2023 Fitness Year in Review

This year I set out to cycle 2023 miles and complete the AIDS Lifecycle Ride. What a blast it was in June to cycle from San Francisco to Los Angeles with my teammates from the South Bay Blaze and a few thousand other riders. A huge thank you to my sponsors and supporters.

I ended up 2023 with over 2700 miles in the saddle, and 107250 ft climbing the California hills. I forgot to count the punctures, although switching to tubeless tires dramatically changed the number of flats.

Towards the end of the year, I switched to a more varied workout regime with lots of swimming, indoor cycling, strength exercises, and a variety of group exercise classes. I swam 23700 yards in the pool. My toughest class is Body Pump which is a varied list of weight exercises. I enjoy BodyCombat or shadow kickboxing the most. That class has so much energy.

With 166 active days, I am quite happy with my achievements in 2023.

December 27, 2023 healthyLifestyle cycling

A Simple Corporate Presentation Template

I am a big fan of simple designs. That is also true for the design of corporate presentation templates. These templates should convey a brand, a level of professionalism (aka no comic sans), and include some necessary markers (i.e., logo, copyright). My preferred and simple corporate presentation template has:

• the company logo only on the first slide. There is no need to keep repeating it on subsequent slides. The audience didn’t forget the name of your company after slide 1.
• a copyright notice is a must on every slide. Ideally it is small, fades into the background similar to a watermark, and is out of the way. I put it on the right edge of the slide at a 90 degree angle.
• one color set. No dark and light version of the slides. It is a mess converting between them. This is especially problematic when you borrow and steal slides from other slide decks. Stick to one color scheme using corporate colors. Don’t overdo the colors.
• a simple background of singular color and no texture. I prefer a white background so that you do not need to remove the white background of pictures.
• no borders nor lines limiting the canvas. To give the author lots of options, provide them with a large unrestricted canvas. Don’t separate the title with a line. If your title requires two lines, no problem. If you need more space to put a diagram or call out, no problem.

Good design doesn’t interfere with the content. It adds to it. For a corporate presentation template this means copyright, a minimum of brand identify, and highlighting.

December 26, 2023

Google Docs Lacks a Merge Feature

Google Docs is great for collaborating on a document. Yet, once a document is released, Google Docs provides few tools to manage change. Sure there is Suggest Mode, which allows up you mark up changes to the existing document. Yet, until the changes are accepted, they do not reflect the truth. In the process, the document is all marked up and sometimes even hard to read.

To work around these limitations, I make a copy of the original document and mark it up, get it reviewed and revise it a few times. This approach has several issues. First of all, merging the changes is a cumbersome manual process. You could do a Replace All, assuming, that nobody else is taking the same approach. Yet, that approach messes up the change log of the original document. This workaround isn’t very practical.

What I really want is a Branch, Pull Request, and Merge capability. I’ll settle for Merge. Microsoft Word has the Combine feature. It has been a while since I used Word, though I seemed to recall it provided features to merge changes.

There are some add-ons to bring Merge to Google Docs. I haven’t tried them yet. Generally, I shy away for these add-ons to our company documents. It would be great to have Merge as a native Google Docs capability, wouldn’t it?

December 21, 2023

Love Is Awesome

Judd Apatow and Paul Rust’s Netflix Series, Love, is awesome. It reminds me of Reality Bites, where the dialogue is the true star. The conversation pulls you both in and repels you. You love it and get anxious. Nothing happens and something may happen. I imagine Curb Your Enthusiasm has similar qualities, although I haven’t seen more than a clip or two.

A scroll to the review headlines gives you the same vibe.

“Love - hilarious, annoying, addictive” - The Guardian

“A Dark romance about terrible people” - The Atlantic

“Liking the unlikable in Netflix’s Love”

“Netflix’s ‘Love’ is not worth your binge time”

“Netflix’s Love makes a strong case against creating TV with binge-watching in mind”

“Love takes its sweet time to get anywhere particularly interesting”

It is how I remember Reality Bites, minus the romance.

In the adorable section, please chalk up the date to the magic castle and the regular get together of Gus and his friends, writing themesongs for movies without one. That is just brilliant! It is something I wish we would have done growing up.

