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cycling / site / Wednesday — Comments Off
1
Jan 25

Happy New Year

We brought in the new year in the same way we have the last two years, counting down the seconds, riding our bikes on the trainers. Doing something three times makes it a tradition, right?

They were just a few symbolic miles, almost soft-pedaled. I was cooked. But, after consecutive days of 54, 58, 64 and, finally, 56 total miles last night, my year on the bike ended like this.

That’s a new PR, in terms of miles, be it ever so humble. December also became my second largest month ever (second only to February) despite no rides in the first two week. For the year, February, September, October and December are the most prolific of each of those months in the last 14 years. In 2024, I rode around the circumference of the planet — at this latitude, anyway.

I’ll complete my first trip around the equator, distance wise, in the next month or two.

None of these numbers mean anything, beyond the context of my spreadsheet.

Speaking of spreadsheets, I did the regular file deleting and updating of things today. One of those things that gets updated each month is a spreadsheet on site traffic. Last year we had almost three-quarters of a million site visits. Who knows why. It was the best year ever, and a 12 percent increase over 2023. Some of those were even people, and not bots. Whatever brought you by, I’m glad you’ve visited. Please come back around again.

Also today, in the process of doing the monthly computer chores, I added one banner here on the blog. (You know those rotate, right? The one on the top and the one on the bottom change each time you load or refresh the page. You knew that, right? You also knew there was a banner on the bottom too, right? Because you read the entire page every time you come by. There’s only five posts per page, and that’s not too much to ask.)

Anyway, now included in the rotation at the bottom page, something I saw at the Museum of the American Revolution two weeks ago.

Let us hope that’s a perpetual sentiment.

Happy New Year!

cycling / Tuesday — Comments Off
31
Dec 24

So much bike riding

Fifty-four miles on Saturday. Fifty-eight miles on Sunday night.

A metric century yesterday.

Fifty-three miles today.

That’s a lot for me. A lot of time staring at the basement, too.

cycling / Monday / photo — Comments Off
30
Dec 24

Libraries and books and classes and things

So let us reset the scene. We have moved through Christmas. Everyone has returned home. No one knows what day it is. My grading is done. Final grades have been submitted. I have turned my mind fully to spring classes.

Fully is probably overstating it. But I’m working on stuff. One class is all but done. Twenty percent of the new class is done. Soon enough that one will become a sole focus.

Also, I want to go to the local small town library. I’d like to explain the library situation to you. We live in an unincorporated community. The small town next to us has a library that you might categorize as, “cute.” It’s staffed entirely by volunteers. It is open 26 hours a week — 20 in the summer.

In the county seat, over in the other direction, there’s a “Free Library.” That’s in the name. And it’s free if you live in the city. If you live in the county, as I do, that costs $15 a year. The free library is slightly better appointed than the cute library.

In the next county, where campus is, there is of course the campus library — currently under renovation. And there’s a library system, six branches of varying size, I’m sure. If I want to join that library, because I don’t live in the county, I could pay $100 a year for a membership.

But!

That larger library system is a member of consortium of 22 libraries and systems. If you’re a member of one of those, you have privileges at the larger system.

My cute library is not a part of that consortium.

You know, being out in the country has it’s benefits and its drawbacks. As I have documented, for the first year we were here we didn’t have garbage pickup. We don’t have road clearing. Somehow, the library thing is the one that annoys me.

None of this makes any sense, none of it matters, because there’s always the ILL, the Interlibrary Loan system.

Interlibrary Loan is a miraculous system. You simply find a title somewhere that you want, that’s not in your home library. You tell your library. They fetch the book for you, and then you get what you requested. The only thing is that ILL operates a little differently everywhere you are. Local rules and resources and all of that. My last campus library, for example, you had to go over to the library to pick it up. The place before that, they brought it to you. It was awesome.

Whatever it is, I have this feeling that the process here will be the weirdest one yet. I’ll find out in the next few days, maybe next week.

The bike riding continues. Last week I wrote of the speculation of trying to hit randomly collected goals that were just a little out of the realm of comfortable possibility, but definitely possible because I could see it, right there, on a spreadsheet. A document that serves only to taunt me.

Well, I decided to reach for all of those goals, most miles in a December, a round number, the circumference of the the planet (at this latitude). They were close to one another, but far away from me. And so I set out for it. After 40 miles on Christmas night, a bit more after that, 110-ish miles this weekend, there was a bad ride this afternoon, and then another one tonight.

The problem is that the ride earlier today was bad because I’m tired. Legs are almost dead. I am probably under-fueled. And the basement is a bit demoralizing at the moment.

Also, I have another long ride tomorrow.

Those big goals might have been a little ambitious. But you can’t get close and just stop, even on your arbitrary goals that mean, in the end, nothing at all. That’d just be rude.

And a bad way to end a year.

