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cycling

The dangers of barbecue

We spent Monday and Wednesday talking about story ideas in my writing and editing class. Today we shifted to research tools. The conversation was all about primary sources. So I got a state accident report form from the police folks. I showed off health department forms from the restaurant inspectors. I downloaded the university’s Form 990 from Guidestar. The form is an annual reporting return that has to be filed with the government, listing programs and finances.

I started out asking “Who wants to know what the president of the university makes?”

People always want to know about the boss, don’t they?

This may be my favorite stretch of classes. Next week we’ll talk about online sources and research. It isn’t for everyone, but I’m going to try and make it interesting in the “yes, you have access to this sort of thing and there are millions of stories that can come from it” vein. We’ll see how many people are intrigued.

I got in a short ride before darkness fell, about an hour’s worth. I wimped out, taking a standard, easy route with only 700 feet of climbing. I topped out at 38.1 miles per hour. There’s a section of my cycling app that allows me to add notes about the ride. This evening I typed in “Perfectly forgettable.”

Sometimes those are the best rides. Nothing remarkable on the two little climbs, nor the one long sprint. The hills close to home slow and manageable. I caught all the lights and worked back through the neighborhood just in time to see the headlights shining. It was mindless and a great wind down from the week. It also wasn’t long enough. But, I’ll ride again in the morning and we’ll find out if I like morning rides. There might be an appeal there. But will it be more appealing than the snooze bar?

This is the best story you’ll read today. It defies excerpting, but we’ll try. This young woman found herself homeless when her lost her job. They bounced from shelter to shelter before things turned back around a bit …

‘I didn’t want to just be average.’

Koen’s family got back on its feet and found a new house her senior year of high school, but she was living in homeless shelters for most of her high school education, which made school work a little difficult.

“At the shelter you have to work and take hours and have to do chores,” she said. “Or if volunteers come to hold events or programs, it would be rude to not go. I studied when I could. I didn’t want to just be average. I had made it a goal my freshman year I wanted to be in the Top 20 every year.”

And that’s exactly where she finished—as one of about 20 students who had such high GPAs the computers named them all No. 1. She graduated high school with honors and an advanced academic diploma.

Koen just started her first year at the University of Montevallo, where she plans to join the honors program and continue to volunteer.

She is one of five young people in a scholarship competition. She’s local and remarkable, so I’m voting for Rebecca Koen.

They’re all moving stories, should you feel the need to be moved this lovely day.

Things to read … because reading makes every day more lovely.

Birmingham exports down 20 percent from 2011:

According to numbers from the U.S. Department of Commerce, in 2013 Birmingham exported $1.8 billion in goods from industries such as transportation equipment, machinery and primary metals. But that number is down 20 percent from 2011, when the city exported $2.3 billion.

That dovetails nicely with certain economic events.

You can’t see it and you can’t know why … Court won’t release costs of Gitmo camp:

A federal judge ruled Thursday that the Pentagon need not make public a document detailing the costs associated with a Guantanamo Bay prison camp used to house so-called high-value detainees.

In a ten-page opinion (posted here), U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell rejected the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit Miami Herald reporter Carol Rosenberg brought seeking records of the costs of creating or maintaining the camp.

The Defense Department said it found only one record, a single page, responsive to Rosenberg’s request. That page was classified in its entirety.

The court filing describing the reason for the classification and level of classification is itself classified

Don’t you just want to know why you can’t know how much it cost?

This happened to me in Birmingham … Visitor’s barbecue from Joe’s Kansas City gets confiscated at KCI:

Bob Porter wasn’t about to leave Kansas City without tasting our world famous barbecue.

Porter, a government affairs consultant from Washington, D.C., flew in over the weekend to attend the Chiefs game with a group of friends. Before catching his return flight at Kansas City International Airport, he stopped by the Leawood Joe’s Kansas City for a pound of brisket, a pound of smoked sausage and a small condiment cup of sauce.

Porter says he assumed the barbecue would be fine in his checked suitcase because it was wrapped in butcher paper and, for good measure, a plastic laundry bag from his hotel room. But when he arrived home in D.C. Monday and opened his suitcase, the barbecue was gone. In its place, he says, was an empty plastic laundry bag and a note from the Transportation Security Administration that said it had gone through his luggage.

“Really? That’s what you’re taking? My barbecue?” Porter says. “I’ve traveled all over the world, and I’ve never had anything like this happen before.”

I had some very dangerous banana pudding confiscated by the heroic blue shirts at the Birmingham airport. It all came down to an idiotic argument about whether it was a solid or a gel. The hungry TSA worker thought it was a gel. If it was frozen, he said, that wouldn’t be a problem. Consider that. If it were a solid quart I’d have a brick, much more dangerous than your regular batch of bananas, pudding and vanilla wafers. Porter, meanwhile, was trying to smuggle dangerous brisket from here to there. Or maybe it was the artery clogging sauce.

So you can now feel much safer the next time you fly.

cycling / football / journalism / links / Monday / things to read / video — Comments Off
8
Sep 14

A day full of things to read

I have been accumulating a wealth of links these last few days. They are all wonderful in one way or another. I will share them here now.

