First of all, I can’t believe that I’ve never blogged from Reno. Half the reason for writing this blog post is so that I can drop a little gray circle over the top of Reno, NV. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I run a sister site to the blog here where I map out all of my blog posts that have to do with travel - it’s at https://www.adamhunter.net/blog_posts.html, go check it out. Anyway, this weekend I went there as part of the Burning Man camp that I went to BM with last year, called Salon Soleil. It was our “gear cleaning” weekend which is called “Brocconalia”, because it’s a portmanteau of Bacchanlia and Broccoli - Bacchanalia both because there is a short party involved and also to convince people that this will be fun and they should come, and Broccoli because the shipping container we use to hold all our stuff is called the Broccoli Box, for reasons which predate my involvement in the group. Anyway, it was a fun weekend. This might sound weird, but I really enjoy feeling useful; I think it’s one of the reasons why I would make a good teacher. Other people might not enjoy spending a day cleaning gear and repairing a shipping container, but I really eat this kind of thing up, and it’s a shame because people hardly ever ask me to do anything. But if you need something done I’m your guy - I made 2 trips to Home Depot and spent a half an hour pumping water out of a barrel into buckets, among other things. The basic deal here is that every year at the end of Burning Man, we just load all the gear - in whatever state it’s in - into this big metal shipping container and have it delivered to a yard in Reno, where it sits until we recover from the burn and show up, one weekend in April, to clean and fix anything that needs cleaning and fixing - which, for those of you who know the playa, is everything. We shake out pillows and clean dishes and organize stuff and, this year, we replaced 2 doors on the box and also had someone weld in a metal plate to repair a hole in the top that was leaking. That kind of thing. I do really enjoy Reno and the Truckee/Tahoe area; we stayed in an AirBnB in Truckee and I drank a lot of decaf coffee. It’s really only 3 hours away, especially when you drive it at 4am like I did today on the way back (I had to teach my yoga class). I should get up there more often.
Today I got to spend the day by myself, mostly. I ended up having a very pleasant last minute surprise breakfast with Paul and Diana, two older folks who do a ton of traveling and were very fun to talk with; Paul is a Bay Area guy from Redwood City and they both used to do a lot of climbing and have a house now in Bend. Maybe someday I’ll go visit them.
I walked 16 miles today; the whole Taxi culture was a bit intimidating and I love to walk anyway so I decided I would do everything on foot. The experience made me realize that I think I’ve been unfair to Morocco, and it’s because we spent so much time way out in some very rural areas. The truth is that Marrakech is absolutely just a vibrant city with a lot going on. I walked all the way out to the suburbs so I could go to Decathlon and shop (more on that later) but on the way I passed all the standards of first-world countries, the brands and coffee shops and there’s even a Chili’s. There’s no question that parts of Morocco are very poor but I think we were intentionally doing the tourist thing of going and looking at the most rural parts. Food, for example: I’ve been mentioning that the food has been a bit dull and same-y but I realized that’s just because of where we were; in Marrakech there is every kind of food you could want and most of it was quite tasty and cosmopolitan. It made me think about what American would look like if you just went out to find rural Cajuns or rural Appalachians. In fact, in general I’ve been fascinated by the idea of trying to put together a tour like this of the Bay Area or even of just Oakland - what would you go see? What image would you try to convey?
This is apropos of nothing but I’ve been walking everywhere with my Ukraine hat on - I just like that hat - but it’s occurred to me more than once that people might think I’m from there or something, and they must be really fascinated to suddenly see a hat from Ukraine, of all places, in Morocco. I wonder what they think of that. Probably nothing, of course, but it’s interesting to think about.
One of the things I did today was visit a Hammam and get a massage. It was very illuminating to contrast that experience with the one I had a few days back up in the Atlas Mountains at the Hammam. Although there were some core similarities, overall the experience was so different and in ways that really betray that tourist/local, urban/rural divide. It reminds me of the difference between biking through Kentucky and having the church ladies make us a full country dinner with fried chicken and pies and casseroles, ….and going to KFC. I’m not saying one was better than the other, they both had strengths, but they were about as different as can be. Today’s experience was very polished; they spoke English (at least some), the place was spotless, I got to wear a white robe and use a locker, the massage was respectful and professional and perhaps most interestingly all the services - including the massage and the spray down - were performed by women, which I distinctly feel would not have been allowed or tolerated up in the mountains, where we were very much split into men and women and a wiry old man who spoke no English slapped us around for a bit. However, the mountain experience was a) way way cheaper, b) more…joyful? If that’s the right word, and c) just as relaxing and positive.
The Medina and related areas are fascinating in the way that all of Morocco was fascinating; a juxtaposition of older ways with modern times. The city almost visibly shifts from the more modern suburbs with McDonalds into a kind of medieval sea of tiny alleyways, merchants out literally hawking their wares from stands, a constant barrage of pedestrians, cyclists and people on mopeds, and the sort of panhandling and wheeling and dealing that you think of when you think of parts of the world that still use cash for everything. Like I said, a man texting from his Android phone on the back of a donkey. And the religiosity comes and goes; it’s always there, in the women covered up, in the 5 times daily call to prayer, but it waxes and wanes; in the Hammam they were very modern and professional, and when I went to the mall to go to Decathlon I could have been anywhere in the modern world. It’s very odd to see a middle aged woman dressed entirely in very traditional-looking Muslim garb, sitting and eating fried chicken at a fast food restaurant in a booth with a woman who is probably her grown daughter who is on her cell phone.
I also tried - because I felt like I was supposed to - to do the tourist thing and go look at a few architectural sites. I visited the Madrasa Ben Youssef and the Bahia Palace. They both were…cool. Interesting architecture. Very cool geometric designs. I liked Ben Youssef much better; it was like an old college to study the Koran and other topics and it had all these weird little funky student rooms for…studying? Living? Not clear. The place was a maze. But there were 5 million tourists there and it sorta ruined it for me. I think I’m just not great at being a tourist in cities and doing all the tourist-y stuff. I much prefer this Intrepid-style trip where we get out into the countryside and have experiences; I realize I’m absolutely still being a tourist and being led around by my nose but it just seems so much more real and also it’s just a lot more fun than standing in line for 30 minutes to look at the inside of an old college.
I also walked about 5 miles roundtrip to go to Decathlon. I love that place. I wish I could have bought more but I stuck to a pair of cool hiking pants, a new pair of cycling shorts and a cool belt. I miss Decathlon.
The driver came to take me to the airport at 2:45 this morning, and I was interested to see that the city was very much alive and active. For people that don’t drink much or at all, they still know how to stay up all night. A man was riding an odd contraption - I think there was a bicycle underneath there somewhere - that was literally covered with carnival balloons. I assume he was selling them but it was hard to tell. And, again - so so many scooters.
On this trip, I felt the particular weight of my privilege, and in particular the privilege I have to travel internationally. When I walk up to a customs officer, of any country, and show my passport, certainly there are moments of nervousness, and there are definitely things I could do wrong, but I’ve never gotten anything more than just a nod and a wave through. I’ve never even had to get a visa. At one point, I talked to our guide, Abdoul, about coming to American and helping us lead one of our tours. But he shook his head and smiled wryly and said the main problem was in getting a visa. So I looked into it, and while it’s possible to get a visa for tourism as a Moroccan, it isn’t easy. It costs $180 and it takes several months and you have to go to Casablanca and have an in-person interview with an immigration agent, and even then if they think you might overstay your visa they won’t allow it. The presumption is guilt, which is something I’ve never had to deal with. For sure, there are countries that aren’t crazy about letting in Americans, but there are probably 100+ countries in the world that would welcome me with open arms and that’s an enormous privilege, so basic that I think I never even thought about the reality of it. And that’s before even considering the economic and social freedoms I have to be able to afford travel and take time off from work, etc.
