Keith Snyder's Blog

So the car’s had a blown head gasket since early this year, which means I’ve gotten good at carrying coolant, checking and topping fluid levels every 40 miles, max (that’s how long it can leak before it overheats), driving with an OBD-II scanner attached so I can live-monitor coolant temperature on my iPhone, breaking 80-mile trips (eg, out to see one of my boys) into two parts with a donut and radiator break in the middle, and so on.

A 2005 Forester with 220,000 miles and a working head gasket is probably worth $2500, and this one will cost around $3500 to fix. Plus the other problems that have cropped up since that one, like the throttle pedal sensor error that, several times, has triggered the check-engine light and suddenly dropped vehicle speed to 5mph with no pedal control on I-84.

So figure $4000 in repairs.

After which, the transmission has been unhappy on sub-freezing mornings for a couple of years now, so that’s probably going next. Another $3000.

So, obviously, try to keep it going until I can scrape together enough for another old one that runs, and see if I can get $500 out of this one. Then when that one breaks down, try to sell it for $500 and get another old one, and so on.

EXCEPT:

After three years of conceiving and building the EPUBulator and going all-in on what unexpectedly turned into a startup company (I was initially only trying to solve a serious software problem in my ebook company, but what I built turned out to also be a perfect platform for pivoting into ebook accessibility, which is suddenly huge), money’s looking better in 2025, and right now I have $4000 I can spend on the car problem. Which, in conjunction with my obsessing over cargurus.com and the used cars on Facebook marketplace, has brought me to an epiphany that echoes Terry Pratchett’s well-known passage about boots.

Because suddenly, if I’m going to be able to afford a better car some time in 2025, the option of not a replacement vehicle, but an interim vehicle unexpectedly opens up. Something used but running that I can rely on until the new income is more firmly set.

Only, hold on — now, suddenly, it DOES make sense to repair the Forester’s head gasket, throttle pedal sensor, and even, if necessary, the transmission. That’s all still less than or equal to the cost of an interim $5–7K old car. Plus I know how well I’ve maintained this one. Plus when I decide it’s time for a newer, higher-quality replacement, say $20K, I can sell this one for $2500 to offset the purchase.

Having money means spending less money. See Pratchett, Vimes: “Boots.”

Plus Vimes didn’t even mention the mental and emotional taxation of constant vigilance, surprises, learning curves, and logistics, just the higher cost and wet feet. And that’s before the generational wealth comes into it, when the owner of the $50 boots dies and his family can sell them for $20.

But also — I love this car. It’s just right in a lot of ways: perfect size, nimble, sticks to the ground in Northeast winter, high-quality part replacements and upgrades while I’ve owned it, no payments, low insurance… It was a satisfying right decision earlier in divorced parenthood, and where my boys learned they could repair things in the real world. And where I confirmed I was actually capable of teaching them that. And it’s the car in which I taught my other boy to drive. And it’s got my Super Randonneur decal on the back, and a 1968 Barracuda emblem I bought for $30 on eBay because I wanted a Barracuda when I was younger and finally accepted I’m not going to have one. It says Barracuda 2.5X on the back now, where it used to say Forester 2.5X.

I figure almost no one has noticed the Barracuda emblem, but one or two may have gotten a laugh behind me on the highway.

I’d aspired to get it to 300,000 miles, and was disappointed this head gasket (its second) went at 220,000. But it looks like you’re staying, car. Well done. Assuming my mechanic doesn’t find anything else when I have him inspect you as though you’re a car I’m considering buying, we may get there yet.

More about the EPUBulator developments that are making for a brighter 2025 as soon as a thing or two gets signed.

I’m so excited about this! (I know, everybody says that about their Kickstarter project, but I’ve got the excitement chemicals speeding around my system EVEN AT THIS VERY MOMENT.)

