cycling « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

cycling

And now the harder things

One of the good things about teaching nearly every class under the sun these last few years is that when a friend needs a course outline in a pinch I have something. I received a text message like that last night and was able to provide three different schedules in a matter of minutes. I spent the rest of the night trying different versions of “How can I help?” Being helpful is the easy thing; convincing people to make use of it is a harder thing.

Another almost hard thing is a mental challenge. Today the spring schedule was released. I haven’t yet finished preparing, or re-preparing as the case may be, the fall term. On the most important hand, knowing my spring whereabouts five months in advance is the way this is supposed to work. I’ve had semesters where that wasn’t the case. It’s like the dream where you walk into a room unprepared, with the wrong book in hand, and with no pants, and the fear of that sensation for four months. On the other hand, one thing at a time, sir or ma’am. On the third hand, things are always subject to change with little, or no, notice.

Some good progress was made today for my second fall class. The immersion of dates and tasks and concepts is such that I will soon wonder if the first class, which I think I’ve completed, is complete. Convincing myself is the hardest thing of all.

Saturday my lovely bride invited me to chase her on a bicycle. She’s riding well and I’m riding poorly and so this was a kind gesture on her part and, ultimately, a vain effort on my part. She wanted to get in 25 miles, so I chose the time trial route, because I think I ride a little better on that route. I gave her something to chase, sneaking peeks over my shoulder and saying to myself “Let me hang on for eight miles,” and I did. I said to myself, “Let me hang on for 10 miles,” and I did. And I said to myself, “Let me hang on until I get over this overpass.” This is where, on a previous ride, she went by me at such a great turn of speed it made a noise. I heard a woooo, and then looked to my left and there she was, and suddenly in front of me before the oooosh was fully formed.

I’ve been passed by a lot of fast people and I’d never had an experience quite like that. I didn’t want that experience again on Saturday, so I said to myself “Let me hang on until I get over this overpass.” And I did.

Then I said to myself, “Let me find a bag of abandoned cash that is not traceable that I can just carry home from here.”

That one didn’t come true, though I did see a bucket on the side of the road and I peered into it carefully. That was just after she passed and quickly dropped me. I got dropped because I was looking in that bucket, or so I told myself for the last seven or eight miles of the route, when the excuse came to mind.

It was sunny and hot and I went through three bottles of water on the bike, and then had another bottle and change when I finally got home. Not pictured: the truck that passed too close on the last bit of my ride.

Sunday afternoon I went out for a deliberately slow ride, leaving the county without ceremony, but returning to the county with a Welcome a sign. So that’s two counties. And then, eventually, a third county.

This was a simple out-and-back route, retracing my pedal strokes means two more counties. A six county-line-ride! All of that without passing a single gas station or store or restaurant. There’s a lot of pretty fields, though. Pastures and crops. Horses and goats and horses.

And also corn.

At one point, from the other direction, there was a guy riding a dirt bike. Something seemed not quite right. As he got closer I realized it looked weird because he was riding a wheelie. Also, he was standing on the seat. There was a car following a little too close behind him for this sort of thing, but these are the choices other people make. The rider looked very calm and comfortable in this position, but I spent a while wondering: How does he get down when this trick is done? Now I wonder: How do you figure that out the first time?

Anyway, my ride was just 22.5 miles out, until the road finally makes a T intersection. The point of this route is no turns, which means I don’t miss a turn, which is a good thing in this instance because, if you’ll note those clouds …

Near my turn-around point I went by this building. Mr. Terry O’Neill, Sr., died just last month at 84.

He worked in oil and asphalt. He worked in the local government, in public works, for a decade. He served on his local township committee, on a 911 advisory board and was the president of groups like the local little league. He was a volunteer firefighter for almost 60 years. He remortgaged his home, as did some of the other volunteers, to help build the firehouse, a simple three-bay shop that safeguards the northern side of his town. It’s the kind of place where there’s a sign out front advertising the community breakfast. How many times must you go to the firehouse before you don’t think about what you did, the challenge you put on your family, the gift you’ve given your neighbors? Maybe you don’t think about that for forever, or on those times when you are hustling in so you can roll out to a call, but there must be a special kind of pride and hope that comes with a gift like that. He must have been quite the man.