All in all, I’m very glad I came to Morocco. I don’t think it’s really my vibe (if that’s the right word) but I am very glad I experienced it, I enjoyed the people I traveled with, and I think that seeing a different world always gives you a better perspective on your own. Other than being physically tired, I think I will arrive back in the Bay Area with some new ideas and some fresh energy for my own life. I can’t wait to get home.
Today was, essentially, a travel day. We did wake up this morning and get to walk through the gardens at Todra Gorge, just an hour and a half or so hiking through this oasis of fruit and vegetable plants along the river which flows down through the gorge. We saw almonds - I’ve never seen a fresh almond fruit up close, it’s a green thing that sits around the white nut inside - and green beans and dates up on palm trees. Then we hiked back through the little village, and had a super cute encounter with a wild dog and a little girl that wanted to take care of her and gave her a stuffed animal. Morocco is a real study in contrasts; the villages are very rural - not so much poor, though they are somewhat poor, but more just…rural. In a way that’s very different but analogous to the rural areas of America where the rhythm is fundamentally different. Then, unfortunately, we basically had to get in the buses and drive all the way back to Marrakesh, which was 6+ hours. We made a quick coffee stop or two - I’ve been very grateful for my sticks of decaf coffee crystals, which have kept me from drinking too much caffeine. We got back to Marrakech late in the afternoon and had a quick hour or so in the Medina, or market. I bought a couple of souvenirs for people and an orange belt for myself, and it was fun because I got to watch the guy resize the belt for me. He cut off a length of it and stamped a new hole and then screwed in the buckle, which was cool because the belts we get industrially made don’t have this feature. Now that I saw him do it I think I actually could probably do it myself in a pinch; the buckle is designed to be moved. Then we had our final dinner with the group, and that was super interesting because it wiped away some notions I’d be conceiving about Morocco; it was a very nice and upscale tourist meal with cocktails and views and great service and the food was actually really good and it made me realize that a lot of what I’d been seeing and feeling about the country was heavily biased towards us being in very rural areas; I thought about what people might think if they visited America but only traveled through West Virginia (not to pick on West Virginia but you know what I mean). The rhythm of life here is definitely very different than home, but now that I’m in an urban center it’s…more similar. You can find McDonalds and shower curtains if you are a tourist and you want them, and the cell service is impeccable. Still no trash cans in hotel rooms though.
I said goodbye to the group tonight. It’s always weird for me because I spend so much time alone and so when I’m with a big group it’s jarring to suddenly go back to being by myself. But it’s all good; I can’t wait to get home actually. I remarked to Cynthia that it’s nice that I am always happy to go home. They invited me - her and Cherelyn - to Cochrane, outside of Calgary where they live, and I may even take them up on it, I’ve never been to that part of Canada. I of course invited them to Oakland. The group was very nice - if older - and it was nice to travel with them. I did so many things that I never would have had the skill or ability to plan and execute on, on my own. I think I really like taking these trips.
Today the plan is to do a bunch of walking, to visit this things called Madrasa Ben Youssef and walk around the city. I love to walk in cities. Well, I love to walk, period. Then I have a Hammam and massage appointment booked for 3pm today, then it’s off to the airport very early in the morning to start heading home and the end of my Morocco trip!
Overall, it’s been a great trip and I’m glad I came, although to be honest it wasn’t as great as the Andorra trip - but that’s ok, that trip was a 10/10 and this was still a 9/10.
Today we woke in our Saharan tent home and I went out for a private walk around the sand dunes. Then we watched the sunrise over the dunes. A nice older Moroccan man helped me take a bunch of pictures and then, sadly and predictably, asked me for money. Breakfast was your standard fare, then we hopped on buses and drove away from the desert. After a few tourist-y stops, we arrived in the Draa Gorge for our longest hike of the trip, a 6-mile and 4-hour hike up and around the Gorge, which reminded me of Red Rocks or of Utah. About 2/3 of the way up the gorge we encountered our first Nomad family, living in and around the trail in literal caves, and farming goats, the youngest of which were still in a small enclave built of rock, and the older ones littered around the hillside, with an elder watching them. This subsistence lifestyle still exists up here. It was cool but I also I felt very odd and conspicuous essentially parading past these humans as if they were a zoo exhibit. The hiking was great and I feel like I finally got a chance to really stretch my legs a bit. I honestly would have preferred even more hiking, both today and on this trip in general. I think the problem is that we’re spending a lot of time in buses so there just isn’t much time for it.
This - the Draa Gorge - was one of the first times that I also felt like I was sharing my tourism with what I would describe as “local tourists”; actual Moroccans who were from the city or at least somewhere else in Morocco and were just here to see the nature and have a day trip. I don’t get the sense that Moroccans have much of a travel culture and that includes even inside their own country; I asked Abdoul about it and he confirmed that Moroccans just don’t think about travel the same way we do in the west. I wonder how much of that is cultural and how much is just plain socioeconomics.
There are a lot of tourists at this hotel with us and it’s a bit jarring to be honest. It’s odd because it feels very remote, and it was a bit of a struggle to get to, hiking over a river and such, but then you turn the corner and…bam. A bunch of Germans and Australians all lounging by a pool and loudly arguing over luggage. Everyone - or almost everyone - here is part of some tour group of some kind.
Without Further Ado: Top 10 Awesome Things About Morocco:
1) The 5 daily calls to prayer are weird and wonderful to an American ear, like some kind of natural clock. I never heard all 5 in a day, but that’s probably because we were often out in nature. But when we did hear them they would ring out unmistakably.
2) There’s a real lack of commercialism. There’s just not as much advertising, no billboards to speak of,
And very few brands. It’s been a whole week and I haven’t had a single Diet Coke - they’re available if you really look hard, but nobody pushes that kind of thing on you. Don’t get me wrong, Moroccans do like to hustle and make a buck, but there’s less of the Western-style advertising and brand loyalty and manufactured need to buy products. That might be partly socioeconomic, but I’ve been in places that were even more poor where there still felt like a lot of brands.
3) No booze. Of course maybe for some this would be a minus, but for me it’s been nice to take a break and remind myself I don’t need it. As with the Diet Coke, it’s available if you really look hard, but you almost have to be in a big city or somewhere catering to French tastes, and it’s never available in restaurants.
4) The weather has been sublime - in general. It started out too cold, which I definitely wasn’t expecting, but at this point it’s just perfect, chef’s kiss.
5) The Saharan sand dunes are amazing. The color and texture of the sand are just what you’d imagine. I’ve seen sand like this before - most notably up near Florence, Oregon. But still: very cool.
6) The bike riding is really great, the roads are clean and well-paved and I felt very safe. I could easily see biking through this country.
7) I felt very safe the whole time.
8) The people are unfailingly kind and helpful. Yes, of course, that’s because I’m a rich tourist, but still: they are.
9) Everything is really cheap. Especially food.
10) Life here feels very real and raw and close to the surface. I think there’s just a lot less artifice, a lot less dependence on modern ways of defining the self and just in general more stability. Not so much TV, or people glued to their phones. Those things are here, but…less so.
Top 6 Not As Awesome Things About Morocco:
1) They don’t seem to believe in separating the shower from the rest of the bathroom. In a hotel setting, the shower just simply “exists” in the same space as the toilet, the sink, etc. And yes, that means water just kind of sprays all over everything. I don’t quite get it. Also Moroccan bars of soap don’t lather up. They are actually quite odd. Maybe I just don’t know how to use them but they just kind of crumble when you get them wet.
