One of my newish favorite images of my kid, among the thousands, is him standing on the front of a lumber cart at a big-box home improvement store, holding his “sword” that his mom made for him out of parts from a toddler tool kit, wearing a dress that his mom also made him—really just kind of a skirt made out of a piece of fabric with beetles printed on it.

You could probably read a lot into his outfit, I suppose. But he has watched Frozen many, many times in the past few weeks, and I believe he likes to wear the dress because it makes him feel powerful. Elsa is the most powerful character in the movie, and she wears a dress. The sword, I’m not sure about, because Elsa never uses a sword, but lots of details about the movie are a little beyond him right now. But if you had sent me a photo of him with the sword and the dress on the front of the moving cart six years ago, and you had told me that I was the person pushing the cart, I’d have a lot of questions.

Our little guy turned three and a half last weekend. I don’t write much about him, or being a parent, and I always wondered if I could write something original about the experience of raising a kid. But it’s probably easier to just try to write the truth.

Years ago, back when I woke up to an alarm clock and not a child with immediate needs, I asked my friend Chris what he thought the biggest surprise about parenting was, and he said, “That the clichés are true.” Which I didn’t believe at the time, but he knew and I didn’t know anything.

Until 2021 or so, I did not think I’d ever become a parent, and I thought all parents said the same things about having kids: It’s the best thing I’ve ever done. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It goes by so fast. Et cetera, et cetera. And now I say all that cliché shit too, always reminding myself, dammit, Chris was right.

Here are a few things I’ve observed and thought about in the past 3.5 years:

Your kid is the cutest
Did you know that your kid is the cutest kid in the world, to you? It’s true. I imagine there’s some biological reason for this feeling among parents. Unless, of course, YOU think MY kid is the cutest kid in the world, in which case I would like to commend you on your impeccable taste and judgment.

Kids say the darndest things!
Or in our kid’s case, he said “Fucking Christ,” every once in a while, for several months when he was about two and a half. Hilary very politely tried to say that he could have picked it up from either of us, but I’m pretty fucking sure she was just trying to protect my feelings.

“Slow days, fast years”
I interviewed 40+ dads in the months leading up to Jay’s birth and the year after, and when I asked them what parenting forced them to improve about themselves, a great many of them said “patience.” This has never been more clear to me than when I ask Jay to wash his hands after using the toilet, or before eating. It is FUCKING ASTOUNDING how many things a three-year-old can find to distract himself from the one thing he is supposed to be doing. Look, I have 20 browser tabs open and can take an entire workday or two to write a 1,000-word essay, but six and a half minutes to wash your hands? Come on, man.

HOWEVER. Every bit of progress we mark as our little dude becomes more of kid and less of a baby means that part of his life—and our lives with him—is over. We have a shared Notes document where we type phonetic spellings of words Jay mispronounces as he learns to talk, because every time he figures out how to correctly pronounce a word, we lose his innocent, Beginning Talker words like “hollowcotter” and “dagedder.” [See Raymond Beisinger’s “The Affabet”]

Kids force you to be present.
Sure, playing with a toddler can sometimes feel tedious, especially when your presence is requested not to actually participate in the playing with, say, a train set, but to sit and watch your kid play with a train set. But when you pull out a smartphone and try to answer an email or check the weather and 15 seconds later you hear a tiny voice saying, “Dad,” as in, “Pay attention to me,” it’s really hard to not feel like a real asshole. Most dads I’ve talked to mentioned regretting that they had to work so much when their kids were young, and I get that, but at least work is earning money to provide food and shelter. There is literally almost nothing I can access on a smartphone that is worth ignoring my kid over. Even if he’s watching paint dry and asking me to watch him watch paint dry.

It’s gross
Previous to having a roommate who didn’t know how his butt worked, I thought I had a maybe slightly above-average comfort level with human feces. Like I feel like I have a Hirayama-in-Perfect Days level of comfort with cleaning toilets, don’t mind digging catholes or blue-bagging it in the backcountry, and have, since 2013, sold a “Grand Canyon Groover Calendar,” made up of photos I took while doing groover duty every day of a 28-day river trip. Well well well. Without getting into too much detail, the birth of my child marked a new epoch in my poop journey. This past December, we had a potty chair sitting next to our Christmas tree, long story, but that’s where we were. The irony of having a groover in my living room was not lost on me.

This is why we can’t have nice things.
Before I had a toddler, I had some stuff I cared about, and it was “nice.” Some of it’s still “nice.” Some of it has been dropped and/or broken and/or destroyed. Now that Jay has been our roommate for three and a half years, my possessions all probably fit into three categories:

1. Stuff that absolutely cannot get fucked up and needs to be hidden from child at all costs
2. Stuff that’s nice and that a toddler could maim themselves with, and therefore must be hidden from child
3. Stuff that’s nice, but let’s be honest, is less important than my kid’s experience of exploration and discovery, and therefor shareable, even if he breaks it, or that’s what I told myself after he broke it

It’s hard
People say raising a kid is hard. In my experience, they’re correct. I think what I didn’t expect was the diversity in types of “hard”: The interruptions of your own sleep that for the first three months or so feel like they’d be an effective interrogation tactic, the sudden disappearance of any time for yourself after decades of having what feels in retrospect like all the time in the world, trying to understand the psychology of a human being who is just discovering they have hands and that they act very irrationally when they are hungry or tired, the slowing down of literally everything you try to do as you chaperone an amateur human being through an airport or hardware store or the steps of putting on a sock—I could go on.

Am I complaining? I am not. Being a stupid idiot who believes that almost every meaningful thing in life requires difficulty or discomfort, I have realized that if I was forced to trade in all the hours it’s taken me to help raise this kid and do something else with them, I’d probably just pick another hard thing to do.

