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12
Jan 13

Little are the great days

I’m going to speak out of turn here, I’m sure, but there’s just a wonderful feeling when you know you have good legs when you start a ride.

We set out this morning for a spin. I had no particular route in mind because I didn’t know how far I’d be able to go. The Yankee is starting back into her competition training. Since she is going farther she should set the route. So she does and off we go through the neighborhood.

The first two-thirds of that leg is all downhill to the creek. And then you have to climb back out the other side. And it was there that I realized I had good legs today. I didn’t want to stay in the back. That was just slowing me down.

Usually I’m just trying to hang on, mind you.

I passed her and climbed to the top of the little hill that marks the intersection. Off we went up the back side of the local time trial route. At the end I got caught at the red light and waited for her. And then we were off into one of the bigger hills in town — which, I must stress, is only big in comparison.

I got down into something resembling my aerotuck and a little stretch at 36 miles per hour. Crossed the interstate overpass, took a right and hit the next big intersection. I was pretty sure that it was time for me to return home. My legs felt great and my lungs appreciated the exercise. My hands were tingling from compression of the ulnar nerves. My feet were tingling because I have a bad habit of point my toes down when I am too busy trying to breathe rather than concentrate on what I’m doing with the bike.

I could feel it starting in my neck, too, even if I was looking down more than out today. The neck and shoulders are what I’m pampering. Anyway, from standing here making the return route home would be about 18 miles. And I’d put a good 90 seconds into my lovely and competitive wife, who said she was no longer interested in hearing me complain about my form or fitness or anything.

Eighteen miles is nothing, mind you. For a frame of reference, 12-15 miles is a good warmup. I am taking the small steps approach.

So we watched football. I did a few things for work. We had tuna for dinner. We opened the windows.

I watched the first episode of 60 Minutes Sports and was underwhelmed. But at least there was whelming, right? A one-sided interview with USADA? A piece on Lionel Messi with the greatest strength being clips from his youth soccer highlights? How is it that you have an artist, the greatest player to play the game, perhaps ever, and the piece isn’t any stronger than that? They wrapped with re-tread piece from 60 Minutes. But that piece on Alex Honnold piece was incredible:

Here’s a National Geographic feature on him.

I’m finishing Wilson Faude’s Hidden History of Connecticut. It is well regarded, even by natives, for all of the small things you can learn in this text. My only problem with this book, so accurately titled, is that he waited until the very end to tell me there is a P.T. Barnum museum in Bridgeport. I must go.

We’re going to read the night away. This is pretty great.

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24
Oct 12

Mussolini at Chick-fil-A

Had dinner at Chick-fil-A tonight. Took a piece of paper to give to one of the guys I often see working there. He always asks me what I’m reading. We’ve talked about the various things we enjoy. I read a lot of history. He said he reads a lot about the Revolutionary War period.

So I’d promised I’d bring him a list of things that I’ve read. I spent a few minutes in my library one day last week writing down names and titles. I pulled images from Amazon to put over the names of the books. I gave it to him tonight. He was happy, smiling, pleased, thanked me.

But then I wondered: Maybe he doesn’t really read about this period. Maybe he was just being nice. Now, maybe, he’s wondering why some guy brings him this piece of paper.

So I got my food, found a table and continued reading Jonathan Alter’s The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope — which is good, if you like Alter or Roosevelt. Alter is a fine writer, but he’s a Roosevelt apologist and, really, there’s been enough of that. But I did learn about Roosevelt’s role in contributing re-writes to Gabriel Over the White House, a movie meant to “prepare” the American constituency for a dictator who, ultimately, executes his enemies in the shadows of the Statue of Liberty. This was actually produced and put in theaters. There’s some of that about 62 minutes in and then you’ll see a Star Chamber immediately thereafter. Roosevelt wrote to William Randolph Hearst, who produced the film, that he thought it would be “helpful.”

You can watch the full movie here:

The Library of Congress says about the film, “The good news: he reduces unemployment, lifts the country out of the Depression, battles gangsters and Congress, and brings about world peace. The bad news: he’s Mussolini.”

Happily we didn’t go down those roads, but then again, in 1933 with the Depression on, people in the U.S. thought a lot about Mussolini. Il Duce was in the midst of his successful years. He was winning people over as a dictator with public works, improved jobs, public transport and more. It’d be a few more years until everyone turned on the guy. In 1933 desperate people looked at him and thought, Why not?

So anyway, I’m sitting there, trying to wrap up this book so I can move on to the next thing, and these two ladies sitting nearby are discussing the music they’ll perform in their church choir’s Christmas performance.

