Hitting 500 made me realize my GPS app lies about elevation gain sometimes.

Honestly, I kinda like that it's smaller now since it makes the challenge feel more precise than I remember.

Man I read something a while back about how even experienced mechanics get stuff like this wrong all the time. Someone was saying their buddy had been putting anti-seize on slide pins for years until a master tech told him that's actually the worst thing you can do because it dries out and causes binding. Now I'm paranoid about my own brake jobs thinking I've been messing up something basic this whole time.

Oh totally, my buddy Mike found a whole set of vintage drafting leads at a thrift store a couple years back. He was just messing around with some old school drafting film and swore the lines he got were way sharper than his usual Staedtler stuff. He said the graphite just felt denser or something, like it stuck to the film better and didn't smear as easy. He even tried sharpening some modern leads the exact same way and couldn't get the same crisp look. So I think there's something to that old formula for sure.

Yeah I used to think newer tech was automatically better, but hearing about your station buddies having the same problem really changed my mind. You think cheaper parts are the main reason they cook themselves?