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need, not want

this is not the summer for which i signed up. granted, late april and early may were very kind to the hebrides (and many other parts of the uk), even in terms of water scarcity. it does seem a tad over-wrought to think of scotland's west coast as one that might suffer from a water shortage, though sepa (scottish environmental protection agency) was beginning to colour the islands in yellow to indicate that a lack of rainfall might soon become a problem. however, co-inciding almost exactly with the start of the annual whisky festival, along came the rain that the authorities claimed was much-needed, though in truth i doubt it dampened the spirits of those intent on sampling as much islay malt as was manageable.

just consider it as tomorrow's whisky.

however, apart from the occasional day of clearer skies, the month of june, so far, has not resembled the on-ramp to the summer we all hoped it might be. acccording to xcweather, temperatures have faffed around but never quite achieved the bright heat that had infiltrated late april and early may.

as advised in previous monologues, i am attempting to maintain a relatively simple fitness regime by way of recovery, presently consisting of riding from the croft to debbie's and back, two or three times over the course of a weekend. my previous bone-headedness had insisted that i head out no matter the weather; rain, wind, shine. it is what the great outdoors is for. why else do i possess a whole range of waterproofs? thus on saturday, my cycling companion and i headed off just before noon to head south west for the traditional latte and double-egg roll served by the lovely deborah. though the weather promised inclemency, it did not seriously arise until we were sat at the coffee bar, staring out over loch indaal, watching the opposite shore disappear into the mist.

already clad in waterproofs, the return trip was encouraged by an amenable tailwind. sadly, as we changed direction into the headwind once more at bridgend, the rain persisted, entailing a dripping wet kitchen floor by the time i headed for a warm shower. even when subsequently popping down the street later to collect my newspaper, hat, waterproof trousers and jacket remained a necessity. like i said, not the summer for which i signed up.

sunday morning dawned with little difference, described by the online forecast as mist, the sort of drizzly rain that mrs washingmachinepost perennially describes as 'wet rain'. she's not far wrong. with our grand-daughter on a 'granny sleepover', the tv remote was no longer my own, chosen as it was, to select the disney + channel and walt's latest live-action retelling of the snow-white story. despite bleary eyes and a desire to nod off once again, i'm afraid the seven dwarves were at least six more than my constitution was likely to survive, to say nothing of the fact that there's was little in the fridge that might serve as a healthy sunday lunchtime repast.

in other words, i had no choice but to cycle once again to debbie's for a cheese and tomato toastie. despite the softness of the precipitation, it was plain to see that whether or not i actually wanted to go cycling, the choice (lunch) was not really mine to make. vast quantities of water droplets across the surface of my gore-tex rapha jacket confirmed the sanity of my choice of apparel, exaggerated just a smidgeon by a strong headwind the full length of uiskentuie strand. helpfully, following the described luncheon, the homeward tailwind was all but dry, though still demonstrating temperatures that scarcely qualified as 'summery'.

i think it true to say that, given our usual practice of effectively cycling in circles before heading home for a shower and change of clothes, cycling can be classified under the heading of 'desire', making it much harder to defend when pointedly questioned, particularly by our better halves. to better defend choice, it certainly helps to have a purpose in life;

lunch, for instance.

monday 16 june 2025

easy option

i learned to ride a bike at the particularly late age of nine, thanks to having borrowed a small, red bicycle from a friend of mine who lived on the other side of the street. it had to be a small bicycle, because all my practising took place on the large portion of grass in the back garden of my parents' house. that way, my less than graceful early efforts could be cushioned when i repeatedly fell off. but ultimately i triumphed and, as the cliché goes, i've never looked back. in fact, by the age of twelve, i achieved gainful employment not only as a paper-boy seven mornings a week, but another after-school job, delivering prescriptions for a pharmacist friend of my father. both of the above demanded use of a bicycle, aided and abetted by the fact that my raleigh twenty featured a large, box-like saddle bag affixed to a chromed rear rack.

the latter was particularly helpful on sundays, when the broadsheets all featured several included magazine supplements, taking up more space than my newspaper delivery bag offered. remember, of course, that this was in the days when larger numbers of people read newspapers.

