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cycling / photo / Rowan / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
7
Oct 25

I reference dramatic reality, undramatically

This is a reminder that this is a light week, because of working events. But Catober is here to amuse you. But there are about 800 words here and four photographs from yesterday’s bike ride. So, yeah, light week.

In my criticism in sport media class we examined two different kinds of stories. The students selected these. One of them was this incredible piece from CNN: ‘Harmed, outed, scrutinized’: How new sex testing rules affect athletes:

Just like Ajok and Imali, a raft of athletes will no longer be allowed to compete in the women’s category at the World Athletics Championships, which are currently taking place in Tokyo, Japan.

Track and field body WA announced earlier this year that beginning from September 1, anyone wanting to compete in the “female category” of its elite events would be required to take a “once-in-a-lifetime test” in the form of a cheek swab or blood test that will screen athletes’ genetic samples. This will determine whether they contain the SRY gene – or “a genetic surrogate for a Y chromosome” – according to the organization.

The decision comes following a World Athletics Council meeting where, along with a raft of other policy changes, the council agreed to adopt multiple recommended conditions of “eligibility in the female category,” WA confirmed in a press release.

The World Athletics Championships hosted something like 2,200 competitors from almost 200 countries and teams. Not everyone, of course, was subjected to this strict scrutiny. It’s an in-depth story that does a nice job explaining this process and some of the biological information to people who aren’t expected to be experts. I wish my lovely bride wasn’t teaching in another building at the same time as that class, because this subject has become one of her primary areas of research expertise. I am not an expert in this area, which meant I had to learn a lot the last few days. The class handled the conversation with interest and care. I was pleased to see what we got out of the story, from a critiquing point of view.

We also discussed this other story which didn’t offer us a lot. But I was able to get in several points about how all stories aren’t created in the same way, some of them aren’t going to have all of the features (or conspicuously lack them) when we’re doing a critique. I turned it into a criticism of Sports Illustrated in general. Because there’s always some context to understand, somewhere. And maybe that’s a note that will seep in over the course of the semester.

We started talking about storytelling in org comm today. Presumably I have a little expertise in this area. There were 14 or 15 slides to digest, getting into the different kinds of stories we receive from the media, our different levels of participation and sociality, fan-centered media messaging and the structures of dramatic reality storytelling. (The by-the-book version requires a story to have drama, adversity, crisis, mentors, persistence and a final reward to be a dramatic reality.)

Here’s a video I showed them that included all of those things and Da Coach O, in under four minutes.

The class will have to put some of that in to practice on Thursday, but they don’t know that yet. So don’t tell.

Here are a few shots from yesterday’s ride, which was a slow, 21-mile tour of some new roads, and some old roads. You can really see the passage of time here, which could be seasonal, or about an afternoon, depending on your meaning.

I love these yellowing cover crops.

On a road I think I’ve been on just once or twice before, we have a discovery for the Barns By Bike catalog.

And on a nearby stretch of road, which I think was entirely new to me, another.

I found myself up a hill, over some bumps, around a bend and taking a left turn. I figured I would just ride that a certain amount and then turnaround. The easy part is getting lost. The difficult part is retracing my steps if there are too many turns. So as I pedaled along some scenic, tree covered roads dotted by a cemetery here and a neighborhood there, I was trying to play the map out in my head: I’m going, roughly, east and this should dump me out … where?

Eventually I got to a stop sign and, considering the amount of daylight I had left, and what I wanted to do with it, decided to turn around and start my hustle for home. It was delightful. Three empty roads and one of them wide open with fields on either side and the only sound was the sound of my tires on the road. I got back to a little crossroads community I know well, turned right and started racing home.

As I got close, this was one of my last views.

