cycling « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

cycling

Just needs more

I’ve neglected to mention this here, I think, but I have the good fortune to work with a group taking an active role in cycling safety. It’s exciting watching these signs, and their message, pop up around town. It’s just one element of a long, long term project, but awareness and education are critically important.

The people doing this work are motivated for their own safety and their mindfulness of other cyclists. They’ve got the ear of the community, and the local state lawmakers.It’s impressive, and I hope the group can keep their momentum going.

Here, the state law requires motorists to move over a lane, or to allow for at least four feet to safely pass cyclists (and other non-motorists). Four whole feet!

Do you know the laws about safely passing cyclists in your state? You can look them up right here, and I’ll thank you for saving lives every time you drive.

We went to campus today and it’s a miracle we made it at all because I kept slowing us down, somehow. It got to that not-quite-comedy-of-errors level, culminating in finding zero parking in several consecutive walks. But we made it. And then we went for a swim.

It was my first indoor swim in a long time. There were lane ropes and lifeguards and chlorine and everything. Also, there was the mystery of when I would slip into the rhythm of swimming back and forth, back and forth. It finally happened, I’m not sure where I was in the swim. But I know where I was when I got pulled from the pool. The lap swim was over, some other people were wandering in and doing some organized looking stretching and warming up.

I said, “Do I have enough time to do 50 more?” But I was told I did not. And so I finished with a slow version of my 1,700 yards.

But, man, you never really know how useful that extra 50 could have been. It could have really made the difference!

After that we meant to a meeting in our department. There was food, and there was work. A handful of the faculty members were working on some important department-type language. On the third or fourth run through someone tossed a joke my way, being the newbie and all. I said, “Hey, you want to get all caught up in details, you’ve invited the right guy.”

Ultimately, the work got done. Everyone seemed pleased by it. I got a phrase or two into the finished product, phrases I may forget, so I’ll just point to all of them. I was just happy to be there.

We return once again to We Learn Wednesdays, the feature which finds me riding my bike around the county, hunting for historical markers. This is the 49th installment, and the 81st marker in the We Learn Wednesdays series. (Assuming I have faithfully and accurately kept count.) And this time, we have to try to figure out why a post office has a historic marker.

This installment features the fabled form letter of plaques.

I love the National Registry markers, but I appreciate, even more, the local ones with some information on them. And it will never not disappoint me that the Registry doesn’t contain an extant explanation of all of the places they acknowledge. In this case, however, you can’t even find this post office on the list! Anyway, here’s the building.

The first post office opened there, or around there, in November of 1903. But the first post office in these parts, I read elsewhere, was created by legislation in 1792. Either way, 18th or early 20th century, they served very rural routes, I would imagine. Also, the first airmail flew out of the county in 1938, it was a gimmick marking the 20th anniversary of airmail. It possessed all of the 1930s pomp and circumstance a small town could muster. There were special envelopes and handlers. The mail bag was taken to the airfield by a fire truck, where other special handlers took part. The Boy Scouts turned out to witness the occasion, and so on. The mail flew to a town about 30 miles away.

And not related to this, but interestingly, I also read an anecdote of an airmail pilot who crashed his plane in 1918 one county away. He was trying to land, but some livestock got in the way. He made another pass, had engine trouble and wound up crash landing. Broke his machine up, but he lived. The mail got delivered. It was the second day of airmail in the U.S. On the same day as the first local airmail, commemorating 20 years of airmail, that pilot had a nationwide conversation on this thing called radio …

Also, historically speaking, a lot of mail has been delivered over the many years. Too much of it bills.

Next week, I’ll probably have similarly limited success on our next marker, but we’re here to try. If you have missed any markers so far, you can find them all right here.

adventures / cycling / NYC / photo / swimming / video — Comments Off
23
Sep 24

We went to the city and got a new mailbox

Happy Monday, where the points are made up and the lines don’t matter, because it is Monday, and we walked into it, again. We have choices. We make them all the time, and yet, once again, we wind up right back here. Monday.

We’re good at choosing things, or so we tell ourselves, but Monday’s always tell the tale.

