Trail Updates

There are trails that are too senstive to stay included in the App. Two of these are:

The Ancient Line Trail.
&
The Red Dot Trail.

Apparently, both are illegal (ALT) or Sort-of Legal (Red Dot) and sensitive.

The last thing I would want to do is to jeopardize access to any trail. So scratch these off your mental list, please.

thanks.

They WILL still stay on MBB until Apple makes the next update to it. Then they'll drop off (and be replaced by more entries you didn't have before, as previously discussed).

App Customers!

First of all, thanks for buying this app I wrote.

But second, I got a bit better understanding of my publisher's computer system the other day.

I thought that you would get immediate updates any time I loaded new riding spots onto the system, but in fact that is not the case. Instead, the publisher waits until there's enough new content that they feel it's worth submitting to Apple again.

So, you'll get more trails added to the App, just not immediately, and it'll come as a larger update, rather than 1 spot at a time.

Sorry for the misunderstanding.

And in response to an earlier post: I found a really nice smooth singletrack trail at Bradley Palmer SP- leave a comment if you'd like details...

Microtech vs. Macrotech

I thought of a new way I'd like to start describing trails, today. The trails of new england are what I would call microtech- sharp rocks, slippery roots, and other small trail imperfections that make you focus on every foot of trail. There's a section near the river at Bradley Palmer SP that illustrates this perfectly. Enough roots, that are tall enough, and just moving forward is a chore.

This is opposed to what I would call macrotech- a sharp hill that requires technique to climb but is tricky in a much larger way (not more difficult, just physically larger) than microtech. Moab's slickrock trail might be a good example of this sort of technical riding: struggling with a natural feature, not the acual riding surface that approaches the feature.

I wish we had more trails like the latter. I love the former, but sometimes I feel like it gets a little frustrating and it certainly makes the hills and such more challenging!

The key: speed over the microtech to ride the macrotech!

Update on BP Waterfall Ride

I just wanted to quickly mention that I went to the location (sans bike) of this ride last night and was forcefully (and not very nicely) told that in fact the sides of the river here are property of Foote Bros. Canoe Rental. Private property!

So, for your own good, App Customers: DO NOT THROW ROCKS NEAR THE WATERFALL!!

Barbie: A Father's View -or- Don't give my kid Barbies

So when Kath and Lu got home from Gparents' house yesterday, there was a package on the porch for her (a bag, actually): the next door neighbors had gifted her 4 barbie dolls. Let's see, there was cinderella, and one in a short little red number with ripped nylons, and a ballerina, and a punky chick with a choker necklace and a black cat T-shirt. Oh, and a skirt too tight to move her legs around much.

There are a couple of assumptions on the neighbor's part here. I won't get into the prideful ones about us not being able to afford barbies, but what about parenting? Most likely we've all heard this before, but for those who haven't, humour me for a moment (the extra U was for Rachel)... Let's see: they all had blonde hair, their feet are shaped so that they can ONLY wear high heels (they show off the calves), and if I've been told correctly (haven't researched this)- the doll has breasts so big that if she were a real woman, she wouldn't be able to walk without toppling (especially since she would ONLY wear heels).

I'm not exactly Gloria Steinem, but we do try to model a little bit of equality for Lucy, and the ideas of feminist thinkers became more important to me the day I got married and even more the day my daughter was born.

Should women not be allowed to look dainty and precious? What do I have against high heels? Is there something wrong with blonde hair? No, of course all of these things (maybe not the hair) are choices that women can make, and of course are none of my business. But it's the unspoken-ness of the assumptions being "given" to my daughter by the (admittedly well-meaning) neighbors that isn't right.

In the same way that assumptions are made about me as a man (on a train once, in the dining car, a girl got up from the table she was sitting at, and went to get something from her seat. The man she was sitting with added alcohol to her coke, nodding at the guys sitting around and saying something to the effect of 'we are all guys, right?'.), and if I want to combat them I have to overcompensate, perhaps women should think about some of the 'Barbie choices' before they wonder why glass ceilings and objectifying attitudes exist?

I'm sure I'm in way over my head here, but I remember some church-going, smart women friends of mine in graduate school, who suddenly wore almost nothing and turned their brains off when we headed to a dance club. That's not what I want for my daughter.

"That's a collectible car, and Lucy was playing with it..."

Still early today, but already, we've gone yardsaling. (it's without the "i" because we were not in fact sailing, but going to sales). Got a nice Pace cycling cap for a dollar, and then got Lu a whole baggy of legos for another dollar (different sale). But even better, I got to cherrypick the best of a whole cardboard box for her bag (windows, doors, a little lego mouse, two horses, that kind of thing). Feeling a little bit of psychosis drawing me in with those legos... don't be a crazy parent, don't be a crazy parent...

Lu and Kath made cupcakes yesterday. Did you hear that, Rachel? THEY made me cupcakes!

All for now. Lucy was up til late last night. Oh, and while we drove around this morning? She cut her Barbies' hair. That deserves another post. I'll do that next.

Last Day of School

7:30am Hey, if anyone's waiting to surprise me with a job offer, today would be a good day. Last day here at Salem High for the summer. Reminds me of those inspirational posters, "today is the first day of the rest of your life" or some such.

There's the bell. Time to go see if we can retreive books the students haven't returned yet.

11:57am The kids are all gone now. So we're clipping locks and looking for books in lockers. I have some enthusiastic little helpers that do most of the work while I use the... what are they even called? Lock clippers?

It's at least something to do while we wait for the end of the day to come.

PS: We got to do the top two floors. I got a North Face backpack and some clear safety glasses. Cool. And I learned about locks. Hardened steel? It's not really harder to cut through- just more brittle. For safety in a lock, you're much better to make sure you get the smallest lock that will work, so that it is as close as possible to impossible to get those bolt-cutter teeth around the locking part. The one lock we couldn't break had just a tiny bit of the locking part exposed. But we had a very hard time with tiny little locks intended for briefcases or diaries, too! Just my two cents.