Also: I didn’t even do the physiological and psychological work of turning this dude from a zygote into a seven-pound human! Or the breastfeeding. As a dad, my body didn’t change in any noticeable way the entire time! I was just the assistant for all that stuff (maybe assistant manager?). And I still thought it was hard. Can you imagine if I had to be pregnant, give birth, and immediately feed and care for a thing that was a fetus 15 minutes ago?

“You’ll miss this”
There’s an old joke about mountaineering—or many jokes, probably, and the gist of them is basically: “That was miserable. I can’t wait to do it again.” It’s a joke, but it’s based on actual human psychology that we tend to forget the hard parts, and mountaineering, somewhat like child-rearing, has many hard parts.

“You asked for this”
I did. I asked for this. I consider myself privileged and lucky to be in a position to ask for this, and then receive it, and to have what has been a relatively smooth journey with it up until this point, all things considered. I would add the caveat, though, that maybe some of us weren’t super familiar with some of the specifics of the “this” that we were asking for, such as the amount of time I would spend using a Libman Easy Grip Scrub Brush to remove human feces from clothing, but also the feeling of reaching my hand down at a crosswalk and feeling a little hand reach up and grab my middle finger without ever taking my eyes off of vehicle traffic.

“You won’t understand until you have one for yourself”
See previous item. Also, to the extent that I understand raising a kid, I only understand my kid, not anyone else’s kid. Even if our kids are the exact same age, it’s not like we are comparing the same pair of running shoes or something— “Do you like the new cushioning in your Cascadia 19s? Me too.”

“They love to push your buttons”
I forget which parenting book I read this in, but yes, I too have felt that my kid has done a certain thing because he knows for sure that it will piss me off. Which is, of course, not true. Someone wrote somewhere that instead of imagining your two- or three-year-old is a smaller adult human who you can expect to act with some degree of rationality, it’s helpful to imagine they’re a raccoon, a creature you probably don’t think you can control.

“You get to see the world through a child’s eyes again”
Sure, this means watching some Daniel Tiger, or Bluey, or Frozen 25+ times or whatever. But it also means when I’m pedaling our cargo bike down the path to take Jay to preschool, trying to find things to talk to him about, and I see a three-quarter moon in the morning sky, and I realize this is a novel thing I can point out to my kid, and I say, “Jay, did you see the moon?” I am also telling myself to look at the moon, which is, compared to mentally cataloguing the dozen or so things I need to do today or stressing about an upcoming deadline, actually quite nice.

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QUICK ANNOUNCEMENT: Next Tuesday morning (January 13), we are opening registration for my 2026 “Running to Stand Still” Freeflow Institute writing + trail running workshop. It’s June 7-12 on Homestake Pass in Montana (10 miles from Butte, a couple miles from the Continental Divide Trail). We run every day (as a group, so not fast), we do two workshop/discussion sessions each day, and we eat lots of good food. This workshop sells out every year, so if you’re interested, send your email address to me at brendan@semi-rad.com (or you can just reply to this email) and I’ll send you an email when registration opens on Tuesday.

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I really appreciate that in the sea of “I DID X EXTREME THING” titles on YouTube, I got served this 13-minute film of this guy snorkeling in a river in Alabama in December, freezing his hands and feet (in a wetsuit) to create a very chill video of some nature, including this line of commentary: “It was pretty sweet to watch this colorful crustacean just straight up vibing in his natural habitat in the creek.” (video)

I figured this T Magazine photo feature titled “Our Favorite Home Libraries” would showcase a bunch of fancy, uncluttered Dwell Magazine-approved beautiful spaces, and sure, a lot of these are really pretty, but a few of them look like the books are doing a hostile takeover of a living space, and I appreciate that. [GIFT LINK]

I mentioned this once before the end of 2025, but newsletter sponsor Precision Fuel & Hydration has put together a sample pack of all of my favorite products so you can try the gels, chews, and electrolyte drink I use. I mean, I didn’t win any high-profile ultramarathon races last year—or any races for that matter—but I did run 1500+ miles and cranked out 300,000 feet of elevation gain, without getting a single cramp(!). (I believe this link will give you 15% off the pack, but if not you might have to manually enter SEMIRAD26 in the discount code spot when you check out)

This is a really vulnerable piece of writing about body image and breast explant surgery, by writer and runner Sarah Lavender Smith: I Need To Get Something Off My Chest

I was never a massive Star Trek fan aside from watching reruns of the original series as a kid in the 80s, but damn if I didn’t love clicking and dragging around these 360-degree panoramas of the interiors of some of the ships of Star Trek. (via Kottke)

The r/ContagiousLaughter subreddit always delivers for me: Seeing how many capes I can put on my client before she notices

This list of every U.S. state’s “loneliest road” was fun for a couple reasons—the methodology, the fact that I saw my pal James Q. Martin’s name in it (as the person they asked to “judge” the 10 most scenic routes out of the list of 50), and the photography (although I’m pretty sure one of the photos is of Interstate 90 through Utah, which is not very lonely at all, in my experience). And also that the loneliest road in Iowa goes right through my parents’ hometown of Emmetsburg, where I spent many days as a kid.

The Ringer has put together a 64-member “Ultimate Traitor Bracket,” including traitors from movies, books, and real life, and they’re already onto the Final Four, but I thought I’d link to the Sweet 16 post here, because it’s just fun to see who they put in it: LeBron James, Prince Hans from Frozen, Fredo Corleone, Cypher from The Matrix, Scar from The Lion King, Iago from Othello, the list goes on.

I can’t decide if today is one long day that feels like it should be two, or two days that feel like they should’ve been one. Either way, its been long but super cool.

The day began Sunday morning with the whole family crowded around the kitchen counter eating doughnuts together. Despite how excited I was for Barcelona, it was still sad to leave them :(. I had just enough time to stuff (and I mean really stuff) the last of my things into my suitcase and backpack. I managed to zip everything shut and minutes later I had dropped my 44 pound suitcase at bag check and was taking myself and my backpack through security. I felt like I packed a lot, but nearly everyone else I’ve seen brought two suitcases and a carry on.

