cycling « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

cycling

cycling / Friday / photo — Comments Off
23
May 25

I put screws into something and called it a day

Some days are productive in the smallest ways. Maybe those are the best days. My alarm went off promptly, I ignored it for a moment, and then read my way through the morning, had a bite to eat, typed up a few things. Normal stuff. And then I worked on a shelving solution.

We need a place to put bike stuff, and so I picked up a second-hand shelf that will fit in a corner. It’s a two-piece deal, a cheap little MDF fixture that probably belongs in a bathroom. It’s going to hang in a corner in the garage. The first step was today, joining the two shelves together. I think they were designed to just sit on the floor, but one little wooden dowel isn’t going to hold it all together. So I added a second dowel. And then I joined them the old fashioned way, by screwing it all together.

The shelves are rounded, so this took ingenuity; I was immediately out of my league. But, eventually I did it. Two cheap little shelves have been joined into one piece. They’ll hold the weight of shows and elements and things.

And right about here you’re wondering if I’ll go self-deprecating or literary next. The truth is, I’m wondering, too.

To hang the shelf on the wall, I’ll make a french cleat. But I didn’t do that today, because I have the whole weekend ahead of me.

This is where I realized this wonderful little problem. How can I accurately that on two walls simultaneously. And then another, how to do it for the top and bottom shelves, as a little added security. I think I have it all figured out. It doesn’t require ingenuity, not really, but it does require some simple carpentry problem solving where I’m really deficient.

Let’s assume my solutions work. It shouldn’t take too long to make it happen. Then it’ll be on to all of my other little projects. And there are a lot of them. I’m eager to get to them. Well, most of them.

Late in the afternoon, or early this evening, or both, I set out for a little bike ride. I was thinking about how I could find new roads, and this is what I settled on. I did the reverse of one of our regular routes, the first regular route we established here, in fact. It’s a simple rectangle to the southwest. But, instead of turning right to head back home, I decided to find out what would happen if I just kept going.

What happens is you ride in the wind the whole day. Also, I pedaled my way through three-plus miles of empty roads and fields. I slid through an old neighborhood, and then crossed the interstate, which was when I realized where this road wound up. There are two truck stops and a hotel on the outskirts of a little town, and I didn’t want to be around of that today, so I doubled back. There was another promising road to check out.

So instead of turning left on the road that I knew, I turned left on a different road. It took me through four-and-a-half miles of views like this one.

Finally, it dumped me onto a road I knew, and so I took an indirect way home. It was a good ride, except for the wind. It was slow, because of the wind and also my legs. But it was pleasant. The weather was right, the traffic was non-existent, and there was a lot to see.

It was a nice, casual 34-mile ride that I finished with a smile. As I got home there was a car in the drive. Who had come to visit? We weren’t expecting company. As I got closer I realized, it was my lovely bride’s ride. She’d left it out of the garage as I worked on those shelves. So we had company, and it was us. This was a thing I said as a kid, when there was a car in the drive at my grandparents’ home, when the car belonged to us. “We’ve got company.”

Rides take you places. They bring you places. Sometimes the kid-in-you-ride takes back.

I wonder where tomorrow’s ride, and the 29 mph wind forecast, will take me.

So it was a literary allusion, in the smallest way, after all. Who could have seen that coming?

adventures / cycling / memories / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
20
May 25

Thinking of an interview I did almost five years ago

Things are looking lovely in the yard. This is out front, because we like to give a nice impression to all of the people who pull up the drive. So many people don’t. And they’re missing out. But that’s OK. More flowers for us.

We’ve been running a gag with a friend about bad photo composition. This is my contribution to the joke.

But, lurking up above, the promise of early August.

The ripening is underway.

Does anyone want some peaches?

In the fall of 2020 I was interviewed by a student working up a profile of my lovely bride for a class project.

He asked me what’s it like being married to an All-American, D-1 athlete, FINA Masters World Championships swimmer, three-time USA Triathlon national championship-qualified triathlete and two-time Ironman finisher.

