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cycling / Friday / video — Comments Off
7
Feb 25

See you in a week

I went to campus three days this week. And if that sounds like a complaint, it is not. Looking ahead, I’ll be on campus every day next week. That’s not a complaint, either. I’ll still have to find to do a full week’s worth of work away from campus, as well. It’s going to be a busy one.

I think I’ll take the week off from the site, just to get in all of the grading and the writing and the other stuff I’ll be doing just to keep my nose above water.

So, sadly, this post will be the placeholder for the next week.

Look! Here’s a shot from today’s 20-mile ride.

Just another month or two of riding in the basement. I’m over riding in the basement.

At lunchtime today, I heard them. And then the sky darkened. The light literally, actually, dimmed. And when I got outside …

They flew from the fields to the southwest, over the house, across the road, did a giant loop over Joe The Elder’s place, and then came back for more.

They come and they go, and then they don’t come back the rest of the day. The ideal way to enjoy a noisy, noisy air show.

Catch you on the flip side. (If the birds don’t get me.)

cycling / Rowan / site / Thursday — Comments Off
6
Feb 25

True or false or maybe

I am floating rib deep into grading. I have 60-something quizzes to work through, and of course, there are plenty of other things as well. So let’s just get through this, shall we?

I have updated the art on the front page. It looks a lot like this.

Head on over to kennysmith.org to see the whole thing. If you sit with it for 50 seconds, you’ll see the whole assortment of 10 new photographs that I took on a beautiful spring day in central California last year. We were waiting for a lunch order over this beautiful bit of sand and sea. And I’ve held on to these photos specifically just to get through the interminable second half of winter.

I had a short bike ride this evening. It took me high into the snowcapped mountains. But I want you to look off to the side of this photo. Do you see that road?

That’s the radio tower bonus climb, sure to strike fear in the hearts of every exhausted rider, who has already slogged their way up the Epic KOM, climbing 1,364 feet over 5.9 miles from sea level. That bonus climb is an even sharper three-quarters of a mile, with an average gradient of 12.8 percent, demanding another 492 feet of ascent. I hate it.

But the route didn’t take up to that tower. I just pedaled right by, to my great relief (I don’t always know where a route will take me) and then back down into the tree line, where the green things grow, and the windmills mill.

In total, it was just a 22 mile ride, and pretty slow, even for me. But I did somehow collect four PRs on Strava segments along the away, including on two climbs.

Small wins are huge wins.

And, now, back to getting ready for more work.

cycling / Friday / music / video — Comments Off
31
Jan 25

Friday the 31st

The weekend is upon us. There is nothing but cold and gray and winter this weekend. All of that and whatever grim things come our way in the news. This is no way to start a Friday, but it is the right way to end January, begin February, and here we are.

I had a nice bike ride this evening, getting in 35 miles before it got too late in the day. I had two Strava PRs over the course of the ride, including the climb at the end of the thing. I messed around with the first mile or so of it, but then got serious and put in 20 seconds on my best time. I’m only four minutes off the fastest time.

The problem is that it was a short climb, just 2.33 miles. You can’t be four minutes behind the fast guy on a climb of that length. You’re almost halfway down the hill!

Hill is the right word. Right now I’d struggle to get over even virtual mountains.

OK, this is the last clip from last week’s concert. This was the finale in the encore, and “Satellite” is just such a cheery song to end a show on. It’s one of those that you can listen to a lot and find it might mean one of several different things. But it’s snappy. And everyone is happy. I have settled on it being a cheery song.

I didn’t notice it at the show, but I see it in the video here, the puppet that represents the Evil Producer is even dancing along in the back of the shot. If you can make an Evil Producer puppet dance, you’re doing something right.

The weekend is upon us. Too bad spring isn’t on the other side of it!

cycling / music / Thursday / video — Comments Off
30
Jan 25

I’m currently out of perfect similes

It has occurred to me that this week, and next, are the last calm weeks of the term for me. The material, of course, scales up, and the grading will too. From mid-February until May will be like a boat ride on choppy waters. You white-knuckle it at times, you wonder why you’ve agreed to this, but it gets you there, and you’re ultimately grateful for the trip, if only this boat would get to a dock, you to a car and, finally, back home.

It’s an imperfect simile, but it gets the point across, maybe. I could spend the rest of this time thinking of a better simile, but instead I’m using the time to try to get just a little bit ahead of things.

Today it was simple stuff. I started composing questions for some research I’m working on. I laid out clothes for next week’s classes. I fired off a message to some students in the online courses. I emailed back and forth with some people. Tomorrow, I’ll read a lot. Next week, I’ll try to stay ahead. After that, liftoff.

Here’s another video from the show last Friday. This is part of the encore. There’s a dumpster behind Guster. Once they were traveling from A to B on tour and got socked in to Western Pennsylvania. As a joke, they put some coordinates online and a few local fans showed up. They played in front of a dumpster. Occasionally they do it again, and now, they’ve incorporated it into their tour.

Here’s part of that original dumpster set. It was 2016.

I wonder if I would have gone out to stand in the cold and snow, just to see what they were going to do.

That was a Saturday. I didn’t write anything in the blog. We were all so much younger then, even though we felt old.

Thirty-one miles on the bike this evening. I’m ready to not be riding in the basement. Maybe in three or four weeks. But, for now, it’s all virtual. I go a long way, I wind up nowhere.

For some reason it looks like you ride over the ocean, but it’s a road in the game. A fictional land, where sometimes you ride fast, but you never go anywhere. It’s like being on the boat, ready for a trip you’ve been looking forward to taking, but the trip gets canceled.

It’s still an imperfect simile.

cycling / music / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
28
Jan 25

The Thunder Song

I’m going to share this video and one or two from the encore and that’ll be it. So you like Guster and enjoy these, or you won’t have to deal with it for another day or two.

This one has acting and a song. It’s a musical! It’s bad acting, possibly deliberately so. It’s a comically, deliberately bad song. It’s possible that it is a deliberately bad musical.

Maybe this is the sort of comedy that requires familiarity with the subject matter to land. Maybe it works on it’s own, I dunno. But the Thunder God, Brian Rosenworcel, chews up the scenery every chance he gets, so trust me, it’s funny.

And if you think that this video being at the top of the post says something about the day, you’re correct! I spent the whole thing reading the first assignments of the semester. Nine down, 67 to go!

Doesn’t seem like so much when I say it like that, he thought, foolishly.

I did have my first ride in the better part of a week. I’ve been fighting a mild case of the sinuses since last Wednesday night. I’ve had much more annoying experiences with it in the past. This, even at it’s most frustrating with the late night coughing and the ragged sleeping, wasn’t all that bad. I have a lifetime of experience in this area, and I am familiar with the pattern. Yesterday, bowing to the onslaught of those little vitamin C supplements and regular doses of antihistamines and the liberal use of cough drops, my sinuses gave up. By Thursday or Friday this will all be forgotten. This evening, for the first time, it didn’t feel like the worst idea to hang my head over handlebars for an hour or so.

Which let me see the lighthouse.

Also, one of the problems of my sinuses are a bit of fatigue. Between that and poor sleep, who wants to ride a bike? I suppose I could have, but, I mean, who wants to ride a bike in their basement when they’re 33 percent sick?

Anyway, 22 miles, one big climb. I thought about doing more, but I was happy to be done. And tomorrow maybe I’ll try again.