The flight to JFK was nice and smooth- a good nap opportunity! Immediately upon arriving at the gate for my flight to Barcelona, I spotted growing clusters of college students huddling and hugging and talking about their breaks. Turns out that the initial assumptions I made about them were right: They all knew each other and were all going on the same program as I was (There are apparently over 200 U Miami kids on this trip!). I was getting very clicky vibes…

Of course I ended up sitting directly next to a clump of them on the plane. Nonetheless the flight was incredibly relaxing and enjoyable: I watched thee hours of the Office (which was the intended purpose of the flight, let’s be clear), Delta served us dinner, I slept for maybe an hour, and then I halfheartedly tried to sleep for the rest of the time. I really enjoyed looking out the window near the end: the city views descending into Barcelona were magical.

The line for border control took a record-breaking amount of time but I got to use these cool new fingerprinting and passport scanning machines and an officer stamped my passport so everyone can know I’ve officially been to Spain.

My flight contained the first batch of BSAE students to arrive, and we were taxied to the BSAE center and given a quick 30 minute orientation and chance to meet each other before we split into taxis once more headed for our home stays and apartments. I rode with a pair of roommates and they were clearly perfectly matched with their host mom. I was jealous and nervous as we drove another 20 minutes out of the city for my homestay. It got gradually less busy and more hilly (while still being a gigantic metropolis), and when we came to a stop I didn’t see anything that resembled an apartment or a host mom/grandma standing there to greet me. Three more steps, however, and Cristina flung open an unsuspecting door, kissed me on both cheeks, and whirled me up to her beautiful fourth floor apartment.

Cristina poured me a glass of water and kindly laid out some cookies as we chatted about my flight and got the wifi and keys to the apartment sorted out. I was then given an enthusiastic tour of the apartment and allowed to choose which room I wanted because I arrived before my housemate. Given that one room was dark, facing away from the sun and decorated in neutral tones and the other was bright and cheery and seemed to beckon you in with a door to the sunny porch, I chose the second one. I unpacked and got the room “decorated” (my decorations consist of a crocheted dinosaur called Bean, a tin deck of cards, the game 5 Crowns, a few notebooks, and a bottle of lotion) in little time. It looks like what I imagine Scandinavian minimalism to be.

Cristina had a work meeting at 2pm, and she took the opportunity to help orient me to the Barcelona Metro system. We bought a Metro pass and she gave me a route to sample while she attended her meeting. I felt very professional riding the Metro down to Barcelona’s Central Plaza, walking around a bit, and then heading back.

At this point in the day I still had 5 hours before I could reasonably go to bed, but I was so very tired. I decided I’d go on a run/walk to shake myself awake. It turned into more of a stroll, but I was able to face time miss Tamara and explore the funky streets and adorable tiny shops all around the apartment. I returned about 5, picturing Cristina worrying that I’d gotten lost- which she was not at all- and sorted and organized some more things in my room. Christina began making dinner around 6, and my house mate arrived an hour later (she took a late flight)- earlier than we were expecting so she was able to join for dinner! Objects felt like they were wiggling and shifting in my vision as I battled my eyelids to remain open, waiting for dinner. Any time I stopped concentrating on it, my neck would snap down towards my chest in sleep mode.

We had a very early dinner for Spain- around 7:15. Cristina made vegetable and noodle soup, chicken, salad, and bread, and we had bananas for dessert. Once we cleaned up, Cristina and I both made some nighttime sleeping tea to lull us to bed. Goodnight!

Why shouldn’t I be writing a blog post? I can enumerate multiple reasons. For starters its 10pm and I haven’t actually slept a full 8 hours since I got to Barcelona; I think the tiredness is just going to compound until I fall down one day in the middle of the street (or fall asleep during class, which has already almost happened multiple times during orientation). Reason number two would just be the amount of other things I have to do, like applying for summer jobs and figuring out my class schedule. More important than blogging? Debatable, but probably yes.

The reason I decided it would be a good idea to write one, however, is because I just spent at least 45 minutes writing long texts to friends and family describing how things are here in Barcelona, and I thought gee this would be fun as a blog post. I’m not going to read through my old texts later to remember my experience, and I haven’t been journaling at all, so this blog might be the best way to remember my time abroad! So… aquí tenemos un poco información sobre mis primeras días en la ciudad!

The City Is so much bigger than I expected! I don’t know why, but I visualized Barcelona as more of a mid-sized city with plenty of open space and parks, and the beach right next door. While there are technically parks, the biggest one I’ve seen hasn’t been larger than a building and was stuffed inbetween a bunch more buildings. It was more of a concrete path with a wide strip of half-dead grass on either side. You’d never know the beach was right there because the buildings are too tall and completely block any chance you might have of glimpsing the water. And as far as the size, you could walk for hours in any direction and still feel like you’re in the city. I was asking people today where they thought the main city center was, and someone responded “It’s kinda just everywhere”, which I think is pretty accurate. The neighborhood that I’m staying in, Sarría Sant-Gervasi, is an hour’s walk away from what one could deem the center of the city, and it is slightly more calm. Although it’s annoying to have to commute at least 30 minutes via metro/bus/walking to get anywhere, its really nice to be able to return to somewhere more chill and relaxed at the end of the day. It sounds nice, but I don’t think I’d want an apartment that’s a 5 or 10 minute walk away from our school because you’d never escape the business.

All that being said, I really do love the city: The architecture is beautiful, the shops are all adorable and unique, there’s so much to do and explore, and the (scarce and sometimes human-made) nature is lovely. Its been two of more than one hundred days and I’m already anxious that I’m not going to have enough time to explore it all (and honestly I probably won’t!). I’m so excited to get into a routine hopping on the metro to get to my classes and internship, finding the best coffee/pastry shops to stop into for breakfast or studying, and scouting out areas to hike and explore after class/work.

