We were interviewing a writer whose work I admire
and he mentioned that someone told him

that we now have the technology
that can write articles for you, super fast

And he said Wait, no, what I enjoy is writing the article,
not holding it in my hand and saying “this is the thing that I did”

I have nothing against minced garlic in a jar
but what I really like is when I have the time

to chop the garlic myself
when I tell myself that it’s important

Important enough to take two minutes
to get out a knife my friend Mitsu gave me,

And the cutting board my brother made for me,
and peel the cloves and cut them into tiny pieces

It is two fingers on my wrist checking for a pulse
and one small, symbolic middle finger

to optimizing everything we possibly can
just because we can

Chopping the garlic is of course objectively harder
than using the minced stuff from the jar

but maybe part of me likes it because I think
it makes the story of the meal I cooked better

Of course, not everything good in life is difficult
there’s eating pizza, of course

and naps and and looking at sunsets
that happen without any effort from me

But everybody has their own list of things
that are, to them, Worth The Effort

Like making your own coffee or taking a photo
or raising a kid or remodeling a house

I guess what we’re all asking ourselves
nowadays, in our Brave New World

(and isn’t it just a Somewhat Braver, Newer
World than last year, and the year before that)

is which parts of being human
we want to fast-forward through

and which parts of being human
we want to keep doing with our selves

I have put skins on skis and skied uphill
right next to a perfectly functioning chairlift

And I have hiked to the top of a peak
that has a paved road all the way to its summit

Climbing using only my legs and feet
and climbing using the aid of a machine

well, most people would say,
those are two different experiences

Or are they two different mountains?

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If you enjoyed this piece, please consider supporting my work. 

I haven’t listened to a Moth story in a long time, but I somehow found out The Moth had a YouTube channel, and this was the first story I watched. This guy isn’t famous or anything, but I love this story, and his mom sounds like a real one. File under: Suprisingly Emotional Stories About Baseball. (video)

It’s a good question: Is it possible to buy a Bob Ross painting? I mean, it should be easy, shouldn’t it? But no, in fact it is not easy, and it is possible, and there’s a reason it’s difficult. But my favorite line from this whole article is from the gallery owner who finds Bob Ross paintings and buys them from the owners, who are mostly regular folks. He says, “Most families that have these paintings are not millionaires, and the money is very impactful in their lives.”

I don’t know if someone might say this is “political,” but I kind of assume that if you read this newsletter, you probably a) think public lands are a good idea and b) would be opposed to selling them. I won’t type out the details in my own words, but the sale of public lands is essentially back on the table, and you can call your senators and encourage them to not support it. If you have never done this before, 5Calls makes it super-easy (here’s a link to their page on this specific issue: Oppose the Sale of Public Lands in the “One Big Beautiful Bill” Act). If you are hesitant or nervous about calling and talking to a staffer or leaving a message, here’s basically what the conversation is like when I’ve done it:

STAFFER: Senator _______’s office, this is _____.
ME: Hi, I’m a constituent and I’d like to leave a comment. Do you need my address?
STAFFER: Yes.
ME: My address is [street address, city, state, ZIP code].
STAFFER: OK, thank you, what’s your comment?
ME: I’d like to encourage Senator _______ to [oppose H.R. 1, the budget reconciliation bill, and any provisions that authorize the sale of our public lands].
STAFFER: OK, anything else?
ME: That’s all, thank you.
STAFFER: Thank you.

I don’t know how I found the Why Cheap Art Manifesto this week, but something about the typeface and the style and the very simple message of it really hit home for me, and perhaps it will hit home for you too. If you are really into it, there’s a link at the bottom where you can purchase a print of it, which, at $20, I guess is technically cheap art, which is very meta, to support artists by buying a print of a manifesto about cheap art. But of course you can just read and enjoy it for free, too.

I made a pie chart graphic for newsletter sponsor Precision Fuel & Hydration this past week titled “What’s In Your Water Bottle(s)?” and one of the pie chart slices was “stachybotrys chartarum (black mold).” Which reminded me of a trick I learned to keep black mold from growing in water bottles: Store them in the freezer. I’ve been using this method for years now, and I think it’s even more important considering the amount of PFH’s Carb & Electrolyte Drink Mix I am putting in them on a weekly basis. I get home from my run, rinse out my bottles with water, and chuck them in the freezer, and voila, no mold. (If you are interested in trying PFH drink mix, here’s a link that will give you 15% off your first order)

If you are a fan of Bruce Springsteen, or a fan of Jeremy Allen White, and/or a fan of music biopics, you might be excited about the trailer for Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, which just dropped on Wednesday.

I was talking to Mike Sowden last week (on a video call, since he’s in Scotland and I am in Montana), and I have no idea what led to this, but he told me about being obsessed as a kid with the Terran Trade Authority Handbooks, and the way he described them lit up some sort of nostalgia center in my brain and took me back to the library in southwest Iowa where I’d flip through books with illustrations of spaceships, tanks, cars, bridges, whatever, and within a couple hours of getting off the call, Mike sent me this link to a scan of the Terran Trade Authority Handbook SPACECRAFT 2000 To 2100 AD book. Maybe you might enjoy it too. Maybe you, like me, will track down a used copy of the book on a website somewhere and spend $45 of your hard-earned money to own a paperback copy of it (or maybe you’re smarter/less emotional with money than I am?).

This is a very short, very simple essay about how human beings maybe don’t need to be just one thing, and I think it hit home for me because I see a lot of media about “your personal brand,” and I admittedly haven’t worked too hard on that kind of stuff, but if I had to design a business card about my personal brand, I think it might look a lot like the business card in the photo at the top of this essay, and I’m guessing yours would too.