i was never sporting when at school; with so many pupils, we had to qualify for the annual sports day, a situation that easily played into the hands of others like me. we would enter for events such as the high-jump, shot-putt and javelin, none of for which we had any chance of qualifying. with nothing in which to compete, we gained an afternoon off school at the onset of warmer summer weather. we might not have adhered to the sporting ideal, but i would argue that we'd demonstrated favourable mental acuity. when it came to the weekly physical eduction period i was still required to undertake even in my latter years of school, i would opt for the cross-country course which passed close to the runway of the adjacent airport. half-way round, i'd sit on a bench and watch aeroplanes take-off and land, before returning to school apparently out of breath and just too late to to join in any gym hall activity.

however, my shopping bike, the very definition of practicality, aside from delivering newspapers and prescriptions, was also my day to day transport to school, a distance of around five kilometres from home. as i entered my fifth and sixth years, school dinners were not on my menu aspirations, so i'd cycle home and back to have lunch at home. if i total the approximate daily kilometres, i probably covered around 145km per week on a sturmey-archer three-speed powered bicycle.

none of the above is intended as a form of narcissism or self-aggrandisement, simply a statement of fact. i was certainly not the only school pupil who did so, evidence for which could be seen on a daily basis by the large number of bicycles, sometimes two-deep, along the entire length of a very long school wall. you can perhaps comprehend my initial surprise on arriving in the hebrides to see not a single bicycle in the secondary school right next to the house we first rented. (i later learned that the majority lived in the outlying areas and were bussed in on a daily basis, but that hardly excused those who lived within easy cycling distance).

however, i am of an age where all those bicycle journeys were undertaken on human-powered bicycles, with nary an electric motor or battery to be seen. there were one or two kids at school who, in retrospect, were probably more than a tad overweight, but in the present time, the uk records an obesity figure of 19% amongst 11-15 year old children. within the adult population, that figure rises to 29% - almost 20 million adults. obviously, there are many reasons for obesity, but the official explanation in the uk is "an imbalance between calorie intake and energy expenditure, and moving too little." in other words, eating too much and not exercising enough.

i think it is probably agreed amongst many of us that any exercise is better than no exercise; anything that gets folks to put in a bit of effort has to be seen as a positive move. thus, riding an e-bike, while less active than doing likewise on an acoustic bike, ought still to be encouraged. however, i am of the opinion that amongst those of a certain (young) age, most are more than capable of riding under their own steam, without recourse to battery power. yet that's a state of affairs that's looking less and less likely.

according to research by the e-bike positive campaign, half of all young adults between the ages of 25 - 34, are more likely to purchase an e-bike than they were one year ago. and among the wider population, over one-fifth were likely to acquire an e-bike to "take advantage of the benefits that this mode of transport could bring." granted, this research was undertaken on behalf of a specifically e-bike organisation (which is enough of a worry in itself), but why no mention of the perfectly serviceable acoustic bike? kids and subsequently some adults of my generation were perfectly happy and, ostensibly, quite fit as a result.

where did it all go so wrong?

sunday 15 june 2025

soap

originally broadcast on america's abc channel for four years between september 1977 and april 1981, soap was essentially a convoluted tv soap, the objective of which was to offer a send-up of tv soaps everywhere. the latter form of brodcasting is, essentially, relatively cheap to make, relying to a certain extent on longevity of the programming to justify the initial expense of constructing stage sets that are expected to have a lifespan, hopefully, of decades. they also rely on varying levels of scriptwriting that emulate the function of chapters in books. leave the reader (or in this case, the tv audience) clamouring for more, eager to watch the next episode or read the next chapter to find out what happens next. the challenge, for the writer in either case, is to keep that going for as long as possible. in the case of an author, that ends with the final chapter (unless a sequel is already underway); for a tv scriptwriter, the challenge is seemingly perpetual, presumably justifying why many tv soaps employ a group of writers.

in the age of streaming and decidedly intangible box sets, instead of having to wait a day or week to discover how any particular situation is resolved, entire series can be watched in a single sitting, always assuming you're prepared to go to work the following day with bloodshot eyes and a glaringly obvious sleep deficiency. it's also why advertisers are often seen to be clamouring for broadcast time on the ad break, or perhaps even sponsoring the whole enchilada, in the fervent hope that a successful, frequently watched tv soap, will forever be associated with their brand. to what it is rarely referred, however, is sport.

confused? you will be.

