I hinted at this guy’s YouTube channel recently, so I thought I’d give him the full endorsement this time.
His channel is called Matty Active and it sounds like he started his athletic career as a baseball player. Now he’s doing mountain biking videos and being honest about his experiences.
Pause there, because that’s what I love about his approach, his honesty. He doesn’t smooth over his feelings of inadequacy. Matty tells you exactly how he feels. He tells the whole world how he “wasn’t sure” or “didn’t expect” or even “wasn’t ready to race”. It makes me trust him when he’s that honest. There are many YouTuber mountain bikers out there who will tell you they’re the best and then they’ll show you their highlight reels. This guy, Matty, doesn’t do that.
He is hyped up on finding new and different bike configurations, like in the video above in which he tries a gravel bike. He shows you his test rides, not only in this video, but his other ones as well. He shows you when he goofs and has to try a feature again. He even lets you know when he doesn’t like something.
Matty Active has a good attitude, which one commenter called “infectious”. I wholeheartedly agree. He seems like the kind of guy everybody would want to ride with because he’s so positive all the time.
Ultimately, with any sport, that’s the bottom line, right? If you’re not having a positive experience, if you’re not having fun, then why play? Go do something else.
And the bottom line, the grand total, for Matty Active, is that I enjoy hearing his view on the sport I love, so I will continue watching his channel.
You already know about Taco Tuesday. It may be one of your top ten days of the week.
Have you heard of Finger Food Friday?
Some of the most fabulous foods are finger foods. Carrot sticks, celery sticks, and apple slices all qualify. Yes, the whole gamut of veggie trays can be the main course on Finger Food Friday.
Sweet peas in the pod, delicious florets of broccoli, and festive lunchbox peppers fit nicely between two fingers—or three if you’re only snacking. If you’re a wee tot, you can grip them in your fist (fist food?).
A veggie plate might include tiny bleached brains of cauliflower, itty bitty baby carrots, and temptingly launchable cherry tomatoes. Yet another might have a perfect pile of black olives (or maybe green), discs of cucumber, crisp okra, bits of mango, and tart cranberries. Then we’re getting into fruit trays instead of veggie trays.
You know what fruit trays have, of course, like oranges, bananas, melon chunks, grapes, cherries, and don’t forget the passion fruit. Lemon and lime slices are occasionally featured. Even things that are not very grabbable can be sliced or diced and stabbed onto a toothpick, like cubed pineapple or sliced jalapeños.
Ha! Now it’s getting really exotic, so throw together some cheese and crackers and you’ve got a cheese and crackers plate.
Don’t stop there. Some people prefer a shrimp platter, or a keto platter, or a vegetarian platter, or a protein platter, or a boiled egg and summer sausage platter. Still others are going to want chicken nuggets and French fries. There are so many ways to do Finger Food Friday.
Last, don’t be afraid to notice that a lot of these finger foods are served with one dip or another. No one wants to celebrate Dipping Sauce Friday though. It just wouldn’t be as fun as Finger Food Friday.
One of the craziest ways people try to show off their wisdom is by creating a phrase that contains two ideas with the second idea being only a reversal of the first. Here’s an example:
“It’s not your eye that hurts, it’s your hurt you’re eyeing.”
This is not a terrible sentence. It’s an awkward, illogical, nonsensical, bland, trite, ridiculous, and annoying sentence. (Read that in the voice of the most ornery, crotchety old man voice you can imagine.) The person is supposedly trying to say your eye doesn’t hurt, but if it does, it’s only because you’re focusing on the pain. Doesn’t that require there to be pain in the first place? Then where does the hurt come from, I wonder. Anyway, the general idea reminds me of the old, hilarious dad joke of saying, “I can make you forget about your hurt eye,” and then dear, ol’ dad kicks you in the shin. If he was a doctor, you’d take him to court.
Malpractice.
Which reminds me of malapropisms, though these are not malapropisms, these idea reversals. For one thing, malapropisms catch our attention because they’re funny. A funny mix-up. Using one word which sounds like another in the wrong context. Like when Uncle Fred describes when he was abducted by aliens and he can’t quite spit it out.
“That was the night they took me aboard the murder ship, er, the murther ship. No, no, no, the MOTHER ship.”
Malapropisms are fun, but idea reversals are not. A better way to say this:
“It’s not your eye that hurts, it’s your hurt you’re eyeing.”
Would be so:
“If you don’t focus on the pain in your eye, it might diminish a little. In the meantime, here’s an Ibu.”
How much nicer would it be to hear that, rather than someone denying your pain and trying to be wise about it?
Then there’s this crusty old chestnut:
“Successful people don’t count their mistakes, they make their mistakes count.”
Ugh! Can you hear the misplaced narcissism on that person? They wanted to say, “I’m so wise. My every word,” but they came up with that ridiculous idea reversal instead. It doesn’t even make sense! Who goes around making mistakes on purpose? Not any sane person. Who goes around trying their worst? If any, very few. No, we try our best.
In fact, the majority try to learn from their mistakes rather than making them again, or making them “count,” whatever that’s supposed to mean. We try to learn from other people’s mistakes as well, and that’s why we read. Read about the failures of another and you don’t have to feel the pain yourself. Read someone else’s poorly constructed thought and you don’t have to repeat the process, or become a cynical old man who writes about other people’s quotes.