The People Have been super cool… for the most part. To begin with the negative, there are about 250 U Miami kids on the program (I’m guessing they make up 50-70% of the entire program) who all know each other and think they’re all that because they go to school in Miami. They’ve gone out drinking and clubbing every. Single. Night we’ve been here and have no interest whatsoever in meeting any of the rest of us. I was sitting next to a crowd of U Miami people during orientation on the first full day, and there were people leaving to go throw up their drinks from the previous night. The worst part was that they were talking and laughing at full volume while someone was trying to present- SO, SO RUDE! I was getting really annoyed. The bright side is that whenever I meet someone who’s NOT a U Miami kid, its a little instant bond.

Onto the cool people! I didn’t expect that I’d be seeing much of the St. Olaf kids once we actually got to Barcelona, but they’re actually the people I’ve been hanging out with the most and, including my roommate, the people I get along with the best. There are roughly 10 of us on the program, and most days we wander around together after orientation and go get lunch somewhere. My roommate Natalie and her friend Sara have been joining us, which is great! They both go to the University of Illinois and are really fun and easy to get along with. I am so, so glad that I have a roommate and that we’re becoming friends because it truly makes the morning metro rides, walks back, homestay dinners, and everything inbetween all that much better. Even better, she’s someone I can text anytime to see what she’s up to! If only she knew she’s slowly filling a hole in my heart from my freshman year….

Cristina, my host mom, has also been super amazing. She’s in her mid 70s but has so much energy, goes to the gym, and works a full time job on top of preparing us meals and cleaning! It was love at first sight from the second I met her, seriously. She’s so incredibly sweet and caring and has opened her home to us without a doubt. I have already learned tons about Spain in general, Barcelona, Catalan, her family, and her opinions on dogs vs cats, all while practicing my Spanish (as she doesn’t speak English). I was really curious and somewhat worried about my homestay family because it can really make or break the experience, but its turned out amazing these first few days! Just know that if you ask Cristina a question you could get a five minute answer :).

The Food Has been… interesting! Not necessarily bad but just not my style exactly. I have walked by so many enticing coffee shops and adorable bakeries but have yet to try any. Its hard to just walk by without stopping to admire their creations! The two meals I’ve eaten out (both with the St. Olaf group plus my roommate and her friend!) have truly not been my favorite. I got a chicken caesar salad from this one place, and the chicken was edible but each lettuce leaf was covered in a thick layer of dressing. I ate one and couldn’t stomach another. The Chinese food I had today was passable, but I got a little scared after reading “fried chicken feet” and “Pig intestine” on the menu.

Cristina has been making us breakfast and dinner every day, which is so, so sweet of her and a great way to save money! Common breakfast items include: individually wrapped tiny muffins, chocolate granola, cookies, and fruit. Perfect to grab on our way out and eat on the metro. Dinner, which has been around 8pm- quite early for Spain- has been good, but has forced me a little outside my comfort zone. The first night I was convinced I was eating raw chicken and was going to get sick, and last night I ate non-scrambled eggs with uncooked yolks for the first time in my life. She always serves us bread, salad, and sometimes soup as well, and is pretty adamant that we not help with anything except clean-up. Dinner is a fun time because Natalie, Cristina and I have great conversations. Granted, Cristina is usually the one talking for most of the time (she is skilled at that) but its really cool to hear directly from a Spaniard about the country and its such a great way to practice my Spanish. I can generally understand what she’s saying even when she’s on a roll at 110 mph, even if I can’t always articulate exactly what I want to say.

Overall its been a great time. I’ve enjoyed each day more than the last, and I think its because they’re getting more and more structured. Our arrival day, Monday, consisted of a 30 minute orientation which I did around 10am (I was in the first batch of students to arrive), and then no other plans other than to get settled in and meet your host family. It was nice that we didn’t have to sit and listen to a bunch of orientation right away, but no amount of reorganizing my stuff in the room or walking around the neighborhood was going to fight off the intense ganas de dormir from our friend jetlag.

Orientation on Tuesday started at 9am, meaning I had to wake up at 7:45 to have enough time to catch the metro to the BSAE offices. Thankfully my roommate (I should say housemate- we don’t share a room) and I were going together and our host mom was making us breakfast, because I slept through my alarm and woke up at 8:10 to Cristina knocking on my door and whispering my name. I put my clothes on as fast as possible and we were on the metro 15 minutes later. However, the metro was only the first piece of the puzzle to get to the offices. We needed to either catch a different metro or a bus to go the last few miles, but we didn’t have WiFi and were really confused about it all. Finally, with 10 minutes until 9, we decided to suck it up and take a taxi, and we were only 2 minutes late! The next day (today) I was the one who had to knock on my roommate’s door to wake her up because it was 8:10 and she was still asleep.

Today was another 9am start, and we finished about noon. Its really weird to have the whole afternoon and evening completely free in a city where it feels like there’s both so much and so little to do. When we’re sitting listening to the orientation, I’m itching to get out there and see it all, but once you start walking the streets it suddenly feels like shopping around is the only option. This afternoon was great because I hung out with my roommate at a cafe after lunch, and then went on a walking tour, given by BSAE, of Mont Juic, which was absolutely beautiful. The sights were amazing, we got to see the site of the 1992 Olympics which apparently made Barcelona famous, and I got to meet some new people! Much to my roommate’s dismay, we spent the hours from 3-8pm walking (to the tour, on the tour, then the 1.5 hours back to our house). My phone logged 25,000 steps!

Tomorrow is our last Orientation day (we might only have 30 minutes again), and then Friday we got to choose between Tarragona and Girona for a fun day trip! All my friends and I chose Tarragona, and I think its going to be awesome- there are Roman ruins and ocean beaches there, and I’m excited to soak it in!

