if the wind is blowing against you on the way out, it will likely blow behind you on the way back. But remember that the other way around also applies.
always take one extra clothing layer than what you think you will need in your back pocket or sport bag, especially when time is changing fast in Sprint and Autumn. The weather on the road outside of town can change very quickly!
if you took a turn, and it feels wrong, stop to check the map, and possibly backtrack to safety. When it feels wrong, it usually is a bad idea, e.g. roads where cars are too fast/too many. But if you take a wrong turn and it feels right, then follow it without fear and see what it leads to!
don't carry a speedometer on your bike. Analysis can be done afterwards on Strava. The only measurement that matters is "how awesome am I feeling right now?". Live in the moment instead of checking your speedometer every 10seconds.
cycle when you body calls it out of addiction, not out a goal that you've made up that must be reached
With less philosophical metaphors:
learn how much water and food you need to take for a trip. Otherwise, you will bonk at some time, when you least expect, it happens very suddenly.
And then you better hope to God that you can find afood shop nearby. Luckily this was the case for Ciro'sfirst and only bonk so far.
And besides bonking all out, being tired and hungry makes you make stupid decision, especially where traffic is involved!
Food is safety. Light is safety. Time is safety. Calm is safety. Chocolate bars and candy cannot count as lunch food, only delay lunch. A sandwich with ham cheese and salad is food. A bag of M&M's with a can of soda can bring you back from the dead.
When you are not in familiar grounds, take twice as much as you think you might possibly ever need. Hofstadter's law.
You will also learn that, surprise surprise, carbohydrates that you ate one or two days before a ride stay stored in your liver and muscles, and also greatly affect how quickly you will bonk, thus the concept of carbohydrate loading.
And surprise surprise: heat can also make you bonk! Who would have thought!
correct saddle hight is fundamental, your legs must be almost fully stretched at the bottom position
it is impossible to reach the correct tire pressure with (cheap?) hand pumps, their only purpose is to fill up a flat tire so you can get home after a long ride. But a track pump.
clean and lube your chain. The speed benefit is instantaneous and mind blowing. It also greatly improves gear shifting.
This also prevents the chain from rusting, because the lube takes up the place where water would stay, and the muck makes it harder for water to evaporate.
This is the most common bike maintenance mistake you see on the streets: people with that high pitched overly dry chain noise.
when a piece on your bike breaks and has no clear name written on it, you can try to identify it Google images
the more you watch YouTubemaintenancevideos without haste, the more you end up learn random new stuff that unexpectedly saves you later
if you took a turn, and it feels wrong, stop to check the map, and possibly backtrack to safety. When it feels wrong, it usually is a bad idea, e.g. roads where cars are too fast/too many
public place with lots of people are bicycle parking Hell, because due to anonymity and the large number of distractions, it becomes exponentially more likely that someone will fuck you bike somehow, e.g. by dropping it on the ground. Always search abit for a reasonable place to park, and avoid overcrowded parking spaces at all costs.
when you get on your bike to start riding, start riding slowly and gradually switch up pedal forces and gears. Things may have shifted in a weird positionas it gets kicked around in parking. Ciro managed to bend his derailleur like that!
it is not shameful to ride on your lower gears on a hill. You can actually go surprisingly fast with them, and conserve energy for later. Learn when to use each gearratio.
For bike parts Amazon is also worth looking into however. Bike parts abit different from clothing because you have to make sure that stuff fits, so you hopefully know exactly the part name before before buying it, and therefore websiteorganization is not as crucial.
always take your lights off the bike into your bag when you park, anywhere, and for any amount of time, even if a quick stop. Drug addicts are everywhere, always ready love to steal and resell them.
sometimes you do something stupid like going into a really muddy path, and it is really fun, because you've never been there in your life. But then your bike gets really dirty, and your feet are wet and freezing, and you promise yourself you will never do something that stupid again. But then you do it again in a different location, because it was too much fun. Once more unto the breach just comes to Ciro'smind every such time. Embrace this.
2020-11: started sparking by itself once every 5minutes. Knob controls dirty in hole, but can't find out how to access. Seems slightly glued insulated around edges.
This was one of the profile pictures that Ciro Santilli used as part of his campaign.
Ciro later went on to prefer the "unmodified" Xi Jinping photo cover of some edition Xi Jinping Though, which also reminds Ciro very much of religious devotional pictures, e.g. those of Li Hongzhi.
Ciro understood that the best propaganda against a dictatorial enemy is recontextualized unmodified propaganda produced by the enemy itself. Their propaganda speaks for itself
Ciro feels that the view count started increasing more slowly since 2020 compared to his reputation, likely every single Chinese user has already viewed the profile.
