Prompt Engineering - AI & Beyond

Introduction

What is prompt engineering? In the context of a generative AI large language model (i.e., AI chatbot), it’s a set of techniques for carefully crafting your prompts in such a way as to maximize the quality and concision of the responses. The idea is to guide the AI so that it doesn’t ramble, hallucinate, or create overly complicated output that goes over your head. This post elucidates popular prompt engineering techniques but goes further, to expand beyond just GenAI. After all, why should we assume that only an artificial intelligence would benefit from such guardrails? I’m going to help you understand how you could apply prompt engineering techniques to interpersonal communications as well. (Note: the examples provided concern a hypothetical family, not mine per se.)

Role prompting

Role prompting is giving the AI a specific perspective or identity to shape the tone, assumptions, and level of detail in its response.

GenAI role prompting example:

Tell the AI: Acting as a trained psychologist or social worker accustomed to dealing with people who have deep shame issues and are very vulnerable emotionally, draft some talking points that my kids and I can use when talking to my wife about the juicer she purchased recently. With the extreme tact and light touch of a hostage negotiator, explain that although the juicer she purchased is in fact entirely useless, and its purchase may cause our children to doubt her competence as a parent, this retail goof is really no big deal, and in fact it’s possible that one day we might actually learn to enjoy fresh kale juice. Be very careful not to say anything triggering, since as a juicer-buyer my wife could respond unpredictably, either lashing out or having a complete nervous collapse. Provide evenhanded messaging that well help her come to terms with her mistake so that in her own time, when she’s ready, she can “disappear” the juicer.

Teenager role prompting example:

Tell your 17-year old son: I want you to act not as a snotty, moody teenager who thinks his parents are nothing but an embarrassment, and instead behave as though you are a grateful offspring well aware of all the privileges you have enjoyed throughout your childhood, and of the sacrifices your parents have made for you. Draft an apology letter to your mom and me for letting all our houseplants die during our trip to Greece, and for ramming my Audi into a lamppost when you were supposed to be driving only the old Subaru and only then for necessary trips to the store, not doing joy rides with your friends. Feel free in your apology letter to point out that at least you were responsible enough to recognize the need for a designated driver. Also, write as though you are an educated person with respect for the written word; that is, do not use AI to draft this letter. And if you decide to cheat and use AI on the sly, don’t insult our intelligence with copy/paste, but just read the AI output one time, then close your browser and rewrite the BS boilerplate from memory so it might actually seem slightly authentic.

Few-shot prompting

Few-shot prompting is giving the model concrete examples of the type of output you want, to show it what you’re looking for rather than trying to explain. With these examples in mind, it can do a better job of responding to the actual prompt, so it can provide the right style, format, and level of detail. Your examples can be delimited with brackets [ ] or tags < > to help the model separate them from your instructions.

GenAI few-shot prompting example:

Tell the AI: The president of my HOA emailed me with a complaint about my juniper bush being a fire hazard in our drought-stricken community, and—apparently just to be cheeky—wrote his email in haiku form. I have decided on that basis to communicate with him solely through the superior poetic form of the tanka, from now on. I need you to help me write a response to his latest complaint. Here is an example of the tanka form this response needs to take:

[Noble native plant
Safely placed ten feet away,
It kindles nothing.
Why can’t you just leave me be
And trust my sound strategy.]

Here is another example:

[Cursed clubhouse light
Shining in my face at night
Doesn’t let me sleep.
It’s posted: “Closes at ten.”
Why can’t you enforce this, then?] 

And here is a third:

[Dead and yellow lawn
So depressing, sad and wan.
Sprinklers all shut off.
Why did you choose to plant grass?
You guys are a pain in the ass.]

Note how each tanka ends with a rhyming couplet, which is my own contribution to the poetic form.

When possible I like to start with a rhyming couplet, too. With the above examples in mind, help me write a rebuttal to the HOA president’s latest complaint, which is that my friends too frequently use the guest parking spots available, when there is no stated limit or policy around this.

Marital discussion few-shot prompting example:

Tell your wife: We need to discuss something pretty important: with our mortgage winding down and the kids launched, I want to lower the amount of life insurance I’ve traditionally purchased. Since I know this is a hot-button issue for you, I would like to give some examples of how I’d like you to frame your misgivings, dissenting views, and counter-arguments.

For one, please use I-statements, not you-statements.

<Wrong: “You insist on doing this dangerous sport but are too cheap to provide some financial cushion.”>

<Right: “Whenever you come home late from a bike ride, I wonder if something happened, and I feel vulnerable since you’re the main breadwinner. I feel like you need more life insurance than someone with a safer hobby like swimming or curling.>

Also, as needed please use the right discussion framing techniques—such the “8 Phrases to Help Your Relationship Thrive,” explained in the New York Times—to keep the discussion on an even keel.

<Right: “Let’s back up for a moment and consider what this relationship needs from us right now.>

<Wrong: “You selfish bastard, you’re obviously out to bankrupt me in my widowhood.”> 

Finally, if you realize that the discussion is getting out of hand, please work to de-escalate it.

<Right: “I think I’m too hangry to have this discussion right now. Can we hit the pause button, reflect on this while we simmer down, and pick it back up after dinner?”>

<Wrong: “Your mom was right about you, all you care about is yourself.”>

Now that I’ve provided these examples of how our dialogue should go, let’s now discuss me lowering the coverage from $3 million down to $1 million, because I’m starting to worry I’m worth more to you dead than alive.

Direct constraint and negative prompting

This is about helping steer the AI’s output, so it doesn’t give responses that are too verbose and/or generic, and/or have the wrong tone. It also tells the model what it should specifically not do, like recommend something you already know you don’t want.

GenAI direct constraint and negative prompting example:

Tell the AI: I want you to help me figure out how to deal with a weirdo who parks his car in front of my house and sits there for hours at a time, and on the last occasion left behind a soda bottle full of his urine. Provide me three steps to take, from most gentle to most firm, to get rid of him, with just one or two sentences in each step. Don’t include legal advice since I’m not planning to pursue that path, and don’t include the response, “If you leave behind your urine again I will find you and I will kill you,” because my wife already made me promise I wouldn’t say that.