When I put together this newsletter, I try hard to make sure it is not all links to 3,000-word essays on Substack, and does include some stuff you can digest in a minute or two, which I think is necessary in life, even if it doesn’t make us feel smarter. With that, I would like to present this 87-second video this guy made using various martial art techniques  to close a refrigerator.

Perhaps you read this newsletter last week and read that we’re putting my “What Does Your Urine Say About You?” chart on a limited-run Nalgene water bottle? You still have a few more days to order one as a helpful reminder to stay hydrated, for yourself or for someone you know and/or love. They’re available for pre-order through this link in my online DFTBA shop. I put together this fun short video using the sample bottle we made, and the full chart is below the video.

—

IMPORTANT FINAL REMINDER:

If you or someone you know/love would enjoy this water bottle because you/they struggle to stay hydrated (or just enjoy the chart on the bottle), we’re in the final days of the pre-order campaign. After June 30, you will no longer be able to purchase these bottles (even during the holiday shopping season, when you remember that you need to get a gift for your friend Jeff, who probably would have loved one of these). Here’s the link (you can also click on the photo below).

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I love these kinds of sports-adjacent stories, not necessarily about the usual sports topics we think about, or necessarily about the players and/or coaches—but this guy, who got really, really good at getting on the Jumbotron at the Barclays Center, and how he cracked the code. (video)

I don’t know how this was done, but it’s super-cool—a guy mapped the geographic movements/migrations of more than 4,000 of his daughter’s ancestors, dating back to the 1600s, and put together this map animation. It’s such a cool visualization of how many lives and decisions were involved in one person being here now.

The folks at Injinji reached out a few weeks back, and asked if I was familiar with their socks. And of course I have been, since 2019, when I battled the most painful blisters of my life for the final 30+ miles of the Hellbender 100, and my friend Canyon said, “Yeah, you gotta get toe socks.” So I did, and I’ve been wearing them for long runs ever since, each of my toes happily in its own little compartment. Injinji is coming on as a sponsor of this newsletter, which is great because it’s a perfect fit, but also because if you’re reading this newsletter, this link will give you 20 percent off a purchase at Injinji.com if you order before midnight PST July 11. (I am a longtime fan of the Trail Midweight Crew, if you’re looking for a recommendation)

I am increasingly interested in the American loneliness epidemic, and maybe it’s not the most uplifting content, but The Pudding put together this short video breaking down the data of who Americans spend time with, and it hits pretty hard—I think in a way that inspires me to try to reach out and spend more time with friends in person. (video)

If you have ever seen Christoph Niemann’s art and design work, you will probably not be surprised at how interesting and accessible this interactive piece he put together about artists and AI for the New York Times is—the first time I read it, I scrolled through it on my phone, which honestly worked just as well as viewing it on my laptop. It really covers some ground. Here’s a gift link to see it. (thanks, Fitz)

I don’t surf, but I loved William Finnegan’s Pulitzer-winning surfing memoir, Barbarian Days, which I think will be a far different book than David Litt’s new memoir about learning to surf as an adult, It’s Only Drowning. I mean, when your book has blurbs by Laird Hamilton, Judd Apatow, and the former U.S. Treasury Secretary, it probably comes from a unique perspective. This excerpt of the book on LitHub did not disappoint.   

I missed this when it came out—just before Father’s Day—but I now wish I had seen it and sent it to everyone I know who’s a dad and would laugh at it by the time they read the fifth sentence. So I guess belated happy Father’s Day to you if you click on this McSweeney’s link: Congrats, Dipshit, You’re A Dad Now.

This is not something I’d say has, uh, depth? But it had me laughing within a second of reading it in the replies of this post on Bluesky, and then I realized I couldn’t share it with anyone who wasn’t on Bluesky, so I tracked down this 2022 tumblr post, which I’m not sure is the original, but at least it’s visible, and maybe you’ll giggle at it while reading “Donkin Dunnts: Amurica Runn No Dundun” like I did. (Also, if anyone knows the origin story of this graphic, please let me know)

Finally: If you read last week’s newsletter and called your senators to encourage them to oppose the selling off of public lands, thank you. If you’ve been following the news, you might know that the Senate parliamentarian rejected the plan to sell 3.3 million acres of public lands, which is great news. BUT, a new proposal to sell off 1.2 million acres of public land is now on the table, so, basically, we all have to call again. Here’s the link to the public lands budget reconciliation page on 5Calls.org, which makes it very easy to call your congressional representatives.

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NOTE: I’m publishing this week’s post on Thursday since this Friday is July 4th, and lots of people/Americans do other things on July 4th. Please feel free to read it on Thusrday, Friday, or whatever day suits your needs.

This is a bit longer than the videos I usually include here, but I got sucked into this guy’s adventure on “America’s Worst Rated Train,” and honestly, it delivered. About halfway through, I wasn’t sure it was good press for Amtrak, but by the end of the video, I thought, you know, yeah, maybe it is good press for Amtrak. Kind of. (Although I do think it’s a little strange that he says “There is one train route that exists all the way from Miami to Alaska,” when the final, quite significant, leg of the trip is quite obviously on a boat?) (video)

I don’t know how I found this essay on youth sports (and also about parenting and coaching), but I kept stopping while reading and going, “huh, yeah,” and wondering if over the past couple decades, we have been (at least partly unintentionally) making sports less and less fun for the kids who participate in them?