Stupid spreadsheet.

cycling / family / Monday / photo — Comments Off
23
Dec 24

The assemblage of the 23rd

The in-laws are here for the holidays. My mother spent Thanksgiving here, and they are here for Christmas. It still feels strange to not travel everywhere for the holidays, but it is also nice to make some of these moments in our home.

And don’t underestimate the practical value of not being constantly on the move. That’s not what it is about, but sometimes that’s what it becomes, which is not what it is about.

If that makes sense.

Anyway, they arrived safely, brought some cold down with them, and we will have a fine old time this week.

I walked by the Dickensian village at just the right time today. I enjoy the village. I’d vote to keep them out for longer, just for the classic scenes and all of the little activities and details you can find. The designs are charming, the lights in them, in the evening, are a delight.

And, today, the sun streaming in was creating these lovely little shadows.

I wish we had the space to display them all. (We have a lot.) Alas, we have a Catzilla.

When I hauled the garbage can to the end of the drive last night, I looked up to see …

… not drones. (That’s Orion. And if this confuses you, get an app, or crack a book.)

Let’s talk about the bike. I did nothing for the first two weeks of December. It was, I thought, an uncharacteristically long lull, and it felt like it. I rode 21 whole miles the weekend before this, just to see if my legs and feet could remember how to make tiny circles. I got in 70 miles on two days last week, just to see if I still could. This weekend I pedaled my way through 72 more miles.

Now we get to the problem of the spreadsheet. Since I log all of these things — in about three different ways — I know precisely where I am. I know what the trend lines look like, what’s possible, what is beyond reach and, dangerously, what might be feasible, if I stretch.

And that’s always the dilemma. Is it authentic if I see those benchmarks coming and push just a little more to get there. Even if only barely?

This is what I can get to, if I ride a lot in this last week: a new-to-me round number. It’s a small amount, so I don’t even want to say it aloud. I could finish the year with the number of miles equaling the circumference of the earth, at this latitude, anyway. (Next year I’ll finish my first equatorial circle of the earth.) Doing all of that also means I could also set a new record for the month of December.

In all, it seems unlikely. I had that lull to start the month, and time is short.

But if I push, I thought as I pedaled through 30 more miles today, if I could somehow get 300 more miles this week …

That’s not a lot. Except, to me, it most definitely is.

That spreadsheet just sits here, taunting me.

cycling / Monday / photo / site — Comments Off
2
Dec 24

And so we start December, and the mad dash

Took mom to the airport for the sad and tearful goodbyes today. Drove home in the late afternoon’s dying sunlight. I was back inside before she was on the plane, but she has safely returned home and I have turned back to work, and the grading of things.

Before I began that, however, I did the monthly computer rituals. Cleaning old files from the desktop, adding the site’s page visits into a useless spreadsheet, updated a few other running files, and so on. I also updated the November cycling chart, which always amuses me and bores you.

The blue line is this year, and you can see that, compared to 2023’s red line, I’ve had a successful increase in my mileage, be it ever so humble. For some reason, in 2021 or so, I added a 10 mile per day projection line to the spreadsheet, and it seems to have outlived its usefulness.

It appears I’ll handily accomplish those two goals, of besting last year and the 10 miles per average, so I’ll turn myself to other, slightly more impressive goals. Goals which I most likely won’t achieve, because of the holidays. But they are out there, nevertheless, and we shall approach them with vigor, and alternating days of tired and enthusiastic legs, I’m sure.

This is funny to me because these are small numbers, really, but they seem YUGE.

Also today, I have updated the banners here on the blog. (You know those rotate, right? The one on the top and the one on the bottom change each time you load or refresh the page. You knew that, right? You also knew there was a banner on the bottom too, right? Because you read the entire page every time you come by. There’s only five posts per page, and that’s not too much to ask of you. I mean, come on.)

So now there are 116 banners randomly loaded across the top of the page, and 118 randomly loaded banners populating the bottom of the page. I should probably cull those two lists. That sounds like a great winter project. So click reload a lot between now and sometime in February to see them all. And don’t forget to scroll down to the see the ones at the bottom, either.

Poseidon always checks out the bottoms of the page. He’s very diligent and curious about the goings on around here.

(When it’s typed well, he caught the errors. When there are typos, he was off the clock.)

Phoebe, on the other hand, is much smarter, and she doesn’t care about any of this. Just so long as her picture makes the site, so that the week’s most popular feature is here every week.

We’re going to finish the year with something like three-quarters of a million visitors, according to the site statistics I looked up today. Why, I have no idea. The cats have it figured out, and they thank you.

As for me, I am now in the home stretch of two classes, so things will be light in the next few weeks. And after those two classes wrap up I’ll be finishing with two other classes. So there are liable to be some thin days in here this December. But there will be something more often than not, and we’ll of course always have the weekly check in on the cats. It is the most popular weekly feature on the site. (They know it, and they make me type it, too. Marketing geniuses, these kittehs.)