Tell your brother: Next time we talk on the phone, I want to strictly avoid the following topics: 1) politics; 2) any culture war matters; 3) what “they” are teaching in our schools; 4) any paraphrasing of a polemic that you got from a podcast; 5) anything that is an “issue”; and 6) anything “important.” I would like you to focus on one of more of the following topics: 1) our pets or children; 2) any wildlife sighting (can include, say, drunken frat boys in their natural habitat); 3) cycling (firsthand accounts or commentary on the pro peloton); 4) fond shared reminiscences; 5) anything that is funny, random, and/or unimportant. Present each topic in five sentences or less, and make sure I have the opportunity to speak as well.

Chain of thought prompting

This is where you ask the LLM to “think out loud” as it creates a step-by-step explanation of the solution to your query. By breaking a complicated response into logical steps, you help the model to avoid errors in reasoning, and should these occur you’ll be better able to check the logic and see where the AI went wrong.

GenAI chain of thought prompting example:

Tell the AI: I want you to help me plan a five-day vacation to Santa Fe, New Mexico for two people for under $3,000. First, make sure there is no hot air balloon festival or other huge tourist draw that will cause National to run out of rental cars without realizing it since their reservation system is obviously primitive and has no real-time inventory check capability. Make sure the rental car company you select can guarantee a traditional car, not an electric one, so I don’t have to charge it in a Walmart parking lot (resulting in the unwise purchase of a plastic gallon jug of vodka that will set the tone for the entire vacation). When selecting a hotel, make sure it doesn’t consume so much of the budget that we can’t afford to eat three times a day. When estimating restaurant costs, assume that the wine will be at least $12 a glass, and beer $9, and modify the food budget accordingly; in general make sure “huge servings” is well represented in user reviews. Make sure not all tourist outings are Georgia-O’Keefe-themed because I have trauma around her art. Should you determine that $3,000 isn’t enough for a five-day vacation in Santa Fe, feel free to suggest alternative destinations, but don’t suggest Florida or anything similarly far away because I’m out of frequent flier miles. Only provide recommendations—do not reserve anything. In the event you’ve already hacked my credit card number, don’t leverage it to do anything agentic; that is, respect that I’ve specifically denied you these entitlements (though honestly, if you’ve already hacked my card, who am I kidding?).

Tell your wife: It’s your turn to decide where we should hike today. When planning this outing, make sure we have a plan ahead of time with a specific destination (i.e., “Sibley Staging Area at 6800 Skyline Blvd” vs. some vague, loosey-goosey notion like “somewhere in Sibley” or “that one trail with all the live oaks, out by Huckleberry” that will have me on my phone searching in vain for trailheads in Google Maps while you drive, so I not only get carsick but am given random dropped-pin coordinates in the middle of nowhere, such that the GPS voice announces “You have arrived” when we’re just in the middle of some road with nowhere to park and not a trail in site. Make sure that the drive time to the trailhead does not exceed the actual hiking time. If there are bridges along the route, determine if they are likely to be clotted with traffic. Present all of the logistical steps sequentially so that I will know in advance if this is going to be a procedural quagmire that adds to the very stress levels that this outing in nature is supposed to reduce.

Caveat

As you apply these prompt engineering techniques to your human interactions, be sure to tread carefully and tactfully, as humans are sensitive in ways an AI could never be. If you spend too much time interacting with a large language model, you may find yourself developing bad habits like prioritizing precision over decorum. This could produce a negative reaction in a human that an AI would never have, such as whacking you upside the head.

Other albertnet posts on A.I.

• I, Chatbot
• Almost Intelligent – Part I
• Almost Intelligent – Part II
• Smartphones & Artificial Stupidity
• A.I. Smackdown – Moto vs. Cortana vs. Siri
• Could Artificial Intelligence Replace Writers? – Part 1
• Could Artificial Intelligence Replace Writers? – Part 2
• Could Artificial Intelligence Replace Writers? – Part 3
• A.I. Smackdown – English Major vs. ChatGPT – Part 1
• A.I. Smackdown – English Major vs. ChatGPT – Part 2
• Schooling ChatGPT
• Will A.I. Steal Our Jobs?
• Tech Check-In - How Good is the Latest A.I.? - Part I
• Tech Check-In - How Good is the Latest A.I.? - Part II
• What is ChatGPT Great At (and Not)?
• Tech Reflection – Two Sides of AI
• AI Smackdown – ChatGPT vs. Copilot vs. Gemini
• New Year’s Resolutions — AI Edition
• Ask an AI Skeptithusiast
• More Advice From an AI Skeptithusiast

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Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

MAMILs in Action - a Big Ring Tale

Introduction

What is a “big ring tale,” you may ask? Well, you know about pickup games of basketball, where players head over to the court to shoot some hoops, encounter other players there, and have an impromptu game. This exists in cycling as well, when angry bikers happen upon others on the road and duke it out. (“Big ring,” as discussed here, refers to how the hero of such a tale, just before launching his final, devastating attack, “throws it in the big ring”—that is, shifts into his bike’s higher gear range.) This post recounts my latest showdown on the road, while also examining a fundamental question: is it lame to compete with road randos? Am I some sort of hothead?

MAMILs in Action – Wildcat Canyon Road, 10/13/2026

As our story begins, I’m ten minutes in to my standard road ride, a 20-mile loop with about 2,100 feet of climbing. I’m not feeling super hot, and I’m not warmed up, so I’m going pretty easy, or at least as easy as I can while climbing Los Angeles Avenue and Spruce Street. I’m maybe halfway up Spruce when I see this dude joining the road from a side street. He’s going pretty well so I figure he might overtake me. Which is fine. I’m not some guy who always has a chip on his shoulder. There are a lot of fast riders in the East Bay and there’s no shame in getting passed.

Still, I gauge this guy’s ability as I sense him approaching. I’m putting out a little over 250 watts, not too shabby, so I figure this isn’t some fred I’m dealing with. And sure enough, when he comes by, I note all the expected traits of a legit road cyclist: high-end bike (i.e., at least $8,000), roadie attire, shaved legs, good form, a flat back (though more ramrod-straight than relaxed), and an almost complete absence of body fat. He looks very fit despite being my age, possibly even a year or two older, so I won’t say it rankles that he’s overtaken me. But I’m not exactly impressed either, and cannot deny feeling a tiny but non-zero level of annoyance. Why? For a few reasons.

For one thing, he didn’t say hi. I don’t expect everybody to, but classy riders invariably will. It’s just friendly, and softens any sense of implied hierarchy, like I think I’m something special just because I’m going faster. (And since you asked, yes, I do in fact greet every single rider I overtake, even the one I see all the time who’s on a folding bike, with no helmet, who has only returned my greeting once, when I was with my wife.)

