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Wellness Wednesday for February 1, 2023

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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I recently got free access to a bike-sharing platform for 1 month, and I have been abusing the shit out of it, I cycled 30 km (18 miles) just a day back and already plan on riding again today. I used to cycle a lot as a teenager but I thought I grew out of it, certainly not what happened, cycling is just as enjoyable to me as it used to be. I really cannot understate how much I am enjoying cycling again. I wake up and immediately start thinking about and preparing for the next ride.

For those of you who live in a city with bike sharing, I strongly suggest you give it a try. Viewing a city through the eyes of a cyclist is much unlike viewing it through the window of a car or viewing it as a pedestrian. You are exposed to the weather like a pedestrian but traveling fast enough that you can scan an entire neighborhood and its venues in a reasonable amount of time. You can also stop anywhere you want as opposed to the stressful process of finding and paying for parking with a car. And of course, having a meal after the trip is a lot more satisfying once you have done 2 hours of exercise. Also, it's better if you can convince a friend or two to ride along with you.

I grew up next to a big city (Dubai, Population 4 million) but lived in the neighboring small city of Sharjah (population 1.2 million, ik not really small). Imagine NYC and northern NJ suburbs to get the dynamics between the two cities. So cycling in the big city, I've been able to experience the city I grew up next to through the eyes of a tourist because I rarely ever visit it other than for school or work.

Do you get people who say it's too hot to cycle in Dubai half of the year the way we get people who say it's too cold to cycle in Moscow half of the year?

Huh. I just looked at the average temperatures in Moscow and it's much warmer in the winter than I was expecting. Biking can get kind of rough at those temperatures, but year round outdoor running there seems like it should be fine. Maybe a couple weeks per year that are so cold that it's truly unpleasant, but mostly not that big of a deal.