cycling


11
Feb 14

I’d really rather not talk about the weather

Another day closer to the weather and we’re coming to the realization that it’ll hit us but good.

There are some things we have to keep in mind about winter in the South. First, it is hard to forecast. This is a dynamic region and the one-two punch we’re getting this week has major elements coming from the west, down from the north and up from the Gulf of Mexico. The forecast models change almost by the hour.

Meteorologists are more than happy to share those long-range models and, I’m half-convinced, they just confuse people who really shouldn’t be confused about winter weather.

Also, it isn’t the snow that’s the problem. Except when it is. Our snow is usually wet. And what often happens is the snow melts, the temperature drops and then we have great sheets of ice over everything. You drive on that.

You drive on that, because I’m staying inside.

And all of that may happen again this week. Most of the worst of it, right now, seems to be aiming for Georgia and the Carolinas. But we’ll have plenty, thanks.

Already the weather has canceled the student newspaper this week. It is due out tomorrow, but the printer is to our north, and they are expecting to get walloped. So on and on the fun goes.

To take our minds off that fun, here’s a shot of Allie, The Black Cat, sunbathing on Sunday:

Allie

That afternoon we decided, hey, it is a beautiful day, let’s run a sprint triathlon.

So we went to the pool. I had my new goggles and we swam our 650 yards. I started out too fast, which was a paradoxical decision as I am slow in the pool. And so I suffered with that for a while. I figured I would redeem myself on the bicycle, where I thought I would be able to hammer it a bit. So down the big hill and up the smaller, other side. Around part of the bypass, up another hill through campus. I got stopped at a red light, turned around and there was The Yankee. I was sure she would be nowhere to be found, but she was having a great ride.

Up through an old neighborhood, hang a left and then a right. I took a road I don’t think I’ve ever pedaled on before, but a road where we once looked at two houses. I finished the 14-mile route just a minute or two before she did, but she also caught a light I did not.

So I guess I’ll have to win in the run. We ran the first half of our 5K together, because it wasn’t a race. It was a beautiful, glorious, day for an hour and change outside, in shorts and t-shirts, in the sunshine.

We ran a sprint triathlon on a whim, making us those people. Last summer I did three of them, suffering and struggling and dreading them and only enjoying them after they were over — enjoying the knowledge that I’d completed them. (For this I get to thank Bud Frankenthaler, who two years ago I watched finishing a triathlon at the age of 79. If he could do it, the rest of us don’t have a lot of excuses, right? Thanks Mr. Frankenthaler. He will probably outpace me somewhere this year, too.) Today there were no bib numbers, no massage table, no timing chips. We did it for fun. Had a great time, too. I want to do it again. Let’s go next weekend.

I do not know what is happening.

Tomorrow we’ll have snow.

Things to read … because links will keep us all warm.

These are just the links, enjoy clicking through the ones that interest you.

Writing headlines that get clicks

IndyStar staffers read your mean comments

Drone use highlights questions for journalists

First Listen: St. Paul And The Broken Bones, ‘Half The City’ — This is a good band, a local group, that’s about to make it big. Some of the musicians are from Samford, too.

And now I’m going to go buy things on the Internet. Who delivers milk and bread?


1
Feb 14

The month’s workouts

workouts

This is all I did in January. It was not a lot, and the lack of red is depressing. Red is the bike. Darker blue is running. Lighter blue is swimming.

Next month I’ll just have do more.


26
Jan 14

Out for a Sunday ride

Worked in a fun little 26 mile route this afternoon. It was a crisp, sunny and beautiful day for a ride. These are base miles or reacquainting myself with the saddle miles. Probably more of the latter, sadly. But great fun anyway!

Ren

(I should take more photos while I’m riding. I see other people’s shots — a guy who works for Apple and a newspaper editor I know are big culprits — and wonder how they do this, ride for as long and as hard as they want to, and then stop and take some incredible shots. Those are from Angelo Calilap, the guy who works for Apple, who is also a bike racer. And then he finds someone else’s beautiful cycling shots and says inspires him “to want to bring another camera other than my iPhone during a bike ride.” Like I’m carrying a real camera on my bike. Like I’m going to actually build up some momentum approaching respectable, see some nice view and then stop. I need my momentum! But I see those pictures and I want to go ride again. How’s right now for you?)

We worked our way through the back of the neighborhood, down one half of the time trial route and then past the city limit sign. We went by all of the shopping, through a sleepy little stretch of road that really lets you work out your legs and then down, down to a creek bed.

Ren

Which only means you have to come back up. And it feels like a long way up. It isn’t, really, numerically speaking. But I’m not a climber. And so when you crack on the first hill, know you have to still turn right and go up another one … well … I should be a better climber.

Ren

Thing I learned on the bike today: A few doughnuts and a banana are not good fuel.

I knew this already, but it is good to reinforce the basics.

Other thing I reinforced on the bike today: I enjoy riding my bike with her, especially on days when I can actually keep up. I even passed her a few times today, hence the pictures.

We were almost home and she said she had a craving for broccoli and brussel sprouts. She also remembered the rule about doughnuts and a banana. So we had vegetables for dinner. Is that something else worth learning? Eat what you crave on the bike?

May have to test that idea.