There’s also the matter of this guy’s clothing. I am not a snob and as detailed here I would like this sport to be more newbie-friendly and less elitist, and I am on the side of the 49% of my cycling community that feels inexpensive, even house-brand cycling clothing is perfectly acceptable. The problem is, this guy’s clothing is too expensive , and without being … how do I say it? Proper? Correct? If you’ve ever read the Jeeves books by P.G. Wodehouse, you’ll recall that the main character, Bertie Wooster, has more money than taste, and occasionally gets into a standoff where his butler Jeeves, the real brains of the operation, discourages him (albeit with almost infinite tact) from wearing this or that unfortunate outfit. If everybody had a Jeeves, there would be no Rapha clothing company. None of the veteran cyclists I know wears Rapha. The sleeves are too long, and the fit is, I don’t know, a bit too close, and it just has this yuppie-meets-hipster air about it. I am tempted to say Rapha is trying too hard, though I don’t like this expression since obviously we should all do our best. But Rapha is just too much. Too expensive, too idiosyncratic, somehow just douche-y. 

This guy is wearing sleek, racer-style Rapha shorts that happen to be tan, which just isn’t done. And his Rapha jersey is salmon-colored. There’s nothing tasteful about his combination, and yet it also lacks the devil-may-care look of somebody who can’t be bothered with matters of attire and would happily dress in the dark. It’s the sartorial equivalent of saying “whom,” to sound educated, when “who” would actually be the correct grammar. This guy is trying really hard to look cool, but he’s not cool, and trying and failing to be cool is even more uncool than what I do, which is to not bother trying to look cool because I know I’m not. (For the record, I’m wearing basic black Pearl Izumi shorts—a classic, tried-and-true garment that has never tried to make a statement—paired with the unassailable Albany High School Cougars team jersey I got for free because I’m a coach. It’s a Hyperthreads jersey, which says “good enough” instead of “only the best.”)

Another thing: this guy increased his pace as he approached, and then increased it a little more after passing me. Don’t get me wrong, I sometimes do this too, if I don’t want, say, a relative newcomer to the sport to latch on, draft for a while, and then pull alongside and engage me in conversation. It’s not that I never want this, but sometimes want to ride alone. And if I do increase my pace to discourage this latching-on, I make sure the change in speed is extremely gradual, so it’s basically undetectable. A rider with true class, in fact, can increase the pace while still appearing to actually slouch. Meanwhile, more often than not, particularly when the rider I pass is someone whose ability I perceive to be similar to my own, I don’t speed up at all … I overtake him or her simply because the speed I happen to be going is slightly higher than his or hers, and I say hi, and if I perceive he or she has subsequently latched on, the only difference in my behavior from that moment forward is that I’ll point out potholes, etc. as a courtesy. This is just the standard etiquette of a tried and true roadie.

But again, I couldn’t really care less that the guy has passed me. I’ve been in this sport a long time, and I know my place in it, and his, and any rando’s relative pace simply does not matter. The guy gradually pulls away, and I’m just doing my thing, and it’s a non-event … though there’s just this faint whisper of a voice in my head, but not even in words, it’s more of a nonverbal half-formed feeling that, if it were to be put into words, would be something like the musing of Pechorin, the character in Lermontov who, considering a poseur of his acquaintance, writes in his journal, “I feel that one day we shall meet on a narrow path, and one of us will fare ill.”

I hope I’ve made it clear that I don’t ride around looking for trouble, ready to lash out if I don’t like the cut of someone’s jib. So here’s the next thing that happens: after reaching the top of Spruce, and when beginning the flat-to-slightly-uphill section of Wildcat Canyon Road toward Inspiration Point (after which the road plunges downhill), and seeing the Rapha dude still ahead in the distance, I perceive another cyclist coming up from behind. He passes me too. No greeting from him either, but he gives a quick nod.

This guy is also on a high-end carbon road bike, an immaculate one in fact, and his non-Rapha clothing is impeccable. In fact it’s some kind of team kit, and the team has some funny name that I wish I could remember. It’s an odd phrase that suggests either something lost in translation, or an inside joke. Like the Rapha guy, this dude also has totally lean, ripped, shaved legs, and good form, but the big difference is, he appears to quite young, early twenties tops. He’s going at a fair clip and I quietly latch on. I give him some space, in case he’d rather be riding alone. (Is there a way to indicate this preference? Not that I can think of. Perhaps if he accelerated that would send a message, but his pace is unchanged.)

Now we’re going a fair bit faster than I would have by myself; after all, I don’t need to be warmed up to hold his wheel. (Drafting works, duh.) My legs are starting to wake up, and we’re cooking along at like 23 mph, up a 1-2% grade. The odd thing is, as fit as this kid is, he seems a little unsure carving through the curves. There’s just a bit of hesitation, suggesting he doesn’t have bike handling totally dialed, like maybe he’s come to cycling recently from another sport. There’s no particular value to this realization but I sense it being filed away as if for later use. Make no mistake, I have no opinion regarding my place in the roadie universe vis-à-vis this rider either; I’m happy enough just to be on his wheel, since going fast is more fun than not.

Well, I think you can guess where this is headed. Sure enough, after about a mile we’re bearing down on the Rapha dude. It would be perfectly reasonable to assume that Rapha would just hop aboard the train and we’d keep moving through space, like molecules that happened to form a bond until some other reaction reforms it. But I’ve got this feeling that something else will happen, that will create an interesting opportunity for me. It’s not that I have ambitions and am thus looking for opportunities; it’s just the race tactician that took up shop in my brain decades ago and never left.

The Rapha dude looks back and pours on more pace, and as we approach I note that his straight but stiff back has something aesthetically disturbing about it, the way we look at a hyena and cannot admire it as we would a tiger or wolf. Suddenly this guy is simply no longer acceptable to me. And here’s where everything seems to take on a familiar scripted quality for me: I can almost see in advance how this will play out. We will reach him right at the bottom of the short climb to the Brazil Building, following which the road plunges down a hill, around a curve, and climbs again. The short climb is probably where things will erupt, and I sense that the young guy is untested, and non-battle-hardened, and this will give me an opportunity. The downhill, meanwhile, will suit me perfectly. And when the climb resumes, the rest of it is shallow, and lumpy, and inconsistent—in short, complicated, thus favoring those like me who have ridden it a thousand times. Hell, I was probably hammering along Wildcat Canyon Road before this kid was born. Best of all, it’s still a mile and a half to Inspiration Point, where we’re all three likely headed, so it’s not like I’d be sucking the young guy’s wheel until the last second and then coming around. Randos do that with me from time to time, and there’s no valor in it. I need to give these guys the opportunity to bring their best counter-move; we need enough remaining road to let the best man win.

