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cycling / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
17
Feb 22

Making my way through the Makuri Islands

Rainy today, all day, and getting colder by the hour.

A great day, then, to stay inside!

So I left the office and got on the bike and rode around some fictional place. I had read about this course on Makuri Islands earlier in the day and so naturally I decided to take the hilliest route.

You get out of a fictional city and into the countryside, which was much more fun, even if I was moving faster through the city segment.

Did I mention this was the hilliest route in Makuri? This bit was a seven percent incline, which was fine. There were harder areas. I think I need to reset my power trainer, basically. Somehow, the level parts near the end seemed more impossible than the ramps at the beginning.

See those blossoming cherry trees? I’m pretty sure they weren’t blooming when the ride started. I rode through the whole blooming cycle!

I’m still dialing in the positioning of the cleats of my new shoes. This is precision stuff and I am doing it by guesswork. I’m also the princess and the pea on the bicycle, so it takes a good long while.

Much like this ride! Which I may never ride again.

cycling / history / journalism / Monday — Comments Off
14
Feb 22

Happy Valentine’s Day

I finally got to try my new bike shoes this weekend. To recap, I bought these on Monday …

And I decided on Monday evening, to my great frustration, that I needed to get new cleats. The gray ones you see here are the old ones. The new ones are black and yellow. They arrived on Thursday, I think, and I installed them and, most importantly, they clipped in properly to my pedals. I do not understand the old problem. The problem has been corrected, I have moved on.

So, yesterday, I got to do this.

And I went faster than I’ve ever gone on that particular course. Two loops, felt easy. It must be the shoes. (Probably it was a lot of rest in my legs.)

These are the earlier model and, thus, less expensive version of the Torch line. The 2.0 cost about $50 more and boast a stiffer carbon sole — meaning a more efficient power transfer. Surely that doesn’t apply to a duffer like me.

But it felt yesterday like it might apply. I’ll try to keep that in mind in 10,000 miles or so.

Anyway, the fictional place I rode was not over the ocean. The islet Zwift uses is in the Solomons. There is one village there, the internet tells me, but no roads.

I wonder if I can talk my lovely bride into a Valentine’s Day ride.

Let’s go back 50 years and down to Selma. It’s the Times Journal, which traces its origins back to 1827. Started life as the Courier, had its press burned during the Civil War, later through a series of mergers it became the Times Messenger, then the Times-Argus, the Selma Times and the Morning Times. Then, in 1920, the paper merged with the Selma Journal to become the Selma Times-Journal, a historically great local paper. Let’s see what was happening in 1972.

Coal strike in Britain was shutting down about eight million jobs. Bombings in Belfast, Nixon prepping for his historic trip to China, and a few bussing stories make the front page next to that rather anonymous standalone Valentine.

Oh, isn’t this a sweet photo on page three.

They did not last. John died in Illinois, in 2008, and was survived by another wife, who he’d only recently married. Carolyn died in south Alabama in 2006 and was also survived by another husband. That man, who doesn’t figure into this newspaper at all, helped design the plaque placed on the moon in 1969. (Her widower died just last year.) But the two above did, perhaps, get married. The names of surviving children in their obituaries match.

The first woman to graduate from AU in building construction.

She passed away last month. In her working life she contributed to projects at Florida Southern College; the University of Florida; the Cathedral of St. Luke in Orlando and Disney World. It’s no small thing to have your work create something people will value long after you’re gone.

An inside editorial.

Good. I’m glad we fixed that.

Oh, this is just lovely. Mom had never been able to cheer him on in a college game, and she surprised him here. He posted 22 points and 15 boards that night.

Nate earned two masters degrees, was a chaplain in the Air Force, worked his way up to becoming Col. Nate Crawford, retiring to Florida in 2006. He’s still down there, as far as I can tell. One of his sons went to the same military academy a generation later.

A half-page double truck ad that starts on page six.

This is 1972, but forced air wasn’t a mystery. How should you use your heater? Turn the heat up until you’re comfortable. Note the temperature on the thermostat. Repeat as needed.

Oh, on the next page:

I grew up with Louie the Lightning Bug (he was developed in 1983, and I had a sweeeeeet glow-in-the-dark Louie shirt.) And though I know of Reddy Kilowatt historically, I was a bit startled to see him here, in 1972. Turns out he declined in usage in the 70s and after. Fuel shortages hurt the mascots first, it seems.

Finally, on the back page.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

cycling / IU / photo / television / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
8
Feb 22

Today was so long I put two days in this post

I don’t usually see this view, that time of morning, on the mornings when I’m up at that time of the morning.

Of course you wouldn’t see this. That time of day the sun doesn’t enter the house this way. The light was coming from across the way, from a parked car’s headlights. And I was up that early yesterday morning for this view.