December 15, 2023

The Big Terrible Thing

I enjoyed reading Matthew Perry’s memoir Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing. If you are looking for lots of Friends’ stories, you will be disappointed. This book is about Matty’s struggles with addiction.

Because I do not read the tabloids, the depth of his struggles was news to me. I had heard of drugs during one of the seasons of Friends. Which famous actor or musician overindulge in alcohol or drugs from time to time? Could it be more cliche? Reading this memoir, his addiction was at another level. It was hell.

The New York Times headline was on point: The One Where Matthew Perry Writes an Addiction Memoir.

December 8, 2023

In Spain, It Is Not About the Food or the Drink. It Is About the Company and the Conversations.

On a recent trip through the South of Spain, it struck me how one just orders a red wine or a beer. You don’t order a Rioja El Diablo 2015 or a Tripel Trappist beer from the monks in West Malle. You order the type of drink and that’s it.

In Sevilla, a red wine is often a basic Rioja and a beer is definitely Cruz Campo, a local brew. There aren’t many other beers on the menu. Belgian beer conglomerate InBev must be scratching their head why there incredible beer selection hasn’t found any footing in the South of Spain.

The answer is becoming more clear to me. It is all about the people you meet at the bar, and not about what your drink or what you eat. Just order some tapas and something you like to drink - beer or wine. The main course is the conversation of what happened last week or last night.

Luckily you don’t have to settle for cabbage rolls and vodka here. Gambas al ajillo, patatas bravas, or boquerones aren’t too shabby. Add a cold beer or any Spanish wine and you have a great starter menu.

And thus, many conversations and night adventures commence. Until around midnight that is, when for some local ordinance, this place closes down faster than a restaurant with rats in the kitchen.

November 4, 2023

Time for Cycling to Look Across the Pond

Rumors of serious shake ups in the cycling world have been rampant this year. “Remco is going to team Ineos”. “Wout is joining team Lefevre”. If you believe today’s rumor, this last one actually may be true, as “Jumbo-Visma and Quickstep are merging”. The world of cycling is turning into a Formula One circus.

This is one of the golden ages of cycling. Impressive young riders are making the sport attractive for television with their exuberant and attacking riding style. Netflix is putting a spotlight on the behind the scenes drama. Women cycling is equally fascinating and gaining in popularity. There are races year around with lots of young men and women competing in them.

And yet, new money should be pouring into the sport and giving oxygen to many new teams. That is not happening. Instead of consolidating around a few super teams like UAE, Jumbo-Visma, or Ineos, let’s share the richness.

Jumbo-Visma winning the three grand tours - the first time any team achieves this - is not a victory for the sport. It is a trophy in the trophy case in ’s-Hertogenbosch.

Let’s look across the pond at basketball in the US. In the seventies, this was a third tier sport with lots of fights on and off the court. Nobody thought it was worth investing. Jerry Bush and the LA Lakers changed that. After the dominance of the LA Lakers and Boston Celtics was finally broken by Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. All three were super teams. After the interim years of Shaq and Kobe, the sport changed dramatically. Nowadays, there are so many great players and many teams with a strong bench. Having a star studded team like my Golden Gate Warriors is no longer a guarantee for winning the championship anymore. The winner of it all is basketball and the NBA.

By contrast, let’s consider European soccer. A few big teams underwritten by oil money and creative financial constructions dominate the sport. Other teams content themselves as talent feeder clubs. Let’s write it down once more: Manchester City, Bayern Munchen, Real Madrid, Ajax, and Paris St Germain will win their respective leagues. Juventus is having some “Italian” problems. How boring has this all become?

Cycling should take a page from the NBA playbook and broaden the sport. Through salary caps and the equivalent of a draft, let’s build separate tour teams around Vinegard, Roglic, Evenepoel or Thomas and classic teams around Wout, Mathieu or Mads. There is lots to gain in the long run from a wide peloton. The next months will tell which direction the UCI will steer (pun intended) the sport.

September 24, 2023

2023 Miles in 2023

Entering 2023, I had two goals: participate in the Aids Lifecycle Ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and ride 2023 miles in 2023.

In June, I completed ALC 2023 and rode every single inch to arrive in Santa Monica.

