Not a lot today. Hey, it is Saturday, and this week that is enough.
But I stumbled across this video via Twitter, and it is something I think and talk about on campus a fair amount. Thought I’d share it here, too.
Pedaled around the city bypass today. It was only 17 miles, I wanted a lot more, but my legs just weren’t there.
Also it was very warm. This might be the year that I become a wilted flower. I’ve felt this coming for the last few years. Septembers have started to get to me as I’ve found myself fundamentally opposed to triple digit heat that late in the year.
And now, on the other end of the seasonal spectrum, mid-80s in March seem a little unbecoming of technically-late-winter.
You don’t notice it when you’re riding. You do notice it when you have to stop for a red light in an intersection with no shade. You wonder about a lot of things just then.
Like why you’ll do it again tomorrow.
Then you get off the bike. You cool down a bit and clean up. And then you remember why.
Laura Lane and six of her teammates were honored on senior night which, thanks to unfortunate scheduling, took place during Auburn’s spring break. The gymnastics squad has a devoted student following, filling one half of the floor at Auburn Arena. Two of them were there, the rest were young families. So there’s some work to do on the scheduling side of things.
The Tigers did not have their best meet of the year, but they did enough to defeat BYU handily, 195.950-192.575.
But after this meet the stakes get bigger. The SEC championships are later this month in Georgia. Auburn will have to face the likes of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia and Florida, but they battled each of those squads within a point during the regular season.
In April the NCAA regionals will be at Auburn Arena.
Dinner at Cheeburger, including a basket of fries and a shake. I don’t mind the indulgence: I rode 27 miles this afternoon. And I’m now to the point where I said “I only rode 27 miles.”
I got scoffed at for that, but I was disappointed with the effort. I wanted more, but my energy levels disagreed. My hand hurt. (Remember a while back, I fell on my wrist? My chain slipped in a turn and jolted everything just right today.) It was hot. I forgot to press through. I was too busy trying to find reasons to stop after only 27 miles.
Watch the entire video if you like, but here’s the backstory. Samford student Ryan Penney spent a day on Lake Martin with his girlfriend and her family. At Chimney Rock — where thousands of us have jumped and dived for decades — there was a terrible accident. Ryan found himself talking with doctors who were telling the theatre major he should consider another line of work, because he’d never walk again. And then:
Afrikaner Blood: “Kommandokorps in South Africa organizes camps during school holidays for young white Afrikaner teenagers, teaching them self-defense and how to combat a perceived black enemy. The group’s leader, self-proclaimed ‘Colonel’ Franz Jooste, served with the South African Defense Force under the old apartheid regime and eschews the vision of a multicultural nation.”
Half-lives: The Chernobyl workers now: “Slavutych in Northern Ukraine was set up by the Soviet government shortly after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster to accommodate people evacuated from the proximity of the nuclear plant. The city was designed to provide the inhabitants with modern amenities and a comfortable life. First people moved in their new homes in 1988.”
America’s Dead Sea: “Salton Sea in the Colorado Desert of Southern California is a former tourist destination that has turned into an environmental disaster. Born by accident 100 years ago when the Colorado River breached an irrigation canal, the lake soon became a popular resort. Yet with no outflow, and with agricultural runoff serving as its only inflow, the lake’s waters grew increasingly toxic. Though the resort towns were soon abandoned, the skeletons of these structures are still there; ghost towns encrusted in salt.”
The cycling story you probably don’t care about: One of the little pieces of cycling etiquette we have here is very dangerous. It involves a simple wave off to people pedaling the other direction. I’ve reduced this to a minimal movement, the raising of a flat hand so I don’t have to alter my “form.”
Form in cycling is important. I have none.
So this evening I rode out my three warmup miles. I sailed down the hill, through the neighborhood, made a beautiful turn toward the exit of the subdivision, through the roundabout and up the little incline that is the first minor piece of work of the ride. Only it felt great, the rhythm was there, the incline felt as mild as it ever has, my legs were crisp.
I coasted the last few feet, unclipped from my pedals, to the stop sign. I let the traffic from either side go by. Finally the only other person was another cyclist. And so I pedaled out across his oncoming path, clipping into the pedals, standing out of the saddle, making the long slow turn. Head on, I gave him the flat wave. My bike wobbled badly. I barely saved it. How, I’m not sure, but I stayed upright. In the two seconds of trying to not fall I sliced my pinkie finger on an exposed, sharp point of the bike.
So that hurt. By the time I had everything under control and could look down I was already bleeding off my hand from the meaty part of the inside of my metacarpus. Also, it hurt.
