Little travelogue, maybe, of my friend Matthew’s and mine trip to France! Travel “day” was really quite rough – in quotes because Friday and Saturday were basically contiguous. Up until the point of getting the airport it was all lovely, and then it was 7.5h in a huge tin can where I couldn’t really move forward or back, and still managed to fidget my way into not being able to sleep for basically the entire time – maybe 2h, generously, across a dozen concerted attempts. We landed at noon local time, navigated customs which was all pretty automatic, and then needed to gtfo. I had planned out the route from CDG to the train station to get our TGV to our destination, and that bus just wasn’t running. Not knowing much but trusting, they said we needed to get on this other bus for €14.

That bus dropped us in the middle of like, suburban commercial newness/nothingness, and we then schlepped all our bags (no rollers, thank god) probably 1.5mi to what I thought was “m13 bus,” but of course the M means Metro!!! And that’s great, we love the Paris light rail!!! And while we were able to take it all the way to the huge central train station, getting through the turnstile was massively difficult, my ticket continued to be rejected, no one was around, until finally there was, and he checked that I’d bought fares (like 3 lmao) on the non working ticket and waved me through.

As we descended through the station, the perfect train rose up to meet us and though it was like 15 stops, it was easy and direct and quite pleasant. After some mid food and coffee and a sit, we got onto the TGV where I did whatever I could to stay awake, which oddly meant no video games, and a really lovely hour and a half later landed us to the little town we’re staying in. It was such a relief, stepping off the train and having theeee breeziest, nicest-weather walk to the place we’re staying, on the 4th floor of an unobtrusive place on the main drag, loft vibes, so nice.

I’m back in France and fighting the urge to write this blog post in bad French! I’ve conducted a few conversations in English but a few en français too. While it’s been a VERY logistically challenging day, I’m so eager to use my French, which honestly is decent. I just want to keep being kinda bad at it so I can maybe get a little better at it!

Hey, remember Autostraddle, the lesbian mag? Online? Good essays? It’s still around and it, is GREAT. They’ve recently started publishing physical issues. This recent one is like, Harper’s Bazaar length at like 250pp, thick paper, & no ads, I think? I can’t imagine the monumental work involved in putting this very very very stylized magazine together, so youuuuuuu should buy a copy and/or subscribe.

Issue #2 is food writing, all naturally quite queer, and this very brief, incredibly real and emotional essay on caesar salad deserves to be read in paper. And it features Melissa King on the cover and in a loving photographic editorial!

Get ye some: https://forthem.com/collections/print-issues-1/products/autostraddle-print-issue-02

I was chatting with my Dad yesterday and he asked what devices I have, and finally I have figured out the way to convey my feelings on google/apple/microsoft/etc. I don’t like lock-in! So I have a personal desktop PC, a mac for work, a linux laptop, a work iphone, a personal android, and various other things. I give different login credentials to basically all of these, because I can make an infinity* of addresses from my domain. I really despair the monopolization/colonization of smaller companies and solutions.

Have just done some lookback on 2025 triathlon expenses, specifically on training supplements, i.e., stuff to make sports drink out of, and “food” that is easy to eat during long efforts (goos, gels, gummies). Mostly sugar and salt, but in specific types: glucose and fructose, sodium and potassium and magnesium.

I added up all the expenses from all the vendors we buy from over all our accounts and credit cards, and then split it in two because my wife and I buy these things together and our training is quite similar. So for me, it comes out to a little more than $100/mo. It COULD be cheaper, especially if I start to get into making my own mixes with sodium citrate, but as things get closer and closer to actual chemistry, I feel it’s safest for me to back away! Though I am interested in this generally.

An easy place to reduce some costs is with maltodextrin, an extremely processed sugar that does not really taste sweet. Note: you should not buy or use maltodextrin unless you are trying to hit specific carbohydrate quantities, usually for athletic reasons! You want to drink it, process it, and for it to be gone, it is not any kind of sugar replacement for everyday use! A five pound bag of the stuff was $17 as of a couple months ago, which is such a fraction of a fraction of any carbohydrate sports drink mix. So you start with the good stuff, and then add malto til you hit the carb quantity you’re looking for. For an hour-long, hard-effort bike ride, I’ll do about 3 servings of $BRAND sports drink mix with 400mg sod and 20g cho per serving, and then another 30-40g maltodextrin, which is 1:1 carbohydrate by weight. This might sound like a lot of sodium, but I’ll save that discussion for another day!

It would be interesting to try to experiment with more natural sugars, but it tends to not process as quickly as the a) cheap stuff like malto, or b) tailor-made sports drink formulations which often include a good ratio of fast to slow processing sugar. So it would take some experimentation! For me, this is a big part of why triathlon is so engaging, there’s nothing I’m not tweaking at any given time!

