2020-12-02 One Thousand Observations I have made 1000 observations of Mt. Hood from Council Crest more
2020-11-22 The races we’re missing: Kruger’s Krossing Ice-cold adobe mud, freezing rain, bonfires, manure, and beer. The perfect farm race. more
2020-11-15 The races we’re missing: Barton Park I love this icy cold gritty sufferfest in a gravel quarry more
2020-11-01 The races we’re missing: Deschutes Brewery So this is never my favorite weekend of racing but it is reliably one of my favorite weekends of the year. more
2020-10-25 The races we’re missing: Cyclocross Crusade: Cascade Locks A great race & venue I arrived at late in my career more
2020-10-10 The races we’re missing: Cyclocross Crusade: Alpenrose Dairy I would spend an obscene amount of money to be able to race my least-favorite race this year more
2020-10-04 The races we’re missing: Heiser Farm Heiser Farm is the kind of race that reminds me I like racing BECAUSE I suck at it more
2020-10-03 Succession Imagine the worst, cruelest, most incompetent, most ineffectual CEO you’ve ever worked under. Remember what a total shitshow that job was? Now imagine that CEO just…vanishes. more
2020-09-26 The races we’re missing: Ninkrossi Ninkrossi is one of my favorite venues despite being historically one of my worst races. more
2020-09-22 The Litany Against Fear Yellow cones will be on your left, red cones on your right. You and your bike must go over all barriers. more
2020-09-21 Burned forests The fires will leave a patchwork of death and rebirth in the forest, but where they touched human habitations there will be only destruction more
2020-09-16 We have spent an entire week indoors As a fresh air addict, this past week has been trying more
2020-09-11 We are already in the refuge all our neighbors are fleeing to Inner Portland is probably the safest place in western Oregon right now. more
2020-09-09 The fires this time Monday the fires were a potentiality. Today we are capped by their creeping murk. more
2020-08-13 No cyclocross Every year since 2011, from Labor Day to Thanksgiving, our family ritual was CYCLOCROSS. Not this year 😢 more
2020-08-11 We weren’t off the grid, so much as adjacent to it There was a house with a roof & plumbing & electricity & internet, after a fashion. I liked the fashion: satellite. It was just fast... more
2020-08-08 Eagle Cap Wilderness As a Nebraskan I am a cheap date, scenery-wise. Oregonians come to the Wallowas for the beauty not the solitude. It’s the backpacking equivalent of... more
2020-08-06 Skies outside cities I grew up with skies outside of cities which are the skies most people in most of history grew up with. At the cabin there... more
2020-08-04 The best bike is the bike you have I regret that I didn’t bring my own bike but I regret more that I didn’t bring tools to fix up the bikes that are... more
2020-08-02 Adventure Dad is proud All the kids brought knives along for this adventure without me nagging them. more
2020-08-01 August 2020 I’m taking a break from social media. Check my web-log for occasional updates. more
2020-07-19 Wy’easting For OBRA’s Wy’easting Challenge, today I rode 13 repeats of Montgomery street from the old PFD No. 1 Station to Council Crest. Each repeat was... more
2020-07-18 What Portland feels like right now Portland is in the national news right now and if you didn’t live here you might be forgiven for thinking our city is a hellscape... more
2020-06-23 Aspects of backpacking, rated For much of my 20s many of my jobs looked suspiciously like backpacking and I lived for weeks or months at a time in tents.... more
2020-06-13 All my interactions with cops When I was probably 7 or 8 years old, a dog attacked me and bit me in the ass. A sheriff’s deputy took pictures of... more
2020-05-25 Rickety local builds are a bad project smell Everyone (engineers, designers, project managers) on a web project should be able to spin up a local dev environment in less than two hours, using... more
2020-05-12 Covid-19 diary: Quarantine fatigue Been a while since I’ve done this. Straightforward: we are busy, and we are tired. Less straightforward: it is obvious our federal government has not... more
2020-05-11 Covid-19 Diary: Quarantine books I have made three or four Powell’s orders since March 16. Here’s what has arrived thus far: Selected Writings — Hildegard of Bingen. I only... more
