. There was nothing to do but clean up the boat, get our $500 cash deposit returned, and eat lunch. It was Xiaoqin's birthday and Google was kind enough to grant us such an amazing deal on a trade-in that she got a new Pixel 7 for her birthday.

The offboarding onto the taxi went without incident, as did Arturo's departure at the airport. Our sailing trip was over.

2022 Spanish Virgin Islands: Bahia Isla Chiva to Punta Arena

 We had a leisurely breakfast, turned on the engines, and raised the sail. With a tail wind behind us, we easily made 5 knots past the tip of Vieques, going 3 miles out to dump the septic tanks again, before turning into a beam reach and arriving at Punta Arena in less than 3 and a half hours. Upon arrival, the point seemed to be filled with boats, but we would later find that one boat after another would depart, leaving us with only 2 other boats to share the bay with. What got us to stay despite the apparent crowd was that most of the boats looked like they would not support anyone on it staying overnight, so we were confident that it wouldn't be a loud party.

We dropped anchor in 15' of water, and snorkeled around in what looked like mediocre water. The water was calm, however, making me eager to make use of the paddleboard. To deliver the kids to the beach. I discovered that the approach to the beach was very steep, so ended up delivering Bowen and Boen to separate parts of the beach as I found a better entry later. I decided I join the snorkelers, but the snorkeling was fairly mediocre.

The beach was unlike any of the other beaches we'd seen in the Spanish Virgin Islands: the sand was coarse and easy to clean off. We walked the length of the beach heading South, and unlike the beach at Bahia Isla Chiva we pretty much had it to ourselves, as one boat after another pulled off --- the only other sailboat, a Catamaran, pulled off to join a BBQ on Puerto Rico proper.

When we were done, I swam back to the boat, got out the paddleboard and ferry'd the kids back to the sailboat, making them jump from the paddleboard to swim the last 10 yards so that they'd be sand free when they got to the swim ladder. I then used the paddleboard to explore more of the Bay to the North, and found some places that looked quite a bit clearer. It would have been a pain, however, to move the boat, since the coral was interspersed with sand, making it tricky to find a good place to anchor.

Arturo and I went snorkeling to see if the snorkeling was any better --- it was indeed a lot better, and he spotted lots of stuff, but I was tired and the visibility still wasn't great --- the water had looked much better from the paddleboard than it did from snorkeling. Besides, we had to pack! The next morning had to be an early start as we had been warned that it took 2.5 hours of sailing from Punta Arenas back to Punta Del Rey Marina. We extracted all the luggage out of one of the V-berths after showering, and started packing away everything that could be packed.

That evening, we enjoyed our last beautiful sunset from the beach, had dinner, and did a little bit of star gazing before clouds came over and occluded our views. I would wake up in the middle of the night to pee and would see one last shooting star in the early morning before waking up for real the next morning.

Review: Heroes - The Greek Myths Reimagined

 Heroes is part two of Stephen Fry's Greek Myths books. This book covers Heracles, Orpheus, Perseus, Theseus, and many of the heroes from Greek mythos. It's all told in a modern style, with many entertaining asides and snide remarks, and is just heck of a lot of fun to read. It's completely uncensored, so I'm sure many people would have issues reading it to their kids, but you know what, that's what makes the book so good. If you've always wondered about all the Greek mythology references being made here and there in popular literature, this series is well worth your time.

Review: What if? 2

 I queued up for What if? 2 as soon as the library's digital queue opened. In many ways, it's a great book for fans of What if?  In other ways it was a bit disappointing. This time, it seemed like he picked questions that weren't nearly as interesting as the ones in the previous book (such as, what if you filled the solar system with soup). In some cases, he has entire filler chapters that are filled with questions, but no answers, or at most a small cartoon as an answer.

Nevertheless, the answers that were in the book are still well researched, entertaining (when there are answers), and full of jokes. Bowen turned up his nose at the book at first but I loaded it onto a kindle for a car trip and he found himself reading it.

Recommended.

