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adventures / collarbone / cycling / Wednesday — Comments Off
7
May 25

A group ride

The grading and sharing of notes continues. And it will continue throughout the day, and probably most of tomorrow. So I’m on schedule, I suppose, but this could go faster. Feedback, however, is time intensive. I try to be as specific and useful as possible. And though there are some recurring themes that allow me to, occasionally, use a bit of copy-and-paste boilerplate on How To Fix That Particular Problem, a lot of this is bespoke.

Here’s the real problem. Canvas, our learning management system of choice, shows me a student’s PDF or DOC file or whatever in one frame of a browser, and, in another, it gives me a tiny little box to type in. Experience has taught me that typing in little boxes does wonders for my creative typographical errors. So I spend a decent chunk of time on each one just trying to read through what I wrote — unlike here — in the hopes that it makes sense. That it is applicable. That it is thoughtful and, dare I hope it, professorial.

It’s grimly humorous to me that I’m in a place where I can evaluate and score someone based on their typos, and I’m working in these tiny little text boxes that give me ample opportunity to sound almost literate.

Also, my feedback ranges from 200-600 words. And I have 60-some of these to work through. So, yeah, it takes time.

But I have an advantage today. Our neighor invited us out for an early morning bike ride. It was short, but also early enough that I’ve had more time in front of the computer screen, joy of joys.

Anyway, that’s our neighbor in the front right. He’s also an Ironman. And a bionic man.

Behind him is his friend. This guy had moved away to Florida, but recently returned to spend more time near his grandchildren. So he’s retired, but busier than ever maintaining two homes. He spent most of the ride telling me about the furniture he’s buying online and refinishing, and the work they’re doing to their house here. They seem the sort to buy it and leap right into it. Makes sense, make it yours! I don’t seem to be capable of that. People lived in this house before me, and that’s something to be respectful of and all. But this guy, he and his wife purchased a home from an elderly couple and it obviously needed to have some updating so they’ve just ripped out the floors and are walking around on the slab right now while the flooring people do their work. Also, he can tell you about the table and chairs he bought on Facebook Marketplace, what they’re worth, down to the penny, and what he bought them for.

He was, perhaps he still is, a big time amateur racer. And so as we went over roads he’s known for years and is now getting reacquainted with, he was telling me about things that happened on each of them, including when we crossed over one bridge where he crashed out and broke his collarbone. So naturally I had to tell our collarbone stories. And then we found ourselves on that freshly painted ribbon, zig zagging our way through quiet little neighborhoods from whence people were starting their day.

At the end of it all, we got to a stop sign and the retiree said thanks for the ride, and turned left. The rest of us went straight. When we got to our neighborhood we thanked our friend for the invite and went up our drive as he continued on down to his home.

That’s the way it is, riding with other people. You get to know these specific slices of their life. You could ride with them dozens of times, knowing only these little bits about them. And if you see them in their secret identity clothes around town, you might not even recognize one another. But then you see them on the next ride.

Small groups, like this, make for a fun ride, so I hope we get to do it again soon.

But, now, back to Canvas.

adventures / cycling / Monday / photo — Comments Off
5
May 25

Now we come to it

Final papers are in for my international media class. I’m trying to get ahead of them so I can stay ahead of my other grading. While one class is finished, another has a tight turnaround on some important work. This week, from my perspective then, is about giving good feedback in a timely manner, so that it is useful to the students.

So this is brief. More brief than normal. (You’re welcome?)

Just riding around the neighborhood on Saturday, in reality is about six neighborhoods, gave me an easy bit of exercise, and a brief glimpse of the sheep and one of their faithful companions.

Sometimes that dog is sleeping as I go back. Occasionally I cruise through there and he’s working. Every now and again he races me — usually he lets me win. But, today, they were all huddled together and something behind me caught his interest.

We recently discovered the local creamery. My lovely bride says I found it, but I have absolutely no recollection of that. They have three flavors of custard, and last night, a night that was sticky and warm enough to make it quickly look like a potential drippy mess, I tried the creamsicle.

They only accept cash. And while I respect their stance on traditionalism at this creamery, that will limit my abilities to visit there. Who has cash? Probably this is a good thing. It is only four miles away, and I can’t always be lucky about eating it before it gets everywhere.

The local bike shop does a ride to the creamery in the earliest part of the summer. It’s a neighborhood thing, and we’ll join in. Because there is ice cream.

But, first, there is grading. So let me get back to that.

cycling / Friday / photo / site — Comments Off
2
May 25

The fickleness of the breeze

It’s Friday! Right? Friday? Yeah. Sometimes you have to check a calendar, just to be sure. I wrapped up the week’s grading in yesterday. And I have done the updates to my computer, cleaning a month’s worth of files, creating subdirectories for May, updating site statistics in the site statistics spreadsheet.

And, hey, we’re well ahead of last year’s numbers here, so thanks for that. I don’t know why people come here, but I’m glad you do.

So one class wrapped up this week, and their final is due next Monday. My online class has another week-and-change to go, with a lot of work still to come. And a lot of things to grade, and then grades to submit. The next two weeks, then, are busy. A lot of sitting here staring at computer screens, plenty of little study breaks, but then right back to it.

