cycling « Kenny Smith | Omnes hic sumus discere.

cycling

Only part of this is about a robot

I was enjoying a nice sit-and-read moment in the library when the vacuum robot decided to do its thing. I’m not sure if it is running on a schedule. If it is, I haven’t ascertained the routine. I could have gotten up and moved some chairs around, if I knew the routine, but I was also having a nice kitty cuddle and didn’t want to cause a panic. Plus the book was good.

So the vacuum rolled around in its random way, picking up things, whirring and spinning. It penned itself between a chair and one of the book cases. It pinned itself within the chair. It disappeared into another room. It came back. It found the cat tunnel, somehow got under it, and pushed it around.

Phoebe was sitting with me, which is a good thing. Poseidon does not need to see the vacuum moving his tunnel around. Poe likes to go into the tunnel and have you slide him around the house. If it is oriented the right way he will sometimes poke his head out of that hole in the top, looking like a little tank commander. Finally, I’m sure he thinks, someone has figured out the purpose of the tunnel, to carry me places.

And if the robot can move him and the tunnel around, that would change the entire paradigm of the house.

Later, the vacuum was just pushing the tunnel around. The vinyl and wire isn’t substantial enough to alert the robot’s sensors to an obstruction, so it just keeps going in that straight line until another wall or piece of furniture is stumbled into.

For a long time I heard the robot in the distance, but it never returned. This was dimly, slowly sinking into my head, in that way that it sometimes makes you wonder why you skipped fast forwarding the commercials, or remember 80 percent of the way through a song that you don’t actually like this song. When the whirring and the spinning and the bumping finally registered, I sought it out. Somehow, it made its way into the laundry room, and shut the door behind itself.

That floor has never been so clean.

Inside the laundry room, the robot vacuum had somehow gotten confused between a throw rug and the washing machine. It would move, bump, spin 90 degrees, move, bump, spin 90 degrees, move, bump. It was horrifying scene, and I study there watching it, wondering how I could work it into a lecture on technology determinism.

I did not work it in. We had other great examples today. Also, there was not enough time to do all of the things I wanted to do in DMP today. Diffusion of innovation will just have to wait until Thursday. But, just now, as I wrote that and tried to think of the next sentence, how it will all go with the upcoming lecture clicked nicely. Let me write that down somewhere.

I had a nice chat with a student leaving class. And then they went one way and I went the other, down to the corner, to the hugging art, and then around the corner to the office. But, first, the street art.

It looks like an intimate moment, right? Is it a reunion, or a departure? He’s got his hat and suitcase. He looks like he’s almost ready to scoop her up, perhaps in defiance of physics, but there’s definitely a sense of motion in this presentation. The moment we are given not only looks different from different angles, but it looks like a specific movement underway.

You can stand there all day, but they can’t complete the move. It’s frustrating. It’s wonderful.

We’ll try another angle next time, perhaps more will be revealed to us.

A mystery of my recent bike rides has revealed itself to me. We went out for a ride on Saturday and I sat in my lovely bride’s wheel and watched her calf muscles go to work. It wasn’t too long after this that I got dropped, and did the rest of the ride on my own.

I won’t tell you how far along in the ride that was, or how much I soloed. It might be embarrassing. (But just for me. She’s riding super well, and I’m not. She keeps getting better and I stay about the same.)

On this evening’s ride, I happened upon a run of turkeys. They weren’t there when I came back by, so this is, unfortunately, as good a shot as I can offer. I think I might have scared them off with my huffing. Unless I was puffing at the time.

It’s possible that The Yankee startled them away. She does a delightfully hilarious turkey call and that might have been enough to send them into the treeline and out of sight. I passed them, first, however, so I don’t know. Which is to say I was out front. I had a decent ride and she was casually letting me dangle varying distances in front of her. But here’s more proof. She took this, when I was ahead and she was chasing.

That lasted about an hour. Then she came alongside me, right near the end. But I won.

Mostly because she didn’t realize we were racing.

When I win, we are racing. When she wins, it is an exhibition.

I finished up Rick Atkinson’s Fate of the Day, on Sunday. This is the second installment in his Revolutionary War trilogy, and I need him to finish the final volume in the next week or two. It’s a wonderful book, as you’d expect from a talented and accomplished writer such as he. I highly recommend it.