now that tnt sports has raised the price barrier, fewer of us now witness the tv soap that is world tour cycle racing, a series of activities that fit the bill perfectly, or sometimes don't. i am under no misapprehension that my fascination with each subsequent cyclocross season is little different from those who watch eastenders or coronation street. from october until february, often twice weekly, i can watch the consequences of eli iserbyt getting all in a froth with ryan kamp and stamping on his back wheel, before being suspended for three events. i can watch guest stars mathieu van der poel and wout van aert appearing for a few disparate episodes and upsetting the apple cart without actually undermining the main narrative, and i can eagerly watch episode/race after episode/race to see if thibau nys fulfils his early season potential.

but let's not rest our laurels on relative obscurity, when a higher profile soap is being currently played out in french france. only yesterday afternoon i was conveying to a fellow member of the pelotonese, how slovenian wunderkind, tadej pogacar, was languishing in seventh place on the dauphiné, behind race leader, remco evenepoel and even arch-rival (soap operas thrive on arch-rivals) jonas vingegaard. this led to a brief discussion as to how much any of the above actors might be keeping under wraps, so as not to give away their performance level prior to the upcoming three weeks in july. then, as i sat down to commence today's monologue, i learn that pog has bunny-hopped both remco and jonas to place himself in the yellow jersey, converting a 38 second deficit into a 43 second lead in one fell swoop.

this has altered what was in danger of becoming a humdrum outing across the channel into an event that most of us will be eagerly anticipating over this weekend, given the hilly parcours ahead. of course, by the time you read this, pog might either have increased his lead by an unassailable amount, or jonas might have simply been keeping his powder dry until the very last moment. either way, those with the income to justify a tnt sports subscription will be glued to the telly-box, while the rest of us make do with after-the-fact reporting on the major cycling websites. the compulsion will surely be hard to avoid.

a phrase oft repeated in situations such as these is 'you couldn't make it up', because if you did, there's a strong possibility no-one would believe you. which effectively beggars the question, are tadej, jonas and remco aware of the existential nature of their day job? was remco sufficiently self-aware to realise that, though he had a very strong time-trial within him to grab yellow, he felt less than equal to the future gradients. and was tadej similarly confident in his latent abilities to hang about at the back of the general classification, knowing full well that the summit finish in combloux had his name written on it. but the soap fans amongst us are now keen to learn whether he has left his beach towel atop stage seven, or whether jonas, the only member of the trio yet to wear yellow, is waiting in the wings.

see what i mean? it's not actually sport; it's a soap.

saturday 14 june 2025

misguided?

i read an article in yesterday's guardian newspaper which highlighted the use of artificial intelligence in the restoration of damaged or degraded old master paintings. perhaps unsurprisingly, included in the process is adobe's flagship image-editing software, photoshop which, following import of a hi-res scan of the original painting, creates a mask overlaying the latter on which a.i. highlights areas in need of repair. the image used by way of a demonstration was referred to as painted by 'master of the prado adoration' a dutch painter whose name has been lost to history. the photoshop mask allowed a digital reconstruction of the damaged painting, subsequently printed onto a polymer sheet that can be placed over the original image.

according to the report, the overlay can be removed if necessary with the use of proprietary solvents.

aside from the contested practice of placing the polymer atop an original painting, the technique's inventor admitted that there are certain ethical issues to be considered, but there was no doubt that the development drastically reduced the time required to save age-damaged paintings, dropping from years to hours. the justification for doing so, however, surely rests in the knowledge that art lovers and historians all across the world, by and large prefer to witness consolidated paintings, bereft of the cracks, missing paint and discoloured areas. i'd imagine the majority are invested in seeing these great works as they would have been at the time of their creation. in such cases, surely artifice trumps originality?

there are parallels to be seen in the drum world, where there's a whole sub-set of drum nerds who are more enthused by the acquisition of orginal drums from the 1930s - 40s, whether they're functional or not. the fly-in-the-ointment contained within the enthusiasm of the vintage drum collector is that the attempt to emulate the percussive delights of early jazz drummers rests on the knowledge that said drums were, perhaps unfortunately, brand new.

but of course, misguided appreciation is no stranger to the velocipedinal world; were evidence required to justify such a brash statement, look no further than the many youtube videos and online articles describing and displaying the 'latest tech' from any major cycling event you care to mention. when you consider the cost and limited availability of many of these so-called innovations, the appetite for their wholesale appreciation is grossly over-stated, even if disturbingly accurate. and yet, half-way into the third decade of the new century, the practice continues critically unabated (present monologue excepted).