Photo from today’s weekly production meeting for The Pedal Turns the Crank. I love Khai’s rough sketches, but the major conceptual breakthrough? That I’ve been banging my head against for months (for years, if you’re counting since I first had the idea that this could be a picture book)?

The scribbles at lower right. Those are the final breakthrough that had to happen.

This whole book is families having bike adventures together, and each spread (spread = left and right page together as one big rectangle) is one family. There’s the mountain bike family, the road bike family, the beach cruiser family, etc. On the last page, they all come together for a big ride.

But just because a kid has learned the chant (“The pedal turns the…CRANK! The crank turns the…CHAINWHEEL! etc.), that doesn’t mean they know what a chainwheel is, or how to recognize one.

I’ve been going with variations of one basic idea, which is simple technical illustrations as spot art on each spread. Pedal. Crank. Then on the next spread: Crank. Chainwheel.

But I got to thinking about how I taught my own kids. I didn’t do that, I got down low with them and put my finger on each thing. Pedal. Crank. Chainwheel. Chain. Sprocket. So could we do something like that at the very end? Just show everything in that way?

And Khai said, Or the center spread.

And there was the thunderbolt:

The center spread (the one that comes halfway through the book) is in comic book form, a series of panels, each showing one of the different bike families taking a break on their journey and the adult showing the kid one drivetrain part.

So each family’s journey is in three pieces: Their own spread, at the start of their journey; one panel of the center comic spread, taking a break during the journey and learning something; and their little part of the big final image, all the cyclists coming together.

And then, on each main family spread, which says, eg, “The chainwheel turns the…CHAIN!” the chainwheel and the chain are red, or have a little glow, or something like that. It’s a Where’s Waldo, with the center comic spread as its key.

This was the LAST THING that had to fall into place.

I love weekly production meetings, I love collaborators that get you excited every time you meet, and I love this book.

Kickstarter pre-launch page. Please follow us! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/noteon/the-pedal-turns-the-crank

Regular posting about The Pedal Turns the Crank is a goal for me, leading up to the unveiling of the pre-launch Kickstarter page, and I’ve been posting some of Khai’s rough art and writing about the project, but today it occurred to me that I could show how some of the design stuff for the Kickstarter is coming along, too.

After reading an article about how to get on podcasts at Jane Friedman’s website, I started putting together a one-sheet (aka press kit, aka media kit), following the tips in the article. So in the spirit of letting people see how things are going, even if they’re not finished yet, here’s what’s up this week on my end. I haven’t cut Khai’s bio down enough yet, and there’s some gibberish in it which is me typing key thoughts while he talked at Friday’s production meeting, but this will turn into what we send out to try to get the interest of bicycle podcasts, parenting influencers, family podcasts, book influencers, crowdfunding blogs…

I don’t think it’s focused enough yet, as a one-sheet. It’s more like book jacket copy, and I’m not sure how to better focus it, but we’re 1) maintaining momentum 2) consistently 3) in the right direction.

Which if you’re a bike person, you’ll recognize as the only way to get someplace you actually intended to go.

Khai showing off his notes from Friday’s production meeting at the Danbury Hackerspace (where I base my print/ebook design company, Typeflow).

One of the throughlines in our Kickstarter kids’ picture book, The Pedal Turns the Crank, will be diversity of all kinds, all of them in love with the bike.

That means different kinds of families, different kinds of backgrounds, different kinds of locations, and everybody having adventures on bikes, with adults watching out for the children (who are the stars).

It also means different bike cultures. We’re not letting ourselves nail down yet to exactly which bike cultures will be most featured (and there’s a big final spread where some of the things we couldn’t fit elsewhere can be allowed to flower), but what you’re looking at above is Khai’s notes from Friday’s weekly production meeting, showing our ideas for a rando spread!

“Rando” is (in the tiny little niche sport of randonneuring) short for “randonneuring.” It’s my sport, and I love it beyond reason. It’s endurance cycling over very long distances, self-supported (no follow vehicles, and rules about what kind of help you can and can’t get), and against the clock – but not racing. There’s a route you have to cover within a certain number of hours, checking in along the way at “controls” (checkpoints) along the way, which you have to reach within certain time windows.

