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Auburn

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2
Jul 11

Stuff and things

Took the day off the bike. After 29 miles and change — I said somewhere that it was 23, but after re-examining the map I discovered an error — we decided to rest today.

So we rested today.

And so it was that we settled in on the sofa to watch a few things on Netflix, only to discover that the items we’d put in our queue are no longer streaming. It’s like standing in line for a show only to get to the window to discover the room is sold out. You can’t put any more importance on it than that, really. This is a television show we now can’t watch immediately. It is hardly a real problem.

But still, Netflix, can’t you send an Email that says “Hey, we noticed some of the things in your queue are about to be removed from rotation”? Also, improve the user interface. And let me queue things from the television. But otherwise you’re a brilliant service in every way.

We watched other things instead.

Never mentioned, and I’ve meant to two or three times, the fine Sherlock Holmes series from the BBC I watched a week or so ago on Netflix. The first season was only three episodes, but they were great television. It is a modern adaptation of Holmes, who is some sort of forensic pathologist who admits he’s a sociopath in a completely invented job. His fancy title is “detective consultant,” but the real job is “bailing out the police.” His Watson is a veteran of Afghanistan and could be a far more interesting character than his interesting partner. There’s one layer to Holmes; there’s a lot of brooding in Watson.

And the dialog.

Everything is just so crisp.

Is it a function of the characters? Unusually talented writers? Television that doesn’t feel compelled to distill their product to the lowest common denominator?

Great show. I’m ready for the second season.

Sports. The Maple Street Auburn magazine has arrived. It is do on magazine racks and at fine booksellers in a few more days. Pre-order your copy now.

I got one early because I have a piece in the magazine. This is the first year Maple Street has run a pub on Auburn. They reached out to my friend Jay Coulter to edit the magazine. I met Jay years ago when I was at al.com and he joined me for regular sports podcasts. Jay asked me to write a story and then he had to step down from the project for other obligations.

Enter my friend Jeremy Henderson. He took over as editor and he (and Coulter before him) assembled a great staff and they produced a fine magazine fan boys can’t help but love. And, also, I’m in it:

Forty years is a long time to be a sports hero. Pat Sullivan has been doing this for a long time, and does it with the grace and ease of a Southern gentleman.

If you haven’t been following his career: after his most recent stop at Auburn as a quarterbacks coach (1986-1991) he spent five years at TCU as the head coach, seven seasons as the offensive coordinator at UAB and has been the head coach at Samford University in Birmingham for the last five seasons. Now, at 61-years-young, his passion for the game is as strong is ever. His grip is still like stone.

[…]

Sullivan looks at his career through those relationships he’s cultivated along the way. His Heisman Trophy experience was no different.

Back in those days the announcement came as a halftime feature during the Georgia-Georgia Tech game. Instead of being on the front row in New York, Sullivan was in Auburn.

“We were actually at practice that day because we had Alabama on Saturday. My parents had come down to hear the announcement … Our TV went on the blink so we had to go rent a room at the Heart of Auburn. We watched it on TV just like everybody else,” Sullivan said.

Sullivan, perhaps the last Heisman Trophy winner to stay at the Heart of Auburn, says his room number has been lost to history. There are plenty of clear memories from the night, though.

Be sure to check out the magazine, on shelves July 19th.

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23
Jun 11

“You gettin’ wet, ain’t ya?”

“Watch out for storms,” she said.

This is good advice. Useless, but good.

I’m on my bike, about 14 miles into the ride when the sprinkling started. Oh, I’d watched out for the storms, but this did me no good. My certainty of the existence of rain did not dissuade it from falling upon me. My awareness of the clouds to my left did not preclude precipitation.

There was a gas station, though, where I managed to take refuge when the wet stuff really started falling. We need the rain so bad I would have stayed under there for a long time, but I was back on the road again in half an hour.

In that time I had two great conversations, each centering around my predicament. One guy asked how far I had to go. When I told him he just laughed. Another man asked if I was getting wet.