I made it in just before dark, and hopeful I can go out again soon. Maybe for some more old roads, maybe for some new ones.

bluesky / cycling / Monday / photo — Comments Off
6
Oct 25

I hastily wrote some words I’m calling a poem

I can tell already, this is going to be one of those busy weeks. Next week, too, probably. Why not? Definitely this week. So it’ll be light here. Lighter than usual. And, already it’s so light you’d have to do a lot of reps to see any gains. But, hey, at least we have Catober — and that’s been wonderful. Click that link and you can see them all, and even scroll back through previous years.

Class prep today. We’re talking about … two stories in my criticism class. We’ll talk about storytelling in the org comm class. I know a thing or two about storytelling — or so I tell myself. The challenge is to distill something useful down into 75 minutes. Which is really about 50 minutes given the usual pace of things. But actually 40 or 45 once you put in videos. That’s one of the challenges, anyway.

I was thinking about news today, clearly.

A split screen shot tells the tale. One man’s words and a webcam in a two-box would win the nightly news.

If we still had value in the requisite things.

[image or embed]

— Kenny Smith (@kennysmith.bsky.social) October 6, 2025 at 4:49 PM

Another good idea might be a serial on local stories that don’t get broader traction (because 🤷‍♂️🌎🤷‍♂️) but still deserve your attention.

This could be a desk-reader sort of show, with some simple EGs and either the occasional local reporter or other topical expert for a bit of back and forth.

[image or embed]

— Kenny Smith (@kennysmith.bsky.social) October 6, 2025 at 7:31 PM

There’s a lot we can do in new ways that use successful older formulas. Perhaps not wholesale for reasons more than just IP and rights, but there’s a lot to be said about previous success stories. One of those things always has to do with what made them successful. It’s not always lighting in a bottle, but the lighting bolt of inspiration. What we already know works is pretty inspirational. Or it should be.

I went out to look at the fig tree. It produced no figs this year. No figs that I saw, anyway. So I guess we cut it back too far. I guess it is now just a tree. And a home to one happy little spider.

I wonder what that will look like by the time I get around to going back out there for my next inspection.

A few shots from a weekend evening bike ride.

On my way out, the sun was a golden clarion, a beautiful guide, a warning faster and more provocative than an hourglass. The sum was a lot of things on that ride.

In roughly the same spot, on the way back, a half-hour later, but on the other side of the road … the moon, which watched a blanketed horse chomp away at grass. We could write a poem about that.

Oh! Dear sweet friend of four legs,
many sugar cubes, and memories and years.

It will be chilled this evening, but your quilted blanket
eases my guilt when I am inside, and you are out.

The moon will keep you company,
and the fruit trees beside you will rustle.

The grass will be a sweat treat on your breath
when I come for your morning nuzzle.

I didn’t say it would be good poetry.

Just a bit up the road, there’s a lovely stand of corn. It’ll be plowed under soon, I’m sure. But there are still a few days left in which to avoid the rusted, brittle golden stalks and admire what’s left of the verdant shades of summer.

Fall, dear reader, is full of complexities. I’m lousy at dealing with them.

So, like I said, light week. But, here you still got four photos, a poem, and, of course, there’s Catober. You can get by with high reps. Just keep clicking that refresh button.

adventures / cycling / Friday / journalism / links / photo — Comments Off
3
Oct 25

You can wind the week down with a lot of work

After a day of committee meetings, and email, and grading, and a bit of class work, I realized that every Friday is like that. Most days are similar. Some days have classes. Not every day has committees.

For a while today was so full, though, that I wrote a To Do list for the afternoon. I’m not a big To Do list guy, but I find that, from time-to-time, it’s an actual productive way to do a bit of cognitive offloading. Plus there’s a little satisfaction of having it all laid out in front of you. Fridays have become a lot of that this semester too: just a big block of uninterrupted time to take on what needs taking on. And, finally, there’s the muted pleasure of scratching a thing off a list. I didn’t use check marks. Didn’t draw a line through an item. I scratched it out aggressively. I don’t know why that is.