(Except now she’s a six time USA Triathlon national championship qualifier and a three-time Ironman.)

This, I noted on social media, is what it’s like.

A few days after that 2020 interview I said “I’m going to go spin out my bike for a bit in the bike room.”

She said, “I’ll join you for an easy ride,” and then I watched her put out about 230 watts going uphill for an hour on Zwift. Sometime soon after that we were on a group ride and she was out front. She sat up and re-did her braid while we were chasing back on to her wheel. At the first sprint point on that ride she was laughing as I tried to go by her. She was LAUGHING during a full sprint. I didn’t win that one. So we got really, really serious about the five sprints after that.

But all of that was five years ago.

Today, I set a hard pace for eight miles, and then she went around me. Then she went away from me. And so I had to chase on for about six miles, hard, to get back. Thinking about that 2020 interview the whole way.

And here is when I finally caught her. We were going up a little hill, and I was doing 26 miles per hour up the long slow hill just to stay on her wheel. Look at how casual she is here, as she’s about to get to the top of the thing.

All told, Strava says this was the fastest 30K I’ve ever recorded.

What’s it like being married to someone like that?

Awesome — unless you’re trying to keep up.

adventures / collarbone / cycling / Wednesday — Comments Off
7
May 25

A group ride

The grading and sharing of notes continues. And it will continue throughout the day, and probably most of tomorrow. So I’m on schedule, I suppose, but this could go faster. Feedback, however, is time intensive. I try to be as specific and useful as possible. And though there are some recurring themes that allow me to, occasionally, use a bit of copy-and-paste boilerplate on How To Fix That Particular Problem, a lot of this is bespoke.

Here’s the real problem. Canvas, our learning management system of choice, shows me a student’s PDF or DOC file or whatever in one frame of a browser, and, in another, it gives me a tiny little box to type in. Experience has taught me that typing in little boxes does wonders for my creative typographical errors. So I spend a decent chunk of time on each one just trying to read through what I wrote — unlike here — in the hopes that it makes sense. That it is applicable. That it is thoughtful and, dare I hope it, professorial.

It’s grimly humorous to me that I’m in a place where I can evaluate and score someone based on their typos, and I’m working in these tiny little text boxes that give me ample opportunity to sound almost literate.

Also, my feedback ranges from 200-600 words. And I have 60-some of these to work through. So, yeah, it takes time.

But I have an advantage today. Our neighor invited us out for an early morning bike ride. It was short, but also early enough that I’ve had more time in front of the computer screen, joy of joys.

Anyway, that’s our neighbor in the front right. He’s also an Ironman. And a bionic man.

Behind him is his friend. This guy had moved away to Florida, but recently returned to spend more time near his grandchildren. So he’s retired, but busier than ever maintaining two homes. He spent most of the ride telling me about the furniture he’s buying online and refinishing, and the work they’re doing to their house here. They seem the sort to buy it and leap right into it. Makes sense, make it yours! I don’t seem to be capable of that. People lived in this house before me, and that’s something to be respectful of and all. But this guy, he and his wife purchased a home from an elderly couple and it obviously needed to have some updating so they’ve just ripped out the floors and are walking around on the slab right now while the flooring people do their work. Also, he can tell you about the table and chairs he bought on Facebook Marketplace, what they’re worth, down to the penny, and what he bought them for.

He was, perhaps he still is, a big time amateur racer. And so as we went over roads he’s known for years and is now getting reacquainted with, he was telling me about things that happened on each of them, including when we crossed over one bridge where he crashed out and broke his collarbone. So naturally I had to tell our collarbone stories. And then we found ourselves on that freshly painted ribbon, zig zagging our way through quiet little neighborhoods from whence people were starting their day.

At the end of it all, we got to a stop sign and the retiree said thanks for the ride, and turned left. The rest of us went straight. When we got to our neighborhood we thanked our friend for the invite and went up our drive as he continued on down to his home.

