That time I biked a mountain

One of my goals for the year was to re-engage in Neuralink, to find a happy new relationship as a heavy hitter at the company. To that end, it’s been an interesting year. I made the switch to the team I’d always hoped for, to the project I’d missed since it was canceled and I got shuffled off it in the summer of 2019. And not only is the work cool, I’ve now got teammates with whom I belong. They’re a bunch of folks who all escaped academia, who aren’t the Neuralink standard-issue Gen-Z engineers that make me feel a million years old. The new sense of belonging I've found at Neuralink this year has extended beyond the team: since the spring, I’ve been doing weekly runs with a Neuralink crew (and perhaps gaining a bit of a reputation around the office as a proper athlete, thank you very much).

Last year, I sorely regretted missing out on a company-sponsored bike ride, but a non-work friend talked me out of it for plans on which she subsequently bailed. As I was in the midst of my sixth IVF cycle, it may not have been the best plan to bike hard anyway. But this year, newly minted athletic reputation in hand, I was not going to miss out. Only, after all my training, my bike had other plans: on the day of the Napa Valley ALS ride, I got myself three flats within the first 23 miles and bowed out, wrapping up with a 14-mile run to find some way to honor the cause while I waited for my guys to wrap up their century ride (which the five of them adorably finished together). I can’t lie, it was all quite disheartening.

I hardly had it in me to shell out a couple hundred dollars more to participate in another company-sponsored ride just a month later when the Kelly Brush Ride for spinal cord injury was announced. But when a colleague reached out about a week and a half in advance to offer Neuralink funding to fully cover it, I could hardly say no. After all, it was just a 50-mile ride, and with all the 33-mile rides to work I'd done this year, that shouldn’t be too much to take on. I said yes, made some fairly back-bending arrangements to accommodate a party in SF the night before (crashing with a colleague I hardly knew on a mattress in his spare room surrounded by sporting equipment). Game on.

Neuralink friends trauma bonded over a ridiculously rainy ride through the mountains.

Early morning yesterday, while driving toward the event, I learned what I’d actually agreed to take on: this wasn’t some casual 50-mile roll through the park. I’d unwittingly signed up to bike 4000 feet of elevation around Mt. Tam when I’d not previously biked more than a few hundred. And, to top it off, the sky opened up as we made it to the starting line. My flimsy biking rain jacket purchased a decade ago for my commutes in Denmark was hardly a match for the weather. I had to bike with one eye open at times because the rain was whipping at us so hard it hurt my eyes. My poor colleague (who actually knows what he’s doing on a bike) stuck with me the whole time, and I can only imagine his boredom as I truly pushed my quads to their limits.

There’s a point of pride in being the slowest person to not give up. It taught me I was braver (and perhaps also sillier) than I imagined. It’s nice to know the years at Neuralink, with my adventurous world-traveling twenties slipping further into the rearview mirror, haven’t entirely stolen my sense of adventure. And it’s nice to have a friend who will waste four and a half hours biking with me around a mountain for which I am wildly unprepared.

Not nearly enough donuts

Among the assortment of races I committed myself to this spring in order to lock myself into a year of "giving running a shot" was one special one: the Alameda Donut Fun Run. I'd spotted the event last year while trying to find happy things I could do if I didn't opt into the final 3 rounds of IVF before 2024 came to a close. In the end, while I'm immeasurably grateful to my past self for opting into those 3, which overall yielded twice what the first 4 cycles did and have given me such greater peace of mind for our future, I still hadn't forgotten the race I left slip by. This year, I roped in a group of friends to team But I Am Le Tired and we made a morning of it. The only problem: not nearly enough donuts. Apparently, if you finished too quickly, you didn't even get a free donut (some great organization there). As I see it, those of us first to cross the finish line were the most motivated to run to our donuts, but I guess, as some folks say, nobody likes a quick finisher.

Team But I Am Le Tired at the Alameda Donut Fun Run 2025

I found myself a fancy croissant-donut and donut-sharked my way through it in celebration of my not-even-an-actual-5k success. (The race only even came out to around 2.75 miles!) Glad I hit up the event, wouldn't do it again. Loved getting to share the moment with friends.