2022 Spanish Virgin Islands: Esperanza to Bahia de Isla Chiva

 I looked through the guidebook and realized that there was an anchorage we had bypassed on the way to Esperanza, which was Bahia de Isla Chiva, which supposedly had good snorkeling. Sure, we'd have to do some motoring, but after the long day yesterday and dropping off Niniane and Dan this morning, we could go there, drop anchor, and check it out. If we found it good, we could stay there, otherwise we could sail to Point Arenas and not be worse for where.

Dropping Niniane and Dan off turned out not to be so dramatic --- despite the luggage (and they'd taken a lot of the non-perishables off our hands), when the dinghy wasn't loaded with extraneous people (i.e., my family), once they could get Niniane and Dan off they could just hand the luggage over without any drama or even tying the dinghy to the dock! So after all that, the dinghy was back on the Yamuy's davits by 9:30am, and we motor'd over to Bahia de Isla Chiva.

We were the only boat at that location, so we anchor'd in about 15' of water over seagrass, and then jumped in with mask, snorkel and fins to check our work. There was a surprising amount to see, starting with a starfish that had parked itself over our anchor chain, and then a barracuda had settled in near the island. The snorkeling was mediocre compared with past experiences, but with the water this churned up there's only so much you can do. Still it took a good hour to do all the snorkeling we wanted to do before it was lunch time.

After lunch, I paddleboarded Boen to shore, but immediately realized that it was too hard, and when returning to the Yamuy, declined to paddleboard Bowen over. We swam instead as I noticed that despite giving me a headstart, Arturo made it to the beach snorkeling faster than I could paddleboard. Swimming a shore was fine, and the kids enjoyed the beach while we walked along it.

The beach was popular, being less than half an hour's drive from Esperanza, and we met some fairly large groups, but they would all disappear around 4pm, since most of them had a bioluminescent tour to go to! Arturo had wanted to snorkel on the Western end of the point, but it looked so rough that I talked him out of it. He did find a pair of shoes that were his size and were abandoned though! At around 4pm, clouds appeared over the island and we swam back to the Yamuy.

We debated what to do the next day. The charter company recommended spending the night at Punta Arenas, but sailing back all the way to Isla Palominos was a possibility, though it was likely to be crowded and noisy with parties. We saw that Icacos was also a possibility, but if you got there and conditions were unpleasant you didn't have a lot of choices left. We decided to just sail to Punta Arenas and have a look.

2022 Spanish Virgin Islands: Culebrita to Esperanza, Vieques

 We woke up early on thanksgiving sail determined to sail. The sail from Culebrita to Esperanza was mostly a beam reach followed by a run, and after having to motor the first half of our trip we were determined to make do without fossil fuels as much as possible this day. With an early breakfast, we swam around a bit to see if there was anything to the reef behind the boat, but all we saw was turtles, which were still great.

Once out of the point around Culebrita and headed east, we hoisted the sail, discovering that the sail ties instead of the zippers around the sail covers were a pain to untangle. With the motorized winch, however, getting the mainsail up was a snap, and soon we were reaching towards Vieques with a 10 knot wind, making 5 knots.

With a gradually strengthening wind, we soon made the 3 mile mark and could open the sewage tanks and dump the tanks. We were suspicious as the dumping of the tanks was quite obvious on one side but not the other. We would eventually figure out that this was because the leeward side pontoon's dump valves would be below water but the windward side wasn't, so you couldn't actually see it.

Sailing is a delight --- there's no engine noise, and on a beam reach you have plenty of speed. Nevertheless the crossing was rough enough that Arturo needed medication, which Mark fortunately had.

At Punta Este, we cleared the rocks and started heading West. This put the wind behind us, which calmed down the journey even further. The Yamuy didn't like sailing directly downwind, however, and all our efforts to sail wing-and-wing came to naught. The entire Eastern half of the south coast of Vieques is off limits, since it was once run by the navy and there could be unexploded ordnance to snag the anchor. We sailed pasts all the harbors until we reached Esperanza, where we spotted the Pier (said to be good snorkeling), and dropped anchor. We identified that we were short a few gallons of water, and there were more groceries we wanted to buy, so after lunch, hoping that a supermarket would be open, we dropped the dinghy off its davits and proceeded to the Esperanza dinghy dock.

