cycling « Kenny Smith | Omnes hic sumus discere.

cycling

Unsteadily steady for a new week

It was a weekend with a little bit of lot of things. It wasn’t busy. It wasn’t overly productive. It was peaceful and some fun was had. The weather was nice. Then it was wet. And today was nice again. I caught up on some stuff. I’m dangerously close to getting ahead on some things. Also, there was a lot of cat cuddling.

I lived the bachelor life for part of the weekend. When the cats figure that out they get especially clingy. Also, we are coming up to cuddle season, when the temperatures dip just enough that they want the extra body heat. Last night a truce was declared in the sibling war and I went to sleep with one on either side of me.

Friday I went to campus for a tour with one of the rock star biology professors. She introduced us to the oldest tree on campus, a ginko, and an oak that’s believed to be older than the nation. We walked through the oak grove.

She hated on lawns. We talked about insects and other native bugs. We talked about how lawns are a traps for bugs and insects.

We saw a space that was designed to be an outdoor classroom. Almost no one uses it, apparently, but it also seemed like none of the faculty in our tour group even knew it existed. It’s only three-tenths of a mile from most of my classrooms. Maybe I should figure out a way to use the space.

We visited what they call the arboretum, which might be the case one day, but they’re overselling it now.

We walked through a meadow that they are returning to purely native plants. We walked through it. Reader, it sounded different. The critters chirped and critted. The birds tweeted. The bees buzzed. It somehow muted the nearby road noise.

It’s a narrow strip of land, in the scheme of things, but the things that live there can help other nearby plots of land. I’d be curious about how that works, but it surely varies species-to-species. Unfortunately, there wasn’t someone with that sort of expertise on the walk. The experts that were there were great, though. And, for a change, I tried not to turn this experience into a class-generating walk.

OK, my idea for the day was a Get To Know Your Campus course. Couple of days of walking. Couple of days of history. Couple of days of different resources and activities that are available to students … stuff that helps people build up investment in the campus community. Maybe it’d be a course for transfer students.

After that tour my lovely bride and I got our flu shots. I also got a tetanus shot because I fell, and also, when was my last tetanus shot? While the woman was giving me my shots I was very brave.

The person that stuck me, twice, offered me a sticker. I declined. We were just going home and there would be no one to propagandize. We did take her up on a lollipop, though. Because we are mature, responsible, pillars of our community, we drove home amusing ourselves by demonstrating weird, noisy ways to enjoy Dum-Dums.

I went for a ride Saturday, my first one since the Wednesday crash. The first day you’re sore. The second day you’re more sore. After that you’re just down lingering pain, or something real and lasting. You have to find out, so I went out.

I reproduced the first ride we took here when we moved three years ago. It was a good time of day for those particular roads and I hadn’t been that way in some time. For some reason I can’t explain it isn’t my favorite route, so I just don’t give it its due. But there are plenty of lovely views.

After you get over the water, get into the county seat, turn back toward home and then go over another bit of water, you get back into the farmland. Maybe that stretch is why I don’t like the route. There are some small hills which are just enough, and perfectly spaced, to break up any momentum I have.

It’s a 20-mile route, which is an easy ride, but I was a bit sore, still. The first six miles my neck and shoulders hurt. But, then, my shoulder felt exactly this way for about two years after my big crash in 2012. I had to stop at a red light, though, and managed to stretch things out just after something in my neck popped. After that, the next 12 miles felt great. I wasn’t fast, but it all felt smooth.

Physically speaking, anyway.

In the last five miles, or so, though, something weird started happening.

This whole route is a lot of straight lines. You turn left at a stop sign. You turn left at another stop sign. You turn left twice more with the flow of traffic. Then there’s the final left and right to get back home. Sprinkled in there are two red lights. The first one was where I had my little stretch. The second red light is four miles from home, and somewhere just before that I lost a lot of confidence in the stability of my machine. And in those last couple of turns after the light I realized I have lost all of my confidence in my limited cornering skills.

This is no way to ride.

Sunday it rained all day. All day. And all night. It rained so much that I even forgot about it. The only time it wasn’t raining was when I took the garbage can down to the end of the drive. I was able to get a lot of class prep done, though. Just as importantly, I plotted out the rest of the week. Just knowing when I’m going to get this or that done feels good. It was such a great use of time that I’m thinking that, by Thursday, I might be working on next week’s class prep.