Grand Reunion Tour - Final Stop of 2025

Check another state off the bucket list: this past weekend, I stepped foot for the first time in Washington state, after one major reschedule due to the nasty illness we caught en route home from Grandpa’s funeral.

Exploring downtown Seattle (and finally hitting up the Perennial Tea Room in person!)

It may not have been as warm as the originally planned visit, but the weather really held up for us. And what’s a cloud or two when in good company?

Making the most of a cloudy Saturday in the woods hiking to Talapus and Olallie Lakes.

We’ve missed Nate so much: he’s one of those friends you can just pick up with after time apart like it’s only been a minute. His decision to leave Neuralink has been one of the biggest hits I’ve taken over my years at this job.

Sunny Sunday on West Tiger Mountain

It’s so good to see a friend doing well and to get to enjoy his company in his element, from exploring (and photographing) Pacific Northwest nature together to enjoying drinks and food at cute restaurants and bars to savoring gooey dark chocolate brownies with coffee gelato over tea late at night in his living room.

A final taste of our time in Seattle with Nate

What more is there to say? I’ve missed my friend.

Escaping "should haves" and a reunion

I’m so overloaded with work, managing our new financial reality, and catching up on all the things that fell behind between the trip out east for Pop-pop’s funeral and the subsequent brutal non-Covid cold I caught en route home. I’ve hardly had a moment to digest this past week’s news. And news it’s been.

But maybe yesterday’s reunion with Anya, 8 years in the making, was a way to start processing. After all, she and I dove headfirst into all the “should have” life plans we’ve been throwing out the window since last we met. She turned in her “should haves” of stable wife, stable job, and fully paid mortgage for a new home, a fresh start, and a journey towards a career of passions sewn together. And I’m abandoning my “should haves” to chase a chaotic, validating experience where I’ll be raising fake twins birthed by some other extraordinary women while I juggle my unique path to parenthood and my role as the longest-tenured woman at an Elon Musk company, the world leader in neurotech, as a newly minted member of my dream team - next gen applications. I get to stay true to myself and the core knowledge that birth is not meant to be a part of my journey as a human. I know it to my core, the same way some people know they’ve been born into the wrong body. The concept of hosting another human inside of me would feel like my body’s ultimate betrayal. Maybe that makes me a little bit trans; I don’t know and I don’t really care. I feel right in my skin.

Clockwise from left: 1. a long-overdue reunion with one of my favorite sorority sisters, Anya. We're both traveling down our own uniquely unplanned paths, and I love it for us. I cannot wait to hear what adventures she'll have traversed by next we meet. 2. A little image I spotted today right when I needed it. 3. Me tonight after work, in the studio where I feel most comfortable in my own skin. I don't think this is what nearly-middle-aged nearly-a-mom (knock on wood) is supposed to look like, but I can't imagine it any other way.

I feel guilty for not being what I think I should be. I feel guilty to our future children for not being willing to sacrifice myself for them, the way so many other mothers would and do. Or as Nicolas says, I’m going to be a great dad.

I’m giving them what I can without losing myself. I’m trying to give them the childhood I wish I could have had, one with a built-in opposite-gender live-in bestie (I hope), someone like my childhood best friend Perri or my same-aged cousin Ryan. Inevitably it’s a childhood they’ll one day resent me for creating, but it’s the best I know to give.

So, about that news: we now know who those women will be, those incredible women who are going to bring our babies into this world. We met and picked them both this past week, and they picked us back. Holy crap. I feel such a debt of gratitude to them for giving me this chance at the kind of motherhood that will work for me, a second chance after we failed with James, a chance for something even better. I don’t feel I deserve this. I feel guilty for not for not telling them why we’re working with them. I wonder if they’d care; if they’d view me as a monster, the sort of monster I sometimes fear myself to be. What sort of mother knows profoundly that she will not host her own baby inside of her? Me, that’s who. I want to love them, I want to care for them, but I want to retain my own bodily integrity. And if I were a man, I wouldn’t have to wrestle with an ounce of guilt over this - there wouldn’t be a choice. There’d just be the basic biology of it all. But I never wanted a uterus. I still don’t.

