Work, life and other detours [II]

Well you know what to do! I have an external on my desk that I just grabbed and took with me when we left.

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Staple for Chinese/Asian hotpot. :stew: :wink:

Glad to hear you’re safe @hatsnp! Wind can be terrifying.

On the topic of preparedness, a few years ago I forced myself to memorize my wife’s phone number. Before cell phones I had so many phone numbers memorized, but eventually I could barely recall my own cell number. Useful in many situations, but for me, at my wife’s urging, it’s in case I get arrested for some of the mutual aid stuff I do.

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My understanding is that phenomena like this are extremely difficult to forecast accurately, and then if your forecast says severe weather with 10% probability, after the 5th one people will ignore the warning.

There was a severe, sudden storm in Budapest on 2006.08.20. ā€œOnlyā€ 80–100 km/h winds, but this was a state holiday, and there was a large crowd watching the fireworks. 5 dead, 300 injured. Ever since, the state met service has been issuing severe weather warnings for all events if there is the slightest possibility of anything.

The problem is, once the above event started fading from memory, people started dismissing the warnings. Yeah, there is a ā€œsevere weather alertā€, but remember the last 10 of those when nothing actually happened? People are very bad when it comes to reasoning about probability.

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I have a new bicycle shaped object.

Due to ongoing health issues, I figured it was time to embrace the eletric bicycle age so I bought myself a nice, cheap and cheerful folding fat tyred ebike, Koolux BK6S,

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Nice. Looks like the tires are farther apart. The cable management seems a little bit haphazard. Is this photo taken within a park?

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It’s a folding ebike, hence the over long cables! It’s a local woodland not far from home, ideal for a maiden bike ride!

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Brian Innes, Welcome to the world of e-bikes! I switched when I started transporting my daughter to kindergarten and found the daily uphill parts too demanding.

My detour for the day: I spent about 40 minutes debugging an intermittent charging issue on my laptop, which included bios updates, checking the wall socket and the charger end with a multimeter, and quietly going crazy, because sometimes it would charge, sometimes it would not, and I could not discern what made the difference. The problem was a piece of debris in the C5/C6 coupling of the carger.

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I am ā€œyoungā€, in decent form, and I’d say ebikes are a must in hilly terrain for everyone who is not a dedicated cyclist. After moving houses to a more hilly place I have stopped cycling as much since it’s quite hilly around here. I enjoy cycling when the HR is stable and I get in the zone, but going uphill is just murder, the legs use so much oxygen, it’s always a guarantee HR will spike to max and I will be tired the rest of the day.

One of my goals this year is upgrading my current bicycle with an electric kit so it just provides assist on reaching top speed.

Looks like a really nice place.

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Not concerned about that and more about them fraying or getting grimy in rougher terrain. Still, I hope you get to go on many photographic adventures.

I used to live and bike in an area with some notoriously steep hills. There was a hill behind my apartment where once while bombing down it the speedometer on my bike read 45 MPH. That was the last time I did that since it’s an unpredictable back road and I didn’t want to hit a rock and go flying. There was another hill that I would tackle that took me several months before I could actually climb the whole thing without getting off my bike and pushing.

That said, I saw this video the other day and have gained new inspiration on what is possible in life. Perhaps those of you complaining about hills have simply not hidden enough whiskey along the way?

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I must’ve watched this video 3 times by now in my life, it’s just too good :smiley: A bit of whisky with fresh spring water and there he goes :smiley:

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I am not, never have been and never will be an athlete. That said, between 2012 and ~2019 (my ages 53 - 60) I did weekend road riding with a few friends. I got my first bike since my teenage years in 2010 but replaced it two years later because it was VERY heavy (45 lbs).

We’d typically do 20 - 35 mostly flat road miles on a ride but the smallest hills were a killer for me – I’m over 6 feet tall, above 200 lbs (…well above). In Louisiana there are only moderate hills at most but even a motorway overpass would be tough. I remember hitting 182 BPM once crossing over an Interstate highway. I routinely would stay at 150 to 160 BPM on flat ground just keeping up (at 15 to 18 MPH). Like I said, no athlete! LOL

So much for an ā€œenjoyableā€ ride…

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I’m the odd guy at work who rides his folding bike to work in any weather¹. Don’t even own a car², but a garage full of a rather surprising number of bikes that found their way in there for somewhat unclear reasons.

Only one of them is electric; the big cargo bike for kids and groceries. Everything else just isn’t urgent enough to not just slow down instead. But the newer, lighter motors do have me tempted…

Footnote 1: I only need to go to work once per week, so mostly weather is avoidable.
Footnote 2: We do rent cars relatively frequently, though. Just not often enough to own.

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