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cycling

Night riding

This is almost entirely about this video. Except for the part that isn’t.

And if you’re paying attention — and why wouldn’t you be? — to the background, you might notice that this one deserves the special banner.

When I set out, this was the angle of the sun in the sky. I’d wavered for a while. Should I? Shouldn’t I? And then finally decided to get in a quick 20 miles. By then, and after I’d re-greased my chain and left my water bottle in the garage, it looked like this out.

I took a right to cut through some nice pastureland. Somebody is ready to put up their hay. Some of the livestock owners have hay leftover from last year, mild winter that it was. Maybe that’ll be the case again.

I pedaled through the farm lands, through two residential neighborhoods and a little town ready to stretch out for the evening. Then I was back in the farm fields again.

One left, and then a hard sprint to the next right, and then a charge up this hill.

Soon after which, I turned on my headlight. I love this thing, because it makes night riding possible. The best part of which are the quite roads I can choose. In the last half pf the ride just four cars passed me, and two of those were just at the end.

Equally usefully, is that you can ride at speed. Do you remember how you were taught to not outrun your headlights?

What?

You know, headlights have a certain limited range, a limited thrown, beyond which the light is too diffuse to be effective.

What do you mean, do I remember?

It’s obvious isn’t it?

I’m a narrative construct. I don’t know how to drive.

Right. Well, trust me. It makes sense, even if it isn’t the best advice. See where you’re driving.

Sure, if you say so. But so what?

Similar principle here.

OK, then.

I can pedal happily along at 20 mph and see the road in front of me. Somewhere after that it feels a little curious, but I’m not bombing down hills or doing a lot of sprints in the darkness. Tonight, this light allowed me to do the last five miles with confidence.

Note to self: Spend more time out here.

The gazebo is a nice place. Lots of lovely furniture. Fun lights. A delightful insect choir. And the weather, well now the weather is just perfect for it.

We return once again to We Learn Wednesdays, the feature where we discover the county’s historical markers via bike rides. This is the 43rd installment, and the 75th marker in the We Learn Wednesdays series. And this one is relatively new. It was installed just last year.

This was a thinly populated area. A couple thousand people lived in this broader rural area. It isn’t much more crowded today. The first school was in a house. Then came a building purpose-built as a school in 1845, and then the Lambert Street school. The modern school, after generations of consolidation and change, remembered the teacher at Lambert School for a long time. Mary Elizabeth Remster, who retired in 1943 after 48 years in the classroom, had a future school named after her. That building was consolidated in 1980, meaning it was likely that kids studied under Miss Remster and then saw their grandchildren go to a school named after the woman.

Continuity is important in a small town. When this building was no longer needed as a school in 1925, it became a home. A former student bought it. He married another former student. The Lambert Street school is still in their family, a century later.

Which means there probably aren’t any students still with us who remember the school, but the local historical society is keeping it alive. The man that bought the home was an artist, a craftsman, a businessman. He served in a medical unit in England and France during World War I. He and his wife both passed away in the 1980s. They had eight sons. Theirs remains a prominent family name in that area.

If you’ve missed any markers so far, you can find them all right here.

cycling / Monday / photo — Comments Off
12
Aug 24

The chocolate was a bust — how often do you say that?

I tried a new smoothie today. Because we have a lot of peaches, you see. The go-to has been a simple peach, ice, dash of milk and honey. And, recently, I swapped out the honey for a bit of brown sugar. That’s been a hit.

Just to experiment, though, because when you have bushels of peaches and a powerful blender everything seems viable, I decided to take out the brown sugar and add a chunk of chocolate. It did not turn into a nice brown color, because it was a chunk that just turned into bits. Thousands of tiny little bits. I guess I was hoping I’d wind up with a peach flavored Frosty … which the people from Wendy’s should call me about … but that’s not what happened here.

It wasn’t the best smoothie ever, but it was a worthy experiment. That little chocolate bunny gave its chocolate life for me to find that out.

I think we have some jelly beans somewhere … maybe I should try those next …

I will not try those next. Why tamper with what works?

Let’s get right to the site’s most popular weekly feature. I know it is, because they tell me it is. They, of course, being the kitties.

I’m a sucker for whenever Phoebe sleeps on her paw. Not sure what it is, other than just about the cutest thing she can do while she’s napping.

I was telling a story on Poseidon the other day. It was a common tale around here. One where I get to blame him for whatever is going on. It’s a high percentage play because he’s usually very much the cause of things. And just as I told that story I had to go down to the basement to fetch this or that.

