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cycling / Friday / photo — Comments Off
3
Jan 25

A furry Friday

New year, still the same features which we will start easing back into in the coming weeks. Of course, we can never overlook the site’s most popular weekly feature, checking in on the kitties.

I caught Phoebe here in a little moment of silly. She has three speeds — affectionate, intense relaxation, silly — and it’s that last one that’s perhaps the most difficult to capture. It’s a little fleeting, and she doesn’t show it off except in just the right circumstance. This, I guess, was one of those moments.

I’ve come to think of it as the cats are petting me back when they do things like this.

And, as Poseidon is demonstrating there, they do that quite often. There’s a lot of affection around here.

I made myself get on the bike this evening. That’s the right verb for it, too. Finally I got talked into a little round of a light spin, and then see how it felt. And, after about 11 miles, it felt pretty good. So I started pedaling a bit harder and faster. I did nine more miles and stayed ahead of everyone who was likewise in the Zwift virtual world.

Nothing of them knew we were racing, but that’s really their fault, isn’t it?

So I’ll probably sit around like a slug this weekend and watch football and do a little work and then get back to spinning the back wheel of my bike and going nowhere fast sometime next week.

Already, I’m behind on my mileage spreadsheet.

cycling / Thursday — Comments Off
2
Jan 25

It has no title as yet

I’m working on this essay, and I can’t decide if it should be serious, or if it should be humorous, or if I am able to thread the needle.

This is all the head work, the biggest part of the process. It doesn’t emerge fully formed, but it coalesces in my mind before I start to type. Then, when I finally do sit down at the keyboard, I just add in the typos, and a little more context than anyone would want. I have a lot of source material to draw from, in this particular case, and it’s all serious. But I want to be mindful of not being a clucking do-gooder with too much serious tone. Heavy tone probably ruins the point. Who wants to read that guy. Also, there’s going to be an issue of understanding in this piece that’s now coming together in my mind. While I’ve been assembling likes and anecdotes and research on it for some time, I am close to overthinking it. Which means it is almost time to put typos to ideas, and out-of-context notions within the confines of the context.

What I think I’m saying is that I need a better writing process. And also about 36 hours in each day. And two unflappable copy editors.

A funny thing happened today. I rode my bike on the trainer. Hated every second of it. One day off, I guess, was not a sufficient recovery from overdoing it last week. So I stopped at 15 miles and resigned myself to trying again tomorrow. Maybe. If I feel like it.

It could be the basement view. It might be the many steps to get back up after a ride. It could be that I haven’t fueled well these last several days.

Whatever it is, I need to get better at it. And soon.

Anyway, there wasn’t much more to today, a day which crept up to 43 degrees, which will be something we can’t say again until mid-February at the earliest. I think this is the year I will utilize the 38-and-under protocol I implemented when we moved north. Roughly, the wording of that agreement said, when it gets to 38 degrees, I don’t have to go outside for anything non-work related if I don’t want to.

Also, there’s a winter storm coming this weekend. So I’ll be outside shoveling snow at some point in the next few days. But, after that, the 38-degree protocol will be observed.

Don’t read that as grouchy, but rather, pragmatic. Much the same as many of us heard from our parents about how there’s nothing good that happens after midnight, nothing important is going to be going on outside at 37 degrees, or colder, either.

Cheery pragmatism, with a great degree charm.

cycling / site / Wednesday — Comments Off
1
Jan 25

Happy New Year

We brought in the new year in the same way we have the last two years, counting down the seconds, riding our bikes on the trainers. Doing something three times makes it a tradition, right?

They were just a few symbolic miles, almost soft-pedaled. I was cooked. But, after consecutive days of 54, 58, 64 and, finally, 56 total miles last night, my year on the bike ended like this.

That’s a new PR, in terms of miles, be it ever so humble. December also became my second largest month ever (second only to February) despite no rides in the first two week. For the year, February, September, October and December are the most prolific of each of those months in the last 14 years. In 2024, I rode around the circumference of the planet — at this latitude, anyway.

I’ll complete my first trip around the equator, distance wise, in the next month or two.