One of the common types of control is a convenience store, where either you get a receipt (its timestamp will prove what time you were there) or have someone (the clerk, or a club volunteer) sign and timestamp your “brevet card,” which you have to carry through the whole event.

This illustration is all about one of those convenience stores – likely a WaWa, though we probably can’t be explicit about that for trademark reasons – at 2am, where a rowdy little tribe of kid randonneurs is regrouping under the supervision of their adult(s), throwing away food wrappers, buying snacks, getting their brevet cards signed, lining up at the bathroom, taking naps on the concrete, and all the other things randos (and other children) do at convenience stores.

I originally had a different location in mind – a dirt road along a cornfield – but collaborating with Khai brought out a way better idea. We both love the visual element of headlight and taillight beams shining along the rough surfaces of walls and fences, where the bikes have been leaned. This is one of the little things I love when night riding, and he’s all about little insider details that will make the painting special.

KICKSTARTER UPDATE: The Kickstarter pre-launch page is under construction, still needs a video, etc. Which is all lurching along, and will go live when I’ve got it all together. Until then, I’ll keep doing weekly “pre-launch buzz” posts at this blog, and I really hope you’ll keep checking in.

I have “Pedal Turns the Crank Kickstarter buzz” on my calendar every day, and I’m not sure exactly how to get that going – but it’s day 1, so… here are some of Khai Tran’s bicycle studies (he’s been drawing a LOT of bicycles lately) and some of his free-associating Post-its based on my ongoing Google Sheet brain dump of different kinds of bikes, bike cultures, families, clothes, etc. Diversity in all things, always with bicycles as the through-line.

The backstory (short version):

The pedal turns the…
CRANK!

The crank turns the…
CHAINWHEEL!

The chainwheel turns the…
CHAIN!

***

This little call-and-response chant was a game I made up for my bike-loving kids. It became a family tradition on our frequent bike outings, and now it’s becoming a children’s picture book, featuring bikes and families of all kinds coming from all kinds of places to meet up for a big ride together.

One day in September at the Danbury Hackerspace, where I run Typeflow (my print book/ebook design/production company), painter Khai Tran turned to me and said, “Ever think about doing a children’s book?” and I said, “I actually have one, but illustrators are too expensive.”

Then after a long, dumb pause, I said, “You’re an illustrator…”

We’ve been having weekly production meetings ever since.

(Here’s one of them. Khai likes my Xootr Swift.)

***

The chain turns the…
SPROCKET!

The sprocket turns the…
BACK WHEEL!

What turns the pedal?
MY FEET!

***

Coming soon to Kickstarter!

Well, soon-ISH. I don’t know how much lead time to leave for bike bloggers/magazines/influencers (do you?), and I haven’t even written the Kickstarter main video yet. But we’re STOKED every time we meet.

More buzz coming. Maybe along the way I’ll figure out what that means.

(If you know how to do buzz stuff with bike people, I’d love to learn about it.)

###

Instead of sitting home, I roused myself and went to the Hackerspace, and instead of driving there, I rode there. On my way, a white pickup slowed right in the spot, sort of analogous to a blind spot, where I can’t see the human figure in the car, is but their fender is keeping pace right next to and behind me and the driver yells something greetingish and then keeps trying to say stuff as I’m calling “What? Who is that? I can’t see you, who is that? What?” I can’t have a backwards conversation at 15mph. I slow so the window will pull alongside so I can see in, but it slows too.

Cut to the end of the story: The guy who used to fix my car is back in Danbury with a new garage and doesn’t know how not to alarm cyclists.