When I mention newsletter sponsor Precision Fuel & Hydration in these posts, it’s usually some sort of personal endorsement from me, a 46-year-old mid-pack ultrarunner dad, which I hope has some value (and authenticity). LIke hey, I’m a regular person training and running, and this stuff works for me, not just for super-athlete types who bound up mountains and barely break a sweat doing it. I was going to do that again this week, but then I saw the results for the Western States Endurance Run come in over the weekend, and realized that five of the top 10 men were sponsored by Precision Fuel & Hydration. (Including four of the top five, which included Missoula’s own Jeff Mogavero). So I guess take it from me, this stuff works for super-athletes too. Here’s a link to the PF 90 gels, a favorite product my both myself and Caleb Olson, who won Western States.

We are pretty lucky in Missoula to have a great local coffee roaster in Black Coffee, and maybe even luckier that Jim Chapman, one of the co-founders, is a creative guy who loves writing and photography. So when I get emails from Black Coffee (besides the ones that inform me my monthly coffee subscription just shipped), I usually open them. The most recent one—“My 5 Favorite Methods for Camp Coffee”—was an easy sell, too, because Jim knows a ton about coffee, and isn’t a snob when he discusses it (I appreciate that he includes instant coffee in his list, because in my opinion, there’s a place and time for it). Anyway, don’t take it from me, a mere coffee enthusiast—take it from someone who’s actually an expert on coffee, and camping.

I can’t even remember the first time I bought a pack of Field Notes pocket notebooks, but I vividly remember the 15 or so minutes I got to spend talking to Aaron Draplin at an event we did in Chicago in 2017. Being charismatic is one thing, and being down-to-earth and funny in tandem with being charismatic is a whole other thing. I have been rooting for Draplin for a very long time, and it’s really cool to see this article about the phenomenon that is Field Notes (as well as this link to a page showing part of Draplin’s vast collection of vintage pocket notebooks).

It’s crazy to think that it’s been 15 years (!) since The Social Network came out, and I can’t say I think the material for a sequel is exactly uplifting, I am cautiously optimistic that Aaron Sorkin will make another good movie (especially if he can convince Jesse Eisenberg to participate again?).

I’m not trying to put a link about AI in every issue of this newsletter, but I knew when John Oliver tackled the subject, it would at least be entertaining. And of course he went at it from an angle—only talking about AI slop, which, in the span of this 29-minute segment, had me laughing, a little sad, laughing, disappointed, laughing, a little angry, laughing, and then applauding at the end.

Because that’s how the PhotoshopRequests Subreddit works, you have to scroll through the replies here to see all the wacky edits people did to this photo of this guy tossing his baby in the air, but I think it’s pretty rewarding scrolling per centimeter of thumb travel.

Last weekend, I was in Wisconsin for my niece’s graduation party, and the morning of the party, I ran down the street from their house to a county park and ran three 1.05-mile loops around the road that circles the park before heading back to the house to pick up my nephew to run a couple more laps around the park with me. To my great surprise and mild entertainment, I got an email from Strava informing me that the first three laps had given me the “Local Legend” title for the most reps on that loop in a 90-day period. I have always found Strava’s Local Legend feature to be humorous, because I every time I’ve gotten a notification that I’ve become a Local Legend of something, it’s always some obscure short segment that I’ve never consciously tried to run a lot of reps of. And it’s usually called something like “Unnamed Rd Climb,” which for some reason is really popular in the Missoula area (and I guess a few other places). So, that’s a long story, but: We made a coffee mug. For me, I guess, and you, if you’ve ever been a Local Legend of Unnamed Rd Climb or something else obscure. OR, even better, if you’d like a gift for your spouse or friend or running partner who would get a good chuckle out of having a dubious honor displayed on a coffee mug. Here’s a photo, which you can click on for more information:

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As I slither out of my sleeping bag an hour after “quiet hours” began at the campground, creeping toward the door of the tent to go ask the people at the next campsite to maybe possibly keep it down, you know, if it’s not too much trouble, I think: this is going to go one of two ways. They’re going to say oops, sorry, we’ll quiet down, or I’m going to have to engage in hand-to-hand combat with up to five men (which will be quick and painful, for me). 

Nobody wants to be that person, the killjoy who walks over to a campsite of people having fun—loud fun—to remind them that this is actually not their backyard, this is a public campground, and other people might be trying to sleep right now. But in the past couple decades, I have been that guy many times. I have used various techniques, have not been physically assaulted or maimed (yet), and have sometimes even succeeded in gently nudging the loud folks to, in the words of Adam Mansbach, read by Samuel L. Jackson, Go the Fuck to Sleep. Here are a few strategies, rated for their effectiveness. 

Denial
You didn’t hear anything. You just woke up. It’s totally quiet out there.
Effectiveness: 2/10

Vigilance
You listen intently, as if a predator might be approaching your tent. You stop breathing. Was that a noise? A car door closing, a camper door slamming shut, someone laughing, someone playing … a flute … at 10 p.m.? Did you hear it again? Yes. Yes, you did. Goddammit.
Effectiveness: 0/10

Earplugs
You put earplugs in your ears. In my experience of working in a loud factory, earplugs are great at minimizing the hearing damage one might suffer working in loud environments where the sound level is pretty constantly uncomfortable, but in a place where relative quiet is abruptly punctured by a loud noise every few minutes, they can be hit or miss.
Effectiveness: Best-case, 10/10. Worst-case, 3/10. 

