Did the Mothman know about COVID?

 Does Bigfoot know about climate change? These things keep me up at night. 

 I am working on 2 new things. Fun little pet projects. 

 The first is a real website! I will be moving the blog to blog.charlotteis.online subdomain, and the website will take over the main charlotteis.online domain. My plan is to use the new site to house all my other pet projects. An elaborate and more fun linktree I guess. My html is a little rusty so we'll see how that turns out lol. 

 The other thing, in conjunction with a new website/landing page, is a new theme for the blog. I would like everything to stay consistent. I do have a few longer form essays/blog posts in the works but there's no ETA on those. I haven't written anything serious since college, much less done actual research, and this is my blog so I can do what I want and not have deadlines if I don't want them. They'll be ready when they're ready. 

 I'll make a fun post detailing inspirations/thoughts when everything goes live, but I have been browsing a lot of the user sites on neocities.org for inspiration and it's had me missing the old days of the web, when it wasn't dominated by three companies and you could find random cozy little corners of the internet completely made by one or two people for a niche only they were interested in. If you have some time to waste, definitely go browse some neocities sites (or make your own!!), they're all really fun.  

Destiny 2 is ending

 Yesterday I got a text from a friend about Destiny 2 ending. No more expansions. No new game on the horizon. One final update and then it joins it's younger sibling on server life support for the foreseeable future. It made me feel weirdly sad. 

 I played Destiny for the first time in 2014. I was a Sophomore in High School and I was using a character slot on my brother's account because he was the one that actually bought the game. I would go on to play Destiny more or less continuously for the next 12 years (after buying my own copy of the first game). It's still the only mmo I ever got really into. So much of my life is weirdly tied back to this game. Looking back at high school and college, if I wasn't studying or going out I was playing Destiny 2. 

 I remember the launch of Destiny 2, the mess that followed with curse of Osiris and the lukewarm follow up in Warmind. I remember the laser tag glitch, running endless Escolation Protocol waves to finally get that trench barrel shotgun (the only one in the game at the time). The shadow drop of the whisper of the worm mission and the 24 insane hours as I grouped with strangers to learn our way through what I still think is the coolest mission in the entire game. I remember how insanely annoying I was to anyone who would listen to me about Forsaken, the story and the gigantic updates that literally saved the game at the time. 

 I remember getting a friend group together to run raids every Wednesday night. Deep Stone Crypt, Vault of Glass, Vow of the Disciple. I remember learning every raid in the game inside and out to the point that I started teaching random people how to do it because I loved raiding that much. It's so corny and maybe embarrassing but I will never forget finally clearing Atraks-1 with my friends and getting to hear the Deep Stone Lullaby for the first time. 

a snippet of my raid report :)

   I remember when shattered throne released, and learning to solo it. I remember running Grasp of Avarice so much I could solo it with my eyes closed. I remember the countless people I helped get Gjallarhorn and the catalyst. I have 57 clears of that stupid dungeon I love it so much. 

 

 It's so corny but I remember that feeling of "correctness" that I had never felt before when, at some point in college, I made a new character (because I mained a Hunter and they were really bad in end game content so I needed a Warlock to get the Conqueror title.. you get it ik), and on a whim made it a woman instead of a man. Weird how that happens. 

picture taken ~2 days before I started wondering about my gender

 I haven't played Destiny in a long time though. I quit soon after Lightfall and came back for a while for Final Shape. I did the raid, saw the ending, tried the "Episodes" that came after. But I was done. The creep of the paid shop, expensive but lackluster expansions, seasonal grind, and separating the dungeons from the rest of the paid content had made me more than a little bitter about the game and that feeling deepened over the years that I played. For the first time in my life I didn't see any news about a new Destiny expansion until after it had come out.

 I heard about the game reaching end of life from a friend. It feels a little bittersweet. I don't play, and I don't have a way to play anymore, but I've been reminiscing about my time on the game this past day or two. The friends I made and the fun nights I had for many many years. It wasn't always the best, in fact a lot of the time the game was kind of bad, but I liked it and I'm a little sad that it's actually over. 