20
Jan 14

A photo week – Monday

Took this shot while out riding yesterday.

riding

It was my first ride of the new year. There’s been cold and things to do and waiting until we had everything just right and so on.

So we found the flattest 20 mile route we could think of nearby and then added an extra leg on that plan, all of which seemed uphill, which was brilliant in retrospect. We ended up doing just under 23 miles, which was great fun. Then The Yankee got a flat just before we were done. I was behind her, watching it go down before she noticed it, so when she stopped I was already throwing a leg over the top tube and reaching for my pump.

The crisis was no crisis. In a moment we were going over the last hill before home, where I took that picture, the scenery marked the end of a nice ride.

Today was meant to be a rest day. So late in the evening I was feeling antsy and went for a three-mile jog. I’m turning into one of those people, apparently.


15
Jan 14

Mugshots liked on Facebook

Overcast this morning. Clear in the afternoon. The high was in the mid 40s. It was the kind of day that suggested a feeling that implied what flirting with spring might, one day, be like.

The forecasts call for another cold snap in a few days, making it our second of the year, meaning we’ll have an extra one that no one ordered. We’ll convince ourselves that, somehow, this means we’re going to have an incredibly nice spring.

Hit the pool, swam a mile. That makes three times in a week. Suddenly, I feel like I can breath in the pool again. That’s always a nice comfort-level skill to have. I’m a very bad lap swimmer, but I only kicked the lane lines twice today, so there’s that, too.

Appropos of nothing I came home the other night from somewhere and The Yankee was watching City of Angels. I remember seeing this in the theater, it was probably the perfect late-90s date movie, after all.

So we ended up watching the whole thing, because she likes the movie, and I can make Nick Cage jokes. And then, toward the end, at the climactic scene:

She yells at the television screen, “Wear a helmet!”

It has just become a reflexive thing, at this point.

Things to read … no helmet required.

The New New Newsweek.com: “it seems like every time you turn around there’s a new Newsweek.com.”

I remember when I first subscribed to Newsweek. It was the 7th grade. It was a class assignment. I was never that big of a nerd. We had the same English teacher four times in junior and high school and she gave us writing assignments out of the old magazines. Those were my first, real, writing assignments, summarizing news copy each week, every week, for four years. It was a decent start on learning the craft of writing. I remember when I finally dropped Newsweek, when they were running wildly divergent covers for different parts of the world. What you saw from one to the next was so different as to be insulting. And if that wasn’t insulting the American copy got the job done. I doubt I’ll be subscribing again anytime soon, despite new editors and a third round of new owners and so on, but having more publications out there is never a bad thing.

Survey: Obamacare worries Hill aides:

A vast majority of top congressional aides say in a new survey that they are concerned about the effects of Obamacare on their staff, ticking off worries about changes to their benefits, higher costs and whether they’ll have access to local health care providers.

Ninety percent of staffers surveyed for a report released Monday by the Congressional Management Foundation said they are concerned about benefit changes under the health care law, while 86 percent are anxious about the financial hit and 79 percent cited worries to access.

[…]

“The elimination of staff’s traditional health care has been a complete disaster,” one aide said in the survey. “If you wanted a legislative branch run by K Street lobbyists and 25-year-old staffers, mission accomplished.”

Guess you should have had your bosses read the bill before they passed it, huh?

What Secrets Your Phone Is Sharing About You:

Fan Zhang, the owner of Happy Child, a trendy Asian restaurant in downtown Toronto, knows that 170 of his customers went clubbing in November. He knows that 250 went to the gym that month, and that 216 came in from Yorkville, an upscale neighborhood.

Businesses are tracking their customers and building profiles of their daily habits using a network of startups that have placed sensors in restaurants, yoga studios and other sites. Chris Gilpin, founder of one such site, Turnstyle, joins the News Hub.

And he gleans this information without his customers’ knowledge, or ever asking them a single question.

Mr. Zhang is a client of Turnstyle Solutions Inc., a year-old local company that has placed sensors in about 200 businesses within a 0.7 mile radius in downtown Toronto to track shoppers as they move in the city.

The sensors, each about the size of a deck of cards, follow signals emitted from Wi-Fi-enabled smartphones.

Whenever I talk in class about how we’re going to be leveraging technology in the near future — which is here, now — this is the one that always makes the students squirmy. You can see why.

This is the best story of the day. I have a feeling no one will mess with Jeanna Harris anymore, except maybe reporters, to whom she gives great quotes. Woman with shotgun chases away burglar:

Jeanna Harris, of Decatur, said the man she woke up early Tuesday to find rifling through her bedroom belongings is welcome to come back and try to steal from her again.

“He better be glad I had my nightgown on. The Lord’s hand was on him,” said Harris, 43, who armed herself with a 20-gauge shotgun and chased the intruder from her home. “I’m waiting on him, and I will not have on my Victoria Secret nightgown. I will have on my running shoes. It didn’t scare me; it made me mad.”

[…]

Harris said she’s glad she didn’t fire, partly because “it could have been a very dirty mess to clean up.

A suspect was arrested. And, Decatur, where this happened, puts mugshots on Facebook. People comment. “They” would do that without booking information being published online, but fewer people would hear about it. In some circumstances that could be a good thing.