Ebenezer Stanton would become a lieutenant in the army. He was a paymaster here. Somehow, he moved to the navy, and so he takes the captain honorific. He was a fourth generation Connecticutonian. His great-great-grandfather founded the little town of Stonington. During the war he married. They would have six children. He took command of a privateer of the Connecticut Navy, but I can’t find anything on that particular vessel at the moment.

He stayed on the sea after the war, sailing from New London, Connecticut to ports on the Mediterranean Sea. He died at 53, in 1811, and would be survived by his widow by 39 years. One of their sons died at sea. His namesake died in Italy just a few months after he did. They also had two daughters, who lived into adulthood and married. One passed away in Connecticut, the other in Cuba. Their oldest child, Nathan, also lived the longest. He died at 57, in Stonington. He had a niece, who he probably knew, who lived until 1893. It all seems so simultaneously close at hand and far away.

This second book ends with the sacking of Charleston, the British general, Clinton, then sailing back to New York after the 30-page expedition in South Carolina. The Gordon Riots in London, which are the biggest disturbances there until WW2, is in the epilogue, but then so to is the return of Lafayette, from France, promising his guns and ships.

There are 200 pages of notes and citations.

When I finished it, I clapped the book shut, put it on my chest, crossed my arms and smiled for a bit.

Hurry up, Atkinson.

I started reading Adin Dobkin’s Sprinting Through No Man’s Land. This is about the first Tour de France after the conclusion of World War I. When Armistice came race designer, and editor of L’Auto Henri Desgrange announced Le Tour would return the next summer. They had to wait for the shooting to stop to go see the roads, the bombed out villages, and design the course. The route was beyond demanding.

As Dobkin writes, a few stages in, “More than 400 kilometers stood in front of them that day. After that, the cyclists would confront the longest stage the Tour had seen. Then, the alpine climbs would begin.”

I’m five chapters and 101 pages in and there’s something missing. I think it needs more of all of the things I’m interested in. Dobkin gives a real nod to the importance of the still young race, culturally, but you could write a lot more about this.

I somewhat understand how the races work today, and they were certainly different a century ago. This book alone makes that clear, if you didn’t know it already. But it’d be nice to see how all of this came to be, and precisely how this race evolved into such a cultural touchstone for France.

But that’s not Dobkin’s job here. Other people have written that, I’m sure. I’ll get to some of it eventually.

For some reason, and maybe this becomes clearer, there are asides on the war, not just the racer’s experiences. There’s a bit on the American 813th Pioneer regiment which was briefly in France. This, and units like it, deserve more attention than they have received. But how does that figure here? Similarly, there’s a digression into Camp Pontanezen an important American troop depot near Brest. The race went by there, but I don’t know why we did.

A better story would be unpacking Quimperlé. Dobkin tells us they had about 9,000 souls before the Great War, but lost something like four percent of their population. I’d rather learn about the terrible impact there.

Also, Henri Pelissier.

He may or may not be getting outsized coverage here. (I won’t spoil the results of a 112-year-old race.) He’s a real character though. Everyone agreed he was a strong bike racer, but he thought it most of all. And while his peers might have disagreed with his own self-evaluation, they all agreed with each other that he was not the most liked man in the peloton.

He was one of four sons. Three of them became bike racers, one died in the war. His father was a cattleman, but they feuded constantly. And Pelissier also feuded with Desgrange and other race organizers. To be fair, pretty much everyone either loved or loathed Desgrange, and I’m not sure if anyone that participated in his races went into the first group.

In his racing career, Pelissier won 10 stages of the Tour in five different years. He won the overall race in 1923. He was also a national champion, and won most of the large races in France and Italy. It went downhill when he got off the bike in 1927. He wasn’t successful in his later pursuits. His wife killed herself in 1933. He met another woman and they were huile et eau, and violence domestique. He threatened her with a knife. One night, at a dinner party, he lunged at her, and cut her face. She retreated to another room, found the revolver his wife had used — and she shot him several times, killing him.

It seemed a bad match. She got a suspended sentence.

Which is a happy place to wrap this up. It is late, there is work today and tomorrow to plan. We are building football franchises in Org Comm. I’m sure some anecdote will emerge.