Well now its nearly 11:30 and I really, really need to go to bed. Goodnight to my Europe friends and good afternoon to my Minnesota friends!

I just realized I forgot to post pictures with my super long blog post! They may not be the greatest pictures ever, but they give you a sense for the city!

Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen/Watch on YouTube

For My Favorite Things, I’m interviewing people about the books, movies, music, art, and other creative works that have helped shape their lives. My guest for Episode 7 is Andy Pearson, VP of creative at Liquid Death, dad of two kids, ultramarathon runner, and co-host of the Between Two Pines podcast. Andy’s favorite things are:

1. Back to the Future Part II

2. Calvin and Hobbes

3. I Get Wet by Andrew WK
Apple Music | Spotify | YouTube

4. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
Publisher’s Page | Bookshop | Amazon

5. Boys and Girls in America by The Hold Steady
Apple Music | Spotify | YouTube

Other things we talked about:
The Curse

A heads-up: Registration opened for my Running To Stand Still writing + trail running course on Tuesday, and we have a $300 Early Registration discount if you sign up by midnight MST on Saturday January 17 (that’s tomorrow). If you like the sound of six days of mellow trail running, talking about writing and creativity with a group of fun people, and hanging out in the mountains of Montana, here’s the link for more info.

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This [professional enduro mountain biker] guy waited for McDonald’s to close to see if he could ride his bike for 24 hours straight in the drive-thru, an endeavor I respect immensely. (video) (thanks, Devin)

From the “key takeaways” at the top of this article: 1) Scientists have identified a stone wall nearly 400 feet long, lying 30 feet beneath the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. 2) It was built by hunter-gatherers more than 7,000 years ago, though its purpose remains uncertain. (via Kottke)

In 1983, artist David Hammons made a bunch of very round snowballs and sold them for $1 alongside other street vendors in Cooper Square in New York, and now I have to watch the documentary about him because the trailer at the end of this piece about his “Blizz-aard Ball Sale” looks fantastic.

My friend Nick Triolo mentioned this to me at least three times (twice in person and once in his Substack) before I finally got my act together and started listening to it: Fela Kuti: Fear No Man, by Jad Abumrad, who you may be familiar with from his fantastic Dolly Parton’s America podcast from 2019 or his other, also quite successful podcast that he did up until 2022, Radiolab.
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube

As I understand this (from reading about it on WebCurios), this is basically a live visualization of plane traffic for every airport in the world, made possible by three different websites and a bunch of computer magic my brain is too small to understand but WOW is it fun to click around a little bit. Kind of fun to type in your local/favorite airport and see what’s going on right now.

I follow the r/FoundPaper subreddit, and there’s often some interesting/mysterious stuff in there. This is less mysterious, but kind of a window into a nightclub’s operating instructions for when Carrie Underwood made an appearance there.

I met Evan Ward on our 2022 Freeflow Institute writing workshop (when we sea kayaked around the San Juan Islands in pre-season temperatures and semi-dicey weather), and I’m not saying the writing course necessarily had anything to do with this piece Evan wrote about volunteering to help people fix bicycles, but I loved it, both for the narrative and the reminder that sometimes doing simple things for people can make the world feel a little less crazy.

I forgot to mention this last week and we’re now halfway through the first month of the year, but if you’re a Strava user, I started this club a few years ago called “100 Grand,” and it’s basically for people who track how much they go uphill. If you get to 100,000 vertical feet (in one sport, or all sports) in a year, I send you a sticker. If you want one. And if you get 400,000 vertical feet, I will send you four stickers. I like the metric of vertical feet (or meters) because it has nothing to do with performance—just reminding yourself to go uphill every once in a while. Anyway, here’s the link to the club if you’d like to partake for the next 349 days.

Finally: I recorded this My Favorite Things podcast interview with Andy Pearson, ultrarunner, podcast host, and VP of creative at Liquid Death, in May 2024, and I finally published it. We talk about Back to the Future Part II, Calvin and Hobbes, Andrew WK, On the Road, and The Hold Steady’s Boys and Girls in America. There’s some crazy stuff in this episode, but the craziest thing to me was when Andy mentioned that he once had a co-worker who “didn’t like music” (!?!?!?!)

We finished out orientation week with more 9am cultural sessions and Spanish classes and some afternoon activities with the program!

On Wednesday we went on a “hike” (more of a leisurely stroll) around Montjuïc; one of my favorite areas of Barcelona so far. It was much calmer and more relaxing than other parts of the city, and a great way to meet other people on the program. The first thing you see when you walk up is a beautiful fountain framing this quaint castle on a hill in the background (I’ll post a picture). Once you walk up to the castle and turn around, you can see the entire city laid out in front of you with another fountain/waterfall thing- breathtaking (I have a picture of that, too). Past the castle is the site where Spain hosted the 1992 Olympics which, as we learned, had a huge effect on the city. Pictures taken of the diving pool that looks out on the city and mountains behind catapulted the city into the public eye. We ended our walk at the base of Montjuïc (Jewish mountain, named for its history as a medieval Jewish cemetery), and I mentally bookmarked it as somewhere to return. Natalie, Luke, Patrick, and I took on the nearly 90min walk back to the Sarría Sant-Gervasi district afterwords.

