A Voice Memo Blog Post Thing I'm Trying

Jun 16

Reduced from this voice note. Listen if you’re into hearing me ramble!

Okay. So I have made a discovery, and it is that the Voice Memo app on your phone can do dictation. For every voice memo, you can look at the transcript of what you've said. So, in an effort to make things easier.

I know. I'm all over the place. I have ADHD, whatever. But my issue is consistency. Like, I will get into these grooves, and for a while I was doing the blogs once a week and it was going well, but the friction of having to type everything up and find the pictures and do all the things is a challenge. So the last post I did, I actually did voice to text on the Bear app, which is not an app about bears the animal, but it is a note-taking app. And I downloaded that app because the native Notes app on my phone lost an important note, and I have never forgiven it for doing so. So I paid for this Bear app, and it's great. It has not lost any of my notes. The only slightly catastrophic thing that happened, which I remedied thankfully, was that I have a note with passwords in it, and that note was password protected and I forgot the password to the passwords note. But it let me open it with Face ID, or whatever it's called. But yeah. So I got all my passwords back.

So if you have not realized in the past however long I've been talking, I'm all over the place, all of the time, doing all of the things and not necessarily doing them particularly well. So the more I can reduce friction into getting something done, the more likely I am to do it. This is my newest method: taking these voice memos and not promising that I will edit them. Anybody who actually wants to listen to them will, and the people who don't won't, and I am learning to be okay with that, because I've been doing really fun things that I want to talk to people about. And the people that want to hear about them will listen.

The Lost Dot 101

The last post I did was before the Lost Dot 101 before I started. About three hours before the start, I went for a coffee, and I'm pretty confident that barista gave me cow milk instead of oat milk as requested, and it ruined my whole life for a few days. So we started the race, and I made it like 40 miles and then I started vomiting, which was awful. And that persisted until I got to about the 80 mile mark, which was the second town that we passed through that had resources. There was this bar, and a bunch of people were stopping there. So I stopped there and stayed for about two hours, just feeling awful. I had some tea, I had brought my own ginger. It was a whole thing. And I just never felt better. So I decided that I was just going to keep it moving and at least make some forward motion.

Long story short, it was cold, it was wet, I was sick, I missed the first checkpoint two days later, by an hour and a half. And from there, I was like, well, I don't want to do this anymore. I'm going to go home. I did sleep on it, and I woke up the next morning and felt like I'd been hit by several trucks, not just the one. So I got myself together, my husband Will made me a route to Zamora, Spain. It was about 100K on a really dodgy, fast, big truck highway. I can ride pretty much anywhere. And that is a skill that I'm super thankful for because it was the most direct route. Did it feel super safe? Not at all. But I made it, and then I rented a car and drove myself back to Girona.

So yeah, that is what happened there. I have filmed at least the YouTube video of my setup, which I'm really excited about because I spent so much time on it. I need to edit it and put it on YouTube like I said I would. But, you know, friction. Editing is the friction. It also took me two or three days to film this because my phone does not have enough storage space because I never delete anything. So, yeah, I'll get there. It's gonna happen, I promise. Don't know when. Maybe next week, but not this week. Unless it does. We'll see. Very unpredictable around here.

Random Accident

Right now I am working on my bike. I got into a bit of a situation with a tourist a few weeks ago. Basically, I was standing on the side of the road helping someone else, and this man flew off the road in a corner on a descent, the same corner that the man I was helping crashed on, and this man flew off the road and I stopped his momentum with my body and fell into my bike. My abs seized up and I was laying there, and he was kind of wiggling next to me, and I needed him to get up. I bruised my ribs, messed up the joint in my pinky finger, which I am currently wearing a splint for. My ribs feel better now. I broke my handlebars, I broke my rear derailleur.

Shout out to SRAM who has been sponsoring me for over a decade, which is really convenient when you break your rear derailleur in a random accident because some tourist man flew into your body.I have replaced the bars thanks to QuickPro for getting me new bars really quickly.

When I was initially building this bike, I made the brake cables slightly longer because the first time I set it up the cable was too short and I had to go buy another cable. So I made the cable slightly longer, which has now come back as the best thing I've ever done, because I had enough cable that I could cut the end bits off and put in new ones. So I just need to wrap the bars, adjust the rear derailleur, put the chain back on properly, and wash my bike because it has been through some things.

This Weekend: 400K Brevet in Altea

I'm really excited and I'm setting this up because we are doing an ultra this Friday, a brevet. Honestly, there are so many names for the same thing and I don't know the difference, but all I know is ultras seem to be expensive and brevets, not so much. I think we paid like 25 euros for this one.