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25
Aug 26

Back to it

Today was a day of waking up at a reasonable time. I had forgotten there was a 7:30 a.m. I am not the morning person. I’m fine when I wake up, but just let me sleep in. It’s my natural condition. So imagine, if you will, the 10 or so years I did morning news. I had one job where I was in the studio at 4:30 a.m. That might the next job’s 6 a.m. arrival seem positively easy. The upside was that you had an afternoon to get errands done. The downside was you can’t, in your 20s, convince people you need to be in bed by 8 p.m.

Reader, I never was.

I was not last night, either. I only had to wake up at 7:30. This was rude enough.

Fortunately, my classes are all in the afternoon and evening.

Anyway, we had a meeting at 9:30 a.m., our first faculty meeting of the semester. This involved sitting in a classroom, reading an agenda, talking about the various items. Trying to stay on track and on schedule, and so on. (This group has a terrific sense of staying on time, and that’s a nice thing to be a part of.) It ran for six hours, this meeting. Six hours is not easing back into things. I suppose all of the work I’ve done these last four weeks have been the easing back into things. And, also, the sudden increase of email that has coincided with the work. Perhaps that has been the easing back in. (Just four more days of easing back in until the full stride begins. But I don’t want to wow you with all of that just now.)

The good news is that we’ll be on the clock for the work next week. Once we get started, then we can get started. The feeling before classes begin is an odd one. It is a stew of excitement and anxiety and you-still-have-time and you-have-no-time and there-are-days-to enjoy-yourself-so-relax and who-can-relax and, also, I-need-more-days-with-which-to-relax. This paragraph breaks no new ground — as opposed to every other ‘graph on this site. It has always felt like that. I suspect the days before a new semester begin feel like that for a lot of people. I imagine it always will, at least so long as we have semesters and people teaching in them.

And now, notes from real life.

We went out for a morning bike ride yesterday. A simple 20-miler, one of the traditional routes. I decided, wisely, that instead of trying to stay out front for as long as possible, I would ride sensible, hanging onto my lovely bride’s wheel, and then maybe I’ll still be there at the end. Going out front would have probably been a better option. She’s riding so well lately and I am not and that’s how you find yourself going 20-plus miles an hour and squinting into the distance, trying to determine if you can still see someone in the distance.

Nothing on that ride was terribly bad. She’s just super great at the moment.

Some farmers, in some places, talk about a second season. We have that here, and here’s evidence of that. I rode this same route a few weeks back and the corner was taller than me. Now, it is not.

This, if I remember my corn growing rates, is pushing the boundaries of the science, which is pretty cool. Double-cropping is a growing thing, and I need to read more about it. I can’t recall if it is efficient or inefficient. (Most likely that depends on the crop.)

For today’s bike ride I recreated a route I did three years ago, this week. It was a ride-every-road-within-shouting-distance-until-you-get-to-20-miles route. I did it at just below a tempo pace. I finished it two minutes and two seconds faster than I did in 2023. I wish it had been faster.

After my ride I finished this project. It’s the same picture I shared yesterday, because the face of it looks the same. This evening I had to attach the cleat to the back. From there, hang the cleat on the wall.

This took four screws, but they had to be precise because the cleat isn’t quite large enough. The cleat isn’t quite large enough because it is a leftover cleat that I made last summer. I got a corner cabinet and mounted it in a dead space in the garage and there sit the bike shoes and the helmet. All of this was an effort to get the bike stuff all the tool stuff. Only, lately, the sunglasses and have migrated back to the tool stuff. So, I had some extra lumber and wanted to try my new brad nailer and everything worked out well. Until I had to get those screws in. There were about three millimeters for error because, again, I cut twice and measured once on this project. It is garage furniture.

And now it is sitting on a wall cleat and holding sunglasses and it doesn’t even wobble when the garage door goes up and down.

There are no cats in this tunnel. Phoebe ran into the room for attention and settled down in her favorite spot for speculative belly rubs. I gave her a nice pet and then shot this, just because I like the way the light was playing off the tunnel.

That’s a new tunnel that my mother sent the cats. We now have two tunnels, so our jealous sibling cats can get along with one another. I’d randomly move them around the house, but these little guys are such creatures of habit I’m not sure how they’d react to upsetting their routine with such an offensive gesture.