Above all else, Terry was a devoted husband, father, grandfather, great-grandfather, friend and neighbor. He led by example, giving generously of his time, his talents and his heart. His kindness, quiet strength, steadfast faith and enduring love for his family and community will be remembered always and his legacy will continue to inspire all who had the privilege of knowing him.

He and his wife have 22 great-grandchildren. Seems like a life well-lived.

Going by that shop the second time, there was a gentle uptick in speed. Finally, a gentle downhill slope to the overall ride, at least for a time. Also, I finally had a tailwind. The humidity sank in, forcing a stop to clear away the sweat from my eyes. Gray skies and sprinkles gave way to a proper rain in the last five miles of the ride, leaving me plenty of time to get soaked.

It was a pleasant 45-mile route. Not pictured, the white SUV which almost drove into me head-on.

It rained the rest of the evening. I sat still, staring at class notes, until it was time to take the garbage to the curb, in the rain. Easiest job of all!

cycling / errands / memories / Monday / overwriting / photo — Comments Off
10
Aug 26

Weekend summaries, never as satisfying as the real thing

A midday storm is an inescapable display of power that changes a day’s entire attitude. When the winds and thunder roll in and the rain pecks at the walls and windows, that’s a thrill, a romance, a terror, a cozy companion, he wrote after careful proofreading.

That time just after the storm has passed needs a name for its sadness.

And it is. This was on Saturday afternoon, when there was no immediate need for melancholy. After an hour or so the sun was brilliant and drying everything out, as if nothing had happened and we were back to a wonderfully hot, now humid, summer day. The sort that is observed nicely from indoors, because let’s be honest about the need to be outside. And that little storm was fun, but the part that follows seldom ever is.

Anyway, we’ve had several nice summer rains of late, and they have been immensely helpful. Presently, 100 percent of our county is rated as “abnormally dry” on the drought monitor. Only 9.8 percent of it is in the moderate drought category. Most of the county has been in a drought since last October. Three months ago it was of the “severe” variety.

This is the second moderate drought we’ve experienced in three years here. In 2024, we got some rain one night in November which broke the longest consecutive-days drought in 130 years of local record keeping. It’d been two months since anything fell out of the sky. Even then, when even the people that pay close attention to these things began to get squirmy, it wasn’t like the 2002 drought, when people were having to change their habits. “My lawn! My car!” When the veggies shrivel or you’re asked to take shorter showers, that’s when people notice. If we’re emerging from a drought right now, a slow-motion, year-long effort, I don’t think it’ll figure into most people’s thinking. Certainly not the neighbors, with the sprinklers.

But if we’re emerging from a drought, it could be a lot worse. Look out west. Look at Europe. Look around.

And if you don’t look too carefully you might think that I caught this maple leaf, midflight, and with a drop of rain on it.

If, that is, you overlook the spiderweb, which I’ve obviously been doing.

Everything grows well out back. Morning sun and afternoon shade and look at the Brown-eyed Susan. It is about to break containment.

Right next to it, the honeysuckle, which we had to cut way back in the spring of last year to replace the trellis upon which it depends. I had no problem with that. Honeysuckle takes your attacks on its free will and laughs in the face of your determinism. I need to prune it more, because it has grown wild and woolly once more. Add it to the list of things I need to do when it isn’t 98 degrees outside, which is the case as of this writing.

There are so many things on that list, and I made one slight in-road yesterday. I visited Harbor Freight, my first every visit, and picked up yard bags — cheapest I could find, and yes I did an extensive price comparison because I have the internet available for my every thought.

I also had a list of other things I wanted to pick up, a note on my phone, complete with names, prices and aisles. To say I have been preparing for this trip for sometime is overstating it, the previous two sentences notwithstanding. And then I got there and —

I’d like to leave the previous shopper a note of encouragement. The important thing is that you almost tried.

Completing the job of landing the cart in the corral would have taken an additional nine steps and a sophisticated heel pivot — I know because I did it for you — but you almost did the thing that society requests of you.

It calls to mind times when I would go to the IGA in wherever it was we lived last. Someone was always leaving carts out. Mind you, I don’t cruise the parking lot looking to solve this problem, but if it’s there I will fix your shortcomings, sure. And I’ll feel good about myself, as I did the times at that IGA when I moved the carts from the handicapped parking spaces into the corral that was mounted right next to the handicapped parking spaces. The grocery store kids were taking a smoke break on the stoop and laughed at that, and, eye contact being a fate-worse-than-death in that part of the world, I gave them a look, in turn.

