do I want to do this?

It’s only been a month since my last update but it certainly feels like it’s been two, so yes, let’s do this! No elegant way to ease back into things so how about a list of 10 8 things I found interesting recently, some of which have been on my working doc for awhile now:

1. I’ve been wanting to write more about family travel over the last couple of years (Santa Fe, Grand Canyon, Indiana & Chicago, to name a few trips), but rather than try to catch up on all that, I’ll just share a little about a day trip from last week’s spring break to Pinnacles National Park about two hours south of the Bay Area (give or take, depending on start location and traffic). Take seriously the advice to arrive early or you’ll have an extra 5 miles of hiking from/ back to the campground parking lot. We hiked nearly 12 miles to and around the Bear Gulch area, climbing nearly 2000 feet and trekking across some very steep, very narrow sections of...pinnacles? My legs were sore for two days!

2. Speaking of National Parks, an interesting Artnet article here about the work of “Dorothy Waugh: The Forgotten Designer Who Created America’s First National Parks Posters,” on view earlier this year at a place called Poster House in NYC. I’m obsessed with the WPA and the look of many of the national park posters of that era.

3. Alysia Abbott, author of Fairyland, which has been made into a movie produced by Sofia Coppola, has written about her relationship with her daughter as someone who lost her own mother before the age of 3. As a fellow motherless mother of two teenagers, I can relate.

4. No podcast news, but I must confess that despite declaring I wouldn’t be working on it anytime soon, I have started to think about a “beyond season 2.” Not a season 3, per se, but an interview here and there and maybe a newsletter feature on a rolling basis. In the meantime, Mason Currey writes about how to be a writer with a day job here. His book on the topic was published a couple of weeks ago.

5. Speaking of day jobs, I attended a virtual project management event a couple of weeks ago and Damian Kulash of OK Go gave the keynote, which you can watch most of here. It’s basically the project management behind the making of one of their music videos, which is way more exciting than any project management I’ve ever done outside my own creative projects (fun fact: I’ve seen OK Go perform live twice - once in SF opening for They Might Be Giants and once in Boston, during which Damian Kulash came offstage and walked through the audience, stopping to place one hand on my shoulder, one hand on my husband’s…he’s really tall!).

6. Do what you want (an OK Go song!) is the title of one of Oliver Burkeman’s recent articles here.

   If your immediate response to that idea is that you’re not in a position to do what you want; or that it would be immoral even to think in such terms, at a time like this; or that I must be blinded by privilege even to suggest it… then I’m afraid it’s even more likely you could benefit from doing what you want.

   It’s become my aspirational mantra for 2026 and beyond (although usually it’s a bit easier said than done).

7. How the bicycle was born, via The Marginalian.

   Laufmaschine — the “running machine,” first progenitor of the modern bicycle, christened vélocipède in France and derided as “dandy horse” in England. No gears, no chain, no tires or pedals even — just a seat atop two in-line metal wheels, to be straddled and propelled with strides pushing off the ground — a precarious high-speed waltz between footfall and wheelroll.

   Fun!

8. Speaking of bikes, after riding my son’s very first mountain bike for 2+ years after he outgrew it and I got into riding and coaching, I finally invested in my own bike, with bigger wheels and full suspension, to boot. I’m really enjoying it so far (why yes, I do want to do this mountain biking thing!) and looking forward to my first race at the Sea Otter Classic this weekend (I’ll be riding the XC on Sunday).

   

Wish me luck!