Not really, but that was a nice perk. I had a doctor’s appointment. It was time to meet a new doctor! Each of the last three regular doctors I had all promptly left. One retired. One got out of the business entirely, the third moved out of town. I assure you, it was me. So I hoped the new person has put down roots and was in the middle of her career.

I didn’t like her very much. People always say this about their doctors. I like her, I don’t care for him. Whatever. It’s not a social thing. I’m sure if I had the occasion to visit with my mechanic we might have different interests. He probably wouldn’t like me, either. But the mechanic is good at his job, hopefully I’m decent at mine and we all hope the doctors know what they’re doing.

She decided to tell me all of the things to do correctly without ascertaining what I might be doing wrong. Which is a good way to get people to pay attention to you.

Anyway, it was a get-to-know you appointment. And we spent about 20 minutes together. I’ll probably wind up moving over to another doctor in the practice when he gets slots available. Maybe I’ll like him!

Afterward it was downstairs for a blood draw. They’ll do tests to tell me I’m in good health, generally, but could be better if I watch my this or that. My general good fortune is not lost on me.

Nearby was a bike shop, and I also need a new bike shop. Today I needed new bike shoes. So I met a guy who’s forgot more than I’ll ever know and has probably made up more than I’ve yet to learn. And he sold me these early model Specialized Torches.

I got back at lunch time, decided to have a bowl of soup for lunch, I figured, if you have the opportunity to enjoy two warm lunches in one work-week, you jump on it.

Worked the second half of the day, and then came home to try those new shoes.

Couldn’t try those new shoes. Because, somehow, the cleats and the pedals aren’t working. Oh, I tried for a while, got frustrated and then went upstairs, ordered new cleats and, thinking of the rest of the week ahead, called it an early night. The new ones will arrive in the middle of the week, just in time for me to use them next weekend.

That was yesterday. Today I was in the office early to give a tour. Not my normal job, but sometimes it falls to me, and this one fell to me late the night before. This tour made me late for a meeting, which concluded so that many of the same participants could have another meeting.

In the afternoon I had two more meetings stacked on top of one another. The first was brief and productive. The second was long and creative and, hopefully, productive.

And, this evening, it was time to go to the studio. Two news shows tonight. They’ll be online tomorrow, or soon after. But, for now, I can catch you up on stuff the sports gang shot last week.

Here are the highlights!

And here’s a talk show about the Winter Olympics.

These shows seem like a long time ago. I blame the snow. And that they produced them six days ago. I kept for forgetting to share them here with the second half of the week being so disjointed. Again, the snow.

Anyway, it was an 11-and-a-half hour today. And another long one tomorrow. So, tonight it’s dinner, dishes and bed. Probably in that order.

adventures / cycling / Monday / photo — Comments Off
7
Feb 22

To a slightly less snowy week ahead

The roads improved over the weekend, but the snow will hang around for days, which is fine. Pleasant reminders and all of that. We’ll be lulled, this week, into a false sense of “warmth.” Tomorrow the mercury will flirt with 40 and the sun will be out. We will call it nice and believe ourselves lucky. And this is as close as I ever come to understanding Stockholm syndrome on a personal basis.

We took a nice little walk yesterday, and The Yankee traipsed through the woods. I’d chosen the wrong shoes for a side expedition, so I stayed on the path. Sometimes moving around does it, but sometimes staying where you ought to gives you an iconic photo.

Iconic photo.

After which I shoveled four inches of snow and ice off the megadeck. It seemed like a good thing to finally do. Why let all of that sit there and wait to melt and damage the wood?

Plus the experience let me see this. Somehow the snow and ice was sliding off one of the tables, but hit a chair and got stuck there.

And when I was shoveling over by the fire element (the grill – ed.) I scooped off a layer of snow and found this.

The camera phone doesn’t do it justice. I assure you, there’s a bit of definition to the nose area. Just to be on the safe side, I left that example of pareidolia alone, What if the deck is haunted by a woodland sprite or something?

Elsewhere, around the front of the house, I am imagining all of this snowmelt will mean good things for the soil’s moisture content come spring.

Time to check in on the kitties. Poseidon has a lot of fun watching the birds, who are eating us out of house and home at a bird feeder in that direction.

And Phoebe spent her Friday lazing in the afternoon sun.

It was nice to be at the house to see the kitties; that won’t happen much at all this week.

I rode through Paris this weekend. You can tell because there’s the Luxor Obelisk, 3,000 years old, direct from Egypt, and a fixture at the Place de la Concorde in Paris, since the 1830s.

Zwift says they changed out the statuary in their game as cutesy little Easter Eggs for riders. So you don’t see Frémiet’s gilded bronze equestrian sculpture of Joan of Arc in the Place des Pyramides in Paris. There’s a likeness of a a cyclist, instead.