I don’t miss anything about that place. Well, the 9:30 sunsets in the summer were nice. They also had good multi-use paths. Seven years, those are the two things I miss.

Anyway, I purchased the lawn bags. Probably should have picked up more — but how much of that do you want to do at a time? I also picked up two corner clamps. You really need four, but they only had the two. I decided to wait on some other items on my list, but I did indulge myself by picking up two cheap tape measures. One will live upstairs. One will live downstairs. This plan accomplishes two goals, keeping the good tape measure from wandering all over the house for weeks at a time, and keeps me from having to go to the garage to fetch the good one when I need to determine the empty space on that wall over there. At $4 a pop, these two new ones will pay for themselves somewhere around 2029.

The tape measures were in one of those blister packages though, the sort that involves great risk of bodily harm to free the thing you now own. The easiest way to free the tape measure was by unscrewing the little belt clip from the back. The easiest way to do this was to pierce the blister package with the tip of a pointy Phillips screw driver. Then you unscrew it. Then you wiggle the screw out of place. The tape itself is now free of the packaging, but you must now dig out the little silver belt clip. And here it helps if you pretend like you are a 19th century battlefield surgeon trying to find a bullet, and then dig the thing out in a grotesque way for moviegoers.

Then you have to reassemble it. Now, this is a tiny screw on a cheap tape measure from Harbor Freight. You must take care with this, pretending like you are the first 21st century surgeon to use a sonic scalpel to remove a three-micron imperfection on a patient’s iris. Then you have to test the tape measure, because who knows what secondary role that screw had. Does the tape come out of the case? Yes. Does the lock lock the tape? Yes, also it has a satisfying click. Does the tape retract when you unlock the lock? Yes. Do you do all of this for the second tape measure? Yes. Does the cat look at you like he is wondering if you’ve completely lost your mind? Yes. Do you know where these two tape measures are going to be stored when they aren’t in use? Absolutely not.

Well, another day for that, then.

I am the type of bike rider that can ride the same road a lot. Some people get bored. I suppose some people find the repetition meditative. Me, I’m usually too close to hypoxia to worry about meditating. I am also the type of bike rider that likes to ride new roads, or revisit the rarely ridden roads. But, what I’ve really learned about myself is that I’m the type of bike rider who, once there is an idea in place, absolutely must do that ride.

Saturday evening I had the idea of doing some hill repeats. It’s all very flat here and I haven’t ridden a real hill in several years now and I was never good at it and it’s hot and I am not riding enough and so this was a good idea.

I recalled this road, which I’ve been up three times perhaps, and down twice. It has a hill. It’s gradual. It is also quiet, and part of it is, as you can see, nicely shaded.

People do hill repeats to get stronger — or, like me, to say they’ve done them. There’s a method to the madness of going up the same hill over and over. Probably more than one. I just decided to go up the hill, and figured I’d do it several times. And so I soft-pedaled my way to that hill, an easy 17 minute ride with no exertion. And then I went up that hill. It tops out, then goes up a bit more, and does that a few times before the road forms a T-intersection with the nearest highway. If you saw the hill in profile it looks a bit like a molar. The climb isn’t hard or long, but what I know about hill repeats is that you want the concerted effort and then the repetition. What I want out of the hill repeat is to be able to turn around safely. And this road does all of those things. So I rode the road, and figured, “I’ll do 10.” And then later I said to myself, “It really is hot out here.” And then I said, “I’ll do five.” And then I said, “I think that’s five.” And then I took the long way home, turning left at that highway instead of turning around, letting the road pull me past the veteran’s cemetery and back into town, feeling the asphalt bend to my right between the gas station and the biker bar. Apparently they have good pub grub, though I have only seen the “biker’s welcome” sign on the wall, and they wouldn’t turn me away, but I think they mean motorcyclists. The little side road I was on after that falls downhill, usually I’m on this bit of infrastructure in the opposite direction. I turn left and and then left again, past the town lake, and into downtown. I timed the red light, singular, just right. Make the right past bike shop and opposite the old fire ring, and then the left for home.

