Xenosthesia.com

Cables

Swearing is a powerful thing, when you’re taking an oath, or making a promise. And I did.

I promised myself that the next time I had any trouble whatsoever with my hydraulic brake system, I’d make it one hundred million times better by switching to a mechanical, cable brake system.

I swore it and then I did it. Here for evidence is the picture positive proof. Above is the front and below is the rear brake.

First kudos go to northwestbicycle.com for having and delivering the absolute best parts in the known mountain biking universe. The delivery was prompt, even though I chose to make an order at a difficult time of year. One of their sales associates described the past two weeks as “nuts”. Probably a good sign for their business, if they’re so busy to call it “nuts”.

I seriously hope this shameless plug for them makes it even more nuts. Do all your bike shopping through Northwest Bicycle. They’re the best!

Hopefully you’ll notice from the pictures that I didn’t have to get new discs. I used those from my previous brake system.

Second kudos go to Origin8.

(I purchased the Origin8 Slick Compressionless MTB Brake Cable/Housing Kit Front and Rear 3000mm/1500mm & 2800mm 5mm/1.5mm Black, along with the Origin8 Vise II PM MTB Mechanical Disc Brake Front or Rear Black X2)

Origin8, who made this brake system, makes it easy to install, and everything necessary was included. By the way, if you plan on upgrading to this particular system and purchase the same items listed above, keep in mind you’ll need some brake levers. I didn’t buy any because I already had some that would work with this mechanical cable brake system.

The immediate reward is this: I had the extremely happy job of trying out, or in other words, test driving, my new brakes and they are phenomenal. They perform beautifully. In fact, the difference between the stopping power of the mechanical versus the hydraulic is not even discernible. The real test, of course, will be time: How much maintenance will go into the upkeep of this cable brake system. I suspect much less, and truly my experience is this: cable systems are worth much more in the long run than hydraulics. I had some of the first hydraulic brakes when they were a new idea for mountain bikes, and though they were built well (I had Magura back then), they still failed due to aggressive riding—or should I say aggressive crashing? Hahaha!

Anyway, unless you want to carry a syringe or two, oil, and tubing with you on the trail, fixing hydraulics in the middle of a ride is not an option. When hydraulic systems fail, you have zero brakes. ZERO. These are the main reasons I wanted to upgrade to cables: they’re less likely to become completely powerless, you can inspect them and actually see any potential defects, and they’re easy to maintain on or off trail.

Remember: Less trial, more trail.

Time To Slow Down?

There are moments in life when everything seems to slow down—and there are times when life needs to slow down.

A person can only take on so much before they’re overwhelmed. For instance, how many jobs can you have in a day? Most of us can only accomplish a finite number of tasks in a day. Most of us can only handle a set amount of responsibilities in a day.

“Burning the candle at both ends,” they say. And the old chestnut is fitting in some circumstances.

Your circumstance may be one.

If you’ve been feeling overwhelmed trying to get ahead, or even just trying to stay alive, it might be time to slow down. It might be time to redefine your meanings.

The purpose of life and the meaning of life. Are they the same?

I would argue they’re different. To me, the meaning of life is a reason to say it; the purpose of life is a reason to do it.

So now you might be thinking, “Great philosophy, but it doesn’t help with the stress of my life.”

It could though. Once you’ve defined life the word and life the event, and separated the two, you can start to define the attributes of the two. If you’re struggling just to stay alive, but you can redefine what it means to be alive, or all of the necessities of life, then you can make it simpler. The simpler the goal, the easier it is to achieve.

For example: A man might think he needs to shave his face to keep himself in the game. But if he stopped shaving for a time and realized no changes to life have manifested, couldn’t he remove that false idea from his definition? Does he need to hold on to an idea that he has proven non-essential to life?

Likewise with many of the ideas we assign to the purpose or the meaning of life. They can be altered, rearranged, or even removed, and life continues onward.

So do you.

Success with Resolutions

Only 20% of new businesses fail in the first year.

80% of New Year resolutions fail in the first month.

What do entrepreneurs have that resolution-makers don’t? How is it that businesses crash on through, while diets and exercise routines simply crash? What is the difference? Why are resolutions more likely to fail? Is it the difference in the rewards? A successful business promises a paycheck and a way to eat, while a diet promises to starve. Or at least it might seem that way.

Possibly a solution to the problem is to create a reward for the resolution.

For instance, someone taking on a new diet should make sure the goal is clear. If the diet is for more balanced blood sugar, a dieter could make the goal be consistency. Chart the progress and make sure there are short term rewards as well as long term rewards. A short term reward might be a cool new gadget to hold drinks, such as a Blender Bottle. With clear expectations and rewards for the effort, success is more likely.

Another resolution-maker might want to carry on with a new exercise routine. Again, the goal needs to be clear. Is it for more endurance? Or is the goal to slim down? Or is the goal to gain muscle mass? Whichever of these, the goal can be so undefined as to be unattainable. To make it more meaningful, the goal needs to be more detailed. Someone trying to gain endurance needs to define the activity, activity duration, and energy spent. The energy spent means how much effort is put into the work. Endurance can be quantified by those three measures. Someone rating their endurance would want to measure an initial event and compare it to later events. A reward in the case of someone riding a stationary bike might be to forego music the first few times around, and then when the endurance improves, reward with music to make the activity more interesting and fun. This kind of reward also reinforces the habit.

