Team Knit has Bike Rally problems. This should surprise no-one, considering that we are all human, and problems are a very human… problem. All of us are struggling to get to the Bike Rally this year. The Bike Rally is a six-day (or 1-day or 3 day, but we are doing the 6 day version) bike ride that goes from Toronto to Montreal at the beginning of August each year. It’s about 660km, and participants camp at night as we go from stop to stop. It raises money for several ASO’s (AIDS Service Organizations) along the way and for one of them (PWA) it raises the vast bulk of the money they need to provide services at all.
Doing this ride is a huge challenge and one that I’ve met for 14 years now (Ken’s even longer) and every member of Team Knit (except Fenner but she’s just a baby) hasn’t just fundraised and completed the ride multiple times, we’ve also all served as leadership in some capacity (or in my case, most capacities) or another. To do this, you have get over all your barriers, and cope with all your problems and this year Team Knit has a lot of problems. Mine? Mine are mostly related to an aging body that doesn’t always share my training goals, and the phenomenal amount of time it takes to get ready and fundraise. It’s been a ridiculous struggle.
Ken’s problem has a lot to do with this picture (not the knitting, I think he’d tell you that’s the only challenge he’s meeting) but that he’s on the train, again. Ken moved to Ottawa a few years ago and trying to train/be a Team Leader/support everyone else while home is there and work and the ride are happening here is… a problem. He’s on the train a lot.
Jen’s problem is that she’s a full-time working midwife with a practice in another town. She’s on call and away a ton, and the time when she can be on a bike is super limited. She’s using her holidays for training and the ride. I know she’d love to be resting instead but she’s a beast.
Fenner – Fenner’s a teenager who just finished her first year of Uni and is spending her summer planting trees in Northern Ontario. She’ll land home right before the rally and leap on her bike, hoping that the backbreaking work she’s been doing is enough to train her up. Her current problems are black flies (they are so miserable holy s**t) and a lack of internet.
Cam’s problems are a lot like mine – time and work, and like me he couldn’t even get it together for a picture for this post. Cameron is crew again this year – a commitment that takes the same time and moxie. Here, since neither of us could do a picture, take this one from last year.
Since this ride is a fundraiser to support people with AIDS, it’s probably worth mentioning here that AIDS causes pretty big problems for the people who have it. Problems like living or dying, suffering or enjoying happiness, the financial costs of having the virus, or being unable to work because of the virus, or being a child with the virus, or having to suffer the stigma and shame of having the virus and all the consequences and discrimination that entails.
Here we come to the interesting part. For the very largest part, when Team Knit tells people that it’s really hard to get ready for the Rally, that it’s a really big challenge and presents some real difficulties – most sweet, generous and loving people will tell us that we should try and solve our problems by not doing the Rally. They tell us about “self-care” and resting, and that’s it’s okay not to do hard things, and that it is very much okay to prioritize your personal problems, and do you know, I agree with that. I think all of Team Knit would agree that taking care of yourself is important and that sometimes you need to put on your own oxygen mask first. Thing is that doesn’t really hold up if the other person needs the air more than you do. Somewhere near here there is an HIV positive mum who is just like me, and she’s trying to solve her problems too and I don’t know about you, but before I make the decision to prioritize my problems, the scope of our problems would really need to be at least equal, wouldn’t they?
Some other people would tell us that other people’s problems aren’t our responsibility, that we don’t need to stay up at night worrying about HIV/AIDs because it’s got nothing to do with us, but Team Knit firmly rejects the idea that humans have no responsibility for helping each other with their problems. We’re on board no matter where or who they are. (It is worth mentioning too that even if you are the sort of person who is very good at deciding that problems belong to the people experiencing them – HIV/AIDs causes problems for people who don’t have it too – it is a terrific burden on our health and social systems and we’d all be better off without it.)
Some other people will suggest that it won’t matter that much anyway – that HIV/AIDs is such a big problem that even trying to deal with it is folly, and to them I say BAH and you are incorrect knitter. Reset your thinking.
Did you know that for many years running the segment of the United Nations that concerns itself with AIDS has had a target for eliminating it as a health crisis by 2030? That this is possible and real and nothing needs to be invented for it to work? We don’t even need new drugs or more research or a vaccine (although those things would be great). All we need is based on what is possible now. Decent drugs for treatment and prevention, funding and distribution for them, robust testing, and the understanding that we need to remove the stigma and shame around the virus so that people can access those things, and so that other people think it’s important too.