So I returned home, cleaned the cut, which was happily superficial and clotting. Suitably bandaged I went back out. About 22 miles in I forgot about my hand, began gripping the handlebars properly and pulled the bandaid away and reopening the wound. So it bled awhile but there was nowhere to stop. Look at me! A suffering cyclist!
I couldn’t say if there is a lot of video like this, or if it is a one-of-a-kind contribution to the International Institute of Outflow Mesoscale Gradients.
That’s from a small town east of Lexington, Ky. and that’s serious business. They aren’t used to seeing that sort of thing up there. Once a Louisville meteorologist confessed to his shock at seeing three rotations in one radar sweep. He’d never seen that before.
Here we call that Tuesday.
Of course they can deal with snow, so there’s a trade off.
Felt sluggish all day. I guess it was the week catching up with me, but there was no energy to be found anywhere. So this evening I made myself ride my bike. I want to ride even when I don’t feel like it, not just when I feel good. That’s how I can really churn out the miles — I told myself while inflating my tires.
So I set off on the warm up routine, down and out throw the neighborhood and then on the two back roads that border the local area. My legs were heavy. Actually they were dead. The wind was blowing. I’ve found that a mild headwind kills two or three miles an hour. Going up hills felt more like standing still.
I did have two nice sprints, the first hitting 31 miles per hour and the second at 30. Otherwise it was a remarkably poor 30 mile ride. Except for this:
It is a lovely neighborhood.
At the Auburn baseball game, the Tigers were leading here 5-3:
They’d jumped out to that score early, and it stayed there a long time. In the top of the ninth Belmont scored two runners on sacrifice flies. It was tied when the Tigers ran off the field.
In the bottom of the ninth Auburn’s leadoff man reached first on a field error. Jay Gonzalez then stole second. There was a strikeout and then an intentional walk. And then Cullen Walker hit one just past Belmont’s diving second baseman. Gonzalez raced around the diamond from second, giving Auburn the 6-5 win.
Nice way to start the weekend series. The only thing missing? The peanuts.
Yesterday the high was 78. Today we didn’t hit 58. And the sun was unobscured by clouds for only a few moments all day.
But I did see the season’s first robin:
There were eight of them in the yard, in fact. None of them were on the bird feeder, but they did find some interesting things on the ground.
Fifty-five miles on the bike today. I’d planned to go 40, but much of it was going to be on new roads, which means being lost. Which means extra miles. And that’s how I added so much extra. I missed the baseball game, but listened to it on the ride home. Racing daylight — despite the 55 miles I cut things short because it would be dark and it was turning chilly — I listened to Auburn beat Charleston Southern 13-1. Maybe I should stay away from the park this season. They are 1-3 when I’ve seen them and 6-2 when I am not (or they are on the road).
The nice thing about the ride, aside from the miles, was in tracking down a few historic markers. The first downside was all the backtracking. About 10 or 15 miles were just because of human error. It seems I made a mistake in plotting my map, and so there I was, under a darkening gray sky, no cell signal, up hill both directions and miles and miles to go.
Also I fell. Last week when I tumbled out of my clips I blamed the firefighters. Today I can blame a police officer.
I was at a stop sign, lost. I was trying to figure out which way I wanted to go to make it to my next planned stop. I’d all but flipped a coin and got back on my bike. Look left, right, left and right again. I clip in, look left and realize this car is coming much faster than I’d realized.
I can’t get out of my clips at a dead stop. (I’m not a very good cyclist.)
So I fall over — pow, crash, boom, scrape — onto my hip and forearm.
A truck had pulled up behind me. I lifted my bike off my right leg and unclipped my shoe. I waved to the truck and moved my bike. The oncoming car was a police officer. He saw the whole thing and he stopped. The guy driving the pickup asked if I was OK. I thanked him and sent him on his way. By then the police officer had gotten out of his cruiser and walked over.
“Are you OK sir?”
I’m fine, I said. But while I have you here, I have a question.
And that is one of your less advisable ways to get a police officer’s attention. But I was fine. I scrapped my forearm a bit. It felt like I landed on my hip pretty hard, but it was instantly OK. We chatted for a minute — he was a nice old guy, quick with a laugh. I didn’t realize until the officer left, and I pedaled off in the direction that he pointed, that my wrist was hurting. I guess I landed on that, too.
So I’m icing my wrist.
You know, if that police officer hadn’t been driving by I wouldn’t have fallen over. What civil servant is next?