The Esperanza Pier was obviously not a site to park the dinghy, but the "dinghy dock" so to speak was in bad shape. The pier itself looked like the frame had been taken apart for parts, and the dock wasn't low enough to step off the dinghy onto the pier. We'd have to have multiple people gripping the dinghy, while Dan the climber and Mark would knot tie it up. We would eventually figure out that the right way to do this was to get people off the dinghy before trying to tie it up. I was not looking forward to doing this in the dark for our bioluminescent tour!

Esperanza didn't look like a town with anything other than hotels and supermarkets. Despite being Thanksgiving day, there was a surprising number of boutique hotels and tourists in town! With our luck the way it was, we visited all 4 supermarkets and it was the last one that was opened. We bought ice cream, and more provisions and water, and somehow there was an avocado in the grocery bag at checkout so I paid for it. We couldn't figure out who had put it there, and eventually it was decided that some previous customer had decided against it at the last minute and I'd just unfortunately assumed that it was one of us.

Back at the Yamuy, Arturo had time to snorkel to the pier, but upon coming back he said, that you would only do it for exercise. I didn't feel the need to exercise, but a rainbow came up and it looked gorgeous. Of course, we were immediately showered by a raincloud as it swept over us.

Dinner was the traditional turkey - presented vegetable plate, and Arturo pulled out the stop to make a paella with what we had. The sunset was gorgeous, but I knew I had to dig out the flash light for that night time landing at the "dinghy dock." The cruising guide said that Esperanza was trying to be a yachting destination, but without improving the dinghy dock there was no way I'd go for a repeat visit!

Nevertheless, we all made it safely to shore in the dark, and did Abe's Bio Bay tour. Arturo had done previous bioluminescence tours and told us to set our expectations low ,but it was magical --- mosquito bay truly had the best bioluminescence anyone in the party had seen --- you'd dig your kayak paddle into the water and it would light up with a ghostly light. You could cup your hands into the water and blow it and it would sparkle. You could splash the water and it would light up when it fell back in. I was stunned and amazed and wished it lasted longer. Apparently thje bans on swimming and anchoring were fairly recent --- one of the hurricanes had caused mosquito bay to lose its bioluminescence for months, and not knowing how to bring it bad, they just banned everything until it came back. We have no footage or photos of this tour because none of the equipment we had could see the bioluminescence. You'll just have to see it yourself. And now we understood why there were so many tourists and boutique hotels in Esperanza --- there was no ferry that ran after the tours, so everyone who came to do a bio bay tour had to stay for the night!

We made it back to the boat by around 9:00pm, got everyone asleep. This was the last night Niniane and Dan would be on the boat, but we had no particular plans for the next few days so we knew we could take our time the next morning. It was too cloudy for star gazing anyway, so the kids got to go to sleep early.

Review: Mythos

 Mythos is Stephen Fry's retelling of Greek Mythology. If you've read anything by Stephen Fry, you can hear the voice coming through, with lots of stories about the Titans, Pandora's box, all told in a modern fashion, with lots of remarks and references and footnotes. It's incredibly readable and I thoroughly enjoyed it, learning about all the minor tales that I somehow didn't know, as well as a retelling of well known stories. Fry doesn't hold back from all the craziness the Greeks attributed to the gods. Well worth my time. Recommended.

2022 Spanish Virgin Islands: Punta Del Soldado to Ensenada Honda

 In the morning, we complained about the mooring ball knocking against the hull all  night. We'd barely gotten the boys into the water when the dive boat showed up! We swam over to it with our dive cards, and they told us that our first dive would be right there in Punta Del Soldado! On that dive, Arturo spotted a lobster (which I didn't see), and Niniane found a shark!

The second dive was at the same place we had anchored out on our first arrival to Culebra, where the dive boat tied up at a mooring buoy marked "Dive only" Despite killing a lion fish and trying to use it to bait a shark, we never found the shark the dive guide was trying to lure out. It was a nice dive anyway.

When we got back to the Yamuy, Dan announced that the referigerators were no longer powered. A flurry of texts back and forth had us removing panels, swapping fuses, and all sorts of other shenanigans trying to get it to get fixed and stay fixed, but eventually we discovered that just turning off the freezer would let the refrigerator work. Sail Caribe offered to come over late the next morning with a refrigerator, but since we wanted a quieter less rollicking night that night anyway, we decided to just visit the town of Dewey from Ensenada Honda and reprovision with food that didn't demand a freezer.

