I thought about talking about 2022 point by point, but the first point is off-limits because of an 📃 NDA (non-disclosure agreement).
I think, though, that I can easily write that I work with all sorts of trendy cloud stuff for distributed systems, like CosmosDB, Azure ServiceBus, IBM MQ. Obviously, all this crap is either in the ☁️ or in Kubernetes. It's also obvious that for most of my readers these words are like Chinese, and so I'd better move on to the next point.
My sister, who lives in the US, flew in to visit with her kids and boyfriend. According to a long-standing plan, we headed to Italy, where everything is indeed very beautiful, and I won't tell you anything particularly new. The magnificent, charming 🏰🏯 and picturesque ⛰ of Tuscany, the famous Cinque Terre coastline with its terrain and little villages clinging to the cliffs. Florence, with its highest concentration of works of art per square kilometer. We even popped into Venice, since we were passing by anyway. I really like it there, I would have hung out there for a couple of days instead of a couple of hours, but it is what it is.
There was, however, one interesting story — as usual, about my own dumbassery. When we were already at the end of the trip in the Dolomites (foothills of the Alps), I rented an e-bike. Not just any bike, but an MTB Scott, for 50 euros a day. A new one costs more than 5k €, so the machine is not bad, even though it weighs 27. It all started out well, sunny and cheerful, but I soon realized that the route turned out to be much harder than I thought.
At one point I tried to cut down slightly to the river to enjoy the view.
I rode down a trail marked as pedestrian. It literally started with asphalt, but ended in STS level 2 cobblestones (MTB difficulty scale). The bike wasn't exactly tuned for my weight (fork and shock). Out of inexperience, I overinflated the tires; they became bouncy, which is very dangerous when you're descending mountain trails.
As a result, I smashed my hands against the rocks with full force. I'm sitting on the side of the trail, it hurts, I'm scared. 🩸 is flowing from the scratches, the 🍎🍏 from my backpack rolled away who knows where, the cup of ☕️ got crushed and spilled all over a good powerbank. And a family of hikers is stomping by, staring at me wide-eyed. It's a bummer, but I'm used to this happening, and it happens to me quite often.
And what do you think, did I ride back to hand the 🚲 in at the rental shop, get an X-ray and all that?
Answer
You guessed right! I'm a little bit unhinged, and so an injury wasn't enough for me, I wanted more adventures. I wrapped my wrist with an elastic bandage and rode on. Because I paid the 💰, and tomorrow we're heading back to Latvia, and I really want to ride the 🚲. Classic sunk cost fallacy. This, as usually happens, only led me to much bigger problems. The wrist, even though I constantly soaked the bandage with cold 💧, got inflamed and hurt. Broken or just bruised — who knows. Soon I rode so far into the ⛰ that turning back was already harder than reaching the finish line, at least that's what I thought at the time. The road kept turning into "scree" made of small pebbles, where the heavy bike would go into a skid. As the classic said, a troubadour has two paths — a corporate gig or a house concert. I'll add that an MTBer also has two — a fall or the abyss. You either brake, go into a skid, and fall over, or you fly off a cliff.
Soon I realized that there was no way I'd make it by six, when I had to return the 🚲. Then again, the ⛰ were exceptionally steep, and the bike's 🔋 was dying. And it weighs 27kg. And here I am with a battered wrist, with no range left, trying to figure out what to do. My sister could probably come get me by car and pick me up so I don't have to slog to the very end. But getting to where I was (Sennes) would take her 2 hours because there are mountains all around. It's a good thing you can even drive there at all — after all, I'm in a nature park, and any motorized transport is practically forbidden here.
The only option for me: push another 400 meters up, over the pass. And then descend to the highway going north from Cortina d'Ampezzo. What can you do, a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. Or maybe I shouldn't have done it — it turned out to be one of the hardest climbs of my life. The incline was so incredible that my heart rate was constantly at 160, and reached 174, which literally never happens to me. The 🔋 was dying, and I conserved it as best I could. When I really couldn't take it anymore, I switched to a more powerful mode, but I knew this wouldn't end well. And it didn't. The 🔋 said enough, and from there on I walked.
Anyone who hasn't pushed a 27kg 🚲 uphill for two hundred meters with battered wrists doesn't know life. This whole trip, frankly speaking, was insanely hard, with the risk of flying into the abyss over the "scree", breaking limbs, and god knows what else. But this last part — it was the absolute 🍒🎂.
Steep route
Painfully slow and agonizing, but I made it up the ⛰. I was actually lucky that a constantly winding concrete switchback led all the way up, instead of scree. I think they concreted it for hikers, so it wouldn't fall apart from the traffic. When I reached the very top, it got a bit easier. The singletrack began. That's what they call trails where you can't drive a 🚙, but can perfectly well ride a bike. Next to me there are 🥾 🐮🐐🕺, and I was trying with all my might to ignore how badly my wrists hurt. It was pretty scary. What if they're broken, and I'll be stuck twiddling my thumbs for half a year. On the other hand, it's almost certain that with cracks in the 🦴 I wouldn't have been able to ride at all, let alone for dozens of km. Especially at the end, when the battery died, and the bike ran on my own steam.
An eternity later, I reached the trail going down. Here I wasn't so lucky — it was a switchback again, but not a concrete one, a rocky one. And on top of that, very, very twisty. The moment you get on the 🚲, you have to get right off, because taking the corner is impossible. The trail is too narrow, the 🧤 hurt too much. Getting off the 🚲 isn't a picnic either, but at least I'll stay alive. Slowly but surely I made my way down until I finally reached a paved road. Its incline was insane. All you had to do was let go of the brakes, and in just a few seconds the speed was 30-40 km/h. Here I ran into a new trap — I couldn't not brake, because the road was winding, but I couldn't squeeze the brake either, because my hands were cramping from the pain. I don't know by what miracle I reached the barrier, behind which was the 🅿️ for mere mortals. My sister was already waiting for me there; she was getting worried, because there had been no 📶 for the last hour, and I couldn't send a signal that I was in one piece.
I immediately confessed to her that I'd overdone it with the route and made a bunch of mistakes. That, however, was easy to notice — my ✋ was horribly swollen, and in several places I had scratches with dried 🩸, with which I had been scaring passing hikers and bikers.
All that's left is to sum it up. Yeah, I did a lot of stupid things. Drank too strong a ☕️, which increased my impulsiveness. Overinflated the tires. Cut through a pedestrian trail, where I fell the first time. Picked a route that was a bit too hard, and didn't turn back when I still could. Kept going after an injury.
And yet. Yesterday I was talking to a friend, and he believes you have to push to the limits of your capabilities, otherwise there's no progress. Self-actualization!