It might be interesting (and sobering..) also to add up everything I spent on triathlon last year. It is a very costly sport. Honestly, I have a number in mind, some mental napkin math of expenses, but I’m not going to share it here!! Get at me if you want to know!!

I’m just dying to talk weightlifting! It’s Rude to proselytize but unfortunately salesmanship has always been one of my traits, so at least I’ll try to confine it to this opt-in, rather voidy space.

Note: IANAD, IANAL either!

Check out Casey Johnston’s LIFTOFF for a really lovely, comprehensive beginners guide to weightlifting. The basic movements – the ones you associate with weightlifting – are straightforward to learn, and a lifetime to master. So, I feel it’s not hard to start, and it stays rewarding for a LONG time!

A barbell is generally 45 pounds. There are some which are 35 pounds, but they are less common at your normal gyms. If you can’t lift that yet, then work up to it with dumbbells. But I bet you will surprise yourself if you try a barbell back squat at that weight, even without having tried it before.

The barbell is used for many many lifts, but in addition to the squat, some other common lifts you’ll see are the deadlift, where you use your legs to push off the ground while holding on to the barbell, and the bench press, where you are pushing the barbell up above your horizontal body.

If you’re not sure where to begin and you’re curious, the book I recommended is GREAT, and I would love to talk to you about any questions you have, and barring all that, just go hang out on one of the weird machines at the gym and observe for a little while (this is a Casey Johnston tip).

Rules for thee but not for me, today. When having the mental health and overwhelm conversations with friends and loved ones, of course I talk about why vulnerability, community, mutual trust, etc, are important. But when it comes to needing to ask for a spotter at the gym (someone to watch and catch the bar if you fail during particular kinds of lifts, especially bench presses), I hate it and it keeps me from pushing as heavy as I know I could. So I tried to ask two people today and the first one thought I was asking for his bench and said he’ll be done soon 😦 and the second one was only kinda available and helped for two of the five sets. So I need to restrategize and figure out how to have the conversation where I ask for help. Even knowing this, I don’t hate it any less! And yes.. this is a metaphor for something bigger!

Have been lifting again for the last couple weeks, and even though I’m just barely putting the bumper plates on again, it feels amazing to be doing this again. I can deadlift 70 pounds! It’s not a lot but it’s probably more than a beginner, and I know that number is only going up. It’s tough to lift as a triathlete, but I’m taking roughly 8 weeks to do so alongside minimal cardio, where I will then abandon it yet again once I thoroughly exit the off-season. One day I would love to just focus on strength! But I love triathlon at the moment and it’s a very demanding (in literally every way) sport.

Erika and I are coming off the long winter break, and I’m just appreciating so much that my work gives me a week between christmas & new years, and because NYD landed on a Thursday, they gave us the Friday of Jan 2 off too, so it really felt like a solid week and a half off!

Not in a resolutions kind of way, but I’m eager to become a journaling type, again, and I’ve already got this blog with the world’s best domain name possible, so why not actually try to get there, right here?? Processing with a bit of writing is something I’ve always done and I think my mental health does really well with that. It’s also good practice to just be in the habit of writing.

I’m coming up on year four of doing triathlon, and I think I’m finding an equilibrium of effort and interest. I’ve been taking it slowly, ramping up, and now I can comfortably do an Olympic-distance triathlon at pretty much any point, and a 70.3 with a known, predictable degree of training. That distance is hard! But it’s now gotten to the point where that feels like the kind of effort you (I mean, you know, “I”) can settle into, you’re not sprinting the whole time, you’re finding a sustainably effortful pace at a heartrate that doesn’t blow out. At this time, I don’t have any interest in doing a full distance ironman, but 1-2 “half distance”, the 70.3 and comparable, per year, is a lot of effort but very doable.

Speaking of milestones, I’ll be five years at my job next month and I’m so proud of that! I started in one area, hired to bring ops practices to a very networking-heavy team, and then I moved to another department in 2023, and I could stay here, and/or in this space (Certificate Authority/ies, if that means much of anything to you), for a very long time.

And speaking of another milestone, my wife and I will be celebrating our one year anniversary next month as well 🙂 it honestly just keeps getting better.

I’ve got a triathlon this weekend, and I’m curious how it’s going to go. I’ve done this exact tri before, and now it’s been a year and I’m hoping I’ll be stronger than last time, my first time doing this race. Also I had just gotten over covid like a week prior, last year this time! My running has been pretty solid because I’ve been getting like 5 runs a week, sheesh. My bike is getting stronger lately, but all this takes time and is slow. My swim somehow seems to be taking a dive (lol), but this is a weird one – first half is against the current, second half is with it (there ‘n back in a river). So the only comparison is my performance last year!