I rekindled my love for cycling last year after I bought a new-to-me Suly Midnight Special and started doing some gravel riding in our local foothills and mountains. I bought the Surly mostly because I love Surlys and have always wanted a more nimble steel bike. I’ve had a Surly Long Haul Trucker, which is steel, since 2011 and it’s probably been the best bike I’ve ever owned. It took me to-and-from work every day for years. It has taken me camping (and still does). It takes me to the grocery store and anywhere else I want to go that requires carrying stuff or keeping my feet dry. It’s old and a bit out-dated, but I love it.

As for the Midnight Special, it has that bullet-proof feel only a solid steel bike can provide. The huge tires eat up bumps and bad pavement, yet it’s still agile enough to make it fun to ride. I absolutely love riding it both on the road and on moderate gravel. As I got more into gravel riding, though, especially in the local foothills/mountains, I began thinking about getting something a bit lighter. Anyone who rides bikes (or motorcycles) knows there’s no perfect do-all bike. You have to make trade-offs. The Midnight Special is solid, yet fun to ride. But it’s a little heavy and doesn’t have the most relaxed geometry. So it can get a little sketchy on “the gnar,” as they say.

I spent a fair amount of time researching bikes and came across some pretty cool ones that were direct-to-consumer only. Lauf, which is an Iceland outfit, has a really unique gravel bike that features their famous (or infamous, depending on your view), front fork. Their Seigla is billed as more of a racing bike and it doesn’t have any mount points for bikepacking so I kind of ruled that one out.

I also really like the looks of the Trek Checkpoint although it’s a bit more expensive than some of the other options (I think you pay a premium for the Trek brand). However, having access to a local dealer that can provide support appeals to me so I haven’t ruled out a Trek.

The other interesting bike I found was from a company in Utah named Fezzari. Well, they were named “Fezzari,” but recently changed their name to “Ari”. They’ve been saying that they wanted to “Better articulate our identity” with the name change, but I think it’s because so many people hated the name Fezzari. The comments in nearly every review or Reddit post about their bikes would spin off into a conversation about how horrible their name is and how folks would never buy one of their bikes because the name is so embarrassing. I wasn’t nuts about “Fezzari” but it didn’t bother me enough to not consider buying one. They have a carbon gravel bike named Shafer, which might be a sign since that’s the name of one of our cats (who is named after the local mountain where I do most of my bikepacking and gravel riding). It looks like a really solid bike that checks all of the boxes for what I’m looking for, except the direct-to-customer bit, I guess.

I told myself and, more importantly, my wife, that I was not going to succumb to the urge to buy another new bike this year and just stick with the Midnight Special since I think I can make that work for the rides I’m doing. As I mentioned, it can be a little sketchy on some of the really rough stuff, but I tend to be pretty cautious so I’m not too worried about it. I still have my old Look 585 for road rides, which I do occasionally. It’s on its last legs, though, so at some point I’ll need to get a gravel bike that works well enough for road riding, too. Maybe 2025!

You have a couple options when playing racing games: you can race against computer-created opponents, generally called “AI” or you can race online against other humans. For the latter usually the game will connect you to a server that shows you upcoming races and some details about them (e.g., start time, virtual location (aka track), how long, how many people registered, etc.). You can then jump in and start racing, which usually ends in tears (aka lots of crashes) because it’s anonymous and random. You may be driving next to someone who’s been playing for years or someone who bought the game 10 minutes ago and is just messing around. Or worse, someone who wants to cause mayhem and crash people on purpose. Game designers try to put controls in place (e.g., safety ratings, rankings, etc.) to keep races clean, but it’s a difficult problem to solve. Which leads me to another aside that I think is unique about racing games.

In a typical video game, you try to dispatch your opponents in whatever way you can, as long as you follow the rules. Racing is weird because while your goal is to be faster than your opponent, you also need to cooperate with them. It’s obvious that to be fair and within the rules you can’t run people off the road or crash into them. But less obvious is the delicate dance that happens when you’re truly racing someone. For example, you need to give opponents room when you’re side-by-side in a corner. You can’t dive-bomb or make moves that are unpredictable and dangerous. You need to respect the other driver and cooperate with them, yet still compete with them.

As you can imagine, doing this online, even in the best of circumstances with people you know and race with a lot, is fraught with problems. People make mistakes or over-estimate their abilities, which causes crashes. Or there are simply different interpretations of “who owns the corner” or if a move was fair or not. There are a thousand other scenarios that can end someone’s race.