We motor'd into Ensenada Honda, and dropped anchor right in front of the romantically named Pirate's Blight, dropped the dinghy off the davits, and motor'd to town with garbage and so on in a hurry, since the grocery stores were about to close. We pulled into the dinghy dock where Boen got his ice cream so we could be "customers', while Arturo, Niniane and Dan provisioned the boat with canned food. We would have stayed for dinner, but we needed to eat everything in the freezer that was about to go bad!

That night, we ate everything in the freezer --- the seafood, the sausages, and the remaining burgers. The star gazing was surprisingly good in Ensenada Honda, since we were far enough away that there wasn't extreme light pollution. There was even some bioluminescence!

On anchor, in a very sheltered harbor, we finally had the quiet peaceful night everyone wanted and needed!

2022 Spanish Virgin Islands: Ensenada Honda to Culebrita

 We got up early, wanting to sail at first light. Well, sail was the wrong word. There was still sufficient weather from the East that prolonging the 45 minute motoring to Culebrita into a 2-3 hour sail seemed ill-advised.  Indeed, making our way out, we were greeted by a storm that gave us rainbows later after it passed us.

Arturo and I looked around for good anchorages and potentially good snorkeling for after Culebrita. The guidebooks had recommended the hike to the lighthouse, as well as the Jacuzzi hot springs on the north side of the island, but wrote that the snorkeling was only good on the side of the island with no good anchorages.  There was said to be good snorkeling near Playa Zoni, but it looked like questionable anchoring,  being so exposed. The most promising anchorage seemed to be Bahia de Almodovar, but that would require backtracking.

Arriving at Culebrita, the Bay had quite a few boats, but there was one obvious parking spot in the middle of the Bay between a few boats so I anchored there, calling for 55' of anchor chain but by the time we were done it was more like 70'. We settled there and its seemed like a nice spot. Mark wasn't feeling good, so he decided to skip the first excursion, but the rest of us decided to go hike to the lighthouse.

The kids resisted, but Boen finally agreed to be ferried to the beach via paddleboard, which I'd yet to use on the trip, so I did that, landing the paddleboard on the beach. Xiaoqin decided to stay and take care of him.

Hiking on Caribbean islands rarely impresses me, but the lighthouse hike was surprisingly good. There were lots of hermit crabs, and the hike had more wild butterflies flitting about the trail than any hike I'd been on. The lighthouse at the top was broken down and the lighthouse tower unsafe to climb, but there was a weather station which was a great place to get a panoramic view of the area.

After we got back I swapped with Xiaoqin and she hiked up to the lighthouse while I dealt with Boen. Actually, Boen wanted to return to the boat, so I paddleboarded him back to the Yamuy, where Mark had turned off the generator after filling the water tanks with fresh water. I then walked over to the Jaccuzzis for the view, destroying my Keen Newport sandals in the mean time. I would discover that Keen had switched to an "eco-friendly" glue, which would cause sole separation after only a limited use. I really liked Keen sandals but this experience will keep me from buying any more Keen sandals for the foreseeable future.

After all the exploration, we went back to the boat for a sandwich lunch. By this time Mark was feeling better. From the top of the weather station we had seen the "snorkeling beach", and it looked like fantastic snorkeling, so we arranged an expedition to do so. This time, I ferried the kids back to the beach on the paddleboard, but then swam this time as our plan was to snorkel. It turned out that the lone mooring ball in the bay was marked "dinghy only", but it probably was too much trouble to get out the dinghy for the short distance.

The snorkeling beach was a bust. The surf had churned it up so there was no visibility and the waters so rough that I scraped myself getting near the reef. We abandoned the idea, though Mark did end up going to the lighthouse and the Jaccuzi.

We were told that turtles were easy to see on the far end of the beach near the Jaccuzzis hiking trail, and indeed, I spotted no more than 4 turtles there. After 4pm, boats started leaving the Bay, and while there were still 3 boats that would overnight there, things got a lot quieter, and we had a nice quiet dinner followed by star gazing and some luminescence observations. There was no question of moving the boat --- it was unlikely that we would find a better spot to hang out overnight. The star gazing was great, with the lighthouse beacon on the weather station pointing East and therefore not interfering with our night vision. Culebrita was indeed a hidden jewel of the area.