So tactically, everything seems to be shaping up perfectly, but there’s one problem: tactics only work if you actually have the athletic ability to execute. All the expertise in the world won’t matter if you’re weak, or old, or both. Weakness is all relative, of course, and I wouldn’t ever sincerely describe myself as weak per se, but then both these guys have already overtaken me. And when I think about how much stronger I was in my twenties … do you think I’d attack my twenty-year-old self? Forget about it. So as stoked as I’m starting to get, I don’t kid myself: this is pretty quixotic to even contemplate and chances are I’m headed for a spectacular defeat. My move might be impressive for a moment or two, but I have no delusion that fate will be on my side. My growing ambition is likely hubristic, except that this is ultimately just three guys on bicycles and nothing is at stake, ergo there can be no tragedy. It’ll be Hubris-Lite.

My only remaining hesitation, as we bear down on Rapha, is the inescapable sense that I might be being silly. Could it all be in my head that either of these guys even cares? It’s not like they’ve thrown down a gauntlet. It’s just guys going fast and guys going faster—no trash talk, no sudden accelerations, for all I know I could launch this huge attack and they might look at each other, puzzled, as if to say, “What’s his problem?” So I have the attack kind of coiled up but I’m still not sure I’ll use it. If everyone just keeps rolling along in some status quo way, I might just stay the course and channel my internal Gilda Radner: “Never mind!”

Ah, but right as we reach Rapha, he stands on the pedals and goes for broke. Excellent! And even better, the kid completely responds and launches a counter-attack, out of the saddle, thrashing the bike. So there you have it! Rapha has thrown the first punch! And the young guy has taken the bait! It is on! We’re hauling ass up the little climb and my lizard brain finally syncs with my neocortex, which issues the non-verbal equivalent of this executive dispatch: “Excessive use of force in overhauling the randos has been approved.”

And so: I make my move. This is the part of the story where literary convention would have me writing, “I put her in the big ring.” But of course I’ve been in the big ring practically since our story began. But I do launch as hellish an attack as I am capable of—no testing-the-waters nonsense, no looking over to see if it’s working, just an all-in, all-cards-on-the-table full-gas assault, not only on them, but on myself. I blast over the top of the hill with a lead of some kind, I dare not look back to see how large, and here’s the coup de grâce: I follow up the initial attack with a blistering sustained effort on the downhill, a stretch of road that I call the “I hate pain” hill (in reference to what it’s like climbing it). I shift all the way down the stack to my 11-tooth cog (in fact, I could call this a “Small Cog Tale”) and bomb the descent (watching like a  hawk for pedestrians because those who appreciate speed enjoy it responsibly). I generally figure I’m doing pretty good if I hit 35 mph on this stretch; today I hit 40. Around the bend I go, climbing again, still in the big ring, nursing all the speed I can out of my legs, shifting to larger rear cogs reluctantly, one at a time, fighting the loss of speed that’s demanded by physics—that is, the grade of the climb—and by biology, that being the age of my legs. I can’t believe how well my body is managing the effort. I’m almost incredulous. These legs!? These lungs? This heart? Seriously? Who knew I had this in me? It feels almost like a miracle. And of course experience figures strongly here: I know, by feel, exactly how hard I can push without going anaerobic. Whatever this best effort is, I can sustain it for the remaining mile-and-change to Inspiration Point where the blessed descent begins.

Paradoxically, the difficulty of sticking such an attack doesn’t lend itself very well to description. What can I say? It’s a savage effort. My respiratory system is turned up to 11, the kind of whooshing airflow that blows papers around a room. My legs burn like they drank habanero salsa. My entire body feels like an overextended rubber band I could expect to snap at any second. I’ve managed to instill that sense of actual crisis that tricks my body into delivering its best effort. And, pedal stroke by agonizing pedal stroke, it eventually works: I reach Inspiration Point without having been caught. So now I’ve got a really good hand.

Because of course it isn’t over; it is exceedingly rare that a legit roadie does an out-and-back to Inspiration Point. Where I’m headed, my opponents likely are, too. But descending is something I’m pretty decent at, and the young guy had showed some weakness at this discipline, and I know this road really well. I keep the heat on, and hope that I don’t catch up to a line of cars routed here from Highway 24, thanks to Google Maps. I hate the way that algorithm clogs up this park road just to save commuters a few minutes.  It would be anticlimactic for us all to get stuck in traffic.

Well, guess what: halfway down, there it is, the nose-to-tail commuter clump. Curses! I know from experience that getting stuck here will cost me about thirty seconds. (Not that the time is an issue; it’s just no fun inhaling exhaust fumes and riding the brakes.) So if I’ve managed to build a decent gap on the randos, I figure, I might just hang on to the end of Wildcat where it meets Camino Pablo where I’ll take a right. Sure enough, on the final stretch I look back, and here comes Rapha, barreling down toward me and the cars. I still have about fifty yards on him when I make the right turn. And guess what: I’m completely warmed up now, amped up on adrenaline, and newly inspired by the rando’s having in fact given chase. So I kick it in the guts and manage around 400 watts for the next half-mile. I never see him again.

Epilogue: who cares?

Of course this whole smackdown is literally a non-event. There are over 10,000 Masters 55+ racers in the United States, the vast majority of whom could kick my ass, and the time to distinguish myself as a bike racer is long past. And it’s not like I have this insatiable ego that constantly needs to be fed; if I did, I’d still race. But something about the absolute simplicity of this random tête-à-tête really satisfies. My career usually does not; it’s complicated and involves giant, months-long projects in which many dozens collaborate, so any sense of accomplishment tends to be so diluted as to essentially escape notice, often completely buried in the frustration it took to get there. And so something so elemental, so in-the-moment, a feat so inextricably wound up in pure will, is a rare and special treat that I can savor even as it burns. Reliving it through memory, and through this post, is also gratifying. I hope I’ve inspired you to let yourself take the bait should you find yourself facing a similar opportunity.