Outside, I looked up just in time. This plane is going to London. By the time you read this, of course, the people are already there. Probably over the jet lag. I wonder what they’re doing today.

Sometimes you should look up even when there’s no rumble or roar of an aircraft overhead. Sometimes you just get lucky. Just about every time, really, if you think about it.

Think about it.

cycling / memories / Monday / movies / photo — Comments Off
24
Aug 26

And so begins the last week of summer

The penultimate weekend. There should be something grand here, but there’s not. At least the last weekend of summer has plans. I think I’d rather have the plans this weekend and nothing next weekend, but the people that schedule big citywide events don’t ask me these things.

It’s nice not being asked a lot of things. But if you never get asked things you can’t have input. It’s a tradeoff. And of all of the tradeoffs we make in life, many of them are worse than that. Still, if someone asked your thoughts, you might think your thoughts had value. You might think you could maybe contribute in some way. You might think it was appreciated, what you had to offer. Cities should ask your thoughts on when they schedule big events is all I’m saying. If I am, in fact, talking about cities.

And of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be? There’s a huge cycling event next weekend and we’ll be there to see it. Guess what photos I’ll be showing you this time next week.

Today, though, it’s just the usual from around here. For instance. Like many of you, I am a newly minted Internet Ancient Greek scholar. And, finally, we went to watch The Odyssey. Knowing I’d have some important thoughts in line with my public scholarship I dressed for the occasion.

These were my thoughts: the movie was very loud. I’d like to see it again, a version without the score. Also, it was a good movie. On the other hand, I’m not sure it met the hype. On the third hand, how you can you live up to an epic. On the fourth hand, it was still sweeping and grandiose. It was also a good set of cast members, but on the fifth hand — five hands, what am I, one of Zeus’ misbegotten offspring? — not everyone seemed well cast. On the sixth hand, I don’t think this movie will age much better than the Romans-with-English-accents era of 1950s and 1960s cinema.

Also, I really would have liked to have heard the siren’s song. You’re going to eventually tell me that the Trojan horse was some iconic visual element, you’re going to go long (and rightly so!) on the great pains to be authentic with clothing and brag about the visual effects, you could give me the siren’s song.

It’s been a long time since I read The Odyssey. I think we read portions of it in high school. In an undergrad literature class I read The Iliad and the Odyssey. I’m not sure — because time makes me forget things — if the professor was truly an expert in the Greek classics or she was just covering bases, but if I had that to do over again I’d insist. Epics of the western culture demand expertise, I’d say, so that I will be better prepared to comment on this after I see a movie in a few decades. But with that in mind, this. The movie changes Homer’s story. That’s fine. It’s art. And also it was an oral tradition. Things change. If you want Homer, read Homer. If you can’t read Greek, get in your time machine and … well, yeah, that’s still a problem. Fine, there are several dozen English versions in part or in toto. I think one was written by someone who doesn’t write English. E.V. Reiu’s translation in the 1940s was the first. Richard Lattimore’s translation is well regarded for accuracy. The relatively recent work of Emily Wilson’s is an excellent version for people new to Homer — she is also the one catching a lot of social media broadsides. Go figure. Anyway, the changes itself aren’t bad. People will quibble with how some of the changes come about. And as I am realistic about the Homeric question — probably there’s more than one author, certainly the story changes over time, also, and this is important … it’s fantasy I’m OK with the descent into madness version here. It has been a long while since our last film that was universally regarded as a descent into madness theme.

Or was that just the woofers in my theater?

I set out Sunday afternoon for a moderately different route. The river run is a simple out-and-back to the river and it gives you a steady 15 miles — yep, 15 miles, every time — and you’re back in the neighborhood in 45 or 50 minutes. But the weather was nice and I figured I’d try a different road. It starts like this. When you get to the river you can turn left or right. Usually, we turn left. But I’ve gone the other way a few times, just for variety. And when I go to the right I take the first right, effectively doubling back with two-plus extra miles for the effort.

But, I thought, what happens if I turn right … and don’t take that first right. So, yesterday I took the second right. I chose this one because I looked at it on a map beforehand and the street name has something to do with tall climbs. There are none of those around here. In fact, at one point on the river road you are three feet below sea level. Well, let’s see what’s on that road. It is the usual array of warehouses, which are the state flower. Also, these guys.