This is so real that Donald Trump said it was his goal in his first State of the Union address in 2019. (Obviously he changed his mind about it as a priority – cancelling USAID without notice wasn’t exactly helpful but I digress.) It is so real that just last month in the 2026 UN Political Declaration on HIV/AIDS they reaffirmed the goal was 2030 and it was adopted by an overwhelming majority of Member States, with 149 votes in favour, 8 against.
149 countries agreed that this is completely and totally doable, if only we have the political and financial will. That’s very much almost all of them.
Amazing news, the Bike Rally can help. Since the plan relies on people finding out that they have HIV/AIDs, receiving the drugs and achieving U=U (Undetectable levels of virus are Un-transmissible) basic community based services like ASO’s can make a real difference today by skipping over the “political will” part. It can simply be our will, yours and Team Knit’s.
Unlike me and the work, or Jen and her shifts or Ken and the distance, or Cam and the time or heavens help her, Fenner and the black flies… this is a problem that we can solve. This is fixable. AIDS as a public health crisis is fixable. Not at some crazy obtuse time in the future either, but within our lifetimes, or even within a few years if enough of us can agree at the same time.
Knitters have been sustaining this event for years and years, and Team Knit is asking you to do it again this year, should your problems be smaller than this one. The cancellation of USAID has meant that global funding for HIV/AIDs is being redirected to support those programs as best they can, and that leaves ASOs all over the world in a lurch, especially as politics in so many places take their eyes off this. If you have any ability to help – even if it’s just the financial equivalent of a few stitches, or if your problems don’t permit that, just forwarding this post around? Team Knit would love that. The best way for us to solve our Bike Rally problems would be if we didn’t need a Bike Rally anymore.
You can find links to our fundraising pages here.
Thanks for even reading this, you have no idea how great we think you are.
Team Knit
(Steph, Ken, Jen, Cam and Fenner.)
The Ridgeline Stripes Crochet Hat Tutorial will show you how to create this gorgeous hat that can be worn in two ways! Whether you prefer showing off the braid or simple stripes and texture, you can crochet along with the right and left-handed video tutorials below! Disclaimer: This post includes affiliate links. Be sure to […]
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From the desks of Free League Publishing.
Pre-orders with bundle discount and immediate PDF access are now live for the thrilling new expansion alongside Evolved editions of earlier ALIEN RPG fan favorites Today, Free League Publishing announced a slew of new upcoming releases for ALIEN The Roleplaying Game Evolved Edition, headlined by the cinematic adventure Operation Leading Edge and an accompanying Miniatures Set, all published in partnership with 20th Century Studios.Amigurumi Dog Breeds: Patterns for 21 Cute Crochet Dogs by Elisabeth Faircloth features "patterns for popular breeds across all categories: Sporting, Hound, Terrier, Non-Sporting, Working, Herding, and Toy Groups!" Take a peek inside, and enter to win your own copy of Amigurumi Dog Breeds below! Disclaimer: I was given a copy of this book for review; […]
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Today, Free League Publishing launched a pre-order for Invincible – Superhero Roleplaying. The official tabletop RPG, based on the groundbreaking comic book and animated tv series Invincible, and voted one of the most anticipated RPGs of 2026, will be officially launched on July 30 at Gen Con and in hobby stores everywhere. Pre-orders in the Free League webshop give immediate PDF access.
The launch includes no less than five items, all detailed below.
Also, fans going to Gen Con can sign up to play the brand new adventure Superhero Season. This intense 2-hour thrill ride throws the heroes into a deadly predicament as a massive bounty is placed on their heads. Tickets are going fast but there are still some slots left on Saturday. And even fans who don’t play can get printed booklets of Superhero Season at the Free League booth #2449.
© 2026 Skybound, LLC. Based on the comic book Invincible® by Robert Kirkman, Cory Walker and Ryan Ottley. INVINCIBLE and any related logos are registered or otherwise protected trademarks of Robert Kirkman Inc. All Rights Reserved.
This month’s Doctor Who Magazine sets the stage for the biggest Who adventure of the year with Circuit Breaker. The new multimedia epic takes place across audios, novels, games, and comics this summer and DWM 631 has everything you need to know.
Enter the world of Circuit Breaker…
Also this issue:
Doctor Who Magazine 631 (c) Panini Doctor Who Magazine 631
DWM Issue 631 is on sale Thursday the 25th of June from the online Panini store, TG Jones and other retailers priced £8.99 (UK). Also available as a digital edition from Pocketmags for £7.99. You can also save with a subscription, as well as receiving exclusive, text-free covers.
