eli.naeher.name

I spent only 16 nights outside in 2025–far fewer than in past years.

I figure I have to post these roundups for one year sometime during the next year–after that, it’s too late.

In Ling Ma’s novel Severance, the fictional Shen Fever creates in its victims a compulsion for mindless repetition.

I spent a bit over 30 nights outside in 2023. 🚲 January 21-22: Ferncliff Forest A few of us rode to Ferncliff Forest from Pawling; M– drove and met us there.

Ever since my 2018 tour, I’ve been itching to get back to Vermont.

After posting about all of my camping trips in 2019, I skipped that ritual last year.

In October I bought a thirdhand Crust Romanceur–my first bike with clearance for big tires (I’m running 650bx48s), my first bike with disc brakes, my first bike set up tubeless.

It’s hard to be sure, but I think I probably spent more nights outside last year than any other (though my total is still modest and I hope to spend more time camping this year).

(As is apparently my habit, I didn’t complete this blog post until many months after the fact.

Ferncliff Forest observation tower Since a snowy trip to Vernooy Falls last month, I’d been looking forward to NYC Adventure Cycling’s last trip of the year, to Harriman.

(Note: this is the first of two planned posts about this trip.

At 6:00 AM Saturday I started the Long Island Randonneurs’ Bethpage 300k–my first 300k, and my longest-ever ride.

After my last 200k ride, I swore I’d never do something so stupid again, and then a couple days later I signed up for the Long Island Randonneurs’ Ronkonkoma 200k.

It’s been almost three years since my last 200k ride–apparently that’s how long it takes me to forget just how much riding that is.

I’ve enjoyed my last few bike-camping trips with 718 Cyclery and the NYC Adventure Cycling Club, but I hadn’t done a solo trip for what felt like a long time.

Yesterday I rode my second-ever RUSA-sanctioned ride (after the Fox Valley Permanent), and my first with other riders: the Long Island Randonneurs’ Jones Beach Populaire.

Recently The Outline published a piece on Computer People for Peace, a 1960s-1970s activist group originating in New York but with numerous chapters nationally.

The past weekend there were two groups organizing bike overnights out of New York: 718 Cyclery’s Mountain Lakes Park microtour and NYC Adventure Cycling Club’s ride to Fahnestock State Park.

For the past few years I’ve used Flickr to host most of the photos for this site, with the help of Christian Nunciato’s jekyll-flickr plugin.

Since I moved to Queens I’ve been trying to get back into the habit of taking the train to ride my bike in interesting places as I did when I lived in Chicago (1, 2, 3, 4).

M– left for her run this morning, and texted me a few minutes later: “They’re doing cyclocross at the park by Costco.”

This post is now several months old because I’ve been both busy and lazy, but I’m posting it belatedly as I try to work through my backlog of subject matter.

When writing tests, I’ve often simulated Postgres using in-memory Java SQL databases like HSQL or H2.

I took a nicely chilly ride today up to the Mid-Hudson Bridge, across, and back down the east side of the Hudson.

Last weekend, with M– in the city visiting friends, I took my first overnight bike trip in New York, to the Peekamoose campground in the Catskills.

#weshutitdown

Ever since John at Uptown Bikes mentioned that the campgrounds in Wisconsin’s Kettle Moraine State Forest are within striking distance of the Harvard Metra stop–in my mind I’d always imagined they were much further–I’ve been wanting to make the trip.

A few weeks ago, while I was at a movie, some reprobate stole off of my trusty vintage Centurion city bike my seatpost, saddle (a nicely-worn-in Brooks B17), and worst of all, my beloved Acorn medium saddlebag.

Dacy Airport on the way out of Harvard, Illinois Last summer M– and I took a rushed trip to Sugar River Forest Preserve in a rental car, and all this summer I’ve been scheming to get back–this time by bike.

A breezy day on Geneva Lake Yesterday I took advantage of the unseasonably mild weather to ride from Harvard–the northernmost stop on the Metra UP-NW line–to Kenosha–the northernmost stop on the UP-N line.

Yesterday we caught the first UP-NW northbound to Harvard at 8:48 AM at Jefferson Park–a run I’ve begun calling the Rando Express due to the proliferation of shiny fenders and boxy front bags on this first train of the weekend to the ferticle cycling-grou…

I’ve really come to enjoy the practice of regular, scheduled skill-sharing sessions among distributed teams.

Alarm clocks, like automobiles, are mechanical devices which bring me no pleasure and thus I do what I can to avoid them in my daily existence. – Kent Peterson I share Kent Peterson’s opinion of alarm clocks but not his ability to wake myself in the small…

For the first time this year the Forest Preserve District of Cook County is allowing camping in the Shabbona Woods forest preseve–and, eventually, four other locations within the forest preserve system.

I find myself more and more eager to get out of the city these days to ride.

I’m just back from lovely Portland (my first visit since 2005–damn, has it been that long?)

I came to 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10 cold, having never heard of it until its arresting dust jacket caught my eye at my neighborhood feminist bookstore, in a bit of precisely that serendipity the loss of which the partisans of the printed word…

Core Offer Engine team stickers featuring our Trello icons, designed by Jessica Kerr On Thursday Outpace Systems laid off two-thirds of its development team (including me).

One of the great things about the “better is better”1 ethos in the Common Lisp community is that it’s given rise to a culture of very good tools.

It’s been a year and a half since I found this wonderful porteur rack (on Craigslist, for a song), and the only thing wrong with it is that Cetma (which is a guy named Lane Kagay in California) doesn’t make them anymore.

A couple of weeks ago Streetsblog Chicago published a very affecting essay by Olatunji Oboi Reed: Why I Fight: How Biking Saved My Life and Can Help Other Black Chicagoans.

Last fall my solo overnight along the I&M Canal Trail had a somewhat disastrous conclusion, when I lost my eyeglasses and had difficulty working for the month or so it took to have them replaced.

Inspired by Let’s Go Ride a Bike, M— and I headed to the Blackwell Forest Preserve in DuPage County this weekend, desperate to get out of town after a failed attempt to camp at Illinois Beach State Park last weekend (they were full).

Yesterday we took a too-quick overnight trip to the Sugar River Forest Preserve in Winnebago County.

I haven’t had time to keep up over the past month but I wanted to quickly post a few photos and a few brief notes.

Day One For M—’s birthday we rented a car and headed to Galena.

Day One This unseasonably warm November left me with no choice but to try to fit in one last (?)

Sunday afternoon M— and I went down to Pullman on the far south side.

In preparation for my bike camping trip a few weeks back, I went and printed out nice color copies of the Illinois DOT county bike maps for Cook and Lake Counties, thinking that they’d do a better job of showing the bike paths I’d be using than Google Map…

At some godawful hour of the morning on Saturday M— left for a trip to New York with a friend, and rather than rattle around at home all weekend reading MetaFilter I decided to take my first bike camping trip—an easy one, to Illinois Beach State Park outs…