3) While it isn’t as bad as some other places, panhandling and its related ilk became a problem at times. People asking if they can take your picture and then asking for money. Offering to sell you cheap bracelets. Etc., etc.
4) The architecture is…a bit dull. That’s a personal preference, of course, and sometimes it can be interesting, but they are oddly obsessed with a particular color of pinkish red (most probably because it’s the way the dirt makes bricks, but in this day and age it’s become an artistic choice) and a lot of the structures and buildings look…functional. Now, to be clear, the *interiors* are often quite nice, but the exteriors can be a bit dull to my eyes.
5) A bit too much desert for my tastes. But then I knew that going in.
6) The food is…good, but…uh, how should I put this - it’s a bit boring. I’m not clear on whether that’s a product of this specific tour or that’s just how Moroccan cuisine is but uh…I’m not going home and looking for a Moroccan restaurant. And the tagine is a really cool way to make food but every tagine meal has been potatoes, chicken, peas, tomatoes and olives roasted together, which is tasty but…we’ve eaten it a lot.
Tomorrow we head back to Marrakesh. I can’t believe the trip is almost over. It feels like I just got my bearings.
Here I sit - it’s 10 until 6pm, and I’m in my Bedouin-style tent, decorated in red and gold strips like the inside of a circus tent. We spent the majority of the day in the bus, driving out to the very edge of the Sahara desert, near the Algerian border. I say the edge of the Sahara because here you can see the dividing line, as the terrain drops the black rocks and turns (very suddenly) into golden dunes with the finest grains of sand I’ve ever personally held in my hand. That’s not to say we didn’t have any adventures at all; we wandered through a small town of Rissani and went through some literal alleyways and into another open air market; this time a bit more polished and permanent but still just as insanely chaotic. This is the region where Henna comes from, and we saw it in powdered form in giant bags, looking like matcha or powdered green tea. We’re about to ride on a camel; let you know how that goes once we’re done.
This morning, knowing that we would be pretty sedentary today and having woken up at 6am, I went for a 5k jog through the town we slept in last night. You might laugh but it was a really rewarding experience; first of all, for having the guts to just randomly strike out into the middle of nowhere - I literally had to turn the key in the hotel’s exterior door to let myself out and I was the only one around. And then secondly just the physicality of turning in that effort when I didn’t have to. It reminded me of the old me: the one that ran 6 marathons and a half ironman. I’d like to rediscover that person.
There’s a bird cooing outside my tent that sounds exactly like the ones outside my Grandma’s house when I was a kid. It’s weird how these literal cultural touchstones stick with you.
The other weird thing was coming all the way out here to the literal middle of nowhere only to find a bunch of other tourists are already here; there’s apparently a giant motocross or 4x4 race and it’s happening this week and so there are a ton of Europeans and other folks here racing motorbikes. Not that this makes it any less fun or interesting it’s just so crazy that you can come to the middle of nowhere and humans still want to be there.
Status Update: riding a camel is very cool. As is often the case with me, it took a while to get over my primal terror, but once I did, it got fun - even, dare I say, peaceful, on the way back especially. Riding in the quiet desert with the sun setting on our left was a very pleasant experience. The camel lurches heavily when you get on him, as he kneels his way into a standing position. Riding on a flat surface or on the uphill is perfectly fine and not very scary, but when he starts to go down a dune it is pretty terrifying. But you just have to lean back and not fight the motion and everything is fine. The craziest part to me about the camels is how incredibly docile they are. When we got to the dune where we wanted to watch the sunset, the camel leader just basically…left them at a random spot. Not tied down or anything - tied to each other, but not to anything else. And then we just…walked away. And we were gone for probably a good hour or so, while we played around, watched the sunset, and took pictures. And the camels just…sat there. I asked Abdul how long they would have simply sat there, but he didn’t understand the question. They’re very peaceful creatures, really. Big suckers, and occasionally a bit stinky, but super peaceful. The ancient people must not have believed their luck: an animal that will just let us ride around on their backs, and just sit wherever they’re put. Compared to riding a horse, camels move much slower and are easier to ride, in my opinion.
Then we had a nice meal and listened to some drumming around an open fire. It felt like a weird combination of my bike rides, burning man, and camping in Yosemite. Plus a camel.
Tomorrow we get up early for a sunrise. I may do a mile in the sand, a throwback to my Florida days. Then we head out for another long drive. The only thing I would change about this trip is all the time in the van, but hey, that’s how it works when your country is as big as Morocco.
Today was a bit of a liminal day - an in between kind of day. The main adventure today was a 25 mile ride through the city of Agdz and a desert area which is not yet the Sahara - I believe we were in what’s called the Draa Valley. It reminded me of nothing more than the terrain of Nevada or Utah, like in Red Rocks.
Riding my bike - even for the roughly hour and a half that we did - was really invigorating because it reminded me of how much I enjoy this kind of cycling. I wish there was a bit more of it on this trip but there was enough today to give me that feeling of the wind rushing past my face on a long smooth downhill through the mountains of a desert. I had flashbacks - in a good way - of all my time on the bike and it made me realize that I think I’m ready for another round. Which is good because I have one coming up in October in the Grand Canyon area! I miss outdoor cycling; I need to get back into it. I was talking with one of the group members Paul about rock climbing and how much he likes it and I realized that things are really fun when you’re good at them and everyone needs a hobby, and mine is long distance cycling, and I’m cool with that.
There was a lot of driving today, and there will be again tomorrow. Morocco is big and we have far to go to get into the desert. I lost my headphones at the last hotel, but maybe that’s a good thing; it forced me to pay more attention to what’s going on around me. There’s a tension on this trip between me feeling like I am here to relax and unwind, and a feeling that I want to maximally experience everything because it’s Morocco and that’s an adventure and who knows if I’ll ever be back. I’m having a good time but I also alternate between feeling lonely and tired and a bit anxious. I need to rest. And so this afternoon I laid down at about 3:30, and we were supposed to go for a walk at 6 but I didn’t even bother setting an alarm, and then lo and behold I woke up at 6:20, so I missed the walk. Oh well. I guess I was really tired.
After the ride, we had a “picnic lunch”; the hotel doesn’t serve lunch I guess. We had gone through a town called Ouarzazate that felt like a mini Moroccan Reno; a city in the middle of nowhere, that apparently was built around film studios, and there’s still two big ones, including one called Atlas Studios where they have film sets you can tour. There was a lot of cosmopolitan services there and we went to a French grocery store called Carrefour, which I’ve been to before. It was weird to suddenly be in the middle of modern convenience and be able to buy tortillas and mouthwash. The music in the store alternated between Moroccan religious music and Adele. It’s hard not to be struck by the juxtaposition of the modern and ancient world here; I’ve commented on it before but it’s striking.
Just as much as the experience of being in Morocco, I’m learning something by talking to my fellow group mates. Most of them are older than me, and it’s really interesting to hear the way they navigate being in their late 50s and 60s, either with kids that are long gone or without kids at all, and just the way they structure their lives around houses and retirement and pickleball and, well, trips to Morocco. I don’t quite know what to think about it all yet but it’s more data.