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For more cycling yarns click here.
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Biased Blow-By-Blow - 2026 Paris-Tours

Introduction

Paris-Tours, despite having been run for well over a century, is considered a fairly minor race. And albertnet is considered a fairly minor blog. So this is a great fit. As you can see, the parcours is practically flat:

Those red icons might appear at first blush to be climbs, but I think they’re actually indicators of piles of steaming cow pies on the roadway—which often are a major factor in the outcome of the race. Read on for my unvarnished report that doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to making fun of the riders, the race, or just about anyone or anything that catches my eye.

2026 Paris-Tours – Chartres to Tours

As I join the action, the riders have about 75 kilometers to go. There’s a breakaway of eleven riders with a gap of just under two minutes. The official Paris-Tours website has their own (albeit unbiased, very incomplete, less literary) blow-by-blow that says the riders have entered Indre-et-Loire, the “third and final department on the race route.” Department? Huh?

Peacock didn’t spring for two commentators. It’s just one guy, the kind of mournful sounding dude with the accent—what is it, Australian? I would say it’s Australian except Australians never sound mournful, do they? They always sound like they’re at a barbecue.

Wow, I just took a little “breakaway” of my own (nature calls!) and upon my return there is no commentary at all. Perhaps an audio issue? No, after some time the announcer speaks again. I guess he just ran out of things to say. Or maybe he was on mute.

Wow, a rider gets a flat and there’s no spare bike—maybe budget cuts are hitting the teams, too. Maybe nobody cares about this race. Anyhow, it’s not a terribly slow wheel change, considering modern wheels aren’t even quick release. Can you believe that? Quick release has been available for decades! Before my first race, in 1981, kids were trash-talking each other and made fun of this one kid because he had a Schwinn. The kid sputtered, “Yeah, but it’s a nice one … with quick release!”

The breakaway takes a right turn onto—what’s this? A dirt road! Man, the host towns and villages of this race couldn’t even afford pavement! What kind of rinky-dink race is this?

Tim Merlier (Soudal Quick-Step) punctures but at least his team has sprung for spare bikes. I guess it’s because Merlier is a race favorite.

The lead is down to 1:12 with 56 kilometers to go, so I’m not going to try to figure out the breakaway riders’ names. The official website of this race doesn’t offer a start list, believe it or not. (There’s a placeholder page, but it’s blank.) More budget cuts, I guess. Meanwhile, most of the heavy hitters whom I’d recognize aren’t even here … they raced the more prestigious Giro di Lombardia yesterday. It’s considered a Monument, and offers hotel lodging instead of camping, and paved roads, and a proper website. (Consider yourself lucky this blog isn’t operating on a shoestring budget today, with a fixed courier font or something.) Adding to my reporting challenge today is that cyclingnews isn’t bothering with a blow-by-blow. Let’s see what the Paris-Tours live report is saying: “Les échappés approchent du premier chemin de vigne. Il y en aura 9 au programme pour un total de 10 km.” My French is rusty but I think that means, “The chapped racers are approaching the finest vines. There will be a program at 9pm showing the final 10 kilometers.”

OMG, there’s a crash! I think several riders have fallen asleep and drifted off the side of the road into a ditch!

Wow, the image quality was so poor after I cropped that photo, I just cannot handle it. So I fed it to Gemini to clean up. See any hallucinations? Look at the riders’ numbers. It’s a mess.

Looks like a nice, soft landing at least.

Now, at the front, an explosive attack! It’s Lewis Askey (NSN Cycling Team), who was second place in this race back in 2023. I happen to know that because it was the coolest edition of this race ever, with an American, Riley Sheehan, taking a surprise victory. Sheehan was a neo-pro and didn’t even have a contract, but played his cards perfectly. And you know what makes that especially exciting to me? I raced with Riley’s dad, Clark, back in the day! Anyhow, Sheehan (the younger) is a favorite for today, and is now a teammate of Askey’s on NSN Cycling Team (formerly Israel-Premier Tech, who signed Sheehan for a three-year contract after his win here). It’s really too bad we don’t have Phil Liggett announcing today because he would say things like, “Clark Sheehan attacks!” or maybe “Adri van der Poel attacks!”

The lugubrious sole commentator is saying there are 35 hectares of vineyards in this region. I think he’s reading off a card. He doesn’t have the air of someone who has any idea how much a hectare is. He might as well be saying “a bunch of vineyards.” (Note: I myself do not know how much a hectare is. I would guess it’s more than an acre but less than football field.)

Okay, there are only five riders left in the breakaway so I’ll give you their identities. Looks like Julius van den Berg (Picnic PostNL), Matis Louvel (NSN), Stefan Bissegger (Decathlon CMA CGM), Storm Ingebrigtsen (Uno-X Mobility) and Yves Lampaert (Soudal Quick-Step). Only two of these are household names: Bissegger (who was sixth place in this race last year and eighth at Paris-Roubaix this year) and Lampaert (two-time winner of Dwars door Vlaanderen and a Tour de France stage winner).

Oh for crying out loud, in the time I took to type that paragraph, the lead somehow dropped to 25 seconds. Wait … suddenly it’s back up to 57. What the hell, could they not afford a competent splits-tracker? Is it some kid with a stopwatch and a notepad? Now they’ve removed the number altogether. What’s next … a text-based split? It’ll say, “A ways back”?

The footage now is of Axel Huens (Groupama-FDJ) who is solo, trying to bridge up to the breakaway. I was too slow to grab a photo (literally pointing my phone camera at the screen since Peacock blocks screen grabs) so I will have to describe him. He looks kind of sluggish and deflated, slack even, not like you’d expect of a rider trying a bold move like this. I think everyone is just running out the clock on 2026. And now he’s already caught by the group. He looks completely resigned, and bends his head down to speak into his race radio: “Well, it didn’t work. Sorry. I tried.” Here’s a photo, now that it’s too late.

Maybe he wasn’t talking on his race radio—maybe the teams couldn’t afford to supply them today. Maybe he was sucking peanut butter out of his jersey. Peanut butter? Yeah … no budget for energy bars today.

The breakaway reaches the fifth dirt sector. Fifth of the day, or fifth to last? I have no idea. It’s too dusty to tell.

Tudor Pro Cycling is on the front leading the chase, working for their leader, Matteo Trentin, who has won this race three times. I think the Tudor rider on the front is Stefan Kung, who is a total baller whom I’d say has to be considered a favorite himself.