At that point I am 3.5 miles from home, I have been out for about 90 minutes, drank three bottles of water, had enough of the heat and the little hills. I am counting, in my mind, the little rises between my bike and my neighborhood. I estimated three. There were four. After the second I started thinking of the alternate ways home, because I didn’t want that last hill. At the four-way stop I could go left and then right and go up a hill on bad chip-and-seal and then do the reverse side of this climb. I could turn right and go down a hill and then up two actual hills before the final incline and … no, straight ahead was the easiest way to get there and I was just done with the heat. When I got home I was right on the edge of shivering, which is one of those early heat exhaustion symptoms. Or the sweat wasn’t evaporating because I was no longer in the wind and perspiration could finally do its cooling job.

Inside, then, more water, this time with electrolytes. Shower.

There’s a very, very small wound in the next photo, and I’m just telling you now. It’s hardly the worst thing in the world, but it is a part of the story and now you’ve been warned.

I’ve bled on a bicycle in several different ways. Crashes. Hailstorm. Whacked by a limb too far out into the road.

Some 10-plus years ago I cut myself so badly I had to turn around, go home and bandage myself up. The little rubber cover on my handlebar hood had disappeared and it hadn’t yet been replaced. Beneath that hood is a screw that holds all of the stuff in the shifter-brake area together. I reached up to adjust and grabbed the screw and sliced my pinky. It was at the beginning of the ride, and so I went back out, gauze and tape and Band-aids and such. I could follow the blood trail back out. I still have the scar.

Anyway, and here it comes, as I was getting ready to shower I noticed I nicked the ring finger on my left hand. No idea how.

It’s fine. Didn’t bleed. I’ll keep it clean and it’ll heal itself because I believe in first aid. But it’s right in that spot where the finger touches the middle finger and it’ll be a reminder, for a few days, that I have no idea how that happened.

My lovely bride, meanwhile, did an aqua bike == a swim and ride race — and she finished second. Podium and proud! We did the proper sort of celebration: Chinese for dinner, and basked with ice cream from the local creamery.

The teens running the place closed as we were there. Removed the garbage bags, shut the windows, took away the umbrellas, turned off the monitors and figured “These two are the upstanding sort who won’t cause us any problem. They’ll probably be home and in bed before 10, anyway.”

And they were right about that.

Well, I had a lot of other things I was going to talk about, but I have to save something for the rest of the week. Besides, I have written now almost 2,300 words and said absolutely nothing. You deserve a break.

cycling / Friday / Instagram / photo / video — Comments Off
7
Aug 26

Alien plants have landed

I got in some good work today. For about three hours and change I worked on straightening out one of my fall courses. I have the first six weeks of lecture notes all set up. Everything is organized through mid-November. Then it got confusing, because I got blurry-eyed. It happens. I’m surprised I was able to keep it together that much.

It isn’t the material. The material is fine, but rather the organizational part. All of those dates, all of those moving parts.

I did realize that one of my better lectures lines up nicely an important part of the football schedule this year, so there’s that.

After a time, I took a break for lunch, which was my first mistake. Lunch was good. We sat around and talked about this and that, as people do. Then we decided on the thises and delayed the thats. We moved some furniture around. We sat and had a little read. I called my mother for a chat, as people do. And, somehow, that was the day.

Oh, and I checked a few of the growing things in the backyard, where some things are having a great year.

Especially the weeds. As in not here yesterday, embarrassing large today, and pulled this evening. So I pulled a few weeds — I need to get more yard bags, and so I can’t too invested in that.

Besides, I just went to look at the things that were a-blooming.

The things we want to bloom, anyway. I can hear my old teacher, and all of my old friends who studied horticulture even now “a weed is anything undesirable. A rose could be undesirable if you don’t want it where it is growing.”

Well, I don’t know for certain what this is. Stonecrop, I think. And I’m not sure if it has grown in this spot before. Or if we want it there. Good thing I don’t have those yard bags, right?

I’ve said that a lot in the last month or so, which goes a long way to explaining all weeds which must now be addressed. Well, soon, anyway.

This evening watched today’s stage of the Tour de France Femmes. We watch a lot of sports, of course, and more than our share of bike races, as you might imagine. At the risk of testing your patience, this stage had what became one of the greatest climbs in mathematical history. (That phrase has never been written on the web.) Here’s the highlight version.

Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney, who has previously won the Tour, attacked on the lower stages of Mount Ventoux, one of the sport’s most iconic climbs. This is the first time women have raced up Ventoux in the tour — how you say … patriarcat. The two women in the lead group with her were Demi Vollering and Marlen_Reusser, two of the most accomplished riders in the modern peloton, and they found themselves locked in their own tactical battle behind. As they all progressed up the mountain Vollering and Reusser botched their own responses to the attacking Niewiadoma-Phinney, who stormed up at such a blistering pace that it changed the circumstances for Vollering and Reusser two or three times as they made their way up.

Usually, the circumstance and the interpersonal dynamics of a bike race, and how each determines the other, are what I found most interesting, but Niewiadoma-Phinney’s metrics are what matters here.

In men’s cycling, the greatest road racer of all time, Tadej Pogačar, recorded a 6.98 w/kg performance for 40 minutes on his 2024 rampage up Plateau de Beille. That’s considered the best climb ever, in terms of the data. Here’s one estimate of her data today.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by @lucascyclingblog

This is all about how much power the ride can generate relative to their mass, which is how the datapoints are equalized among different people. Niewiadoma-Phinney’s averaged that sort of output for 55 minutes, so 37 percent longer than Pogacar did. And, she was pointed into a headwind for most of the climb.

Also, Taylor Phinney — Niewiadoma-Phinney’s husband, my all-time favorite rider and now on the comeback trail to become an Olympian once again — said her number was actually “more like 5.6” w/kg.

It’s an astounding thing. An awesome thing, in the truest sense: that ride should fill one with some awe. And she did it in the big race on the biggest climb on the hardest day. Most of us can’t produce power like that under ideal circumstances. Certainly we can’t hold it for long. Guaranteed a lot of people will be trying this weekend, but a lot of people are going to realize, very quickly, you cannot match one of the greatest rides of all time.

adventures / baseball / cycling / Philadelphia / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
4
Aug 26

If the sunset doesn’t distract you the scoreboard might

Sometimes conceptualizing work requires several different techniques. Today’s involved handwriting a bunch of outline-style things from an old semester. Then I had to scribble between all of the lines, merging some things and separating other things. And then I typed all of that up and did it again, removing some things as I went. It sounds easy, and it is, but there’s a lot of thinking that goes on in between those scribbles and merging and separating. Eventually, that became a good stopping point, and I needed to clear the old cobweb attic so that I can return to this again later this week.

Next I need to go through, line by line, lesson by lesson, to make sure all of the dates and the units and the lectures and so on all line up. After that, I’ll have to go back through it once more and make sure the assignments all line up. And then that class will be prepared.

Then I’ll do all of that, more or less (sometimes more) for two more classes. Later this week, maybe by the weekend, this will pick up speed.

You know what didn’t pick up speed today? Me. I set out for an afternoon ride and there was no wind and no legs and that’s really all of there was to it. I did the first half of our river run, which takes you seven miles to, you guessed it, the river. Instead of turning left to follow the route I did something unusual and I turned right. A mile and change down the river road I turned right again, creating the beginning of my double back, as I pedaled through Warehouse Town. I found a map of that area that goes back to 1927. All of the roads we know today are on that map. The land would have been different, of course, they built those warehouses right up to the muddy edges of the slough.

That that road was there a century ago means some kind of bridge was there, too. Now I want to know how long that’s been the route. The little crossroads town has been around since the late 17th or early 18th century. People have probably used that little water inlet in one way or another for all of that time. What all is sitting out there in that muck?

Anyway, you can think about that when you aren’t riding too fast. But when I got into that town I turned left and headed home. For a change, there was no headwind, no wind at all, and so I just tried to keep my tempo up as well as I could and timed myself on little segments, to that tree line, to this stop sign, and so on. I had to get home, get cooled down and cleaned up.

We went across the river this evening to see a baseball game with some friends. Sat in the shade that the parking lot affords (the shade of a car, that is). Someone brought chicken nuggets and other people brought cookies and drinks and we brought some fancy bread snacks. The conversation was pleasant until the appointed time of walking into the stadium. We got in just in time to see the first run scored on a TV screen.

Tonight we were sitting well down the first base line, close to the fair pole. It was a warm evening in the sun until …

And then the latter ends turned into a perfectly lovely evening. And how could it not be a lovely evening? Nice people on either side of us, beautiful views, some woman taking her social media influencer photos below us. The good guys with a lead.

Also, the video board operator likes it when the all-star pitcher gets two strikes on batters on a bad team.

When the hometown team is at bat they have some slickly produced montages. I assume this is meant to be evocative of the city’s iconic clock tower.

