mrCharlie

Reviving an old topic... legendary station WOXY 97X lives again, at least for a week. That was definitely my favorite station growing up, but reception was pretty terrible across most of the east side thanks to some awful country station in Georgetown. I mostly listened at home with my receiver and giant directional roof antenna. I kept listening after I moved and they went online before eventually going away, so I'm pretty excited. I had no idea the Cincinnati-based streaming station Inhailer was a thing, but I will be checking that out moving forward if they have an indie-centric playlist. Not useful for me since I'm not local anymore, but looks like its also available as a HD radio streaming station. https://www.citybeat.com/music/woxy-fms-modern-rock-500-countdown-finally-returns-in-may-after-20-years-off-the-radio-dial-14894043

There is a state park near me that's particularly bad for this, older trails as you mentioned - though my understanding is they've done a lot of work recently and added signage. The mountain bike only trail (one main loop with a couple of cutoffs) is thoroughly interwoven with bridle and hiking trails, most intersections are unclear leading to user conflict and horse damage on the bike trails. In the past I usually rode using trail map apps on my phone as a GPS, but reception is iffy and the phone stays in my bag. The watch will be nice next time, I also have the option to set the route ahead of time and get turn-by-turn guidance. All of that assumes the trail map data in the watch is current, which brings us back to no substitute for good signage. I realize a lot of the confusing layouts on trail systems are the result of trying to cram as much distance as possible into a small area, erosion control, and keeping hills ridable. I've certainly found myself appreciating shortcuts when the weather turns or me/my bike is broken (or just having a few options for a shorter ride) - but good signage is a must regardless, even with tech-based solutions.

My first Garmin (Vivoactive HR) died a little over two years old - while the watch itself was waterproof, apparently the buttons weren't entirely so if pressed while the watch was wet (which was stated very clearly in the manual). My fault in the end. Anyway, though it was well out of warranty I reached out to Garmin support for suggestions on how to dry it out. Along with a few ideas they offered a replacement for $60 - the watch itself was originally $250. I'd guess if you contacted them when the charging issue happened they would have made good. The app shows an absolutely ridiculous amount of data with my new watch, way more details than (at least the free version of) Strava. A lot of it is daily stats and biometric info. I particularly like the detailed training status/recovery info which I've found quite accurate. The biggest problem is there is just a LOT there, so its a bit overwhelming.

Seconding the dcrainmaker recommendation once you've zeroed in on a few possibilities. I currently have a Garmin Fenix 7 Sapphire Solar, which is amazing and a total overkill for my needs. But I had a bunch of gift cards stockpiled from Christmas and birthday, so decided to splurge. I went mountain biking with it today on trails I've never ridden, and was really glad to have the built-in maps which are surprisingly usable. Battery lasts about two weeks depending on how much GPS activity. Previously I had a Garmin Instinct for 3 1/2 years. It took an absolute beating, and needed nothing more than a replacement band after I wore through the loop. I decided it was time for an upgrade when I was only getting 4-5 days between charges. The Instinct series is a good all-round watch if you like the look (not everyone does), does a bit of everything and I loved the durability and battery life. If it wasn't for my gift card stockpile, I was going to get an Instinct 2 Solar - the potentially unlimited battery life was really appealing.

Car makers for years have been trying to kill off their entry level, low-profit models - the COVID chip shortage of the last few years was the excuse needed industry-wide to finally do so. Most manufacturers now focus on well-equipped, high margin, high priced crossovers, SUVs, and trucks. The rise of EVs is also a good excuse to keep prices high to cover new technology, though to be fair a lot of mass-market EVs really don't have much margin (many reportedly lose money). Another factor is that cars really are better and last longer than they ever have in the past. A few decades ago a 10-year-old car with 100,000 miles was just about on its way to the junkyard - now something like that will probably set you back $10k, and have several more years of life in it. A lot of people would rather buy a "nice" used car than something entry level and basic (and part of that is so they don't "look poor". Essentially, used cars are the new entry level. My opinion - as usual auto manufacturers have short memories. First, when the economy eventually cools off, most won't have anything inexpensive to offer. More significantly, by offer nothing entry-level US manufacturers in particular are creating the perfect conditions for Chinese manufacturers to come into the US and take over the entry level, exactly as Japanese and Korean manufacturers did in the past. Japanese and Korean cars initially appealed based strictly on low-price, grew into offering great value-for-money, and built up enough brand loyalty and equity to not offer models at every price point. Why would you buy a used Ford Escape when the same money puts you in a brand-new, well equipped, with warranty Zeekr X or BYD Seagull? At least Toyota and Hyundai (for instance) still offer some reasonably-priced models to build customer loyalty - if you have a good experience with your Corolla, you upgrade to a RAV4 when the kids arrive, and a Lexus when you make management.