Thursday was Park Güell day. Commissioned by Catalan industrialist Eusebi Güell and designed by Antoní Gaudí, the original intent was to be a private city and gardens for rich people. The failure of this idea led the space to be turned into the iconic park it is today. It was another hour walk to get to the park from the lunch place we had gone to, and it was pretty mush a straight shot up the mountain. Once we finally arrived, we didn’t see anyone from our program and quickly realized we had gone to the wrong entrance. After much confusion and Google Maps manipulation, we had to hike several flights of stairs and crazy steep roads back down the mountain (no exaggeration at all..), over to the other side of the park, and up again to where everyone else was waiting. I was glad we went to the effort to find the right entrance, because it was truly breathtaking. Surrounded by beautiful forest in front of me, the grand park gates to the right, and brown and blue tiled houses giving off very strong gingerbread house vibes to my left, it felt like a scene out of a fairy tale. We spent over two hours walking around inside the park- there was so much to admire! Views of the city (you could see all the way out to the ocean), wildly cool architecture poking out of the vegetation, and tiled everything everywhere you looked. The sun showed up big time and I was starting to feel more connected to my study abroad mates; it was a fun afternoon!

It seems every day has a theme, for Friday was Tarragona day! This is where my pictures of quieter streets, Roman ruins, and the ocean come in. I slept the entire bus ride there and back, and it took willpower to stand up from my seat when we got there. This day trip was mandatory: everyone in the program chose to visit either Tarragona, the land of the Roman ruins and ocean, or Girona, famous for its Jewish legacy and being the place where Game of Thrones was filmed. I was happy with Tarragona because I was able to touch the ocean (with one finger!) and there were less U Miami kids there. We got a guided tour of some of the ruins and if I remembered any of what our guide told us, I would’ve describe it here. It was cool, though, because I got to take the tour in Spanish with some of my friends (even though our guide kept accidentally switching to English) and we went inside ancient Roman walls and tunnels. Our last stop was the Colosseum, which you can view below, and was stunning. Afterwords we went with a group of almost 15 to a small cafe for lunch (the St. Olaf group plus some new additions from the tour). We had a leisurely Spanish lunch, with the people at my end of the table struggling to hear anything from the other end of the table. Afterwords we walked over to a fish/meat/vegetables market where I got to see more guts than I ever needed to see, countless decapitated fish of every kind, including crabs, jellyfish, and everything in-between, and the most gigantic hunks of meat casually hanging from the ceiling. It was all very Spanish and very fresh. We had just enough time to see the beach before we left. A few other people and I climbed down the rocks to the shore, a process in which I almost lost my phone (it fell out of my pocket into a hole in the rocks, but thankfully it only spent a few terrifying moments there before Luke was able to reach far enough in and grab it).

After finally being done with jet lag, I think the weekend just undid all my progress. But it was worth it because I got to experience what everyone is so hyped about, especially here in Barcelona: Going out. Friday night was a fail turned fun, and Saturday night was the classic clubbing experience to make up for Friday. I knew I would feel really lame if I didn’t go, and I stand by that because it was an overall fun experience both nights.

On Friday a group of 8 of us spent $20 each on tickets to a club that was 23+. Somehow no one saw that when buying their ticket, so we showed up and immediately showed out. Just to make the situation even better, it started raining pretty hard after we got turned away. We ran down the block to a McDonald’s that was still open, where we regrouped and waited out the rain. We decided to walk around and see if we happened to run into a different club or bar. We didn’t, but we did run into a supermarket where everyone except me bought a bottle of some type of drink and drank it (illegally, it turns out) as we continued wandering around. Eventually we caught wind of an Irish bar called George Payless (George Pains, its an inside joke) and made it our goal to get there. 30 minutes on the Nit Bus (Night Bus) later, and we had accomplished that goal only to run into another roadblock: The bouncers didn’t believe that me and this other girl Peyton were 18 and they wanted us to show them our IDs. It seemed like the only thing they were going to accept was our physical passports which neither of us was carrying around (smartly), so we had traveled all that way for nothing. Until… the people we were trying to meet up with came running out of the bar! Our two groups merged for a short while and convened at the second fast food restaurant of the night, Popeyes (at this point it was around 2am). However, we realized this new group of mainly U Miami kids kinda sucked and were very full of themselves and rude (we all agreed), so we split off again in search of a nearby speakeasy. We were so so tired but we needed one success before the night was over! And it really was a success.

I kinda thought speakeasies were a relic of the 1920s. I also kinda thought they were dirty and gross. And I surely thought I would never go into one. But I was wrong on all counts! This place was disguised as a barbershop, so the guy let us in only after we requested haircuts. He sat Luke down and actually began shaving his hair before asking us for the secret passcode. We needed a few hints, but eventually he pushed open the mirror behind the barber’s chair to reveal the actual bar: Clean, aestetic, and slightly quirky. There were many upsides to my experience at the speakeasy, and only two downsides: (1) Everyone had to order something (the cheapest drinks they had were 13 Euros, and I really didn’t feel like ingesting anything more), and (2) They closed a half hour after we got there so we didn’t get to soak up the vibe for too long. Nevertheless I ordered a passion fruit Moscow Mule which was tastier than it could have been and we enjoyed a happy ending to a rainy night.

So, although I was incredibly tired the entire night, you can see why I ended up having a good time on Friday night. It was all the community and adventure of clubbing without actually going to the club! As far as my twenty dollars… tragic. Saturday was the real clubbing experience - pregaming at a cheap shots place (we shared a pitcher of some drink that was surprisingly good… until we mixed the alcohol in) and hitting the Twenties club afterwords around 12:45. The group tonight was me, Natalie, Gracie, Araba, Luke, Patrick, Miguel, and Max, and it was raining and cold again because that is just what Spain has become. Natalie worked some instagram magic that allowed us to get in for free, and we circled up directly in front of the DJs on the dance floor. Instead of trying to describe my experience, I am just going to include some of my thoughts on clubbing below:

1. It’s not terrible but its not that fun either
2. Can be very expensive
3. I’m surprised regular clubbers aren’t deaf already
4. The floor was disgusting and covered in spilled drinks and broken glass.
5. It would be so greatly improved if I knew like any of the songs at all.