my present contention relates to the release early last week, of campagnolo's latest groupset, introducing thirteen rear sprockets to the professional and amateur pelotons at lower (yet still expensive) cost than its predecessor. it's a release that seems to not only have garnered resounding approbation, following many a years of expressed doubts concerning vicenza's future, but one that sheds new confidence in campagnolo's oblique strategies.

in essence, however, campagnolo has exhibited a similar appreciation of the inherent nerdiness of the cognoscenti as do both of its principal peers. yesterday morning, entitled Bike Atel13r: where excellence meets innovation in the subject line, an e-mail arrived highlighting a range of cycle manufacturers who had outfitted their bestest bicycles with the new groupset. no different than my fellow aficionados, i clicked the link promising to show 'an exclusive collection of exceptional bikes: from top brands to the most refined bespoke creations' which, if i'm perfectly honest, the atel13r was exactly as i expected, consisting of seventeen bicycles, from which perhaps the strongest impression gained was just how similar they all appear, and that's before noticing the wireless super-record components.

in all honesty, why were any of us drawn to look at photographs of very expensive stationary bicycles? though aesthetics ride high amongst the chosen ones, surely the best part of cycling is the riding itself? the rest is just showing off outside the coffee stop.

friday 13 june 2025

finding your bearings

a long lost friend who moved farther north decades ago, was the first to offer bicycles for hire on islay, with a heinz 57 varieties of velocipedes contained within the garage attached to the post office of which he was postmaster (long before horizon was even thought of). from where he had acquired these bicycles in the first place, i was too scared to ask, but in the process of normal social interaction, my services were engaged to maintain this small fleet of cycles only a few years after i arrived in the hebrides.

that first season taught us both quite a lot in terms of what visitors were looking for and just how incompetent the majority were at riding bicycles. i doubt things are much better nowadays, when it often seems that cycle-hirers haven't ridden any shape of bicycle since before their ages hit double-digits. and in common with those who hire cars, because it's not their's, there seems little, if any desire to treat the bicycles with at least a modicum of care. and as a good friend of mine advised several years ago, 'people don't read signs.

the latter was clear following the regular return of many bicycles after extended rides along the sandy beach that constitutes the big strand. this inevitably led to yours truly, sat in the doorway of the bike shed, surrounded by cycle wheels, removing wheel locknuts and bearing seals, cleaning sand out of hub shells, before filling them with new grease and bearings, then readjusting the cones. it was a somewhat tedious but necessary past-time, inevitably accompanied by applying a similar process to the good old square taper bottom bracket. and all this after asking folks not to ride along the strand, augmented with a clear printed sign situated above the bicycles.

at the time, i recall thinking that i'd sell my soul for a fleet of bicycles featuring seemingly higher tech cartridge bearings. but somewhere in the darkened depths of thewashingmachinepost bikeshed, lies a front wheel built on a white industries, polished alloy hub, smoothly running on cartridge bearings, removal of which, if memory serves, required an honours degree in physics. similar difficulties have subsequently presented themselves across the intervening years, particularly with reference to rear hubs, several of which have helpfully contained a cartridge bearing midway through the hub shell; relatively easy to remove, but an uncontested nightmare when trying to replace it.

i recall my naive fandom that had me opt for hubs, headsets or bottom brackets which featured cartridge bearings, rather than anything that dared to equal my own luddite tendencies with individual bearings and some grease (or not, as in the case of a number of raleigh bikes). the only possible exception to which i'd be willing to admit is a cartridge bearing headset, a strain of steering ease that has great merit, if only because it rarely entails the necessity of replacing the crown race.

a few years ago, campagnolo kindly sent a pair of bora wto 45mm carbon wheels for review, in which the accompanying literature made plain that the hubs still rolled on cup and cone bearings. with another of the sunday peloton having also purchased a set of campag wheels, it has become obvious that both sets of wheels roll far better than others on cartridge bearings. and that can be easily explained when you learn that the bearings enclosed within the outer cartridge are considerably smaller and fewer than is possible by popping in a set of loose bearings.