Review: The Story of the Tour de France 2019

 I was a big fan of McGann's previous Story of the Tour de France, and when I saw they had a report of the 2019 tour for about $2, I tried it. It turns out that a format that works  in long form when you collect about 20 year's of racing history doesn't work when it's just one year. It reads like a long Velonews article, and you're left without sufficient context year after year, which was one of the best things about their collections.

My guess is, when they have collected enough updates for 20 years they'll publish it all in one volume. At that point it would be worth your time to read/buy that volume. Until then, I'm staying away from these annual updates. Not only is the price bad, without sufficient context there's just no point.

2022 Spanish Virgin Islands: Punta Grand Tamarindo to Punta Del Soldado

 The morning found everyone refreshed and free from sea-sickness. Niniane had a work related call from 9 in the morning, so I moved the boat from the north side of Punta Grand Tamarindo to the south side just so we could see different things. The snorkeling was indeed better on the south side, and we had a grand old time.

After her call was over, I asked the crew if they wanted to explore Cayo Luis Pena, the south side of which supposedly had good anchorage. Nobody disagreed, so I moved the boat there using the motor, since it was too close to bother sailing. We pulled up to a mooring ball and tied up. A motor boat came in carrying divers. "Hey Arturo, you can swim over to the dive boat and see if they will take us diving tomorrow!"

Arturo swam over, and sure enough, they were willing to meet us here tomorrow at 10:00am. I pulled a playbook out of my bicycle touring bag of tricks and negotiated them down to 9:30am so we could have time to move the boat to another spot the next day and do some snorkeling. We did some snorkeling, walked on the beach, and had lunch.

After lunch, however, Mark pointed out that the boat was encountering quite a bit of swell. We had two choices --- anchor closer in to shore (not advised because there was coral that we could damage), or change locations. I made the call to change locations and we released our mooring ball and motor'd over to Punta Del Soldado, hoping against hope that the swells would die down there.

Indeed, the swells were much reduced, but upon doing a dive check of the mooring ball we discovered that the pennant line was too long and was causing the line to move under one hull. We redid the moor directly onto the mooring ball and that solved the problem, allowing us to do more snorkeling. We called Aquatic Adventures to make sure they could pick us up from Punta Del Soldado and they said no problem, and then proceeded to do more snorkeling.

The location indeed had great snorkeling, though it also had a number of jelly fish, which put Bowen and Boen off getting into the water. I actually had one tap me on my shoulder but fortunately I was wearing my rashguard. We also saw a ray and starfish, as well as a coral farm.

Right at the end of the day, Arturo and I found a Spotted Drum, unusual because they're nocturnal and not easy to see. This one was very shy but Arturo managed to get a good photo!

Dinner was BBQ hot dogs! We went to sleep early and discovered to our dismay that because we'd tied directly to the mooring ball, it would tap against the hull of Arturo's cabin and wake him up on occasion. In retrospect we should have moor'd at the other mooring ball, but we weren't about to run a fire drill in the middle of the night. No matter what, it was still quieter and better sleep than a land-based hotel.

Review: Gran Turismo 7

 I didn't set out to play Gran Turismo 7. What happened was that I found a good deal on a Thrustmaster T150 for $100. Since I had a collection of racing games from PS Plus, I got it, installed it on a desk, and played Dirt 5 with the kids. Dirt 5 was a lot of fun, but the throttle kept slipping under me, and Dirt 5 had such a strong force feedback that the steering wheel would actually vibrate loose from its clamp and come off!

Pengtoh suggested that I got a FGT-lite racing chair, which looked expensive, but would solve a lot of these problems. The darn thing took me 2 hours to put together on a summer evening, dripping with sweat. It was heavy and solid but required quite a bit of tweaking to get positioning right. Once you got it setup, you never wanted to move it and I never successfully folded it. Worse, while getting it setup once in a while I would knock one thing or another out of alignment and in the middle of a game I'd fall over!

At the end of a month, Xiaoqin asked me to send it back and I didn't argue. It took another hour to take it apart and then I had to drive it to the UPS store to return it but I didn't regret it. The thing might be useful if you had a dedicated video game room, but it was simply too difficult to fold.