Then around 7pm at the Hackerspace, I look at the weather and it’s 53° and going down to 48°. I rode there in shorts, sandals, and a t-shirt. I guess I’m leaving sooner than later and suffering a little. No hoodie at the Hackerspace, no jacket, no socks. But 2020’s Randowear stuff is still on shelves in the closet. Maybe… And yes, there’s one long-sleeved men’s large that must have been returned at some point, or has something wrong with its transfer. It’s just thin cotton, but it’s twice as much thin cotton as I’d have otherwise, and it pleases me that I’ll be riding home at twilight in a shirt with that very same bike on it, with its headlight beam part of the design, so…

And then around 7:10, Greenwood Ave. is a parking lot, just one long chain of stopped cars. I can’t see over the little ridge of Blackman Ave., but I figure they’re probably all stopped for a train, .4 miles ahead at Library Place. But I’m cold and I’ve got a tailwind, two reasons to go fast—and I’m on a bicycle: three—so up the rise and yes, past the solid jam of stopped cars and their brake lights, blocks ahead, are the bigger red lights of the crossing and the dark gray of the train. Pump, snake, go, speed past the cars, eyes on drivers’ headrests and door cracks, going harder like I’ve been doing again this week, breathing through my back and pedaling from my butt, and then it’s .3 miles ahead, then everything’s still jammed and it’s .2 and I start thinking, could this go like… yeah, maybe, though it would be total random luck.

Nobody doors me, heart rate’s up, inhale in two stages, bring that oxygen in, now .1 miles and the butt of the gray train starts sliding into the gray shadows where it’ll disappear…and the shadows take it…and the barrier arms are still down and the red lights and the clangs still going, .05, is this going to—? But yes. Without slowing or even pulling my effort a little, the bike hits the intersection at exactly, precisely the perfect moment, the arms up, the clangs stopped, the lights not out yet but the first few cars have let up on the brakes – but it’s too late for them. I’m past the tracks, out of the saddle, and up the shallow little rise before the first car is even shifted past second gear. First through, from .4 miles back.

Though not from .4 miles back. That’s a conceit. From farther back, but no, before that, but no, before that. Yes, from 10 to the -43 seconds after the Big Bang.

If a train leaves Redding Station headed North at X mph and a bicycle leaves Danbury at 7:02 going Southeast at 15mph, does God smile?

God does.

This is what I said on June 27 to the Bethel Religious Display Committee. This committee was convened in response to conflict over the placement of this banner, which, for the first time in the town’s history, was in a public square at the same time as a manger scene:

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The committee’s mandate was to make recommendations to the town government about how to deal with that conflict.

 

My name is Keith Snyder. I live on Main Street.

I timed myself reading this, and it comes to about six minutes, so thank you in advance for allowing me that chunk of time.

The pro-creche side of this seems to honestly believe that people who think differently than they do are mean and petty.

I haven’t been sure exactly how to respond to this. So last week, I didn’t. But something [local blogger] said last week made me realize what I did have to offer. [She] said that when she first moved here, one of the first things she noticed was that very creche in that very square. She said she was struck by how beautiful it was, that it wasn’t religious, that there was no problem with it, and that opinions to the contrary are because of “hatred.”

I would like to share my early experience moving here. It was August, 2014. I had just separated from my wife two weeks earlier, and my two boys and I landed here. And we really liked it. Still do. We liked our street. We liked our neighbors. We liked the grocery store. It had a sushi bar! We liked the bookshops and the bike shop. We felt like we had landed someplace safe.

Four months later, in December, I came around a corner and saw a big creche on what seemed to be a central public square.

And I stopped and just stood there with my mouth open. I know that sounds like the kind of thing you say when you’re exaggerating. But it’s not. I literally stood there with my mouth literally open.

And suddenly, my new, safe little town was a little less safe.

To understand why, you have to understand something that may not be within your experience.

I grew up with swastikas spray-painted on my house and crosses burned into my lawn. Regularly, for years. And, regularly, for years, the local good Christians turned their eyes away, and pulled their shades down. It wasn’t their business. They didn’t want to get involved.