A lot of that looks like they just removed walls, enlarged entrances or pulled up carpet - and ran out of money or interest most of the way through. I'm sort of torn on it, in many ways if I were buying a house someone else renovated I'd rather see the work with the walls open and finish the drywall myself. On my 1906 house, pretty much everything done wrong or done poorly was when it was converted back to single family as basically flipped in the late 70's.

On local Facebook groups, there is still some chatter from the "don't spoil our quaint village" crowd opposing any and every development proposal. Those voices are generally becoming overwhelmed by people who want more retail and (especially) more restaurants locally, and accept the reality that Granville will be growing whether we like it or not. Nobody wants a McDonald's or Wal-Mart on South Main St, but collectively most of us would love to be able to stay local even more often. Interestingly, many of the anti-development individuals were also vocal online in opposing the school income tax renewal that just passed. Pretty much all the LLC-owned developable empty commercial lots in Granville had "vote no" signs on them last week, as they do every time a school levy comes up. Those lots are also grossly overpriced. While speculative on my part, my suspicion is that if utility extensions and zoning changes provide more opportunity for commercial development in the area, the land that a few wealthy and powerful local groups have been sitting on for decades suddenly becomes a lot less valuable. So we get those groups in opposition to anything pro-development, at least until they get the chance to cash out.

Not taking away from the point, but I wonder how much of that decline is attributable to other forms of communication that really took hold during COVID (video/audio with Teams, Slack, Zoom, FaceTime)?

Thanks for posting, I'm in! I set up a Garmin Mountain Bike training plan when I got my new watch back in January, which generally got me on the bike (or trainer) 3-4 times a week for an hour or so, usually on my WfH lunch break. I've never ridden over the winter with that much consistency, and never followed any sort of heart rate zone training plan. I missed maybe three sessions and was feeling strong until a few weeks ago, when COVID finally caught up to me after three years. It was the first warm, dry week of the year and I was planning to take a day off and go mountain biking, that did not happen. Even though I was only really sick for a day I'm still feeling a bit wiped out. Slowly getting back on the bike (the weather isn't helping), so maybe this will be one more way to help keep me motivated. I actually canceled my Garmin training plan just this morning, it was really starting to ramp up with strength intervals right as a I got knocked out. I don't see catching up to that anytime soon.

Glad to hear, that's exactly the charger I had open to buy!

We picked up our first EV yesterday, a BMW i4 eDrive35. We lived with one car (hybrid Toyota Venza) for 13 months and it mostly worked since I'm fully remote. We can do a fair amount in Granville on foot/bike, but we were increasingly running into situations where one car was a problem, like my wife and I passing up work travel opportunities or our son getting sick at school. The biggest scare was when the sunroof and windshield on our Venza took a rock on the highway, taking months to get fully resolved - though to car was drivable, it served as a constant reminder we are frustratingly car-dependent. As mentioned elsewhere on here, Elon's antics were the final straw and we didn't even consider a Tesla - the BMW is nicer inside and out anyway, and built quality is excellent. The 260-mile range (the i4 has an option for more) is average-ish by modern EV standards but felt right to us, long enough for occasional trips but not hauling around or spending for more battery than we need. Another interesting compromise on the i4 is it shares 90% of body panels with the ICE 4-series, so we have a vestigial transmission tunnel which is filled with batteries. While a dedicated EV platform would be more space efficient, I find this interesting from a manufacturing perspective since it allows BMW to flex their line between EV/ICE models depending on demand (FWIW, the demand seems to be all-EV). If that's what it takes for companies to mitigate risk to offer more EVs and keep costs down, that seems like a win. One other surprise - we leased the car, something we've never even considered doing. First, it seemed like a good way to low-risk tiptoe into the EV world - there will be a lot of exciting options in 3 years, and we'll know by then if we got enough range or the right features. The big reason though is leasing the car felt like a pretty good deal. It's German made, so it doesn't qualify for the $7500 federal EV tax credit. However, I learned about the "leasing loophole" while researching the car - essentially any commercial company leasing a EV to a consumer gets the $7500 EV credit, without the country of manufacturing restrictions, and has the option to pass it along to consumers. In our case BMW took $7500 off the capitalized cost- if we decide to buy the car at the end of our lease, we'll effectively end up saving $7500 overall versus if we bought it outright. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/10/7500-new-ev-tax-credit-workarounds-to-irs-rules.html https://leasehackr.com/blog/2023/2/18/list-of-every-ev-that-gets-a-7500-credit-on-leases Now we just need to get a charger installed.

I really, REALLY want to see this route happen. The three of us are driving to Chicago for my wife's conference this week, dreading the traffic and parking as usual just to ride the train and walk once we get there. Amtrak would work so much better. My wife's student's hate having to either make the long drive, or deal with the flight for such a short trip - and they get reimbursed by the university. I guarantee almost all of them would take the train if it was an option.