Gaslighting yourself
That guy’s laugh wasn’t that loud, was it? I mean, it might have just woken you up as you were drifting into sleep, but you’re probably just a bit sensitive. That thump every 20-30 seconds? It’s pretty muted, honestly, and 11 p.m. is a perfectly OK time to split firewood. You’re just being oversensitive.
Effectiveness: 0/10

Anger
This strategy involves getting so mad you could spit, or do spit, or imagine yourself forcefully silencing the loud people, or pouring corn syrup into the fuel tank of their generator that’s been running since 7 p.m., or hastily packing up your entire camp and driving home/somewhere else while shaking your head in disbelief. Not effective.
Effectiveness: -3/10

Not being mad, just being disappointed
As effective as this technique was when I was a teenager and my mom used it on me, it does not work to get people to be considerate of others’ experiences.
Effectiveness: 0/10

Deploying chemical agents that will render them unconscious
Actually haven’t tried this one, but have fantasized about it many times.
Effectiveness: Who’s to say, really. Definitely illegal though.

Complaining, in head
Effectiveness: 0/10

Complaining to tentmate(s)
Effectiveness: 0/10

Self-righteousness
Sure, you’re far from perfect, but you would never be an inconsiderate dickhead like those loud people are! I mean, the nerve. Don’t they realize there are other people here trying to enjoy the sounds of the breeze in the trees, or birdsong, and not a bunch of dipshits playing Wizard Staff and falling into the campfire? Oh, wait. You have been an inconsiderate dickhead, at least that one time. It was years ago, but still.
Effectiveness: 0/10

Approaching their campsite and politely asking them to quiet down
Awkward, really not enjoyable unless you happen to enjoy confrontation, but if you really believe someone has to do it, it might have to be you. You can accidentally shine your headlamp in everyone’s eyes on its brightest setting, but it’s not very diplomatic.
Effectiveness: anywhere from 0/10 to 10/10

Waiting for someone else to ask offending party to quiet down
True story, one time I was climbing at Red Rock Natural Conservation Area near Vegas and we camped there a couple nights, and there was absolutely no vegetation between campsites, so sound traveled pretty far. At like 1:30 a.m., I woke up to someone’s dog barking for a few seconds, maybe at a coyote or something. The dog kept barking, kept barking, kept barking, for a couple minutes. I sighed, resigned to the fact that I was going to have to get out of my sleeping bag, unzip the tent door, walk over there and … suddenly, I heard someone from another campsite scream, “SHUT THAT FUCKING DOG UUUUUUUUUUUUUPPPPPP!!!!!!” Seconds later, the dog stopped barking. I rolled over and went back to sleep.
Effectiveness: In the above story, 10/10, but results vary per situation. 

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I am a big fan of Luke Nelson, who is a dad, husband, physician’s assistant, sponsored trail runner, ski patroller, race director, and just a swell guy in general. I remember seeing his “Pocatello Round” come through my Strava feed in the summer of 2024, and thinking, “Well, of course he did that.” Luke dreamed up a 72-mile route around his hometown of Pocatello, Idaho, and ran it with friends, and this short film documents the effort and people that made it possible. (video)

(Also, here’s the Strava map and details of his run, if you’re interested in seeing what it looks like on a map)

The Hardrock Endurance Run starts about an hour after this newsletter publishes on July 11 (6 a.m. Mountain Time), and I wanted to share a couple relevant links—one is the interview Zoë Rom and I did with Katie Schide, the UTMB and Western States Endurance Run champion who is definitely favored to do well at Hardrock. We talked a little bit about her college job hauling giant pack loads up trails to the White Mountain huts in New Hampshire, how she has trained for Hardrock by spending time in Leadville, Ouray, and Silverton, and her PhD thesis. Here’s a link to listen on Apple Podcasts, and here’s a link to listen on Spotify.

Second: I loved this preview of Hardrock from longtime runner and writer Sarah Lavender Smith, who finally got into Hardrock this year in her mid-50s. It’s a great breakdown of how she’s prepared, what she’s expecting, and how she feels about running the race in her mid-50s as opposed to her mid-40s. If you’re following the race and want to root for someone, you can root for Sarah—and/or some of the other Hardrock women competitors in their 60s she lists in her Substack piece.

It’s sunny here in Western Montana right now, and f I am not wearing a sun hoody on my trail runs, I have been wearing the new Trekker Snappy Shirt from newsletter sponsor Janji. The high collar is great for covering the back of my neck on days when putting up a full hood is just too hot for me. The shirt is 10% off in the two remaining colors (I am a fan of the Reverse Paisley because I think it’s fun and also hopefully doesn’t show stains as much?). It’s listed as a “men’s” product but as you can see in the pics, it’s not necessarily just for men. And of course you could wear it for things other than running.

I wouldn’t say I’m much of a horror fan—I can’t say the last time I watched scary movie, and I’ve read very few horror books. But I am Patreon pen pals with Wendy Wagner, and got to chat with her at my Portland book event last May, so when I heard she had a new book coming out, I thought, “Wendy’s so nice! Maybe I should broaden my horizons.” She was kind enough to send me an advance copy of Girl in the Creek, and I am pleased to report that it was a fun, engaging read that didn’t give me nightmares. As I said, I don’t know anything about the horror genre, but if you had told me Wendy’s book was classified as something like “supernatural murder mystery,” I would say that sounds accurate too. It’s set in a fictional small town on the slopes of Mount Hood, and if you’re interested, here’s the link to the publisher’s page. If you’d like to support a local bookstore, here’s an affiliate link to the Bookshop page.

I have to agree with this sentiment, but I also don’t think I need AI to do my laundry and dishes, since I get a lot of good thinking done while hanging laundry and doing dishes.

I think I might have shared something about this a few months ago when I first heard about it, but Mustard, who was arguably made even more famous when Kendrick Lamar yelled his name during TV Off (and even more during the Super Bowl performance), now has a mustard collaboration with Heinz—Chipotle Honey Mustaaaaaard. (I have no financial interest or otherwise in this venture—I just think it’s entertaining. Also, did they argue about how many As they wanted to put in the name? “6!” “No, 5!”)