 Anyways, that's it. I hope you are having a good weekend and a lovely memorial day off. Coming Soon: a website reorganization!! (stay tuned!)

Boston Marathon sightseeing

 Yesterday was the Boston Marathon! It's the busiest time of the year by far around here, for better or for worse. I'm usually the only one of my friends who cares and most years I end up walking around Boylston street the day before to see the finish line and maybe the expo, but nothing more since no one ever wants to go cheer with me :( .

 This year was different! My sister was visiting and she had a friend running in the race. We were on 'bottle duty', meaning we had to find a way to get to a spot wayyyyy earlier in the course than is normally easy to do and hand off a small water bottle filled with a carb mix. This ended up being perfect since my sister is also a cyclist, so we turned the whole thing into a fun bike ride. We got to see both the men's and women's elite fields go by, with both of the eventual winners, John Korir (who set a course record!) and Sharon Lodeki, along with a huge chunk of the men's sub-elite field before finally seeing and successfully handing off the water bottle. 

Elite Men's group through mile 16, including John Korir!

Elite Womens group through mile 16, I dont think this pic has Sharon Lodeki in it :/

 With a successful bottle handoff behind us, we hopped back on our bikes and raced down Beacon street to some side streets that connect with Commonwealth Avenue to cheer for my sister's friend a handful more times. Boston's marathon route is basically a straight line from Hopkinton to Boston so seeing someone multiple times in the race is tough to do, as transit options are extremely limited outside of the metro area (even in Boston the runners are faster than the green line lol) and the race takes place on the two major roads in the city, comm ave and beacon st.

 After making it to Cleveland Circle to cheer one last time, we realized we were kinda stuck on the Newton side of comm ave until the crows thinned a little. It was pretty chilly, we spent the entire day cycling between being warm on the bikes and getting too cold standing and cheering, so we killed some time by biking back into Newton to hang out at a cafe for an hour or two before coming back and finding the official pedestrian crossing around Tappan St. Between side streets, cafe runs, and sightseeing we ended up with ~30 miles of biking on the day. 

We made it across!!

 After that we made the mistake of trying to take the green line back into downtown. The train was more packed than even the worst I've seen after a sox game, and the MBTA did the thing where they cancelled the train right at Kenmore with no warning, dumping a packed train onto an already overflowing platform. After that we decided to walk the rest of the way to the restaurant. 

 My promise to you, beloved reader, is that I will never run a marathon (I have a chronic injury and can't run anymore), but spectating is always a fun time. Everyone has fun signs, (most) people are friendly, its a state holiday, and this year it was literally 4/20. I had a great day even if I'm dead tired today. I'll leave you with this cool pic my sister took of me and my bike (have I mentioned I built my bike enough?). 

me and the bike I built

 

Can I be annoying about this bike I built for a second?

 I've been biking for a while now. I started up at some point in College when my chronic foot tendonitis developed into a dysfunction and ensured running would never be an option for me again. At that point I was a broke student who "borrowed" her dad's old road bike to stay in shape. But when COVID hit, it kind of turned into an obsession.

An old Peugot bike I restored and used as a commuter in college

  Over the years I've developed a solid base of mechanic skills, both out of necessity (bike shops charge insane prices for stuff you can do yourself in ten minutes) and out of curiosity. All through this time I've had the little thought in my head of building my own bike. Like a good bike. A carbon fiber bike. 

 So, around spring last year, I started looking for frames online and was instantly disappointed. The big name retailers nearly never sell the frameset (bike frame + fork) alone for the kind of bike I was looking to build. Typically the frames they provide are for extremely premium aero bikes or high performance racing builds. Neither of which I was trying to make. 

 Eventually I found the ICAN A9. 