Let’s see what happens next.

What happened today, though, was that I finished some grading. I wrote my online class. I wrote much of my next message to that class. I made the final changes to Tuesday’s slide deck. I finished Thursday’s slide deck. I ignored Wednesday’s slide deck. That’s for tomorrow.

Today was a beautiful day and after I’d done the day’s work I enjoyed another little bike ride. This time, I took what was one of our other regular routes. It was a long seven-mile stretch into a headwind. My next two turns gave me more speed because of a crosswind and a tailwind. But those were two turns that felt still felt shaky.

The problem with this route is that there are two ghost bikes on one road. They sit right before my next turn, and as I was trying to line up that turn I could hear a car approaching, I could see the little dot that represented it on my Garmin, I could watch it drawing close, I could see the ghost bikes. I could see the turn. I could see the poorly patched ruts in the new road right where I wanted to turn. And, anyway, I need to find my confidence again.

I made the turn safely, of course. Here we are, after all. And the payoff was riding under this lovely canopy of trees. This is a great road.

And the payoff was the sun over this field. It felt then, and looks now, like I’m pedaling through a knockoff Van Gogh painting. Just needs windmills and some of his other trademarks.

I took on some other roads I enjoy, a perfect one-mile ribbon, a long uphill stretch that I crushed, and then another up-and-down bit where the bottom is some oddly shaped pond-creek-canal thing I can’t understand that reeks of sulfur. Here I faced a conundrum. If I don’t get out of that little valley I might asphyxiate. Should I pedal faster to get up the hill and away from the smell? If I pedal faster I’ll have to breathe in more of this stuff. Also, what’s causing that? And why is it worse now than it usually is?

On the next road I ran across a cornhawk.

If you see it from the side, this strip of corn husks stretches almost all the way to the treeline. I wonder if it’ll still be standing when I go back by there later this week.

Anyway, on balance, my balance on the bike felt a little bit better. Still felt dreadful about each real turn, though. And some of the bumps, too! I didn’t even have a real hard crash — I still have a small bandage on my elbow, but my knee is fine, and most of the soreness has worked its way out as expected and I’m fine — but it has succeeded in getting in my head.

Oh, hey, that’s almost 1,500 words. And there’s new stuff to grade and other things to do. Let me see to those now.

adventures / Auburn / cycling / memories / photo / Rowan / sport / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
7
Oct 26

I crashed my bike again

I’m fine.

Just a perfect, beautiful, lovely, chamber of commerce day. The sort of day you want all the time. The sort of day that you know is really a marker. The sort of day that will stick around, for a while, if you’re lucky. The sort of day you know isn’t going to last.

But I got ahead of things, and so I found a way to sneak outside and enjoy it for a whole hour.

I invited my lovely bride out for a bike ride, so that I could chase her for 45 minutes and then slowly drift away from her, which has been the way it has worked this year.

After the turnaround, and before I got dropped, I managed a few photographs. We totally posed this.

And here’s me saying goodbye to her, because, for most of the rest of the way, she would be in the distance, and then gone, and I could just sit there and pedal into the wind with my thoughts and playing the rest of my week’s work out in my head. I wonder if I would go faster if I did that less. I wonder if I did that more I’d go slower, or if the work would be better. I didn’t have time to ask her, because soon after this, she was gone.

What happened next was, well, exactly what I said. The headwinds caught me, I sat up, started thinking about stuff and just casually pedaled my way home. I counted the vehicles that passed me dangerously. I’d just been thinking about how I’d gotten away from using that as a bit in class, and I should get back to that. Today, there was the commercial service van that almost hit The Yankee and gave me a little more room. Then there was the oversized black GMC pickup, which almost hit me, And then the white Chevy Silverado which almost clipped me while trying to save two seconds to immediately turn in front of me. I’m not sure why your two seconds are worth risking another person’s life, but that’s how it works.

Today, all of that happened within 36 minutes.

But the real fun was later! I completed much of the planned route, returned to the neighborhood, and then lost my back wheel. I felt it go to the right, felt me go to the left, and felt me hitting the ground. Heard myself saying “Ow! Ow!”

