I Started Mountain Biking and Didn’t Die

In 2022 I did a thing. I started mountain biking. And I didn’t die. (Whenever I go out, my wife tells me not to die.)

Instead I biked 239 miles, 37 separate times at 19 different places across 8 states. (And that’s just mountain biking, not counting my road biking.)

It was not without incident.

  • I managed to bruise my tailbone on my second ride out and couldn’t ride for three weeks. I had to sit on a donut. So I bought knee pads.
  • My brand new bike fell off my bike rack. Let’s not talk about how I didn’t notice right away and dragged it let’s not say how far.
  • How hard can a teeter totter be? I never found out, because I fell off the raised platform before I even got to the teeter totter.

But it was also incredible fun. I saw mountain rivers and fall colors, winter frost and waterfalls. The exercise kicked my butt, but it was fun so I didn’t care.

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West St. Paul Reader Member Drive

I’m in the midst of a member drive for my local, neighborhood news site, West St. Paul Reader. We do hyper-local news—like City Council, new restaurants in town, and local election coverage. We’re supported by members—neighbors, really (it’s a small suburb)—hence a year-end push to grow our support.

So far it’s a big success. We hit our initial goal last week—25 new or upgraded members—and then hit one of our ongoing goals—200 total members. Now we’re pushing for 225 members and then our big goal of 250 members—when we’ll add coverage of local school board meetings.

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2022 in Music: Spotify Unwrapped

It’s the time of year when we rehash the year with lists, so here’s my year in music. It’s courtesy of Spotify Unwrapped again, which is still a goofy, app-only, mess of a user interface. But oh well, the basics are there.

I listened to 47,914 minutes of music (more than 91% of users), accounting for 5,964 songs, 2,691 different artists, and 83 different genres. (Here are last year’s stats for the sake of comparison.) I play music while I work, often tuning the music out if I’m really focused, so that’s why I have such ridiculous stats.

Supposedly my top five genres are indie pop, pop, stomp and holler, rock, and alt z (what is alt z?).

Top Songs

  1. “Hot & Heavy” by Lucy Dacus (41 times)
  2. “Holiday (Green Day)” by Half Past Two
  3. “Glowing Review” by Maisie Peters
  4. “Love Me More” by Mitski
  5. “The Story of Us” by Taylor Swift

I’m always looking for a good ear worm, so here are some highlights from my top 100 songs:

  • “The Last Great Sweetheart of the Grand Electric Rodeo” by Sarah and the Safe Word
  • “Cannonball” by Avril Lavigne
  • “My World” by Koren Grace
  • “Who Are You” by Diet Cig
  • “Growing Up” by The Linda Lindas
  • “Raise Up” by Semler
  • “Got Away” by Kady Rain
  • “Under You” by Charly Bliss
  • “F*****g Up What Matters” by Tegan and Sara
  • “Road to Paradise” by TAT
  • “Rehab” by People Planet
  • “Full Metal Black” by The Royal They
  • “Irrelevant” by P!nk
  • “Gay Kids” by Rachel Kurtz
  • “Scotty Doesn’t Know” by Maddie Ross

My Top 5 Artists:

  1. U2 – I listened to 2,236 minutes of their music. That puts me in the top 0.1% of their listeners. No real surprise there.
  2. Five Iron Frenzy – I listened to a lot of Five Iron leading up to their Denver show, so no big surprise there either.
  3. Maisie Peters – She’s one of my favorite new discoveries this year.
  4. Taylor Swift – I don’t even think I listened to her new album that much, so it’s probably older stuff.
  5. Tegan and Sara – Between their new album and the debut of their High School TV show (which is 1990s retro wonderful), I’ve had them on repeat.

Last year my top 3 were Five Iron, U2, and Taylor Swift, so I guess things haven’t changed much?