Why are frogs in kids’ books usually male? The Pudding did an amazing analysis of children’s books, and which animals we tend to characterize as male, and which animals we tend to characterize as female (including an experiment in which they asked 1,300 participants to finish a story that begins, “And then the bear said, ‘I must go to the river.’ Upon arriving…” to see which gender the participants assigned the bear.

Also, if you missed it last week, this is an actual coffee mug we just started making (clicking the link will take you to the shop page for the mug):

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I got quite a few responses to my post “A Regular Person’s Guide To Surviving An Ultramarathon” a few weeks back, so I decided to try to turn it into a YouTube video—which I just published yesterday. (video)

I might be a little late to the party here, but I finally finished Orbital by Samantha Harvey, and I was just telling a friend I regretted listening to the audiobook because it was so beautifully written that I wanted to spend more time with the sentences (which is kind of impossible unless you’re really skilled at rewinding an audiobook app). But if a short literary novel—ahem, award-winning, bestselling novel—about astronauts orbiting Earth sounds good to you, I highly recommend it. (Also, I have a theory that most books will eventually settle at about a 3.8-4.0 average rating on Goodreads, and I think I have to amend that to say that any book that’s nominated for the Man Booker Prize will settle at somewhere around 3.4-3.7, since just as many people seem to hate those books as love them). Here’s a link to the publisher’s page for Orbital, and here’s a link to the Bookshop page if you have a local bookstore you’d like to support.

There’s a lot of interesting info in this post from newsletter sponsor Precision Fuel & Hydration about how frequently you should take in carbs during exercise, including the breakdown of five different strategies from small, frequent doses to large, infrequent doses, but I was very excited to find my own strategy validated by a very fast runner: “Ultrarunner Robbie Britton hits 90g/h by consuming a PF 90 Gel in two separate doses. ‘My method is a big gulp initially and then I finish whatever is left in another hit by the end of the hour.'” [Reminder: Clicking the above link gives you 25% off your first Precision Fuel & Hydration]

I started laughing my ass off at the 00:09 mark of this video, and then thought, “this video is 63 seconds long, what else could happen in the next 50 seconds to make it better?” and I gotta tell you, I did not expect this lady to walk up to this guy, and get the reaction she got from him, which made me laugh even harder, and also sort of restore my faith in humans.

I have now known Ed Roberson for seven or eight years, and in that time watched him go from “guy trying out podcasting” to full-time podcaster and emcee/public speaker. He told me years later that the first time we met in person in 2018, at our little condo in Denver, that it was the first time he’d ever used the recording equipment he’d set up on our kitchen table to interview me. Ed has been visiting Missoula the past three years in advance of the Old Salt Festival, where he interviews people on stage and leads panel discussions, and before the festival, he stays at our house for a couple nights. Since 2018, he’s interviewed a lot of big (and/or big-to-me) names, including Nick Offerman, Kristine Tompkins, Hampton Sides, and others, so there’s been a lot of water under the bridge, so to speak, between that first interview and the interview we did at my kitchen table a few weeks ago. Which of course is just two friends chatting about the same stuff we’d been talking about while Ed was helping me build Jay’s playhouse in the backyard the day before—creativity, learning to teach, making my Seven Summits of My Neighborhood film, and the male loneliness epidemic.

We’ve all been there, clicking on one new (wrong) thing and then the algorithm makes all sorts of assumptions about our interests, and, well, “Now my feed is 50% dudes with perfectly groomed beards explaining why modern society has emasculated men, 30% videos of people blending vegetables while talking about ‘ancestral nutrition,’ and 20% ads for supplements with names like ‘Alpha Beast Mode’ and ‘Primal Warrior Stack.’” —Michelle J, “I Followed a Life Coach on Instagram and Now My Algorithm Thinks I’m a Men’s Rights Activist With a Juicing Problem”

This is a brand anthem video for HOKA, which I guess is essentially a sort of ad, but I gotta say, it’s fucking great. Made me think I actually do love running, partly because of exactly what they depict in the video: community. Anyway, it’s two minutes, and I’ve watched it three times this week.

I was talking to my mom a few weeks ago about my feeling that my brother and I had one of the last small-town/suburban childhoods in America where kids rode their bikes around to each other’s houses to hang out (which ended in 1993 when we moved across the state into a house on a highway with a 55 mph speed limit). So I’m probably the target market for this nostalgic collection of photos of kids jumping bikes over each other, many of which look like they probably ended with some scraped elbows/chins/knees. (via Kottke. org)

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Rich seemed like a nice guy, and although we only interacted for a few minutes, I remain forever grateful to him for the psychic load he unburdened me from, and took on himself, despite not knowing me at all.

Rich is a hero, but he’s not unique. He’s one of many heroes around the world who act probably on a daily basis, visiting strangers they meet via Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist, coming to their homes and agreeing to adopt a piece of neglected exercise equipment.

I don’t even know if we shook hands before he got in his car to drive away, which I regret. I think I was just so excited to have back the space in our garage that had been occupied by a NordicTrack ski machine for almost a year and a half.

I had bought it off Craigslist on a bit of an impulse during an August when the wildfire smoke in our town was really bad and I needed to exercise. Why didn’t I buy a treadmill? I don’t know. But I would have needed a pickup to haul a treadmill home. Plus the first real ultrarunner I ever met told me years ago that he did a ton of training on a NordicTrack, and that it really mimicked the motion of running well. Better question: Why didn’t I just pay for a day pass at the gym four blocks from my house?

Well, I didn’t. I bought a NordicTrack from a guy in an apartment complex a few blocks away, despite many red flags like a) I’m not really much of an exercise machine person and b) the fact that NordicTrack stopped producing the ski machines in the late 1990s.