Here’s a followup to last Thursday’s story about the mailbox. To recap, a guy got distracted by a wasp or bee in his car, ran off the road a bit, took out our mailbox and cracked his windshield. Fortunately he was OK. His son lives in the neighborhood, he wanted to do the right thing, so he tracked us down, because no one was home. And then he came by that evening, deeply embarrassed, and offered to replace it. Friday morning he was out there putting the new one in.

We might have gotten an upgrade.

Best part is, no bills have come to this mailbox in the three days now that it has been operational.

To sum up, we live in a neighborhood where people are good to one another, take responsibility for their actions, and even put numbers on your mailbox for you.

Seem like this was a good choice.

I had a few nice bike rides today and this weekend. Here’s a video from Saturday, after I got dropped by lovely bride and decided to try a new road.

She took this photo on Friday evening. I bought her a new Garmin Varia radar, and this was the test ride.

The Varia sits on the back of the bike, it has a bright light and emits a radar signal (or something like it) and detects oncoming traffic. When something is behind her, the Varia sends a signal to the bike computer in the cockpit. She gets a loud beep and some visual dots.

It’s a nice safety feature. She already loves it. Good present, go me.

On that same ride she went back home before I did, so I added up some extra miles to enjoy the sunset and the neighbors.

Often I turn up this road, and ordinarily you should probably just ride toward the setting sun, just for the magic of it, but I went straight on for this ride.

A few turns later, and heading back in, I was well rewarded for my patience.

There’s something awfully peaceful about being out at that hour — blinking and flashing like a chaotic Christmas try, but my lights are behind me, and these views are peaceful and lonely and full of the imagination.

And, this time of year, gnats. Full of gnats.

Also Saturday, I did an early evening swim. I might have gone faster if only because I didn’t think I would finish my 1,720 yards before it got too dark to see the walls. For about 10 minutes I kept redoing the math, trying to decide where would be a satisfactory place to wrap it up.

But my arms kept moving and sometimes my feet kicked and I got it all in. And now that’s something I want to do more of, swimming in the evening, around my evening rides, I guess. How to manage, how to choose.

Sunday, we caught a train and went into the city. Felt like a rom-com setup for supporting characters in a Billy Chrystal film. We met my in-laws at a restaurant for a terrific meal — more on that tomorrow. And then we walked down to Madison Square Garden to see Sebastian Maniscalco and friends. He’d been filling up the Garden all week. This was his last show there. At the end, he brought his father on stage.

They’re shooting a documentary together, he said. I think Maniscalco is trying to make his dad a star. Isn’t that what Instagram and TikTok are for? I was a sweet moment. For us, this was a Christmas present for the in-laws. The headliner, feature and opening acts all had great acts in the round, and my father-in-law laughed at every joke. I think my mother-in-law did, too.

And then, just like in the movies, we parted ways outside the Garden. Them to their car and back to Connecticut. Us to the train station and a ride back home.

No one at the restaurant, which we will talk about tomorrow, offered me pepper for my paprikash.

adventures / cycling / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
19
Sep 24

Right out of the box

After a thoroughly trying afternoon of meetings, I came home to check the mail … but there was no mailbox.

There was a mailbox, but it wasn’t on the post. It was on the ground. That is most decidedly not where I left it earlier today.

Great, I thought, that’s something I get to figure out how to fix tomorrow.

Soon after that I got a text from my lovely bride asking about the mailbox. She was asking because someone called her, leaving a message saying he hit the thing, and he’d be by later this evening to explain what happened. That’s a decent thing to do. And, sure enough, a man showed up in the early evening, chagrin and regret on his face.

He said his son lives in our neighborhood and he’s through here all the time. Today he was dropping something off and, as he left, he said a hornet or a wasp got in his car. He looked down to try to swat it away, or some such, and his car drifted to the right, hitting the box, tearing it from the post, cracking his windshield and ripped out the wood work.

He said he was going to come by tomorrow to replace the box, which was a wonderful gesture.

And, most importantly, I don’t have to figure out how to install a mailbox tomorrow.

Guy felt so bad about it he wouldn’t even let us pay for the box or the lumber. And, presumably tomorrow, the bills can be dropped off once more.