I landed on my surgically repaired shoulder, which is fine. I landed on my knee, which is scratched. I landed on my elbow and forearm, which has some nice road rash. For some reason I couldn’t get up in my bike shoes, so I kicked them off, and stood up, trying not to get a leg cramp at the same time. Looked around, surprised that no one saw this. Picked up my bike, where the left handlebar had gotten wedged beneath the top tube, the front wheel cranked all the way over. I couldn’t get undo that. Also, the handlebar was pushing the rear brake line, so the whole of my bike was shut down.

So I carried it, bleeding, the short distance home. I was very close.

Put my stuff away, inspected my helmet and was pleased to see I didn’t smack the ol’ noggin. I celebrated by hammering free the headset from the top tube, checked the wheels and the brakes, and then went inside.

Cleaned my wounds, took an angry, painful, shower. We did the first aid routine. Gauze, bandages, marveled that all of the bleeding parts are right on the bending parts of my limbs. So we made use of some ACE bandages. Then, I got ready to go to class.

Our department had an open house today, so the floor was filled with students. I tried to stay out of the way, hoping no one would bump into me. Already, I’m a bit sore, and that’ll become a problem tomorrow and Friday, but also, see above.

In class, I had to apologize for sitting sideways, because we mummified my leg. Also, I had to apologize for being delayed with grading a few papers. That was supposed to get done this afternoon, but the day got away from me, as you might imagine.

This class was about fan identity. I do this whole lecture through the lens of being an Auburn man. I make fun of Georgia. I discussed social identity theory, role identity, and identity fusion theory, which is my favorite of the bunch. I show this video, as an example of a shared experience. I show them where I was in the video.

They were a bit interested in that one, because it is surreal. And it was surreal. (Also, I think, it is why I don’t like being in crowds.)

I talk about Warren St. John’s Rammer Jammer, which has some incredible anecdotes about fan sacrifice. I show them videos of the viral Roll Tide Willie guy. Some of them know of him, but one of the local stations did a nice little profile package on him, and it is entirely different.

While it is playing I’m trying to count the number of people I know who are that guy. More than one. He looks like a caricature, but he’s a real guy. And since I’ve been asking them to think of fans as a client rather than as being a fan themselves, it seems important to give the guy a little understanding.

I show a terrific NFL hype video, which won’t embed here, but does allow me to point out roughly all of the positive things we’ve been talking about.

As a test, I showed this video. It doesn’t really get laughs. I don’t know why.

After I gave them my big Go Vote speech we got out a few minutes early.

I drove home, called my mom to tell her I got her grandfather’s pocket watch working. Missed a turn and wound up way off course before I figured it out. Every nondescript field looks the same in total darkness.

Got home and learned that I’d bled through the bandage on my elbow. Bled into a white shirt. I could feel it during class. Didn’t want to make a scene. All of that blood will come out of the shirt, though. And it’s an old shirt, so that’s not a problem. But, I need to figure out how to clean the elbow of my sport coat. And now I get to figure out how sore I’ll be tomorrow, how much more sore I’ll be on Friday, and what Saturday might feel like.

cycling / Monday / photo — Comments Off
5
Oct 26

A lovely, full, productive day

This was just a little weekend of everything, meteorologically speaking. Saturday offered us some sun, and a bit of chill. Sunday was dreary and cool, the autumn really sinking its hooks all of us, the summer growing weary, the leaves on some of the trees growing bored with just hanging there. Two of the pear trees are all but bare. Saturday we rested and watched football. Sunday I spent the afternoon doing a lot of schoolwork. It seemed like a lot then, anyway. Right this second, I wonder if it was enough. It’s an unusual feeling.

It was a good day, though. Two lectures prepped to start the week. I graded some things — and more of that to go in just a bit. I reviewed four research papers for a conference. I wrote a social media post for work. I wrote my online class. It’s been a productive day.

But there’s also Friday.

The weekend before this one, while I was out of town, we had a nor’easter. I guess I’d always associated nor’easters, large-scale extratropical cyclones, with winter weather. Maybe because they usually happen between the months of November and March. But, late September weather has to do its thing, I guess. Wind and rain were in the forecast. And here, on the inner coastal plain where the heavy land and the green sands meet, we got a little rain, but a lot of wind.

