cycling « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

cycling

cycling / Friday / photo — Comments Off
5
Sep 25

Saw an aerodrome, was transported

After a day of reading and prepping and typing away at my keyboard, I went for a little early evening bike ride. The wind was up, my legs were down and it was slow, but that’s OK. We got vaccinated last night and so I blame the quality of the ride on the conspiracy theories floating through my system.

There was a new-to-me road I wanted to see so I pedaled my happy little self toward the winery, but turned right before I got there, marveling at how I was easily doing 18 and 19 miles an hour up this hill on Wednesday, but doing considerably less than that today. I turned right and then left, and went down this road.

This looks flat when you’re on it and in this photograph.

But it is actually a little downhill. It bends off to the right at the tree line and then toward a creek bed. But the wind comes from that direction, usually, and it is actually a difficult down hill some days. Some days I have to shift to an easier gear to get down the hill. Some days coming from the other direction, up the hill, is easier than going down the thing.

In fact, today going down it felt unusually strong and I was doing about 17, but with minimal effort. And with no legs and post Covid vaccine (which we got last night) I felt a bit sapped and didn’t want to put any effort in. Later, as I reversed this route exactly, I came up the hill almost twice as fast.

That road alters reality, is what I’m saying.

I enjoyed some nice time under the trees elsewhere along the route.

And then I finally worked my way over to the new-to-me road. There used to be a little airport here. It was originally named after the town, but then it got a new name in 2021, when a private company bought it and dubbed it the Spitfire Aerodrome.

That’s just a great word. A great combination of words. It’s evocative of times far enough away that we mistakenly romanticize them. No one says the aerodrome without thinking of dirigibles or dashing pilots with silk scarves and leather jackets or barrage balloons or search lights piercing the sky and … they closed the joint in 2023, to make way for yet more warehouses no one needs.

I rode there it just to see what was at the end of that road. How often can I see an aerodrome? What’s there is a fence, through which you can still see two or three buildings, which look to be in still-good shape. The runway seems to be intact, as far as small municipal runways go. This is the view on the way back out.

I got back just in time to clean up for dinner, and fill the evening with tales about how the new microchips ow floating in my system have made me even slower.

cycling / football / links / photo / Rowan / Thursday — Comments Off
4
Sep 25

From here to there, to space and back

Here’s a photo I shot in the backyard tonight. The bright one, low and just between the tree crowns, is Jupiter. The second largest thing in our solar system, itself larger than what our puny little brains can contemplate — and pretty small itself, in the larger scheme of things — is just hanging right there. It’s bright enough to be captured by a cell phone camera, even as a little smear of light.

You know that big red spot on Jupiter? That’s a storm. It’s been raging away, a single storm, for at least almost 200 years.
This is the view when Voyager approached in 1979.

That was just two years after Voyager 1 launched. And now, 46 years later, the probe is the thing we’ve cast farthest into the night. Voyager 1 began the summer 15.5 billion miles from home. Scientists predict it will be one light day from Earth in November of next year. If distance is success, it is more successful than anything that we’ll launch in our lifetimes.

Sometime, in the next 10 years, for any one of a variety of reasons, we’ll lose contact and control of Voyager 1 forever.

Which is a lot to think about, when you’re just standing out back. What is far away? And what is farther than that?

I wrote something on Tuesday and we published it on Tuesday and I haven’t mentioned it here at all. Shame on me. This was a quick look at what ChatGPT thought of the first weekend of college football.

It immediately tried to tell me that Ohio State and The Most Definitely Back Longhorns are archrivals. I don’t expect a distributor of ones and zeros to know this, but five games played across 20 years does not an arch rivalry make.

Incidentally, Google’s Gemini got that right. The preceding is a sentence seldom uttered or typed.

ChatGPT goes on, trying to summarize a key point from random games. I didn’t ask for specifics, so it is guessing that I’d care about Michigan’s big day rushing against New Mexico. Justice Haynes tallied 159 rushing yards and three scores against the Lobos, a team that was 126th in rushing defense last year. It presumes I also had a peculiar interest on Nebraska’s Dylan Raiola. It tells me he threw two TD passes against UTEP. But…the Cornhuskers played Cincinnati, not UTEP. (UTEP fell to Utah State.) Dylan Raiola is a QB at Lincoln, and he did throw two TDs, though. ChatGPT mentions Purdue’s 31-0 “statement win.” That was a 31-0 trouncing of Ball State. If that’s a statement in West Lafayette this year, the Boilermakers are in for another horribly long season.