No sir, that’s why I’m standing under the awning.

It reminded me of the time in 1994 — during the LSU vs Auburn game*, in fact — that I had a flat tire. My jack slipped and I had to try to pick up the corner of my old Buick by my shoulder. This guy walked by and asked “Have a flat?”

No, I just rotate my tires every 50,000 miles no matter where I am.

You know, it might have been the same guy.

So the rain stopped, my ride continued. And then the rain returned for about 45 seconds. I pedaled on. Stopped at my pre-arranged place to pick up a snack and some replacement beverages. And off I went for the second half of my ride. This is an area I’ve only ridden twice before, so I’m only starting to get comfortable in the hills. I struggle my way through until it is time for a snack … and realize I can’t open the packaging from the bike. So I stop. Still can’t open it. Poke it with a stick, no luck. Find a sharp rock, and suddenly I’m a prehistoric man in sweaty raglan.

Eat my nuts and honey snack, get back on my bike and realize one of my water bottles is missing. Well.

So I backtrack. I go all the way down one road with no luck. Down a huge hill and another road with no sight of the gray and yellow bottle. And then down a third stretch of asphalt.

Where I find it sitting next to a bridge. I had squarely hit the rim-wrecking pothole on the bridge and the bottle fell out of the cage. Probably I was grunting too hard to hear it land.

Now which way? I didn’t want to go up that huge hill again, and it felt as if I hadn’t reached the mid-point so I called an audible and worked my way back home. When I got in and looked at the altered route I found it was a 41 mile day.

Didn’t feel nearly as miserable as I did from our 41 mile trek last weekend. That’s improvement.

And I was only heckled twice, so clearly I’m doing something right.

Farmer’s market this afternoon, where we bought cantaloupe, watermelon, corn (from a different grower), peaches, squash and tomatoes.

I sound so healthy, don’t I? (We had cookies for dessert tonight.)

Random things: Reporters arrested for … reporting. That’s going to court with a great hue and cry.

Publishers to universities: We aren’t the bad guys. Another tough spot for everyone that devolves to control, and impressive markups.

What’s eating college radio? Bottom line issues, apparently, though we’ve been discussing it and the prevailing opinion among WEGL-alumni is that all the good ones graduated. (And I did, too.)

Dumb commercial of the night:

* This is what I missed while struggling with my car. I remember it because the seven turnovers to win was quite ridiculous. My senior year in high school, Auburn was as out of that game as you could be when I blew my tire. By the time I got back to the radio the game was over and they’d done the improbable, and thank you Curley Hallman.

Is it football season yet?

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8
Jun 11

Meet my new friend

The story, and it is a good one, can be found on the War Eagle Moments blog.

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2
Jun 11

New York, Day 1, Part 2

Hello, Thursday, I’d like you to recall Tuesday. We’re going to add a few more pictures from Tuesday in this space today, and then some more, tomorrow, to round out Wednesday.

This idea didn’t make any more sense when I initially thought of it, either.

We are very high up on the Empire State Building, here:

We met an Auburn man there, too. We had four War Eagle Moments in Manhattan over the last two days, in fact. All four of those stories have been added to that photo blog.

It doesn’t look that high in the picture, but of course this was as high a place as you could stand in the man-made world. And, of course, that’s higher than you should ever hold your phone through the railing for a picture of a shadow.

I have taken this picture before, but the one below is better. I love this stuff:

Like this. That’s great faux-deco.

And the NBC microphone, at Rockefeller Center, took that picture five years ago, too.

St. Patrick’s Cathedral, from high atop Rockefeller Center:

We were able to walk behind the pulpit in St. Pat’s for the first time ever. They had a copy of Pieta there, and the others visiting revered it with a reverence that could only be considered reverence.