Berm Peak, on YouTube, has a great video every aspiring mountain biker should watch before buying a bike. The video is regarding the differences between a 400$ mountain bike and a 13,000$ mountain bike. I’m going to spoil it right here, so if you want to watch it for yourself, watch now…
The guy making the video does a good job going over the differences without too much bias. He says a couple of illogical things. I’ll forgive him for those, but I’ll also explain them here. At the end he admits he probably could’ve bought a cheaper bike. Long before, he throws one tongue-in-cheek joke in there which could be interpreted as baiting, but I’d give him the benefit of the doubt and say he meant it as wry humor. His cheeky joke is when he says the 400$ bike has some features the 13K bike doesn’t have, like nifty L and R indicators so you know which pedal goes on what side. Narf!
One illogic: he acts as if bikes have skills. Only the rider has skills. If anyone ever said, “I got a spendy bike so I can be a better rider,” they might also say, “I bought an expensive soccer ball so I can be a better soccer player.” See how that doesn’t actually make any sense? Now, you might be asking what the similarities are between a soccer ball and a mountain bike. You might be thinking the bike can be upgraded but the ball can’t. That’s true, but upgrades don’t translate into skill either. One similarity is that both the mountain bike and the ball get kicked around. Another similarity is the fact that both really do come in a variety of styles and prices. If you don’t know what you’re buying, then you may be the one who gets kicked around.
Another biased illogic: He outright says, if you don’t have tubeless tires you’re going to get a flat. What?! People can do all the same things with tubes as tubeless. Here’s another secret you might want to know is that lots of people who ride tubeless bring a tube along with them, just in case. Keep in mind here too, every thing you take with you adds weight—a point our Berm Peak YouTuber brings up several times.
Riding tubeless tires is no warranty against flats, neither is riding tubes. Probably the best defense against flats is knowing how to fix them. Before you buy tubeless, understand there is a substance, sometimes called slime, which is terrible horrendous to work with when doing a repair. Don’t get it on you, or you’ll regret it.
He talks about hydraulic brakes and how he loves that sort of system. Hydraulics aren’t a necessity. In my case they are a liability. I like adventuring. I like going off trail. I’ve gone off some crazy stuff. If that sounds like you, then you should realize you’re going to do better with mechanical brakes. When adventure riding, cables are superior. Beginners and daredevils will be better off with mechanical brakes.
He even talks about wifi, or bluetooth, seat poppers AND brakes. Those are fun toys—until your battery dies, or you hit something, or you get some interference—so many ways they stop working, then you can’t do anything. Your expensive toys suddenly are worth 0$ in every imaginable currency. Why even waste your money on that? Again, stay with what is reliable, and that would be cables. Cables may weigh ounces more than wireless devices, but consider how much the whole bike weighs when you’re hiking it back up, or back down, the hill.
In his comparison, one bike is aluminum, another is titanium. Get this fun fact: the value of titanium fluctuates up and down depending on the demand in the market. Some years it’s worth more, some less. An ounce of titanium at early 2025 prices is only worth 12$ per kilogram, so that’s around a penny per gram and 24$ for that 2kg bike frame. This, of course, is the price of unprocessed, unshaped titanium. What do you think? Is the manufacture of that material worth what this YouTuber paid for it. I’d say he was following his dream, so maybe. If you love your bike, it’s worth every penny you paid for it.
He’s dead right when he talks about plastic pedals. Those are how the bike manufacturer keeps the overall price of the bike low. They cost like 10 cents to make and they’re sold to you for 10$. You are not getting a deal on the plastic pedals, only on the overall price of the bike.
As I said already, our Berm Peak YouTuber admits he feels a bit silly making the video and finding out he paid way too much for a mountain bike. A person can definitely fall into the wrong persuasions. There’s no need to spend 10K to 20K for a mountain bike. Especially if you’re just starting out. If so, get the less expensive model. When you find out you love the sport, go ahead and get some actual upgrades to the less expensive bike—such as metal pedals instead of plastic.
For more insight on the subject, try checking out Matty Active, a YouTuber with similar topics.
It IS Spring! We definitely had a shorter Winter’s end and swifter Spring beginning. Thank you Salty Stew! (That’s the name of our groundhog.) So Spring is here. Flowers are popping out of the dirt, the weather is warming, and people are venturing out of their hibernation hovels. Even yours truly was able to get out and enjoy some early mountain biking. Of course there was some mud on the tires, but that’s kind of the point, right?
One hilarious way I know it’s Spring is when my crabby neighbor tells me he can’t believe the stores already have aisles full of Easter candy. I don’t notice the stores stocking things as much as he does. In a way, he’s my one main source of news and my barometer for Spring. I can see it in his eyes, how he hates the chocolate-covered peanut butter eggs. Despite being crabby, he knows what Easter is really about.
My family’s favorite way to know Spring has arrived is when the birds move back into the birdhouse. We have a wooden birdhouse where we get to see baby birds pop out every year. It’s so much fun I should probably install a camera so we could watch the hatching of the baby birds. All we see now is when the birds come out and start learning how to fly. They hop around the yard for a while learning how to go higher and higher until they’re in the trees.
Some people measure Spring by how much longer they have to get their taxes declared and settled. Tax season is Spring, for them. Or Spring is tax season. Either way you say it, that’s a sad way to live life—dreading Spring.
Most of the people I know love Spring. They start saying things like, “Isn’t that gorgeous weather?” or “I love the smell of earth after rain.” They cheer up a great deal. Some can’t seem to stop talking. Others greet everyone more cheerfully than they did in the Winter. And some of them stop coming around because they’re off doing something outside. Suddenly their favorite outdoor activities take a priority position. And that’s perfectly alright. Everyone has their favorite way to celebrate the season.
Xenosthesia.com 