User Guide

Questions added as they're asked.

Q. What's this blog for?
Q. What's with the footnotes?
Q. What is cyclocross?
Q. Why don't any of the subject lines make sense?
Q. What were you doing in Africa?

Q. What's this blog for?
A. Good blogs I suppose are for or about something, but this one's mostly a personal reference. I write in a vague attempt to stay literate now that I'm out of school; I write to think; I write instead of watching TV. 

In an attempt to prove that I'm capable of sticking to a theme, I also started a little side project about things I see and hear on BART. I update that a lot more frequently.

Q. What's with the footnotes?
A. I speculate, in advanced MS Paint, that most people usually write/think like this:

My internal monologue usually looks more like this:

There's a lot of places to go between the beginning and end of a sentence, is what I'm saying. At least I've graduated to footnotes from the old mess of asterisks. You should read them, anyway; sometimes they house the good stuff.

Q. What is cyclocross?
A. Cyclocross is a short-format bike race over mixed terrain, some of which forces you to get off your bike and run (or trudge, as the case may be). It's my favorite sort of racing these days for many reasons—but the one you should care about is that it's very spectator-friendly. And there's beer.

Other, more entertaining answers:

• From my teammate Lee Slone: the cylcocross comic
• On Xtranormal: hipsters discussing cylcocross
• From my erstwhile roommate Jacob SB: scenes from the collegiate races at the 2010 cyclocross nationals in Bend, Oregon.

More bike backstory here.

Q. Why don't any of the subject lines make sense?
A. Some British magazines—such as Q, which my hip mother reads—put a cryptic phrase on the spine of each issue and award a prize to the reader who can figure out what it has to do with the content. I'm not saying I have any prizes, but, hey, consider it a puzzle. They're mostly just song lyrics anyway.

Q. What were you doing in Africa?
A. After finishing high school, I took a (semi-forced) semester off and traveled via overland truck from Kenya to South Africa. I studied African development at Cal and returned after graduating for a shorter trip through West Africa and Morocco, in part to figure out if I wanted to actually use my degree. The answer ended up being no, not for the time being. It's complicated. I do know, though, that something about the place gets under your skin and stays there. I'll be back.

If you're planning African travel, I'm happy to share what limited things I know. You can reach me at ealiasalim(at)gmail.

Among the reasons I want to return to the dark continent:
lack of liability laws really bring out the best in local entertainment.
Due diligence here was feeding the crocodile a chicken before letting me sit on it.