The only person who ever helped us scrub the swastikas off, as far as I can remember, was the German lady across the street, Heinke.

But those weren’t really good Christians.

Here’s something else I saw, not long after I moved here. There was a swastika at the Bethel train station on the sign that says BETHEL. Not big. It was, I don’t know, about this big. And it hung around there for a long time, and none of my neighbors scrubbed it off. Which I understand — it’s just a little graffiti. Probably kids? I finally scrubbed it off myself, as best I could, with a toothbrush. Because it wasn’t important to my neighbors.

But tonight something is really important to you. A little statue of Jesus. That’s important. And which patch of land it goes on, and keeping other people’s things off that land at the same time. Which is odd. Because Jesus never said he wanted a little statue of himself. What he does care about — and he makes this very clear — is how you treat neighbors and strangers. That’s what he says, flat out, that he cares about.

Had you behaved as though you loved your neighbor, and cared for strangers, none of this would be happening. But you didn’t. You want your statues. In a town space. Between certain dates. By themselves. That’s what’s important to you.

And by letting you do it, the town says that’s what’s important to the town.

Okay. I want an atheist sign. And I’m willing to share. I’m hoping to share. I don’t mind that other things are up at the same time. I hope they are. It’s great. It’s sharing. With my neighbors.

I do care that it’s accorded the same respect as other displays. But — respect doesn’t mean that when you’re not using something, you’ll allow everybody else to split the leftovers. That’s not respect. Everybody knows that’s not respect. You know that’s not respect. That’s winning.

To me, sharing is the win.

***

There are two things I’ve heard pro-creche people say to justify their positions.

One is “I’ve lived here a long time, so my opinion counts for more.” Well, I’ve lived here a long time, too. I’ve lived my entire life in the United States of America. Which is where we are right now.

It’s not the United States of One Group Gets To Choose First And Then Everybody Else Divvies Up What’s Left. You’re entitled to zero special treatment of your display. And I’m entitled to zero special treatment of mine. And this is true whether one of us has enjoyed special treatment in the past or not.

The second thing I’ve heard pro-creche people say is, “There are more of us, so what we want should matter more.”

That’s not what Jesus taught. That’s not what anyone who cares about right and wrong has ever taught.

You’re wrong about this in the moral code of your own religion.

***

So all that is what hit me when I came around that corner, and saw your creche for the first time. All by itself. In what I was pretty sure was a public space. I saw that my new town doesn’t care. You, I expect not to care. But this was the town putting its stamp of approval on it. Boom. We don’t care either.

Okay. I’m a big boy. I’ve been through much worse than that.

But now that this is all happening? Maybe when there’s a meeting, I’ll show up and say what I think.

You can disagree with me. That’s one of the beautiful things about living here. We can disagree. But next time somebody tells you it’s hate, or you hear that coming out of your own mouth, maybe you can take a second and rethink that a little.

Last thing I have to say. We all have biases. I have one too. I’m gonna own mine. I’m sitting here expecting you to do the least neighborly thing. Because in my lifelong experience — that’s just what my good neighbors do.

***

Thank you. I have kids to pick up at Quassy, so I’m out of here. Thank you for the six minutes.

 

A MAN ON THE PORCH was giving me the staredown. The Cornwall County Market makes great breakfast burritos with tater tots in them and I remembered (incorrectly, it turned out) that it had an ATM. The staring man was older than me by maybe five years, and presented as tough guy, beefy biker subtype, with a tuft of white goat beard, a black shirt with some design on it or other, and a baseball cap. I recall something on his head, anyway; I think it was a baseball cap. But I don’t know what the cap or the shirt said, because where I was looking, as I came up the steps onto the porch, was straight back into his eyes, So they’re the main thing in my memory.

Part of avoiding conflict is breaking eye contact — not just so the other person won’t escalate, but so I won’t. In adulthood, I’ve expended some energy unlearning this habit. So I looked back at him and went in the store.