To slim down, a person may simply want to fit in their old pants again. Easy enough for the brain, but not an easy map to follow. If a person wants to slim down, they need to define how exactly they’re going to get there. They could say, “More exercise and a modified diet.” More exercise and a modified diet are still generalized goals. If a person needs to eat fewer cheeseburgers, define it exactly so, but with numbers. How many fewer? Does anyone even know how many they eat in a week or a month or a year? If not, and the goal is a number, then it’s time to find out. If the number was twenty, make the goal be fifteen. Same with the “more” exercise generalization. It needs to be less nebulous in its formation. A person should decide how much exercise is already being done and then add to it. Say this person already exercises once a week. They may want to add one more exercise session or four. The number added depends on the person, but success depends on the clarity they give to their resolution.

Consider the business again for a moment. If a person went into business and decided to sell shorts to people who want to workout, would they say, “Let’s sell enough shorts to break even. Ready, go!”

Of course not. They would say, “We’ve spent X number of dollars starting the company. We need to sell Y number of exercise shorts to break even on startup costs, so let’s sell Y + n to make a profit! At least enough to buy lunch. Work for that cheeseburger!”

Define the goal.

Chart the progress.

Reward the progress.

An Optimistic 2020 Review

If you were thinking there couldn’t be a worse year than 2020, think again. There were some really amazing things that happened in the midst of all the coughing and the holding in of coughs and the political freak-outs and the extrovert freak-outs and even the regular everyday mentally-challenged freak-outs. No matter what country you live in, you likely had a mixture of all of the above.

By the way, by extrovert freak-outs, I mean it was a great year for introverts. While extra-verts, a.k.a. extroverts were wigging out because they couldn’t mingle as much as they loved, introverts were saying, “They want me to stay in my house and keep my distance from others? It’s what I was born to do.”

No patience for the year-in-review articles of others, I had to make my own. Even Dave Barry, whose articles are usually quite entertaining, was mostly political this time around, and political is the equivalent of unfunny. Not that reviews have to be funny, but this is Dave Barry we’re talking about. You know, the funniest guy in journalism. Well, as they say, no one can always bat one thousand.

One thing that was kind of funny about 2020 was that there were so many sports arenas without sports, and so few people even talked about it. I mean, all year, the same people I know who would talk endlessly about their sport team, had nothing to say. I should be honest, and admit they had very little to say…until Chadwick Boseman died. Then everything turned to how good Chadwick was, and it was like a dream come true for all of us who get sick of hearing people talk about sports and politics every second of every day (although, in my opinion, sports talk is far better).

Chadwick was the highlight of 2020. And before you say, “Yeah, but he died.” Not only is that a very provincial view, but it’s a shallow view as well. One could at least wax optimistic and easily say, “At least we had him for some of the year.” Chadwick is a Christian, so to die after having done so much for everyone he could is the ultimate compliment. Not only was he a great man, but he left us stories of his good deeds in the middle of a year full of news that was difficult to stomach. News agencies are notoriously scandal-focused, but when Chadwick passed, we saw all those agencies turn their focus on the goodness in humanity.

Included with the great stories of great men, we had some top-notch science going on also. There was a study which discovered spraying water in a fine mist can produce hydrogen peroxide. There is no doubt this is a valuable discovery in light of recent events.

In other science news, still helpful, was the discovery of the ability to genetically engineer tomatoes as a source of a drug used in helping people suffering with Parkinson’s disease. This and the previous science news were found on the Science Daily web site. The idea for this one was to make an efficient way for undeveloped countries to have an efficient and inexpensive source of the drug for Parkinson’s. In my mind it could be an efficient way for everyone on the planet to receive the drug. Plus, who could argue with drug production that could also produce the ingredients for a pizza?

Psychology studies in 2020 were off the charts. It was amazing to many scientists that during a pandemic, with people in quarantine—with no one requiring anything of them—those people still altered their clocks. Twice in the same year, people followed the same pointless tradition of “Daylight Saving Time”, even though they didn’t have to answer to anyone but themselves. Psychologists are still trying to figure out why.

Lastly, there was brief, and in my opinion too brief, mention of alien spacecraft during 2020. The only thing remaining throughout the year was that if you ever got tested for C19 then you know what it’s like to have your orifices invaded during an alien abduction. Hahahahahahaha!

Test of Thumbs

There is a test to see how many words a person can type while using only their thumbs. (The world record is 101 words per minute.)

Two. Two words per minute. That’s how many I can type. About as fast as carving words in a stone slab in the catacombs. Does hyperbole grace every sentence of this post? No, not every sentence. Let’s not exaggerate.

Have you ever tried? Some people I’m aware of can tap out a full novel in a text message.

Thumb-mail. A full-on 18th century letter, typed out with your thumbs? Amazing. Strange, but amazing. Strange to me, because I would lose interest after the first paragraph.

One problem I’ve recognized is that my thumbs are wider than average. To type with the tiny keyboard provided on a cell phone is like trying to smack one ant in a colony with a skillet.

If I was Harpo Marx, I’d follow that sentence with: What that ant was doing with a skillet, I don’t know.

You should be glad I’m not Harpo Marx.

My next question, though, is: Why would anyone need a skill like typing ultra-fast with their thumbs? I can only think of one reason.

A person needs to tell their mother they love her before they get eaten by an alligator. And would it matter if they were swallowed arms first, or not? That would depend on if they could get signal inside the alligator.