Here’s probably the worst scenario when it comes to league sim racing. Say your league has a weekly race that everyone knows about in advance. You spend hours practicing and working on your car setup. (Yeah, literally, hours.) The night of the race comes and you spend an hour doing the pre-race practice session with everyone. Then there’s a 20 minute qualifying session. You do well and are in P3, right in the second row. The race starts and you all rush down the main straight towards the first corner. As you enter the corner someone behind you has missed their braking marker and hits you from behind. Your car spins around and 25 cars rush past you. Your car is damaged and you can’t really drive it so you have to retire from the race. So the 12 hours you spent preparing for the race are over in 35 seconds and you finished in last place.

This happens frequently enough to where it can cause you to question why you spend the time. But it’s not all doom-and-gloom. There are times when you prepare for a race and it ends up being amazing. You have a bunch of intense and respectful battles, survive the race, and have a great time. And this is why you keep racing online with other humans – you’re continually chasing that high you get every now and then when the stars align and something magical happens.

Rallying, though, is a different beast since it’s only time trials. So the format works really well for online racing. You can create a rally event with multiple locations, each with a certain number of stages. You set a start date and an end date for each location and participants simply need to complete their stages before the end date. No hassles trying to find a time for 30+ people to race once a week. No races ended by someone else smashing into you.

Some of the best things about the previous Dirt Rally 2.0 were the daily, weekly, and monthly online rallies that were built right into the game. Every day you could start up the game and find a few different rallies to race. Some only had a single stage, but others had a few stages. Some only lasted the day and others ran for a week or a month. It was really cool to practice for the stages and then see how you compared to other drivers.

Unfortunately, the new WRC game doesn’t have that exact same setup, but they do have this concept of clubs, which is really cool. (I think DR2.0 had clubs as well, but I never really used that feature when I played it.) Anyone can create a club and setup whatever rallies they want, choosing the car class, location, weather, time of day, number of stages, etc. People can then join the club via the Racenet website and get access to the rallies right in the game interface. I’m really impressed with how slick it is and that the website has built-in telemetry and comparison data for all the runs. It’s really, really neat.

Racenet combined with Discord has allowed a bunch of different groups to create pretty vibrant communities that run daily/weekly/monthly rallies and special event rallies. I’m starting to get involved in a couple of them and will probably be writing about it more. Now I just need to get my driving up to speed.

In late spring of 2022 I was getting a little burnt out on learning guitar and wanted to do something that was challenging, but also fun. Learning guitar is rewarding, but sometimes you get in a rut and the struggle overpowers the amount of actual fun you’re having. So I decided to buy an Xbox and get back into gaming.

Like most Gen-Xers I grew up playing video games and loved it. I started playing Atari and then when I was older saved up and bought a Nintendo (NES) and played that for hundreds of hours. I moved to computer games before giving it up the last couple years of high school. I was too busy studying and working in college to play much and, aside from a short stint with an original Xbox in the early aughts, never really did any gaming after college. I always felt guilty, like I should be studying or working or “doing something productive.”

I kind of regret giving it up because I think it’s a great hobby. But back then it wasn’t nearly as social as it is now. There wasn’t any online gaming so no Discord or Twitch, of course. Pretty much all socializing was done in person so sitting around by yourself and playing video games when you’re in your teens and 20s was a bit limiting, at least back then. At any rate, I decided now that I’m retired and live in a state that has winter again, I should make up for lost time and get back into it.

My original plan was to start playing F1 2021 since I was newly into F1 and thought doing some F1 racing on Xbox would be fun. I quickly discovered racing games on a controller kind of suck so I bought a low-end wheel and pedals. I also discovered Dirt Rally 2.0 and got massively into that, way more than playing F1. I also started playing Assetto Corsa Competizione (ACC), which led to another, more expensive discovery: a PC is required for this kind of stuff. So I bought a PC and then upgraded my wheel and pedals and, yeah, things got a little out of control. This is all probably cheaper than golfing or skiing, but still a little ridiculous. And it’s even more ridiculous given the fact that I’m not a “car guy” and, in fact, kind of despise cars. But, for some very strange reason, I love racing pretend ones. At any rate, I learned how to use Discord, joined a league, and did a lot of online racing with humans from all over the planet.

League racing is probably the best aspect of sim racing since you get to know the people you’re racing against. That leads to cleaner, more competitive racing. And aside from the racing part, it’s just fun to meet different people and add a more social component to the whole thing. But, it’s competitive and ends up taking a lot of time. I had been doing it for nearly two years so at the end of 2023 I figured I’d take a break.

It’s been a couple months since I’ve done much racing but a couple weeks ago I picked up the latest WRC game during the Steam spring sale and have been playing that a bit. WRC was released last fall and is the successor to the beloved Dirt Rally 2.0. Like most new games it had some issues at launch, but seems to be a lot better now. I’ve been having a blast getting back into it and although it’s only been a couple years, it kind of feels nostalgic to be playing a rally game again. I don’t think I played DR2 after I started getting serious about ACC, so I’m back to complete noob status. But I’ve found some online communities who are obsessed with rallying and run custom events so I’m getting more serious about it.

