Weird

The drama. The pageantry. The American Birkebeiner Giant Ski Race on Main Street in Hayward.

The 2025 race featured 30 teams, including the champion — Tree Schoolers.

From Wikipedia: “An ice spike is an ice formation, often in the shape of an inverted icicle, that projects upwards from the surface of a body of frozen water. Ice spikes created by natural processes on the surface of small bodies of frozen water have been reported for many decades, although their occurrence is quite rare. … Natural ice spikes can grow into shapes other than a classic spike shape, and have been variously reported as ice candles, ice towers or ice vases as there is no standard nomenclature for these other forms.”

Among the mind-blowing coincidences of my life is how I met the countercultural chaos mathematician Ralph Abraham, who died on September 19. He was a huge influence on me and the moment we met was extraordinary.

Coincidence is not technically the same thing as synchronicity. To believe in synchronicity, you must believe in meaning. And I did.

It was the 1990s and I was a young hippie newlywed in Bonny Doon, the backwoods of Santa Cruz, California. Like a lot of folks, my wife and I lived at the end of a long winding dirt road at the end of another long winding road. It was like a miles-long driveway. People with land out there had sprinkled the place with trailers and shacks, and they let people rent them cheap on the down low. One of those shacks was home sweet home. You could hear the ocean in the distance. The outhouse had no walls or roof, it was just … out. …

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