Then just as part of my brain was asking, “What’s with that guy?” another part shot over the answer: I was wearing my Women’s March t-shirt.

I was pretty scruffy myself that afternoon; I’d ridden the Batsto 200K on totally the wrong bike the day before, and I was sunburned and favoring my left knee. My own beard was an island of darker gray stubble a little longer than the lighter gray stubble on the rest of my face. Old jeans and black t-shirt. If not for what the shirt said, I could have passed for one of the staring man’s people.

But it’s those teeny differences that are the real betrayals. When your own people turn on you, that stings more than the Other doing it. I had just pulled in to get cash, but now with the ding of a magic wand, I was in enemy territory.

I realized, even at the moment, that I really wasn’t. I’ve been in enemy territory, and this wasn’t it; this was just some bigoted asshole sitting with a sandwich, marking my passage. But you never know who else is on an asshole’s side; this was rural Connecticut, not Stamford, and in an instant, I’d become aware I was a limping Jew in a Women’s March shirt.

The kid at the counter told me there was no ATM, but there was a bank over there. So I limped back out (not badly, just some stiffening up during the hour’s drive) and drove over there for some money because last year, the Tri State Mini Maker Faire — where I was headed — had a booth with Mexican food made by Mexicans. For an Angeleno in the land of Irish Catholics, this is a kind of a big deal, and I didn’t recall that they took debit cards.

I don’t feel a need to retell, here, at length, the whole story of my family being terrorized by white supremacists when I was a kid — crosses burned into the lawn, swastikas on the house, my mom crouching under the mail slot with a kitchen knife, the house broken into, me staying up at night to take shifts on guard — but chances are good you don’t see that bigoted asshole on the porch the same way I do. You might even want to teach me that I can’t possibly know he’s a bigoted asshole.

That’s Use of a Shirt #1.

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My friend Kelly didn’t run the Mini Maker Faire this year, but I still wanted to support it, since it’s awesome. The blacksmith was out front again, guiding more kids in the forging of iron coathooks, and this year there was a crepe stand in the building lobby.

“I like your shirt,” said the woman spreading batter on a couple of crepe griddles with one of those crepe rakes that looks like a kid’s wooden propellor toy. “Is that from the Hartford march?”

“No, DC,” I said. “The big one, in 2016. I mean 2017. That January, after—”

I don’t remember the rest of the conversation, and I still had brevet brain, so putting together sentences good was somewhat beyond me, but No longer in enemy territory, my body reported. Thought you’d like to know. Releasing tension now.

Already knew that, my brain retorted, but the body has its own defense readiness system and doesn’t care what the brain knows.

That’s Use of a Shirt #2.

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The family from Avocado Cafe was in the parking lot near the Physics Bus again with burritos, guacamole, and hot sauce corresponding to the three standard degrees of the Connecticut hot sauce scale. Reminder to Angeleno: Keep some actual hot sauce in the glove box. It was still good guacamole, though.

This is not a Use of a Shirt; it’s a plug for Avocado Cafe in Millerton. I was not paid for this endorsement.

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We were driving back from dropping some kids with their mom after the Faire when we saw a twentysomething guy on the side of the road with his car doors open and a couple of big black manicured poodles lolloping around on the highway. That is to say, I glanced, barely noticed, and would have kept going because nothing seemed wrong to me, but Kelly, being a devout and diligent asker-if-people-are-all-right, slowed, so I rolled down my window and rose to her example.

The guy had black hair and black scruff, red sneakers, and the kind of kippah you wear all the time, not the kind you take out of a box at the front door of the synagogue. “I’m trying to help these dogs,” he said. He’d seen them out on the highway, where they clearly shouldn’t be, and he’d called the number on their tags, but it didn’t work.