It's 400K, it starts in Altea, it goes through Calpe, Dénia, a whole bunch of places, and ends with a final climb up Coll de Rates, which is a pretty famous popular climb that the pros train on when they are staying in the Calpe/Altea area. We have 27 hours to complete this 400 kilometers.

To me, it feels kind of like a redemption arc from not finishing the Lost Dot 101. The odds are against me once again because I spent two weeks off the bike thanks to my ribs and my finger. So I'm not as fit as I want to be. I'm on borrowed fitness. But this time I'm not alone, I have Will, I can draft, he can draft off of me, I can climb pretty solidly, and I think for me this will be less about how strong I am and more about how well I rest, how I fuel, how I set up my bike, all that stuff.

So I have mapped out my fueling plan. There's a lot of gels involved, just because of the nature of the timing, and my history of not being able to eat very well on the bike, and also that we will be riding through the night for a large portion of this. The event starts at 7 p.m. and it is 400K. The first 200 are relatively flat and then the last 200K is quite a bit of climbing. I think in total it's about 5,000 meters, maybe a little under that, so about 14,000 to 15,000 feet. Not flat, but doable over the course of 400K. It's just the short time span that makes it interesting.

Pedaler's Retreat Recap + Next One Announced

I spent a couple weeks in America starting May 28th, after the Pedaler's Retreat, which was really fun. We had four riders, and it was a learning curve for all of us, but we've lived here for five years, we know that area pretty well. I think we gave everyone a good time. They all seemed really happy. The hotel was super nice, the routes were really pretty, but there was a lot of climbing. And so we did some adjustments as needed for the folks that were having a bit of a hard time, and that was the best part of being in charge: we could modify it to be what it needed to be.

The next one is in October, the 7th through the 14th. We have a couple of folks already signed up. I'm really excited about it. We're making two groups: a Group A, which will do quite a bit more climbing, and a Group B, which is not much less distance but the elevation is much better. I think that's really the thing that makes it challenging: it's the climbing and not necessarily the distance.

Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta, and Grandma's First Calzone

After Pedaler's Retreat, in America I went and hung out with my friend Sam in Detroit, and it was so much fun. She had taken off of work, so we did all of the things, just so busy. There were at least two or three nights where we didn't get home until after midnight. Like, girl. I am old. I do not live this way. But it was fun and I don't regret it.

Her niece is in the Detroit Youth Choir nd they had a concert. It was Beyoncé themed and the babies were singing and it was so much fun.

They had a smaller elementary age group and then a high schooler aged group. The babies, the elementary kids, were jumping around for a good 45 minutes. I was tired just looking at them. Full choreo, most of which was literal jumping, moving around, dancing, and singing Beyoncé. And her niece did really, really great. I think she was the best one. I know I'm a little biased, but as someone with a degree in music who studied all of this, I can firmly say I think she was the best one, and not just because she's my friend's niece. And it reminded me of being part of stuff like that as a high school kid and how much it really inspired me. I went to college for music because I felt like I could. And that was cool.

From Detroit I went to Chicago for the Rails to Trails Conservancy board meeting, and that was really fun. I saw the beginnings of the Bronzeville Trail Project.

It was so cool what they're doing there. It's going to take a lot of work and a lot of money and a lot of time, but they're going to get it done and it's going to be really, really cool. And it's really fun seeing it led by the community. And I also learned a lot about how much Major Taylor spent his time there.

I don't know. You're always learning something new. You're always seeing new things and meeting new people who are just so passionate about stuff. And they were really excited to meet me, which was really fun. I know that what I did was really special in a lot of ways, but I think sometimes it's hard for me to feel that way about myself and the things I've done because if it's not current, sometimes it feels like it doesn't matter. And in the case of Major Taylor, I feel like he's being celebrated more now than he was when he was alive. I guess that's something I should dive into another time. Maybe I have thoughts and feelings I haven't fully explored yet.

After Chicago, I went to Atlanta, saw my mom for her birthday and hung out with Grandma. I have been doing this thing with Grandma where every time I go see her, I'll take her to dinner to try a new world cuisine and then spend the night. This time I was like, oh, we'll do Mediterranean. But the Mediterranean restaurant that I chose off of Google was actually in a Super Walmart and I was like, maybe not that place. So I pivoted and we went to get calzones instead.

"Grandma, have you ever had a calzone?"