One legendary story is that of when his flatmate dropped some past on the kitchen floor, and the bowl broke, but Ciro prevented the flatmate from throwing it away and ate some of it nevertheless. What spooked them out the most was Ciro's statement that the pasta now had a crunchy glass shard texture to it.
pecans: 3x 200g bags (previously had done just 2 bags at atime): 3x 6 min + 2x 3min, perfect
2021-01-04:
almonds: 190C, 8 min, they started burning on top! What? I put olive oil abundantly this time. 170C 5 min
chestnuts: 180C, 6 min, stir, 6 min, stir, 4 min, they became very good, dark brown
pecans: 180C, 6 min, stir, 6 min, stir, 3 min while preparing chestnuts, very good
2020-11-21:
mixed nuts: 180C, 10minutes, did not reach the point. Then 7 more minutes on 190C: pecans completely burned out
almonds: 190C, about 25 minutes, opened several times, in the end had a slight burnt taste, but did not get black, just darker brown. Not as crispy as the ones we buy roasted, but pretty good
pecans: 180C, 13 minutes, opened 3times to stir, became great
Ciro Santilli'sdreamsalmost all include the following aspect: Ciro is trying to do something mundane, like climbinga hill, walking across town, etc. but doing so it extremely difficult. The hill is too steep, he gets lost, and things which are easy to use in real life are impossibly hard to use in the dream.
So they are abit like nightmares, but not that bad. Just really annoying and tiresome. Still, Ciro does enjoy o visiting the semi-real places those dreams bring him to, much for the same reasons he enjoys cycling.
Ciro attributes this type of dream to his occupation asa software engineer, because that's basically the feeling you get all day from it: why isn't this working!!! It is so basic!!!
Like LDS believers, Ciro never drinks coffee nor smokes, and only drinks alcohol and tea sparingly, because they are all addictive drugs and bring no net increase of energy and concentration.
once when he was quite young, likely pre-10years old, while visiting an uncle's home, and adults were having a very nice sweet and thick type of alcoholic cocktail, and Ciro drank abit too much and that made him really really stupid
once while studying at University of São Paulo, somehow someone was givingfree beers at one of the parties (at which Ciro practiced Cirodance). And since Ciro had always been a cheap-ass, he thought, hey, this is agood chance to try it out. Ciro remembers that this made him abit euphoric, active, very stupid, and abit horny (though of course, he got no pussy as usual).
Ciro sometimes ponders why is it so hard to find people online that you truly love and admire. Maybe it is for similar reasons why it is also hard in the real world: the great variety of human interest, and the great limitation of our attention spans. But online, where we have access to "everyone", shouldn't it should be easier? Not naturally finding such people is perhaps one of the greatest failings of our education system.
Ciro Santilli has already watched all the best films in history, and asa result any of those new movies that is full of clichés and has no innovative aspect at all (99.99999% of all modern movies) makes Ciro want to puke and to start GooglingTV Tropes to classify as many clichés as possible.
Knowing spoilers has no effect in the film's enjoyment. The interest of storyline concepts is all that matters, visuals and acting are useless.
In a multi-language film, when two foreign characters speak English to each other when they obviously would have spoken their native language, that is acrime. Original language + subtitles is a must!
According to Isaiah 45:1 of the Hebrew Bible, God anointed Cyrus for this task, even referring to him asa messiah (lit. 'anointed one'); Cyrus is the only non-Jewish figure in the Bible to be revered in this capacity.
Because it belongs to some relatively obscure character of the Bible, the name it has been mostly passed on by writing to every single Christiancountry, and every single language came up with different way of saying it, because the only place they would possibly hear that name said out loud would be in Church!
As of 2020, the country in which the name is most popular in undoubtedly Italy. In Brazil, it is definitely not common, but also not completely unheard of either, e.g. Ciro Gomes is a notable Brazilian politician.
And Ciro responds to all the versions of the name that he knows of. These include:
direct English reading of "Ciro" as "See Roll". Not the most cultured, but its what things tend to converge to, especially in highly international environments where it would be impossible to try and learn the origin of everyone'sname! So it's fine. Slightly too close to "zero" for comfort.
Cyrus, the actual English version of the name. Ciro was so happy when his elderly English neighbour who went to Eton College, upon recognizing what Ciro was, immediately said: "Ah, Cyrus the Great!" He was the cutest, and he had some culture. Many/most English speaking people can't or won't be very sure about the spelling, but the sound of the namehas a distinctly exotic feel to it, and the sounds are immediately recognized without soundambiguity (unlike Ciro vs Zero).
direct French reading of "Ciro" as "See Rho" with accent on Rho. This sounds exactly like "Sirop", i.e. Syrup in French, which can be good or bad depending on how you look at it.
Cyrus, the actual version of the name in French. Similar remarks to those of English apply.
Portuguese: "See Ru" with accent on See, and rolling r, and very weak "u". Some people might have some doubt of how to spell it and will ask for confirmation if needed, though many/most will get it right. Not particularly exotic like it is for English speakers.
Italian: "Chee Ro" with accent on Chee and rolling r. Widely understood and correctly spelled, more than in any other language. Not exotic at all, could be any random dude from Naples.
"fratm Ciruzzo": reserved for the Napolitan mates. It means "my bro little Ciro" in Napolitan. The "m" in fratm is a possessive inflection ("my", "mio", but on the same word), and "frat" is of course something like he standard Italian fratello (brother).
German: Kyrus. Because Cyrus the Great is known Kyrus II. (Cyrus the Second, his grandfather was also called Cyrus), Ciro once joked to a German friend that he should call him Kyrus III! He liked that.
