adventures

adventures / baseball / cycling / IU / Monday / photo / Twitter / video — Comments Off on There’s a(nother) video at the end
24
Oct 22

There’s a(nother) video at the end

I made this late last night, early this morning. Losing sleep for mashup art is a questionable choice, but when you have an idea …

There’s another video, a better one, at the end of this post. This photo, taken earlier this evening, offers a visual cue about what you’ll see in just a few hundred casual words, and after a few weekend photos.

Keep scrolling down to see that video.

We had an incredible weekend of weather. I didn’t even know what to do with it. Just warm and bright enough to feel like it could and would go on forever. Not so warm that you’d believe it to be true. And somewhere in there, amid the sun and the shade and the breeze, you can be held in a powerful grip of indecision.

We took a nice little walk on Sunday. Saw this wooly bear caterpillar, which was very much in a hurry to get to wherever it is that caterpillars go.

On the nearby goat farm they’re putting in another asphalt path. I look forward to exploring that when they remove the construction tape. One must respect construction tape, but this looks all but done.

How many colors can one tree sport, anyway?

This is on another path, and with more colors.

I got photobombed …

It doesn’t pop in the photo as well as it did in the daylight, but this tree is both yellow and red. It was fantastic, and that’s another problem of autumn. It’s too temporary — despite what I said above.

We stood under the trees and felt the breeze and caught the leaves.

If you don’t know what to do with a fine autumn day, catch the leaves.

Another work week has begun. My contribution to the cause today was this. Three-quarters of a running project are completed, and the rest will wrap up later this week. And then I’ll talk about them, perhaps, unless something more interesting takes place that day.

(Cheer for something more interesting.)

We set up a new system to show off student media work on the big screen. Wednesday we’ll roll that out. I also met two scholars visiting from France.

I got to the house just in time to take a quick bike ride. Got back in before dark, could have gotten a bit more out of the ride if I’d put a little thought into the route, but, no matter, it was 20 miles.

Went slow on this road, just for these views. Hopefully the video is worth it.

And now it’s time to get ready for tomorrow. The faster we get to it the faster I can get through it. Also, the quicker I can get to bed the quicker I can … fill my weary head with useless ideas like that Bryce Harper video. Pretty good one though, wasn’t it?

adventures / IU / photo / Thursday — Comments Off on 271 words that say nothing
20
Oct 22

271 words that say nothing

The forecast said we’d hit 60-some degrees today, which is an improvement from earlier in the week. The first day in a slight trend of warmer temperatures. But, as I ran errands this morning, it surely didn’t feel like it.

The Yankee had an appointment to make this morning. Some of her first times out and about, and so that is another sign of improvement. (She’s doing well and staying on the mend!) But she can’t drive herself yet, so I am now playing the role of executive chauffeur.

Here and back, here and back. You know how that goes. We had lunch in the car, just like the not-too-long-ago days. And that was when the sun finally burned off the clouds. That was worth 15 degrees, easy.

She came on campus after that for a meeting, and sat in my office for a while as I finished the day’s chores. A few of her students stopped by — she’s incredibly popular with the people who know the score. Stamina comes back over time, though, and the half day’s worth of activity wore her down. By the end of my work day, she was ready to go.

So we went!

At the house, we sat beneath this tree for a while, until the sun dipped low and the temperature started to slide back toward where the day started. And that’s the rhythm of things, isn’t it? No matter how far you go, how tired you get, you always come back to where you started.

One hopes, anyway.

The forecast calls for another week or more of warmer weather ahead.

One hopes.

adventures / cycling / Monday / photo / video — Comments Off on Peak autumn weekend (The one with the leaves)
17
Oct 22

Peak autumn weekend (The one with the leaves)

Here are a bunch of photos from what turned into a lovely weekend. (Next weekend is forecast to be nice, too, but the leaves and the sun worked out this weekend and you don’t count on that twice in a row around these parts.)

I went for my first bike ride in, quite a while, actually. The Yankee insisted I go ride. I think she’s tired of me hovering and worrying over her. So I had a 31-mile pedal and it felt like the first ride in quite a while, actually.

I went down the best autumn road in town. This is our seventh autumn here, somehow, and I’ve only taken this road twice. Some things should just be used sparingly, ya know?

