If you’re going to give someone a chore for their birthday,
you better make sure it’s well worth the work. I worked hard to make this one easily clears the bar. Alas, Jevan and Ben will have to be the judge.
Strava Puzzle #3 is even shorter than #2 (Annie Are You OK?), which was shorter than #1 (SloMoPo). I’m following the trend of decreasing attention span.
I take a lot of photos on my rides, and while that makes for a richer sharing experience with others, it still leaves much to be desired. One thing that could certainly make it better would be to match these pictures with the most fitting music that could be played when encountering that same scene.
Here are my first three entries. I will be back to add more:
1) The Blue Ridge Parkway, VA
Okay, I actually had more than just my cell phone for this ride. I had a GoPro on the handlebars. Here’s one 3mi segment of the ride, with the song that I know I played at some point on this epic ride:
It’s actually happened several times that this song, and this line, was playing when I was on a significant climb. And I’ve found it helps my performance on the hill if I belt out “I am the one thing in life I can control; I am inimitable, I am an original.” This particular climb is about 3,500ft.
I was on a really good tear with regard to my “Days Since Last Crash” streak, nearly doubling my previous best. But today, when I was on a good tear of another kind (riding the fun Rose Hill / Bridle Trails path from the park down to Marymoor), the mud that I had been enjoying turned into my enemy, as my back-end slid out while I was purring along.
It was a clean slide right up until the last second, then my hand went down and was hyperextended back. After a quick check of bod and bike, I decided to pedal on, figuring whatever pain was waiting for me wouldn’t kick in until I stopped. And that’s pretty much how it played out.
Another 45 miles of beautiful riding, and now I’m wearing my skating wrist guard to keep it still until I get it checked out next week.
One terrific discovery on all of my extended retreat rides has been the more creative church names I’ve encountered. Here are my top two so far (both in NC … bummer that I haven’t found any better names in my home state of VA … yet):
1) The Remnant of His Seed My mind isn’t in the gutter most of the time that I’m riding, and certainly not when I’m passing churches, but something about this name just felt, well, flacid.
Found this audio clip from an especially excruciating day on my 2019
1:22pm: “One mile at a time. On skyline drive. In the shade. 73 degrees. 62 miles down. What does that mean? 44 to go. No, 54 to go. Geez, bad math. 54 to go.”
Yes, I talk to myself while I’m riding. No, I don’t always record it.
Here’s a business idea for my Mormon buddies. This picture is heading in the right direction, with some nice wheels to shuttle these missionaries in style.
So now, picture this:
A cycling jersey that is an imitation of a missionary shirt, tie, and badge.
Even if we can’t convince the missionaries to wear them, I know of plenty of cycling teams that would love to suit up with these.
“Back when I was a kid”, we had albums that we put on the turntable, and then sat back, perusing the album liner notes while we experienced the album tracks, in order. We only needed to get up once to flip the album over. Side note: tip of the hat to Tom Petty for capturing this experience for future generations in the middle of his Full Moon Fever CD.
This was a wonderful way to experience the music. It was a mode of listening where the album got priority. We weren’t listening to it while the TV was on, or while we were studying. We just listened. And furthermore, we sat there and listened to the entire thing (the closest concept to “pause” was the nicer turntables that had a lever you could use to raise or lower the needle, so that you could lift it and re-lower it in exactly the same place).
This weekend my college crew and I were sharing memories, and trying to pick our favorite album experience. Days of Future Past (Moody Blues). Dark Side of the Moon (Pink Floyd). The Joshua Tree (U2). Red / Blue (The Beatles).
For me, I was torn between a few. So I cued up Brothers in Arms (Dire Straits) and All That You Can’t Leave Behind (U2) for my ride today. First of all, it was awesome to listen to albums completely again. No shuffle. No playlist mix. Just two albums, each in track order. I will definitely be doing more of that.
Brothers in Arms was the first album I bought. That’s not to say it took me a while to get into music. As the youngest of seven, I just got to use all the records, cassettes, and 8tracks my siblings were buying. And I instead spent my money on a stereo cassette player/recorder, allowing me to pull songs off the radio and make my own mix tapes.
But Brothers in Arms was the first time I bought an album. And I’m pretty sure I bought Run DMC’s Raising Hell at the same time. A great way to start my music collection. And I continued to go back to Brothers in Arms every time I was in the market for a new stereo. “Your Latest Trick” is a terrific song for testing speakers.
All That You Can’t Leave Behind is the album that accompanied me on my first retreat. I played that in order repeatedly during my daily long drives. So many great lyrics across all of those tracks, my top probably being, “I see an expression so clear and so true that it changes the atmosphere when you walk into the room.” Runner-up, “I’m not afraid to die. I’m not afraid to live. And when I’m flat on my back, I hope to feel like I did.”
Standing in the ER over my 23-year-old son. Resting my hand on his shoulder and massaging his head, For far longer than he would normally ever tolerate.
I want to protect him but I can’t. I want to scold him but I don’t. Instead I just comfort him and stay, just, thankful.
His head will heal. The lessons will, eventually, seep in. My family will survive.
My second Strava puzzle Annie Are You OK? was a little more difficult. That’s by design. I’m trying to make each puzzle a bit harder. Let’s see where we go from here.
This was a team effort solution by Neil and Jevan. Applause on the teamwork, much like the way we solve the weekly wsj meta crossword puzzle.
Step one: The single use of 👀 in all the titles was intentional. It drew your attention to the title “Third in Third”. Jevan at first said, “I know this title is important, I just don’t know what to do with it.” Neil added, “Well, the third letter in the third word is ‘i’.” I made an encouraging sound.
Step two: The last title tells you the length of the answer, but again there is another intentional number usage: five. Notice that all of the titles are between one word and five words long.
Step three: Neil said, “What if one-word titles use the first letter?” He then started spelling: R, E, M, E, M, B, E, R; Remember.
Step four: “Ah, okay, so then two-word titles form the second word by taking the second letter of the second word.” T, O; To.
Step five: Jevan jumps in, “Is it ‘Remember To Drink Your Ovaltine’?” Jevan knows my love for movie quotes, and Jevan is also a fan of A Christmas Story. I smiled and said, “Bingo.”
Another hint in the puzzle that they didn’t need to get them started. The ride titled simply “Be” is a one-word title that also makes the sound of the first letter in the word.
And then, post-solution connections were incorporated into this puzzle. This refers to connections that you can’t possibly make in the solving process, but once solved, you can look back on and see the connection. There was day 103’s title: “Frageeelay. It must be Italian!” which is another quote from A Christmas Story. And then there is the puzzle title “Annie Are You Okay?” a reference Little Orphan Annie, which is the club that Ralphie gets the decoder ring for and decodes the same message as this puzzle delivers: Remember To Drink Your Ovaltine.
Major Blunder: I embed this scene to tie the story together, and when I watch it, I discover I had remembered the line wrong 😮. It was “Be Sure To Drink Your Ovaltine.”