My lovely bride told me Saturday morning that we had a limb fall. I’m guessing it was the 50+ mph gusts we got overnight. I’d planned to deal with it on Monday, but I had a flight on the country’s third largest airline, who is field testing a new slogan: Never On Time.

The plan was to cut it up for the fire pit. Tuesday, after work, I dragged the whole limb to the back. I’ve done this a few times now, cutting up limbs at the front of the property and then taking several trips back to the wood pile, when I’m already tired and out of patience. This time, because I finally got smart, I dragged the whole limb to the backyard and just one time. This was the right strategy.

Friday I cut it up. I realized I’d forgotten the hedge trimmer and left it outside for a week or more, so I cleaned up the rust with a proprietary mixture of rust removal products that have been maturing for years under the kitchen sink. Then I set about cutting back all the twigs and small branches and leafy bits, which has made the pile of stuff to burn in the pit impossibly tall. (The next time we get a night with no wind, we’re roasting marshmallows.) The limb, once denuded, didn’t look like all that much.

So the next question was which way should I deal with that. I could break out the chainsaw. I’d have to oil it up, run some extension cords, remember how to use the thing, and so on. That limb doesn’t hardly seem substantial enough for that. I’ve also got a great pruning saw. I finally decided the pruning saw would be better. And 15 minutes and 11 cuts later, the job was done. I don’t think I could have gotten the chainsaw out in that amount of time, certainly couldn’t get it, set it up, do the sawing, drain the oil, and put it all away in 15 minutes.

I need a chart that helps me determine which one to use in the future. I need fewer limbs to fall. I need the chainsaw manufacturers to explain to me why saws leak oil as a known feature.

Also this weekend, we spent a little time in the gazebo.

We need to spend more time out there. It is a nice setup. I always seem to rediscover the idea late in the season.

The work I did Sunday, when the weather was bad, freed up some time today, and this was the best idea I had all weekend. It was a beautiful day, and I haven’t been on my bike in a while, and aside from the 15 mph headwinds, it was a perfect day to make my feet turn in little circles.

Here are a few of the things I saw on my 65 kilometer ride.

There aren’t enough tree-covered roads like this around here. Then again, if all of the roads here looked like this, if that would feel like enough.

Having gone through town twice, and then another little crossroads town, and back out into the pastureland, I found this view about 30 kilometers into the ride.

Then I saw this tractor, pulling a mower, very soon after.

At about 53K into the ride, I finally had the chance to take a shadow selfie.

After that, it was back into town a third time, just to add on the distance. I passed one of the sheep herds attended to their evening graze.

Not pictured today were the three deer, four dogs, five chickens or six cars that seemed intent on killing me.

But you do get the sunset over my shoulder. This is just two miles from home, and about 60 seconds before everything on me made the case for wrapping up the ride.

So I did, having timed the ride perfectly. A glorious day, a slow, windy ride, 65 kilometers ending just before the sun disappeared. Got cleaned up, took a 20 minute power nap, had dinner, and put on the compression boots.

Now, I’m about to grade tonight’s homework, and pull together a few more things for tomorrow.

This was a great Monday. I hope yours was, as well.

cycling / Monday / photo / Rowan — Comments Off
21
Sep 26

Autumn showed up

The equinox came … or did it arrive? … or did we catch up to it? Or it will. We mark the equinox tomorrow. But the autumnal weather pushed its way in this weekend. Rain came with it. Everything was gray, except when it rained, except when it was sunny. Weather forecasts are spotty now, thanks to unnecessary budget cuts to NOAA and NWS. This won’t be a real problem until it is. But fear not! When it is, we’ve also cut FEMA to the bone. We are a very smart society.

Anyway, the weather was a bit of everything this weekend. We even had some blowing rain and some sideways rain. At least the drought monitor program, and if that data is still working as expected, we are now officially out of our drought. I haven’t mentioned it here since the beginning of the month, but our maps changed about two weeks ago. Take longer showers, kiddies! The aquifer is full!

Or so I assume.

Friday I went to campus to take part in a Professional Learning Community. We are encouraged to take part i some of these. There is a wide variety presumably there is something for everyone. You could see it as a chore, but, really, you’re being paid to learn things. This semester I am in a food, agriculture, and forestry PLC. I like food. I have a degree in agriculture. I studied forestry for two-plus years. I figured it’d be a good program for me. Friday was its first meeting, and Friday we went to the campus farm.

