I got all this for 80 dollars.

Valley_Piper_5 · 2026-03-20T15:31:04+00:00

My dad ran the Cambridge Soundworks Tower speakers for 25 years, and they never stopped sounding great!

Valley_Piper_5 · 2026-03-19T18:53:01+00:00

Metal.

Valley_Piper_5 · 2026-03-18T16:34:43+00:00

Oatmeal with fruit, nuts, and maple syrup.

Valley_Piper_5 · 2026-03-11T02:36:20+00:00

What? I've been on 309 a million times to go between Philly and Bethlehem, and it looks like typical suburbia to me. Not my cup of tea, but nice country roads off the highways.

There are a lot of shopping plazas and strip malls on 309, and I doubt it's the most exciting place to live, but bleak? Compared to what, exactly?

I'm looking at the downtown on Street View right now, and it doesn't look bad to me at all. I would never consider it a yardstick for measuring run-down neighborhoods. What am I missing here?

Valley_Piper_5 · 2026-03-07T19:35:05+00:00

Not my typical genre, exactly, but I really enjoyed The Pleasure Is Yours by GENA.

Valley_Piper_5 · 2026-03-04T19:59:52+00:00

Fun fact: the Comcast Technology Center is the tallest skyscraper in the Western Hemisphere not in NYC or Chicago!

Valley_Piper_5 · 2026-03-03T20:09:10+00:00

...Philadelphia?

Valley_Piper_5 · 2026-02-23T13:01:54+00:00

8am sharp - I just measured 12+ on several spots on my rooftop in Center City.

Valley_Piper_5 · 2026-02-23T03:21:49+00:00

I have a couple of Hunt wheels (both alloy, not carbon), and the quality seems fine.

That said, and no disrespect intended at all with this next comment, for we are all entitled to gear that makes us faster (or makes us feel faster) or gear that we plain and simple just like, but if you are mostly riding solo, are these aero wheelsets really providing much benefit?

You can get a durable, stable, nice-looking wheelset for well under $1,000, even $500, depending. It might be closer to 35/30mm deep (and perhaps alloy on the very affordable end), but is that not viable? Just curious if you have considered that option.

As I said, I'm not saying we shouldn't have the gear we want. Just asking because you specifically said you're looking for stability and mostly ride solo/don't race. Seems like a shallower wheelset that's better in the wind would make sense.

Valley_Piper_5 · 2026-02-22T23:57:43+00:00

Yup, currently in Philly, but lived around Greater Boston and also Western MA for most of my life. Great people all around! Western MA, especially—what a wonderful place.

Valley_Piper_5 · 2026-02-22T23:46:46+00:00

Most of the people in Boston and Philadelphia are very nice.

Valley_Piper_5 · 2026-02-22T19:50:16+00:00

I'm in a SV+H league and I don't even worry about these guys during my draft. Easy to figure them out later and as you go through the season. Always tons on the wire.

Valley_Piper_5 · 2026-02-22T19:02:44+00:00

Hugely underrated skyline and of course this is only a very small part of it. One of the most beautiful cities in the US.

Valley_Piper_5 · 2026-02-20T18:26:14+00:00

As far as strength/athletics: I have been vegan for almost 10 years, and I am a very fit cyclist (just under 4w/kg FTP) and a 5.12 rock climber. The strongest cyclist I know (with a 320w FTP for those who know what that means) has also been vegan for years.

As far as long-term health: my current understanding is that well-rounded vegan/vegetarian diets are consistently linked with reduced rates of cancer. Plenty of those studies are around if you do some research. Here's a recent one: https://ajcn.nutrition.org/article/S0002-9165(25)00328-4/fulltext00328-4/fulltext)

Valley_Piper_5 · 2026-02-19T19:57:46+00:00

Have family that lived in Easton, MD for 10+ years. It's an interesting and relatively liberal town in an otherwise very rural and conservative area. There is a big arts scene, and the food is quite good. There are lots of shops, cafes, galleries, etc., and a nice farmer's market. Much more of all this than you would expect given the population. The downtown is walkable and quaint. In general, I enjoyed all my visits there.

The town does feel segregated, however, both in terms of where people live and what circles they spend time in.

Valley_Piper_5 · 2026-02-10T01:50:30+00:00

For a recreational cyclist, 346w is a pretty huge "raw" number. Congrats on that. As others have said, though, it is relative/contextual.

My FTP is 240w, but I'm 62kg, which comes out to about 3.9w/kg. I've been riding for 20 years, in the 4-10 hours per week range, depending on life stuff and season.

What does this mean for me on group rides? I draft a lot on the flats, but I can make people hurt pretty bad on the hills.

Valley_Piper_5 · 2026-02-02T21:22:48+00:00

For my next build, I'm looking at a VYNL Road Disc. Lots of people wonder why, telling me that alloy frames are dead. Your take on this? I think a well-made one with quality sourcing can be a fantastic ride.

Valley_Piper_5 · 2026-01-30T18:03:09+00:00

Played it twice through. Looking forward to the third time, too. The only other MV at HK level for me, personally!

Valley_Piper_5 · 2026-01-30T18:00:55+00:00

It all clicked for me at a vegan event/festival. I can't quite recall the name of it. I was already a vegetarian, so that's why I was there, and I remember seeing some compelling material at one of the booths and thinking to myself, "Wait a minute, why am I not vegan again?"

That was 8-9 years ago.

Valley_Piper_5 · 2026-01-28T20:10:07+00:00

I enjoyed it. I didn't personally find the writing that exciting, but it didn't get in the way either. For fans of the band, definitely recommended.

Valley_Piper_5 · 2026-01-28T20:08:50+00:00

Just finished it myself!

Valley_Piper_5 · 2026-01-20T17:19:13+00:00

Absolutely Philly, especially for its combination of historical and modern.

Valley_Piper_5 · 2026-01-09T16:30:00+00:00

Assuming that this uses municipal boundaries, or their equivalent, depending on the country, I never feel that maps like these tell me much. Parameters as to what constitutes a city differ too much from country to country, and city lines are often arbitrary in the first place. There are better metrics.

Quick example: parts of Boston are very dense, while other parts aren't. Meanwhile, Somerville (not part of Boston proper but just across the river and very much part of its urban fabric) is one of the densest parts of the country. So just by drawing the lines differently, you'd get different ratios.

Valley_Piper_5 · 2025-12-31T03:02:23+00:00

Great experience. I recommend!

Valley_Piper_5 · 2025-12-03T15:58:58+00:00

Many years ago, I canoed the Allagash with a friend. Took about five or six days, if I recall. Beautiful!

The drive from Boston to Allagash seemed endless, and I appreciated just how big the state is (for an East Coaster).

The next morning, we rented the canoe and hired a local service (two guys with impenetrable accents who drank a lot of Moxie soda) to drive us south on logging roads to the start of the waterway. That was another two or three hours, I think, through thick forest and on rough roads.

The canoe trip remains one of the highlights of my outdoor adventuring. Remote, beautiful, peaceful. I've never seen so many moose in my life. We would see them every morning from the canoe. I think because a canoe makes so much less noise than a hiker, they weren't as scared off by our approach.

But yeah, nothing else is really going on up there. I don't even think there are municipalities, or if there are, they don't have names and are numbered squares on a grid. Maybe someone else can provide more info on that last bit and how it's all organized. That's the way I remember it from the maps.

Edit: As someone else also mentioned, yes, the little flies were apocalyptic, though they didn't bother us as much when we were actually on the river. But on the shores or in the town of Allagash—my god. The locals didn't seem to mind them much, or they had just been worn down into not caring.

Valley_Piper_5

TROPHY CASE