What a luxury it is to have this privilege. How extraordinary that Neuralink has gifted me the means to take this exceptional life path and fate brought me a husband who’s willing to walk it with me. Of course, I also feel guilty about the privilege that goes with this journey. How very many exceptionally hard-working people will never get to enjoy the choices I have? I’m sorry the world cannot gift everyone the chance to live so luxuriously, so authentically. I cannot believe that I get to choose how many babies, and roughly when, and which biological sex - that I get to sculpt a family of my dreams that will never again conform to any more of my plans once those babies enter this world, just like any proper family, but this is a family that Nico and I are making profoundly on our terms. I don’t know why I got this lucky.

I’m working on letting go of guilt. Letting go of “should haves”. Loving myself for the crazy path I’m letting myself take, the one Nico’s letting me take without even needing to forgive me though somehow I still feel I need to forgive myself. It’s not easy.

Grand Reunion Tour - Bonus Stop

I couldn’t bear to fly across the country just to be sad, to remember someone who doesn’t have any more tomorrows. Not when there are so many people I love who are still out there, hearts beating, lives racing, and time escaping us but time left still. So I contacted my friends, some I hadn’t seen in several year, some since my wedding reception, and a special one for whom it’d only been weeks. Magically, a California friend even fit in the New York mix. And we made plans, so many plans, too many plans. I met new children, tried new restaurants, spun and flipped and stretched at aerial classes. I did flying trapeze and don’t need to do that again. I squeezed in some flying pole right after landing in California and will do that again. I sipped on Yemeni spiced teas at Qahwah House. I sampled an iced mushroom latte at Le Botaniste. I inhaled bagels, cozied into slices of pizza, and nibbled through dim sum. I talked. I laughed. In the quiet moments between the love, on trains or in the shower or late at night in bed, I cried. I was very much alive and human, and other than sleeping, got everything I needed. I hope it won't be so many years before the next round of reunions with the lovely folks of New York, but at least I know if the years slip past us again, the folks will still be there on the other side. Some people just feel like home.

A whirlwind of an emotionally fulfilling and physically exhausting trip through New York after saying goodbye to Grandpa. Caught Nikki at the tail end of her East Coast adventure, reconnected with Rui & Max (now with baby Luna!), met Amy & Jim's very new Justin, saw Esther, finally caught Hakim who's relocated East, and crashed and drank and ate and flew with the one and only Sharon.

A return to California and life as normal felt horribly anticlimactic after a week of living so intensely, so I found something to help motivate me to board the final plane westbound: a flying pole class mere hours after landing, booked over a sleepless layover in the Denver airport. You don't need to sleep to pole, right?

Sending off Grandpa

Al Aloia, 1930-2025. Husband, father, grandpa. Fisherman, bowler, cribbage player. Catholic lector. US Marine. One man, one life that touched many.

No matter how prepared you may be, the finality of death hits you with waves of grief, and the timing won’t always make sense. My grandpa died last week on Thursday. I learned mid morning bike ride when my phone rang and my mom’s name appeared. I didn’t cry. I made sure to ask how she was doing. I proceeded to buy the baguettes for which I was en route. I got home and showered and caught the shuttle, and then came the first rounds of tears. When I made it to the office, I tried to work, but soon the logistics of the moment overtook me. I grabbed a call room and furiously sorted out how Nico and I would be planning our visits. All the friends I’d contacted in the area back in June when this first entered the horizon were pinged and the wheels began turning. I had to skip a guest lecture because somehow, in the moment, nothing was more important than understanding what the next week would bring. By lunch time, I still delivered the chèvre chaud salad that’s become a weekly staple at Salad Club, and that evening I stuck to our first casual afterwork half-marathon as planned. I seemed suspiciously fine. Over the next half week, I focused on preparing and working and didn’t feel much.

The next set of tears came in the uber last Monday evening. All the planning and prep work was done. Our furbabies had their care plans. The black dresses had been sourced. The bags were packed, the agenda packed solid, and all that was left was the follow the carefully laid plans. To begin to be present. To acknowledge that this was it: time to say the last goodbye.