Hey, there’s the hill the road sign was talking about. Actually, it’s a five-mile road (and I was only punish passed twice) and there are four of these hills. You might call them rollers. By the end of the road which was so boastful of its hills I’d climbed about 120 feet.

I’m not judging. I’m merely pointing out that the terrain here is flat. I’m faster on flat roads than I used to be, but I probably couldn’t get over a proper climb without a tow rope anymore. (I did two big hills in Switzerland last summer, first climb in a few years, and it felt exactly as I remembered. My chain and derailleur fell apart before I could complete the whole hilly route, however.)

Anyway, back home, and I finished up the work on this rough little piece. I used my new brad nailer to mount these little bits as shelves. It’s garage furniture, I cut once and then measured twice, and this will get the job done.

I’ll make another version that’s smaller and neater, one day. I have already mapped out the plans in my mind. For now, I just have to attach the cleat to the back of this one and put it on the wall. But fun like that you have to spread out over several days. We’re not totally uninhibited.

Here’s the view, last night, as I took out the garbage. It’s about midnight.

Believe it or not, there are three planes in that shot. One of them flew directly overhead, and had no ADS-B transponder signal. It came from Washington D.C. Those tracker apps are such great fun, and the flights without all of the information might be the most fun of all. Sure, that one plane is going to Boston and the other to Florida, but the mystery of this plane, that’s loads of fun.

Speaking of fun, the first meeting of the semester is tomorrow. We’re easing into things with a six-hour effort.

cycling / Monday / photo / Rowan — Comments Off
17
Aug 26

And now the harder things

One of the good things about teaching nearly every class under the sun these last few years is that when a friend needs a course outline in a pinch I have something. I received a text message like that last night and was able to provide three different schedules in a matter of minutes. I spent the rest of the night trying different versions of “How can I help?” Being helpful is the easy thing; convincing people to make use of it is a harder thing.

Another almost hard thing is a mental challenge. Today the spring schedule was released. I haven’t yet finished preparing, or re-preparing as the case may be, the fall term. On the most important hand, knowing my spring whereabouts five months in advance is the way this is supposed to work. I’ve had semesters where that wasn’t the case. It’s like the dream where you walk into a room unprepared, with the wrong book in hand, and with no pants, and the fear of that sensation for four months. On the other hand, one thing at a time, sir or ma’am. On the third hand, things are always subject to change with little, or no, notice.

Some good progress was made today for my second fall class. The immersion of dates and tasks and concepts is such that I will soon wonder if the first class, which I think I’ve completed, is complete. Convincing myself is the hardest thing of all.

Saturday my lovely bride invited me to chase her on a bicycle. She’s riding well and I’m riding poorly and so this was a kind gesture on her part and, ultimately, a vain effort on my part. She wanted to get in 25 miles, so I chose the time trial route, because I think I ride a little better on that route. I gave her something to chase, sneaking peeks over my shoulder and saying to myself “Let me hang on for eight miles,” and I did. I said to myself, “Let me hang on for 10 miles,” and I did. And I said to myself, “Let me hang on until I get over this overpass.” This is where, on a previous ride, she went by me at such a great turn of speed it made a noise. I heard a woooo, and then looked to my left and there she was, and suddenly in front of me before the oooosh was fully formed.

I’ve been passed by a lot of fast people and I’d never had an experience quite like that. I didn’t want that experience again on Saturday, so I said to myself “Let me hang on until I get over this overpass.” And I did.

Then I said to myself, “Let me find a bag of abandoned cash that is not traceable that I can just carry home from here.”

That one didn’t come true, though I did see a bucket on the side of the road and I peered into it carefully. That was just after she passed and quickly dropped me. I got dropped because I was looking in that bucket, or so I told myself for the last seven or eight miles of the route, when the excuse came to mind.

It was sunny and hot and I went through three bottles of water on the bike, and then had another bottle and change when I finally got home. Not pictured: the truck that passed too close on the last bit of my ride.

Sunday afternoon I went out for a deliberately slow ride, leaving the county without ceremony, but returning to the county with a Welcome a sign. So that’s two counties. And then, eventually, a third county.