I used it a couple times in our garage when the smoke was really bad, and then ignored it for almost a year and a half, watching it gather dust and sawdust, until I finally listed it on Craigslist for much less than I paid for it. Then, after it didn’t sell, I dropped the price. Then I dropped the price again, and finally, I just put it on Craigslist for free. Like just come and rid me of this goddamn thing, please. Within 14 minutes, a guy named Rich messaged me and said he was interested.

I grew up in what I believe was the heyday of infomercial fitness equipment: The Abdominizer, the Thighmaster (hawked by Suzanne Somers), the EZ Krunch, the Abflex, and later the Shake Weight, all of which sold millions of units on the promise of changing our lives, only to be debunked and/or ridiculed later. Suzanne Somers claimed they sold more than 15 million thighmasters, and the much less-famous Abdominizer apparently sold more than 6 million units in 50-plus countries.

Among all those gadgets that promised to give us abs, or muscles, or just fitness, but ended up in garage sales or charity shops or landfills, there must be some stories of people whose lives were actually changed by an infomercial-pitched exercise aid, right? Some folks who did, actually firm up their core by committing to workouts with the EZ Crunch, as endorsed by Price is Right model Dian Parkinson? Or someone whose lifelong fitness journey began with an impulse buy of the Shake Weight late one night while sitting on their couch, dusting Doritos seasoning off their fingertips to dial the 1-800 number on the screen of their TV? Surely this happened hundreds of times, with all the millions of these things sold.

Unfortunately, that’s not what happened with the used NordicTrack I bought from the guy in Missoula. I don’t remember what I originally paid for it, but I think it was somewhere in the neighborhood of $250, which means each time I used it cost me $125, which is almost the cost of a pair of running shoes, which I actually use, and even if running shoes somehow didn’t work for me, they could be used as walking shoes. The unused NordicTrack just sat there, taking up too much space in the garage—but taking up even more space in my head every time I walked by or glanced at it, a little ski machine-shaped spot in my brain colored with light shades of guilt.

Rich from Craigslist showed up to remove it from my garage within minutes of messaging me. I helped him carry it to his car, feeling the weight of the machine leave my hands as we set it in the back. I watched him drive away, hoping he’d get more joy out of it than I had. Maybe it would change his life?

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Wow did I love this 15-minute film about three L.A. cyclists who come from diverse cycling backgrounds and found each other to enjoy, as Dante Young puts it, “riding around in tight-ass clothes all day.” (video) (thanks, Brody)

This one-minute video was simply titled “Researchers react to first-ever photos” on the youseeingthisshit subreddit, and I watched it three or four times before I poked around to try to find more info on why these guys were so excited about this bird. The video is from 2022, shot on Fergusson Island, off the east coast of Papua New Guinea, and the bird is a Black-naped Pheasant Pigeon, which is a bird species that hadn’t been documented by scientists since it was first described in 1882—it was one of 20 “lost” birds that hadn’t been documented for more than 100 years. The guy with the camera is Cornell researcher Jordan Boersma, and he’s showing the video of the bird to local biologist Doka Nason. More info in this Audubon article, but the video itself is just a moment of joy. Like I am not what I would call a big “bird person” but I loooooove this video.

A few weeks ago, Zoë and I got to chat with Mike Ko, aka Kofuzi, for The Trailhead podcast, about his journey from regular guy to YouTube running celebrity, including the evolution from a “not that fast” runner (other people’s words, not mine) to sub-3-hour marathoner. In a move that was maybe kind of like wearing the band t-shirt to the concert or the bar t-shirt to the bar, I wore my “Non-Elite” hat for the video call (which was designed by Kofuzi and the folks at PATH Projects), which is still one of my favorite hats.
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify

I am starting to increase the distance of my longer trail runs to prepare for a big 5-day-long effort in early September, and the folks from newsletter sponsor Injinji thankfully sent me a pair of their Ultra Run Crew socks, which I am loving because of the extra padding for those longer-mileage days here in Missoula. If you’re looking for socks for running or hiking, clicking this link will give you a code for 20 percent off your purchase at the Injinji website.

There are only a few instances of profanity in this Substack piece about a really weird Airbnb experience, but if I were going to teach a class on how to use a few rated-R words exactly enough in your writing to be funny but not *too much *, I would use this essay as an example. (I think being able to write dialogue with a Scottish accent probably helps too)

This My Modern Met story is really just kind of a summary of a CBS Evening News story, but DAMN. Molly Shafer, a high school senior in a small town near Madison, Wisconsin, had friends when she was younger, but lost touch with many of them during high school, as she became a “loner.” But during her senior year, she decided to try to reconnect with them by painting portraits of 44 classmates. She spent about 13 hours on each one. The news crew interviewed many of the classmates for the short segment, and Molly, who said: “You can’t go through life thinking that you don’t have friends because they don’t like you, because that’s not the case. People aren’t thinking that hard about you. It’s all in your head. You just have to try.”

Boy did this Longreads story end up being way different than I thought it would be—the headline “Eight Limes, No More: The Accidental Poetry of Found Lists” really doesn’t even hint at the depth than you get when reading it. I particularly loved the list writing/writing exercise the author describes near the end of the essay. Also this bit: “Lists are how we fight chaos with ballpoint pens.“

Jason Chatfield has a wonderful Substack newsletter called New York Cartoons, and it was an honor for me to do a Substack Live discussion with him last week, as I consider him to be a real cartoonist (for the New Yorker and others), a real artist, and a real comedian. Also a really nice guy, in my experience meeting him for a quick coffee the last time I was in New York, which turned into, if I remember correctly, a several-hour, multi-coffee discussion with maybe some lunch too? Anyway, hell of a guy, loves to create and dig into the creative process, and we talked about everything from self-publishing books to road trips (he’s on one right now, in an RV somewhere south of Portland), to failure. If you’d like to watch our chat, here’s a link (we both decided to wear glasses for the interview, without discussing it beforehand?).

