Thailand does sound interesting for other reasons too. Will see if wife is interested in doing a multi-week vacation there. Will shield her eyes from the dudes though :-)

ah ok, thank you for the detailed response.

holy crap that didn't even occur to me! D'oh! Thanks!

<SARCASM> I'm beginning to think the USA healthcare system may not be as glorious as the marketing materials have indicated. </SARCASM>

Ack. Thx. That is a pretty monstrous downside.

I'd upgrade the part that sits on top of the saddle. Should easily be 7 KILOGRAMS lighter but it's constantly in the fridge & freezer.

come over to r/triathlon but honestly if you rode 100 miles, learn to swim and you could do a sprint before the end of the summer. I didn't know how to swim on Jan 23rd, 2023. By Sept 1st I had done 2 Sprint, 2 Olympic, and a 70.3.

And to be clear, I still SUCK at swimming. As long as you set your goal to compLete, not compete, you can do this sooner than you think.

yep. https://www.roka.com/ .

I think BlueSeventy, Roka, Xterra, a few others make triathlon wetsuits.

I ended up buying direct. Most tri-clubs have discounts of (20%? 25? 30) at roka. I know Oakland Tri Club and GGTC do, at least.

So, I didn't know how to swim until last year. Others will be more qualified. I can only say that sizing is extremely problematic, xterra ran tight, roka better.

I've only swam at ECCL, Temescal, Mills College, and the YMCA. Those are all 25 yards so <50% of an olympic.

I haven't paid attention to USAT sanctioned, but I've done Santa Cruz, Napa, and Marin. Did you look at those?

Trump and the entire GOP disagrees. it is official because Trump deems it to be. That's their defense for why it's NBD that he kept boxes of info at Maralago.

dude, ramifications for wrong toothpaste are FAR worse in my house. I bought Colgate instead of Crest once. We don't use tubes, we use (whatever you call the bottle type thingeys).

You'd have thought I stabbed baby jesus in the heart. I mean come on, same size, same general color.

Thank goodness for Amazon. Now I just have to click "buy again".

honestly it's self serving. I'm treating them the way they need to be treated by any future romantic partner. If that partner is male, they better step tf up and not be a wimp.

Force him to learn, b/c I swear I say a silent thanks to my penis every time they have their cycles for not bleeding for 4 days/month. He'll be forever grateful for not having to deal with that.

lol the first time the (then-15) year old talked to me about clots the (then-17) year old was next to her. The older one had just been accepted as a bio major in college. She thought it was funny af when my response was "wait - actual clots come out? WTF? How big do they get?" and then asked 101 questions about it, saying "look I can't help you until I actually understand how this whole thing works."

THEY ended up getting squeamish when I defended myself by saying "Look my penis doesn't bleed every month and this isn't stuff I was taught in school." As if they didn't want to accept that Dads are male, and have penises.

This is the stuff we need to teach in high school, to both genders. It's a human biological function, being squeamish is stupid.

100%. I'm the dad of 2 girls. For whatever reason, they went to Mom with the biology of their menstrual cycle, but to me with the emotional/etc. And more than a few times painfully accurate details of the biology although I suspect it was to feel me out to see if I was really okay with it or if I'd get squeamish.

My wife was A)shocked that my daughters would go into GRAPHIC detail about their period with me as at age 50 she still doesn't admit to her own father that she's ever had one, and B) happy that they're talking to both of us. Might be based on who they think is more emotionally present/has capacity, no idea, we haven't yet figured that bit out.

This is both nice cuz twice the chances for them to talk to one of us, plus it's a "load balancing" exercise. Cuz 3 women in the house, their cycles impact each other, and sometimes my wife isn't in the best place to talk to someone else about their difficult period when she's having one.

But for the record there's way too many options for pads/etc. Wings/no wings, numbers, etc. It's simpler and faster to buy a new car, always takes me 20 minutes of reading every damn box at Target.

no, it's the first time I realized I didn't consciously take the bike to the grocery store, it was just a foregone assumption that ofc I'm not driving if I only need 1.5 brown bags of groceries.

I bought the pannier bags explicitly for grocery store trips 2 years ago. But it's been an explicit choice to ride vs the default.

They...did not stretch :-)

I had to give them away and get ones that fit.

I only do it when there are no other cars around, or only the cars behind me. I've found they get more annoyed when I wait as they're then stuck behind me as I get up to speed. City streets, they can't go more than 25mph, and I can get up to 20 pretty quickly but slower than them.

well I'll admit I locked it to a cart and put inside the store where MANY carts were abandoned. I moved it all the way to the back, and right next to the corral of probably 75 carts, so I wasn't taking up valuable real estate nor was I taking up a cart that would be needed by others.

That is a legit concern though.

you're cycling to get groceries in the Phoenix heat? Okay that's badass...

Nope. I also never drank in high school. Had a *great* time in my 20s, but that's because I chose to.

You do whatever makes you happy. Not just in partying/etc, in life. Screw everyone else and what they think you should do. I can assure you if you always do what you want, you'll end up in a place you like. You'll know that place is the result of you living true to yourself, so even if you're poor, you did what you wanted, not what your parents/friends/etc wanted.