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015: Pedal to the metal

015: Pedal to the metal

April 19, 2026
4 min read
2026
2026-04-19
weeknotes

Hello world!

This week’s phrase is inspired by the cycling I did this week — even when the weather was poor. Sunday morning’s ride was the kind of ride where just getting started is a massive win. The drizzle faded away and I had a lovely time once I stopped thinking about how few degrees there were between me and freezing. I worked out this haiku on my ride:

Is the sky too gray?

On a cold and rainy day,

Do it anyway.

Most of this week’s training happened in absolutely gorgeous weather. I managed quite a few PRs along Montour and the Great Allegheny Passage.

🔖 My Favorite Stuff from the Internet

🌱 Gardening

A bunch of seedlings have germinated. As I suspected in last week’s post, I did bring all the nursery pots into the house and up to the third floor. We have a few nights overnight lows below freezing this week. Based on a look at Last Freeze Climatology from the local National Weather Service station, I am proceeding as if this week is the last freeze of the season. I’ll aim to get the rest of the seedlings planted by the first weekend in May.

🎧 Music

💿 1001 Albums

I am massively demoting 1001 Albums in importance. The daily pics felt too much like an obligation. That’s partly because I required myself to finish each album. I am also demoting this project in importance because the hit ratio has not been high enough to justify letting these picks jump the line ahead of my “to listen” list. I’ll still check in periodically but with very little commitment.

I am accepting album recommendations at @brie on record.club.

📊 Stats

Top Genres

  1. 🛹 Alternative Rock (67 plays)
  2. 🍿 Pop (49 plays)
  3. 🔌 Electronic (44 plays)
  4. ✨ Rock (37 plays)
  5. 🎷 Jazz (33 plays)

Genre Stickiness

Daily Genre Breakdown

Daily Artist Breakdown

I like how this chart shows the spread of music listening by day through the week:

I didn’t listen to much on Wednesday.

📘 Reading

In Progress:

  • Chain Gang All Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (Progress: 22% of 384 pages)

Social Reading

🙌 The list at brie.dev/books is up-to-date. I went back and rated every book read in 2026. I’ll continue backfilling ratings. See Hardcover for my ratings.

I keep track of my reading in various places across the Internet. I track every book I read as @bbrie on Hardcover and as brie on Rambling Readers. I also track each IRL Book Club pick.

🕹️ Gaming

🕵️ Ingress

I’ve been happily collecting Orion tokens ahead of Orion Global Op. I’m just shy of 5,000,000 AP as I work my way back to LVL16 after my first recursion.

🎮 Steam

I had a lot of fun playing the first Ever Seen A Cat? this week. The game — 💝 a gift — is the first entry in a trilogy and has more replayability than any ‘hidden objects’ game I have ever played. The artwork is beautiful: highly recommend.

🏆 Steam Achievements

🐾 Movement

MetricTotal
Total distance40.6 mi (65.3 km)
Total on foot3.7 mi (5.9 km)
Total on bike36.9 mi (59.4 km)
Active time4h 37m
Elevation gain397 m (1,302 ft)
Avg outdoor bike power125 W

Although the weather took a turn for the cold Saturday night into Sunday, the rest of the weather this week was perfect for cycling outside. All my biking was on my new bike; I put 0 miles on the Peloton this week.

📯 Social

Plop and I both posted a bit on Mastodon this week. I’ve been doing a bit of gratitude practice with #ThreeGoodThings in addition to more tiny weeknotes.

For Plop’s Caturday post, I borrowed a beautiful John Lennon quote about the sun.

Thanks!

— Brie