The point I’d like to make here is that I randomly picked three of the bullets ChatGPT offered me. One is wrong on the face of it; another is lacking any of the nuance your football hating relative could have brought to the conversation. Also, I spent three minutes Googling all of that to check its work.

Go ahead and subscribe to that newsletter. I’ve got an idea for another piece for next week.

Today on campus I had my second classes. Criticism and org comm — most of the students came back and some new ones came in. In criticism, we did our first high altitude pass of what media criticism is about, and started to speculate on why it is important. In org comm, we announced our fantasy football teams. We’re going to play football as part of our larger classroom experience. In groups of three or four they’ll all run a franchise and apply the things we learn across the semester. Some of these people are very eager to do this, which is great.

I gave both classes my second off-topic lecture. I do this three times a term. The first day, Tuesday, I talked about my hope of helping students discover the joy of learning. I do that by talking about a former student who is doing some really incredible things out in the world, simply because she wanted to take on new things.

Today, we talked about being safe around cyclists. We have a vested interest in this, of course. I told them about Johnny and Matthew Gaudreau, which was just a year ago last week. They know of it, being that they were local boys and Johnny was a big time hockey hero and Matthew was, to a different degree. But they don’t know the details. So I share a little of that, and then point out that in a few weeks my lovely bride and I will celebrate the third anniversary of her horrible accident after a tangle with a pickup truck. Three ribs, shoulder blade, destroyed collarbone, muscular damage and a concussion. It took her more than a year to get back to her normal quality of life.

I used to give this lecture, I told them, a bit differently. I used to tell students that I won’t say what color bike I ride, or what color my helmet is, because I want you to be safe around all the cyclists you might meet. And remember, I’d say to them, one of them might be me. And I have your grade in the palm of my hand.

I would do this with my very dry sense of humor, putting my right index finger in my left hand for syllabic emphasis. In the palm. Of my hand. At the end of one semester a young woman said to me that I got into her head with that, and it made her nervous every time she saw a cyclist. That wasn’t my goal, so now I explain the whole joke.

And now I’ll hope they give cyclists and others more room when they pass.

Next week I’ll start a class by saying “Who here drives a …” whatever car gets too close to be between now and then. I’ll drive this point home all term. I’m changing attitudes a few dozen people at a time. I wonder if they’d be willing to listen to me go on and on about Voyager 1.

cycling / memories / photo / Wednesday — Comments Off
3
Sep 25

Two strikethroughs

Visited a new dentist today. This was after making an appointment in the spring. And about four days of text messages asking, over and over and bloody over to confirm the appointment. After which the emails started. And, each of them asking you to pre-register.

The things a dentist’s office now asks new ~~patients~~ customers these days is positively invasive. More so than most of the tools on that rolling stainless steel cart, even.

This place is a big operation, and they’re operating in an old house, which is pretty customary around here. This one is a sprawling joint. It was difficult to find the exit when my perfunctory appointment was complete.

They took about 45 x-rays. How my brain still works, I don’t know. She said I had good teeth. Here’s the new gimmick. You go in for a checkup, but then you have to go back for cleanings. We’re not doing separate appointments for each every six months.

But otherwise, it was fine. I really, really, really don’t care for hands in my face. It’s not the dentist, or the dentistry. It’s the personal space. It’s the hands.

And also the realization that this is about selling you things as much as health care. Our previous dental expert always had something to offer you, and it was all vital and grim. But it was never the same thing twice. A few years in, you start to notice.

I had a nice late evening ride. It was just 21 miles, around the extended neighborhoods, if you will. All of it was familiar, but I tried to do things in different orders.

Here’s the sod farm, I ride by here in one direction or the other quite frequently.

And here’s some of the ubiquitous corn, and my shadow selfie.

This pasture is always empty, as far as I can tell.

Here are a few of my old friends.