That probably aggravates the French, but it’s tucked in a little turn and you barely see it as you’re tapping out of a little seven degree hill coming out of the Avenue du General-Lemonnier tunnel. But on the other end of the fabled Champs-Elysees there is the Arc de Triomphe. It makes sense that the detailed friezess are left open and blank. We shall not speak of replacing the four sculptures at the base of the arc: The Entry of Napoleon, The Departure of the Volunteers, The Conquest of Alexandria and The Battle of Austerlitz. Their digital replacement seems like an art crime to me.

We had the opportunity to visit it in 2015. The Arc is a beautiful thing to appreciate in person, if you can.

And here’s the Champs-Elysees route.

Seven quick loop gives you about 25 miles. Now it’s time to add miles.

cycling / Monday / photo — Comments Off
31
Jan 22

Now looking for a new challenge — and a Wikipedia page

Lovely, cold and fast weekend. They just go too fast, but they’re otherwise lovely. Nothing of great import was accomplished, as if by design. It was a weekend to sit in a chair and enjoy a nice blanket. So I did some of that.

But the skies were clear the whole time. This was approaching sunset last night.

We had dinner with a friend on Saturday. Our friend is a professor, an incredibly well regarded political anthropologist. She writes about food and labor and refugees. She has a Wikipedia page. She must not run her own Wikipedia page because, having just checked it, I noticed her being a wonderful host to two brilliant neighbors has not been added to the entry.

We’re the brilliant neighbors. She lives nearby. We run and ride by her house a fair amount. She is also a triathlete. Perhaps soon she’ll come dine at our house. So you have a week or so to create quality and credible Wikipedia entries about us.

(If you need a credible Wikipedia entry, I’ll try to return the favor.)

I wonder how many people I know as more than acquaintances that are on Wikipedia. Someone should write a script that cross references your social media networks, contact lists and text message recipients

I think this makes the fifth non-family we’ve dined with in a home in the last two years. I’ve been to three restaurants in that same amount of time. One of those was under professional duress, and the other two were outdoors. It’s no more or less weird than it has been over the last 21 months, oh, and here comes another variant.

Two Zwift rides this weekend. I’ve spent all my time in the saddle, of late, on just one particular course of the game. I set an admittedly humble goal of averaging 20 mph over the Volcano course. It’s a comparatively easy route, it’s biggest feature is one of the milder climbs on Zwift. Gear and Grit says the volcano KOM climb is tied for seventh in classification, 10th in length, 13th in ascent, and 15th in average gradient. In other words, this climb suits my style.

I’ve been sneaking up on this silly goal the last few weeks, and made a few improvements on Saturday.

I cut six (or 16, depending on which app you like) improbable seconds off my PR on the volcano KOM segment. That’s the 2.3 mile climb itself, which I’ve been up a dozen or so times by now. (So you can say I know the road.) I did the math after the Saturday ride and calculated that I need to find 32 more seconds somewhere over the course of the whole route to get to that 20 mph goal.

Looking at all the data on all the different apps, knowing I’m working pretty hard and with the climb to contend with, I just couldn’t see many places I could find 32 more seconds.

I tried again Sunday afternoon, thinking I might be able to get a few more seconds out of a lull in my good Saturday ride. If I could push a bit harder in the two-to-four mile and four-to-six mile splits I could get some gains. Push there, recover somewhere, and then peel my legs off on the climb and the descent. This was my thinking as I got ready, putting on the workout kit and noticing my legs seemed a little heavy. “No way I do it today,” I said to my reflection.

Started the route in the rain, motivated by passing a big clutch of people early, I concientiously upped my tempo in those two early splits, while hoping I could keep a respectable rhythm on the climb and maybe strategize something out of the descent and then the last bit toward the end.

I somehow found four more seconds of improvement on the KOM, which I’d just re-set just yesterday. Even more surprising, I took 1:47 off my total best time for the route. I hit my humble 20 mph goal, and finished the course averaging 20.4. I also improved my equally humble 20-minute power average by three percent. Over the course of the month I’ve bettered that number by six percent.

So, in that sense, the 12 rides I had this month were productive. I should ride more.

A few years back the great Bill Strickland wrote a list of things he’s learned in a lifetime of riding bikes. I liked the list so much that I copied it into a Word file, deleted the ones I hadn’t discovered, reworked the rest into what seemed like my own chronological order of discovery and started filling in the spaces in between.

My list has just 20 items on it. Twenty items in 10 years feels fairly prolific for life lessons. One of them is “You can push harder than you think.”

I remembered that one again yesterday, after that ride.

It’s Monday, and time to check in on the kitties. Phoebe enjoyed part of her weekend and some afternoon sun on the landing.

I told you about the new mattress. Poseidon is still a big fan of the old one.

And here’s the rare shot of the two of them sitting nicely with one another.

Must have been cold that night.

Looks like it’ll be colder still this week.