I did get in a nice 21-mile ride today. It was good to be outside. There were no new roads, but I put a few of the familiars together in a new combination. It was warm and sunny, and my shadow enjoyed it.

And now it’s dinner time. We’re getting Indian food tonight; that’s something to celebrate.

cycling / memories / Monday / photo / swimming / video — Comments Off
16
Sep 24

Twenty years ago today, and this weekend, and today

Twenty years ago today Hurricane Ivan came ashore, straight up Mobile Bay. It came ashore as a Category 3 hurricane.

I woke up at that morning to go to work. My power was still on. The drive got treacherous pretty quickly. Visibility dipped. A 20-minute trip turned into almost a 40 minute drive, but the worst was yet to come for our area, which was a good 250 miles inland. That far away from the coast, hundreds of trees were down and power poles snapped. Miles and miles of power lines were on the ground before the worst had even arrived. Early on, the state broke its power outage record, with Alabama Power saying three-quarters of their customers were in the dark. We couldn’t communicate with people down on the coast.

Whole forests down there were snapped, shredded and felled by 100 mph winds down there. The eastern part of Mobile Bay took a wallop. In Gulf Shores, they had eight feet of water on the main drag. Everything almost a mile from the beach was underwater. A handful of people waited out the storm on the battleship, the USS Alabama which is a museum in it’s day job. One wind gauge on the ship broke after registering a gust of 105 mph, another recorded a 112-mph gust. “You could feel the whole superstructure of the ship move when a big gust would hit,” one of the men that worked there said. The USS Alabama weighs 85 million pounds, and she was shuddering.

Up in Birmingham, we reported the hell out of that hurricane. I was still relatively new in that newsroom — my last newsroom — and this was just the second big national story we’d had in my first few months there. So I was showing off a little, maybe. But it was important. Before the next day was out, the estimates were already rolling in that there was more than $10 billion dollars in damages and some places would be in standing water and without power for weeks. I think I worked about 15 hours that first day and something just short of that the next day. I was calling everyone I knew and reporting their experience online. Back then, I knew a lot of people all over the region. I was calling the parents of ex-girlfriends: Do you have power? What happened where you are?

Don’t know how you may be related to them in your day job (if not directly, certainly spiritually?) … but these guys are Pulitzer prizing their blog today. Especially great for those of us with ties to the area but who are not there.

Only al.com eligible for a Pulitzer. This was 2004 and it was all so very new. But in 2005, Hurricane Katrina went to New Orleans. Our colleagues at our sister company, The Times Picayune and nola.com won two Prizes, and they deserved them both and more.

We were writing a lot more than a blog. We were putting together multimedia stuff as it came in. We were running a weather central microsite complimenting the wire copy and the NWS content. We were moving fast and doing creative things and telling a statewide, regional story. We didn’t win a Pulitzer, but we were paving the way, 20 years ago today.

I had a 35-mile ride on Friday. Almost thwarted just six or so miles in. I bunny hopped a railroad track and caught the rear wheel on the far track and popped the tube, right after this lovely little spot.

So I stood in someone’s yard, taking the wheel off the frame and the tube out of the wheel. I fiddled with a new tube and finally got everything ready to pump it up. I carry a pocket-sized hand pump. All hand pumps have a limitation. They just won’t push enough air pressure to let you do much more than get safely home. And that’s when it works well. But my pump is 11 years old, it was probably cheap when I bought it, and they don’t even sell the thing anymore.

It works … some of the time. Earlier this summer, for example, it really didn’t. In that yard today, it didn’t. After I limped a bit farther down the road and stopped in a field to try again, my pump decided to get its act together. I had a good stiff tire and did the whole ride I’d planned out. Just a bit later than I’d expected. But the views were wonderful nonetheless.

I did the last few miles in the extended neighborhood. Enjoying this view on a perfectly quiet road, soaking this in. This is why I enjoy riding in the evenings.

(If that’s not the nighttime video, just refresh the page and scroll back to it. There’s an autoplay function here I can’t turn off right now.)

