"I deeply regret any distress that my comments may have caused you, or your family, and I hereby undertake not to repeat any such slander at any time in the future."

Well, despite my best efforts to use the Tresca for my wet rides and spare my other bikes the indignity of moisture, today I got caught in the rain on my New-To-Me Titanium Forever Bike, shown here shortly before the first drops fell:


You know those rides where it starts raining and you think maybe you should turn around because you've already gotten a good ride in, but then you also think, "Hey, it's raining anyway so I might as well keep going," so you do in fact keep going and by the time you get home your feet are frozen because you didn't wear shoe covers?  Well it was one of those.

Even so, it was an enjoyable ride, and thanks to the dated ceramic coating technology on my dated wheels I didn't have black rim grime all over my tire sidewall afterwards:


Not only that, but there was barely any pad wear:


I guess the idea of ceramic rim coating still lives on as Mavic's "Exalith" treatment, but as discs continue to take over I suppose all of this is of rapidly decreasing relevance.

In other news, as I mentioned Wednesday, I wrote a little feature for Outside about my trip to Bentonville this past summer.  As someone who writes on the Internet I expect criticism and make a little game of trying to anticipate what shape it will take with each new endeavor.  In this case I mostly figured I'd get crap for saying positive things about Bentonville, and I did indeed--though not quite  in the way I expected:

i really do appreciate that people from all over the world come to northwest arkansas and write about it because I think more people should generally know that arkansas is Good. but friends, I gasped SEVERAL times pic.twitter.com/6j2nVbLDYV

— Olivia Paschal (@oliviacpaschal) November 21, 2019

Hey, I get that someone from the area would find my "clueless New Yorker pleasantly surprised by Bentonville" take irritating.  If anything I was poking fun at my own provincialism, and if that didn't come off then I guess I failed.  Even so, I've been perusing the excerpts that apparently elicited gasps from her, and to be honest I'm still a bit confused.  Consider this one:


Is it really so odd to find this juxtaposition incongruous?  Did I miss something and the rest of the world associates the Ozark Mountains with bagels?  And it's not just an Arkansas thing; frankly I'm equally surprised when I find bagel places in California or any other place far from the New York City metropolitan area, for two reasons:

1) Attempts to export the bagel are generally unsuccessful (and that's not even counting all the shitty bagels right here in New York);
2) I'm not sure why they even bother exporting the concept because frankly bagels are overrated anyway.

Now, at the risk of eliciting more gasps, I am in no way suggesting Ozark Mountain Bagel Co. does not make a good bagel.  For all I know they may be the best in the world.  However, I didn't try them because I've developed a wheat allergy for some reason (if you remember my hives it turns out that's why I was getting them) and no longer eat bagels.  Furthermore, because I no longer eat bagels, I've now come to understand they're basically overrated gut bombs, and really what I miss most about them is how convenient and ubiquitous they are.  (It turns out you can even get them in Arkansas.)

Of course, you may be tempted to point out I only think bagels are overrated because I can't eat them anymore, and that I'm suffering from sour grapes syndrome.  (Or, if you prefer, stale bagel syndrome.)  This may very well be so.  Nevertheless, allowing that this may be true, and also allowing that Ozark Mountain Bagel Co. may very well be the best bagel shop in the world, I was still amused to find a bagel place in Arkansas.  Sorry.


I can't tell if she's annoyed because I should have expected to find a restaurant in Bentonville that was pretty much identical to every third restaurant in Brooklyn, or if she's annoyed that I ate in a restaurant in Bentonville that was pretty much identical to every restaurant in Brooklyn and liked it.  Granted, she could be annoyed that I ordered my hamburger on gluten-free bread (lots of people do find that annoying), but I really didn't feel like having a gigantic hive attack on those fantastic Bentonville mountain bike trails.  As for how I was feeling in that restaurant, honestly I was one-third disappointed that downtown Bentonville was so similar to Brooklyn, one-third disappointed in myself for really liking that it was so similar to Brooklyn, and one-third disappointed in myself for feeling so at home with what Brooklyn has now become.  In short, I don't know what irony level she's working on, so it's hard for me to understand what made her gasp here.


Okay, this museum is absolutely amazing, and honestly it was the real revelation of the trip.  I really did forget where I was because I was so wrapped up in it all, so it was funny in an endearing way when I'd hear someone explaining the art to somebody with an accent that brought me right back to Bentonville--and I'm not trying to be condescending at all.  It would be no different if you were visiting the Guggenheim from Arkansas and Joe Bagadonuts from Bensonhurst was giving someone insightful commentary on Picasso in thick Brooklynese.  Furthermore, your mentioning this in your subsequent article would elicit no gapsts from me.


This is true, at this point I felt like I was in Portland.  But yes, I certainly should have realized that I was in Bentonville, and yes, my inability to reconcile these qualities with my preconceived notion of Bentonville is admittedly lame.  I guess overall she's offended that I came to Bentonville and was like, "Wow, they have bikes and art and fancy food!"  Fair enough.  At the same time, we all have our preconceived notions of places we've never been, and we all often find those notions dashed upon the rocks of reality when we get there, which is what this story was all about.

More confusing to me than all of this is why she didn't include a link:

The article is published under my own name in a widely read publication.  How is linking to that doxing?  I'm not going to burst into that thread and interrupt the party but people are welcome to tweet angrily at me, I can take it.  Still, it's more fun to watch people tweet among themselves:

Wow, he catches on quick.  I mean it's right there in the headline:
Then again, in his defense there was no link, so he wouldn't know that.

Ugh.  The Hamptons?  Off-season?  Puh-leeze.


There's culture in DC?

Uh, do I really need to note something that obvious?  Anyway, I'm only pointing out it smells near Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport, which it does.  Go check it out if you don't believe me.  And that's not even meant as an insult--smell aside it's a really nice airport, and about a thousand times better than LaGuardia, where you just want to kill yourself immediately upon deplaning.

In any case, I'm sorry Bentonville confounded my expectations (not that I had bad expectations, just different ones) and that I think it's a great place.  I've certainly heard of people visiting New York City and having their expectations confounded, like when they discover the "pushy New Yorker" thing is mostly BS and people here are generally very friendly and ready to give you directions (unless the subway doors are about to close, that is), and it seems to me that, when it comes to travel, confounded expectations is a good thing.  And again, as far as my Bentonville story, the clueless rube is supposed to be me.

Anyway, if you do go to Bentonville, let me know how the bagels are.