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NEWS FROM ME: As of today, August 1, we are opening up 25 more spots for the next session of my How To Tell One Story online writing course. So far, 180+ people have taken the course, and I’ve gotten tons of positive feedback from them. It’s six weeks, two emails per week (Mondays and Thursdays), each email containing a lesson, short video, and writing exercise that takes between five and 30 minutes. You complete the lessons at your own pace, and you have access to the lessons and videos as long as you want them. We’ll close registration after August 8th, or when the 25 spots fill up. (and psssst, right now it’s $50 off the regular price). Here’s a link if you’d like to check it out. 

I watched this video and thought, “maybe too weird for the newsletter,” and then I thought, “nah, maybe I’ll just share it anyway and the weird people will like it,” and then I watched it a second time and noticed the end credit that said “characters (and trumpet) by my son,” and the source drawings, and thought, “OK, maybe it’s not so weird, and just sort of cute in that little kid way.” But that’s me assuming the son is a little kid, so who knows. (video)

I was aware that people hike to all 48 of the 4,000-foot summits in the White Mountains, and I was also aware that people do all 48 of the summits, each one in each of the 12 months of the calendar year, but I honestly was not aware that people hammered out all 48 summits in one push until Gary C. sent me an email with this link to Andrew Drummond’s write-up of his latest attempt, which he finished in just under five days (!!!). Apparently people have been doing this since Reverend Henry Folsom put a route together in 1970, and did it over 19 hiking days (not consecutive). Anyway, the numbers to do it in less than five days are jaw-dropping (especially the final day, 59.53 miles and 19,678 feet of elevation gain).

We’ve been having Black Sabbath dance parties with our toddler since Ozzy Osbourne died July 22, and I saw a Popular Mechanics story (paywalled) about Ozzy’s genome sequencing showing that he was predisposed to hard partying and also surviving said hard partying, AND that he had some Neanderthal lineage. Which was pretty interesting, but this Psychology Today article explaining why his DNA won’t produce “another Ozzy” was even more interesting. So, RIP Ozzy.

I have, until this week, sort of assumed that a blood sugar crash during exercise was the same as “bonking,” and it took reading this article from newsletter sponsor Precision Fuel & Hydration to realize that no, they’re not the same. If you take anything away from What happens when you ‘bonk’? (And how to avoid it!) by Andy Blow, let it be that you should not only enjoy eating more carbs in the days leading up to a big effort, but that it is actually, as my junior high basketball coach used to say, prior proper preparation preventing poor performance. (also note that clicking the above link will give you 25% off your first purchase on the PFH site)

I just realized this week that endurance cyclist Alexandera Houchin has a Substack, and the first thing I read—her reflections on her many experiences racing Tour Divide over the years—did not let me down. My favorite part: “In a society obsessed with finish line narratives, we mustn’t forget the starting line stories, too. For I believe the distance from the starting line is where the true spirit lies; where did you come from to get to that race start line? Now, maybe more than ever, I urge people to dream impossible things, to line up at starting lines, and tell their stories.”

I had such a blast talking to my friend Fitz Cahall a few weeks ago, and having a bit of a return to The Dirtbag Diaries after several years. This conversation, and what I guess is really my first poetry reading, started when I published the “Reminder To Touch Grass” poem back in February and Fitz messaged me and asked if I’d like to read it on the Diaries. (Which I of course said yes to)

Did I need NPR to tell me that the word “dude” is useful? No, but I did need NPR to tell me that scholars spent 20 years trying to pin down its origin, and published a 261-page book about it. Also, “even with the rise of ‘bro,’ “dude” still reigns supreme, according to a recent survey linguistics professor Scott Kiesling conducted.”

This is just a short video I found on the Maybe Maybe Maybe subreddit, of a guy being very good at his job, and having fun with showing tourists a good time, and also kind of showing off a little bit.

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This photo of me, running to the finish line of a race with my toddler, Jay, was about 45 seconds away from not happening at all:

Hilary had woken Jay up from his nap, driven an hour and a half from Lake Hawea to the finish line parking area, scooped Jay out of the car, hustled him and his strider bike to the finishing corral, and gotten there just in time to see me about 150 feet away, jogging toward the finish alongside a guy named Kyle, scanning the fence line for her and Jay. I saw them, slowed and stopped, engaged my core, and grabbed our 30-pound, bike-helmeted kid from Hilary as she lifted him over the fence, set him down and we ran across the finish line together. 

In an alternate scenario, I might have ignored my wife and son in narrowed vision tunneling to the finish, downshifted, gritted my teeth, and sprinted next to Kyle, racing him the final couple hundred feet through the red arch, in a battle for 85th place. That might have come as a surprise to Kyle, as we’d run together off and on for the final six or so miles, chatting and jogging fairly casually. 

Of course, that didn’t happen—Kyle ran to the timing mat, jumped in the air to click his heels for the camera, and crossed the mat 16 seconds ahead of Jay and me, finishing 85th. 

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Years ago, I was listening to a podcast with a runner who was also a race director. I don’t remember anything about the interview with this person, except the part where they made fun of people who held hands with someone while crossing the finish line—a spouse, pacer, a fellow runner. At the time, I remember thinking, Huh, weird hill to die on, especially if you’re a race director. 

I had recently finished a race while holding hands with my wife, who had patiently paced me the final 30 miles of an extremely painful 100-mile race. As we approached the finish arch, I remember feeling that there was no way I would have made it to the end of the race without her. 

