Your guide to slowing down and finding depth in a shallow world, from open roads to full glasses to fresh perspectives. More here: https://nitter.gq/t.co/uR25BPkvUA
Nova Scotia, Canada
Joined September 2008
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Revolutionary France abolished the seventh day. Lasted 12 years.
The Soviets abolished the week. Lasted a decade.
The Tour de France writes rest days into the rules.
My knee learned this the hard way in Portugal.
Why one day in seven off the bike is the oldest touring advice there is.
cycletouring.substack.com/p/…
🤖 Made with AI
ALT Touring bike outside a laundromat.
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In 1952 Italy declared Matera’s caves a national disgrace and moved 15,000 people out.
In 2026 the same caves are €395 a night. Sold out.
Both decided nobody should live there. One made it illegal. The other made it expensive.
What I actually bought, and why the mule’s corner is now the minibar:
thinkingrock.substack.com/p/…
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A reporter interviewed me last month about the restaurant. I walked her through a normal day. Article in the morning, then some coding, then the cidery to rack a tank, then errands, then feed the sourdough starter, then a bike ride, then music lyrics in the evening.
She said, "You are a polymath."
I nodded like I knew what that meant. I did not. Looked it up later.
There has been a word for this since 1624 and nobody had bothered to put it on me until a stranger did it by accident.
thinkingrock.substack.com/p/…
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I just received 3 coffees from Peter Donkers on @buymeacoffee! buymeacoffee.com/djrivard/c/…
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I paid more to ship a camp chair home from rural Quebec than the chair cost new. It went eleven days without holding a human being.
Wrote about that box, and the three other things in it, and the guy who packed them.
cycletouring.substack.com/p/…
🤖 Made with AI
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'Best year in 30 years': Annapolis Valley apple growers welcome strong crop | PNI Atlantic News share.google/TOwtYVLDZlBlaYg… – at Kings, Subd. B, Nova Scotia
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Denial says nothing is wrong.
Despair says nothing can be done.
They disagree about everything except the part that matters: either way, you get to go back inside.
New essay. Hope Is Not a Forecast.
thinkingrock.substack.com/p/…
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Loaded a $900 steel bike and a $5,000 carbon gravel bike with 30 kg each and ran the physics.
Over an 80 km day the carbon bike arrives 9 minutes earlier.
The $4,100 you kept is six weeks of touring.
Nobody's tour ever ended because the bike was too heavy.
cycletouring.substack.com/p/…
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Nobody calls a cider maker on a Sunday to chat.
I like the calls. Thirty years of being the guy people phone when a ferment stalls or a freezer quits.
Last fall a neighbour asked how I was doing and I said "fine, busy" before the question finished landing.
thinkingrock.substack.com/p/…
🤖 Made with AI
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Bike touring hospitality in the algorithm age. How a feed brought two round-the-world cyclists to our door, and why a Vermont farmer in 1988 did the same thing better.
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I treated a click on my touring bike with three days of loud music. It was the left pedal. Thirty seconds of listening would have found it.
New post on the nightly bike check, kneeling in gravel, and what a rag teaches:
open.substack.com/pub/cyclet…
🤖 Made with AI
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Love isn't a feeling. It's accurate attention paid to a specific person as they currently are.
Which is why you can be fond of someone for twenty years and have quietly stopped loving them without ever noticing.
open.substack.com/pub/thinki…
🤖 Made with AI
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Third night of the tour a man asked what I did for a living and I told him I was between things.
I have never in my adult life been between things.
It came out easy. That's the part that bothers me.
open.substack.com/pub/cyclet… – at Kings, Subd. B, Nova Scotia
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Thirty years making cider taught me one thing about changing yourself: you can't argue with fermentation. You can only change what goes in the tank.
Turns out that's the whole job, in the cider house and everywhere else. open.substack.com/pub/thinki… #habits #intention
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Our website with our complete music catalogue is now live. Every song and lyrics available for free, no app or steaming platform needed. Enjoy and share!
selahsoundcollective.com
#modernchristianmusic #ChristianMusic – at Kings, Subd. B, Nova Scotia
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New release today. Trip-hop version of the fall of man (Genesis 3).
music.youtube.com/watch?v=Iu…
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I just received a coffee from David Mitchell on @buymeacoffee! buymeacoffee.com/djrivard/c/…
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Nobody can sell you a knee. There's no affiliate link for sleep.
So the entire cycling review industry orbits the parts that fit in a box, and riders arrive at the start line with a perfect bike and a body they've never read the manual for. open.substack.com/pub/cyclet…
#biketouring #bikepacking
🤖 Made with AI
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Coded and done version 1. New SaaS just launched. This was fun: consignloop.com/
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