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.

Comments

What I learned from being a stay at home, homeschooling, dance dad.

I was recently subjected to some kind of a sick experiment, in which all my free time was completely taken away, my rights to privacy relinquished. I survived at the mercy of an oligarchical panel of tiny despots. Yes, I was a stay at home parent. It isn't as easy as I thought. I don’t know about other homeschooling parents but I have a very picturesque view of how things should go. Children gathered around listening intently to unabridged classic literature. My six year old asking thoughtful questions about historical figures and the times and places in which they lived. With the utmost patience and joy my kids sounding out words of poetry, naturally learning phonetic rules in beautiful rhythm. We'd have nature walks every afternoon with plenty of time for music and art. By now you can probably tell, I don’t do most of the schooling in my house. Turns out my fantastic idea of how homeschooling should be was jus...

Lunch time in The Dirty!

The Dalles has quite a few restaurants relative to it's size. Some are great some are down right bad. These are my five favorite places to eat lunch in The Dalles in no particular order. Some are old favorites and others are relatively new establishments. All serve delicious food and drink. Montira's Thai Montira's is the only thai place in town. But that lack of competition doesn't keep them from delivering a quality product. Other restaurants of the Asian variety have them beat as far as portion size and price go but they serve a quality product consistently. I can't say that about many other places in town. Montira's serves really great food for a decent price. Just be warned if you ask for extra-spicy you will feel it all the next day... But its worth it if you really like spicy. Spooky's Spooky's is one of t...

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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