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cycling / food / Monday / photo — Comments Off
25
Apr 16

Scenes from a weekend of riding

We got in about 60 miles on the bikes this weekend. We went over to Columbus on Saturday, a beautiful, warm day, to ride the bulk of it. Here is the Riverwalk:

You have to time this right so you can either avoid, or run into, the maximum amount of pedestrians. Your windows are narrow over there. But look at that sky!

I thought I would take a selfie. And I did, but this one turned out even cooler:

I guess I pressed the shutter button before the sensor compensated for the light. That white background is not Photoshopped, that’s just the way it turned out.

My Specialized and the Chattahoochee:

Really we go over to Columbus to ride for the late breakfast after. Can we talk food for a second? Let’s talk food for a second. As a baby, I gave up the bottle relatively quickly. And — being raised in the deep, deep, deeeeep South — I was probably weened on biscuits and gravy. So understand: I have a frame of reference here. Plucked Up Chicken & Biscuits has the best gravy biscuit I’ve ever tasted:

And I’m from the South, of course, so I know which I speak here. Also, someone thought it’d be a good idea to lightly batter some tender chicken and then put it in a spicy pineapple marmalade. This was a good idea:

Go have some. Seriously. It’ll change your day.

Today’s roses at home:

They just bloom and bloom and require nothing of us. Pretty incredible.

cycling / history / markers / Thursday — Comments Off
21
Apr 16

Riding for markers

I’m working on wrapping up a project I’ve been undertaking, more off than on, for several years. I’ve been riding my bike all over the county to photograph the markers and the places they document. The ones I’m showing you today are all from the same place. So important is this location, there are three markers within view of one another.

Three signs in all, six sides of information, generations of families and leaders and history. Interesting how cemeteries are both the beginning and end of history.

You can see the other sides to these signs, and the sacred grounds they mark, here.

baseball / cycling / Monday / photo — Comments Off
18
Apr 16

A smattering of pictures

What is a smattering, anyway? The word means “a small amount,” but isn’t that relative? Anyway, here are six — but I didn’t put a lot more here, so comparatively it was a small amount. Anyway.

At a baseball game this weekend I caught a foul ball. As protocol demands, I gave it to a kid.

Baseball fan for life now.

The sky was incredible on Saturday, so I took a few pictures, just to remember it:

Hanging out with Allie, who was enjoying a nice sun bath:

A view from part of my ride today. This is on the time trial route. I love this little roller. You come down from the smallest little right-hand descent and as soon as you bottom out your cockpit is pointed up again. It is fun any time of day, but, in the evening, you hear everything come to life. On one side are crickets and from the other side you hear bullfrogs:

And an odd-looking shadow portrait:

cycling / history / markers / Thursday — Comments Off
14
Apr 16

Back to the markers

I have to finish this project up and, so, for the next several weeks I’ll be sneaking in a few posts that will shoot you over to my historic marker page. The concept there is pretty straightforward. I’ve been riding my bike all over the county to photograph the markers and the places they document. This has been an on-again-off-again project for years. Time to wrap it up. Here are two that will get us a bit closer to doing just that.

This is a superlative sign. It is the most difficult one in the county to get to. It was one of the hardest ones to find. Being from 1954 it is perhaps the oldest of the bunch. It has perhaps the widest ranging actual historical significance. And there’s less at this physical location than any other marker in the county. There’s absolutely nothing there:

You can see the other side, and the locale.

After France, late in the Colonial period gave all of this region to Britain surveyors marked the boundaries including this one in south Smiths Station. This line goes all the way across at least two states. I wonder if there are other signs elsewhere on this line.

Also, 18th century surveyor still sounds like an impossibly difficult job.

I had a professor once who explained that the railway switch that was located just down from this sign is why all of this is here. And then he’d walk you through a few decades of railway history and it made sense. And now the town which grew beside the railroad became a city and then a blue collar town and then it dried up and now it is making a comeback. And that’s about 100 years of history.

Click here to see the other side of the sign and a lot of the locale.

cycling / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
12
Apr 16

Allez, Allez

The soft drinks don’t often speak to you, but when they do, you should consider listening:

I like to keep track of roads where I can break the speed limit on my bike. It is a short list. There’s only like six or seven roads in town.

Let’s call it eight after today.

Also, I use one of the popular apps to track all of my rides. In the app there are certain places along any given road which have been selected as courses where you can compete against other people. Today, one such course, I learned I’m three seconds off the pace set by an NFL first rounder, two-time all-SEC, 3rd-team all-American, two-time Super Bowl champ.

He doesn’t know it yet, but we’re about to race.