Speaking of cognitive offloading, I do a thing in my classes now where I show an AI fail each day. Usually it is an image. I try to find the sports-related one since those are my classes. And I try not to make them all about Google’s AI, which is unrepentantly terrible. If I just showed that thing every day I’d look like I was piling on. Some of these are funny. And sometimes my students ignore them. It is either, I’m not as funny as I think I am — which is not true — or they feel like I’m shaming them about lousy technology that has been marketed to them and they’ve fallen for — which is true, for the most part.

Here’s my next example. The perils of letting AI plan your next trip:

Miguel Angel Gongora Meza, founder and director of Evolution Treks Peru, was in a rural Peruvian town preparing for a trek through the Andes when he overheard a curious conversation. Two unaccompanied tourists were chatting amicably about their plans to hike alone in the mountains to the “Sacred Canyon of Humantay”.

“They [showed] me the screenshot, confidently written and full of vivid adjectives, [but] it was not true. There is no Sacred Canyon of Humantay!” said Gongora Meza. “The name is a combination of two places that have no relation to the description. The tourist paid nearly $160 (£118) in order to get to a rural road in the environs of Mollepata without a guide or [a destination].”

What’s more, Gongora Meza insisted that this seemingly innocent mistake could have cost these travellers their lives. “This sort of misinformation is perilous in Peru,” he explained. “The elevation, the climatic changes and accessibility [of the] paths have to be planned. When you [use] a program [like ChatGPT], which combines pictures and names to create a fantasy, then you can find yourself at an altitude of 4,000m without oxygen and [phone] signal.”

People will trust the weirdest things.

This is lousy op sec, and of course silly on the face of it, and catty to boot. Great reporting from the Star Tribune.

After the day’s work was done, we hoped on our bikes and rode up the road for a miniature group ride with our neighbor. Here I am, out front. Or, rather, here is my view in the one moment when no one was in front of me.

I’m riding with two All-Americans here. One of them a rather recent All American. I’m just trying to stay close to the drafting lines.

Near the end of the ride, on a false flat, there was a tease of a sprint. And then there was a sprint. My lovely bride spun it up, and the many years and thousands of miles riding with her told me instantly what was happening. So I sat on our friend’s wheel. She went to the inside of the lane and tried to take on the three-time Ironman. I was right in her slipstream, waiting. I figured if she got over I was going to counter attack. It would be beautiful. And then she sat up. Our neighbor is pretty new at this, and probably a bit stronger than she realized, but the other person in that photo is pretty fierce.

So I finished third, which is a perfectly fine way to start the weekend.

Catober / cycling / photo / site / Wednesday — Comments Off
1
Oct 25

Welcome to Catober

Welcome to Catober, where, every day, we share a photo of one of the kitties. It’s a big hit and we all look forward to it every year.

Tomorrow we’ll have a photo of Phoebe, Friday, a picture of Poseidon, then another of Phoebe on Saturday, and so on. You’ll want to come back every day to see the cuteness and/or hijinx. You might also like this category to catch up.

We went to a local diner for breakfast this morning. We took my in-laws, and there we met my god-parents-in-law (just go with it). This was planned. They were all down to see their granddaughter, and granddaughter-in-law, play field hockey last night. But they each had to head back to their respective hometowns today. It was a brief trip extended by a leisurely breakfast.

My father-in-law and godfather-in-law met when they were five and six years old. My mother-in-law and godmother-in-law met in nursing school. My godparents-in-law met one another at my in-laws’ wedding. And so for these many years they’ve been tight. And each is godparents to the others’ kids. Hence all the go with its.

Across from my seat was this photograph.

It was taken in 1922, on the occasion of the first air shipment of produce in the U.S. It was asparagus.

The first commercial flight was in Florida in 1914. I’m a little surprised that it took eight years before anyone thought they should throw some veggies on a plane. I’m disappointed the first choice was asparagus. Kids across the country were too, imagine, this new technology, and that’s what we’re using it for? Asparagus?

