Ah, got it. I could see them getting to be a bit much. I wanted to post a bit of the background and also some of the things about the bike and purchasing decision to maybe give a some more value to the community. Not sure if they worked.

EDIT: Oh, I found a community on Lemmy.world that appears to be dedicated to people sharing their bikes: !xbiking@Lemmy.world

So far, so good! I’m glad you like the colour. That will help me warm up to it too. I think it’s growing on me.

I have a pair of single-sided SPD pedals, like these. They allow me to use my clipless shoes if I want, or flip the pedal over and use any shoes. Main drawback is that you have to fumble sometimes to get to the right side of the pedal you want.

Not sure if this is against the rules of this magazine, so please let me know. Back in the Reddit days, we’d post photos of our new bikes and title the posts “NBD” (new bike day).

I used to ride a 2016 Trek Émonda. I loved that bike, though sometimes I wished it was a bit more versatile when riding with the kids, on rough ground, etc. Anyway, at the height of the pandemic, in a bout of depression, I decided to just sell it. I almost immediately regretted it.

I’ve been looking for a replacement for a couple of years, trying to find something perfect, but not rushing. I wanted something that was more versatile, with more tire clearance, so figured I’d jump on the gravel bandwagon. I have weird body proportions (6’1“, but with a really long torso and an inseam of less than 32”, so finding a fit can be difficult. I wanted a bike with a stack of 600mm+, a reach at 400mm+, but also a standover as low as possible (like 770mm or less). Even with the wealth of gravel bike choices available right now, that didn’t leave a lot of options.

I decided to go with a 58cm Knolly Cache Steel, which I had to order in to my “local” Knolly dealer. It looked to be everything I wanted, and as a bonus, it’s Canadian-made, and it’s steel!

Some points:

• The frame is gorgeous. Lots of beautiful bends and elegant welds.
• I debated over going with a 1x or 2x drivetrain. I decided on the 2x, because I was nervous about running out of gears. I’m already glad that I did. I tend to push higher gears than others, and even with the 2x, I find myself riding in the highest gear somewhat regularly.
• I picked the grey colour, which in real life has much more of a blue/purple hue than expected, and the red lettering is much more of a hot fuchsia. Still, it has sort of a fun ’80s vibe.
• While this bike is a good 5 pounds heavier than the Émonda, and the tires offer more rolling resistance, in practice it doesn’t feel much slower than my old bike.
• Ordering a bike online can be very nerve-wracking when it comes to fit, especially for someone like me with weird body proportions. I had a good idea of what I was looking for from a geometry perspective, but one thing to note is that many dimensions can be measured in different ways from manufacturer to manufacturer. For example, the 58cm Cache has a listed standover of 717mm, but that number is so low partly because of the way Knolly measures: they measure right at where the top tube and seat tube connect (so not really where you wold stand over the bike), and I suspect they don’t take tire height into account, which in this case adds about 50mm+ to the actual measurement.

I have a very similar dream to yours, where I don’t even realize I’m enrolled in a class until a week before it ends. The main difference for me is that it isn’t an exam that I have to get through. Instead there’s some kind of year-end assignment that is due, which requires me to know everything that has happened in class all year.

Another, scarier one that I have is going into the basement and once down there, the stairs to get back up are gone. So I’m panicking trying to find a way out (and sometimes chased by a monster).

Somewhat related: I’m leasing a 2023 Nissan Rogue, which has a CVT. But it also has paddle shifters! I’ve tried it a few times but it just feels weird.

I do around 10:30 to 5:30, which would be okay, except I wake up a lot throughout the night, almost always starting between 2:30 and 3:00. This past week, my first wake-up has been even earlier, around 1:30.

It’s hard to imagine now, but the original Game Boy blew my mind because it used cartridges. I don’t know of an earlier handheld that had interchangeable games.

VS Code works well on macOS. I use it on my Windows work computer and my Mac home computer, and the experience is pretty much the same, aside from key bindings.

From my understanding, Emacs is easier to get up and running in macOS, though I’m not really sure what the challenges are on Windows.