After we got through the Red Rocks part of the ride today, we ended up riding through a small village next to an area where they grow a lot of dates. It’s a weird landscape because it’s dry and rocky but then there are these oases where they grow the date palm trees. We rode out through a very small village, through the palm farms, and watched a group of schoolkids get off a school van and walk home, chatting and waving and talking, girls separate from boys. I think I mentioned this yesterday but in a world where everywhere can start to feel the same, Morocco is different, and it’s been good for me to be exposed to a different rhythm of life. It’s not my life, nor would I want it to be, but it’s fun and inspiring to see the way a different people live, to remember that the way I experience things in my little world is not the only way to do things, nor is it the only correct way. There are others. Riding down and around the paved path leaving the town and heading out through the palm fields, I really felt that this place was just fundamentally different from home, in a way that even Iceland or Ukraine didn’t feel; that these people, while still human of course, live just a different life from mine, connected by TV and Internet and Cell Phones but still with a different beating rhythm.
Case in point; I was asking Abdul about the doors to our hotel; the doors in Morocco are all elaborate and huge. These doors to our hotel - which is more of a compound than a hotel - are 12 feet tall and solid Cedar wood with iron rivets. They swing wide and are arched at the top, and inset into each door is a second, smaller door. He said that in the old days there would be two different knockers, one for the smaller door and one for the bigger. Family and close friends would knock on the smaller door, and the women inside would know that they did not need to cover up as much, because it was just family. If you knocked on the bigger door, it made a different sound, and the women would know that company was here and they had to cover their face; either that or somebody showed up with something big like a horse and needed the big door opened. Now, obviously, modern Morocco doesn’t necessarily do all these things all the time, but still, you can feel that the heart of that time, and of the religion, is still beating very close by. It’s not the distant past in Morocco; it’s still a part of daily life, just like the donkeys.
Oh, and cats! There are cats everywhere. They even come into the restaurant area and beg at the table. I gotta say that even though it might not be sanitary, it’s pretty darn cute.
And the weather is sublime; I’m sitting outside as. I type this, listening through a window as the staff cleans up from the evening, and speaks in a language I have no hope of understanding, laughing all the while. There are so many different ways to live, and it’s good to be here and see this one.
A few programming notes - I title each blog based on where we ended up at the end of that day; that’s a habit I got into when I was long distance cycling, as the destination always felt like the most important part.
I love blogging because I feel like it helps me “burn in” my memories; I find that by retelling these stories I personally remember them more. Somebody in the group yesterday asked me who even reads this stuff, and the true answer is that I don’t know, but even if very few of you ever do, I find it immensely helpful just to organize my own thoughts and photos and to be able to refer to it later.
Today we woke up early, had our standard breakfast of bread, hardboiled eggs, yogurt and jams and almond butter, then walked back down out of Amoud to our bus. It’s amazing how different it felt to walk down; first of all because we were going down but also because the weather had gone from Pacific Northwest to Colorado mountain; all dry and bright and beautiful. Everything looked so different and it didn’t feel nearly as far. I started to understand that what I was in was basically the Moroccan equivalent of a skiing and climbing town like Telluride. I finally got some floss and pain pills in town, then we hopped on our tiny bus, where we would spend most of the day, as we had a lot of ground to cover. But we made a lot of fun stops. I found myself thinking of what I would show people if I arranged a tour of Oakland like this, if people came from around the world to see where I live. What would I show them? Of course in SF you’d see the standard sights; the DeYoung museum, perhaps, the Golden Gate bridge of course, Chinatown, the Mission. In Oakland maybe the Rose Garden, Jack London square. If it was a hike and bike you’d hike Tilden and ride the path up along the coast to Point Richmond. That sort of thing.
Being in Morocco, and not home, our first main stop (after coffee and a bathroom break) was a weekday market. I hate to sound cliche, but this was everything I would have thought it might be - boisterous, busy, loud, with everything for sale from food to daily supplies and hardware. It was a magical moment because it felt very, very real, not sanitized at all for tourist consumption. Of course they knew we were tourists and there were other tourists there but also it was a very real and very much working market and everyone around us was buying carrots and onions and whole butchered goats and also scythes and batteries and laundry detergent. One of the members of our group (an older mostly bald gentleman that our guide keeps calling Ali Baba) got a haircut. It reminded me of the markets held on the weekend at Laney college, where some of the booths look like somebody robbed a Walgreens or a Harbor Freight, or just bought the contents of a random Chinese container ship. One of the weirdest things about Morocco is the way you can find a small cell phone stand right next to a business that sells a whole goat. Abdul told us that the day before was the live animal market where they sold actual goats and sheep and even camels. Apparently a camel is like 7-8000 dirham, which is about 800 USD.
Oh, also: so many scooters! Or mopeds, or whatever you want to call them. Which warms my heart because I’ve always had a soft spot for scooters and Moroccans seem to love them. I took this crazy picture of all of them parked outside the market but they are everywhere, a constant supply of them on every road.
The infraststructure here in Morocco is surprisingly good although I don’t know if that’s because we’re being shielded from it as tourists. The roads have a lot of construction, and it’s controlled chaos in most of the smaller towns and villages, but also there is plenty of internet and cell service and power outlets and we’ve been pretty well pampered. The food is still very basic but good; just meats and vegetables and lots and lots of bread. It’s interesting to spend a whole week without any Diet Coke or any alcohol or even really very much junk food; junk food is available here if you want it but we’ve been getting fed much more traditional meals of just whole cooked foods with some spices, and I think it’s been good for my digestive system.
We had a pleasant and inoffensive lunch stop where I had a very nice omelet with tomato paste and onion (which was a good change of pace) and some good conversation; the lady sitting next to me was retired but used to work in Microsoft’s XBox division in Australia. There’s a very nice woman here named Cynthia who is here with her friend (Sheri Lynn?) from Alberta, Canada and she’s been a really nice person to start having conversations with. Then we stopped a few more times just for views as we drove the Tizi Ti’schka (spelling?) pass, which felt to me a great deal like driving through parts of Nevada or even Colorado. The terrain here has started to feel much more like Nevada and Red Rocks, but with a bit more water and greenery from time to time. Ait Ben Haddou is one of those “oases”, and I see now why they are called that; it rises up away from a small river in the desert and the banks of the river have some irrigated areas of greenery. The Casbah (or multiple casbahs really) rise up the hillside, all pink and flat with cool windows and cool doors. It looks just like a movie, and for good reason, it’s been the set of many movies. There are narrow archways and places to hide from the sun but also vast expanses of desert. There was a broken down casbah at the very top of the hill that Abdul said they used to use as a bank of sorts to store communcal valuables.
In addition to some great views and the opportunity to buy a magnet or two, we stopped at two different women’s collectives, which are a kind of uniquely Moroccan way of trying to start to break down the gender roles by having small business where women can work at a trade and earn a little bit of money. The first one was just a lunch stop. The woman, Nadia, through Abdul’s translation, told us about how it had started, with 140 women from this little village getting together who all had issues; divorce, widows, unmarried women and also those who just wanted to do more with life. But they often had to get some man’s permission, and so onnly 40 were allowed to do it in the end, and they started with just tea and bread for tourists, but they have moved on to full lunch and everything. They had to break down rocks to make a little space for them to put their kitchen and seating areas, which were quite nice and shady. It was very nice, once again, to be able to speak French because this woman didn’t speak any English but she spoke pretty fluent French so I was able to ask here questions directly. It’s amazing to think about women just being totally unable to do even the simplest of business or life moves - either being outright forbidden or being required to get permission from the men in their life. I realize that’s the way everything used to be but it’s so crazy to me to think about that.