I have seen Pieta, at Rome. (The original was by Michelangelo, and it was the only piece he ever signed.) St. Pat’s Pieta is a fine sculpture, but on a scale of one-to-10 Pietas, this is four Pietas at best. According to Wikipedia, the authority of everything Michelangelo, the St. Pat’s version isn’t even an “authorized replica.” This version was built in 1906 by William Ordway Partridge, an American who studied in Florence, Rome and Paris (where he was born).

We learned about this building while on the Circle Line tour on Tuesday:

It was the first skyscraper on the island. Actually, our guide said, they originally called it a cloudscraper, all three stories of it, but they renamed it so people wouldn’t think poorly of the weather. Marketing has deep roots. Behind it, I believe, is the New York Bank Department.

OK, this one needs a bit of background. Our friend Kelly takes pictures of her feet to prove she’s been places. (Ask her why.) Every so often, then, we take pictures of places our feet have been. Here The Yankee shows Kelly the Statue of Liberty. I suppose my picture of her taking a picture is the “making of” photograph. Wendy also took a picture of The Yankee taking a picture of her foot. I took a picture of Wendy taking a picture, which means I also shot the “making of the documentary.”

This was all on the Staten Island Ferry, which we rode over from Manhattan and back for an extra, late evening view of the statue. We rode to Staten Island on the Molinari, who was a congressman and borough president. We rode back on the John F. Kennedy. We passed the S.I. Newhouse, which was named after the historic publisher. I worked for one of his companies for more than four years and walked past some of his offices in Times Square on Tuesday. No getting away from the man. He died in 1979, his son runs the family empire today, at the age of 83. He’s worth billions.

How quiet do you think it is out there?

More from our two days in New York tomorrow.

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27
May 11

We are taking a trip

She’s wearing my aviators, but she’s not flying the plane.

The Yankee flew the car, though. And that was a problem. Just as we got on the freeway and up to a NASCAR speed the whole thing began wobbling. It felt as if a tire was going out of round. We did not, she said, have time to go back home and swap cars. We were, ahem, riding it out.

After a while we ran over something and the wobbling improved. Later it returned. We stopped to check the tires, but everything seemed OK. And then we ran over something else. We stopped again to discover we hadn’t been hitting things, but rather were slinging rubber from the back passenger tire.

On the side of the freeway, having left home late and running to the airport, we found a tire exposing the steel-belted bits. We’d lost a chunk of tire about the size of your hand. This required a tire change. That required pulling all of the luggage out of the trunk and then the fastest tire change ever. Also, we had to add a bit of air to the tire. Our personal air pumps are a bit slow when you’re watching the clock.

We made it to the park-n-ride shuttle. We hustled through airport security, feeling safe with the oh-so-cursory attempt of security theater taking place — better than too much, I say — and then to the plane. Which was delayed. A flight attendant was late.

Oh, they’d leave you, but for one of their own, they’ll board half the flight, count their crew and then take the passengers off the plane. The flight attendant was late because her flight had not shown up. This happens so frequently they have back-up flight attendants waiting to spring forward and offer you a bag of peanuts.

Now, this trip is one-part conference and we’d done something we’ve never done before, which is to fly into the town on the day of our first role in the festivities. The Yankee had to chair a panel in this afternoon’s sessions, which made the plane and the shuttle to the hotel fun. Our room wasn’t ready. We were hours beyond the checkout time, but people weren’t leaving. The Westin in Boston is just that awesome, apparently.

The Yankee, then, changed into a power suit in the locker room. She broke a locker. And that was just how the day went. But, we made it here. She got to her panel on time. We had dinner with friends — her dissertation chair, who is also on my dissertation committee and a guy I went to Auburn with who’s now working toward his PhD at North Carolina — at a place called Dry Dock Cafe. It feels like a restaurant in a mall, but the soup and salad and crabcakes are great. Everything else was fried. The appetizer, nothing more than kidney beans, relish, garlic and mayo (all to taste) was wonderful.

And that was the day. We’ll be in Boston over the weekend through the ICA conference and then on to the next part of our long journey. All down hill from here.