Another rider punctures. Or, to be more precise, his tire punctures. The rider, Simon Goossens, is being a very good sport considering this mechanic is taking forever to change the wheel, and there are at least six or eight bikes on the team car—just none for Goossens.

The announcer is talking about Bissegger and says, “He’s one of those powerful riders.” It’s really a shame I couldn’t be co-announcing this race with him because I could reply, “As opposed to one of those powerless riders who nonetheless makes his living at this sport.”

The peloton hits a steep climb and there’s a huge attack at the front by some Lotto guy, flanked by Askey.

Wow, the peloton is all strung out now, and suddenly the gap to the breakaway is down to 15 seconds, and now 11 seconds … dang, with about 25 kilometers to go it seems things may come back together. But it wasn’t all for naught; because Louvel was in the break, his NSN team hasn’t had to do a lick of work chasing so their two favorites, Sheehan and Askey, will be fresh for whatever happens next.

The peloton is all back together now, and I think they’re sitting up a bit based on how they’re now gutter-to-gutter.

Looks like Merlier still hasn’t regained contact after his bike change. Odd, that.

Now, just before the breakaway is caught, Bissegger attacks! Does he think he can solo for 20 kilometers? Do I think he can? Well, if this were a vlog, you’d see me shrugging right now. Maybe he can solo.

Bissegger’s Decathlon team is at the front slowing things down. Bissegger looks pretty solid.

Now Christophe Laporte (Team Visma – Lease a Bike) takes the front, which is a bit odd since he’s his team’s leader and some lackey should be doing this.

Okay, this is weird: at some point, off-screen, Bissegger was caught, and now it’s his teammate Pierre Gautherat who’s off the front solo. What the hell happened? Did Gautherat just blow by his own teammate instead of giving him his wheel? Did Bissegger detonate or something?

There’s no split but the peloton can still see Gautherat. I’ve never heard of this guy but he does look pretty strong. Not like any of these guys don’t, of course.

Some Visma guy catches Gautherat, dragging another Decathlon rider up with him. The Visma guy is Per Strand Lagagagagagagaggagaga (dang it, they didn’t show his name long enough for me to catch it) and I don’t know who the second Declathlon dude is. Probably it doesn’t matter because the Visma guy won’t work. I can’t blame him—who would want those odds in the finale, two against one?

“Who’s gonna win this Paris-Tours?” the announcer asks dolefully. This is his go-to filler technique: the rhetorical question. He’ll ask this twenty more times before the end.

The trio is caught. The peloton is pretty big now, though I note Bissegger has gone out the back.

“We don’t know who’s going to win,” the commentator says somberly, pointlessly.

They hit a short climb and Decathlon attacks again. A group of six quickly has a decent gap. It includes Askey latched on the back. “Is this the group that’s gonna win?” the commentator asks woefully. Ooh, Laporte is in there, a race favorite, so this could be the move, with only eight kilometers to go. It’s flat from here on out, and paved.

Weirdly, we’re not getting any useful footage now … just the countryside. What happened? Did the camera bikes run out of gas? Or did broadcasters’ contracts get abruptly canceled to cut costs?

Okay, the riders are back on the screen. Five chasers are now bearing down on the breakaway. They latch on so we’ve got a group of ten, with about five kilometers to go. Behind, the rest of the peloton looks disorganized. They need little pencil caddies, and day planners.

But what’s this? The lead group is now screwing around, looking at each other, not seeming committed. Very odd, with less than four kilometers to go. We’ve got Jasper Stuyven (Soudal Quick-Step) in there, Laporte, Paul Lapeira (Decathlon), Florian Sénéchal (Alpecin – Premier-Tech), Toms Skujins (Lidl-Trek), and Per Strand Hagenes (Visma – Lease a Bike, the rider I formerly referred to as Lagagagagagagaggagaga, for which I apologize).

The group is fracturing and reassembling like an amoeba. Cripes, I’m getting a little lost here. If somebody would just solo, that’d make my job easier.

Skujins goes early! Per Strand Hagenes counters, and blows by him with about a kilometer to go! My prayers are answered!

Strand Hagenes is giving it his all! But it’s terribly close, Stuyven bearing down!

Strand Hagenes is holding strong! He looks over his shoulder, gauging  the gap! So does Stuyven!

Strand Hagenes has got this. And just ahead of the line, he does a very strange victory salute:

It’s kind of an “everybody just calm down” kind of gesture. Reminds me of standup comedians who try to shush the crowd so they can start their monologue.

Strand Hagenes finishes his salute with the classic “Oh no, did I leave the iron on back home?” gesture.

Stuyven rolls in for second place, just barely ahead of the group sprint which Laporte takes handily.

Now the footage is of everybody milling around. This is normally where we see a lot of hugs. Not so many today; everyone just looks tired and kind of let down. Then the footage changes to more groups coming over the line, as if we cared. Weirdly, a small bunch rolls in with two Astana riders sitting up and clapping. What are they celebrating? Their team didn’t get a rider in the top ten. Maybe they’re just glad the season is over. But couldn’t they save their applause for, say, the dinner table?

Here are the results.

Strand Hagenes is being interviewed.

INTERVIEWER: Congratulations on your win. [Yawns.] The, uh, power you had was impressive.

STRAND HAGENES: It was a good day, I didn’t feel the best, but we kept fighting. Lot of the guys were watching Christophe so I found a good moment.

INTERVIEWER: It’s a good victory, also the team’s victory.

STRAND HAGENES: We messed up in the beginning by not being in the break but the guys went all out to bring it back so we could still go for the win.

INTERVIEWER: This is a race dear to your heart, you won in 2022 in the U23 category.

STRAND HAGENES: I like the race, I’m always suffering a bit in October. [Shrugs, like they’re just talking about what he had for breakfast.] It’s an interesting race where anything could happen.

INTERVIEWER: Walk me through that victory salute, with the palms toward the asphalt, patting the air. What was that about?

STRAND HAGENES: As a professional rider winning a race, I want to use the platform to advance the public good, to put my moment of fame toward raising social awareness of important issues. And I think victory salutes are getting out of hand, with riders practically beating their chests, repeatedly punching the air, or pointing at themselves as if to say “Me, me, me!” It’s as though the sport is shifting from an emphasis on character to building this giant persona, and I’d just like to dial that back a bit. So that was my way of saying “Everyone calm down, it’s just a bike race.”

INTERVIEWER: So if you’d been holding a football, you wouldn’t have spiked it in the end zone?

