Even in Kyoto

Out of all the places for conferences, there's a lot I appreciate about Portland and its convention center. Everywhere there are thoughtful, conservation-oriented efforts: coffee service always uses reusable cups, there is a vending machine with reusable water bottles (and bottle filling stations at the drinking fountains), the toilets are the dual-flush type, and there are signs in the bathroom encouraging users to go for the hand dryers over paper towels. There are other touches, too, like desk nook stations set up for perching between talks, and a pod station for breastfeeding needs. The conference organizers also contribute to the atmosphere by doing things like providing a quiet room and childcare. In their presentation guidelines, they include helpful information on how to make presentations more universally accessible, and this year they have some form of closed-captioning system going, too.

I also still like the hostel where I'm staying (Portland Hostel). I believe it used to be part of the Hosteling International network, but that seems to have been dropped at some point. Since I only ever come to Portland sporadically, the changes that have occurred at the hostel seem fairly dramatic. This hostel used to occupy a cluster of houses, with the corner lot as a parking lot. Between my last visit and this one, they went ahead with a plan to build up that corner lot into the main hostel building, which now houses the reception desk, a cafe, and a community space beneath floors of dorm rooms. The community space has been quite busy over the last two days with musical performances and some sort of private scrapbook/crafting event. The hostel grounds still house some nice outdoors spaces between the buildings, too.

There have been some disappointments. The dorm rooms in the new building are very similar to hostel dorms everywhere; we are packed in like sardines. But that's what you get, for hostel prices! If I come back I will definitely spring for a private room instead. Our dorm room is directly above the cafe, which meant on the first night we had cigarette smoke wafting up. And while the newer kitchen space is workable, it's in a basement and generally less pleasant than the prior kitchen arrangement.

And some aspects of Portland are either the same or worse than before: there are clearly still a lot of homeless folks everywhere, and the area immediately around the Convention Center is a depauperate dead zone with few shops or restaurants within easy walking distance. Definitely feels like there have been casualties of the pandemic.

The one grocery co-op in town apparently permanently closed not too long ago, and prices at grocery stores and coffeeshops here are inflated beyond what I saw in Seattle. A $6+ latte feels steep. I also had my first experience of the grocery store-within-a-store at a Safeway: all of the products that sellers have identified as retail theft targets are now housed in a boxed-off portion of the store interior, with its own separate cashier (baby food, pharmaceuticals, etc). To be sure, this arrangement is less obnoxious than the various passive baffles that retailers had been testing out (speak not of wage theft!). Still - what a depressing shopping experience.

Amidst the wintry gloom and rain, there are lovely moments, like when I stepped off the bus and got to watch the culmination of this rainbow during an evening Gathering of the Crows!



It's funny, though. I don't have a ton of reasons to visit Portland, because it mostly just feels like Seattle's younger sibling, with less to do overall. Still a nice enough spot for a conference, all things considered! And perhaps one of these years I'll find myself back here again at the end of the Seattle-to-Portland bike ride. We'll see.

In general I am relying on smart o phone data while traveling, but it is varying in its cooperation, so this is a high speed, low budget smart o phone post.

Anyway! Several years have elapsed since the last time I stayed at what is now known as the Portland Hostel. In that time they finished building a new central building that houses the front office, a cafe, and a community space. The kitchen is now on the lower level of the original main building. And a grocery coop that I’d remembered has ceased to exist. Grocery prices are definitely jacked up here. Otherwise it’s all all right so far.

I am fighting a sinus/barometer headache, though. Sigh.

Today's original itinerary and goals:

1. Post office, to mail myself a ream of paper and a big stack of outdated calendars (Priority box so I don't have to lug everything all over Portland), and to buy a big stack of stamps for a big pile of overdue holiday cards

2. University Bookstore for more red correcting pens (Pilot V-Ball Extra Fine, they work so well for me as a left-handed person).

3. Artist and Craftsman Supply, to replace two pens that are out of ink and hopefully find a good small notebook for sketch journaling.

4. REI, for replacement lightweight gloves and a replacement foam accordion seatpad (Z-rest, if you know what those are).

5. Uwajimaya to hunt for a specific type of Thai Tea.

6. Pacific Fabrics to hunt for some dress and trouser fabric, and to just generally nose around.

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How it went:

1. Got things shipped off fine! But then, the Postmaster said they have a grand total of 6 stamps left for sale, 5 of which are menorahs for Hanukkah. I've never been to the post office after they've completely run out of stamps before, I was amazed and said okay, never mind for now, save those stamps for someone else who might really need them. So the Stamp Quest must continue.