Anyway, the good guys scored early, put three more up in the third and added an insurance run in the seventh. Jesus Luzardo scattered four hits across eight innings before giving way to Caleb Kilian, who closed out the game in just his second appearance. The big star of the night was the other new guy, three-time batting champ and four-time All-Star Luis Arraez, who was traded yesterday and drove in two tonight. He was somewhere between San Diego and Dallas when San Francisco moved him. I wonder if he even knows what hotel he’s staying in right now.

Well, tonight, at least, he’s on a winning team trying to move back up in their division. After tonight’s win they’re about five games back, I believe.

The production crew was excited to use the winning graphics package, for sure. The Liberty Bell light lit up and the fans went home happy.

Perhaps no one does local imagery better than these guys. They have a lot they can use, and they incorporate it all. The old Fightin Phils are haunting the stadium, a replica of the Liberty Bell is parked just outside. There are statues, there’s that clock imagery from above. And there’s the graphics with the bell, and a little restaurant bar in the park named after John Pass and John Stow, the two founders who cast, and recast, the bell.

They need more Ben Franklin and cheesesteaks, but there’s enough here they could just rotate through the years. Maybe it’s down to the whims of the Phanatic, himself now a timeless institution. Many schools and professional teams are steeped in their local or manufactured iconography, and they should be — it’s important. I’d tell you why, but I’m saving that for an in-class lecture this fall. Enroll and find out!

books / cycling / history / Monday / photo / site — Comments Off
3
Aug 26

This covered more ground than anticipated

It was oppressively muggy — central Arkansas muggy — last night. Also it rained. Rained all night. Rained into the morning. Thunder was my alarm clock. The storm front blew away mid-morning. We’ve been in triple digits with the heat index into the early evening. I’ve sat here to sweat.

I spent several hours doing work stuff today. Don’t you want to know about it? I had to find the notebook that held the fall 2025 notes for a class I’m teaching again. I figured it was in one of three places, and I found it in the third place: a bookcase. Also, there were two notes books. So many notes I made for myself! I’d forgotten that.

When last this class met it was a twice-a-week class. This fall it will meet once a week. So the bulk of my day was in starting the reorganization process. Moving things around, renaming modules. Oh, and I updated this document I maintain with pages and pages of university resources. And I updated the syllabus for the course. It’s funny: some parts of working through all of those details can be easy, and some parts seem like a huge effort.

Apply that nonsensical observation for most of my days for the next five or six weeks.

Tomorrow I’m going to restructure the outline of that class. Hopefully that will be done by Wednesday. The rest of the week will be spent in making sure the work works right for both the style, and schedule, of this new version of the class. And I need to figure out how I’ll update the old slides in an efficient way.

That, I think, will be solved by some inspired bit of epiphany. Or I’ll just do it the long way 15 times in the next few months. Copying and pasting is such a bother, innit?

Also, I have to work on two other classes. I suspect I’ll begin one of those next week. The good news is that they aren’t starting from scratch. I’ll just agonize over them as if they are.

There’s a new look to the site, and if you go to the front page you can see it now. It starts like this, the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa.

Go ahead and look. That link will go to a new tab. Give it 60 seconds of zen. This page will be here when you’re ready.

The new idea for the front page is to update those images each month. If I don’t mess that up I have front page updates prepped to take us into next June. If I don’t mess it up.

I also updated the mobile version of the site. Just some easy text corrections and changing a few buttons that needed changing. Still not sure why it looks as intended on a phone, but broken in a computer browser. That’s an issue for another day. I wonder how many times I’ve said that about this issue.

And, of course, because the first of the month was this weekend I also did all of my regular monthly computer updates, changing various files, updating spreadsheets, cleaning up files, and so on. It’s not the most fun thing to write about, but this is is an old machine now, and it’s necessary. Fortunately these are easy chores.

Do you know that feeling when you learn something new and you just have to tell someone about it? I learned this yesterday and I have to tell people about it. Admittedly, I like this tale more than anyone else will, but I have that feeling, and so now you get to learn about this too. And for that we must return to Rick Atkinson’s Fate of the Day, the second in his Revolutionary War trilogy.