That’s the way it is, riding with other people. You get to know these specific slices of their life. You could ride with them dozens of times, knowing only these little bits about them. And if you see them in their secret identity clothes around town, you might not even recognize one another. But then you see them on the next ride.

Small groups, like this, make for a fun ride, so I hope we get to do it again soon.

But, now, back to Canvas.

adventures / cycling / Monday / photo — Comments Off
5
May 25

Now we come to it

Final papers are in for my international media class. I’m trying to get ahead of them so I can stay ahead of my other grading. While one class is finished, another has a tight turnaround on some important work. This week, from my perspective then, is about giving good feedback in a timely manner, so that it is useful to the students.

So this is brief. More brief than normal. (You’re welcome?)

Just riding around the neighborhood on Saturday, in reality is about six neighborhoods, gave me an easy bit of exercise, and a brief glimpse of the sheep and one of their faithful companions.

Sometimes that dog is sleeping as I go back. Occasionally I cruise through there and he’s working. Every now and again he races me — usually he lets me win. But, today, they were all huddled together and something behind me caught his interest.

We recently discovered the local creamery. My lovely bride says I found it, but I have absolutely no recollection of that. They have three flavors of custard, and last night, a night that was sticky and warm enough to make it quickly look like a potential drippy mess, I tried the creamsicle.

They only accept cash. And while I respect their stance on traditionalism at this creamery, that will limit my abilities to visit there. Who has cash? Probably this is a good thing. It is only four miles away, and I can’t always be lucky about eating it before it gets everywhere.

The local bike shop does a ride to the creamery in the earliest part of the summer. It’s a neighborhood thing, and we’ll join in. Because there is ice cream.

But, first, there is grading. So let me get back to that.

cycling / Friday / photo / site — Comments Off
2
May 25

The fickleness of the breeze

It’s Friday! Right? Friday? Yeah. Sometimes you have to check a calendar, just to be sure. I wrapped up the week’s grading in yesterday. And I have done the updates to my computer, cleaning a month’s worth of files, creating subdirectories for May, updating site statistics in the site statistics spreadsheet.

And, hey, we’re well ahead of last year’s numbers here, so thanks for that. I don’t know why people come here, but I’m glad you do.

So one class wrapped up this week, and their final is due next Monday. My online class has another week-and-change to go, with a lot of work still to come. And a lot of things to grade, and then grades to submit. The next two weeks, then, are busy. A lot of sitting here staring at computer screens, plenty of little study breaks, but then right back to it.

I never learned that skill young, but there’s nothing like impending deadlines to teach new skills.

I set out for a 25-mile ride after a day of sitting in front of the computer. One of the regular routes I established last year. It is a route that, on the map, is roughly shaped like a bullet, though I am not nearly as fast as.

I went into town and through it, doubling back and through a crossroads that has the word “town” in its name, but it is nothing more than a red light, a farmer’s market, a gas station and a small car dealership. Then, out into the countryside.

I took a turn that sends me back to the river, but crops, woods and a few houses and developments in between. Usually this is a road that gives me five or six miles without any cars. And, once you’ve done this for a while, those experiences stand out, and you make note of them, so that you may ride them again.

When the road ends, it is time to turn right. You have a nice wide shoulder-slash-bike-lane-but-mostly-shoulder, where you can do four miles super fast, which you also make note of, and visit as often as you can. And then back on the road for home, a seven-mile stretch … into the wind.

This is a mistake. The conventional wisdom is that you start into the devise a route that puts you into a headwind first, and then the tailwind on the way back. Economy of efficiency when you’re more tired. Because I was doing a rectangular route, a squishy bullet, I should have had a tailwind to start, and a tailwind to finish.

But, if you live in a place like we do, this is a challenge. Nearly an impossibility. Today, on that same road, a straight line with flags flying at regular intervals, the wind blew from every direction on the same road within 80 minutes.

What even is that?