The basement is a wondrous place to the cats, because we don’t allow them down there. I know, for a fact, that if we let them come and go they wouldn’t be interested at all. But, while the basement is cat friendly, it isn’t cat proof. So they don’t get to go. And just as I was heading to the basement he made a run. He’s good at timing these things, but he didn’t win out this time. He covered it well, though. He wasn’t darting for the basement, you see, he just needed to rub his chin on the door.

Poseidon has also recently discovered an interest in corn husks, but they aren’t a good treat for cats. So the corn, even the fresh picked stuff, goes directly into the refrigerator. Which means he must try to also go into the refrigerator.

If we get too much corn, we are keeping it in the laundry room, because we have cats and when you have cats you put your corn in the laundry room. He, of course, needs to be in there constantly.

So the cats, you can see, are doing very well, thank you.

I’m getting pretty good at timing out evening rides. This is why I did not get in a ride this evening. I waited too late, doing other things. (Two of those things had to do with peaches.) On Saturday, however, I set out at 6:35 for a 25 mile ride.

That still left a lot of time to enjoy the views through the corn fields.

Oh, I had lights a plenty. There’s a blinkie on my seat post all the time. In my back pocket, in the evenings, I carry a little four buck triangle light that I got for Christmas last year. It shines right through the material so well I’m going to pick up some more the next time I’m at the hardware store.

For the front I have my trusty One80 bike light. I saw their head lamps on Instagram, a runner I follow swore by them. I bought the Yankee one, she loved it. I bought myself one. And then they pushed those bike lights. I got one for both of us. She doesn’t particularly care for night riding, but I do, and I think those lamps are so great I bought two more of them, just to keep on a shelf in the basement — where the cats aren’t allowed.

I passed one stunning barn on the way back — I took a different road, for the different views, and it turns out to have worked very well for that time of day.

So I was well stocked in illumination products, but it turns out I didn’t need them. Oh, I turned on my blinkie and the one I carry in my jersey pocket, a bit more visibility for the distracted drivers behind you never hurt anyone, but I figured I would get all the way back home before I needed to use much of my front light. If anything, I figured, there is one dark patch where it might be necessary.

A strange thing happened on the back half of my ride. I didn’t realize it until I was almost all the way back home, but my legs came back. I don’t know where they’ve been since roughly mid May, but everything else felt a little sluggish and even slower than normal since then. Saturday night, however, there was plenty of power and energy.

This is all relative, of course. Relative to this point in life, and all of that. But compared to the rest of the summer, the second half of this ride was great. And kinda almost approaching a reasonable speed.

I don’t want to say I was a super man, or anything. Maybe I was just inspired by this view. Because, as I looked to my left and saw that gravel drive and that farm and that sunset I thought, If a kid grew up there, he had a great chance to play Clark Kent.

And so I made it home with daylight to spare. Not much. But still.

Maybe my legs are returning. I bet its the peaches.

cycling / memories / photo / site / Wednesday — Comments Off
7
Aug 24

Starting year 21

Today marks the beginning of the 21st year of this website. We had a private anniversary party yesterday. A little peach crumble … a small scoop of vanilla … yes, we pulled out all the stops for kennysmith.org.

I opened this place up in August 2004, two cars, three jobs and four houses ago. I’ve been writing in this space through the advent, rise and now the fracturing of social media. I’ve been in all of those places, too, but I figured out, pretty early on, what some have only come to learn in this online cultural nadir. You post it on someone else’s site, you don’t own it. At least all the photos and other things are on my server. It has been a way to pass the time, occasionally learn new code, or, rarely, get a commission. I ramble here, all the time. Often, it seems like I should ramble more. It has been a lot of things, and I’m pleased with all of them. North of six million people have come through here. I have no idea why, but I’m grateful. Mostly, I’m glad you’re here, and that you’ve kept coming back.

Suddenly, it seems as if there should be an announcement. A big surprise. A new direction. A redesign. Something. But I don’t have anything.

Hey, next August, this place will be 21. I might think of something by then.

It has been almost relentlessly humid lately. The sort that keeps you from doing anything outside.It’s been a lot like home, actually. But, today, it wasn’t humid. It rained!

I said, How long are you going to ride?

And she explained her route.

When you drop me, just keep going, and don’t stop and wait for me, I said.

“Are you sure?”

I’ve been going slow lately. If you wait, you’ll just drop me again. Then you’ll wait and drop me, wait and drop me, and it won’t be a good ride for you.

I asked her how long she was going to ride for, she said, “I’m going for distance, and not time,” and explained the route she had in mind.

It’s always about time, so this was rare. And more fun. And this route is a new combination of familiar roads, and longer, and here I am, unfit for the ride at hand.

