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cycling

cycling / hobby / Monday / photo — Comments Off
19
Mar 12

“We must be caught up.”

This guy was outside this morning:

In the afternoon I rode my little bicycle, turning the wheels around and around for what little I’m worth. I did an out-and-back, just down the long, hilly road from my neighborhood, out of town, past a handful of deputy sheriffs, through the neighboring town and than through two unincorporated communities. When I got to the point that was the farthest I’ve been on this particular road I felt great and pressed on.

And if the pros romanticize riding the cobblestones of Europe I invite them to enjoy the neglected country roads of this part of the world.

I road on a stretch that was little more than beaten shale until it turned into a still-smelling-of-tar new blacktop. It wasn’t much better, despite being brand new. Finally I had to turn around, riding over new asphalt covered in the red clay that means I’d traveled through at least three different soil regions.

On the way home I landed a sponsor, of sorts. I stopped at one of the crossroads gas stations to enjoy the shade and the last little bit of water. The guy working the till was sitting on a bench outside and invited me in to top off from the sink. So, Alice Faye’s Grocery, you guys are the best. And for the water refill and two handfuls of ice, I’ll mention you a lot. Also, I’ll stop back by, when I’m not in lycra, and buy a few things.

By the time I got home I’d managed 50 miles. And only the last few were uncomfortable. For the first 44 or so I felt as good as I ever have on the bike. I even set a personal best average speed over the course of the ride. It is still slow. I am not a very good cyclist.

At home the cable was out. A technician was due between 5-7 p.m. While we waited a contractor for the cable company showed up to bury the line the tech left in our yard on Saturday. He was scheduled for April but, as he said, “We must be caught up.”

This was a man of dirt and grass and heavy machinery. He has a dispatcher who tells him where to go, and that is enough. You have to admire the man’s work. Instead of a bright orange cable sprawled across the property there is now only a narrow cut line where he had to get under the grass. If you didn’t look hard you might not even see it.

As he worked the other guy showed up. And he was mystified.

These problems have persisted since we moved in. We go through a few months of mild problems, and then a long series of very persistent outages. When that happens we have experiences like this, three guys out in three days.

Oh they mean well, and they try hard. There are a few constants in the many visits. Most of them have something unflattering to say about the cable company they work for. They can never figure out the problem. They mostly just undo what the last guy did.

The guy that came out Saturday was little different. He told us the spectrum of numbers our streaming data should be at, and then told us the negative number we were at, which brought about the new cable stretched across the lawn. That worked until today.

The guy today yanked out an amplifier module one of his colleagues installed last year. It isn’t needed anymore, he said, because of the new, and newly buried, cable.

Why this wasn’t a problem for two days he couldn’t say. He couldn’t say a lot, really. He spent much of his time confused about the problem, which can’t be great for his morale. Here’s the customer, here’s the problem, here are your springtime allergens and your cat allergies.

“What is the deal with this?”

It doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence, granted. But he got everything working in time. The cable got buried, everything is working as it should again. I had turkey for dinner. Life is good.

Also, we had this visitor today:

cycling / video / weekend — Comments Off
17
Mar 12

On curation and heat in the sun

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.

Auburn / cycling / Friday / photo — Comments Off
16
Mar 12

The definition of only

So long, and thanks for all the flips:

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.

Terrible, I know. Tomorrow, then.

cycling / Samford / Thursday / video — 1 Comment
15
Mar 12

Look at me! One hand!

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:

The mind and will and spirit are powerful things.

Below are the winners of the 2012 World Press multimedia awards. Brilliant, beautiful work:

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!

Forty-five miles. It was a great ride.

Auburn / baseball / cycling / Friday / iPhone / photo / video — Comments Off
9
Mar 12

No really, buy me some peanuts

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.