Maybe I also remembered that Kilian Jornet, arguably the greatest ultrarunner of a generation (if not all time), had finished the 2016 Hardrock Endurance Run while holding hands with Jason Schlarb. And that was a race he could have won. But, he said, “It’s logical…not to make a sprint to finish one minute ahead.”

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I have, like everyone else, put the hammer down (as much as I could, anyway) to run hard in the final mile of a long race, taking long strides to sprint (OK, kind of sprint) across the finish, even if I’ve been barely jogging, not-so-powerfully power-hiking, or hobbling for the previous five or 10 miles. That is also not logical, and yet I have done it. It was how I felt like showing up, at the time. 

If you have also done this, a pace chart of your race might look something like this: 

I don’t know what other people think about in their low moments when they’re pushing themselves out on on a race course or in the backcountry, but I would guess I’m not alone in a) wondering why I make myself do hard things in the middle of nowhere b) thinking about my home, which is to say my family, and sometimes my bed at home. It’s a privilege to go out and voluntarily seek adversity in nature, and when I find that adversity, it reminds me to be grateful for what I have.

Running is who I am for most of the day on race day. And in a typical week, it’s who I am for about 6-8 hours. But I’m a lot of other things all the time. 

I have told people that the UTMB finish line in Chamonix is probably the best finish line in sports. This is not because it has some 100-plus-year tradition (like the Boston Marathon), or because the greatest elite runners in the sport routinely battle it out in the final 100 meters to determine who will be that year’s champion. It is because you get to watch people from all over the world feeling whatever emotions they feel at the end of a 103-mile odyssey around Mont Blanc. Plus, they can run through the finish corral with their pacer, spouse, kids, dog, whoever they want. Some sprint, some walk, but they all cross the timing mat, and complete one of the biggest efforts of their lives. 

But a finish line, whether it’s the UTMB, or the terminus of the Appalachian Trail, or a local 5K race, can represent one of the biggest efforts of somebody’s life. And no matter how we show up there, in a sprint that threatens to explode our quads, or hobbling next to a friend cajoling us to go a few more steps, or carrying a kid who maybe doesn’t understand what Mom or Dad just did to get to this point, aren’t we really just trying to say, 

I’m 

So 

Happy 

I 

Could 

Be Here 

Right Now? 

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Today is the last day to sign up for my How To Tell One Story online writing course! As of my typing this (Thursday afternoon), we still had eight spots available. Since I kind of messed up a funny video promotion I did for it on Instagram that had a discount code on it (long story), it’s $199 for everyone instead of $249. But, again, today is the last day to sign up, and the spots are filling. Here’s the link for more info. (We’ll open up another 25 spots the week of October 3-10).

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As a huge fan of independent movie theaters, I really enjoyed this breakdown of how they make it work financially—although no one featured in the video mentioned memberships, which our local indie theater uses to keep the lights on (I am of course a member). (video)

Great headline on this short piece from Steve Magness and Brad Stulberg’s newsletter: “The Most Underrated Performance Enhancer: Having Fun,” which is in the same vein of something I’ve told a lot of people when they mention the idea of starting writing a newsletter: have fun with it, or you’ll find yourself abandoning it because it feels like work. I believe Steve and Brad are writing more about success/winning, but I think we’re on the same wavelength (isn’t fun its own kind of success?).

I follow the PerfectFit subreddit, and it’s usually just mildly satisfying stuff that happens to fit together, but this photo delivers a whole story, and you can just imagine the relief: A woman lost her engagement ring on a cross country trip, found a month later in husband’s deodorant

I am sure there is more to this story of the late musician and Harvard mathematician Tom Lehrer writing a letter to representatives for 2 Chainz in reply to their request for his permission to sample his song “The Old Dope Peddler,” but I think the writing itself is just *chef’s kiss*.

This is maybe not “inspirational” in the typical mostly-positive sense this newsletter usually embraces, but I have been thinking about it since I watched and saved it on Tuesday—I sometimes wonder if in 10 years, we’ll have retreated more into digital living, or if we’ll collectively say, “wow, this kind of sucks,” and rebel against it, doing more things in the “real world.”

Sometimes I look at certain pieces of art and wonder if they’d be as well-known if they were, you know, smaller—like Picasso’s Guernica, but 11 inches by 25 inches, instead of 11 feet by 25 feet. I’m not saying this hyper-realistic pigeon on NYC’s High Line is Guernica, but it is huge. (via Kottke)

The morning of my friend Nick Triolo’s book launch party at the library in Missoula a few weeks back, I invited him to join me on one of my twice-weekly runs on Mount Sentinel, since he hadn’t been in town for a while and we were due for a catchup. I of course totally forgot that a) his new book, The Way Around, was about circumambulation, which is kind of the opposite of summiting a peak, and b) my regular run route goes to the summit of Mount Sentinel. I of course remembered during the Q&A when he mentioned it in a sort of “hey, nothing against peak bagging” joke. We had interviewed him a few weeks prior for The Trailhead podcast, in which we talked about his book, and his 30-plus-race-finish ultrarunning career. Links to listen here:
Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Speaking of the Trailhead podcast, if you’ve been listening the past few months and would like to help us out by taking a quick 2-minute survey and share your opinions and/or recommendations, here’s a link to it.

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Did you know that you can respond to this newsletter (or recommend something for next week’s Friday Inspiration) by clicking “reply”? It’s true. I love getting replies, and I am able to read them all, and try to respond to them (but sometimes I can’t, which is a bummer, so thanks for understanding). (If you received this email from a friend, and would like to subscribe, please click here.)