Going clubbing in Spain is also incredibly time-consuming. Because dinner can be at 10 or 11pm, people don’t start getting to the clubs until after midnight. This also means that if you eat dinner at 8 like us, you have time to get cozy reading a book or writing a blog post before leaving for the bar, which will make you tired and make the idea of going out into the cold, wet, dark night very unappealing. Clubs start to get busy around 1 or 1:30am, and the party continues until 4, 5, or 6am. All this to say, you probably won’t be going to sleep before 6am which makes doing anything before noon the next day hard. And you feel really weird sneaking back into the apartment and going to bed when your host mom is less than an hour away from waking up.

We stayed out until 3:45 on Saturday night which means we spent about 4 hours “dancing”. Dancing comes naturally to me when its a song I know and like and have plenty of space to jump around and make large, sweeping movements. It’s a different story when I have people shoving and bumping into me every three seconds as I’m trying to maintain a circle formation with seven other people. Dancing in this case is extremely awkward and difficult. Your options, or at least what I could think of, were to: step side to side with the beat, move your shoulders to the beat, nod your head to the beat, or jump (more like bop up and down) with your hands in the air. By the end of the night I was so tired that my definition of dancing had become: Stand there and at least try to smile.

You know something else that is time-consuming? Blogging! I intend for my blog posts to be short summaries as I think that’s better both for me and for my loyal readers, kudos to you, but I just don’t have it in me to write concisely sometimes. Who knows, hopefully the next blog post you see is a fun little tidbit I wrote over a 15 minute coffee break, but don’t be surprised if its a full-blown book.

Photos!!

1. Everyone has a purse. I have a hiking backpack. Everyone’s purses are black, brown, or maybe maroon. My backpack is blue, green, red, orange, purple, yellow… I do in fact like my backpack better than a purse but it is quite heavy and annoying to carry around all day. Then again, a purse probably would be too.
2. I struck gold today with the Spanish version of Crisp and Green: Honest Greens. The Spicy Feta bowl was really good and there are at least 10 more bowls/dishes I must try. It’s avocado everything here! This place might even be going beyond the fit bit moms and instagram walls so beloved to Crisp and Green- they offer like five different types of water (I went with still room temperature splashed with a bit of the still cold and it didn’t disappoint). The question- and the answer is no- is if this posh salad lunch is worth $60-70 a week.
3. The U Miami kids can be difficult… very difficult… sigh. And they’re practically 2/3 of the students here so I find myself highly disappointed with the chance to meet new people.
4. Never have I ever put so much thought into cellular data, data roaming, and WiFi. The existence of WiFi is becoming a pretty salient reason for going somewhere.
5. I was 1 minute late to my first “Sustainable Development in the Mediterranean” class because I got lost. When you were just rushing to buy shampoo and conditioner in this very odd-smelling corner store and trying to decide if you wanted the “Multi-vitamin” or “Volume” kind and then realize you have exactly 10 minutes until class starts and you’re not sure where you are and your phone doesn’t work cuz now the only place it works is at Cristina’s house, the buildings all start to look the same. But I used my invincible powers of memory, logical deduction (kinda), and quick steps to make it there almost on time.
6. Then I proceeded to flight off sleep for the entire hour and 45 minutes of class. And by fight off sleep, I really mean fight. I physically couldn’t get my eyes to open all the way and about every 4 seconds my body would automatically shut down and I’d start falling to my left side until the shock would wake me up and I’d snap back into position. It was a trying time, and of course now I feel wide awake.
7. I keep wondering if Seville might’ve been a better place to go. Maybe people there would be slightly less obsessed with partying until 5am and getting drunk every night and slightly more nice. I really can’t decide if I want to rebel against the system and go off and have adventures on my own or prioritize actually having friends and succumb myself to four months of dreading the weekends and a wacky messed up sleep schedule, aka no sleep.
8. That was a sad one to end on so I added one more!

Living in a homestay was a great choice. Just finished a delightful homemade dinner of salad, lentil soup, spring rolls and these fried ham and cheese things with some vanilla pudding afterwords (a Catalan specialty that tastes exactly like the inside of creme brûlée). Great conversation with my host mom Cristina and dear friend and roommate-except-we-don’t-share-rooms Natalie. We talked about everything from recent rail accidents (yikes) to rainfall patterns in Spain to the proportion of cheese in different types of cheesecakes, and now Natalie and I are on a call planning a trip to Switzerland with Gracie and Mya!

Kevin and I were running on the trail, chugging along, talking about why people write. Because if you ask a writer, they’ll tell you it’s often essentially a form of self-torture. Yet, we—writers—are compelled to keep doing it. But why?

We were on the fire road that cuts across the face of Mt. Sentinel about 800 feet above town, a double-track of dirt that goes for almost two miles of wide-open views and is a fantastic place to go if you enjoy talking while you run, because you’re right next to each other the whole time, minus one or two spots where you might have to step aside for another runner/hiker/dog walker.

I had a couple things to say about why it’s hard for people to write, because I am technically a writer, which just means I have figured out ways to publish enough words and make enough money for the IRS to not contest it when I put “writer” in the appropriate box on my tax forms.

On the day that Kevin and I went on this trail run, I was about 60 percent finished building a set of shelves in my garage, mostly out of materials I’d salvaged from the old shelves someone had built in our garage a few decades ago and didn’t work for us anymore.

Kevin had recently finished building something very similar and had sent me a photo of it, so here we were, two runners, who were also amateur carpenters and people who want to write, talking about all that stuff as we jogged along.

I note all this because I said to Kevin something like,

Well, it can be hard to justify spending several hours trying to write something, because at the end of all those hours, you might not think what you wrote is any good. If you spent that same amount of time and a bit of money buying some wood and trying to build a table or a set of shelves, and you didn’t quite get it right and the table or the shelves wasn’t the greatest thing ever, it would probably still be usable in some way.

Maybe you mess it up somehow and have to start over once or twice. And if you cut a piece of wood an inch or two too short, you might have to go buy some more wood so you could try it again. Sure, you fuck up some wood, but you end up making something, in your hours as a novice woodworker.