One red-eye later, we were ferried from the airport straight to Grandpa’s house. The backdrop for so many Christmases and Thanksgivings and Easters, the fathers’ and mothers’ days, the informal family Sunday get-togethers, would now be the backdrop one last time as we sent off the final member of that generation. There are no more grandparents left, just the smell of their tobacco permanently woven into the fabric of the home that cradled every one of my aunts and uncles, the seat of the Aloia lineage for the past 68 years. It feels wrong that soon this property will pass to other hands, that there isn’t anything left for us at 4 Cherry Lane.

I was struck, at the wake, by the items that made it into his coffin, the mementos that summarize a near century navigating this planet and all its (and his) changes. There was the Marines memorabilia and of course the cross, the fly fishing gear, and a winning hand of cribbage. There was a Cuban cigar with a banana sticker stuck atop, an homage to the quirky banana label collection Grandpa began in retirement. And that was it: a life in several items, lying alongside a man who even in death had fabulous bone structure and hardly a wrinkle to betray his 95 years. How strange that this was what it’s boiled down to, physically speaking. This and the souls - those left behind, perhaps a hundred or so, gathered in his honor; quite the crowd for a man who outlived so many of his peers.

At the funeral the next day, the eulogies reminded us that the biggest footprints Grandpa left behind aren’t physically tangible. But what left me aching, as I’m afraid I’d realized in the days and months prior, was how little of an individual relationship I’d actually lost. He was a figurehead, a titan in the family, and a wonderfully loving man, but how much did we individually know each other? When asked to take a moment, seated in that pew, as the final eulogy drew to a close, to call upon a cherished memory, to hold it, and to carry it with me as I proceeded down the aisle, I struggled. The only conversation I could even recall was the one just before moving off for grad school when he’d warned me not to become too French - one it would seem I failed to heed, not to his disappointment. I think I was most touched when, at the reception, his youngest brother personally sought me out to let me know how proud he and Grandpa and everyone was of what I was doing, and to keep it up. Oh, the Neuralink stuff? I asked. No, everything, ever since you were little, he said, and that was that, on to the next conversation. It helped to know that even if we weren’t always chatting, he’d been watching, he’d known what I was up to, and he’d been proud. I often feel I let the family down, jetting off to all corners of the earth chasing big dreams as we celebrate the family devotion and commitment that I fear I fail to embody. It’s a comfort to hear I still had my place in the mix.

And less than 30 hours after convening in New Jersey, it was time for the Aloia clan to say their goodbyes, to scatter off in all directions with promises of reunions in the not too distant future. I think they’ll happen. And in them, Grandpa’s legacy lives.

He died holding his children’s hands, fluttered his eyes open one last time just before his final breath, surrounded by them in the home that had held them and so much chaos and love for so many years. In our last moments in that home, Nico and I made a round of gestational carrier picks that may have led to our first hit, so the legacy of love and family remains deeply tied to that site for all of us. And now our stories continue.

Being a supportive friend

I'm probably going through some sort of mid-life/pre-parenthood crisis. There aren't yet enough grays in my hair to be described as graying, but I have enough to shed them. I get targeted ads for perimenopause. Corners of the internet have decided I've past the point of adding value to society and it freaks. me. out. Yes, I still get catcalled (gross) but they can't see my crow's feet. I'm deeply envious of the "distinguished" adjective my male counterpoints enjoy. I didn't realize how much value I placed on how I'm perceived. To put it simply, I just don't feel sexy anymore, and my vanity's caught me by surprise.

I'm not sure a photo shoot that celebrates my physical being is exactly what I need - probably realizing that doesn't matter would be healthier. That said, the photo shoot wasn't my idea: a friend wound up on PR for a boudoir photo studio and needed bodies for their open house. So what's a supportive friend to do but show up and strip down?

And you know what? I channeled my inner Beach Barbie and felt awesome. Without further ado, please enjoy the results of my first boudoir photo session.

Bringing all the Beach Barbie energy like any supportive friend when her presence is requested at a boudoir photo studio.

Living my best life not worrying about anyone else's "expiration date" labels.