The ride to LA surely added to my overall yearly mileage. When I checked Strava today, my cycling miles stood at 2,159 miles. I surpassed my 2023 mileage goal! 75 rides, over 85,000 ft elevation gain, and more than 163 hours in the saddle. I am proud of this meager achievement.

Let’s finish 2023 strong. There are still a few months left. I hope to ride at least 50 miles weekly on average.

September 10, 2023

Lisbon, Where Seafood Is King, Coffee and Beer Are Weak, and the Lifestyle Is Amazing

Purposely I hadn’t read much ahead of our trip to Lisbon. I wanted to be surprised by Portugal and Lisbon. I wanted to “follow my nose” in and around the city. My wife had done an amazing job planning our few days in the city, with outings to Cascais and Sintra, and lining up some great restaurants. Reservations are a must if you want a spot in one of the small restaurants during the high tourist season.

Our few days in Lisbon, at the tail of the World Youth Days when the city was bustling with youngsters, turned out to be amazing. The city near the bay and with its many restaurants and bars, is fun and happening. No wonder lots of young professionals want to work remotely from Lisbon for a few months.

The weather during our visit was hot, especially by Lisbon standards. On day one, the temperature was forty degrees Celsius. That was the perfect set up to explore the city during the cooler night too.

Fish is everywhere on the menu. I mean everywhere: sardines, cockles, muscles, octopus, and of course bacalau (cod). It is served in many styles: grilled, fried, or in a stew. It is surprising to learn that bacalau is hardly a local fish. Portugal imports tons of cod from Norway and other countries.

We tasted great Portugese white wines. Many of the them and their wine regions were unknown to me.

Beer in Southern Europe tends to be limited in their selection and of the lighter and crispier style. A refreshing drink on a hot day: Superbock and Sagres. A large beer is a few Euros.

I was underwhelmed by the coffee culture. Sure, there are cafes, yet, the coffee offerings are sub par. You may get a cappuccino made with milk or heavy cream. That is a bit surprising for a sailing folk, who conquered Brazil, and aren’t that far from Italy and Spain.

Lisbon is a very affordable city for tourists. Getting around town can be challenging. After all, the city is built on seven hills, so be prepared for some steep climbs. Don’t rent a car. Use public transportation. The iconic trams tend to be overly crowded. So we didn’t try them. A 30 minutes train ride is a few Euros. Hop on a tuk-tuk (prices differ on the size of your party) or Uber. We criss-crossed the city in Uber for 4 Euros(!).

We had a great time in Lisbon. It is a fun and vibrant city. There is a lot going on all the time. This is a city that lives!

August 10, 2023

More Than Just Cod

When visiting Portugal, it is easy to assume that the cuisine is cod all the time. On the menu of many restaurants in Lisbon you find cod. You assume that cod is a local fish. And yet, Portugues do not fish for cod in their own waters. Cod does not live in warm waters off the coast of Portugal. These fish prefer the colder waters of Iceland and Norway. As a matter of fact, 70% of all cod consumed in Portugal is imported from Norway.

So why is it that cod is on the menu of so many Portuguese restaurants?

First of all, Portuguese are fishing folk. They have been fishing the North Atlantic for centuries. In the 15th century, Portuguese explorers discovered cod fishing grounds off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador. This led to a boom in the Portuguese cod fishery, and cod became a staple food in Portugal. Even in the US, Portuguese are now to be fishers. it was the Portuguese who ruled the Monterey, CA sardine canneries.

Secondly, cod is a very abundant fish that is easy to catch.

Thirdly, cod is an inexpensive fish, which makes it affordable for people of all income levels in Portugal.

Lastly, cod is a mild flavored fish, appealing to many people.

The result is that cod is the most commonly consumed fish in Portugal. The Portuguese consume an average of 10 kilograms of cod per person per year. This sounds a lot, yet, Argentines consume 110 kg per year of their favorite protein, beef. Portugal is the world’s largest importer of cod. There are over 365 different cod dishes in Portuguese cuisine, one for each day of the year. Bacalhau à Brás is one of the most popular cod dishes in Portugal. It is made with shredded cod, potatoes, eggs, and onions.

Even so, when visiting Lisbon, go beyond the traditional cod dish. At Nossa Casa, a hard to get into small restaurant in the heart of Lisbon, when tasted an amazing cod in cream dish.

August 8, 2023