And some of my newer friends.

Finally, my racing buddy. When I go down his road we often chase one another. A nice break, I guess, from his job herding the sheep.

Sometimes I win. Sometimes he wins. He must have somehow known I was coming today. He got a head start and I ~~couldn’t pass him~~ let him win.

adventures / cycling / Monday / photo — Comments Off
1
Sep 25

Happy Labor Day

Welcome to September. And to fall. And the semester. Anything else? Everything else. And so long summer. Except for the second summer, which is here for a time. Second summer, a mild, brief, way to overwrite the memory of the heat wave and the sweats you didn’t ask for. Quite, slow and mild, give me three or five months of 70s and 80s and I’ll be ready for spring. In this way we can also overwrite the season that actually offends in favor of a sequence of days and weeks and months of weather just like this. Who needs a winter anyhow?

Sometimes it’s easy to miss a subtle joy of spring, overlook an earnest day of summer, or the calm and thoughtful afternoon of fall for dreading what comes next. It’s a shortcoming; being aware of it doesn’t solve the problem. I guess one day I should find ways to enjoy the winter.

Thinking of it somehow just highlights the problem.

I mean, here I am, going on and on about that on a perfect mid-year day, the beginning of a beautiful September, which was hearkened forth by the beautiful end of August. A day which, just a bit ago, I was outside watering plants, covering the grill, and counting my blessings: health, a peaceful day, a delicious dinner, and so on. Everyone should have those things.

This was the view from the backyard, while the grill was going.

And while we had perfectly made steaks, we also enjoyed our own fresh-grown okra. Took all season, and we got one large meal out of the yield. Worth it.

Today, being the first day of the month, means cleaning the computer, updating some files, building new subdirectories, and so on. One of those little tasks is tracking the site data. August, for some reason, had the most visits in the 21 years of the website. I don’t know why people keep coming back, but I’m glad they do.

And also the bots, I suppose, but I appreciate the people more. So thanks for being here.

We had a bike ride with Miles, the neighbor, on Saturday. They dropped me near the end, but I took this shot 30-some miles.

Ours was a morning ride, which is unusual. Especially after the fact. There was a full day still to go. There are so many things to discover about early mornings. Rediscover, actually. I did morning drive for about a decade and, years later, I am still revolting against the notion of early alarms.

I went for a solo ride this evening, a much more normal time for a bike ride, if you ask me. And no wonder, look at these views. This is some farm land not far from the house. I wonder if they put in any okra this year.

I missed the perfect shot here as I pedaled along, but there is also a little cut out in the treeline, and I knew it was coming. So I framed up the sun. Not a bad composition for off-the-hip soft pedaling. Just staying upright and getting close to the photo you want is sometimes a thing. Putting the sun between those trees in the foreground and the trees in the background, simultaneously? That’s real talent.

Along that same road, the tree, the moon, the chip and seal.

And just over that hill is a beautiful old swayback Appaloosa, enjoying dinner.

You wonder if horses ever look at sunsets. You wonder what they think about when they do.

Classes start tomorrow. Guess I better figure out what I’m going to talk about, huh?

cycling / photo / Rowan / Wednesday — Comments Off
27
Aug 25

Pump me up

We’re coming to it now, he said with a cosmic blend of emotions — excitement, lament, worry, stress, the weary desire for a nap, fear of returning to a schedule, the optimism of returning to a schedule, paralysis by analysis and others. I am excited for the new semester, which begins next week. But that means the summer is almost over, which is a sadness, but a real lament that that also means the actual, meteorological summer is almost over. And did I do enough with it? Probably not, because of the worry and stress of the upcoming semester and all the new classes.

Prep is a word I’ve used something like nine times here in the last month, and thought about constantly. I am doing new class preps seven, eight and nine this term. I have been here four terms so far. So there’s your worry and stress.

Which leads us right into the desire for a nap. That or my poor sleep habits. I am not a very good sleeper. And that’s also figuring into the summer laments. Worse, it is a very small concern when considering a proper schedule. But this is a low buzz rather than a blaring klaxon. My entire adult life I have lived in fear of the alarm clock: what if I miss it. As such, getting out the door each day is usually one of the day’s biggest challenges. So, in that way, I’m fortunate.

