In this article, Dan Kois tells his story of living in the Netherlands for 3 months with his children but without a car.
In the Netherlands, only tourists wear helmets.
a country with more bikes than people, and we were eager to slip into the two-wheeled flow.
Even in optimistic American municipalities that have demarcated bike lanes on the street or paved a few bike paths, cars come first, and drivers rarely look out for cyclists. Drivers park and then swing their front doors wide; they make right turns without looking behind them; they pull out of parking lots and cut across bike lanes at full speed. Who can blame them? The system was built to maximize drivers’ efficiency, and anything that might slow them down is a glitch. [underlining, mine]
For cyclists used to being second-class citizens, watching bikes navigate the Netherlands is revelatory.
Most important, drivers look out for cyclists, cede the right of way, and are rarely surprised by them. After all, nearly all those drivers are cyclists themselves. The eighteen million residents of the … more than twenty-two million bicycles. Dutch kids ride in child seats practically from birth, are on balance bikes by two, and are cycling unaided by four. Old people continue to cycle, too: when pedalling gets too difficult, they switch to battery-assisted e-bikes, which now outsell standard adult bikes in the Netherlands.
What If We Stopped Pretending? The New Yorker By Jonathan Franzen September 8, 2019
I just finished reading What If We Stopped Pretending? by Jonathan Frazen in the September 8, 2019 issue of The New Yorker. I think you should read it too.
Today, the scientific evidence verges on irrefutable. If you’re younger than sixty, you have a good chance of witnessing the radical destabilization of life on earth—massive crop failures, apocalyptic fires, imploding economies, epic flooding, hundreds of millions of refugees fleeing regions made uninhabitable by extreme heat or permanent drought. If you’re under thirty, you’re all but guaranteed to witness it.
Psychologically, this denial makes sense. Despite the outrageous fact that I’ll soon be dead forever, I live in the present, not the future. Given a choice between an alarming abstraction (death) and the reassuring evidence of my senses (breakfast!), my mind prefers to focus on the latter.
To fail to conserve a finite resource when conservation measures are available, to needlessly add carbon to the atmosphere when we know very well what carbon is doing to it, is simply wrong.
I recently read The Public Library, an amazing book written by Robert Dawson. Dawson, traveled and took pictures of libraries around the world. He made an effort to photography libraries that were in affluent and struggling communities. I love books about books, but this one was such a fantastic idea and so easy to execute myself.
Mammoth Lakes Library (stacks)
While on a recent vacation to Mammoth in the mountains of California. I convinced my wife to stop by the local library to take some pictures and explore. It didn’t take long and it was a beautiful library. The library was opened in 2007. I also felt much more a part of the community sharing in their local library.
Mammoth Lakes Library (the view)
The two-story library looked new and was beautiful inside, with lots of movies and audiobooks on the first floor as well as a young readers section. On the second floor, we found the children’s area a MakerSpace and the rest of the collection. A very good size for a small town.
Mammoth Lakes Library
Next time you are on vacation make a quick stop at the local library. You might just learn something. I’ll make an effort to do more spotlights on libraries as I am able to. This was fun for me and I hope it gave you all something fun to read and maybe encourages you to visit a library soon!
Yesterday, I had the pleasure of spending 6.5 hours in Galaxy’s Edge. I was invited to be part of the cast member previews. They were testing out a new way of getting into the park: virtual cues. At 10 am, we checked in using the fast pass at Haunted Mansion. There we got a website and were told to start checking it after 12 pm.
Sure enough when 12:03 pm hit they started letting groups in. The group number on our ticket was 10. Around 2:30 pm our group number came up and after putting our phones and other electronic devices (fitbits and apple watches) into small shipping bags with self-adhesive we were allowed to enter Galaxy’s Edge.
Our cast member recommended that we go straight to the cantina, since it was going to be busy. They were right as even when we were about to leave at 8 pm that evening there was still a line to get in. Outside the cantina, there was a line, made up of black tape on the ground. As people, left groups were let in. We waited in line for about 30 minutes.
The cantina is amazing. It looks like Oga’s cantina from the movies or Mos Eisley bar. It is small. Booths surround the outside wall that are large and can easily accommodate large groups. Everywhere else is standing only. You can stand at the bar or you can stand at some small but long-standing tables (big enough for four on each side) between the booths and the bar. The last choice is where we were placed.
Oga’s Cantina Coasters
Remember you don’t have your phone, so you can’t check Yelp or any other sites to assist in making your decision. You can only order two alcohol-containing drinks, but there are other non-alcohol drinks on the menu.
Bespin Fizz
The Bespin Fizz was the first drink I ordered. There is dry ice at the bottom of the glass, separated by a plastic disk with holes in it. This was an alcohol-containing drink, and it tasted fruity. All members of our group and the group across the table from us enjoyed it.
Blue Bantha
The Blue Bantha is a non-alcohol-containing drink. It comes with a sugar cookie, topped with something similar to small rice crispy’s then finally topped with bantha horns made out of a hard sugar frosting. The milk is sweet and would be a big hit with the kids. This was my favorite drink. I mean it comes with a cookie!