so why is this worthy of consideration? well, a recent article on bikeradar was keen to point out that for the first time, the latest iteration of shimano's xtr hubs has eschewed the ball bearing in favour of replacing them with the cartridge variety. there's no doubt that fabrication times are reduced by simply fitting cartridge bearings, a setup that eases use of automation. artificial intelligence, accompanied by robots is not yet the equal of loose bearings and copious grease. historically, campagnolo has seen fit to plough its own furrow, no matter what the competition does, so we can but hope that vicenza will remain the ancestral home of the ball bearing for the foreseeable future.

thursday 12 june 2025

source material

having effectively disassociated myself with the review factory that is the bicycle industry, in order to fill these pixels on a daily basis, you may have noticed that i require the ability to expound upon a particular velocipedinal subject; in other words, voice an opinion that i have spent 29 years trying to convince my reader, is not only worth voicing, but also worth listening to. that remarkably fragile construction of purported experience is, as many of you will have already sussed, built on sand. i do have many years of experience writing thewashingmachinepost, but from a certain and probably educated point of view, that might be considerably different than knowing anything about bicycles or the industry which spawned them in the first place.

my day job at a newspaper has taught me that, when the pages look like being bereft of the news that people are being asked to pay for, it's time to conduct at least a modicum of research, the result of which will, hopefully, provide a solid basis for compulsive exposition. in truth, that almost always works to a greater or lesser degree, and it's a modus operandi that i'm still hoping is a transferable skill. to that end, i regularly trawl the industry journals and websites along with other online sources in the search for velocipedinal succour. however, lest you think me at risk of incurring plagiarism, let me disavow you of that notion.

the missing word is inspiration.

since i do enjoy the written word, as both writer and reader, i have remained distant from the so-called vlog, particularly in the light of having neither video editing software, a video camera of any description, nor, indeed, the time to employ both of the latter. similarly, given the professionalism demonstrated by even the least popular cycling podcast, talking into a microphone connected to garageband seems too far from entertainment to be worth a punt. a bit like the reason i do not drive (i'm not a very good driver), i think vlogging and podcasting are best left well alone for the benefit of all.

however, in similar manner to curating news wholly relevant to residents of the isles of islay and jura, providing content for a cycling blog is notionally ring-fenced; my opinion of sending in the troops in california would be the very definition of irrelevant. and while certain portions of the cycle industry seem hell-bent on self destruction, or heading ever further into the corporate realm, i am just a tad concerned that my allegedly educated opinions on any such matters lean just a bt too far towards the negative side of the barometer.

but just when it seems possible that i might run out of bona-fide subject matter in which anyone might find interest, despair turns to relative joy. were i better organised, i would have a lengthy string of possible entreaties which afford the time and opportunity to research in advance of placing fingers on keyboard, but i fear those days are long gone. currently i hope to channel my love of jazz improvisation, by sitting down after work to figure out what might fill the black and yellow pixels for yet another day. however, the rules are that it has to be of some interest to someone, and hopefully to me too.

it's not often that the words insane and mad are employed when describing the new bike on the block, but according to future publishing's online outlets, cycling weekly and cycling news, that is the kneejerk reaction to factor's new aero bike, unreleased, but seen at the criterium du dauphine, currently underway in french france. despite having been previously advised by both websites that aero is so yesterday's thing, it would appear that factor have not been paying attention. however, what they have been paying attention to is the habit of cutting edge track bikes featuring front and rear (seatstay) forks that appear to have been conceived to accommodate either two side-by-side wheels or one of those fashionably wide knobblies beloved of the unbound brigade.

a recent e-mail from an italian domiciled friend contained a link to the radavist website and an illustrated article featuring beautiful bicycles from this year's los angeles invitational. top of the list was a beautifully restored lugged steel colner, a secondary brand once offered by ernesto colnago. in true aficionado style, the brake cables exited the top of the lever hoods, the gear levers sat atop the narrow downtube, and the rear brake cable was fastened to the top tube by chromed metal clips. in the hope that you won't think less of me, i will refrain from stating just how long i sat in fervent envy of such a glorious bicycle. it even had an identically painted tyre pump affixed vertically to the seat tube.

when my gaze alighted on factor's utterly hideous aero bike, i cannot deny that the temptation to don a black armband in tribute to everything we've lost was all but overwhelming. i understand that dave brailsford's invention of marginal gains made it hard for team sky's peers to avoid joining the happy throng, but good grief charlie brown, cycling has long been referred to as the beautiful sport, a title that is every much at the behest of the bicycles as it is aimed at the sport's practitioners.