She pulled forward and around, and we got out. “When you say it didn’t work—” I said, “Like—”

“Like there’s — like nothing.” He dialed again. “Like it — Oh — ” This time there was a connection. But it was a recorded message saying the call could not be completed.

There was also an address on the tags, but while the dogs were happy about the yogurt container he’d put down for them, there’d been no leap from dogs happy about yogurt to dogs getting into his car so he could take them home.

Kelly opened the back of her car and started talking to the dogs in a calm and friendly way, and I got the sense that where I was standing, just off the rear fender, was making the open hatchback less friendly, so I moved away, and after some more talking to them, patting the car interior, and putting the yogurt in there, she asked one of the dogs if it was OK for her to pick it up and then did so, setting it in the car, and then the other one jumped in.

While Jonathan followed us in his car to the address on the tags, about four miles away by highway, she said she could tell the dogs were used to women. For their part, the dogs just stood with their faces poking forward between us and watched the car ride until we got close to the address, and then they got excited and we got confused, because it was a closed skiing-goods store.

Within a few minutes, though, Jonathan had found a neighbor who knew the dogs and their owner, who was the owner of the store and had recently moved to a new home. I found her on Facebook and messaged her my number, and though she didn’t answer, cops and an animal control guy in a white pickup became involved, and it was clear things were fine.

During a brief lull while we waited for other people, Jonathan told me he’d been on the way to a social justice seder — and then there was the awkward moment where you say a word and don’t know if the other person knows what it means, so you’re like, Um, do you— but I smiled a little and he said “Member of the tribe?” and I said “Yeah,” and we both knew exactly what the awkwardness had been. His decision to stop had been based on a judgment: Social justice is good, but there are these two dogs right here. So he missed his seder to help them. I told him that was mitzvahs for like a month, plus now he could do something bad.

On our way to pick up Indian food from Great Barrington, Kelly told me again that she could tell those dogs were used to women, and had no use for men, something I could never have discerned. I told her I saw Jonathan look at my shirt when I got out of the car, and it might have made him more comfortable about these people that random chance had delivered to him on a rural highway.

That’s not Use of a Shirt #3. It’s still Use #2: Identifying Friendlies.

That morning, the shirt had been the next clean one on the stack in my dresser. Use of a Shirt #3 is it’s a shirt.

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“Maybe he’ll find his tribe in high school.”

That’s been the parental refrain about my musical kid and high school. He was bullied in elementary school in the city, has had an IEP and special services from age four until just recently, and all his friends have been mutual friends with his brother, who is ambivalent, at best, about sharing friends and possesses a quicker mouth and a more mercenary social agenda. This year, his brother is off to school in a distant town, leaving the musician flying solo, for the first time in their lives, at his new high school.

School started last week. Maybe he’ll find his tribe.

Today I was late picking him up for the first time ever; the two schools, in towns 10 miles and 30 miles away from me, on different schedules, with a barrage of same-day early dismissal announcements, a new 5am family reveille, and a bricked phone so I can’t reach anyone or use Google Maps, would have been daunting on enough sleep. On rando brain without the rando, they did me in. I was late, following a printout of how to get to his school instead of PhoneNav, and thinking Google really needs to get some randonneurs on staff to tell them how to do a usable cue sheet.

Music boy was wandering around the giant school parking lot with his trombone case, looking for me. As it turned out, he thought he just didn’t know how to recognize the car (I got it last week from a local used car dealer, and he doesn’t have its silhouette internalized yet). I tapped the horn, he found me, I apologized and got on his case about not having his phone, and he launched into today’s story while I was still asking how his day went.

“Last week,” he said, “I said I liked putting sound on SoundCloud, and today SoundCloud is like the biggest thing in school!”

That’s cool, I said. Did they go to your page?

“Yeah, some of them! I can’t check it because I don’t have my phone. There’s this girl who said it’s her new favorite song.”

Really? I said. Who?

“Remember that girl who was telling everybody I was her boyfriend last year? It’s her.”

