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Auburn

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18
May 12

My old self again

I’ve been sneaking in a few rides this week. I huffed through 10 miles yesterday and 15 today, pronouncing myself fully healed from my amazingly persistent neck soreness.

That has been much better for a week and change, actually. The one thing I’ve struggled with since then was riding my bike. Something about being over the bars — in the drops or properly Flemish on the hoods — was giving me aches and pains. The looking up, to keep an eye on the road in front of me, had been bothersome even if I felt normal in pretty much every other way.

So I’ve been stretching my bike chain a bit this week. Whatever fitness I had are gone, but my neck feels better. Limited by time, I scurried around over yesterday’s 10 miles at what is, for me, a respectable pace.

Today I added to that, confident I am OK and just waiting impatiently for my legs to come back.

And so naturally I fell off my bike.

I’m at the top of one side of the hill on which our neighborhood rests upon. This is the largest hill in town — which, again, isn’t saying much compared to places with real elevation, but still. The one slightly tricky thing about it from this approach is that on this particular road you go up from an easy gradient into a slight right curve to a stop sign, which marks the crest of the hill. Now you have a road in front of you that goes from right to left.

I’m turning right, so naturally any oncoming cars from my left are the primary consideration here. Having reached the intersection, l take my right cleat out of the clipless pedal while simultaneously glancing left. There is a car. My shoe goes right back into the pedal. I fell over. (The car did not touch me.)

That was the part that happened the fastest. You know how, when you recount some memorable moment of life or death you have a 45-minute stream of conscious monologue you can return home with? Not this time.

Unclip, car, clip, ground.

And it was faster than that sentence. I landed on my right hip and arm, somehow managing to keep the bike off the ground with my legs. I think I might have gotten my left hand over, too, because that wrist hurt for a few minutes. I have two little scratches on my knee.

I’m fine. My bike is perfectly fine. My pride was slightly wounded.

Then again, I’m not a very good cyclist.

Just like riding a bike? Just like falling off of one, too.

But I got in 15 miles, which is a joke, really. That’s the most time I’ve had in the saddle in five weeks, though, and I finally feel comfortable about building up the distance again. It feels so good to feel good again.

About baseball, ugh.

Beautiful evening to be at the park. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. There were three Florida home runs, though, and plenty of other scores as the Gators beat Auburn 10-1.

At least they’ll be overconfident for tomorrow’s game, the finale of the regular season.

Auburn / baseball / iPhone / photo / site / Thursday — Comments Off
17
May 12

Hey look! Something shiny!

I was going to write a bit about baseball tonight, and all through Saturday. That was originally the plan. The grading is almost done. The weather is just agonizingly perfect. That’s not a good description. Let me try again.

You know that one moment around Christmas that you aren’t obsessing over presents, traffic, wrapping paper, relatives or cooking? That moment where the moment settles on you nice and quietly? That’s the same moment you get on mild Fourth of July evenings if you get a gentle little breeze. That bit of easy peace, that’s what the weather feels like right now.

It’ll be in the 90s next week, but what we have now we have to soak up, low 80s, light breezes, beautiful skies, brilliant sun, quiet nights. Perfect springtime weather.

So the weather is behaving marvelously. I’ve made serious headway in the grading. (Almost done in fact!) This is the last weekend of regular season baseball. Our plan was to eat a lot of peanuts.

And before I could even zoom in:

Florida had a 5-0 run by the time Auburn collected their fifth out of the game. One of those nights.

This might have been the highlight:

Creede Simpson got back to first safely. On the next pitch he’d bluff a steal. The catcher threw down to second, missed the shortstop and the ball sailed into center. Simpson stayed at first. He was, literally, staring at his shoes.

So it was that kind of night. But Florida is the second or third ranked team in the nation depending on which poll you use. These guys are almost a AAA team. Oh, look, something shiny!

That’s hanging from a crane over the lot that formerly was Sewell Hall behind right field. They tore that old dorm down for a new one recently and the work crews are quickly building a new one. There are three cranes on the job right now, that’s hanging over the pine trees tonight.

Florida won 6-0 over Auburn. It was a game where not much went right. But there’s always tomorrow.

And there’s the new decoration for the top of the blog that came out of the game:

Auburn / baseball / photo / Samford / Tuesday — Comments Off
15
May 12

Grading things that need to be graded

That time of the year. This is finals week. Grades are due next Monday. I have papers and things to read. That will be a lot of the rest of the week.

