Adventure Racing World Championships
Sept. 22 – Oct. 6, 2025
Penticton, BC, Canada
I’d love to attend my first A.R. Worlds — but will probably be in Asia at that time.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
By coincidence, I was 1st to watch this VIDEO. Just happened to be online when it popped up.
The independently made VIDEO is a bit cheesy, but McConaughey does offer some good advice.
Celebrities! Is there anything they don’t know? 😀
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Like most teen boys my age, I read every Heinlein book I could get my hands on.
Tunnel in the Sky (1955) … a group of students sent on a survival test to an uninhabited planet, who soon realise they are stranded there. The themes of the work include the difficulties of growing up and the nature of man as a social animal.
His juvenile books are rollicking adventures. No profanity.
But on another level, Heinlein was a provocative philosopher on matters of personal freedom, particularly sexual freedom, libertarianism, religion, politics, and government.
Heinlein wrote strong female characters decades before it was cool. 😀
My main takeaway from Tunnel is the truism that rule of law must come first.
Everything else, later.
If you don’t have enforceable laws, wannabe dictators will insist criminals are tourists.
Here’s Georgia GOP Andrew Clyde barricading the doors of the Senate. He later called those attacking him tourists.
Trump called them “political prisoners.” And “hostages.”
Any objective person would want those breaking into their home or business arrested. To deny this fact is to deny rule of law.
As in Lord of the Flies, which had been published a year earlier, isolation reveals the true natures of the students as individuals. The Heinlein book is more optimistic, however.
The colony of young people in Tunnel do establish rule of law. Democracy.
In any case, it’s still worth reading Heinlein books today. They are thought provoking.
I’m planning on cycling Iceland late summer 2024.
This would be the ultimate … — … AND I won’t be doing anything this challenging. 😀
Riders Chris Burkard, Eric Batty, Emily Batty, and Adam Morka.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
In 2024 — I have to call myself an experienced Bikepacker.
Any trip where you carry enough gear to allow sleeping overnight … somewhere. Even a motel.
A multi-day cycling trip.
For me it was a natural extension of hiking. Fun, enjoyable, exercise outdoors.
Low cost.
I enjoy tenting. So that’s a bonus for me.
Joe Cruz posted a terrific History of Bikepacking article.
People have been cycling overnight trips since the invention of the bicycle.
It’s astonishing to me how little bicycle technology has evolved.
Here’s Frank Lenz, who famously went missing during his circumnavigation of the globe, which he started in 1892.
Diana Greene Foster is a professor at the University of California, San Francisco.
She led the ten-year nationwide Turnaway Study analyzing the health and wellbeing of women who seek abortion in the United States — including those who do not receive one — and in 2020 published a book, The Turnaway Study: Ten Years, a Thousand Women, and the Consequences of Having—or Being Denied—an Abortion, on her findings.
In 2023, she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in recognition of her scientific work, including the book and more than 120 scientific papers. …
In 2022, she was recognized as one of the ten people who shaped science that year by Nature.
One of the most expert in the field.
Here’s a fascinating new TED Talk. Unsurprisingly, the women forced to carry a child to term have worse consequences than those who have the freedom to make the choice to abort.
Anti-choice advocates in the USA often simultaneously deny raises in minimum wage, health care for children, maternity leave, and even free school lunch. Pro birth. But not pro life.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
King is a great story teller. And this is another great story.
More of a crime book than horror story.
Holly (2023) by Stephen King … follows Holly Gibney, who made her first appearance in Mr. Mercedes (2014).
She also appeared in Finders Keepers (2015) and End of Watch (2016), and later was a major supporting character in The Outsider.
She was also the central character in If It Bleeds, a novella in the 2020 collection of the same name.
In July 2021 amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, private investigator Holly Gibney mourns the death of her mother, with whom she had a complicated and strained relationship.
Despite taking a break from work, Holly is contacted by Penelope Dahl, whose daughter Bonnie disappeared earlier that month. Holly is intrigued by Penelope’s message and agrees to work on the case. …
Holly is a damaged and flawed individual. BUT you can’t help cheering for her.
Stephen King is one of the most popular critics of Trump online.
In this book, Holly’s mom dies of covid. She had been a rapid MAGA ReTrumplican.
You can criticize the amount of anti-MAGA sentiment in this book. You could call it preachy.
I’m OK with it myself, as I agree with King that Trump is the worst thing that’s happened to the USA in a long, long time.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
I’ve been a fan of Wade Davis for decades.
An academic and adventurer. He crossed the Darién Gap at age-20, for example.
This book is a summary of his Massey Lectures:
The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World (The CBC Massey Lectures 2009)
Very good. Smart and succinct.