I never learned that skill young, but there’s nothing like impending deadlines to teach new skills.

I set out for a 25-mile ride after a day of sitting in front of the computer. One of the regular routes I established last year. It is a route that, on the map, is roughly shaped like a bullet, though I am not nearly as fast as.

I went into town and through it, doubling back and through a crossroads that has the word “town” in its name, but it is nothing more than a red light, a farmer’s market, a gas station and a small car dealership. Then, out into the countryside.

I took a turn that sends me back to the river, but crops, woods and a few houses and developments in between. Usually this is a road that gives me five or six miles without any cars. And, once you’ve done this for a while, those experiences stand out, and you make note of them, so that you may ride them again.

When the road ends, it is time to turn right. You have a nice wide shoulder-slash-bike-lane-but-mostly-shoulder, where you can do four miles super fast, which you also make note of, and visit as often as you can. And then back on the road for home, a seven-mile stretch … into the wind.

This is a mistake. The conventional wisdom is that you start into the devise a route that puts you into a headwind first, and then the tailwind on the way back. Economy of efficiency when you’re more tired. Because I was doing a rectangular route, a squishy bullet, I should have had a tailwind to start, and a tailwind to finish.

But, if you live in a place like we do, this is a challenge. Nearly an impossibility. Today, on that same road, a straight line with flags flying at regular intervals, the wind blew from every direction on the same road within 80 minutes.

What even is that?

adventures / cycling / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
1
May 25

Into the ever-persistent wind

My in-person class wrapped up yesterday, but they still have a final to submit, and there will be plenty to read there. Meanwhile, my online class is going strong. While mindlessly washing dishes last night, I thoughtlessly made the mistake of counting up the number of things I have to read and score between now and the middle of the month. And, because it is mindless, I went ahead and tried to determine how many pages that will work out to.

About 650, but perhaps a few more.

So there is a lot of work to be done. Plus meetings and who knows what else that pops up.

Anyway, while I wait for things to get submitted, we got in a nice little bike ride this evening. Here’s me, and my shadow!

And here are some Angus we ran across.

And a red Angus for good measure.

Of course, I could be wrong. My cattle identification is a bit rusty. That was a 20th century skill of mine, and it was shaky even then.

In my freshman year of college I had an animal and dairy science class and breed ID was a part of the class. The professor had a carousel of slides that he showed us, let us study, and quizzed us on. I found that, for some species of different sorts it was easier to learn what was in the background of photos. Great for a quiz, absolutely useless in the field, of course. Then again, I’ve not been asked to identify a breed of farm animal professionally since my internship ended … several presidential administrations ago.

Anyway, these are the things I had time to think about and remember on a windy out-and-back ride. I got dropped on the way out, fighting a bitterly persistent wind. My lovely bride is better in the wind, because she gets lower on her aero bars and I’m just a parachute. But then we turned around, enjoyed the tailwind and I pulled my wheels off the road.

I had a 38-mph sprint on one timed segment, days which I thought were behind me. And they are! But so was the wind!

There she is, in the final miles, after she caught back up, and riding into the sun. My ride back was 13 minutes faster than my ride out. She was faster, still.

cycling / Monday / photo — Comments Off
28
Apr 25

Three great rides

I went out for a little bike ride on Saturday, the best sort of ride, the kind where there’s no route, no plan at all, and you just find out what happens. This is much more fun than estimating a time or distance, and far more fun than the normal enterprise of planning a route. Saturday I just went … that way.

And so I went by the historic haunted house and past the church and down the three stretches of a road named after a town which was named after a plantation. From there, I turned left. Part of this road I know, in the reverse direction, because it is one of the regular routes. But I did not turn onto either of those two roads. I just kept going passed this barn.

There were clouds in the sky, something to keep an eye on, but i was going in another direction.

Over this way, for example, we had beautiful skies. And so I just kept pedaling. I contemplated alternated lefts and rights, but figured I would be sure to mess that up on the way back.

I just kept going straight, because the road allowed for it. Passed the houses and the woods and the cattle.

At some point I passed a “Now enterting” county sign. I hadn’t even realized I’d left the county, but now I was back. I’d been riding a straight line, but it was maybe a circle?

Maybe that explains the thunder, and then the rain, and possibly the small hail. It was raining, hard; I was 20 miles from home and who knows where this misbehaving storm cloud was headed.

I turned around, laughing, and started back. I had to do about two miles in the rain, but dried out for the last hour or so in the sunniest weather possible. It was 40 miles, round-trip, and at one point I went 11 miles without seeing a car.

And that’s how a spontaneous trip becomes a planned route. I’ll be doing that again.

Sunday afternoon I did the now-usual 15-mile route. I met this tractor near the house.

Nice of the guy to wave. Then, on the way back, I passed another tractor. This one was tilling right by the side of the road.

And that guy waved, too.

Me and my shadow are quite popular, sometimes.

Today’s ride was one of the standard 21-mile routes. (We have two of those.) And in this ride, an oddly misshapen rectangle, I encounter a dozen stop signs, seven turns and two railroad crossings. I did not have to put my foot on the ground the first time.

That’s a great ride, too.