I admit that last year was the only Vuelta I've yet followed as it unfolded (my active following of the sport is limited to the 23 Tour and the period from halfway through the 24 Giro to present), but it's my favorite of the grand tours. It's the Week 3 of the year, if you will: people are both tired and wired after a long season; riders and teams may want to make up for an otherwise anonymous year; there's a pervasive serotinal mood to fit the season, a Friday afternoon or spring semester senior year energy; unexpected crazy shit is liable to happen, from a domestique getting his day in a wily breakaway raid to a stage depart from a Carrefour. It's a race with sunglasses and a Hawaiian shirt on. Maybe its historical status as the youngest and least prestigious GT helps it take itself less seriously. In any case, here are my wishes for the 2025 Vuelta a España, ranked roughly in order of descending likelihood.

• Jonas wins GC by at least 7 minutes
• Jonas stunts on everyone on the Angliru
• General morale-crushing domination by my lil yellow boys
• Romo and/or Castrillo stage win
• Pidcock finally accepts his True Nature as a punchy breakaway merchant
• One more finish from Landa in the traditional Landa Position of GC (3rd-8th)
• Traditional UAE \{setminus} Pog antics
• Soler doing Soler things
• A couple good days for the EF squad, who can best be described vibes-wise as "local magnet school's eighth-grade boys' delegation, with their two adult chaperones"
• A return of the stone-cold killer version of Egan Bernal we saw briefly and gloriously at Jaén
• Tiberi does not prosper
• Some manner of wacky bullshit at the TTT
• At least one of the Aussies delivers us another Jai Hindley "we're not here to fuck spiders" esoteric and profane Australianism
• Nobody gets badly hurt
• Rogla astral projects into the Vuelta
• Proverbial boys with the time machine save the Wout of last year's Vuelta from that heartbreaking, knee-obliterating, Vuelta-ending crash. He takes both points and KOM jerseys all the way to Madrid.
• I just want to hear Sean Kelly's voice one more time, TNT and Eurosport >:'(

I don't have much to add to this, it's just a sweet little story I wanted to share:

The Crane Wife by CJ Hauser

I got a job in May, which is why I haven't posted as much on here. It takes up most of my attention and mental energy, which is I think more of a factor in not Doing much lately than it taking up my time.

I have a lot of stuff I want to do--I found that article by linkhopping around the small web, which is something I've been growing a bit of a hyperfixation on the last couple days, imagining hosting options and domain names and tech pipelines for a hypothetical little digital plot of my own. I've been guiltily percolating a newish novel idea since January, guiltily because it hasn't translated into any words on paper (I'm both mortified to talk about it and bursting with the desire to do so). I'm wanting to learn to sew, but that's also been more of a mental hobby of picking out patterns and grabbing little bits from work (a quilt shop) and imagining projects than actually doing anything. It's just a weird holding pattern of having reached what was a goal for so long, and yet nothing else has changed. A bit of the "now what?" has settled in.

We've reached that late summer early fall serotinal period a bit earlier than usual, by my personal demarcation point of the leaves on the local black walnuts starting to turn yellow. They're the first tree around here to turn for the fall. But the Joe-Pye weeds are still in full bloom, little pink cloud banks by the sides of the road, and the blessed interval of cooler weather we've been having has come to an end, so summer isn't really done with us yet.

And the seasons turn also for the bike folk! It's one of the wackier parts of the calendar, in between the Tour and the Vuelta a España. A bustle of activity with Vuelta tuneup races like San Sebastian and Vuelta a Burgos; the awkward middle child of World Tour one-weekers, Tour de Pologne; the half a metric ton of salmon for winning KOM race; and a sprinkling of random French races like Tour de l'Ain. Folks are gearing up for the (men's; the women's was in May) Vuelta or Worlds, they're announcing their plans for the rest of the 2025 season, they're announcing team transfers for next year.

I dunno. Time moves on, with or without me.