For the record, the types of ride, in terms of most fun are:

A vacation ride
Riding without a plan on roads you don’t know
Riding with a plan on roads you don’t know
Riding roads you know
Riding for time
Riding in severe weather

All of those are fun, to be sure, including the severe weather. I got caught in a hail storm once. It was hilarious.

Anyway, today, I was dropped quite easily and early, as I imagined. I did see this cool tractor, though. I wonder where he’s taking all that fruit.

I was in a headwind just then, and I’m usually no good in the breeze, but today wasn’t bad. And then there was the rain, which started falling about an hour into the ride.

Then, the most fun thing happened. I just kept riding. Legs felt pretty good and everything worked fairly well. Around the two-hour mark, though, I realized that the old pair of bib shorts I was wearing should really be for rides of 90 minutes or less. Something to figure out before I put on cycling kit.

Somehow, this will be easier than just throwing away the old and obviously worn shorts.

I looked down at some point in the last 10 miles or so and this little maple leaf was being pressed against the brake lever by the wind. I picked it up so I could take this photo.

When I got home I found that leaf, still stuffed in my jersey, ready for its moment. No idea why I kept it. But that changed up my routine at the end of the ride, and somehow that let me notice this daylily that I would have overlooked by the garage door.

It got plenty of rain today, so I’m sure that is one happy plant. If I thought of it at the time, I would have rung my socks out on it, too.

But I had to head over to the peach tree and get today’s haul.

Seriously, come get some peaches. We’re celebrating over here with stone fruit, and we have plenty to share.

cycling / family / memories / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
6
Aug 24

Still not good with the seeds

Every English teacher you ever knew, every English professor you ever met, was always working on that one book. Or they would tell you about their book. Or they had it in them. It was the book of their childhood. Every autobiography was going to have long and beautifully intricate passages about the chrysanthemums in bloom, and their time romping with their friends and the little sisters and cousins of their lives.

It was always so silly because there would inevitably be a metaphor, but the metaphors were interchangeable and, often, not that good. You need a certain something to pull that off, and most people that spend a lot of time in the classroom, or grading papers, don’t have the opportunities to cultivate that certain something. So it all came down, finally, to a lament.

But those flowers were always there, and it was that loss of childhood, the flowers flaring, beautiful, and then fading, like so many bad lectures, and Moby Dick essays before them now

The only person that could write about it well, without it becoming a parody of himself, was when Willie Morris wrote about the jonquils blooming in his native Mississippi. He missed them from New York, where he was finding himself conflicted about so many things in the world changing around him, and he in it. He wrote about the smell of the jonquils, almost every year he was gone. And in most of his work after he went home, they didn’t seem to appear as much. You can use a metaphor up; Morris knew that, and that’s why it worked for him.

I always laughed at the cliché, but now I get it.

One of my lasting memories, he wrote in his best Robert Redford voice, is walking out back to the garden my grandfather kept. He would hold an old dull kitchen knife in his hand. It had a silver handle. Solid but light. It was, I think, the boning knife, that long thin one. He carried a salt shaker in his back pocket. It was a dull white plastic. A little beaten up. Probably it had been around for forever. I followed him as he stepped confidently over ground he’d trodden for decades. And out there, in the hot, bright summer sun, he’d find a great, big, ripe watermelon. He’d pull it from the vine and walk with me over to the edge of his row crops and, there, he delivered to me the secret indulgence of sun-warmed watermelon.

For a long time after he died, I wouldn’t eat watermelon. And then, for a while, I only did when someone brought it out, and only a little, to be polite, and I felt bad about the whole thing. It felt disrespectful.

But now, I do eat some watermelon. It comes with a weird mixture of that same great regret.

And there is also a maudlin nostalgia beneath the rind, the sadly sweet memory in the sweet flesh. I can’t not think about all of that. I thought about it when I cut this one up yesterday. It was a small melon, we got it from a local farm as part of a weekly produce box. I thought about it when I ate part of it yesterday, and again when I had some more today. I will think of it when I finish the thing off tomorrow.

I’ve always thought I was learning the incredibly valuable lesson that fruit was the best when it was still warm from the sun. Putting watermelon in the fridge is an awful act. I thought about setting it outside for a while and eating it the proper way, I thought I’ve never had before, but that really would have been stepping out. This is the thing I have difficulty reconciling. Maybe that’s what grandparents are trying to pass to us. Maybe, a grandparent’s lesson is really about what we can prize about what we had. Maybe it was something about those little yellow flowers on the vine, and the metaphor they hold, briefly, within. Or that salt shaker.