When the Augusta’s ammunition and gunpowder burned off the explosion was heard more than 50 miles away. The vessel’s remains sat in the water for about 90 years, a sometimes navigational hazard. I found a great 2015 lecture that talks about the ship, recovering the vessel’s remains, a tourist attraction, scavengers, and then …

That appeals to me in more ways than one. I’d just like to make things and then point to them later and say “That came from …” and the rest of that sentence not be “the lumber yard.” You can see some better photos of the HMS Augusta furniture and paneling from the DAR themselves.

Here’s one other, unrelated, Revolutionary War note for the day. Just 250 years and one day ago, John Adams wrote to Richard Cranch, the colonial watchmaker, clockmaker, and repairman of Boston. He talks about the inoculations against smallpox and a few other events of the day. But also this.

You mention the Exultation at a Declaration of Independence. Is not the Change We have seen astonishing? Would any Man, two Years ago have believed it possible, to accomplish such an Alteration in the Prejudices, Passions, Sentiments, and Principles of these thirteen little States as to make every one of them completely republican, and to make them own it? Idolatry to Monarchs, and servility to Aristocratical Pride, was never so totally eradicated, from so many Minds in so short a Time.

I’ve rambled on a bit, as it turns out, a few times recently about the public moods of those heady, dangerous, uncertain days. It’s not as if they had a bunch of surveys in the field to gauge things on the home front, or beyond their own social circles. They just knew what they knew, heard, read, and felt as they did. But there’s the great John Adams, certain of a sea change all the same.

It’s a remarkable kind of public politics, really. A revolution of its own, perhaps. Gauging the public interest like that wouldn’t have mattered quite the same way to a monarch. And it matters, of course, more and more now. Also, we still find the pros guessing at it often as not.

Cranch and Adams had been friends for decades. It was the watchmaker that introduced Adams to his future wife, Abigail.

I guess you could say, at both points, Adams knew what time it was.

Cranch married Abigail’s sister, so they were all related. And while the couples remained close, John kept his friend at arm’s length over money-making schemes. Cranch was not lucky in business. But, he served in the Massachusetts legislature, and was a trial court judge for almost 30 years. He and his wife died within a day of one another. He was apparently a forgotten man until modern historians wrote about him in just the last few years. His son became a federal judge in D.C. Two of his grandchildren became a painter and a minister. One of Cranch’s great-grandchildren was a man named Henry Ware Eliot, who became president of a brick making operation in St. Louis. And this is how history never ceases to astonish me. This man, the great-grandson of a Revolutionary War era man, died in 1919. Henry Ware Eliot, by the way, was also the father of T.S. Eliot.

I didn’t see that coming, either.

I had a nice ride Saturday evening. My lovely bride was off having a girls’ day and by the time I set out I had most of the roads all to myself. It’s quite lovely to be out when most everyone is already where they need to be. I did the river ride, which is the second route we designed for ourselves when we moved here in 2023. We haven’t done it in a good long while because a bridge has been closed since July of last year and there’s a sad and spooky part after that, but the road is opened once again.

Just behind me in that photo is where that new asphalt begins. If they’d just paved down another 100 feet or so (and, again, this road was closed for a year, they had time) they could have repaired the biggest mess of potholes you can find in the county.

When you get to the bridge it has that new overpass smell.

New overpasses have smells. Turns out it is not a pleasant smell, but surely it will descend upon the highway below it.

On the other side of the overpass we regained a pleasant little downhill, and a stretch of land that gives you three or four houses on one side, and a cornfield on the other. There is an intersection soon after that, so it was only ever a closure effecting about 1.5 miles, but still, it’s nice to have that road back. This corn is a definite change of pace.

From there you go up a little hill, through more fields, past the famous local artist, respectfully cruise by a memorial, and sprint through a tree canopy so you can get to an access road that’s a half-mile, tree covered stretch of brand new asphalt. A car followed me down that road, but the driver stayed respectfully behind me while I tapped out something in the 20 mph range. After that, back off the access road, another overpass, more trees, watch out for deer, go as fast as you can by the house where the people always yell, and then into the wind.

If I go the way of our designed route I would eventually get to a four-way stop and go straight, but last year the county made a shambles of that stretch of road. If I turn to the right I can stretch this ride. The weather was nice, I was not pressed for time, and so I went that longer way, making my road selection as it suited my whim and wind direction.I stunk it up on the one real hill on the route, as usual. Twice, though, I broke 34 mph on a flat stretch. Haven’t done that recently.

Maybe I’ll do it again!