Very Big News!: Community Update - August 8, 2024

Hey everyone, and welcome to a very important community update.

As I have been mentioning for months, I am taking a "vacation" around September for the first time in a long time. In order to do this, I have created twice the normal number of videos in the first half of the year, which will slowly come out in the latter half of September, as well as October, November and December. I will still be posting on here of course, but new videos will slow down (you can watch all the early ones if you have not already, and highly refined versions of the early released will be released on the regular schedule), and it will be a bit more community updates, blog posts and the like for a while. As always, I imagine I will pick production up a lot going into the holiday season as this is the best time to make videos and by then my "break" will be winding down.

You may be wondering... why the break? And so I figured I'd tell you... I am actually having a child with my wife sometime in September, and thus I wanted to take a bunch of time off of making big stuff so I could do all the stuff any new parent naturally wants to do. At the same time, this year has been absurdly busy — I am moving, had to get a bunch of crazy dental work done (which thankfully finally is), and I had to prepare everything for the little one arriving and so I also wanted to provide a bit of a heads up that my responses might be a little slower over the next few months — though as usual I hope to reply to every comment or message within about 2 weeks. I wish I could do faster, but I find this is the best balance between being able to get videos and posts done and keep everyone up to date.

While I am on break, I hope to come up with a really awesome plan for the winter and 2025. I already have some big videos locked and loaded, but I am interested in what locales people would like to see me cover next year. For one, I want to do a broad video on rail transit in Africa - which I really should have done sooner, and I will also cover some more big Chinese cities like Beijing, Guangzhou, Chongqing, and Chengdu, Eastern European cities, and Middle Eastern cities. I am also hoping we get some big transit openings in Toronto in 2025 (we surely will) which will make up a lot of videos and action for the year.

All in all there is a lot happening, and I am excited for what's coming. Please take it easy on me if I am slower to reply in the next while, and also send me your ideas for videos topics etc. (remember, the more widely applicable and interesting the topic, the easier it is for me to make it a video).

Thanks for coming along on this journey with me,
Reece