But before all of that, here is a video featuring the parents of a fine cyclist and, wouldn’t you know it, Davis and Connie Phinney were world class cyclists themselves. They have an incredible story of success and heartache and recovery and peace and satisfaction. It is worth 15 minutes for the archival footage alone:

And now for some interesting news from near and far:

Al Qaeda Wasn’t ‘on the Run’:

In all, the U.S. government would have access to more than a million documents detailing al Qaeda’s funding, training, personnel, and future plans. The raid promised to be a turning point in America’s war on terror, not only because it eliminated al Qaeda’s leader, but also because the materials taken from his compound had great intelligence value. Analysts and policymakers would no longer need to depend on the inherently incomplete picture that had emerged from the piecing together of disparate threads of intelligence—collected via methods with varying records of success and from sources of uneven reliability. The bin Laden documents were primary source material, providing unmediated access to the thinking of al Qaeda leaders expressed in their own words.

A comprehensive and systematic examination of those documents could give U.S. intelligence officials—and eventually the American public—a better understanding of al Qaeda’s leadership, its affiliates, its recruitment efforts, its methods of communication; a better understanding, that is, of the enemy America has fought for over a decade now, at a cost of trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives.

Incredibly, such a comprehensive study—a thorough “document exploitation,” in the parlance of the intelligence community—never took place. The Weekly Standard has spoken to more than two dozen individuals with knowledge of the U.S. government’s handling of the bin Laden documents. And on that, there is widespread agreement.

From the Office of There’s a Special Circle for This Guy … Woman beheaded ‘with machete’ in north London garden:

One line of inquiry for detectives is understood to be that the man was inspired by recent footage of terrorists beheading two American journalists in Syria.

Some residents claimed last night that the suspect was a local man who had converted to Islam last year, but those claims could not be verified. Detectives said they had ruled out terrorism.

For a different kind of frustration … We Could Have Stopped This:

(T)he world largely ignored the unfolding epidemic, even as the sole major international responder, Doctors Without Borders (also known by its French acronym, MSF), pleaded for help and warned repeatedly that the virus was spreading out of control. The WHO was all but AWOL, its miniscule epidemic-response department slashed to smithereens by three years of budget cuts, monitoring the epidemic’s relentless growth but taking little real action.

Even as the leading physicians in charge of Liberia and Sierra Leone’s Ebola responses succumbed to the virus, global action remained elusive. The neglectful status of the WHO was, horribly, by design.

Meanwhile, closer to home … Stop and seize:

After the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the government called on police to become the eyes and ears of homeland security on America’s highways.

Local officers, county deputies and state troopers were encouraged to act more aggressively in searching for suspicious people, drugs and other contraband. The departments of Homeland Security and Justice spent millions on police training.

The effort succeeded, but it had an impact that has been largely hidden from public view: the spread of an aggressive brand of policing that has spurred the seizure of hundreds of millions of dollars in cash from motorists and others not charged with crimes, a Washington Post investigation found. Thousands of people have been forced to fight legal battles that can last more than a year to get their money back.

More than 100 teens swarm Memphis plaza, ‘knocking out’ shoppers

Seldom do most people wish to be a teenager again, but there are some people who would like the chance after reading this … Teen with autism victimized in disgusting ALS ice challenge prank:

Although their son is doing well and bravely returned to school, the parents have a message for the teens that humiliated him:

“I hope you will be punished to the full extent of the law, which still to me would not be enough, but that’s what I wish,” said Mensen.

School officials say no disciplinary action will be taken until after police have completed their investigation.

We watched this documentary this weekend:

You should watch it. There will be sobbing. I’m not sure you can say enough about It’s Time. Not every story is as great, or terrible, as the one that brought Chucky Mullins and Brad Gaines together, but it is a tremendous look at what football, the region and story telling can be. You’d be hard pressed to make a much better sports documentary.

You can tell a lot about the world around you by the business news:

Alabama’s economy in slow recovery

August Jobs Report Disappoints

Fed: Under Obama, only the richest 10 percent saw incomes rise

The 3% Surcharge Catches On: The Lucques Group Introduces Healthcare For Employees

On the other hand, there is apparently a market for this … Pampered Babies Kick Back and Relax at the Floating Baby Spa

And, finally, some good economic news, locally speaking …

Reliance Worldwide Corp. plans $50M expansion in Cullman

YP affiliate to add 165 jobs in Shelby County

If you can end a post with good economic news, and on a Monday, no less, you’ve really done something, I think, so we’ll call it a day. Hope yours was a great one!

adventures / cycling / Friday / iPhone / photo / Pie Day — Comments Off
5
Sep 14

You just go faster

Nothing like having your last event of the work week being a meeting, and then being stood up. I waited for half an hour, no word, and left.

I’d have rather had the meeting, and been done with it. Who knows when it will happen now. On the way home I had this view as a brief consolation:

But, hey, we got to talk about story ideas in class today — always a fun topic — and I still made it home in time to get an hour on my bike. I need more than one hour at a time, of course, but you take it where you can get it.