This was a simple out-and-back route, retracing my pedal strokes means two more counties. A six county-line-ride! All of that without passing a single gas station or store or restaurant. There’s a lot of pretty fields, though. Pastures and crops. Horses and goats and horses.

And also corn.

At one point, from the other direction, there was a guy riding a dirt bike. Something seemed not quite right. As he got closer I realized it looked weird because he was riding a wheelie. Also, he was standing on the seat. There was a car following a little too close behind him for this sort of thing, but these are the choices other people make. The rider looked very calm and comfortable in this position, but I spent a while wondering: How does he get down when this trick is done? Now I wonder: How do you figure that out the first time?

Anyway, my ride was just 22.5 miles out, until the road finally makes a T intersection. The point of this route is no turns, which means I don’t miss a turn, which is a good thing in this instance because, if you’ll note those clouds …

Near my turn-around point I went by this building. Mr. Terry O’Neill, Sr., died just last month at 84.

He worked in oil and asphalt. He worked in the local government, in public works, for a decade. He served on his local township committee, on a 911 advisory board and was the president of groups like the local little league. He was a volunteer firefighter for almost 60 years. He remortgaged his home, as did some of the other volunteers, to help build the firehouse, a simple three-bay shop that safeguards the northern side of his town. It’s the kind of place where there’s a sign out front advertising the community breakfast. How many times must you go to the firehouse before you don’t think about what you did, the challenge you put on your family, the gift you’ve given your neighbors? Maybe you don’t think about that for forever, or on those times when you are hustling in so you can roll out to a call, but there must be a special kind of pride and hope that comes with a gift like that. He must have been quite the man.

Above all else, Terry was a devoted husband, father, grandfather, great-grandfather, friend and neighbor. He led by example, giving generously of his time, his talents and his heart. His kindness, quiet strength, steadfast faith and enduring love for his family and community will be remembered always and his legacy will continue to inspire all who had the privilege of knowing him.

He and his wife have 22 great-grandchildren. Seems like a life well-lived.

Going by that shop the second time, there was a gentle uptick in speed. Finally, a gentle downhill slope to the overall ride, at least for a time. Also, I finally had a tailwind. The humidity sank in, forcing a stop to clear away the sweat from my eyes. Gray skies and sprinkles gave way to a proper rain in the last five miles of the ride, leaving me plenty of time to get soaked.

It was a pleasant 45-mile route. Not pictured, the white SUV which almost drove into me head-on.

It rained the rest of the evening. I sat still, staring at class notes, until it was time to take the garbage to the curb, in the rain. Easiest job of all!

cycling / errands / memories / Monday / overwriting / photo — Comments Off
10
Aug 26

Weekend summaries, never as satisfying as the real thing

A midday storm is an inescapable display of power that changes a day’s entire attitude. When the winds and thunder roll in and the rain pecks at the walls and windows, that’s a thrill, a romance, a terror, a cozy companion, he wrote after careful proofreading.

That time just after the storm has passed needs a name for its sadness.

And it is. This was on Saturday afternoon, when there was no immediate need for melancholy. After an hour or so the sun was brilliant and drying everything out, as if nothing had happened and we were back to a wonderfully hot, now humid, summer day. The sort that is observed nicely from indoors, because let’s be honest about the need to be outside. And that little storm was fun, but the part that follows seldom ever is.

Anyway, we’ve had several nice summer rains of late, and they have been immensely helpful. Presently, 100 percent of our county is rated as “abnormally dry” on the drought monitor. Only 9.8 percent of it is in the moderate drought category. Most of the county has been in a drought since last October. Three months ago it was of the “severe” variety.

This is the second moderate drought we’ve experienced in three years here. In 2024, we got some rain one night in November which broke the longest consecutive-days drought in 130 years of local record keeping. It’d been two months since anything fell out of the sky. Even then, when even the people that pay close attention to these things began to get squirmy, it wasn’t like the 2002 drought, when people were having to change their habits. “My lawn! My car!” When the veggies shrivel or you’re asked to take shorter showers, that’s when people notice. If we’re emerging from a drought right now, a slow-motion, year-long effort, I don’t think it’ll figure into most people’s thinking. Certainly not the neighbors, with the sprinklers.