2. U Bookstore only had 4 red pens left, so I had to supplement with some purple ones, I'm sure my students will prefer the purple anyway. Also, I think they re-re-arranged, weren't the art and office supplies upstairs for a while? And now they're back downstairs? That whole section is still pretty depauperate compared to what it was historically, but at least it still exists.

3. Artist and Craftsman Supply delivered on all accounts, hooray! Love that place. I would like to give it all my money, every time.

4. The glove display at REI was a little overwhelming because it's winter and everyone wants all the giant long mittens for all the skiing. But I eventually figured out where they had the same Smartwool gloves as I'd gotten before, and I was able to compare them against something closely related with more wind-blocking capability, which let me conclude that out of the entire massive mitten and glove array, the ones I had were the ones I wanted still. So now the clock will start ticking again on an update to the palms and fingers.

No z-rest seat pads, anywhere. I did find some mostly nylon men's MTB shorts on sale, though, and I somehow managed to resist the urge to buy myself a Micro HydroFlask, even though I keep wanting something of that size to transport booze half and half for coffee. I didn't think it, YOU thought it.

I'll probably order both items once I am back in New York. I at least managed to avoid SOME packaging via all of today's errands. Let's just point out that if I'd ordered a ream of paper, it would have come packaged inside of a box, and that box would have been padded with even more paper, which is ridiculous. At least thanks to the post office trip, I could pad the paper with a stack of calendars.

5. Uwajimaya has less interesting selection than our local Asian grocery store in Albany, NY. So no, no sign of the tea I'm after. I'll probably wind up ordering it online, too (ChaTraMue Brand Extra Gold Original). I did buy some sriracha and cholula, because I managed to forget that my mom doesn't believe in hot pepper sauces, for unknown reasons.

6. Pacific Fabrics was a great way to cap things off. It's in SoDo (that's South of Downtown Seattle to the rest of you), upstairs from Pacific Iron and Metal, naturally (LOL). I got off the light rail and discovered that lo, there's a 'bertos in SoDo, wow. Who doesn't love cheap Mexican food? From the exterior of the building you'd never expect the bright and bustling space full of fabric inside. It gave off Original REI vibes (that's the REI before they built the flagship store, the one that had the REI Smell). LOVE it.

I wound up buying some fabrics that I may come to regret, with ambitions to make a dress and also some trousers from them. The fabrics are a linen/rayon blend and the people working there warned me the fabric will want to fray so I will need to plan accordingly. But they are extremely pretty and it's really hard to feel the fabrics when shopping online, so I went for it.

While I was there I was also glad to have a chance to feel the ripstop they had in stock. I didn't buy any, because it was the wrong color, but now I'm more confident about some upcoming ripstop shopping (pack and pannier covers). And otherwise, it's just really nice to know that anytime I'm back in Seattle there's a good fabric store that's worth the trek and right near a light rail stop to boot.

I think I wound up walking around 5-6 miles altogether, along with various transiting, which is so much more than I regularly walk in New York, because most of the time in NY I'm on my bike if I'm trying to go somewhere. This would have been a terrible expedition to carry out by bike, however, most especially because it looks like they're ripping up Eastlake now to add more streetcar tracks. Oh, I'm wrong, they're just putting in more Fancy Bus, which is probably just as well. Based on our experiences with the 70 last fall, the Fancy Bus is very much needed to accommodate the throngs of people wanting to take that line.

I have some entertaining photos to share, too, but that will have to be a separate post.

Today has mostly been wrap-up / prep tasks at work: get more cricket paper ready, water the ants, feed the horseshoe crab, et cetera.

At one point while I was in high school, a big exhibit about Leonardo DaVinci's notebooks toured our town. I mostly recall that we had several events at school ahead of going to visit the exhibit, to somehow prepare us for it all. I mean, I guess otherwise we would have just looked at the pages and not really known what to make of them. As it stood, my memory is that I looked at the pages and didn't really know what to make of them. I mean, I understand that they have interesting elements to them, what with the writing everything backwards and the intriguing notions about how things work and about contraptions. But, then what?

Can you imagine being someone whose notebooks became so famous after death?

Anything I've ever written down has been scattered across such a wide range of different notebooks that there's no coherence to any of them, really, nor am I any sort of Renaissance artistic genius, heh. I mean, the most coherent ones are the lab notebooks, because I *do* try and uphold certain standards with those.