And also baseball.

The last peanuts of the season:

One of my favorite things to say this baseball season has been commenting on the ingenious of these legumes. You drop them, you can still eat them!

It truly is the little things.

Auburn romped to an 11-3 victory over FAMU last night. That game was over in the first. Tonight’s game had a less desirable outcome.

Auburn let a two-run lead slip away when Jacksonville State scored four times in the fourth. The Gamecocks added two more runs in the fifth and another pair in the seventh. Auburn had responded with one run in the fifth frame and then four more in the seventh.

The Tigers trailed by one as they headed to the bottom of the ninth. Auburn stranded three runners and that’s where the last non-conference game of the year ended. Auburn lost 8-7, having committed three more errors which led to two runs.

So they’re hovering near .500. They’ve clinched an appearance in the conference tournament, but you have to have a winning record to be eligible for the NCAA tournament. And, to close the season, Auburn hosts third-ranked Florida this weekend. No biggie.

Fun note: If you go to Chipotle and put on a show for the people working behind the counter they’ll write on your aluminum foil-covered burrito:

adventures / Auburn / iPhone / memories / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
10
May 12

The nonexistent slings and unpainful arrows

For those who have never been to Price’s Barbecue House — I’m sorry and you should fix that as soon as possible — they are set up to take your order at the counter, hand the ticket to their right while you get settled at a table. After an appropriate amount of time spent thinking about the delicious food you are about to receive one of the nice guys running the short order grill calls your name. You go collect your food and eat this delicious meal they have prepared for you.

Mr. Price sometimes takes the order. More often than not, of late, one of the ladies working there is running the front counter. Mr. Price, as I’ve mentioned here before, remembers me. I visited the place so much during undergrad that last fall he asked if I was back or just visiting. That was more than a decade and thousands of customers ago.

(I’ve eaten a lot of food here. And, while it is still sensibly priced, I just had a flash of memory: is it possible that my breakfast here once cost $2.17? Surely not. That seems shockingly low, even for a century ago, especially for the golden age of the 1990s. Another number pops in my head: $5.45? My memory can’t be trusted. That was in the last century, mind you.)

Anyway, Mr. Price remembers me. The ladies, one of them at least, doesn’t recall my name, but she remembers the usual breakfast we order. This new lady, though … Last week she wrote my name as she did above. I thought that perhaps she spelled it phonetically. Perhaps, I reasoned, a little of my north Alabama accent had slipped into my name as I told her the order. Maybe I’d done as much of my family does and made it sound like an I. Today I was very deliberate with the pronunciation, just out of curiosity.

“Kenny.”

And, again, she wrote: Kinny.

And that might have been the worst thing that happened today.

I’ve got it made, I tell ya.

Also, I have a big stack of papers to grade. So, if you’ll pardon me …

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5
May 12

Ump: Who said that? Who’s there?

Buck Belue quarterbacked Georgia to a national championship in 1980. He’s a legend for all of that, but this was really what makes people remember him more than 30 years later:

He also played baseball at Georgia, batting .356 which, as we learned in Bull Durham, is a career in any league. He played in the Expos organization for three years and that’s how he finds himself in broadcasting in Atlanta today, trading on his considerable name power and sports knowledge to make a fine career.

One of his side projects is to call a bit of college baseball on television, as he did today. Auburn was busy losing to Georgia, and Belue was making fun of the Tigers, but also pointing out every questionable call questionable umpires were making. Those guys haven’t had a weekend. (That sentence applies to both Auburn and the umpires.)

So I poked fun at Buck Belue on Twitter for making fun of the umpires. He said “Dude blew the call.”

And the dude did. It was a call that should have gone in favor for Georgia — a swipe tag at second that happened right in front of the properly positioned umpire — but I calls ’em likes I sees ’em. This umpire …

… sometimes he doesn’t see ’em.

(Sorry … it’s just … those glasses … )

Auburn lost Friday night in a game which featured good starting pitching for Auburn and no bats — Georgia’s starting pitcher had a great game. Then there was an unfortunate sixth inning which saw four Auburn pitchers allow two hits, four walks, a hit batsman and four runs in a 5-2 loss.

Tonight’s game saw errors three spread across 11 innings, in a 6-5 Auburn loss that featured more bad calls from the same umpire crew. The guy above was behind the plate last night and he blew a call that would have scored a key run for Auburn. He’s had a tough weekend.

Hope yours, though, has been lovely.