STRAND HAGENES: I have no idea what you’re talking about.

Full disclosure: I freestyled a bit there, trying to capture what was unsaid in that interview. It’s hard to convey the nonverbals in a written report like this. Maybe you had to be there.

Now the top three riders mount the podium. Strand Hagenes is handed a bouquet and a very strange trophy that looks like a kid made it in art class out of some branches he found in the yard. Strand Hagenes stares at it, perplexed.

Finally he sets the weird trophy down on the podium and raises his bouquet in another understated salute. Stuyven looks kind of bored.

Well, there you have it, Paris-Tours done and dusted, and the 2026 cycling season as well. Check back in March when I’ll probably cover Paris-Nice, or visit this site next week when I’ll write about something totally unrelated to cycling … maybe a startling exposé, like the real truth about smurfs.

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From the Archives - Bits & Bobs Volume XXXIII

Introduction

This is the thirty-third installment in the “From the Archives – Bits & Bobs” series. Volume I of the series is here, Volume II is here, Volume III is here, Volume IV is here, Volume V is here, Volume VI is here, Volume VII is here, Volume XIII is here, Volume IX is here, Volume X is here, Volume XI is here, Volume XII is here, Volume XIII is here, Volume XIV is here, Volume XV is here, Volume XVI is here, Volume XVII is here, Volume XVIII is here, Volume XIX is here, Volume XX is here, Volume XXI is here, Volume XXII is here, Volume XXIII is here, Volume XXIV is here, Volume XXV is here, Volume XXVI is here, Volume XXVII is here, Volume XXVIII is here, Volume XXIX is here, Volume XXX is here, Volume XXXI is here, and Volume XXXII is here.

What are Bits & Bobs? They’re longer than tweets, shorter than essays, and slightly more formal than graffiti. Back when people wrote letters, and then treated email as a way to send letters, and there were no blogs, I got my literary ya-yas out by stretching the epistolary form into something almost bloglike. This old correspondence is what I now mine for literary snippets that, on a slow news day, can be assembled into these posts.

The different volumes of Bits & Bobs are not organized numerically, alphabetically, or taxonomically; nor are they assembled in order of priority, importance, urgency, or applicability. You can peruse them randomly, sequentially, or as directed by your Ouija board.

The following dispatches were written when I was a Berkeley student.

October 12, 1990

Today’s vocab word is “frame,” in the phrase “frame yourself.” I don’t have the etymology, and it’s possible my roommate B— coined it himself, but I’m quite certain it will see widespread use from here on out since it’s such a useful term—and you read it here first! Anyhow, framing yourself is when you say something really stupid and there’s nowhere to hide. Like when B— and I were in the San Francisco Centre, this huge nine-story shopping center, and checked out this really fancy shoe boutique, not because we wanted or could afford the shoes there but because of the really fly saleswoman. We walk in, expecting to sort of drift away naturally at any moment, but then the saleswoman says to B—, “How’s it going?” He looks at her, totally shocked, as if he’d assumed we were beneath her notice, and doesn’t know what to say. Finally he stammers out, “What?” She repeats her innocent greeting, and he trips over some words and then, to cover, picks up a display shoe and starts asking questions about it. He’s just making it worse, but she is pretty fly so I take a seat and pass the time comparing all these Italian dress shoes to my totally thrashed Nike Air Solo Flights. B— is asking now about whether these shoes would be resolable, and the saleswoman is getting really confused—”Why would you want to? Don’t the soles look durable?”—while B— begins to blush. That’s how you frame yourself. (I could give you numerous examples of this from my own life, but what would I want to do that for?)

November 3, 1991 [from a letter to my mom]

Tonight my homework was reading America Is in the Heart by Carlos Bulosan, and it triggered a random flashback of memory from just over four years ago. You [my mom], Geoff, Max and I were at the Wells Fargo Bank on the corner of Santa Rosa and Foothill in San Luis Obispo, late in the summer of 1987. All of my belongings—which we had miraculously crammed into your VW Jetta for the trip out—were already at Geoff’s old apartment on McCollum where we’d be staying briefly before moving into our own place. Now we were parting ways: you and Max would drive the thousand miles back to Boulder, and Geoff and I would bike to our apartment where I would start my adulthood.

The moment held oddly little emotional intensity for me. It seemed completely unrealistic—not because I was beginning a completely new life, but because this lifelong separation originated in a bank parking lot, of all places. Geoff showed all the signs of experiencing a big moment, and you began crying. As I sit here recalling it tonight, I am waiting to see if I’ll finally respond to that sendoff, from so long ago. Back then, I was like the kid in the Bulosan book, too wary of the new struggle I was beginning to bother looking back at my old life. In that parking lot I had slipped into some kind of emotional coma. Riding off, and seeing you drive away towards Colorado, I might as well have been biking to a friend’s house, sure to be back home in time for dinner. But what home? Home was not home anymore.

The impact of the moment never did catch up to me; the delayed reaction I expected never came. I simply wandered off into my future, looking around half-interestedly as though browsing at a garage sale, never thinking to look back over my shoulder. But for one long moment tonight, during which I closed my eyes and almost dropped my book, the accumulation of long-neglected responses almost overwhelmed me. Perhaps if I were a faster typist, or more swift in contemplation, you would be reading a more impassioned letter. As it is, the moment has already passed and I’m ready to get back to my book.

January 8, 1992

Did I ever tell you about The Iciest Chick in the World? This betty is cold fresh, man, we’re talkin’ straight-up stupid-fly. I first saw her last spring on the first day of English 139, and decided to bust out on the extreme extrovert tip. (That worked reasonably well with H—, at least until I took it a bit overboard, right?) So like I said, this chick is totally rad and offhandedly mentions how she was just in Kenya hanging out. Then, another totally dope freak sits down next to her. If I had seen her first, I would have called her the Iciest Chick in the World. But as it is, the friend is relegated to a close, yet also breathtaking, second. Then this dude sits down with them and starts talking, as if continuing a conversation from earlier, so he’s obviously their friend. As near as I can figure he’s not a boyfriend since he doesn’t show one of these fly betties more attention than the other. So now the trick is to kind of chat with all of them, even though my attention is drawn completely to the Iciest Chick. (To give you the idea of her look, she has short, dark hair, kind of like the Zachary’s waitress my roommate and I affectionately refer to as “The Lacrosse Player,” and the stylin’ clothes—and body—of a J.Crew model like we used to gape at in the catalogs that would arrive in the mail, unbidden but totally not junk mail.) Well, I never made it on time to English 139 again, despite my most earnest efforts, and thus never got to sit next to the Flyest Chick in the World again (until the day of the final exam, when she sat right next to me just to mess with me). But all semester long, from across the lecture hall, I’d surreptitiously check out the Iciest Chick during class, whimpering inwardly in hormonal agony, like a dog in heat trapped in a kennel. Since that final, I hadn’t seen her since last fall when I was riding my bike through campus down this hill. As she walked up the other way, I did a double-take, was totally distracted, and almost crashed my bike. Seriously.