2020-04-21 Covid-19 Diary: sleep and dreams With hundreds of millions of people sheltering at home during the coronavirus pandemic, some dream experts believe that withdrawal from our usual environments and daily... more
2020-04-16 Covid-19 diary: at the river This kind of thing never gets old Shake it off from Paul Souders on Vimeo. more
2020-04-15 Covid-19 diary: Inside Today was the first day of the quarantine that I spent entirely inside. It was a beautiful day and I got up early for my... more
2020-04-13 Covid-19 Diary: Fear of Contamination is the crowbar fascists will use to pry open liberals’ hearts Which is scarier?— Paul Souders 🐌 (@axoplasm) April 12, 2020 Admit it: when you saw ppl arriving at your neighbors’ for Easter brunch you wanted... more
2020-04-12 Covid-19 Diary: Timmy Failure This post was written 2020-04-15 Last night as a family we watched the new Timmy Failure movie, set and filmed in North Portland. It was... more
2020-04-08 Covid-19 diary: Resources / fraying I need to stop and count the resources our household has for coping with the coronavirus crisis: Two grownups with secure jobs those jobs require... more
2020-04-05 Covid-19 diary: Council Crest This weekend on our family bike ride everyone rode to the top of Council Crest. We were kind of focused on the youngest, I mean... more
2020-04-03 Covid-19 diary: a bad day I had a bad day yesterday. Maybe the first day I would characterize as such in the past three weeks. I was up early to... more
2020-04-02 Covid-19 diary: cozy catastrophe From my Twitter: so half my friends have time to learn to bake bread, the other half barely have time to shower guess which half... more
2020-03-31 Covid-19 Diary: Wild It’s wild that the Developed world more or less intentionally went into a medically induced coma to shut down this virus with “only” a 1–3%... more
2020-03-30 Covid-19 Diary: third week, second weekend Adjusting to the surreality of Social Distance Commutes. Traffic every day is like Christmas or quieter. Weird though that people are not driving any better,... more
2020-03-26 Covid-19 diary: social distance I worry that Portlanders, already prone to anxieties about personal space and body purity, are going to be psychically damaged by “social distancing.” Already I’m... more
2020-03-25 Covid-19 diary: bodega So far this week I’ve made three trips to grocery stores. The first two stores were mostly well stocked except each store was missing some... more
2020-03-21 Covid-19 diary: outside This post was authored on 2020-03-25 We took a family bike ride today to Powell Butte, and then up it and over it. I have... more
2020-03-20 COVID-19 Diary: habits @11:27 I have done 4 things that made this week much less stressful than it might have been: get up at 6:30 am & ride... more
2020-03-19 COVID-19 Diary: Fortunate @10:05 I (and my family) have been extremely fortunate so far in this crisis: I have a relatively secure contract through at least early summer... more
2020-03-18 COVID-19 Diaries Occurs to me — occurred to me a week ago? — that I should be keeping a diary of my experience during COVID-19. Daily. Consider... more
2020-02-21 Freedom Machine For the nth time in a year now I have an internal infection that’s keeping me, very specifically, off the bike. I can do most... more
2020-02-12 I Never Quite Recovered From My First Exposure to Kombucha From this Twitter thread ca 2002 at Last Thursday on Alberta st., there was a 20-something white dude with dreadlocks, selling kombucha at a card... more
2020-02-05 Five percent more chill Every morning I wrestle with this feeling that maybe people driving cars are just lazy. I’m thinking this as I ride with my kids five... more
2020-01-16 Human spaces reconceptualized for machines Almost every day I ride through Riverplace, a lovely wide car-free path, lined with shops & apartments, opening onto the Marina, just south of downtown.... more
2020-01-15 Testimony in favor of the Residential Infill Project Selfishly: I want more — and more diverse — neighbors, and I want more commerce. more
2020-01-08 No matter where you’re from, we’re glad you’re our neighbor The central urbanist question for moderately posh urbanites like myself is: “should poor people be allowed to live in our neighborhood?” If the answer is... more
2020-01-02 Energy → Technology → Culture What if humanity didn’t have access to eons of solar energy stored in the form of fossil fuels? What if our technological progress were constrained entirely by the energy falling on its surface, and not buried beneath it? more