 

 Pretty much exactly what I was looking for. Lightweight, carbon fiber, inexpensive, works with mechanical groupsets, but has plenty of room for upgrades down the line when I can afford them. On top of all that, it came in this gorgeous white, yellow, and blue paint scheme that I loved.

completed frameset, fresh coat of paint :)

 Frame in hand, I was ready to build! I sourced a groupset from my old bike, a complete Shimano 105 R7000, cranks and brakes included. I set up a workspace in an unused corner of my apartment building's basement and got to work tearing down my old bike for parts. 

my old bike, stripped bare

 

A box of parts to be reused

 With the easy part down, it was time to get everything onto the new frame. The big issue was that this new bike had cables that were completely internally routed, meaning the only time a cable ever saw the light of day was when it had to connect to a derailleur. That, unfortunately, also includes the handlebars. 

4-5 hours later, cables routed.

 If you've never worked on a bike, connecting the cables to the shifters is usually pretty easy. You pretty much just plug them in and then tape the cables to the handlebars to be wrapped with bar tape later. It's maybe a 20 minute job. This bike came with a special kind of handlebar that worked with the bike's internal cable routing to keep the cables inside the handlebars until they poke out at specific spots to be connected to the shifters. Routing the cables through this handlebar is a nightmare. It took me five hours over two days to get the cables routed properly. If I ever have to replace a cable in this I might just swap handlebars to a traditional stem/bar combo instead of the integrated one here. I will say it looks sick though, so maybe it was worth it. 

Honestly after that struggle, everything else came together pretty quickly. Bikes are actually not that complicated and not that difficult to work on so once the hard part of cable routing was done everything else kind of snapped together.

  

nasty ass basement

my assistant

 I got the bike to the point that all I needed to do was attach the chain and tune the derailleurs and my motivation dried up. At this point winter had started in earnest and I wouldn't be out riding on the roads with this bike anyways, so I wasn't in any rush to finish the thing. But as spring crept in and work got stressful, I finally had some time off to finish it up and take it for a ride. 

finished!

 This is the first bike I've ever built completely from scratch! It's also the first time I've owned a carbon fiber bike. I totally get why cyclists get weird about making everything carbon fiber now, the weight difference between this one and my aluminum bike is gigantic. It feels light and snappy to ride, and the material difference means the roads feel a little less rough. 

 I'm super proud that I finished the project too! I have way too many half finished projects laying around my house and sitting in Github repos so dragging this one across the finish line feels really good. There are already several upgrades that I'd like (electronic shifting, carbon wheels...) but those will have to wait a while since everything bike related is expensive at this point. 

 That's it! Thanks for reading, thanks for letting me be annoying for a little bit. I promise this isn't a bike blog, I just do a lot of biking and love talking about it! I have been listening to Gretel's new album Squish recently, I really like it. I think my Gretel album ratings are:

1. Slugeye
2. Squish
3. Head of the Love Club

 The Boston Marathon is on Monday, it's going to be a rainy weekend, and I have a little "staycation" to enjoy. Have a nice day!

 

 

Saw some gooses

 Or maybe it's geese, I don't know, don't make me look it up. They're all starting to show up again in Boston, leaving poop all over any pedestrian path even remotely close to a body of water. My heart goes out to anyone trying to have a picnic on the esplanade, it will be entirely goose poop by mid-April.

  Last night a friend and I watched Colleen Hoover's It Ends With Us (dir Justin Baldoni). It was unbelievably bad. I don't really have a lot to say about it other than it was bad and Blake Lively had some all time terrible outfits. I drank a lot of wine and felt very hungover in the morning so I'd say it was an ideal Saturday night. 

 Then this morning I had to drag whatever remained of my body and soul out onto my bike for a long ride. It was miserably cold and rainy the whole ride, with the rain occasionally intensifying from a heavy mist to a full downpour at random intervals. I literally cannot wait for the summer, or just a season that isn't rainy. I did to see those Canada Gooses though, that made it all worth it. Have a nice rest of the weekend :)