Davis compares cultures quickly and easily, looking for lessons for us who haven’t lived with Amazon tribes for years.
Of the thousand key point, one really struck me. His discussion of how the British — on arrival — could not understand the Australian aborigines.
These are and were a people with no notion of linear time.
Theirs was one of the great experiments in human thought. The notion that the world existed as a perfect whole, and that the singular duty of humanity was to maintain through ritual activity the land precisely as it existed when the Rainbow Serpent embarked on the journey of creation.
… But in life there is only the Dreaming, in which every thought, every plant and animal, are inextricably linked as a single impulse, the inspiration of the first dawning.
Had humanity followed this track, it is true that we would have never placed a man on the moon.
But we would most certainly not be speaking of our capacity to compromise the life support of the planet. I have never in all of my travels been so moved by a vision of another possibility, born literally 55,000 years ago.
TED Blog
Edmund Wade Davis CM (born December 14, 1953) is a Canadian cultural anthropologist, ethnobotanist, author, and photographer.
Davis came to prominence with his 1985 best-selling book The Serpent and the Rainbow about the zombies of Haiti. He is professor of anthropology and the BC Leadership Chair in Cultures and Ecosystems at Risk at the University of British Columbia.
The scenery is amazing. Excellent and varied cycling possibilities.
One of the best areas of the world for biking adventures.
Click PLAY or watch 2-minutes of highlights on YouTube.
Ultimately, I had to quit after day 3 because of illness.
Drinking from the same hoses and standing pipes as every other cyclist, I suffered some sort of stomach problem. Diarrhea. Threw up on my shoes, at one point.
Didn’t eat for about 36 hours.
BUT if not sick I might have still quit after Siena. Completing about 190km of the 472 total.
For one thing, the afternoon lightning storms were terrifying. Even the most experienced riders hunker down in lightning. Two were killed in Tuscany as I post — both hit by falling trees.
The rain turned some trails into impassable mud baths. … Though it did soften up some other trails.
My bike is excellent for normal bikepacking — but the Tuscany Trail was far more technical than I’d expected. A mountain bike with very little weight attached is what most experience riders were rocking.
I was envious of the electric mountain bikes.
My bike was the 2nd most inappropriate rig. Worse was a 2-person tandem. Husband and wife. I wished them luck.
I was cycling with ALL my gear for a months long trip.
On one of the many downhill, rocky trails a screw came loose on my front pannier rack. So my front saddle bags were rocking side-to-side.
In Siena I took as much off the bike as possible (see photo below) and went to find luggage storage.
IF you Google “siena luggage storage” you’ll find a wealth of options.
All lies. In Siena there are only tobacco shops who hold a few bags as side income. And they only open randomly. Not Sundays. … And this was Sunday.
WHY doesn’t Siena have 24-hour lockers like most Italian tourist cities.
My theory since age-17 is that Italy is hopeless for tourists.
Nothing works. Nothing is open when you need it.
A long history of government inefficiency and corruption makes it this way.
Note that Germany and Switzerland next door are two of the most efficient nations.
There are no real enforced rules in Italy. Yet every time a tourist turns around somebody is yelling at you for violating an unnecessary rule. Yeesh.
When tourists complain, it’s explained that Italians don’t care about entrepreneurship nor efficiency because they value lifestyle over money. I don’t buy it.
Chain-smoking and sipping tiny espressos is not a healthy lifestyle.
I’d definitely return to Tuscany for cycling. But not likely the most famous ride ➙ the Tuscany Trail.
For one thing, it’s mainly a ca$h grab by organizers. They spend very little and pocket over 100 € / person. Normally capped at 3000, in 2023 they went up to about 4700 bikes. Too many for these trails and small towns.
Better, for example. is the Ganza Gravel event. October is much better weather than June. Cyclists have 3-4 different routes to choose from. Folks get together for meals in the evenings. There might even be a food festival at the end.
For those who are not really cyclists, the supported electric bike tours looked very good to me. Not inexpensive.
Rosuvastatin 10mg
After 2023 annual medical lab tests, my Doctor recommended I try 3 months of a pill to see how it affects my cholesterol levels.
He was surprised to see my numbers as I don’t have other conditions often associated with cholesterol risk.
I’ll TRY as well to change my diet: fewer bad fats; less dairy, red meat, partially hydrogenated oils.
More fruits and vegetables, fish, etc.
The evidence is quite good that simultaneously taking drugs that lower blood pressure and cholesterol reduces the risk of stroke.
My blood pressure meds:
I’ve never noticed any side effects from any of these medications.
Rick McCharles 