Favorite Things: May 2018 Edition

New series of monthly (my intentions at least) things I'm really enjoying...

Ride Report

Ride Report is an app which uses your phone's location data to automatically keep track of your bike rides. For each ride it asks you a simple survey "How was your ride." After collecting enough survey data from rides Ride Report can generate a map showing the worst and best rides for a city. Some cities are even using this data to make better transportation decisions.

I'm not sure if this app will work at a smaller scale for a city like The Dalles, but the idea is very cool. The more people the use it the more helpful it will be. At this point I've only ever said my rides were great and being the only user in town this is very unscientific. I highly recommend using this app for fun and better city planning or at least better informed fellow cyclists.

Libby

Libby is an app which allows you to borrow ebooks through your local library. For some reason it is much easier for me to get through a book quickly if I have it as an ebook on my phone. Libby combines the convenience of ebooks with the price of the public library (AKA free). The ereader itself has a different interface but is pretty comparable to Google Play Books and Kindle in my opinion.

There are a few drawbacks to getting your books this way however. Popular new books have very long wait times. If you place a hold on a hot new piece of fiction you might have to wait for six months plus. Also, the duration of the loan is shorter than a normal book from the library. Only 2 weeks. So if you're like me and it takes you a while to work your way through a novel this might not always work for you or you'll have to be interrupted in the middle of your story (this happened to me while reading Carrie).

If you use a public library (or at least The Wasco County Library) and have a device to read ebooks Libby is wealth worth trying out.

Good Fruit Grower

This article and video interview of my cousin Nick Anderson reminds me of how blessed I was to grow up on a farm. Having a family life that requires you to learn how to work and parents who teach you how to have fun doing it is one of the greatest gifts a child can have in my mind. I can't really take my kids to work with me so this one of those virtues I'll have to pass on to my kids some other way.

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Book Review: Tribes

Tribes by Seth Godin is a quick read on leadership. I read this book because it was listed on "Books every leader needs to read" or some such similarly named list. There are some good bits to glean out of this short book. I'll try to condense them here: Managers are not by nature leaders. Managers allocate resources to accomplish a defined outcome. Leaders change things by setting a vision and building a tribe around that vision. Tribes are everywhere big and small. Mega-tribes, sub-tribes, etc. Leadership is inherent risky. But far less risky than our minds tend to think. This is evidenced by the many failures of several highly successful leaders. (Think Elon Musk and the Tesla Truck presentation ). Find people who are doing exceptionally better than average and amplify their influence on everyone else. Leadership is about challenging the status quo. It is s...

Bike disaster leads to awesome discovery about my neighborhood.

While replacing the tire on my front wheel last week my quick release just completely fell apart. Being a bicycle maintenance noob I said to myself "No! Now I need to go buy a whole new wheel!" (and quick because this is my commuter bike ) I quickly hopped in the car and drove down town to the local bike shop downtown, which was closed. Apparently the owner is "biking and eating in Italy." I have only ever known of this one bike shop in The Dalles. In desperation I did a search for bike shops near The Dalles and low and behold a location popped up just blocks from my house. T & Nae's Cycles is a little appointment only bike shop a couple operates out of their house. I didn't know it was appointment only at the time so I just hoofed it up there to see if they could help me fix my bike. Luckily somebody was home and willing to help me out. Once I explained to him my problem he got me the part I needed (for free! ...

How to not dread running.

It’s warming up and the sun has been shining (kind of). You could almost say it was running season. I have to admit however, at the when it first started warming up this year I was dreading starting to run. Memories of last year's misery haunted me and I was seriously contemplating giving the whole thing up. Ultimately I did give running one another shot. So how are things going this year? Pretty darn well actually. Better than ever even! This year I’ve earned PRs for every distance Strava keeps track of, I haven’t suffered any injuries and I’m genuinely enjoying myself. This is much better than last year. Last year I had a short and fairly miserable season, plagued with injuries. Last year I had a few goals tied up with running . I wanted to run longer and faster than I ever had. I had really detailed goals for each week of the summer, how far I should be running and at what pace. I tried to make sure I never broke the “10% rule” adding too m...

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