Category: just life

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just life

bike upgrade

i’ve been riding my bike more and more in recent years. even with a car that rides electric up to 40kms (which is enough to go into town a couple of times), and even with knowing the battery is charged with renewable energies, it still doesn’t feel right to drive it on a whim for short distances. plus, all the time it takes to remove the car cover, deal with gates, finding a parking spot… blergh. so, bike it is! a few times a week i take it to go swimming in town, or ride to cabanas for knitting club, and it suits me fine.

the ride into town though, while not particularly challenging, has a small hill that demands the lowest gears of my órbita, and is just… annoying. sometimes it’s annoying enough that i don’t want to go swim at all because of it. i’ve been hearing about electric bikes for ages, but the price tag on them was always a little too daunting for me to consider one. plus, it felt… lazy? in my head, only older people were allowed electric bikes, for some reason, and i barely knew anyone my age who had one.

lately though, i got over it. i tried a very basic electric bike in the netherlands for a day, and like craig wrote, “I went to climb a hill and it felt as if a giant had gently placed his hand on my back and pushed me forward.” YES, exactly! i realized that i wanted that ease every day, so that my head did not add this extra friction to the trips i wanted to do with the bike. i wanted to use it more!

i looked for one OLX for some time, but then by chance, i found out a friend had one in her garage that she wanted to get rid of… so i guess the universe was telling me to go for it, and i did! meet the new kid in town, a foldable conor maui:

normally, this wouldn’t be the kind of bike that i’d go for, as i prefer the comfort that curved handlebars and bigger wheels give… but it was practically new (a mere 180kms on the odometer, and barely a scratch!) and the price was a steal. plus, it’s kind of cool to try a small folding bike that i could potentially bring with me on the car or the train. for now, it’s just been such a joy to ride it, and i find myself picking longer or uphill routes just for fun.

i just realized this is the sixth bike i’ve bought as an adult — the love affair for this kind of 2-wheel transportation continues! :)

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just life weeknotes

weeknotes 50-51/23

on the last week before coming north, we cleaned up the house, made some last christmas shopping for the children, wrapped up the presents and ate everything from the garden — i even made caldo verde with the leaves of the broccoli plant! :)

on the first days in the north, i saw my niece LJ, the cutest 5 month old ever! she’s in a really nice phase now, laughing easily at everyone and charming us all.

then we drove further north to be with the parents for christmas… only to find them infected with covid. :( so it’s a bit of a lonely christmas this year, every branch of the family in its own home, and the boy staying with his own parents. my ears hurt from all the mask-wearing, but so far i’ve managed to stave off an infection. fingers crossed it stays that way and that everyone will be bug-free by new years!

because there’s not much to do, i’ve managed to do a bit of reading to wrap up the year: i’ve finished the sweetness at the bottom of the pie, bird by bird, check & mate and olive kitteridge, as well as a few children’s books. each one of these was great for its own reasons: some for the surprising format, some for being really well read by the author, some were just comforting in their predictability… it’s been a good year for books.

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just life weeknotes

weeknotes 49/23

a mostly quiet week, spent running errands and trying to get the presents for all the family. i finished 2 very short audiobooks: how to keep house while drowning and train dreams. the first in particular stuck with me, its compassionate advice applying to much more than just house chores.

we’re full on “pre-christmas mode” around here, and one of the things i must do is to use the vegetables i have in the mini plot before we head north. so today i took all the chard and did a nice stir-fry with it. it’s still amazing to me that i can grow these things with some seeds and a bit of dirt!

and on the same vein, sometime ago the town was offering some free 300L plastic composters, to those who wanted them. i signed up for it, and forgot about it until they emailed me last week! so this week we had a little workshop to learn how to work with them, and will soon be receiving the dalek-shaped contraption. i can’t wait!

and last but not least, this gorgeous hoopoe, just chilling. :)

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just life

weeknotes 48/23

– my new hobonichi is here and the first date on the calendar was november 27… so of course i immediately jumped into it. :)

– lately, i’ve been kind of fascinated by ultramarathons, and we watched a few documentaries about them this week. i’m not a runner, but i admire people who can run the whole day, and then the next day, and the next day, and the next day ad nauseum for weeks on end, up and down mountains. like… how?! i can’t even make it around town for a 5K…

– friends from abroad staying over always means re-discovering our region through their eyes. we overdosed on portuguese classical dishes and desserts, did the touristy things and even taught one of them how to solve a rubik’s cube!

– i finished listening to the high mountains of portugal, which was a curious and strange book. the title is misleading (or perhaps ironic?) and the country portrayed is a strange version of portugal where weird things happen… though not weird enough to call it a fantasy novel. maybe the title created expectations in me that didn’t pan out in the end.

– it’s 2 weeks until we head north, and already the pre-christmas anxiety is setting in. i don’t know why i seem incapable of just enjoying the season. even though i realize i don’t even have to do much in the end, i feel stressed by all the errands, the demands on my time and the close proximity of an overwhelming number of people… i know i’ll appreciate a lot of it in the end (and this year, there’s the added bonus of a baby niece!), but it’s not my favorite part of the year.

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birdwatching in portugal just life

weeknotes 47/23

we spent the week in beja!

we had a postcard meeting this weekend and used our house swapping membership to spend a few extra days there, in a cozy and super central apartment. the week was passed birdwatching, walking the narrow streets of beja, people-watching in centenarian cafés, admiring all the pretty tiles and filling up our bellies with alentejo’s many delights.

we went into a local museum with works from jorge vieira, and only later did i realize that he was the same artist who did the huge “man-sun” metal sculture on expo 98. the museum focused more on his ceramic works, and the boy and i admired the one above, which we both thought was a pig until someone pointed out the horns… 😅

and naturally, there was some birdwatching too! nothing too fancy, but we logged a few new birds, like a red kite, eurasian jackdaw and a spanish sparrow, which looked rather mean!