OF#30 - Mountain biking, hiking, and accident-proneness
What can mountain biking teach us about the hidden cost of disease? Why is hiking so well-suited to maintaining friendships? And what does peak accident-proneness look like?
Hi there, I’m Thomas Najar. Welcome to issue 30 of Open Frame.
Let’s jump right to it.
Magical mountain biking
Max Fierek has battled Lyme disease for many years. He finds refuge from the struggle in mountain biking. It goes to show you, you can’t tell by looking what ordeals a person is going through.
Hiking and friendship
Julie Beck is writing a series of articles for the Atlantic called The Friendship Files. In her most recent piece, she writes about a group of friends who have maintained a monthly hiking outing continuously for 25 years.
We did a number of one-off hikes, and after one of those I remember saying, “We ought to do this every month.” We all laughed and thought that was not doable for folks as busy as we were. I said, “No—let’s put the date on the calendar for next month.”
After that, the dates were established month to month. As soon as we complete one hike, we immediately establish when the next will be. We rotate the organization and planning duties, eeny-meeny-miny-moe style.
That person has complete authority and responsibility to organize the hike, select the location, provide the beer and other refreshments, and make any other side-trip plans. We’ve done breakfast, dinner. We sometimes hit various local watering holes, or we just plop down with a cooler in the woods somewhere. The organizer is responsible for setting up all the logistics, soup to nuts, and is not questioned on the decisions made.
What about hiking makes it so useful for maintaining friendships?
Rodney: Hiking gives you physical activity. We get out into nature, and I’m a great nature lover. I’m also a local historian and, in particular, a Civil War historian. So much of our hiking has involved locales where events of the Civil War took place—in Virginia, Maryland, and West Virginia. Hiking allows me to explore all of those interests in a single activity.
Jim: And then there’s the advantage of having guaranteed time spent away from your spouse on a regular basis. I love my wife and my family, but it is really nice to know that once a month, I’m going to be away from them, doing some things with my buddies. If it were once a week, it would intrude on my family life. But I owe it to myself to once in a while say, “I’m leaving this morning, and I ain’t coming back for eight hours.”
Bo Brill: I do love my spouse, but it’s nice spending time with other guys. It’s good to be around other people who look at the world similarly.
I’m blessed to live in a location with easy access to great hiking spots; it’s my favorite activity for catching up with friends.
How good is your video geography?
Have you traveled and seen much of the United States? Or Europe? Think you can identify cities based on a little video footage? Try out City Guesser and give it a try.
Be careful out there
The world can be a dangerous place. Be careful.
Tweet of the week
Pithy sayings of bite-sized wisdom aren’t always helpful. The Art of Purpose made a list of the 25 worst.
That’s it for this week folks. Have a great week, stay safe, and remember to be awesome!
Thomas
Gee, thanks for introducing me to City Guesser. It has turned into a time-sucking wormhole. In other words, it’s highly addictive, and interesting in that SOMEtimes I can guess a location within a mile in a city I’ve never visited. Clues: verbiage, language, terrain, flora, food, building shape, iconic buildings, presence of water. It’s so disheartening to see how much nationwide corporations influence our cityscapes and make them more generic. I’m talking about you, Starbucks.