And I’m writing about asparagus because that’s better than discussing how I spent a full day grading. I needed to do it. I was oddly looking forward to doing it. I did it.

This evening we went for a bike ride. One of our neighbors went with us. Here I am trying to chase down two All-Americans.

I was not an All-American, so this was difficult. Our friend was a swimmer and a legitimate, I mean legitimate track star. She’s got all the cardio you want, and now she’s just taking up tris and bikes, as you do. And that she’s just getting started is probably the only reason that this happened.

She better not get good at this, or by this time next year, I’ll be well off the back.

I hurt the big toe on my left foot somehow, and it isn’t exactly pleasant to walk on at the moment. Not too bad in shoes. But I made the mistake of trying to stand up on the bike and I immediately sat back down. I’ve never gotten out of the saddle a lot anyway, but I’ll need this little ache and/or pain to go away soon for just general use, and also in case I need to lean out and sprint.

Sprint. That’s funny.

Classes tomorrow. And more Catober! Come back for that!

cycling / Monday / photo / video — Comments Off
22
Sep 25

I’m not saying I rode with a ghost; I’m also not not saying that

I’ll just tell you, straight away, that this is going to be a full week for me. I’ll probably feel it for the next three weeks. Which is to say that this week is busy, and I’ll insist upon taking an extra moment or two next week to recover. And, because of that, the week after that, I’ll be in this same boat again.

Also, I have papers to review, extra meetings to attend and some things to write. And I’ve been writing other things. Maybe some of them will see the light of day at some point. Plus the regular work, of course. Well, it keeps you busy, as they say. Anyway, you’ll probably just get a lot of scenes this week. So let’s do that!

Here’s a little sunset montage I made, but I don’t think I ever shared it. Nothing to it, just a few extra photos, literal over-the-shoulder photos.

I went on a circular ride on Saturday. A crude circle. A child’s unsteady drawing of a circle, if you looked at the map, and if the child did not yet understand circles. The wind was in my face for about three-quarters of the ride. Especially right here. I’d been ducking one breeze and then took a hard left, thing I could be relieved because that wind would be on my shoulder, but, no, an even more annoying breeze was in my nose.

A bridge near us has been closed for a good long while. Closed in a “Yes, this applies to you” way. But now it is open. If you go over that bridge you’re pretty quickly into another township, which makes for three or four in one quick effort out that direction. This was from today’s ride.

And on that same ride, as I paced myself back toward the neighborhood and the approved low-light roads … the sun is telling these spent cornstalks good night.

It’s not as dark as I look, and I made it back into the evening roads. It’s a nine-mile route with bike lanes or extremely low traffic or both. And, if you’re really desperate, you can add in another five miles of pre-approved neighborhood roads to the mix. (I have negotiated this with my lovely bride in a safety-first way and, since, have only annoyed her with my choices twice.)

So I made it back to that area, and that’s where this photo is from.

I was on that road because one stretch of those 14 miles of evening roads is now being undone and redone. It’d be great for the gravel bike, but that’s not what I was riding. I suppose the good news is that I was able to share that chip and seal news with the local bike ride group we’re forming up. Way out here, where the heavy land and the green sands meet, we have a hardy little bunch of eight people in that riding chat, and that doesn’t include one of other just-too-far-away riding buddies and a few of the notorious no-one-can-hold-their-wheel beasts that I see out from time to time.

I rode with one of those guys for a while today. I was just a few miles in and then I heard the noise come along side. Big man. He turned his head to look at me for about two pedal strokes, wordlessly, and then moved to the front. I sat on his wheel for about three miles, turning out 25 and 26 mile per hour splits. I had to let him go, and he had the decency to turn a different direction at the next road.

I see him on Strava. I think I saw him off in the distance on a ride earlier this year, when I chased a taillight for miles, but then it disappeared I know not how. The locals say that, on a quiet evening, if you listen really closely, you can hear him sigh, shift gears and pedal into the phantom world.

I bet he would have enjoyed Saturday’s wind.