Finally, I got the Playseat Challenge. This wasn't a heavy duty chair, and was considerably lighter and easier to put together. It's so light that when you flip up the steering wheel to get in or out of the chair if you didn't stabilize it with your hand or body weight the chair would flip over! But this one folds nicely, and comes with a velcro strap that keeps everything together neatly. I can get it to fit myself or Boen properly, and it handles up to a 200 pound weight limit.

OK, was the steering wheel worth it? The answer is yes. I don't really enjoy racing games but this setup actually made them worth playing. When there was a Gran Turismo sale on the playstation store I picked it up and had fun --- you can actually tell the difference between cars from the feedback on the steering wheel, which is very impressive. I'm never going to buy a sports car, so this is much cheaper than the real thing. In fact, I even finished the single player campaign (called "Menus") and watched the post-game credits. It's been a long time since I actually got around to finishing the video game, so that says alot about how much fun it was.

And Boen at least enjoys it.

2022 Spanish Virgin Islands Index Page

 From Nov 20th to Nov 27th, my family, Arturo, Mark, Niniane, and Dan chartered a 420 Lagoon Catamaran out of Puerto Del Rey Marina and motor'd and sailed the islands of Culebra, Culebrita, and Vieques, which are usually collectively known as the Spanish Virgin Islands. This is the index page, collecting the photos from the trip as well as a day by day trip report.

Pictures

• Piaw's Photos
• Arturo's Photos

Trip Report

• Prologue
• Nov 20th: Puerto Del Rey Marina to Punta Grand Tamarindo
• Nov 21st: Punta Grand Tamarindo to Punta Del Solado
• Nov 22nd: Punta Del Solado to Ensenada Honda
• Nov 23rd: Ensenada Honda to Culebrita
• Nov 24th: Culebrita to Esperanza
• Nov 25th: Esperanza to Bahia de Isla Chiva
• Nov 26th: Bahia de Isla Chiva to Punta Arenas
• Nov 27th: Punta Arenas to Puerto Del Rey Marina
• Epilogue

What I learned from 32 years of cycling

 I first started cycling seriously in 1990, when I was an intern at Bellcore and had totaled a car that I had bought for $200. The bike was a Shogun, too big for me, but I rode it to work every day, and rode it on weekends. When I graduated and got a real job I got myself a Bianchi Eros and rode that a lot too!

Over the years, I've ridden quite a few bicycles, including tandems, mountain bikes, and various touring bikes. Cycling is, as someone once wrote, a marriage between a body which is somewhat adaptable, and a machine that's somewhat adjustable. But the psychology of the cyclist is actually just as important, if not more so than either the machine or the physical aspects. A bicycle that's fun to ride hard will entice you to ride harder and more often. Frequently people buy bicycles for resale value or for trails or conditions that they'll never ride (or learn to tackle). It's far better to buy a bicycle optimized for smooth roads and only switch to mountain or gravel bikes if you find yourself riding them.

For instance, I learned that while I was a good enough mechanic to fix most parts of the bicycle, and even build wheels, it's not something I enjoy. It's something I'm frequently forced to do so since many professional mechanics aren't even as qualified as I am, despite being more practiced. Many people buy bicycles and do not ride them, and the enthusiasts who pour money into cycling will buy new bikes every 2-5 years, while I tend to retain the same bicycle (and even components) for decades or longer whenever possible. That makes me a very bad fit for the bicycle market. So, for instance, that means that ball bearing hubs which require an overhaul every 2000-5000 miles have a TCO much higher than sealed bearing hubs. Despite owning the tools and requisite skills to do my own overhaul, the pre-load adjustment faff of a ball bearing hub meant that I almost never did my own overhaul, paying a bike shop $30 per overhaul once a year or so.

Similarly, the expensive bottom brackets like Phil Woods just wouldn't get maintained either, and once they needed maintenance, you needed an expensive tool to press the bearings out and install new ones. By comparison, the DuraAce BB cost $40, install without hassle, and when they die (in about the same time as the expensive BBs), are easy to replace. On wheels, sealed bearings almost never die! The only wheel part I ever had die on me were the freehub mechanisms on DuraAce 7700 rear hubs (which are made of titanium and nearly impossible to source!), and the Freehub on the Phil Wood touring rear hub, which cost $300 to replace (and Phil Wood refused to honor their lifetime warranty --- the new owner definitely does not believe in preserving the reputation of the company!).