And that’s considered a normal hobby—compared to writing—because at least you’re making something that has a purpose, if only for the people who live in your house. Very different from, say, writing poetry, or short fiction, which may never get published or even get read by anyone else.

But look: We both know that you can go to a home improvement store and buy a set of those wire rack shelves, or a set of plastic ones, and they’ll work just fine to hold your stuff.

But you didn’t do that. You took three or five or eight hours or whatever and penciled out a sketch and went and bought some wood and some screws or nails, and you measured the wood and cut it and clamped it together and tried to get all the angles right and cut more wood and drove in screws or nails and got some sawdust all over yourself and maybe a couple splinters in one or more fingers, and you made something yourself, and it maybe didn’t turn out exactly like you thought it would, and maybe you didn’t end up saving any money after all, but it works, and it fits in the space better than something from the store, and now you can say, Sure it’s not perfect, and sure, plenty of other people could do better, but I made this one.

I guess I think that’s why we write.

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The early-registration discount for my Running To Stand Still writing + trail running workshop this June in Montana ends January 31. More information and an application link can be found here.

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Here’s a video version of the above essay:

I didn’t know that much about Tara Dower before watching this film, but I particularly like how she would rather introduce herself as “trail folk” instead of “ultrarunner,” and that one of her biggest talents seems to be inspiring an entire squad of friends to help her achieve her insane goals (and they all seem to be having so much fun doing it)(video)

Apparently a huge swath of the northern United States could see the northern lights this past week. I missed them, and maybe you did too, but this commercial airline pilot sure saw them from the cockpit of a Boeing 787 flying from Calgary to London and WOW did he get some wild photos of them.

I got really excited when I saw this video pop up on YouTube, listened to it like ten times, and announced to Hilary, “Hey, new José González album dropping soon,” and then realized that the album is not coming until March 27th. So, “Hey, new José González song available now” if you’re into that sort of thing, and if you’re not, let me just say that I have asked my music industry friend if José González is indeed the very nice guy he seems to be, and have received confirmation. He’s just one of those musicians who could keep writing music that’s 70-90% the same as his old stuff for the next 20 years and I’d keep eating it up.

I have feelings of great validation whenever I hear that someone smarter/more successful/faster than me espouses some sort of trick I’ve been doing for a long time without knowing that it’s actually a thing. Like when I read that author David Epstein sleeps in his workout clothes to eliminate that small bit of friction when he needs to get out and exercise the next morning. Or when sports scientist and CEO of newsletter sponsor Precision Fuel & Hydration Andy Blow says to spend two minutes the night before thinking about what training you’re going to do the next day as one of his tips of How to motivate yourself to train this winter. (<—This link will give you 15% off your first 2026 order on the PFH website, but you might also have to enter the code SEMIRAD26 when you check out)

This is the second time in two weeks that I’ve shared a link from the r/FoundPaper subreddit but I particularly enjoy this definition of art, and the photo of the room in the school basement where it was found.

This poem, “Occasional Poem,” by Jacqueline Woodson, simultaneously feels so effortless and so powerful, which is probably why she’s written more than 30 books and won a whole bunch of awards.

This photo gallery of the “snow monsters” that appear during winter conditions at Japan’s Mount Zao ski resort is so cool. I don’t know what else to say but it’s worth scrolling through on a screen, probably the bigger the better. [GIFT LINK]

I loved this short piece on Geographic Geoff’s substack, which answers a question that, like me, maybe you’ve asked before but maybe just in your own head, and maybe you, like me, were not in a place to google it, and then forgot about it, but now, please enjoy the answer to that question, “Lots of countries end with ’-stan’ but why?”

On our most recent Trailhead podcast episode, Zoë and I interviewed our mutual friend Doug Mayer, who started the tour company Run The Alps, and who has also run the 330-kilometer Tor des Geants not once, but three times, and wrote a graphic novel about the race. I probably say this a lot because I try to have fun in most things I do, but this episode was really fun to record, and I hope if you listen to it, you laugh as much as we did.
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube

The thing when you go out clubbing until 4am is that the possibilities for the next day become greatly limited if you want to get any sleep at all. Naturally, I missed the first sunny Barcelona morning in literally a week and woke up at 1pm. After breakfast (if you can even call it that), Natalie, Gracie, and I met at la Plaza Catalunya for some shopping time. Twas very fun, but I couldn’t help feeling a bit sad that we were spending the first sunny day indoors. We visited Bershka, Pull and Bear, and one big box store and the prices at every place were amazing. To add on, skirts, shirts and pants that already were only $20 or $30 often were on sale for 40, 50, 60, or 70 percent. I bought one sequin-ey skirt that I can wear clubbing (when its a lot warmer), but I absolutely hated all the clubbing-quality tops I tried on. Yuck.

Oh yeah, and then I had my first real experience in a McDonald’s. I didn’t eat anything, dare you assume, but I sat perched on the edge of my chair and watched Gracie and Natalie eat cheeseburgers, french fries, and ice cream.

More on the newfangled sunniness here: My host mom told us that unideal weather does not show up very frequently in Barcelona and one day later it started raining and didn’t stop until today. The first day was foreboding clouds warning what was to come, the second and third days were torrential downpours during which I got my new leather jacket very wet (whoops), and the fourth, fifth, and sixth days were general dreariness and cloudiness with some rain sprinkled in (sprinkled- thats a pun). I didn’t realize how much I was craving sun until I stepped outside today and instantly smiled. :)

Gotta go eat dinner- I’m late!

Back from dinner and now procrastinating doing homework. It’s funky because I swear I want to do my homework- it sounds fun and I want to learn about the stuff we’re learning about in my classes- but the very notion that I would be “doing homework” is what spoils the idea. Maybe I’ll post some photos on here and then start my readings :)