On today’s ride, I set out alone and, ultimately, turned in another slow one. I went through some of the nearby pasture lands and some of the row crops. I pedaled by the winery, turned left toward the gas station and then left again toward the park.

Past some sheep, on a beautifully paved road that has some nice curves into an old neighborhood that leads into the town. Through the town, and out the other side, I wound my way down to the inconvenience center and beyond.

It was that time of day, on a dramatically cloudy day, when you have to plan your route, and be ready to adjust it, based on the light. So I rode on two new roads out that way, watching the light, confident in my bike’s lights — one on the seat post and one blinking through my jersey pocket — and in the three mile downhill back to town. After that, it’s easy, through the town in just under a mile, and then four miles of open roads, and a reasonable bike lane, back to the house.

There’s one spot, in between two hills, and under a dense canopy of trees, that felt dark. But after that, it all opened back up to the same, even, gray light we’d had most of the day. It was 8:30, and I still had time to pick up the day’s peaches.

So many peaches. We’ve only just begun.

Please come get some peaches. If you do, I’ll promise to not torture you with literary allusions.

cycling / Monday / photo — Comments Off
5
Aug 24

On Monday

The time has come upon us. Or it is very nearly upon us. Any day now. Any moment now. We’ll be drowned in peaches. I picked these off the ground on Saturday. We’d had some rain and a bit of wind and so a few landed on the ground a bit early. They aren’t all ripe yet, but there are plenty of things you can do with almost-there peaches.

My goal, this year, is to not be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of peaches the tree produces. And the happy thought is I will not get scurvy this month or next. I’ll also get more vitamin A than any reasonable person should.

Seriously, come by and get some peaches. There will be plenty to share. Our neighbors can enjoy only so many. Our freezer has a limit. There’s ice cream and bread to work around in there.

It says here on the ol’ Garmin that I’d ridden two hours and five minutes when I took this photograph on Saturday.

I shot that in the neighborhood next to ours, so I was almost home. My overall ride was about two hours and 15 minutes. All of which is to say, I am riding slow.

That’s not a problem, but it is annoying. And, if you’re slow, you have a lot of time to ponder the situation. A lot of time.

Today’s ride wasn’t any faster, but I did enjoy a new road. Quite a few, in fact, but this was the one I’d wanted to try, the whole point of this particular ride. Through the trees until it teed, and, then, turn right into you get back into town and then head on in.

I saw five deer. Or I saw one or two twice, it’s difficult to say.

This evening I looked and it seems I’ve been slow since May, so there’s that.

But, my ride on Saturday did offer me a consolation. On Saturday, 2024 moved into second place in terms of miles ridden. Still four months to go! I might need them all to put 2024 atop the ledger. Especially after July, which was no good. Sick, heat, travel, and when you mix them all together it turned into a bit of apathy. Maybe the break will help in the long run, but as you can see from the graph, it put me behind.

I’ll get back on track. Staying above those trend lines is an important part of the goal.

What’s more important is the site’s most popular weekly feature, checking in on the kitties. (I think it’s been a few weeks now.)

The most important thing, though, might be Phoebe’s milk. I’ll eat a bowl of granola and she’ll wait impatiently. Lately, she has become more impatient, and has chosen to express this through biting. That was fun for about a week, but then the bites got a bit sharper. A bit more adamant. More … pointed. Everything on this beautiful cat is sharp and pointy.

Apparently, she’s trained herself to know when I am almost through with my bowl. Apparently I have a pattern, because when I pick up the bowl, she knows I’m wiping it out, and so there’s more stamping and head butting and biting.

At first I counted the bites, and recounted them later to my lovely bride, because it was cute. Now, I’m actively defending myself from this beautiful, sharp, pointy cat.

She gets insistent because when I’m done, it’s her turn.

When she has her fill, she doesn’t drink much, she takes a few steps away, stops, and then does the full-body shake. I put away the bowl and find out where she’s chosen to enjoy her milk coma.

Poseidon does not get milk. He can’t handle the hard stuff. He’s catose intolerant. The Yankee gives him almond milk. Bougie cat.

He’s presently sitting on a box. We tell them not to get on the counters, which they ignore. But they are also jailhouse lawyers, and take pride in sitting on papers, bags or boxes that are on the kitchen bar, as if to say, “Not on the counter!”

It is working against him though because, this is his food. And if he’s sitting there, I can’t open it, and feed him.

He’s smart. He’ll figure it out.

I caught him emerging from his cabinet above the refrigerator. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before.

Recently, The Yankee took exception to my calling it “his” cabinet in her kitchen. But, I reminded her, she was the one that put a blanket in the cabinet for him.

The kitties, as you can see, are doing well. And I hope you are, too. Have a great week!