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adventures / cycling / photo / Wednesday — Comments Off
15
Jun 11

Already out of clever titles

Nice 22.65 miles on the bike this morning. Great to be riding again, even as it is getting warm out. We cruised past subdivisions and pastures and lakes. We stopped at a gas station which published their outstanding tabs on their marquee. Now that’s small town.

Also, Bill really owes.

There was a guy at the station who was taking a break from cleaning the parking lot with a blower. It was, he noted, hot out for a bike ride. When he was young, in Birmingham, he couldn’t afford a car and biked everywhere, he said. He couldn’t do that today, he said while tagging another drag from his cigarette.

We escaped the shade and pedaled on.

Much of the rest of the afternoon was spent on website building and three particularly troublesome CSS issues. You might imagine the five paragraphs of hilarity on that subject.

Received an Email from Delta:

I would like to extend my personal apology for the inconvenience you experienced as a result of the delay of Flight DL5130.

[…]

We value you as a customer and sincerely appreciate your support of Delta. To demonstrate our commitment to service excellence, as a gesture of apology I am adding 2,500 bonus miles to your SkyMiles account.

You wonder what the delay threshold is where they start doling out miles like candy. Our 45 minute delay earlier this month did not merit such attention. This is the first time I’ve received such a note, but then with inflation, miles aren’t what they used to be.

A Delta delay helped get a friend fired from his job. How many miles do you get for that?

Stanley Cup tonight. This has been on the state capitol of Massachusetts for weeks, just waiting for tonight’s deciding seventh game:

I suspect shenanigans. Says the guy who’s watched two periods of hockey all season.

Vancouver got close. Boston won. The Canadians are rioting. Odd, that.

adventures / cycling / iPhone / Monday / photo — Comments Off
6
Jun 11

Sea Day

We’re just taking our time out here in the Atlantic. We’re cruising at a pace that makes Bermuda on the third day of the cruise. I don’t mind. I love the sea days. If you don’t know how to relax a few sea days will teach you. We’re on the Celebrity line — which is the line of choice, my cruise veteran folks insist — and they do a great job with pretty much everything, including giving you entertainment and distractions on the ship. But to just sit back in the shade, read, watch the waves go by, that’s glorious.

So we left yesterday, turned off the phones after we crossed under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in New York and started exploring the ship. We had the lifeboat drill, required by international law, but streamlined to 94 seconds by the efficient people of this vessel, the Summit. Essentially, go to your muster station, bring your life jacket. Put it on, velcro, snap, whistle and light.

I feel safer already.

As if anyone is going to be finding their way to the theater if the dreaded seven horn blasts are heard.

So we did that, saw a bit of the ship, got cleaned up for dinner and had a fine time.

This is my second cruise, our honeymoon last year and this week, both on Celebrity where you get top-notch service. And the food. My heavens, the food. Last night I had a lamb shank that could have fed an American family of six. Amazing. Tonight there was the barbecue glazed black salmon, which was nothing like you’ve pictured just now, but better in every conceivable way. In between there are restaurants, grills, cafes and all sorts of other places to embarrass you with their options.

Today, though we started in the gym. I rode 35 miles, had a piece of grilled and pressed chicken for lunch and then went to my massage. See? Celebrity. My masseuse was from Romania, where they train people with sharp elbows and brick-like knuckles in the finer arts of sublime muscle torture.

Then we hit the therapy pool, which is to say a warm salt water pool with random spouts swirling water at various angles splooshing you. After that I read the day away.

There is nothing in the world wrong with a sea day.

The Yankee and her parents, at dinner tonight.

Auburn / cycling / memories / Thursday — Comments Off
19
May 11

Oh, hello, Summer

Road around the better part of town today. It isn’t the largest city, by sprawl, but it is big enough when you’re on a bike. There is a sense of accomplishment, though, when you pass those city limit signs and you aren’t in a car.

Most interesting, to me, was when physiology finally kicked in. I haven’t been eating a lot this week for whatever reason. My medical diagnosis: I go through phases. (I’m not a medical doctor, clearly.) Seeing, though, that I am the person who’s appetite goes nuts upon extra exertion, I was surprised to find I wasn’t eating the cabinets off the walls to get to the food inside. So it became an interesting game this week: How long will this last?