There’s also the fortune that comes with a return to a schedule. No more planning. Just doing. Which is great because I’ve been thinking about how one of these classes should work for … I dunno, seven eight months now. Paralysis by analysis.

And there’s this weird, irrational belief: when the semester starts, I’ll actually have more time to figure out all the unknowns. That seems like the desperate bargaining of a desperately bargaining mind, no? But, again. No more planning. Just doing.

Doing much more. Aye, there’s the rub.

Tomorrow we have a day-long faculty meeting.

Tuesday, when classes begin, we’ll actually be under contract.

Today, I went to a different kind of meeting. I’m on a county-wide committee, which of course is part of my “service to the community.” This is a traffic safety thing. On the way, I drove down Main Street.

No kidding, that’s the name of that road.

When I tell people it’s a lot like home, that is a road I drove down today.

Today’s meeting was about implementing some traffic improvement and traffic calming elements at historically dangerous spots. It’s all done based on data which acknowledges that funds and grants are finite, and not every street we have emotional, dangerous, encounters on are at the top of the list. It’s a round-and-round sort of argument. But the implementation here is one part structural, road engineering, and one part psychological, human engineering, which is how they came to invite me to the thing. I suppose they were running low on options.

But at one point, a fellow down at the other end of the table, a county higher up, said “Perhaps the gentleman from Rowan … ” and pointed at me.

So, you bet, this is service to the community, and it sits proudly on my vita. Which I need to update.

When I got home, having driven down that bustling main street once again, we went for a bike ride. It was a slight variation of my 25-mile time trial. And I had good legs today. Moving so fast was I that I did not see the driveway gravel that had leaked into a road. I hit it hard, knew it right away and thought If I still have air pressure in a quarter of a mile I’ll be OK.

I did not have air pressure in a quarter of a mile. But I was OK. So I stood in someone’s yard — not for the first time this year — replacing a tube. My sixth of the year. Or maybe my eighth.

So I did the whole thing, removed the wheel from the frame, pulled the tire of the wheel, slipped the tube out from the tire. I spent a long time running my fingers over the wheel and inside the tube, just to make sure nothing was inside there. Which seems silly since I knew it was a handful of stone just down the street.

I put the tire back on the wheel, and then tucked the tube inside the tire, then folded the other side of the tire inside the wheel. All that was left to do is inflate it.

I carry a handheld pump in my jersey pocket. It’ll inflate a tire about halfway, and give you an unanticipated arm workout at the same time. It’s fine enough in a pinch. If I can get it working it will put enough air in the tube to get you home, but the ride is basically over.

So last, month, I bought an electric pump. It fits neatly in your pocket. You put it on the valve, press one button and, supposedly it inflates the tube. It is said the thing holds a charge for months, and that you can basically inflate two tubes on one charge. I’ve been carrying it for weeks, almost forgot about it, but then realized, this is the perfect time to try it. If it doesn’t work, I can get home in just three miles using the old hand pump. I dug the electric one out of my pocket, put it on the valve, pressed the button and waited a second or so for it to come to life. Then it hummed, vibrated slightly, and filled the tire up right away

I am impressed.

I didn’t fill it to capacity, because I wanted to have some extra juice in the thing for later if necessary. Even still, it was vastly superior to the hand pump. Faster, and more air pressure, and it allowed me to continue the planned route, rather than limping home. I was only four miles behind my lovely bride, which meant the whole thing, from stopping to starting, took about 12 or 13 minutes. It would have taken much longer, and been more frustrating, if I’d only had the hand pump.

I stopped a bit later to put a bit more air in the tube. And it was then that I resolved to buy about a dozen more of these little pumps, have a bandolier made and wear them across my chest, like some old western warlord.

And now I will tell everyone who rides a bike about electric pumps. You can get the Cycplus for a lower price if you shop around. After one use, though, I am reasonably sold.

I never saw The Yankee again. She was too far ahead, and moving very fast, indeed. But I had a nice enough ride, even if I was standing still for too long to keep my legs warm.

Here’s a shot over my shoulder.

And a left-handed shadow selfie at 18 miles per hour.

But, for now, back to the school work.