They’re flipping through three-ring binders. As it often happens when music people discuss music things there was a bit of singing. The lady on the right was pointing out parts to the one on the left.

A guy comes up, a contractor of some sort based on his clothes, and he says “You sure make that beautiful song beautiful.”

She did have a nice voice.

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13
Jul 12

From the desk of Eddie Rickenbacker

I’m sore. I’m tired of hurting. And tired. I haven’t had a decent night of sleep since hurting myself and being tired isn’t helping matters much. So instead of complaining, let’s just change the subject.

I sat at this desk the other day:

It belonged to flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker when he was running Eastern Airlines.

I wrote of Rickenbacker in this space two years ago after I picked up one of his biographies:

Race car driver, pilot, ace, war hero, Medal of Honor winner, businessman and more, Eddie Rickenbacker is one of the great American icons of the first half of the 20th Century. He died quietly, almost forgotten in 1973. My history professor, the great W. David Lewis (1931-2007) of Auburn University, talked glowingly of Rickenbacker. He researched, for 15 years, his hero — including during the year or so I took his classes — and his book, came out in 2005.

Lewis was a character, full of life and passion for his varied interests. He was a renowned professor of the history of technology, loved cathedrals, pipe organs and, of course, aviation. I saw the autobiography, thought of Dr. Lewis and picked it up. On of these days I’ll pick up my professor’s book; I have to after reading these reviews.

I also met a man last December who worked for Rickenbacker at Eastern Air Lines. He told a story of having a real bad flight, being worked up about and then giving Rickenbacker, the president, an earful … only he didn’t realize who he was talking to. Rickenbacker nearly died in a plane crash in 1941 (dented skull, head injuries, shattered left elbow and crushed nerve, paralyzed left hand, broken ribs, crushed hip socket, twice-broken pelvis, severed nerve in his left hip, broken knee and an eyeball expelled from the socket) and was adrift in the Pacific, dangerously close to the Japanese, for 24 days in 1942. Rickenbacker won his Medal of Honor for attacking, on his own, seven German planes, shooting down two in 1918. He also won seven Distinguished Service Crosses. Eddie Rickenbacker knew a few things about having a tough day (His book begins, “My life has been filled with adventures that brought me face to face with death.”) so he let the indiscretion slide.

Because Dr. Lewis wrote the definitive biography on Eddie Rickenbacker, he was also able to convince his estate to donate many of his papers and belongings to Auburn. That desk sits in the special collections section of the RBD Library.

You aren’t supposed to sit at that desk, the librarian told me, but “You don’t look like your up to anything, though.”

So military and aviation buffs should now be jealous that I’ve sat at the great man’s desk. I could have opened the desk drawers to see what was inside, but that seemed a more private thing.

Instead, I read some turn-of-the-20th century recollections from some of the old locals. Some of those notes will get shared here, too, eventually. Probably in the next few weeks when I’ll basically be confined to the arm chair.

Maybe I’ll sleep a bit between now and then.

books / iPhone / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
28
Jun 12

A holy roller, and some words about words

Saw this on the road today:

The scripture there, a bit blurry in the picture, is Romans 10:9, “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.”

Do you ever wonder why people share the scripture they share? There’s the precise message, of course, some are motivated by the very specific point. But others, you just think If you have the chance to share one, what would it be? There’s that entire book of them, after all.

Mine is Philippians 2: 1-4.

Therefore if there is any encouragement in Christ, if there is any consolation of love, if there is any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion, make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose. Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.

That’s a lot to live up to, but worthy of aspiration.

What’s yours?

Anyway, all down the side the truck had this great pastoral church setting. The truck was owned by a small company from Georgia. On the hood, where you’d normally find the truck’s ornament, was a giant rounded cross.

It is a two lane highway, so I didn’t get the chance to see what was on the other side of the trailer. We can only wonder.

Finished the biggest part of that paper I mentioned earlier this week. Tonight, as I was dabbling in the last section of it, my entire Macbook froze on the F3 exposé. Also Chrome shut down separately from all of that. Chrome — We were good, once, for about six weeks! — at least has the restore tabs function. Otherwise I’d have become convinced that the electromagnetic field around me had gotten off kilter today and that this paper was destined to never be finished.

Earlier in this project we encountered a few server query problems that kept locking up as we tried to gather data. Earlier this week I managed to spill a full glass of tea all over the notes about my data. Taken altogether this has been comical, though it didn’t feel like it at the time.

But I passed my section on late this evening to The Yankee, who’s coordinating this project into a an impressive bit of brilliance. I wedged 23 citations into 11 pages with 2,500 words, most of them I wrote three and four times. Some of them good, even. Some could stand for some extra polish.