None of these numbers mean anything, beyond the context of my spreadsheet.

Speaking of spreadsheets, I did the regular file deleting and updating of things today. One of those things that gets updated each month is a spreadsheet on site traffic. Last year we had almost three-quarters of a million site visits. Who knows why. It was the best year ever, and a 12 percent increase over 2023. Some of those were even people, and not bots. Whatever brought you by, I’m glad you’ve visited. Please come back around again.

Also today, in the process of doing the monthly computer chores, I added one banner here on the blog. (You know those rotate, right? The one on the top and the one on the bottom change each time you load or refresh the page. You knew that, right? You also knew there was a banner on the bottom too, right? Because you read the entire page every time you come by. There’s only five posts per page, and that’s not too much to ask.)

Anyway, now included in the rotation at the bottom page, something I saw at the Museum of the American Revolution two weeks ago.

Let us hope that’s a perpetual sentiment.

Happy New Year!

cycling / Tuesday — Comments Off
31
Dec 24

So much bike riding

Fifty-four miles on Saturday. Fifty-eight miles on Sunday night.

A metric century yesterday.

Fifty-three miles today.

That’s a lot for me. A lot of time staring at the basement, too.

cycling / Monday / photo — Comments Off
30
Dec 24

Libraries and books and classes and things

So let us reset the scene. We have moved through Christmas. Everyone has returned home. No one knows what day it is. My grading is done. Final grades have been submitted. I have turned my mind fully to spring classes.

Fully is probably overstating it. But I’m working on stuff. One class is all but done. Twenty percent of the new class is done. Soon enough that one will become a sole focus.

Also, I want to go to the local small town library. I’d like to explain the library situation to you. We live in an unincorporated community. The small town next to us has a library that you might categorize as, “cute.” It’s staffed entirely by volunteers. It is open 26 hours a week — 20 in the summer.

In the county seat, over in the other direction, there’s a “Free Library.” That’s in the name. And it’s free if you live in the city. If you live in the county, as I do, that costs $15 a year. The free library is slightly better appointed than the cute library.

In the next county, where campus is, there is of course the campus library — currently under renovation. And there’s a library system, six branches of varying size, I’m sure. If I want to join that library, because I don’t live in the county, I could pay $100 a year for a membership.

But!

That larger library system is a member of consortium of 22 libraries and systems. If you’re a member of one of those, you have privileges at the larger system.

My cute library is not a part of that consortium.

You know, being out in the country has it’s benefits and its drawbacks. As I have documented, for the first year we were here we didn’t have garbage pickup. We don’t have road clearing. Somehow, the library thing is the one that annoys me.

None of this makes any sense, none of it matters, because there’s always the ILL, the Interlibrary Loan system.

Interlibrary Loan is a miraculous system. You simply find a title somewhere that you want, that’s not in your home library. You tell your library. They fetch the book for you, and then you get what you requested. The only thing is that ILL operates a little differently everywhere you are. Local rules and resources and all of that. My last campus library, for example, you had to go over to the library to pick it up. The place before that, they brought it to you. It was awesome.

Whatever it is, I have this feeling that the process here will be the weirdest one yet. I’ll find out in the next few days, maybe next week.

The bike riding continues. Last week I wrote of the speculation of trying to hit randomly collected goals that were just a little out of the realm of comfortable possibility, but definitely possible because I could see it, right there, on a spreadsheet. A document that serves only to taunt me.

Well, I decided to reach for all of those goals, most miles in a December, a round number, the circumference of the the planet (at this latitude). They were close to one another, but far away from me. And so I set out for it. After 40 miles on Christmas night, a bit more after that, 110-ish miles this weekend, there was a bad ride this afternoon, and then another one tonight.

The problem is that the ride earlier today was bad because I’m tired. Legs are almost dead. I am probably under-fueled. And the basement is a bit demoralizing at the moment.

Also, I have another long ride tomorrow.

Those big goals might have been a little ambitious. But you can’t get close and just stop, even on your arbitrary goals that mean, in the end, nothing at all. That’d just be rude.

And a bad way to end a year.

Stupid spreadsheet.