Oga’s Obsession provision
Oga’s Obsession provision is not a drink, its a dessert and it is also non-alcoholic. It has pearls filled with a raspberry fluid, suspended in a jello substance. On the top are dried berries (I think) and pop rocks. This comes with sporks (which are the only utensil in the whole land. I really enjoyed this as did our whole party, they gave us enough sporks for everyone to have one. I think this is another one that will be a big hit for the kids.
Fuzzy Tauntaun
Ah, the Fuzzy Tauntaun. This is a drink you will not forget. It has various peachy alcoholic in it. It made everyone’s lips tingle for a while. They do give you a menu at the table that has all the ingredients on it, but without a phone and fearing reprisals for writing anything down I did not. The taste of this wasn’t really anything that any of us cared for.
The Outer Rim
I tried the Outer Rim from another at our table and really enjoyed it. It does contain alcohol. It had black salt on one section of the glass and some kind of yellow slimy stuff in it, but it didn’t taste bad, it just looked strange.
One of our party also got the Jet Fuel, which comes in a small glass, about the size of two shots. I’m told it had bourbon in it and was delicious, I didn’t get to try that one. It is also the most alcohol containing drink on the menu.
A drink I haven’t seen posted anywhere was the Jedi Mind Trick. It was blue and looked like a light blue Gatorade. It was alcoholic but had an off-putting flavor that my group didn’t care for.
The Ithorian Garden Loaf
Being a vegetarian, I opted for the Ithorian Garden Loaf at Docking Bay 7 Food and Cargo. It was the only thing vegetarian on the menu at the time of our visit. While the sides do look like the picture above, the meat does not. It looked to be a mix of Impossible meat bricks. I got two. It comes with a kind of gravy over the meat, mashed potatoes and everything else. I really enjoyed it even though the meat doesn’t look as good as what is pictured here.
raspberry crème puff with passion fruit mousse (left) or chocolate cake with white chocolate mouse and coffee custard (right)
The plates for the desserts in Docking Bay 7 are more grey than the blue depicted above. The raspberry creme puff was everyone’s favorite. It also helps that it is larger. Both desserts are very small. The raspberry one has a pink cream in the center with very soft light cake on the outside.
The chocolate cake is dense and has a white custard on the top of this ball shaped cake. The little puffs of green in the picture are bits of soft, light fluffy cake, that is colored green.
The Black Spire area is amazing. It is easy to forget that you are in Disneyland. You can’t see much of the other lands in Disneyland. While in the queue for the Millennium Falcon ride, you can see the spire of Big Thunder though.
The Millennium Falcon ride itself was a lot of fun. The ride is short, but it is amazingly interactive. Spoilers ahead!
There are 6 people in each simulator. I believe there are 6 simulators in all, but it’s hard to tell as I got turned around in the underground tunnels leading to the simulators. Each simulator will consist of 2 pilots, 2 gunners, and 2 engineers. One pilot steers the ship left and right. This was not clear to me, but I think this person can also boost and brake. The right side pilot steers the ship up and down, however up is down and down is up.
The gunners. This was not my favorite position (I rode the ride 4 times, getting to do almost every position), during the ride you will shoot at the bad guys, but you can’t point any guns, not really. There are two options for the gunners when they sit down. You can play manual or automatic. With automatic, you can just mash a button shooting over and over and the computer aims for you. With manual, there are three buttons you get. The top one shoots up at an angle, the middle shoots straight and the lower button shoots down at an angle.
The gunner is the least interactive, although you do get to shoot missiles. The buttons for each position in the simulator flash when you need to mash them. The last 2 positions are engineers. This one is very interactive like the pilots. As the ship hits things, and it will, you hit the flashing buttons. You also fire the harpoons.
I don’t want to say too much more about the story of the ride, but it is fun. I did it four times. The only position I didn’t get a chance to do was the up and down pilot (or right side).
One of our party also did the lightsaber experience. This cost around $200 to make a lightsaber out of four or five different selection of parts. This takes some time. There was about a 20-minute wait for a time to go in, then once we got our colored card, there was another 45-minute wait where in the queue they show you how to assemble the lightsaber, being careful not to let the stormtroopers see what you are doing in this open area. Then once inside its about a 20-minute experience building the real lightsaber you will keep and listen to the story, which is pretty cool. The finished lightsabers do look very cool and are heavier than I would have expected.
You can also build a droid for about $120. It is remote control and looks cool, but also looks like it is more plastic than metal, which is disappointing. There was a shorter line for this, but no one in my group did that.
I spent 6.5 hours there and I was exhausted. There are very few places to sit down in the land, I think they did this on purpose to make it easier to move around. There are lots of things to look at but it is difficult to get inside the shops as they are small and everyone wants to see what is being sold.
I rode this today. It was awesome! I had my Apple TV hooked up to a different TV and the resolution was much better than the TV I had had it hooked up to. It was 11 miles of brand new scenery. At my speed it took me around 40 minutes. Lots of fun and awesome to ride a new route in Zwift. Below are some pictures that I took along the route.