Any takers?

Tomorrow: two percent more typos, 12 percent more photographs, three percent funnier! Just a prediction.

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20
Apr 12

A cookie, a book, baseball and music

Yesterday’s fortune cookie could have been an error of syntax.

“Remember three months from this date. Good things are in store for you.”

Maybe it just needs a conjunction: Good things are in a store for you.

So, if I go shopping on July 19th … I might find something nice. Somebody remind me of that.

This week I finished a book I started a few days ago. I read slowly, and intermittently, usually at lunch. But when I fly, as we did last week, that’s extra time, and the pages turn rapidly. So I wrapped up, at lunch on Monday, Matt Seaton’s Escape Artist. I picked it up because Bill Strickland wrote about it a few years ago, quoting from it in an enticing manner:

The road now falls sharply under tree cover. There is no need to pedal; the bike accelerates rapidly past the point where pedaling would be effective. You move into a tuck, making your body as small as you can into the wind, spreading your weight as low and evenly as possible over the bike. In the autumn, your eyes would be scanning the road for wet leaves that can form a skein of slime as treacherous as ice. But the winter’s rains have washed the surface of detritus. Still you watch for potholes and stones.

You are in free-fall, Seaton writes in “The Escape Artist.” You are aware of nothing but the line you need to take. A few minutes before, the sound of your labouring lungs was your constant companion. Now, in the background there is just the roar of the wind and pulsing of blood in your ears.

The road makes a hard bend to the right and then straightens to point directly downhill to the valley floor. If the surface is dry and you are running on good tyres, if the way is clear of traffic and you can use the width of the road, if you have all your courage and wits about you, you can make it round that curve without touching the brakes. You hit forty-five, fifty, right at the apex. You cannot see the exit and it is crucial to pick the right line. If you start running out of road, the camber will be against you, shrugging you off the blacktop. Once committed to a line, it is too late to use the brakes. To crash at this speed is unthinkable.

And then, in a split second, you are round and free. You are still upright, and the road stretches out in front of you again. You cannot believe your luck, you are alive and intact. You feel the chill of the air as the wind slices through layers of clothing, greedily sucking away the body’s heat from damp undergarments and the scorching tears on your cheeks. But the cold does not hurt. You have taken flight.

Strickland wrote “If you read Sitting In regularly, it’s probably because you care at least as much about how riding feels, about what it means – whatever that means – as you do about new gear or the latest news from Europe or our bullet-pointed advice for staying lean (which works, by the way). Go chase down The Escape Artist.”

That excerpt is from the beginning of the book, so when I stretched out the paperback I was excited for what surely must come next, whatever it was. But it peaked early.

Which is a mean thing to say. Seaton is a fine, fine writer. He has a heartbreaking tale, and it is well told in the memoir. It just wasn’t the right thing for me at the time. But if you want a heartbreaking memoir, go for it.

It is doubly mean because, while I don’t understand all of the things Strickland writes about, I love the way he writes. It is a good day when his name pops up in my RSS reader. And so, when you stumble upon someone who’s style you so thoroughly enjoy, you add a bit of heft to their recommendations — well, except Strickland’s clothes and high end endorsements; my money tree is a bit light. And if that recommendation comes up a bit short for what you want or need at the time, then that throws the entire suggestion calculus out of whack.

I’m considering another book he suggested for some later date. Will it be keeping with what I think I’d like? Will I miss there too? Gauging someone’s relative tastes and preferences never gets any easier.

Sometimes the ball doesn’t bounce your way. And sometimes it really doesn’t. And that’s how you find yourself pulling in the infield to try and preserve a nine-run deficit.

A throwing error and two unearned runs later and this metaphor really starts to hurt. And so it was tonight at Samford Stadium- Hitchcock Field at Plainsman Park. Two-time defending national champion South Carolina beat Auburn 12-5. (The Gamecocks are eighth nationally. They’re only in third place in their division right now. SEC baseball is crowded with talent and tough.)

Two nice gentlemen from South Carolina were sitting right behind us. Tomorrow I’m going to ask them if they’re gluttons for baseball punishment. “Are you sure you want some more of this?”

One of those guys said ours was the nicest campus he’d ever seen.

“Glad you’re here, thanks for saying so. Try not to hurt us so bad tomorrow whydoncha?”

Oh one other thing: I bought Counting Crows’ latest release, Underwater Sunshine. on pre-order. It arrived the other day. It is covers old and new. It is stuff they love, that inspired them like Fairpoint Convention and Faces. It is a sonic catalog of new acts like Kasey Anderson and Coby Brown. If you like the Crows, you should go order this now.