I was coming off my gravel ride today and heading to work when I saw a roadie ahead of me, and so I put my head down and tried to close the gap for a bit of an interval effort. He was really moving, so I had to really work for it, but I did get on his wheel eventually. After I'd had a chance to catch my breath, I came up next to him and said something like "hope you didn't mind me catching a wheel for a second there," which he didn't.
Then he commented on my dirty gravel bike and asked what the trail conditions are like in the area, because he'd been just on the road for a few months and hadn't hit the dirt in a while, and so I filled him in. He thanked me, we complimented each other's bikes, and then our routes split and we went our separate ways.
It was just a nice, friendly interaction of the type that you can't have on a freeway. And imagine, if bike commuting was commonplace, we could all be having those kinds of interactions all the time. Instead, we're all isolated from each other in metal boxes on wheels, and that sucks.
ik this is a shitpost but that's like the worst possible way to handle that situation
i'm like a third-generation none, my parents were both raised secular and their marriage was officiated by a guy from the a.h.a., but i had some christian classmates in like kindergarten or first grade (public school in california) and i sorta half remember asking my mom some question about something i'd heard them say at some point or another, and what she did was she explained to me (in 5yo detail, anyway) what christianity even was, which i didn't really understand at that point, and that was enough to make it clear to me how silly it all was.
one of the easiest ways to figure out who to trust, imo, is looking for who can most accurately and fairly describe what their opponents' argument is. trying to hide it away from a kid who's looking for answers is just going to make it more intriguing. going over it in detail makes it clear what the problems are.
e: damn, who'd i piss off