But if we’re emerging from a drought, it could be a lot worse. Look out west. Look at Europe. Look around.

And if you don’t look too carefully you might think that I caught this maple leaf, midflight, and with a drop of rain on it.

If, that is, you overlook the spiderweb, which I’ve obviously been doing.

Everything grows well out back. Morning sun and afternoon shade and look at the Brown-eyed Susan. It is about to break containment.

Right next to it, the honeysuckle, which we had to cut way back in the spring of last year to replace the trellis upon which it depends. I had no problem with that. Honeysuckle takes your attacks on its free will and laughs in the face of your determinism. I need to prune it more, because it has grown wild and woolly once more. Add it to the list of things I need to do when it isn’t 98 degrees outside, which is the case as of this writing.

There are so many things on that list, and I made one slight in-road yesterday. I visited Harbor Freight, my first every visit, and picked up yard bags — cheapest I could find, and yes I did an extensive price comparison because I have the internet available for my every thought.

I also had a list of other things I wanted to pick up, a note on my phone, complete with names, prices and aisles. To say I have been preparing for this trip for sometime is overstating it, the previous two sentences notwithstanding. And then I got there and —

I’d like to leave the previous shopper a note of encouragement. The important thing is that you almost tried.

Completing the job of landing the cart in the corral would have taken an additional nine steps and a sophisticated heel pivot — I know because I did it for you — but you almost did the thing that society requests of you.

It calls to mind times when I would go to the IGA in wherever it was we lived last. Someone was always leaving carts out. Mind you, I don’t cruise the parking lot looking to solve this problem, but if it’s there I will fix your shortcomings, sure. And I’ll feel good about myself, as I did the times at that IGA when I moved the carts from the handicapped parking spaces into the corral that was mounted right next to the handicapped parking spaces. The grocery store kids were taking a smoke break on the stoop and laughed at that, and, eye contact being a fate-worse-than-death in that part of the world, I gave them a look, in turn.

I don’t miss anything about that place. Well, the 9:30 sunsets in the summer were nice. They also had good multi-use paths. Seven years, those are the two things I miss.

Anyway, I purchased the lawn bags. Probably should have picked up more — but how much of that do you want to do at a time? I also picked up two corner clamps. You really need four, but they only had the two. I decided to wait on some other items on my list, but I did indulge myself by picking up two cheap tape measures. One will live upstairs. One will live downstairs. This plan accomplishes two goals, keeping the good tape measure from wandering all over the house for weeks at a time, and keeps me from having to go to the garage to fetch the good one when I need to determine the empty space on that wall over there. At $4 a pop, these two new ones will pay for themselves somewhere around 2029.

The tape measures were in one of those blister packages though, the sort that involves great risk of bodily harm to free the thing you now own. The easiest way to free the tape measure was by unscrewing the little belt clip from the back. The easiest way to do this was to pierce the blister package with the tip of a pointy Phillips screw driver. Then you unscrew it. Then you wiggle the screw out of place. The tape itself is now free of the packaging, but you must now dig out the little silver belt clip. And here it helps if you pretend like you are a 19th century battlefield surgeon trying to find a bullet, and then dig the thing out in a grotesque way for moviegoers.

Then you have to reassemble it. Now, this is a tiny screw on a cheap tape measure from Harbor Freight. You must take care with this, pretending like you are the first 21st century surgeon to use a sonic scalpel to remove a three-micron imperfection on a patient’s iris. Then you have to test the tape measure, because who knows what secondary role that screw had. Does the tape come out of the case? Yes. Does the lock lock the tape? Yes, also it has a satisfying click. Does the tape retract when you unlock the lock? Yes. Do you do all of this for the second tape measure? Yes. Does the cat look at you like he is wondering if you’ve completely lost your mind? Yes. Do you know where these two tape measures are going to be stored when they aren’t in use? Absolutely not.

Well, another day for that, then.

I am the type of bike rider that can ride the same road a lot. Some people get bored. I suppose some people find the repetition meditative. Me, I’m usually too close to hypoxia to worry about meditating. I am also the type of bike rider that likes to ride new roads, or revisit the rarely ridden roads. But, what I’ve really learned about myself is that I’m the type of bike rider who, once there is an idea in place, absolutely must do that ride.