Cycling is incredibly fashion driven, so over the years I went from being the person showing up at rides with the widest tires (Michelin 25mm, which actually measured 26mm or more) to being the person with the skinniest tire (Continental GP5000 25mm, which measured 25mm). The "gravel bike" revolution isn't bad though --- now you can get high quality tires in 40mm or more, and while I don't always appreciate the roads I used to ride in solitude now having lots of cyclists using them, all cyclists are always better than a car driver.

Many modern "upgrades" such as electronic shifting, disc brakes on road bikes, tubeless tires, and even indexed shifting do nothing to improve the performance or enjoyment of the bicycle, but rather make the bike harder to maintain and subject to unpredictable failures, such as the batteries running out on electronic shifters. I avoid those to the extent possible. Some upgrades, however, can get to the point where a phase change suddenly makes what used to be burden something worth using. One example is that the increase in the number of gears on the rear wheel went from 5 to 9 or 10, all it did was make the rear wheel weaker, as the range of the gears available didn't change all that much. However, when SRAM introduced the 11 speed wide range cassette for mountain bikes with the 11-50 cassette, suddenly you could eliminate the front derailleur while getting a close to identical range of gearing for the bike. At the point it was worth upgrading since a simpler drivetrain wasn't just lighter, it was also more ergonomic and eliminated the unreliable front derailleur. Even for such upgrades I usually would stick to the old tried and true system for a bit longer to give the prices a chance to drop and for potential issues to surface.

There are people who claim that for instance, triple cranksets with front derailleurs are pretty reliable, but they've never been problem free for me. A lot of it is that typical triple setups seem geared towards a 30/40/52 crankset, while I would want the lowest possible gear so I'd go for a 24/39/50 crank. The reality was that this meant that I was running the front derailleur out of spec, so would encounter problems others who didn't ride as low a gear did. In practice, the 50/11 gear almost never got used, so giving up the high gear was the right thing to do when it comes down to switching drivetrains.

I discovered that I enjoy bicycle touring enough to try to do a big tour every year, and love it enough to have written a book on it. The book sells badly, but I have a fondness for it that I don't have for my more successful books. I discovered that I don't like carrying lots of weight on the bicycle even though I've done it a lot. I even bought a triplet so I could carry the kids along, and it was a relief to me that my kids actually enjoy it, never opting to take the train when they have the opportunity to ride. (Though I did learn early on that if they had a sag wagon they would avail themselves of it more often than not!) To be honest they travel better than many adults, never complaining about rain or the difficulties of the day. They finish each day with plenty of energy.

People ask me about ebikes on occasion. I've learned that batteries are the hardest to maintain component on a bicycle. If you use them they wear out and die. If you don't use them, they wear out and die. Sometimes even if you only use them once in a while they break. It's a lot of hassle --- my suspicion is that unless you were an enthusiastic cyclist, an ebike won't make you one and you'll end up driving.

I learned that I really like the geometry of Grant Petersen's bikes. Grant pays more attention to how bicycles ride than most designers. His designs over the years have evolved for the better from an already high standard. I still want to tweak his geometries. For instance, because I ride clipless pedals and he doesn't, I want a BB still lower than what he's willing to use. For a road bike with 25mm tires I want a 80mm BB drop, and he'll go for 75. For a gravel bike with 40mm tires he'll spec an 8cm BB drop, and I think I'd go with 85mm. This sounds minor but when I ride I notice the difference.

I've learned that I'm not sensitive to saddles in general. I went from an Avocet saddles to Brooks B-17s (which never needed breaking in for me) and to Ritchey WCS saddles. The B-17s could last me 10 years before they "broke in" too much to be comfortable, but then I started riding tandems and 2 years of butt sweat would destroy the saddle, so I switched and discovered that the lighter (and more durable) saddles were just as comfortable as the B-17s.

Despite having ridden for 32 years, I'm still learning more about cycling on every ride. Hopefully I'll be cycling for another 32 years!