Well, I recently saw her again. At the end of the fall term the professor of another English class threw a party at his house, and I attended with my friend H—. And who should show up but The Iciest Chick in the World! So I finally have another opportunity to strike up a conversation, and I feel like the situation is more in my favor now. I have a girlfriend, so I’m free from that stigma that lady-less guys seem to have: you know, that invisible sign around the available guy’s neck that says, “DEFECTIVE,” and the built-in kill switch that gets flipped whenever he screws up and lets on that he’s interested in a chick. You know, how he says “Hey” to her and she thinks, “Oh my god, I can’t even believe this desperate putz is trying to hit on me.” So not only do I have the poise of a guy who is spoken for and not on the make, I’m also there with H—, who is frankly gorgeous. Even though H— and I are just friends, nobody would necessarily know that. So a girl might take a slight interest in me, or at least might not be repelled by me, for the simple reason that I seem unavailable. Not that I intend to capitalize on any of this; it’s just nice not feeling like a pariah.

With all this in mind, I have the confidence to approach the Iciest Chick, who’s standing with her guy friend—the same dude I’d encountered the first time I met her (and whom I only remember because the fact of his friendship with this girl was a source of bottomless envy). I offhandedly remark, “Say, weren’t you two in English 139 last spring?” The dude laughs in my face and says, “Yeah, but how come you remember? There were like 150 people in that class!”

My poise is shaken seismically. What can I say? That I remember him only because he was with her, and I remember her because she’s the Iciest Chick in the World? I’m rescued by J—, a classmate from English 180A, who shows up out of nowhere and gracelessly butts in to the conversation. Even though we’d spent the past semester arguing in class, I suddenly treat him like an old friend. That’s me, Mr. Social. Turns out J— knows the Iciest Chicks’ guy friend, so I’m saved. The three of us chat, just as though the whole point of me saying hi wasn’t the chick.

Next thing I know the food has been served and I’m sitting on the floor at this coffee table, across from the guy friend, pretending to carry on a conversation. My real attention is of course on the Iciest Chick, who is sitting right next to me, fully enjoying my appreciation of her. Just by her presence she’s essentially teasing me, albeit aimlessly, like a cat sharpening its claws on a scratching post. Every time she brushes up against me I think I’m going to pass out. I am hoping this isn’t noticed by H—, who is at a nearby chair, because she’d probably give me endless shit about it later. 

H—, meanwhile, seems totally unaware that J— is transfixed by her, pining for her like he did all semester. He gets up and offers to get the Iciest Chick’s guy friend a beer. The friend says, “Thanks,” and I, not having received the same offer, venture a joke and say, “Yeah, thanks” to his back as he walks away. It comes off perfectly—the Iciest Chick even laughs—except for one thing: as I deliver the line, a small particle of food flies from my mouth. Whether or not the Iciest Chick saw the flying particle, the mere prospect that she did is enough to trample my mojo for the remainder of the evening. I’m just as paralyzed as I was ten years ago when I was chatting up the flyest girl in my junior high school class and my retainer fell out of my mouth. I end up pretending to practically ignore the Iciest Chick while shooting the breeze with the two guys. This always happens. Of course, this is actually the most appropriate thing to do anyway since I do have a girlfriend, after all. My interest in the Iciest Chick is like that of a hunter who shoots big game merely for sport, leaving the carcass to rot in the wilderness. Except that (to correct the metaphor) I realize I’m not a big game hunter at all, just some dumb tourist driven into the savanna by a local guide to look at a lion.

January 14, 1992

Remember summers as a kid? Imagine: it’s a hot day, and without thinking you drop by the neighbor kid’s place and ring the doorbell. Without so much as a greeting he strolls out, maybe you slap each other around a bit, one guy slouches into a lawn chair in the garage where it’s cool and the other rides around in circles on his little brother’s bike. Finally somebody says, “So whaddya wanna do.” There’s no answer and nobody cares, so you just hang out and maybe five minutes later (though nobody’s keeping track), the other guy says, “I know, let’s make some Kool-Aid and go up on the roof.” You get some towels and if you feel like it you actually climb to the roof. Otherwise you set up in the street and lie around in the sun. Most of your attention, what little of it there is, centers around making sure there’s a constant supply of Kool-Aid and ice and maybe that the towel’s damp at all times ‘cause it’s so hot. One moment slips into the next and no plans are made more than a minute or two in advance. Those days are never coming back.

February 25, 1992

We had a spate of vandalism on our street [in a sketchy part of south Berkeley]. Car windows broken out, and tires slashed, including the ones on my girlfriend’s scooter. Eventually the lady next door caught the vandal red-handed. He’s a student at the elementary school across the street, just ten years old.

In other news, my roommate and I went mountain biking and were heading up Ashby toward the trails when we encountered these two grade-school-aged kids riding as fast as they could, one on a tiny BMX bike and the other on a cheap, beat-to-hell Miyata ten-speed. We rode with them for a while, kind of making sure they didn’t get run over, because Ashby is a busy thoroughfare. The kid with the ten speed, who was wearing a dark wool cap that gave him the aura of street cred, which clashed comically with his youth, was really stoked on our bikes and asked if we raced, etc. I noticed his bike’s fork was bent, and told him to come by the Square Wheel and I’d write him up an estimate and fix his bike. He actually did bring the bike in, and I went a little easy on the labor charge. Get this: the bike had a sticker on it advertising the shop it came from: The High Wheeler, in Boulder, Colorado. My first full-time bike shop job!

So you might be wondering if there’s a point to these stories, and there is: turns out both are about the same kid. Days after picking up his bike from the shop, the kid happened to see me in front of my apartment, ran over to chat, and learned that I lived there. I mentioned the vandalism (without letting on I knew who’d done it), and described what a hassle it was replacing the scooter tires, etc. He looked so ashamed I felt bad for him.

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