I supposed I should back up; Ait Ben Haddou was an actual place for people to live, before it became for tourism only- which was recently, maybe only 5 or 6 years ago. Now all the living quarters have moved across the river to (slightly) more modern facilities. Also, the weather was ideal; I get the feeling it gets very hot here but for us we had a very nice cooling breeze and we were there for the sunset. We watched two camels amble along the banks with a human leading them, watched a bunch of tourists, crossed a ramshackle foot bridge, and ended up at the second collective which made and sold carpets. A younger woman there spoke perfect English and told us all about how the women make the carpets, while a woman showed us the painstaking way she put each individual thread - which they spin by hand from wool - onto the loom and weave it. It can take them months or years of part-time work to make a single large carpet. They were beautiful but mostly too expensive and hard to ship for me to consider, but I did buy a smaller “poof” that you fill with padding. I don’t know how I’m going to get it home but I’ll manage!
I’ve noticed a pattern with these trips which is that I have a really hard time getting started. Because of my dental emergencies (by the way, I fractured a molar while out here, more on that later when I feel like telling that story) and also the jet lag and anxiety, it’s really only now that I feel like I’m starting to be able to relax. I’ve been snapping awake at 3:30 am; last night we stayed in a proper feeling hotel and it was the first night I got an honest night’s sleep, from about 10pm to 6am, and I’m starting to feel human. It’s hard because I want to make a good impression, I want to relax, and also I want to build memories, and all of those are hard when you’re just exhausted.
I don’t quite know just what to think of Morocco yet. In many ways it’s exactly what I might have imagined it would be; in others it’s not at all. I haven’t formed a good narrative about it yet but I’m still exploring.
The rhythm of life here in Morocco - at least, up here in the Atlas Mountains - is genuinely different than anywhere else I’ve ever been. It might sound jaded, but in all or almost all of my travels - even to Ukraine - there was a modern rhythm to life that felt in some sense similar to home. Yes details might be different, priorities change, but the basic rhythm of life felt familiar. But here, life is genuinely different. Maybe it’s the way all the food is natural and home cooked, or the way there’s so much less commercialism and capitalism. It’s not that it’s so poor; things are rural and poor here to some extent, but I’ve been far more poor places that still felt modern. No, it just seems like a place more out of time. The way everybody knows everybody else. The way cars can’t get into the main city so everybody just walks around the narrow alleyways and stairs, or uses the donkeys and mules, which are present everywhere. Things can feel very tourist-y here for sure; we passed a number of tourist groups on the way up to lunch at the sanctuary at 7200 feet, and clearly tourism is an important industry. But underneath there is a real life happening here as well and it is happy and calm and very different than home. It’s the only place I’ve ever been where you can see a man riding a donkey sideways up or down to work while carrying an Android smartphone and texting from it.
Although lots of cool things happened in the last 24 hours, perhaps the star of the show was the Hammam. I have, of course, been to many saunas and spas, including those coming from other traditions, like slavic Banyas. But the Hammam was cool and unique, mostly because of the man who ran it and was our treatment provider/ritualist, a quite elderly and very spry and wiry Moroccan man who spoke not a lick of English and proceeded to throw water at us, sit on us, bend our limbs and slather us in soap with glee and abandon. We got a shampoo, a massage, he slapped us and lifted our legs as we lay on a heated floor in a very wet room. I wish I could have gotten pictures but obviously that’s inappropriate but just imagine a questionably clean but very pleasant white tiled room with a low ceiling and archways leading to other rooms for washing. It was a deeply personal, very masculine (no women were allowed; they had their own separate session) and, if I can use this word, joyful experience. It weirdly reminded me of the “human car wash” from Burning Man. (Oh and it cost about $13).
All the food is delicious and kind of absurdly healthy, which is probably good because of my minor dental emergency which I’ll talk about soon. It’s Whole Foods; rice, potatoes, carrots, olives, bread and jam and peanut butter - everything either raw or cooked on an open grill or in a Taijin on top of charcoal. No Diet Coke to be found. In the morning we had a local village woman show us how they make a traditional bread and we patted out and made some of our own - I burned mine a little but actually it was really tasty that way. They are very simple round loaves of a very simple dough made with semolina; it reminded me a good pizza crust but they just eat it fresh and warm sometimes with butter and jam and lots and lots of tea. She was charming and delightful and covered head to toe in traditional cloathing and also, of course, had a cell phone. Then we went up to a rooftop terrace where we got amazing views of fog rolling in the valley and where we would be hiking.
The hike up to the sanctuary was also very pleasant, across a dry rocky river bed and up winding steps. I am running into trouble just because I am so exhausted - I’m running on probably 3 hours of sleep per night for 4 or 5 nights - but I trudged like a zombie up behind our guide to lunch, which we had surrounded by cats (there are cats everywhere here) in a low slung enclosure up on the mountain. The rhythm of the small mountain village is also quite fascinating; nobody lives there but people work there to support the folks trying to climb the mountain (Mt. Toubkal, which is up at about 13,000 feet) with lunch and water and snacks. There were hoses going everywhere, water flowing through town, buildings built into the sides of the hills seemingly at random, men going to and fro, guiding, cooking, serving, yelling at each other, and donkeys and mules littered around, bothering the cats. It’s a rhythm of life that’s just fundamentally different from home, that’s for sure. It gives you perspective.
The one thing I’m not crazy about - other than being tired and mentally spent from dealing with dental trauma - is the cold. I was not prepared for cold and this house/hostel/waypoint is unheated and freezing, especially at night.
Everyone is very nice and I am feeling really bad that for reasons of anxiety and my fatigue and fear about my mouth that I’ve been really antisocial. I don’t even knokw very many peoples’ names and they must think I’m quite odd and unfriendly but I will try harder to be social and engaged.
As with a lot of great traveling, it’s hard to believe that just about 12 hours ago we were still eating breakfast in Marrakech. In between, we have now ridden a bicycle about 24 miles and about 3000 feet change of elevation, ridden a bus, then hiked another 2 miles straight up another 1000 feet change to what feels like the middle of nowhere.
I admit to being not entirely sure what I was going to experience in Morocco but from a pure nature and physicality perspective it’s not at all what I was imagining - which is not a bad thing at all, to be clear. I was imagining some kind of desert landscape and hot or even very hot temperature and a lot of sun. And I think that is coming, but what today actually felt like was the Pacific Northwest if you can believe that. It started out sunny enough if a bit cold, then it rained and got much colder, then it stopped raining but stayed cold, then we went up into the mountain and it got very, very foggy. We had dinner in a delightful little ramshackle spot with a open room and chairs made out of half oil cans painted garish colors; it was a Tagine meal which will be a common occurence, of meats and vegetables and bread, simple but delicious. I’ll never forget looking over and realizing the “fridge” wasn’t actually plugged into anything; I don’t know how much electricity they had. And cats; cats everywhere. After lunch/dinner we walked around and around this dirt path and over a river until suddenly it opened up and we found ourselves, Brigadoon style, in a little village with tiny little narrow alleyways where kids were playing soccer with a misshapen ball. We carried some of our stuff but the other half just magically appeared next to the homestay, I still don’t know how.
Morocco is an interesting place. Parts of it feel very modern and there is obviously some wealth around, but also we passed literal shepherds herding their sheep across roads through tiny villages and a surprising number of working donkeys carrying people and packs to and fro. I had the distinct impression that if I stopped one of the guys on the donkey though he would have an Android smartphone and a Tik Tok account. It’s a place that defies an easy description; certainly there is a lot of tradition around but also it feels like things are moving and shaking. Partly that’s because there’s obvious tourism, mostly from France, but also I hear from the locals that things are going well in Morocco; there is peace and relative prosperity. We were stopped no less than 3 times by Gendarmes who wanted to check papers and make sure we were all wearing our seatbelts, but it felt less like a request for a bribe and more just bored traffic cops looking to pad their stats with minor traffic tickets. Now we are in homestay/hotel/hostel which seems quite nice actually but it’s unheated and I am freezing! We don’t have reliable hot water either, so I’m told. But we have clean towels!