Dude, she’s into you.

“…you think?”

She tells everybody you’re her boyfriend and tells you it’s her favorite song. Do you have a better explanation?

“Well. No.”

Want a girlfriend?

“No, I don’t think so!”

Okay, there you go.

“Oh, and I was walking down the hall and somebody was playing the song.”

Wow, really?

“Really!”

That is fantastic!

We got his brother from Mom’s, he told the stories again, and his brother suggested it was a big prank. Which I shot down. Possibly a little too hard.

So now it’s 4pm, we’re home, we ate the celebratory ice cream I bestowed upon the family, and he went and checked his listens on SoundCloud.

600 listens.

200 today.

26 new followers, and somebody saying they’re a local producer and would he sing on a track. (“About that…” I said, and gave him a few sentences of go-in-with-your-eyes-open).

When he was done reading all the comments from his new listeners and following everybody back, today’s play count had increased by 15.

Maybe he’ll find his tribe in high school.

Maybe he’s a flippin’ rock star.

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Nicholas Snyder on Soundcloud

When you’re on a rural highway late at night or in the morning after midnight, often there are no streetlamps, so all you can see is what’s in the unevenly illuminated wedge of your bike headlight, which, if it’s a generator light (mine is), gets brighter when you’re descending and dims on the climbs. The beam mostly illuminates the road immediately in front of you, and shades down to grays and beiges after that, and beyond that is black, with the occasional bright distant dot of a reflective highway sign.


 


In the few inches right in front of your headlight, rain is a scattered jumble of bright slivers. If your headlight isn’t at its brightest, the slivers will have dark dashes on them as each drop passes through a beam blinking on and off too fast to be seen when there are no raindrops. That’s how modern bike headlights “dim”; they don’t actually get dimmer like old incandescents; they just don’t illuminate as often. If you have a battery-powered light, the lengths of the dark dashes on the bright slivers change as you click to different brightness settings.


 


In heavy fog or mist, there are many more bright slivers, smaller, and a short bright cone of haze, and then the beam brushes the top of your front tire, and then the road, with the shadow from that tire, and then there are shadows and refractions from the water on the headlight lens, the dark wiggly snakes of road patches, and the glitter, which is sometimes glass or wire or other puncturing crap and sometimes the chip part of chipseal paving.


 


If you can see your own shadow, and there are no streetlamps, that means the first car in a while has just crested a rise or turned onto the highway some ways behind you. Your shadow will gradually get larger, and gain density and sharpness, and move to your right as the car approaches in the lane to your left. The road surface will become better illuminated, and pebbles and other junk outside your little beam will stand out against the relief of their own shadows; if you’re experienced at this, you’ll take the opportunity to look farther ahead for potholes or puddles.


 


All the shadows—yours, the bike’s, the gravel’s, the beer bottle’s—move together, their size changing and rotation accelerating as the car approaches. By now, you can hear the hiss and swish of the car tires and its displacement of the air. Maybe its engine, too, but that won’t necessarily become primary at any point.


 


A few seconds before the shadows all rotate to three o’clock and vanish, on a forested highway that curves left, you will see your giant shadow on the trees in front of you: You, your helmet, the true shape of your body, your bike. You, pedaling, 10′ tall, then 20′, on gray-green trees. The perspective rotates slightly as the car closes the distance, as though the 40′ cyclist’s labor exists on a turntable, and the dark giant and his 50′ bike and pedaling legs slide sideways to the right, along the trees, and vanish.


 


Red taillights pass you, but what you’re watching is what the car’s headlights can tell you about the road ahead, until the road curves or crests, and then the headlights aren’t telling you anything, but the taillights are still red dots, which vanish soon enough too, and you’re listening to rain patter on leaves, the wet whir of your tires, some rhythmic mechanical noise you’ve been occupying yourself trying to identify, and if you’re lucky, the gorgeous echoes of a wood thrush.