the uci has been roundly castigated on many an occasion for its introduction of particularly odd and oft-times irrelevant regulations, but where are the blazers from aigle when it's time for much-needed aesthetic reinforcement? to quote private frazer from dad's army, "we're all doomed captain mainwaring."

photo: the radavist/la invitational

wednesday 11 june 2025

annunciation

you'd think that placenames without any difficult agglomeration of consonants would prove simplicity itself in the pronunciation stakes, but any clash of gaelic with english derivations is bound to create difficulties at some point along the conversational trajectory. take port askaig for instance, islay's most northerly ferry port and from whence the council's far smaller car ferry departs and arrives to and from the isle of jura across the tidal stretch of water known, confusingly, as the sound of islay.

for those of us domiciled in the hub of the universe, the emphasis is placed on the opening vowel of the second word: port aaaskaig. but despite my having used the two words in regular discussion with my parents for many a long year, my father stil insisted on emphasising the word port and the latter vowels of the word askaig.

obviously, i didn't think this through before commencing; it would probably have made a great deal more sense to have framed this discussion as a podcast. however, since we're already down the rabbit hole, i will continue unabated.

islay placenames such as bunnahabhain and bruichladdich are amongst the exceptions, and are almost invariably pronounced incorrectly, but that will hardly come as a surprise. but even bowmore, from where i currently spout forth, possesses its very own problems; yet again, the emphasis is on the second syllable, and the three letters b-o-w are not pronounced as if it's the front of a calmac ferry. however, given the purported velocipedinal nature of this blog, we ought best to move on.

a former colleague who moved to the scottish mainland several years past, has been conspicuous by his omnipresent radio silence. that sort of thing happens, but one or two members of the sunday peloton keep tabs on his progress via the ubiquitous strava, mention of which commenced a short debate as to how that particular trademarked appellation ought to be pronounced. after all, when considering the ill-fated komoot, the majority will annunciate the latter with the emphasis on the second syllable (oot). based entirely on that knowledge, it would surely not be contrary to any restrictive conventions to pronounce strava underlining the va, sounding very similar to the name of norwegian pop band, aha with the implied silent exclamation mark.

common consent would have it that the latter pronunciation sounded decidedly more in keeping with the unwritten philosophy that is considered an integral part of the cycling meme.

but however you choose to pronounce strava, it has become likely that strava's offices in san francisco are being positioned as the centre from which their bid for world domination will be based. already they have assured their future by providing relevant cycling data to councils and governments the world over (and you thought they were just being friendly), but in order to add to that information repository, they have just acquired cycle training app the breakaway (not to be confused with orla's band of merry men, following tnt sports grand tour broadcasts). from the information provided on the breakaway's website, this looks, from the outside at least, a case of technological incest, to wit: "The Breakaway starts with your existing data. We use data from your indoor workouts (Zwift and Peloton), your outdoor workouts (Garmin, Hammerhead and Wahoo), and your biometrics (Oura). If you use Strava we can usually get a lot of that data from one source."

strava's acquisition appears designed to ensure that data never strays too far from its homeland. this particular purchase has been preceded by that of the eponymously named runna, and i'm guessing you won't have too much difficulty sussing what their imperative might be.

it will surprise you not one wit to learn that i do not possess a strava account, and even if i did, there would not be any training taking place. my principal reasons for avoiding the app, other than the fact i have no mobile device on which it may reside, is the suspicion of duplicity, a not altogether unfounded accusation. as mentioned above, though you may find it helpful to study the results of your recent outings, it's no real secret that strava finds that information even more helpful, particularly from a financial point of view. the ability to freely aggregate the anonymised data scraped from millions of bike rides all across the world, allows them to provide interested parties with information that might be assistive to transport departments of all nationalities. though i'm not sure it's entirely cynical to contend in public, there's every likelihood strava was either founded to do precisely that, or perhaps a happy accident that became ever clearer as the years rolled by.

as the saying goes, "if it seems too good to be true, it probably is." though i can see little harm in strava's current business model, the acquisition and inclusion of two distinct training apps might be seen as one (or both) of two things; to prevent users straying too far, or to ensure they have a monopoly on related data. how long before it all becomes overseen by some iteration of artificial intelligence, or purchased by meta and providing strava's founders with the payday fom heaven.

just saying.

tuesday 10 june 2025