I’ve got a bit more to say about this, but it’s getting a little long so I’ll pick things up in a second part. In the meantime, here’s an awesome video about Group B rallying in the 1980s.

There have been more than a couple times over the past few years where my wife and I have been driving somewhere and I’ll start rambling about new car paint, trying to figure out/talk through why it looks different. Like Hank Green in the below video, though, I could never really articulate what I was seeing and why I thought the paint on some new cars was different. I think my wife, who’s generally a good sport when it comes to my various/many eccentricities, maybe saw what I was talking about, but I also got the vibe she was just humoring me. At one point I remember concluding, “It’s like a matte finish, but still glossy.” I think I left it at that, but in the back of my mind it’s always been something I’ve been curious about.

So today I opened up YouTube and was about to search for something when I saw the below video in my recommended list. I’ve never done any searches on the car paint thing I just mentioned and I don’t think I’ve ever watched a Hank Green video before. So I don’t know why the video was recommended to me, but wow what a recommendation. First, it’s good to know know I’m not alone in both noticing this and trying to figure out exactly what’s going on. Second, now I know what’s going on – haha! No flakes!

Here’s a link to the article Hank references in the video.

One of my favorite shows in the last few years is The Bear. I don’t think I’m alone because it’s won a bunch of awards and accolades, all well-deserved. Many people comment about how realistic the show is when it comes to working in a kitchen. I’ve never worked in the food industry so I can’t really comment on that. But, like I said, the general consensus from folks who know is that the authenticity of the kitchen scenes – the culture, the characters, the lingo, the physical and mental pressures – is legit.

In addition to the amazing acting, writing, and cinematography, I find the whole obsession with perfection at high-end restaurants mesmerizing. I’m sure things are different when you’re a one-percenter and everywhere you go is dialed-in, but to the average person like myself it seems like most businesses are unorganized and kind of half-assed. It’s interesting to get a glimpse into this world where perfection is the bar and everyone seems to really care about quality.

I read Unreasonable Hospitality last year after watching season 2 of The Bear and it gives more details about what it takes to get a Michelin star (or stars). It’s a bit weird that I’m so interested in this, yet have zero desire to actually dine at any of these places. Perhaps it would be fun to go to Eleven Madison Park since it’s now plant-based. But, I don’t think I’d ever be able to justify the cost. Who knows, though, maybe some day.

Back to the point. I worked at a Fortune 100 tech company for 17 years. It wasn’t exactly the pinnacle of high-tech, Silicon Valley, but it also wasn’t a shitty mom-and-pop, either. However, in my 17 years I can’t say I was ever in a single situation where I was overwhelmed with a team’s “level of perfection.” I don’t want to come off like a snob here because our team was the same. Sloppy at times, working to the level of “good enough” and, for the most part, hitting that target. But still, the pervasive culture included a lot of shoulder shrugging. And there’s probably a good reason everyone at that particular company, and people at most companies, strive for “good enough:” the effort required to move the needle from, say, 95% to 99.9% just isn’t worth the gains. Kind of an 80/20 thing, I guess.

I also think there’s some type of defense mechanism at play. It’s either the “cool kids don’t care” syndrome or something related where if you totally commit to caring 100% about your craft, you open yourself up to a lot of disappointment and heartache. And mental health issues, like The Bear highlights. Yet there’s still something alluring about striving for a level of perfection that’s utterly unreasonable. Like really committing to something, showing it’s actually cool to care and that you’ve thought about all the details and have your shit completely dialed in. Where every meeting has an agenda and people are prepared, present, and engaged instead of on their phones or laptops. All documentation is 100% complete and accurate. There’s not a piece of lab equipment out of place. Everyone is unified and working toward the same goals. Tape is cut, not torn.

While The Original Beef of Chicagoland certainly doesn’t capture this ethos at the start of the show, Carmen and Sydney seem to. The other restaurants featured in the show definitely do. I think it’s also fair to say the actors, writers, cinematographers, and editors of the show itself (we’re getting meta now) are working at an insanely high standard and are displaying some of that obsession with details and that’s what makes the show so amazing.

Today’s world feels so hectic and fast-paced with people sprinting all day, every day just to keep up. There’s something refreshing when people decide they are going to buck the trend of “more, more, more at any cost” and instead focus on details and an insanely high level of quality. On the other hand, Carmy is exactly that type of person, pursuing this insane and somewhat unattainable ideal and his life outside of work is a complete mess. (And maybe even inside work, given how season 2 ends.) Perhaps the romanticized ideal is a myth and while we can strive for perfect, “good enough” is the healthier choice.