But is anyone going to try and read any of those? No, they are not. What's the point?

It's hard to remember sometimes that historically, access to paper and writing implements was quite limited.

Anyway, I should go home early and work on packing. FWIW I'm headed to the Seattle area for about a week, then to Portland for a conference.

The last time I drove the car was the Saturday after Thanksgiving, when I went over to a friend's house at night in a neighborhood where it would have been impractical to bike (too far, too cold, too dark, no/unknown infrastructure). When I started up the car to drive home, the tire pressure light came on, accompanied by an alarming beeping sound. After getting out to look at all four tires, none of which were making any alarming hissing noises*, I slowly and carefully drove home.

I had so much going on, I didn't have the bandwidth to deal with figuring it out until this morning. Would I wind up needing to drive to a random gas station to put in more air?

Internet videos suggested that it would take a LOT of pumping with a bike tire to add more pressure. But, that's what we've got, so I figured I might as well give it a try. (also yes, double-checked with a car tire pressure gauge since those are more accurate for the relevant range)

And, yep, all four tires were unsurprisingly low.

But surprisingly enough, it didn't take very much pumping to fill them to the correct pressure, I think because they're actually fairly small!

So, minor vehicle achievement unlocked. The light turned back off again after 60 seconds of driving, and the frogs that just arrived on campus yesterday now have fresh, tasty crickets to nosh on (wanted to drive to the pet store to minimize cold shock for the crickets).

Now I just need to get the oil changed, get an updated inspection, and deal with the panel rust.

So you see, car ownership is such a convenient bargain, isn't it?




*We had a rental car tire develop a puncture when driving around Kauai two years ago, and were just relieved we made it all the way back to the rental place before the situation got dire!

I feel like I have a lot of things to think over right now, as 2025 comes to a close and I start looking ahead to 2026. Many of them are connected and complicated.

-Do I want to prepare to go back to France yet again, for one more round of the Paris-Brest-Paris in 2027? If so, I'd better plan on some long bike rides in 2026. In the very least annikusrex and I have plans to ride bikes from Albany to Montreal in June, hooray!

-There's a big conference happening this August in Germany, a meeting that only happens every 4 years, of the International Union for the Study of Social Insects. This is a pretty big deal to attend! Can I afford to go, both with regards to time and money? I should start planning for that now, to help keep costs down.

-Another conference opportunity just came up, for a section meeting of the Entomological Society of America, taking place in a neighboring city 45 minutes from here. This conference is a huge opportunity for my research students, but because of budgetary constraints I will likely have to pay out of pocket for it for myself. In the big picture, however, it's more important for me to go to this conference with my students than to do the full suite of annual rowing activities. So I need to prioritize around that. But seeing as I now own Petrichor, I really should just focus on doing my own thing more when it comes to rowing during the on-water season next year. A big step for that has been figuring out how to solo-launch Petrichor. I'm *almost* there.

-I also need to get an application together for partial funding to go to Arizona next July for some ant fieldwork, also bringing research students with me. The most tricky part of the trip is that it's unclear for how long my students will be able to join me in Arizona. But I should be realistic about how much time I need to spend there. At least a month, in and around Tucson this time. There is a lot we can get done this summer.

-But it can't come at the cost of getting other academic work finished and out the door.

Anyway, 2026 is looking really busy, in many good ways. There are also some family things that are going to require some time and attention, mostly related to S's family. Complicated. A lot on my mind.

During dinner with a friend the other week, the friend mentioned a new-ish time management self help book called Four Thousand Weeks, where apparently the premise is about thinking about how much time one might have alive on this planet, to then think differently about one's priorities and what one does across that time.

Would you say it's good timing or poor timing to have a topic like this book come up, in the context of several weeks where first a Physics colleague died suddenly (didn't know him very well, but other colleagues and students have very much been affected), then our school's beloved lacrosse coach fell down stairs at home and died, then a colleague with terminal cancer died, too?

I'm really not sure.

But I don't feel like I have much else to report at the moment.

I did convince my rowing teammates to, once again, participate in a contest where we all rowed 6000m on the rowing machine and then ran a 5k, for a range of definitions of "ran." It took me 34 minutes to jog-trot the 5k part, heh, which made me think of several of you because really, this is the one time of year I ever attempt to run a 5k. Apparently that was 2 minutes slower for the run than the last time I participated in the Holiday Hustle, in 2023. My erg time was also slower.

But the running route was lovely, because of the recent snowfall.