Saturday evening I had the idea of doing some hill repeats. It’s all very flat here and I haven’t ridden a real hill in several years now and I was never good at it and it’s hot and I am not riding enough and so this was a good idea.

I recalled this road, which I’ve been up three times perhaps, and down twice. It has a hill. It’s gradual. It is also quiet, and part of it is, as you can see, nicely shaded.

People do hill repeats to get stronger — or, like me, to say they’ve done them. There’s a method to the madness of going up the same hill over and over. Probably more than one. I just decided to go up the hill, and figured I’d do it several times. And so I soft-pedaled my way to that hill, an easy 17 minute ride with no exertion. And then I went up that hill. It tops out, then goes up a bit more, and does that a few times before the road forms a T-intersection with the nearest highway. If you saw the hill in profile it looks a bit like a molar. The climb isn’t hard or long, but what I know about hill repeats is that you want the concerted effort and then the repetition. What I want out of the hill repeat is to be able to turn around safely. And this road does all of those things. So I rode the road, and figured, “I’ll do 10.” And then later I said to myself, “It really is hot out here.” And then I said, “I’ll do five.” And then I said, “I think that’s five.” And then I took the long way home, turning left at that highway instead of turning around, letting the road pull me past the veteran’s cemetery and back into town, feeling the asphalt bend to my right between the gas station and the biker bar. Apparently they have good pub grub, though I have only seen the “biker’s welcome” sign on the wall, and they wouldn’t turn me away, but I think they mean motorcyclists. The little side road I was on after that falls downhill, usually I’m on this bit of infrastructure in the opposite direction. I turn left and and then left again, past the town lake, and into downtown. I timed the red light, singular, just right. Make the right past bike shop and opposite the old fire ring, and then the left for home.

At that point I am 3.5 miles from home, I have been out for about 90 minutes, drank three bottles of water, had enough of the heat and the little hills. I am counting, in my mind, the little rises between my bike and my neighborhood. I estimated three. There were four. After the second I started thinking of the alternate ways home, because I didn’t want that last hill. At the four-way stop I could go left and then right and go up a hill on bad chip-and-seal and then do the reverse side of this climb. I could turn right and go down a hill and then up two actual hills before the final incline and … no, straight ahead was the easiest way to get there and I was just done with the heat. When I got home I was right on the edge of shivering, which is one of those early heat exhaustion symptoms. Or the sweat wasn’t evaporating because I was no longer in the wind and perspiration could finally do its cooling job.

Inside, then, more water, this time with electrolytes. Shower.

There’s a very, very small wound in the next photo, and I’m just telling you now. It’s hardly the worst thing in the world, but it is a part of the story and now you’ve been warned.

I’ve bled on a bicycle in several different ways. Crashes. Hailstorm. Whacked by a limb too far out into the road.

Some 10-plus years ago I cut myself so badly I had to turn around, go home and bandage myself up. The little rubber cover on my handlebar hood had disappeared and it hadn’t yet been replaced. Beneath that hood is a screw that holds all of the stuff in the shifter-brake area together. I reached up to adjust and grabbed the screw and sliced my pinky. It was at the beginning of the ride, and so I went back out, gauze and tape and Band-aids and such. I could follow the blood trail back out. I still have the scar.

Anyway, and here it comes, as I was getting ready to shower I noticed I nicked the ring finger on my left hand. No idea how.

It’s fine. Didn’t bleed. I’ll keep it clean and it’ll heal itself because I believe in first aid. But it’s right in that spot where the finger touches the middle finger and it’ll be a reminder, for a few days, that I have no idea how that happened.

My lovely bride, meanwhile, did an aqua bike == a swim and ride race — and she finished second. Podium and proud! We did the proper sort of celebration: Chinese for dinner, and basked with ice cream from the local creamery.

The teens running the place closed as we were there. Removed the garbage bags, shut the windows, took away the umbrellas, turned off the monitors and figured “These two are the upstanding sort who won’t cause us any problem. They’ll probably be home and in bed before 10, anyway.”

And they were right about that.

Well, I had a lot of other things I was going to talk about, but I have to save something for the rest of the week. Besides, I have written now almost 2,300 words and said absolutely nothing. You deserve a break.