Our guide told us about the work she and her colleagues and a bunch of students are doing. They’re just getting started, but it is already interesting, and already breaking out of the humble beginnings category, just in year two.

This is not a land grant school, but here we are, on a small regenerative farm, where scientific work is taking place, where they are helping support students and the community with fresh produce, restore land, and also make a few bucks for a good cause. The president of the university grows some peppers out there, he and some students work the land. The peppers get turned into a hot sauce. It’s sold, with proceeds going to an emergency student fund. The president is very proud, and this is a cool running project. Also, the hottest hot sauce is so hot the catering services aren’t allowed to provide it on campus.

There’s also a nice little birch stand out there.

Birch bark is incredible versatile. You can create bowls (makeshift or otherwise) for food and water storage. People have used it to make roofs, canoes, cordage, body armor. You can actually eat the inner bark — some indigenous tribes saw it as famine food — and may have medicinal properties.

But there’s a researcher here who is doing some science beyond what are understood as those practical, historical uses. Presently there are experiments underway studying the adhesive qualities of the stuff.

I wonder how you get a project like that underway. How many hoops that research team had to jump through, if they got pushback, or if had to work the phones and forms a lot. I bet I’d get turned down if I suggested something comparable.

The conversation at the farm inspired an idea and by the time I got back home I had a semester-long thumbnail sketched out. I waited a few hours to send it on, just so it didn’t seem immediately hasty. It doesn’t have to do with those trees, but we’ll see if it becomes anything more than an email. Could be fun.

Let’s check on a few of the things growing at home. I’m still not sure if this a flower or a weed. The definition simply has to do with intention, and I don’t know if we want this there or not. But it looks nice. Also the bees like it.

The rose bushes are still going strong. These things are resilient, prolific, and persistent.

We have two giant hydrangeas, and this one has had a great year. Also, the rains didn’t knock it over this summer. Hopefully it’ll give us a few more weeks before the beautiful decay begins. Again, the bees are pleased.

Inside, Saturday, I caught the diminishing sun at just the right time. Usually there’s a cat on this landing, but they both missed out here.

Sunday it rained. And then it rained some more. And it kept raining. And while it rained, I admired the still-budding flowers. And I actually stopped to smell the roses.

And, friends, there’s something to that expression. They smelled lovely. If you get the chance, you should do that.

I make this joke that we should keep this weather until March. It’d be nice for a lot of reasons, especially the flora.

But, ya know, if it warms back up a bit after this cold front moves through, that’d be nice, too.

At the risk of putting a busy week behind, and after a productive afternoon trying to stay on top of everything, I enjoyed a little bike ride today. The highs only got to the mid-70s, and then I messed around and almost missed my window. The temps had started to slip just a bit. It felt cooler outside than inside, but you don’t notice such things when you finally get the heart rate up.

Before I got out of the neighborhood, I noticed the first real signs of fall.

The whole of it was a gray ride, through the neighboring neighborhood, into town, around the lake, back through one of the busy intersections, past the new purposeless developments and into the countryside. When I got precisely halfway into the ride, almost exactly so, the occasional sprinkle became a mist, which evolved into a rain.

I was riding into it. But I had a big right turn and I figured I had a 50-33 shot of riding my way out of the rain. What I got, when I turned right, was a full on rain shower. And I rode in that for the last 12 miles. And in the last seven miles it was just rain and headwinds.

It wasn’t a fast ride, but it was the right ride to start autumn. Let’s have a great one!

cycling / Monday / photo — Comments Off
14
Sep 26

Doing and whirring, but never enough

Slept in and woke up traumatically, as if something was wrong. It was not unlike the adrenaline dump you can get in a dream, only I don’t know that I’d been dreaming. Also, I felt, for a few moments, as those something might physically be wrong. Counted all my fingers and toes. Everything on my face was in place. Caught my breath, let me fingers wake up (I’d been sleeping on them and they’d gone tingly) and, soon enough, everything was fine. But that was some kinda weird.

And then I got to it. I worked through the morning’s emails. I sent a message to my online class. It was a carefully crafted document that reminded them of upcoming due dates, mentioned the local football team, highlighted various events going on campus ranging from soccer to an art exhibit to career fairs, and so on.