And it lasted until I had about 13 miles and lots of hills left to go on my route today. There just wasn’t much more energy for my body to offer. But I pushed through, best I could, proud I went through another city limits sign, even if my route weaved me through the towns in such a way that put me back and forth between them. Who needs a cold glass or reality when “Oh look! You’ve changed cities again!”

This took a few minutes.

Random photographic interlude:

Saw this downtown the other day. This is in front of Auburn Art, another one of the downtown storefronts that has been turned into an extensive gift shop, hawking memorabilia where the authentic thing once stood. The little sign here is evocative of a bygone era, and that era was once inside those doors. Time marches on, only the nostalgic are looking for the past in handsomely framed portraits and paintings — which can all be found inside if you have sufficient credit!

Both the historic Toomer’s Drugstore and Auburn Hardware have morphed into a similar fate, more boutique and peddling more trinkets than their names would suggest. We can sell the ethos, but in another generation will the trinkets be of bygone gift shops themselves?

Tonight I … vacuumed. Can you tell I have a book report to write? Some habits never die. I have a heavy tome on two-and-a-half centuries of media to consider and write about within the next week. Naturally I choose to finish the laundry and otherwise make the place look a bit more respectable.

Also, tomorrow, I pick up my best girl from the airport!

Auburn / cycling / iPhone / memories / photo / Wednesday — Comments Off
18
May 11

Warmer and just as perfect in every way

Nice ride on this sunny, warm morning. Down the hill that is daring to wreck me. I hit a big bump there this morning I hadn’t discovered before. It was so big, and the speed so great that I swerved and wobbled the rest of the way down the path. And this is how I know I’ll never be a good bike rider: the speed I reach on this downhill is what the best bikers in the world do when they are simply pedaling hard.

So there’s that. Up the subsequent follow-up hill, through the stores of temptations — the cupcake boutique, the ice cream shop, the donut factory and more. I meandered back toward campus, turning by the old dorm that is now an apartment complex and work my way into a road full of traffic, including an intersection where I almost became a hood ornament. And then back to the quieter roads, past a golf course and the airport, onto another big road and then down the slow, gentle hill that means you’re almost home. There’s only one more big stretch after this, and that’s where a truck decided to get as close to me as possible and honk his horn. I passed him later and it was tempting to return the favor, but I didn’t. He was in a big truck, I was on a carbon frame.

Somewhere midway through the ride I challenged two guys on Harleys to a race. They just laaaughed.

One day I’m going to do a video of all of this. Nothing like a little multimedia humility as you work your way through the gears.

Went to Niffer’s tonight, because I wanted steak fries. I was going to grill, but I had no charcoal. The realization of which also made me think Grilling for one is silly. I’d watched an episode of The Pacific last night and at one point a Marine gets a little reprieve from the horrors of island fighting and goes back to a hospital and is talking with a psychiatrist. There are fries. The Marine picks one up with a curiosity and amazement that turned into this bemused expression “I just saw all of the things I saw. Here’s a fry.”

Whenever a food is reduced and elevated like that, I figure you have to seek it out. So I wanted steak fries and Niffer’s provides. The waiter took my order — and I am the guy that orders without need of menu, so this is easy on him — and disappeared. A young lady brought my food. Another waiter offered me a refill. My guy was gone until it was time for the check. Behind the pole, above, you can see his arm. He was complaining of having less than $200 of sales for the night. “How is that even possible?” Oh I have an idea.

But I enjoy Niffer’s, this guy aside. It is the town’s quirky decor, with cutesy names on the straightforward menu place. It is one of the remaining locally authentic places found on the ever-shrinking list of “Places where we hung out when I was in school.” They are celebrating their 20th anniversary this year. I’ve ordered pretty much the same thing every time. Their first menu is hanging on the wall. That sandwich would have cost me about four bucks in 1991.

I suppose my first visit there was 15 years ago. Keely, the owner, was on the floor then as she still is now. Seldom is the place not hopping. Tonight was one of those nights, but I got there late, on a Wednesday and the university is between semesters. She comes to visit our table every so often. She doesn’t know me from anyone, but every so often she brings free food with her. Not much has changed about her place in most of that time.

Towns change. Businesses thrive and fail. People retire or get bought out or the rent gets too high or whatever. Graffiti is painted over. New people come and institutionalize their memories as being The Memory of how it should all be just so. You can’t begrudge them that, but you’d like it if a few more things had remained, all the same.