I am having fun but I am beyond exhausted. Cold or not, I think I will sleep like a log.
It is now 6:09 AM and I am wide awake in a hotel room in Marrakech, Morocco. About 48 hours ago I left my house in Oakland to fly to Morocco to start a 10 day tour with Intrepid Travel based on recommendations from the group that I had my Andorra adventure with. I am lying here in this bed writing because I feel compelled to remember the experiences of the last 48 hours and in particular the experience I had last night. Not because it was so earth shattering but just out of some sense that among my experiences I really want to remember this one. It would be easy to overblow those adventures but also I feel like they represent something important. The flight itself was perhaps uneventful if long. Leaving Oakland was easy in an Uber and I went to this second-rate lounge at SFO in the International area that I can get access to with my Amex, where I chatted with a woman headed to Korea and ate mediocre meatballs. The first thing of note was that while still in Oakland I had felt a slight…twinge in one of my teeth on the upper left. But there really wasn’t any easy way to do anything about it at the time so I was just hoping for the best; but as I flew I could feel it getting worse and giving me a slight headache. I kept thinking that my anxiety and hypochondria (which have been getting the better of me lately) were kicking in and tried to sleep and ignore it, which I failed at completely. The flight landed late at CDG, and I already had a short connection so I ended up having to run madly through CDG. Huge shout-out to the staff at CDG who ushered me right to the front of the security line and got me to the gate on time. They were one of the first “trail angels” for me of the trip. Being conversational in French - even if poeple could one hundred percent tell I was American - helped a ton. And then of course we just sat on the plane in Paris for forever, I don’t even know why. Hurry up and wait! I ended up next to a young couple with two young infants who spoke French and overhearing their conversation was cute.
Upon landing in Marrakech I actually managed to get an Uber to the hotel, which apparently is rare. I got there, checked in, and realized with a sinking feeling that my tooth was just getting worse and worse. I suddenly realized that I was headed out for 10 days into the literal countryside and Sahara desert of Morocco and I might have a serious dental problem. I had flashbacks to many years ago when I ignored a bad tooth and then suddenly was in blinding pain and I started to panic a tiny bit. For some context, I have been really trying to embrace not being so anxious and so I had been telling myself this just was no big deal but suddenly I realized that it might be a big deal, and it was Saturday evening, and I was in Morocco of all places. This started an adventure which would culminate about 3 hours later with me in the chair of a dentist in Marrakech, paying him 800 dirham (about $90) in cash to do an emergency cleaning. The end of the story is that I just had bad gums and a mild infection and I’ll be fine but the whole experience was so illuminating and interesting and honestly really positive.
Marrakech is a world that we have largely left behind in the US; whether that’s a good thing or bad is open to debate. It’s very modern here in many ways of course; smartphones and fast food restaurants and GPS. But they still use very old-fashioned taxis for example; the kind you literally flag down from the side of the street. I had my tour guide with me, Abdul - who is awesome - and he started trying to flag down cabs that actually already had riders, and finally we got one. They spoke in Arabic, a long conversation, and I got in. On the way to the dentist we dropped off the first guy that was in the cab, then picked up a woman, then dropped her off, all in about 15 minutes. Abdul ended up connecting on WhatsApp with both of them and the cab driver. There was no music on the radio; there was no need, the conversation was constant. My Uber driver alone took at least 10 phone calls in the 20 mninutes it took me to get to the hotel. Sometimes when I interact with people from this part of the world in Oakland they are this way and it was really interesting to see them in their “native habitat”, so to speak. In some ways I’m jealous.
But to take a step back, unbelievably, there was a dentist who ran a 24/7 emergency service - seemingly mostly for tourists - about 20 minutes from the hotel. I found it on Google, then the hotel called, then Abdul called, then I called. It was very confusing but I came to understand that the dentist didn’t stay at his office; he stayed at home and waited for people to call, then he would go in and open up for them. He was, in a word, awesome. Clean, professional, and fast. You remember how I posted about JSX and the difference between flying them and flying regular TSA? This was like that. It was just him and a dentist chair and his stuff. No insurance, no forms, no nothing: I walked in, he sat me down, he took 3 xrays and showed them to me right there (not leaving the room or anything by the way), then shot me up with novocaine and cleaned the heck out of that tooth and the two next to it and told me I had to get a deep cleaning ASAP when I got home. He wrote me a presecription for pain pills, told me to buy mouthwash, floss and tiny brushes and refused to take any extra money when I tried to give him a tip. The whole thing cost less than $100. Once again proof that our healthcare system is a mess.
One of the great things about travelling is being exposed to other ways of doing things. I think there was a time in America when things worked like this; before Uber and the pandemic and online video games. I’m not saying it’s better, I’m not saying it’s worse - but it is, clearly, different, and it would make sense to imagine that there are both positives and negatives for us as a society. Certainly it’s more confusing for an outsider, and the potential for things like petty scams seems high. But on the other hand it felt all along the way like a very humanistic experience; an experience designed by people for people and it met the needs of me, a person. I honestly have no idea if 24/7 emergency dental care is available in Oakland - maybe it is. After all, I can now book an appointment on my phone for my doctor and often go the same day, so it’s not like we don’t have these conveniences. But this felt very different in a way that’s hard to put my finger on. I think I will always remember walking the streets with Abdul and dodging scooters, or staring out the window of my cab as he had a solid belly laugh with an old Arabic man driving our cab about which I have no clue, or trying to find an open pharmacy because nobody knows when anything is open. The woman that got in or cab on the side of the street, and then later out of our cabon the side of the street, wearing a head scarf and smiling the whole time and paying about $1 for her whole ride. Who knows where she was going or where she was coming from. It’s like the difference between Jacksonville and Oakland, then take that and that’s the difference between Oakland and Marrakech, if that makes any sense.
Marrakech is interesting. The weather here right now is amazing, and there’s more green than I would think. All the buildings are pink and the city feels very, very alive. I actually witnessed a spontaneous 5-person soccer game break out on the street between some guuys working. It felt like I was in a Sondheim musical but it was real. I also expected more people to be smoking but nobody does that I can see. And I was in a hurry so I ate at - I shit you not - a placed called “O’Mexico” which sold me a spicy set of chicken tenders and french fries wrapped in a tortilla and grilled (for the equiavlent of $6 including a bottle of water I might add) and honestly it was pretty damn good. It is a little janky but surprisingly clean and friendly and honestly in a weird way reminded me of Oakland. I feel bad that I won’t have more time to explore Marrakech but this is a nature tour so we are heading out early this morning and won’t come back until the very end.
But in some ways I feel I already had the peak Morocco experience.
OK, I admit it: I just kind of hate it when people make me do stuff, period. And I really have a love-hate relationship with technology; I work with it, I create with it, and I love what it can do for me, but the time has long passed when I want to mess with it intrinsically. I want it to get out of my way and let me get work done. And for the last god-knows-how-many years, Windows 10 has been remarkably stable and gotten out of my way, for which I truly appreciate it. But the time has finally come when for some reason Microsoft has decided in their wisdom that I have to either upgrade to Windows 11 or let hackers spank my computer in the butt.
To be clear; nobody is making me upgrade to Windows 11, in theory. Microsoft agents are not standing at my front door making me do this. But the reality of the modern internet is that, without constant bugfixes, any operating system becomes more and more brittle and fragile and easy to break into over time. It’s like having a home security system but nobody monitoring it anymore.