The Yankee and I set out together, but she said “See you at home,” which I took to mean, “Go have fun,” which really meant “Go hard.”

That was the plan, at least in two places. There were two courses I wanted to try to conquer today. One seemed easier than the other, but I had zeal for both of them. At least until my lungs gave out, which has a direct relationship to zeal. I was halfway up the long slow hill that marked the course I hoped to mark a new best time when everything seemed to give way. I pedaled harder, but it seemed I was going slower. I told my legs and lungs I wanted nothing to do with their protests, but they protested anyway.

And when I got home and checked the app I discovered that I had sliced 48 seconds off my best time on that course. That gave me the course lead over the next best time, by one whole second.

On the back half of my route today was the other course I wanted to master. And there it started to rain on me. Also, it was getting close to get dark. I ride on that particular stretch of road frequently, but this was only the second time I have timed myself on it. The course is designed for someone who can go all out for three straight miles. This isn’t my strength — I don’t really have a strength, I think — but we are all full of weaknesses and average talents of one sort or another. I dropped 1:38 off my last timed trip down the course and now I have the fast time on that segment, too.

On the last rode before the clouds came back again and I was rained on again. The twilight had turned to a full on flirt with the night. Two police cars passed me going the other direction and I expected one of them to turn around and give me some grief. But I pedaled furiously and made it home in the last embers of the day. The Yankee wasn’t very far behind me. I’d gone hard, and she did too.

Then we went out for Pie Day.

cycling / I do not know what is happening. / journalism / links / Monday / things to read — Comments Off
1
Sep 14

Labor Day

Last night we ordered Chinese takeout. I offered to go pick it up after The Yankee called it in. The lady on the other end of the phone knows who we are based on one of our habitual orders. You tell the soups and the egg rolls and the entrees and she says “Oh, hi Missus Smith.”

Then I went to pick up during halftime of the Tennessee game tonight and she started asking things about work. The nice lady at the Chinese restaurant, who has people going in and out constantly, knows where I work.

We might be eating too much Chinese.

Tonight we had Italian potluck with friends, and that was awesome. In between I did some work, building a lecture and tinkering with notes for other things and so on. I labored on Labor Day, but there was no grief to it. I sat in a chair at home and typed things. And when I was done, I took a 22 mile spin around town. My cycling app says my ride gave me the best times on four local segments.

This is surely a calculating error, a timing mistake. More likely, none of the fast people in town use this app.

Things to read … because everyone in town should read.

This is a former student, a Fulbright scholar now embarking on a year in Tajikistan. He’s a bright guy, and this will be an amazing adventure. Read along: House of leaves.

Security for journalists, part one

Boomers. When did we get so old?

I prefer the Vyclone app, which lets my collaboration be with my friends, rather than everyone, but this has some uses too: Snapchat lets you watch and create group videos of live events with ‘Our Story’.

7 interesting things about Lee County agriculture

The UK has big, big problems. This is simply a terrible symptom. Scandal hit Rotherham ‘deleted abuse files’:

Top ranking staff ordered raids to delete and remove case files and evidence detailing the scale of Rotherham’s child exploitation scandal, sources have revealed.

More than 10 years before the damning independent inquiry revealed sexual exploitation of 1,400 children in Rotherham a raid was carried out on the orders of senior staff to destroy evidence, it has been claimed.

In 2002 high profile personnel at Rotherham Council ordered a raid on Risky Business, Rotherham council’s specialist youth service, which offered one-to-one help and support to vulnerable teenage girls, ahead of the findings of a draft report, according to the Times.

The raid was to remove case files and wipe computer records detailing the scale and severity of the town’s sex-grooming crisis, sources told The Times.

Meanwhile, closer to home … In Maryland, a Soviet-Style Punishment for a Novelist:

A 23-year-old teacher at a Cambridge, Maryland, middle school has been placed on leave and—in the words of a local news report—”taken in for an emergency medical evaluation” for publishing, under a pseudonym, a novel about a school shooting. The novelist, Patrick McLaw, an eighth-grade language-arts teacher at the Mace’s Lane Middle School, was placed on leave by the Dorchester County Board of Education, and is being investigated by the Dorchester County Sheriff’s Office, according to news reports from Maryland’s Eastern Shore. The novel, by the way, is set 900 years in the future.

There’s a lot about this story that doesn’t yet make sense. Hopefully the next draft has some insight, otherwise, it would be particularly troubling.

(Three days later update: There is a lot going on in that story. And local media interviewed the teacher. It would seem there is still a good deal going on in that story.)

cycling / I do not know what is happening. / running / swimming — Comments Off
1
Sep 14

The last two months of exercise

More time on the bike, just the tiniest bit of running and only two trips, recently, into the pool. The There is no balance, there are only the miles behind and the miles ahead:

I never posted last month’s workouts in light of everything else that was going on. So, in the interest of being a completist, here it is. The sport tabs signify swims, which also denote the week of two triathlons in seven days. Those were good times:

I feel as if I need to ride more. I feel as if I need to do everything more.