Learned the magazine to which I submitted an article last night is going to run another essay I wrote earlier this year. It actually relates to the idea above, which is both coincidental and sad. Not every part of my day is like that, I promise. Re-reading the thing, though, I cringed at a few points and beamed with pride at a few others. I wrote that. It is a running goal, write something with sentiment that doesn’t become maudlin.

cycling / errands / football / iPhone / journalism / photo / Samford / Tuesday — Comments Off
17
May 11

Waiting for 4.0

That tree will haunt your dreams. I want to go back to Big Lots, buy it and bury it so it doesn’t frighten little children.

Would anyone like to hang it, instead? Or maybe put it in a lake as a fish reef?

Pedaled around the southern part of town today. Again it was very cool. The high today was 68 degrees. I set out down the hill of death and up the two hills of shame, took a right at the light and raced past the back of the subdivision. Turned right, passed a school, up two huge hills where I geared up as far as I could and still had to just put my head down, grit my teeth and make mind-deals. Just 20 more strokes and you’ll be there. OK, five more.

Crossed the interstate on the narrowest overpass in town, dodged traffic on the bypass and then cruised through one of the great old neighborhoods. When I made it to campus I turned around, cruised the neighborhood the other direction, got caught by a bunch of buses on the bypass and then made it home feeling strong.

Later I went back downtown to see about a watch. The crystal needs replacing, and the jeweler at Ware’s with whom I spoke could not see through the scuffs to read who made the watch.

It’s a Fossil.

“Oh,” she said shaking her head sadly. There’s bad news here. “Fossil doesn’t let us do any work on their watches. They have some sort of warranty deal, though.”

And then I asked the wrong question. Is that pretty much a standard thing? Would that be what the rest of the jewelers in town would say if I went asking?

“You could try Walmart, but we have some of the best jewelers in the state right here …”

Right. Well then.

She was happy to not help me, though, so there’s that.

So I went to the bike story, because I have this issue with gears and hoped someone would answer my question. But the answer was no better than what I’d read. Score one more for the Internet. Now if it would just get me up the hills a bit easier … (That’s web 4.0, I hear.)

Started watching The Pacific tonight. Made it through the first two discs, thanks to Netflix. We’ve seen Guadalcanal and Pavuvu. This was all promoted, when it debuted on HBO, as the Band of Brothers of the Pacific Theater. And the men that fought there have long had a legitimate claim that their stories have gone unnoticed through all the retellings of what happened in Europe.

The series, four episodes in, is fine. It is no Band of Brothers. I’ve seen that many more times and read Ambrose’s book that spawned the series and two memoirs (Dick Winters’ and Lynn Compton’s) around it. That story was much more about the camaraderie. I’ve only read one of the memoirs (Eugene Sledge’s) that was the source material for The Pacific, and will one day get around to Hugh Ambrose’s book. So far, this one is about the sun and palm trees and firefights at night and grim desperation in the daytime. But there are six more episodes to go, maybe it will get there.

The island hopping miseries are an interesting thing. Somehow you wonder if you’re getting the full story, but if you look around at enough perspectives you realize how this may have been a period of the deepest deprivations (from both sides) of man and maybe you don’t want to know every little terrible detail.

Finished an article I’ve been working on. The task was this: write a 2,000 catching-up-with profile. And the focal point gave me a lot of coachspeak and platitudes. Not that I blame him. The interview was fine — the coach is a very nice guy and has always been an accommodating gentleman — but coaches get in the habit of speaking like coaches. They’re always a little bit leary, because you never know who’ll read the thing. That just carries over, hopefully not at home, but whenever someone breaks out a recorder or a notepad.

So write 2,000 words on a series of humble “doing greats” and “we’re excited about the season” and “one game at a time” and “we see it as a business trip.” This took a bit of creativity.

I’d written about 2,200 words and then cut a few hundred, which just made the thing better. I wrote one ending, but decided against it, so it became the end of a section. And then, to finish the story, I wrote back to where the tale began.

Sent that off, it’ll be on shelves this summer, wrote this and now time for bed.

Oh, when I took out the garbage tonight I noticed I could see my breath. May in Alabama. It was 48 degrees.