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December may still be months away, but if you're a stitcher, you know that holiday making season starts now! Imagine how satisfying it will be to have a stack of beautiful, perfectly fitting hats ready to gift when December arrives. That’s why I’m so excited to celebrate Christmas in July with a special giveaway featuring […]
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0Bugbears are attacking the dwarfs on their way up the mountain to make offerings to their god. A group of elf scholars came to the region to study the presence of bugbears in such remote region and they are stopping the dwarfs in their attacks against the bugbears. Furious with the lack of offerings and prayers. The dwarven god is eminent to turn away from the region and allowing monsters to roam free. The PC’s can seek the god absolution on the dwarfs instead or even make them leave the region and help the bugbears in taking the region and put their gods in power of Altuvia.
(This is a PDF but there is an Obsidian markup file. Again, I tried to install obsidian and get it going to view it the way it was meant to be viewed, got it installed, but again couldn’t figure out how to view/work with the markup file)
This sixty page adventure describes … I don’t really know what it describes. A political situation? A couple of dungeons surrounding a political situation? It’s all just general ideas, with few specifics, and almost certainly worth no time. And yet, I find the premise intriguing in a weirdly real-life cynical way.
The marketing blurb is essentially correct. Some dwarves were driven above ground by oozes attacking their mines. They have no ore. They are trying to get ore from their cousins but the elf lands are in the way and “Now the dwarfs wait for the complicated and unhurried elf politics allows the ore transport.” Noice! And, now, some bugbears have moved in to the region. Their attacks are preventing the dwarves from getting to their temple to honor their goddess. This WILL eventually cause her to abandon them and then the bugbear god will move in to set up shop, which is the EXPLICIT plan of the bugbears. IE: preventing the dwarves from worshipping their goddess so she’ll abandon them and their dude can take up the mantle of the region. But, now, also, with the bugbears showing up, some elf researchers have shown up and have a manor home in the wilderness where they’ve set up base. They want to study the bugbear migrations, which they find unusual, and are preventing the dwarves from attacking the bugbears. If we think of the eves as having superior technology/gods/magic/armies, then the position of the dwarves becomes quite interesting. Piss off the local elves and maybe influence the larger political “ore from our cousins” thing? Are there local dwarves acting as guides to the elves, or, maybe, nearby halflings that trade with the dwarves but also sell their services to the elves? The analog of an asymmetric power relationship, and the consequences to all parties, it quite interesting. The elves WILL, through their good natured scholastic meddling, cause the dwarves to be wiped out and the bugbears to take over the region. Do they care? Will they be wiped out also? This is all fucking magnificent. The comparisons to real life are obvious.
And almost nothing of substance is in the adventure. Some of what I described is present in the adventure. Some of it is shit I inferred, like dwarf collaborators or halflings, or other linkages. But, also, beyond a simple overview, essentially matching in context and length what I described, there is nothing of any of this present in the adventure. The individuals, the timeline, everything else, none of it really is related to the overall situation described. Yes, the bugbears want to kill and maybe an elf , described, wants to study shit. But these kind of grand machinations, or even minor machinations, are just not present in the adventure. At best you’ll get an NPC description who has a quest like “I want some elven wine.”
For it being sixty pages there is remarkably little specific to point to. The dwarf mines have a map, but no key, just instructions to roll on random tables. But, even then, I’m not sure I can make heads or tails of the map. Are the rectangles rooms? Or are those just hallways that meet up? What are the grey lines? And then the map of a ruined manor is not keyed, with just things like “Bedroom 1 : The room to the left of the corridor” Creature amounts and mundane treasures, including potions and scrolls are just not present, explicitly so, fitting in to some “for use with any system” statement. I can’t fathom ever doing this in an adventure.
This is SO open ended, SO non-specific that it amounts to just the overall situation description, some NPC descriptions that don’t tie in very well, and site descriptions that are almost as vague and non-specific as you can possibly have and still call it a site description. You’re going to have to wing, and add to and expand everything. I get it, we do some of that when running a game. But there is SO little direction here, so little that is specific, that this amounts to very little more than napkin notes and ideas of what could be going on in various places with various people. In sixty pages. I think I’m done with Kobold King.
This is $2 at DriveThru. There is no preview.
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