Ken Wake 3/23/26 Ken Wake 3/23/26

Commit

I ordered the frame. A Salsa Cutthroat. Carbon. Deep Orchid. I have been waiting for this frame since last year.

Ken Wake 3/16/26 Ken Wake 3/16/26

Composition

The night before the scan, I went looking for gym shorts. I could not find a pair that fit. Not because I had gained weight. Because I had lost it. The body had changed and I had not registered it.

Ken Wake 3/9/26 Ken Wake 3/9/26

Gradient

I did not plan to ride Cote de Pike. The estimate said twenty minutes. It took me forty-four. Here is what I paid attention to: heart rate. Not speed, not power, not the riders passing me.

Ken Wake 3/2/26 Ken Wake 3/2/26

Data

They drew fifteen vials on Tuesday. I sat in the chair and watched the tubes fill and thought about what I had written three weeks earlier. Fifteen vials of blood is doing something about it.

Ken Wake 2/23/26 Ken Wake 2/23/26

Oxford

The text came in while I was frothing milk. Piper. No preamble. A red crest. Mansfield College. University of Oxford.

Ken Wake 2/16/26 Ken Wake 2/16/26

Horizon

I moved the book. Thinking Design was scheduled for Fall 2026. It is now scheduled for June 2027. The reason is not scheduling. It is quality. I grew to hate the draft.

Ken Wake 2/9/26 Ken Wake 2/9/26

Governance

On Wednesday, the Office of Inspector General released the Medicare Advantage compliance guidance. By Thursday morning, I was revising my entire enterprise assurance plan. The question that kept forming was not about work.

Ken Wake 2/2/26 Ken Wake 2/2/26

Stability

I got on the bike on January 11. Once. My feet didn't hurt. Not even a little. You would think that would have sent me back the next day. I have not been back.

Ken Wake 1/26/26 Ken Wake 1/26/26

Return

When Cecili walked in, all four dogs lost their minds. The load didn't disappear; it divided. It was after dark. Too late for coffee. We ordered honeygrow and ate without ceremony. Then we got to work.

Ken Wake 1/19/26 Ken Wake 1/19/26

Espresso

I came to espresso through a health decision, not a lifestyle one. But once I started, I discovered a domain with extraordinary depth. Grind size. Dose weight. Extraction time. The machine responds to inputs, not intentions.

Ken Wake 1/12/26 Ken Wake 1/12/26

Robustness

Last week I wrote about load. This week I want to ask a different question: what held? The dogs create the morning. The espresso machine creates the ritual. The things that collapsed depend on discretionary energy.

Ken Wake 1/5/26 Ken Wake 1/5/26

Load

The year did not start with resolution. It started with weight. Ten pounds over the holidays. At home, mornings are designed. Over the holidays, mornings began with whatever was in front of me.

Ken Wake 12/29/25 Ken Wake 12/29/25

Pedals

There is a pair of pedals on my desk. OneUp Aluminum platforms. Purple, to match the Chris King components for a bike I have not yet built. No mechanism. No clip. No twist to release.

Ken Wake 12/22/25 Ken Wake 12/22/25

Friction

I stopped riding in June because of Achilles tendonitis. I had been riding clipless pedals because that is what serious cyclists do. I cannot rotate my ankles. The friction was there the entire time.

Ken Wake 12/15/25 Ken Wake 12/15/25

Alignment

The week I diagnosed the room, Cecili left for Asheville. The girls and I had the week. Solo parenting, work compression, holiday logistics. The office redesign did not happen. What I noticed instead was smaller.

Ken Wake 12/8/25 Ken Wake 12/8/25

Misalignment

The office is clean now. But cleaning it did not make me want a tidier office. It made me want a different one. The room was not messy. It was misaligned.

Ken Wake 12/1/25 Ken Wake 12/1/25

Cleanup

I planned to spend the weekend reorganizing my office. Life intervened. By Sunday evening I had cleared a few surfaces and run out of momentum. What surprised me was that even the partial work changed the room.

Ken Wake 11/24/25 Ken Wake 11/24/25

Depth

A Monday morning. Our CEO came in energized. The idea had momentum before anyone had examined it. Something felt off.

Ken Wake 11/17/25 Ken Wake 11/17/25

Threshold

A year ago I was using a cane in airports. I am forty-eight years old. Before I turn fifty, I intend to ride the Tour Divide. This is not a reasonable plan.