Then I came home and tried to fix the garage door's doorknob, which had lost its set screw and came apart right when I was trying to leave to set things up for the rowing event. It was much easier to deal with during daylight hours, at least.

Then groceries and cooking, and now Martha is curled up in my lap, so I suppose I should just try to finish mending this first cycling jersey.

I mostly just need to organize my thoughts about what to tackle next, projects-wise.

...were laundering the shower curtain, and harvesting worm dirt from the worm bin.

This is the first major harvest since I built Worm Bin Bench II. We've been adding and adding stuff to it, and by now it has (had) so much worm dirt in it that it really needed to be harvested. In the past, when harvesting worm dirt out of the old bin, I would bring the bin outside and carry out my work on the back porch steps, in bright sunlight. This bin is a little too big for that sort of thing, and also it's cold out there, so I had to come up with a new method: scooping dirt into a plant tray to sort it out then and there.

I think the hardest part was tracking down a hand trowel to scoop the dirt with. I eventually found one that has a wood handle that was stuck inside a bag of potting soil that was sitting out next to the outdoor compost. The trowel was exceptionally rusty and slimy, but those things didn't really matter for this purpose. I should probably get a nicer trowel for home use one of these days.

The new method worked well.



Well, with one small exception: it attracted the curiosity of the cats.





That, by itself, is fine, except that Martha decided she wanted to see about walking along the top edge of the open lid. That, by itself, also turned out to be fine, if mildly precarious, except for when she went to leap off, and the physics of the situation dictated that the lid came flying down. Thankfully, I anticipated that happening and caught the lid before it smashed into anything.

I gave a bunch of the houseplants all a generous helping of the freshly harvested worm dirt. Hopefully they like it. History suggests they will.

Other than that, I have mostly been grading student papers, or procrastinating from grading. The cats have been helping. Witness:





I suppose it's fine to have a relatively uneventful weekend. That won't make me enjoy grading papers, however.

This is going to be a quiet year for me, and that's totally fine. I did get up and crank out a bunch of meters for the Concept2 Holiday Challenge, because that's always a great way to work up a good appetite. Then I managed to finish a small art project that has been lingering (gift for friends). In a bit I'll finish cooking a Portobello Wellington and a pumpkin-apple-pecan pie, and then I'll head over to a friend's house for dinner.

...the bad news is that Gari the Gerrhosaurus major has squamous cell carcinoma, aka skin cancer. The vet says chemotherapy could be an option, but I'm not sure how realistic that would wind up being.

The other two things:

1. When I woke up this morning, I noticed that the thermostat display was off. Hmm, must need new batteries. I had woken up early to try and get to winter training early to finish up a side quest, so I hurriedly tried to swap in some new batteries. Nothing. Ugh. I gave it up for dead and went off for the day, figuring I'd need to get home early for more troubleshooting and probably a phone call to the landlord.

When I got home tonight, thankfully the house didn't feel *that* cold. Not pleasant for the cats, but not wretchedly bad. Further inspection of the thermostat revealed that the old AA batteries must have started leaking and corroding the connection. With some cleanup, we have heat again, hooray!

2. Rowing practice itself was...interesting. Most of the time, we use what we call "static" ergometers (rowing machines), but they don't fully simulate the rowing stroke. So to get something closer to the real deal, sometimes we'll set up our ergs on sliding tracks. It's possible to get ergs permanently configured for this function, known as "dynamic" ergs, but the slides are what we've got.

Well, when I tried to do the rowing pieces for the morning, which involved trying to maintain low stroke rates between 16-20 spm...I had very little luck. For context, someone new to using slides will find themselves crashing around back and forth because you have to control the momentum of your body weight to use slides properly. I rather quickly figured out that I wasn't actually crashing back and forth, I was crashing forward, despite trying all kinds of different little tricks. Hmm, that could mean that I am try to row on slides on a sloped floor. We did 3 15-minute pieces altogether, with 3 minutes of rest between them, so during the first break I went off in search of a spirit level to test my hypothesis, but came up empty-handed. So, on to the next piece, sigh, with lots more crashing back and forth and very little productive rowing.

During the second piece I got to thinking, if the problem is a sloped floor, what about if I try turning the erg around 180 degrees? So during the second break, I did as much.

Night-and-day difference, I tell you.

My side quest was also successful: several years ago I bought a mirror so we could watch our form and self-coach during erg pieces. However, the wheel brackets for the mirror made the whole mirror too low to the ground. So I added some extender pieces of wood to elevate the mirror. It's much more helpful now for correcting my form!