Now, you might say that it’s fully within Microsoft’s rights to not want to keep writing bugfixes for old software they wrote 15 years ago. And I get that; I agree. But here’s the thing: they are already writing those fixes. They, in fact, give them to certain customers, like Enterprise customers. They even had a program where they were selling those fixes called Extended Security Updates. But for some reason - and I honestly don’t know why - they’ve decided that I’m not allowed to buy those fixes. I think they’re mad because I replaced my motherboard or something. I don’t know; I can’t figure it out and I’m sick of messing with it.
So, to recap: they have fixes for Windows 10, and they will even sell them, but they won’t sell them to me. And I’m not even honestly sure why. The whole thing feels like some kind of weird high school popularity contest mixed with a mobster protection racket, and it’s honestly pissing me off. But realistically, my only options are: a) keep using Windows 10 and just hope and pray, b) upgrade to Windows 11 or c) don’t use Windows anymore. “a” is bad, “c” probably will happen someday but not today, so yeah, it’s “b”.
Now, you may ask why I don’t want Windows 11. Well, partially it’s just because if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But also, Windows 11 is, well…modern. In some good ways maybe, but also in some bad ways. It has ads. It has AI all over the place. It’s…chatty. It has fancy graphics. It’s “Helpful”. It shows you news and weather. It wants you to install stuff; OneDrive or Edge or ClipChamp or god knows what else. It is not a tool which respects your time; it is a TikTok channel. And it’s only getting worse with time.
So, yeah. Microsoft: you suck. I don’t want your damn Windows 11, and when I do install it - which I will, because after all I need to get work done - it won’t be because I want to, it’ll be because you shook me down for my time, and I will resent you for it.
It’s Christmas! So it feels appropriate to think about how grateful I am for a lot of things in my life. Certainly there are things that I wish were different or better, but honestly, I’ve really been feeling a ton of gratitude in my life lately - I don’t even have to fake it! Here’s a partial list of some things I’m really grateful for:
I’m grateful, of course, for my family, my Dad and my brother, and in particular the podcast that my brother and I have been making, which is about Mystery Science Theater 3000 - I’ll probably blog about it more in the future, but it’s at http://www.2b3kpodcast.com.
I’m grateful for my job and my financial situation which let me do the things I want to do, basically whenever I want to do them. Especially in this economy and this world I’m so grateful for that.
I’m grateful for my overall health; a few problems nonwithstanding, I’m in great health overall and that’s so important.
I’m grateful for my yoga studio that I teach at and practice at, Left Coast Power Yoga - it’s a great studio and the woman who owns it is amazing and I’m just very grateful for that space to teach and practice.
I’m grateful that I have a nice, comfy house and a safe place to live. I’ll also slip in that I’m grateful for my car, which works great and doesn’t cause me any problems.
I’m grateful for cycling! For my bikes, for Zwift, for Cyclebar, for the ability to get joy out of cycling and being on the bike, both indoors and out.
I’m grateful for Bike the US for MS, the charity that I work with and have done so many rides with in the past.
I’m grateful for my friends, especially Lacie.
I’m grateful for my writing group(s) which are great places to be artistically productive and really fun spaces, especially the one at Ultimate Grounds, and my friend Adam that I met there.
I’m grateful for Ukraine, for my new friend Kateryna that I meet with once a week online from Ukraine who teaches me Ukrainian (or tries anyway!), and I’m grateful that the people of Ukraine stood up for freedom and still are.
I’m grateful to live in Oakland, where the weather is amazing and the job opportunities are good and I get to do lots of interesting things and live near my brother.
I’m grateful for Toastmasters, which has been a really fun way to meet some nice people and get some time public speaking.
I’m grateful for ArtHaus, which is honestly a really fun coworking community.
I’m grateful for lots of other things besides - for coffee in the morning, for my computer that works really well and lets me pursue creative stuff, for being safe, and I’m sure there are other things I’m forgetting but I think that’s a good place to stop for today!
Merry Christmas!
I mentioned a few times before that I’m working on my own YouTube channel, recording a bunch of gameplay videos for this video game that I enjoy playing. As part of that, I’m trying to use Open Source software for as much of the pipeline as I can; not because I’m going to do anything with the code or anything but because in 2025 there’s this real fear that software is going to change out from underneath me; for one thing, most commercial software these days is subscription based and I’m just not going to do that for lots of reasons, and even the stuff you can buy with a one-time purchase is weirdly…cranky. Like it has to update itself constantly, or it shows ads even though you paid for it, or it stops working with a new OS release, etc., etc. Open Source software is just plain more reliable because all it takes is one person to just want it to keep working and they can make that happen.
Anyway, one of the last pieces of the puzzle was the Windows Sound Recorder which I’d been using in Windows 10. It’s not a bad app; by Microsoft standards it has less bloat than most, and it basically gets the job done. But I wanted something dead simple and also open source, and I found it in a fairly obscure thing called the OnlyR Sound Recorder. This thing is exactly what I want and no more: a giant record button. The UI is super simple and looks pretty good and it works great. I have a few quibbles, such as the way it names files, but basically it works like a champ. I highly recommend it for anyone doing YouTube voiceovers.
https://github.com/AntonyCorbett/OnlyR
I’ve been working lately on a new YouTube channel, at least partly to learn video editing and such. The thing about this channel is I’m making a lot of lightly edited videos, and I’m doing it on Windows. I’ve used iMovie before and I really like it because, although it may have flaws, the UX really respects my times and doesn’t mess around; the hotkeys make sense, and it works well for beginners. I’ve really struggled to find something similar to use on Windows. I’d taken to using ClipChamp, which is a tool that comes with Windows that Microsoft bought from a third party. And I can see why they picked it because it has a very iMovie-like aesthetic and the UX, at least for me, is really spot on. But it has some serious technical flaws; first of all, the video output is kinda weirdly compressed and you can’t control it very much at all. Second, it keeps my computer pegged at 100% even while idle, which means that for my workflow, it was keeping the computer fans on the whole time while I was trying to record a voiceover, which was really annoying. Also, it has this nasty habit of leaving copies of your movie all over your disk, and I’m making a lot of movies so it was a real pain to keep going in and deleting them. Still, I kept using it because I just couldn’t find anything better that still had a usable UI for beginners.
Until I found OpenShot. Now, OpenShot is not perfect; it has a few rough edges, and I had to remap a couple of hotkeys. But it’s basically exactly what I want; a sane, rational product that works on Windows, is great for simple video editing, and doesn’t suck in any obvious technical way. It doesn’t have any of ClipChamp’s weird flaws and it’s been rock solid and stable for me so far. Granted, I’m not doing anything complex, but still, that’s kinda the point.
If you want to make and edit simple videos, like for YouTube, I highly recommend OpenShot. I picked it up in literally 5 minutes.
www.openshot.org
I just found out yesterday - by driving by it - that in San Leandro there’s a giant warehouse for Ghirardelli chocolate, and they have a sort of “factory store” where they will sell you bulk chocolate, leftover chocolate and, most importantly, they will make you a hot fudge sundae. Now, first of all, hot fudge sundaes are amazing. I distinctly recall living in Texas and one of my favorite things was when we had the chance to drive far enough north to get to Braum’s country. Braum’s is worth a whole article in and of itself, but the important part here is that they made their own homemade hot fudge sauce and it was absolutely fantastic. And the closest I’ve found since - it might even be better - is Ghirardelli’s. Their ice cream is good, too, especially the flavors that have chocolate in them. I got a mint chocolate chip ice cream hot fudge sundae, and I wasn’t even sad when the cherry fell off and hit the ground. Everything about their sundaes is rich, creamy and smooth, full of delicious sin. One thing I really like is that they are so good and so satisfying that honestly I don’t even need a big one. I sat there in the parking lot on a beautiful sunny Bay Area day and everything was right with the world for one shining moment.