And with views like this, you could see why I wouldn’t want to spoil it, right?

And so I huffed and puffed and counted my blessings that I was able to ride this road on one of the best days of the season, just for a quiet few minutes with no cars and these views.

Here’s a video of it, which buffered and compressed poorly, it seems. I may have to try this again, but, really, it’s the light and color we are after here, and definitely not the bouncy part in the middle.

Woods at the bottom of that same road:

That old road turns into a fork, to the left is a gravel drive and to the right, a gravel road.

But when you’re on a road bike, and don’t have gravel tires, you can’t be too curious about what lies further ahead. It’s probably just another house or two, anyway.

Here are some other leaves. You can never capture autumn, not really.

You need to smell the leaves.

And you need the suggestion of chill in the air.

That flicker of the sun glancing and dancing through the leaves is helpful, too.

You need the sound of the breeze dancing through the trees.

And the crunch of another season under foot.

That’s what you need to really appreciate autumn, before it is all just sticks pointing to the sky.

Those parts are never in the pictures.

Even the ones from a fine Saturday morning walk.

adventures / Friday / photo — Comments Off on This is a recovery week – Friday
30
Sep 22

This is a recovery week – Friday

I read broadly. I’m well educated. I travel well. I watch the occasional documentary. I feel like I have a decent vocabulary. So it doesn’t happen every day anymore, but yesterday I learned a new word. The doctor taught it to me.

This was after the surgery. The Yankee did great. She has strong bones. The surgeon, who does hundreds of these a year, was complimentary of the patient and the quality of her injury. She blew her collarbone into five pieces. And he showed me the X-ray where they put most of it back together.

I asked about the rest. Do you take those fragments out?

No, he said. The bits are so small there’s nothing left.

The impact of her crash ground the bone into something little more than dust particles.

In addition to that, and the two broken ribs, we also learned she fractured her shoulder blade.

This is what happens when a cyclist riding at about 25 miles per hour is cut off and forced to crash by the driver of a red pickup truck.

Be kind to cyclists. And wear a helmet.

adventures / photo / Thursday — Comments Off on This is a recovery week – Thursday
29
Sep 22

This is a recovery week – Thursday

She did great, but today got out of control in a hurry.

Much like when the driver of the red pickup truck cut off my wife and caused her to crash her bike at about 25 miles per hour.

This morning, one doctor’s office visit and an X-ray turned into a surgical consult. We’d been hoping that the collarbone would settle itself down, but the past week, the relaxation of the muscles and all of that, have actually shown the true extent of the problem. The first doctor was — what was that reaction? Appalled, Stunned? Crestfallen? — a bit shaken by today’s X-ray. What the pictures said was that surgery is the right answer. Avoiding surgery, at this point, is a game of chance, but, really, delaying the inevitable.

The doctor says, “I’ll let you think about it.”

Not that there’s much to think about, really. Young and active and planning on staying that way, the best outcome is the one you want. That’s definitely surgery. The surgical outcome is far more controlled. But, for a week, she’d been hoping to avoid that.

It’s funny, you spend a week trying to will something to happen, gritting through terrible pain, and then one photo that makes the point, clear as day. The space between the bone fragments was large enough to write “surgery” in a substantial font.

I’m not sure how many sentences we’d gotten into the subsequent “think about it” conversation when he came back into the exam room.

“Have you eaten anything today?”

And that was when the day turned into a sprint. If there’s a surgery, someone should come into town to help out. Her mom will be on the next plane. We need to get her from the airport. Arrangements made. Arrangements changed.

There needs to be some straightening up around the house, then. New sheets on the guest bed. Floors vacuumed. Room made in the closet. Extra bathroom opened. Coffee purchased. And and and. I’m also still in a quixotic campaign to get her painkiller prescription refilled.

The surgical center called. There had been a cancellation, can we come even earlier? We could and we did. There was scarcely time to think or react. We just did, all day. Maybe it is better that way. Less thinking and worrying and fretting.

Because there hasn’t been enough of that in the last week.

And so I found myself sitting in the foyer between the waiting room and the carport of the surgical center, answering work email, because that’s what important right then, I guess. What else was I going to do?

She did great and she’s doing great. But that’s why there’s not more here.

But don’t forget: Catober begins this weekend.

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