I finished my notes, and slides, for tomorrow’s class. I prepared a bit of Wednesday’s class and Thursday’s, too.

I washed three rugs, and a load of towels and sheets, besides. I read the news. Put the kitty beds back out. I call them caves, but there’s another product with that name. Really, these are the most luxuriously lined sleeping bags that are cat sized. They almost never climb in them. They do sleep on them. And they needed washing, which happened yesterday. So thick is the microfiber and faux fur it took a full day for them to almost dry inside and out. But, today, one went back in the box in the window, and the other went back on the ottoman.

I submitted an extended abstract for a conference. I’m going to examine, and hope to present my observations on the agenda setting taking place in the new Saturday Night Live UK. I just discovered this show yesterday. Had an idea 20 minutes later, then wrote 1,100 words on it last night, before and after the football game. Made some edits today, and off it went. That’ll give me something to watch when it gets too cold to go outside, and something to talk about for 15 minutes next spring.

Caught up on the news, ate some leftovers, replied to a lot more email, the usual. It was a productive day, and I did it all this afternoon. Who needs mornings, anyway?

I had a nice bike ride on Saturday. My lovely bride and I went out together, but she wisely pulled the rip cord when it didn’t feel right. She’d already had one big workout that day and I slowed her down and made her wait too long for another. So I just pedaled myself around for 30 miles.

I like going this way because we’re actually below sea level here … that’s two places in this general area where I know that to be true. The other is 7-feet below, this one is about 5-feet below sea level. Also, the water is here. And I mean, here. The tide had come in, and I hadn’t given that any thought when I set about on that particular route.

Today, just after 5 p.m. when I’d done all that I could do, at least until later tonight, I had another ride. This one was one of the better rides I’ve had in a long time. I don’t know if I’ve ever understood the conditions that allow for me to have this sort of ride, but I’d like for it to happen again.

It was in the 70s, for most of the chosen route and the time of day the traffic was minimal. Everyone was where they needed to be. The bike was doing everything I wanted it to and my legs weren’t bothered by the effort at all. Some days, I think, I am limited by different things. Could be my legs today, my lungs tomorrow, the bike or the terrain or the time available on other days. But, today, it just all worked out.

I did my 25-mile time trial route, my 14th if my notes are correct. This was my fifth fastest time, and my second fastest of the year. And it could have been faster, but there was a stretch on the back half of that course where I realized that today was a day I could ride tempo, but I had no need to do so.

Even the cars that passed by behaved today. And I timed this to almost perfect. This is the last light, just before I turned for home.

This is one thing the Velominati got right.

La Volupte translates roughly to “voluptuousness,” and while the first thing the mind goes to is a sexual definition, my favorite is, “the property of being lush and abundant and a pleasure to the senses.” In a sport where pain is worn like a badge of honor, those times when cycling is lush and abundant and a pleasure to the senses are what makes us want to climb onto our bikes again tomorrow. When Bobet returned home from his ride on the Azur, his brother asked him how it went. His answer was simply, “I was flying today.”

I feel like I’ve had one small experience with la volupte. One. In 28,000 miles. And that was years ago. It’s not something you dream of or look back on too much, but it’s nice.

I’ll look back, though, on today’s ride, when I could elevate my pace and do it again, and then again, and wonder why I didn’t feel that at all, when I could get over the little hills and get back to it without missing more than an extra breath, when the water tasted cool even at the end of the ride. When I noticed that my ill-fighting bike wasn’t making anything hurt. When I noticed that my shoulder hurt, just like it did constantly between 2012 and 2014, and I spent some miles hoping that wasn’t the secret to this. When I thought I’d do a little sprint near the end, but my glute was protesting, so I decided not to, but almost did it anyway. When all of the colors looked like an oversaturated indy house art film. When I developed no recollection, whatsoever, of the sound of the wind. And when I set no segment PRs, no bests of any sort, but I still felt fast, capable, and ready to ride again.

I’ve not had any of that on the bike in a while, not really. I’d like to.

OK, this is the first night of real grading this semester. I have 108 things to look over. Let’s see how many of them I can get to this evening, before I wander out into the dark, looking for a change of pace. There could be clouds out there to see, after all.

That, I’m telling myself, is how a productive Tuesday will begin.