She'd never had a calzone, or so she thinks. And so I was like, oh, it's like pizza, it's like a fried pie with pizza in it. She's like, I don't like pizza. Grandma doesn't like pizza, but she loves pineapple pizza. Only pineapple pizza, which I am a big supporter of. I know that's very controversial. So yeah, we got calzones and she loved it and it was great. And last time we went and got pho, and I taught her how to use chopsticks and she picked it up right away. Grandma is the best. She's the smartest person I've ever met in my life, and the nicest person and the most loving person. Man, I'm lucky. I really won the grandparents lottery.

Women's Bike Racing Fan Club

I am excited about the Women's Bike Racing Fan Club stuff. I think that's really taken off.

I've been trying to figure out my lane there. Like, I was doing race recaps, race previews, talking about some of the stuff that happens in the peloton that people don't really think about. Like, I did a reel about the iliac artery issue that a lot of cyclists have, because Maggie Coles-Lyster won a race and it was really cool because she had just come back from that iliac artery surgery.

It's just such an annoying, terrible, sometimes career-ending situation, but now people are figuring it out sooner and intervening, getting the surgery, making a recovery. And it's just been so cool to see her doing really well. Stuff like that, and also covering UCI rules and stuff, seems to be catching on. People seem to be very interested in learning that stuff because when you're within the cycling community, within the peloton, it seems like not big news. And you take for granted how much people don't know. I've been having fun with it, and really appreciate all the people that have been supporting it and sharing and all of those things.

Showing Up

I've also been trying to figure out just how to be myself. I have had a lot of weird experiences in the past five years, let's say. And I feel like I've been tormented with how I present myself publicly, how polished that is, how unpolished that is. Like, I went through a very long period of sadness and overwhelm and burnout. And so I was still trying to stay afloat on socials and make content that was happy and positive, but I also found that really challenging because things weren't really positive and things weren't really happy. And I did lose a lot of followers in that time, and Instagram did not like me being in burnout, which contributed to the burnout and the overwhelm, because I was like, well, this is kind of how my livelihood works and I'm losing all of this momentum because I'm sad. And nobody wants to see that. But I also didn't feel like I needed to pretend to be happy because that's not genuine.

Anyway, I'm trying to figure out where I am now. And I am in a much better place. I'm not feeling super burnt out anymore. I feel like space is being created where I can explore these new projects like the Women's Bike Racing Fan Club and taking on these ultra distance races and just really go for it. Have fun with my friends and visit my grandma.

My fear of rejection is very strong. But that should not dictate how I live my life. And so that's why I have done this.

Sponsor Thanks

Thanks so much to my sponsors.

SRAM has been sponsoring me for over a decade. I rode for a SRAM-sponsored WorldTour team and thankfully did not have to lose that sponsorship in the process and I'm still working with them to this day.

I really, really do love how easy it is that since I have crashed and broken my rear derailleur, all I had to do was take off the old broken one and put the new one on. Push a few buttons and we're good to go. The wireless thing: fantastic. Never change.

POC: the helmets are super comfy and they fit big hair really well, and that has always been a sell for me. The POC vest is fantastic, fantastic, fantastic. It doesn't hurt that it's the bright orange Team Amani Edition— I look like a traffic cone. I love that for me. Tons of pockets, holds a two-liter bladder of water. So many snacks. And the bags are also incredibly waterproof. I spent hours and hours in the rain and none of the stuff in the bags got wet, and that, to me, was a godsend because I couldn't take one more bad thing.

Castelli: My favorite thing about the Castelli stuff is that the bib straps are super, super stretchy, and I don't have to take them off to use the bathroom in any season, and that is a fantastic feature.

And last but not least, whoever's still giving me money on Patreon, God bless you. I appreciate it so much. It goes towards the Abundance Project and the work that I do there. And you have no reason to continue giving me money except for the fact that you care about what I am doing, and for that I say tremendous thank yous. I know I am horrible at providing individual value for patrons. I'm sorry. What do you want? Is it videos? Is it answering questions? Is it shoutouts? Is it merch? Like, what do you want? What will make the Patreon more valuable to people so I can do more good work for the Abundance Project? Let me know, because as of now, the only things supporting the Abundance Project are my own goodwill and effort, SRAM, and the Patreon. That is what's keeping that alive. You are keeping that alive. I appreciate you.

Thanks so much for listening. I don't know exactly how this should work, so let me know if you have questions, and I'll do my best to make this into something interesting. It's just an idea. I have so many ideas and not all of them are good. I know that. But I am trying this new thing where I don't let fear overtake the urge to try new things. Okay, bye.