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adventures

adventures / cycling / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
13
Jul 22

Nat sound included

The Yankee asked me to shoot a video of her on our bike ride this evening. So that took precedence of my other video plans. She was making a video and needed some B-roll, but she gave me carte blanche. So I settled on a clip of her going by me. Which means I had to be in front of her. And I decided, for some poorly oxygenated reason, to do this in a place where I’ve never taken any footage of her before.

Which means I had to stay ahead. And then I had to wait for her to come by.

But this is the sound I hear when she goes by.

I did set a PR on one Strava segment, though, and spent the entire rest of the ride, from that moment, trying to catch back up to her. Finally I did, but only on our street.

adventures / cycling / Monday / photo — Comments Off
11
Jul 22

Of bikes and bees and bushes and cats and things

A quick shot from our Saturday bike ride. This is on the part where we go around a sharp right curve that’s almost a turn. It’s an uphill that’s almost a downhill, or a downhill that is an uphill, I can never decide. The part just before this you can really hammer it. And within just a few feet from here you’re in the Bermuda Triangle of gear selection. It never makes sense.

Immediately after that, though, there’s a left hand turn and she takes off. It’s a three-mile stretch that suits her strong, powerful style. I slowed down, too, because my rear tire was starting to feel a bit spongey and there’s a big downhill ahead that ends at a stop sign. I wanted to be conservative there.

But then you turn left and eventually it turns into a one-mile uphill.

There was another cyclist up ahead. We caught him. I jokingly cautioned him against letting me slow him down when he passed me on the bigger part of the climb. I heard The Yankee giggling at that as I went by her. And then he passed me.

But I caught him again. And then I got stung by some sort of flying insect, just above the knee. It only hurt when I pedaled, which I had to do for another 10 miles or so.

All of it was fun, except for the bee sting.

But I don’t want you to think that all of life is fun and musical and amazing. Today’s big adventure was trimming back a huge shrub in the back yard. It was long overdue.

And now back to your regularly scheduled cat update. No bush chores for them, but they had a big week nevertheless.

Here’s Phoebe enjoying her Sunday evening nap.

We’ve recently moved some furniture around and she has had no problem adjusting to that, as you can tell.

Poseidon is living up to his name, looking for a shower this morning.

I tremble in fear at what he might want tomorrow.

That’s it for now. Please check out my Twitter for more. And you can also see the (still-running!) series of videos I’m uploading daily from our Cozumel dive trip, over on Instagram, too. Speaking of Instagram and cats, did you know that Phoebe and Poseidon have an Instagram account? They do. Check them out.

More tomorrow!

adventures / Friday / music / video — Comments Off
8
Jul 22

Handle Me With Care

I’ve been sharing video this week from the Toad the Wet Sprocket, Gin Blossoms, Barenaked Ladies show we saw last Friday night. As I mentioned here, this is making up for a 2020 show. We bought these tickets in 2019. It was supposed to happen again in 2021, but, finally, here wer were last Friday.

I’d never seen Toad the Wet Sprocket, somehow, but always wanted to. Gin Blossoms I hadn’t seen since college. BNL we saw in 2018, and last week was the fourth or fifth time I’ve seen them.

And then they came out for a one-song encore, an ensemble of all three bands, Something of a supergroup covering The Supergroup. There are 18 platinum, nine gold and one diamond records and something like 30 million total sales and 20 top 10 singles between them. I bet the Wilbury step-brothers would approve of this.

It came as a surprise to me how much I enjoyed that, how happy that song would sound, how happy it’d make me feel.

We left the venue saying it was a great show, saying it was all worth the wait.

adventures / history / music / Thursday / video — Comments Off
7
Jul 22

It’s raining macaroni

A few more clips from last week’s Barenaked Ladies show to pad out the week. Why not? After all, you don’t hear enough bass solos these days.

That led to this. It was never released as a single, never had a video, and “If I had $1,000,000” hit 13 on the Canadian and UK charts and made it into the US Top 40 and, of course, is a live show staple.

Also, my mother-in-law quotes it to me now, which is the best part.

BNL does rap covers and medleys and they come off as ad libbed, but this has been done before. No one puts “Just A Friend” and “Coincidence” together on a whim.

And they closed the show with a few covers. Devo is always a popular choice.

And then there’s Led Zeppelin. It is 53 years old and still rocks.

Whole Lotta Love was off II, their second album, which Led Zeppelin recorded on tour. It went platinum 12 times. That song was about Jimmy Page’s instrumentation and legendary bluesman Willie Dixon‘s lyrics. (He sued. They settled.) And now, 53 years later, bands with four-decade pedigrees of their own, are still covering their efforts.

I wonder if they had any sense of the staying power of this stuff at the time. Page was 25 at the time they recorded Whole Lotta Love, Robert Plant was 21; John Bonham and John Paul Jones were in between. They closed every concert with that for four years. Now, BNL does, too.

Well, except for the encore, which you’ll see tomorrow.

adventures / cycling / music / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
6
Jul 22

Which song will get stuck in my head?

My lovely bride told me I shouldn’t put this into the world, but the forecast was for 107 degrees, and we didn’t hit that mark. So I taunted the weather. She said the weather would make me regret it. She’s really thinking of everyone else. Like I want it to be 107 degrees.

This was plenty. I’m not as young as I used to be.

More music from last Friday’s show! Here are a few clips from Barenaked Ladies, who were the headliners.

“It’s All Been Done” hit number one in Canada and landed in the top 10 in the US.

BNL’s live show comes with a lot of comedy and a bit of ad libbing and the occasional freestyle moment.

The song about pinching is a big hit.

There are also singalongs in a BNL show.

Here’s a newer tune. “Man Made Lake” was on last year’s Detour

There are classics, of course, and covers, too. We’ll get to some of those tomorrow.

No one is going to talk about this enough, but Wout van Aert had the most amazing ride in the Tour de France today. It was on the cobbles. He’d captured the yellow leader’s jersey, and was a favorite for stage five. And then it all went wrong. And then it went sideways and bananas. And then Wout van Aert showed his mettle.

He crashed once and narrowly avoided crashing into a team car. After he recovered from all of that, his team had the worst day imaginable and he had to drop back to save them. It seemed a sacrifice of the yellow jersey. But Wout is the strongest rider in the best field in the world. Here are the highlights.

So after his crash, and a near-crash, and animating the race, and giving that up to save his team’s two overall contenders, Wout van Aert still managed to narrowly hang on to the maillot jaune. He’ll give it up in the next day or two, and people won’t really appreciate his ride today as they should, but it was epic.