I had a nice and easy 20-mile ride today. Easy, and somehow I found myself sprinting along a road at 36 mph, which is about where I max out these days. I’m not even sure why I did that, and I felt it for a good long while thereafter.

But before that, corn stalks!

It’s a nice time to be outside, so I’m spending a lot of time outside.

I also had a swim on Saturday. The pool was chilly, but that makes you go faster, they say. I think if there’s anything to that it’s just because you’re trying to get out of the water. But there was a comfortable 1,720 yard workout. That’s a mile, which sounds like a lot, but it isn’t, not really.

Today, I had another mile swim, and it was a bit faster, but still slow. But fast for me, because i was trying to get my laps in before the chill set in. The thermometer said it was 76 degrees.

And so I begin to wonder, what is my tolerance? And how many more outdoor swims can I have before we find out?

Quite a few, I’m hoping.

adventures / cycling / Monday / photo / swimming — Comments Off
9
Sep 24

Buncha peektures

And how was your weekend? Mine was lovely. (I hope yours was even better!) Let me show you.

On Friday, I swam a mile, a nice cool 1,650 yards.

Somewhere around 500 yards or so my arms finally decide they want to make the many revolutions required to complete the swim. I say arms because there’s precious little for my feet to do. Oh, I try to kick, but it doesn’t come automatically. I have to tell my feet to do the fluttering, splashing thing. And then, soon after, they stop. I’m probably a few thousand miles away from them doing their one job in the pool without conscious thought. Maybe I should do kick drills.

I think about that, but somewhere around that 500 yard mark my mind goes away and it’s just breathing and counting and turning, and 500 yards turns into 1,300 or so.

It’s satisfying, to count up those lap numbers — if I can keep count while I try, in vain, to remind myself to kick.

I had a nice ride Friday afternoon, too. I turned right out of the neighborhood, rode on down to the stop sign and, instead of going straight or turning left, as I normally do, I turned right. Because, somewhere down that road about five miles, there is a four-exit roundabout and I suddenly wondered, Where does the other exit go?

So I went down there to see where that road went. Part of the way down I thought I knew where it would take me, but I was wrong. Also, I wasn’t too wild about the road. I probably won’t use it too often. Five miles later it dropped me off in town, and I spent the next 10 or so miles just noodling around through the countryside. I took this one near the end of my bike ride.

I got back in just before it got dark, making my lovely bride happy, because that meant we could eat dinner at a reasonable hour, and not dictated by pedaling away in the quiet of a late summer evening.

On Saturday, we were enjoying a nice early evening outside, and when we looked to the east, we saw …

I don’t think phone cameras do a good job of capturing rainbows, but this was a spectacular rainbow. And then it became a double rainbow.

It hung there for more than 20 minutes, long enough for two planes to fly toward it, or through it. I wondered if they could see it up there. Rainbows are a question of timing and positioning, perspective, then.

We know they saw it in the city. On what was, I suppose, a slow news weekend, this was a big doing in the paper and noted on local TV.

Also, we got a double rainbow out of the deal. This is a panorama.

(Click to embiggen.)

This was, I am sure, one of the best, if not the best, rainbow experiences I can recall. It looked like it touched down just on the other side of the neighborhood. I haven’t heard about anyone finding the gold, though maybe they’re wisely keeping that quiet.

The Yankee and I enjoyed a nice ride yesterday. We did a variant of one of her favorite local routes, and then tired from some big workouts, I dropped her off at home and pedaled on.

Around 30 miles into the ride, I saw this masterpiece of modern art.

For the next 10 miles, so all the way home, I wondered how you fix that. Surely, there must be enough slack in the lines to allow them to move the busted pole out of the way while they installed another one right next to the old stump. You can think of a lot of ways that the linemen might address that problem in that half hour or so. I bet they do it with good cheer. After all, you finally must assume they’ve handled something like this before, probably many times. There is surely a procedure. No doubt they have a contingency. And I’m sure it will be repaired this week, if it isn’t already back up to spec today.

And while I was thinking of all of that, my shadow had a pretty good ride.

Sure, he looks like he has good form, my shadow, but he never has to pull any actual weight on these rides.