Esperanto rabbit hole

Got a text from a college friend this morning mentioning that he had found a copy of Why Learn to Speak Esperanto in 2025? in a Little Free Library. I love that Esperantists are still at it even if my own skills - hard acquired on the interminable bus voyage from Tualatin to Lake O to PCC-Sylvania to a terrible summer job in Beaverton in summer 1992 - are super rusty. 

Of course this sent me down an Esperanto-in-2025 rabbit hole. I ended up at the delightful Esperanto World webstore, where one can buy pronoun pins, including ri, a gender-neutral pronoun that has emerged in the ensuing 33 years! Esperantists against Fascism pins, pins declaiming one's love of a certain controversial consonant (ĥ). Love it.

It gives me joy to see that the community aspect of Esperanto is still a thing. Back in those days I loved learning the language but was terrified to actually potentially speak it to anyone. The years have softened me. There was a Cosmonox show a while back where I did a bunch of banter in extremely broken Esperanto. I was still a little scared that someone might actually heckle back in Esperanto, but the odds of that happening at a dive bar on SE Foster are pretty low, I guess, and anyway, high concept jokes sometimes don't land like you think they will. I went back to my usual incomprehensible speech in my native language after the first couple songs.

Salad spinner

Boyo and I were riding back from after school care when I saw some stuff laid out in a free pile at the side of the bike path. Wait, was that?!?! I turn our big cargo bike around.

Yes! It's a salad spinner!!! We currently own a semi-broken cheapo Ikea model that is partially functional, but with one plunge on this one's handle, it is clear that our salad spinner game has been substantially upgraded. The boy contentedly cranks it as we ride back home.

So I guess this is a free plug for OXO brand salad spinners. Plunging on this thing's handle makes me feel like I'm starting up a helicopter. It hums like a spaceship. Using a manual kitchen gadget should not be this fun. And does it spin the absolute bejeezus out of our salads? It does.

Hill Killerz/GF tiramisu

Portland Bike Summer has begun. I will admit that it is tough to look at all the fun listings and shake my middle-aged fist at the reality of having job/kid/home in the hinterlands. Though of course it's also nice to have a job that isn't terrible, a kid that is awesome, and a house with an affordable mortgage. 

REGARDLESS: I saw that near my house on Tuesdays there is a "hill killerz lunch hillz" ride - ride from the bottom to the top of SE 52nd Ave. five times in a half hour. Seems like my kind of ridiculous, I thought, even as someone who doesn't particularly love hillz. But doing ridiculous thingz together with other nerdz? And using lots of Zs to pluralize nouns? Sign me up! 

I bike the ten minutes from my house to the bottom of the hill and will my cranky gears into their lowest granny settings, and off I go. I get there and it's a very positive scene. Bells are rung, thumbs-ups exchanged. People cool off in the shade at the top of the hill. There's lycra, athleisure, me in the same schlubby work tee and shorts combo I wore yesterday. No one is judging anyone. Within 20 minutes I've done my requisite five rounds and I head off into a perfect Clackamas afternoon.

Gluten-free treats update: Today my dear wife randomly brought home gluten-free tiramisu from the coffeeshop near her downtown job. I would never have thought to buy this or consume this, but I have to admit it was a good idea.