I don't disagree, but FWIW the developments just to the north of there (which are technically Columbus, but with the NA mailing address everyone says they live in NA) are mostly relatively-dense-ish townhomes. My mother-in-law lives in a three story unit, which is really space efficient, and overlooks a rather nice marsh that I much prefer to the usual grass-lined retaining pond. Though you also might have nailed one of the reasons she likes living there. On the way to Grandma's Sunday my son pointed to Bubbly Hall and asked if we could get donuts.

I think Pickaway County has both of those beat. https://goo.gl/maps/kudFMfxwbJ1KNQbEA

Hopefully it won't set the Cincinnati & Eastern back too much, I'm assuming this sort of thing is pretty routine. I grew up right across the valley when the Peavine was still a mainline, it was nice to see trains finally running on it again.

This is a great point. My wife has an annual conference in Chicago, there isn't any particularly good route to drive there from the Columbus area. We usually drive via Lima/Ft Wayne, which is shorter in miles but includes 2-lane stretches, lots of stoplights, and long stretches with few services. It's usually takes 6-7 hours, worse if we hit any city at rush hour. Then there is the annoyance and very non-trivial expense of parking once we get to Chicago (conference is in the loop), storing a car we aren't going to use the entire time we are there. We've flown it a few times as well, the overhead of air travel takes away from the time savings from the flight. It's also expensive (especially now that there are three of us). The best part of that trip is not having an expensive-to-park car in Chicago, and taking the orange line from Midway to our hotel. I'd absolutely love to take a train instead, even if it cost the same and flying and took as long as driving.

Interesting. Potentially we see increased investment in density because there is nowhere else for corporate/investment money to go in the housing market. If this plan works, it seems like an improvement solving a very-real problem. It's difficult for homebuyers who need reasonable-and-prudent contingencies (inspections, financing, sale of previous property) to compete against all-cash, contingencies waived, over asking offers funded by corporate money.

I'm assuming the article means Heath, which would put it where (RIP) Toys R Us used to be/Big Lots is now. I don't think there are 30 streets in Hebron :)

I canceled my (hometown) Enquirer and (where I live now) Newark Advocate digital subscriptions a few years back. I was tired of paying two subscriptions for the same USA Today and other national content in both places, very little local news in either. There are MUCH better sources for paid national news. Even my boomer in-laws gave up on their Enquirer subscription last year - "there just isn't anything in it".

I lived in Mainstraße for a year back in 2007 and worked on Garfield Place. Usually rode the bus, made the walk all of once. This really nails that experience - nothing has changed with the CWB.

Walked the block or so down there for an early dinner on Saturday, it was outstanding. They did a really nice job converting what was a dance studio into something really nice inside. Along with (also Grow-owned, primarily breakfast/lunch) Station right across the street, this already busy area of Granville is becoming a small hub for restaurants. Despite being outside the core of downtown it still entirely walkable for most of the village (including from downtown) and Denison. Along with the fact both of these places are really good, the location and critical mass will hopefully help keep these top-of-mind and consistently busy. Plenty of additional opportunity for new businesses (hopefully more restaurants) along South Main - the badly-space-constrained vet's office and pet store have moved to River Road, Denison is trying to figure our what to do with the soon-to-be-decommissioned steam plant, and vacant lots between Raccoon Creek and the highway. Ray Ray's on Columbus Rd, despite only being a bit further, is not walkable from the village and is the only business in the area. Even though the food is good, they unfortunately seem to be struggling. When we go out for dinner in town it's always something we can walk to, so Ray Ray's isn't even a consideration.

I took a photo of this billboard juxtaposition a few years back in front of Jolly Pirate Donuts in Heath. I was hoping it was intentional...but it also wasn't up very long.

I wonder if ChatGPT also gives up with "PARITY ERROR" after one too many insults?

I had some really mixed feelings about the Munson Springs purchase. Granville badly needs an expanded business tax base (which the initial proposal would have contributed to), but the neighbors were definitely not happy about it. At least half the property was unsuitable for development as well, being mostly steep hillside. None of that seemed to stop them from moving forward...but the 2020 COVID downturn did. At the time it felt a lot like the village was bailing the developer out, but with Intel it now feels like the decision to purchase was a good one. I'd love to see at least some of it used for a park (specifically, multi-use trails that I can ride my mountain bike on), maybe I need to to one of the meetings and make that suggestion.

A lot of the accessories on Subaru engines are (or were) top mounted, and the standard is any hard impact point. I suspect in the case of Subarus, the changes are more related to impact height and are quite pronounced because of how low the hoods were previously. I'm certainly not saying the pedestrian impact standards are a bad thing, but reduced forward visibility is definitely a side-effect. Other otherwise very beneficial safety standards (rollover and side impact standards) have had similar side effects on outward visibility (higher beltlines, thicker pillars). Unfortunately this makes a lot of modern small cars feel claustrophobic and difficult to see out of, less of a problem for crossovers and SUVs with their more upright seating and taller windows. I suspect this could be one of the contributing factors (along with the snowball effect - getting a taller vehicle to see over the other taller vehicles) pushing people towards towards larger, higher vehicles.