I never used to drink coffee. I was a Diet Coke guy. I didn’t really get why people would want a hot drink, and I loved bubbles. And don’t get me wrong; I still have a soft spot for a soda once in a while, but a few years back, in the search to get off the aspartame, I found coffee and I’ve never looked back. And after a journey that included a YouTuber named James Hoffmann (look him up; he’s informative and hilarious) I found myself at a high-end kitchen appliance store eyeing a $350 coffee maker from Fellow. I knew Fellow because I had a few of their high-end ceramic mugs, which are amazing, by the way. The one I have here on my desk right now is stained from years of holding coffee; from a bright white it now has a deep brown patina which I actually find quite tasteful.
Anyway, I now have a morning routine that includes making a cup of coffee. This includes measuring whole beans, spraying them with a little bit of water (helps keep them from sticking to the grinder), grinding them by hand (takes about 20-30 seconds), putting in the little Melita filter, and hitting “go” on my fancy Fellow coffee machine. This might seem like a pain, but it takes about 2 minutes, is actually really contemplative and rewarding, and makes a hell of a cup of coffee. It’s a small thing, but it makes my morning happier.
Drink decaf coffee. You’ll thank me later. It’s delicious and roasty and hot and satisfying but it doesn’t make you feel like a wrung out dishtowel. Don’t get me wrong; I love the real thing as well, I’ve been drinking it every morning, but I’m just saying, at some point in the day you really don’t need the caffeine, and I’ve always been afraid of drinking decaf. So I switch to water or something, which is fine, but I miss the taste of coffee. And decaf coffee used to suck but, well, now it doesn’t. Or rather, sometimes it still does, but then sometimes regular coffee also sucks. So it’s just like the real thing; you just have to find a place that makes good coffee, and they will probably make good decaf coffee. And actually, as a bonus, Starbucks’ standard decaf is way better than their regular (which is not hard to do, a dishrag full of rain water is better than their regular).
So - drink decaf coffee! It’s yummy!
I love to cycle, obviously. And I’ve done a lot of it right in the great outdoors, as this website alone will attest. But sometimes I also enjoy riding indoors. There’s lot of reasons to ride indoors; bad weather is one obvious issue, but also things like be able to get in a consistent workout, or just enjoying the music or camraderie. I ride indoors in my house on Zwift, but sometimes I want to get out there and spin, and that’s when I go to Cyclebar. I’ve tried a lot of different spin classes; Soulcycle, for example, or a local business here in Oakland, as well as my gym. But I keep coming back to Cyclebar for a few simple reasons, the first of which is data. It’s funny to me that in 2025, most spin classes don’t let you track even simple things like how many calories you’re burning, much less data that I want as a cyclist like my current RPMs or my output watts (which is how much energy you’re expending). These are really basic stats that you would think anyone would want to know. Some places, like Soulcycle, do this on purpose because they feel that it takes people out of the “flow” and also might intimidate beginners, and I guess I see their point, but that’s not the kind of class I want to be in. A lot of places just have really old or crusty equipment. And some places have the right equipment and don’t mind if you use it but don’t have the training or maintenance to do things like keep the batteries in the head units charged.
Cyclebar, however, incorporates it as part of their vision and mission. Admittedly, different classes use it to different extents, but no matter which of their classes you take, you always have at least access to that data, even if it isn’t part of the class. So for a numbers fan like myself, I can do things like push myself a little farther each time, or monitor my own RPM. Typically I watch for a few things, but most importantly my watts, and my overall total distance. Those are the ones I care about the most.
I don’t click with every instructor and every class, but the other thing I like about Cyclebar is that they are willing to leave you alone. Of course it’s a group class, but they aren’t pushy. Some places I’ve been will get right up into your face with some Richard Simmons-y tactics that I think are motivating but are just a huge turnoff for me. I need the freedom to ignore the instructor’s suggestions if it isn’t working for me; that’s true both in yoga and in spin, and Cyclebar - at least my location - lets me do that.
And they generally have pretty good taste in music, and it’s clean, etc.,etc. Also they’re right next to Slice House pizza. :)
So yeah, shout out to Cyclebar Castro Valley!
Greetings! Happy Thanksgiving! On this day of gratitude, I want to post about one of the things that I’m very grateful for, which is my local yoga studio that I both attend and teach at, Left Coast Power Yoga. A small business run by a local (woman) small business owner, LCPY is an awesome place to take Yoga; not just from me but a small army of awesome teachers. What I particularly enjoy (other than how close it is to my house!) is how warm and community-feeling the place is; a literal warm physical refuge from the city. Since this is a page literally about me and how I teach yoga, I figure it is way overdue that I talk about the studio where I now teach!
I teach once a week right now, on Sunday mornings, at 8:15 AM, at the Laurel location. So if you’re ever in the Laurel, check out my class; it’s a beginner-friendly alignment flow class for an hour. I really enjoy teaching it, it’s a great way to get the back half of the weekend started. I’ll make a more substantial post at some point about my teaching philosophy and what I enjoy about teaching, but for the moment, on this Thanksgiving day, I just want to express my gratitude. I went to a holiday flow class this morning taught by the studio owner Rachel, and it was a great way to get the day started!
There’s something that really bothers me about all this talk about this “Ukraine peace plan” that’s been going around these last couple of weeks, that I imagine must be even more frustrating from a Ukrainian perspective. There are lots of reasons to get into how dumb this whole circus is, but one thing in particular has struck me that I want to focus on and get off my chest, and that is how fantastically naive it is to arrange these “peace plans” without having both Russia and Ukraine in the room.
I used to run an apartment, as the leaseholder in SF, that had, at various times, as many as 5 roommates in it, counting me, in tight quarters. I had to negotiate over a lot of squabbles; occasionally involving me, but often not. Now, a dispute between countries is not the same as a dispute between roommates, and I get that. But there are similarities. And I am putting aside for the moment the very real ethical and moral quandaries involved here. To be clear, Russia is an aggressor state, and Ukraine absolutely deserves to get not only every single inch of their land back as well as reparations from Russia for all the damage, membership in EU, etc. But I understand the realities of wanting to negotiate some kind of end to all this and I’m open to the idea that there can be realistic talks. What I do not understand is how these proposals are put forth as some sort of important document or breakthrough when they are nothing but. There is just no point in doing all these elaborate negotiations without both the parties in the room. Negotiating without Ukraine is unethical, and negotiating without Russia is pointless.
Now, look, I’m not saying that there is zero value in having the US, Europe and Ukraine get together and get their ducks in a row so they can put together a united front in confronting Russia. That’s sensible and valuable, to a point. But pretending like we are somehow “closer to peace” is hot garbage, while Russia launches hundreds and hundreds of missiles a day to kill civilians and take Ukrainian land. These various “peace proposals” are just not that important. To go back to my earlier analogy, it feels to me like having two roommates get together to make a plan for their cracked-out insane roommate who is currently putting holes in the wall with her fists. There’s nothing wrong with getting together on the side so you can go in together with a united front, but there’s no point in making an elaborate document about which kind of wallpaper the roommate will buy you when she fixes the walls; we are so far from that point that it seems kind of absurd and even distasteful. The “document”, if you will, is simple: stop being an asshole. Stop putting holes in the wall. Stop screaming at the cat. Stop throwing poop everywhere. Etc., etc. The energy should be spent on isolating the roommate, getting her out of the house, calling the cops, etc. The problem here is obvious, and it does not require a 20 or 28-point plan to start addressing it.