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5
Aug 25

Last night in New York

We left the house at 2:30 yesterday. OK, 2:38, because my lovely bride would wonder what was wrong with me if I was on time. And, yet, we were still early because, before we’d even left the yard I exclaimed, “EXCLAMATION!” And she said, “What?”

I was pulling out my phone by then, because I’d just remembered I’d set up a time for someone to come by the house on Wednesday, only I won’t be at the house.

She didn’t know that, yet, and she said, “What is it? We’ve got time. We can go back.”

So I guess I didn’t have to be out of the house at 2:30, after all. I think she’s counter-programming our schedule to allow for my difficulty in grabbing shoes, belt, wallet, making sure the doors are locked, the cats are on guard duty, that food is in their bowls and that the battalion of ninjas out back understand their orders (Defend!) for the night.

So I rescheduled the guy. He’ll come by next Wednesday. Watch me forget that, too, somehow.

So we drove to Hamilton Station, a four-track, two-platform commuter operation. It worked out such that we were about six, maybe seven minutes early. I am definitely being counter-programmed.

We boarded a train with the dingiest windows you’ve ever seen, because this is the U.S., not Europe, friend. And we went into Penn Station. From there, we walked to a subway.

So this trip has taken the car (which was great), a train (which was fine) and a subway (which I can do without, but whatever). We went up four stops. Had dinner on a pier — which was more cosmopolitan than it sounds, I guess, and thankfully not terribly overpriced. I had a little basket of fish and chips, which sustained me through the night. There was a citrus herb mayo — see? Cosmopolitan. Then we went next door, or to the next pier over, and upstairs.

We were there because Pier 17 had the show, which we’d come to see. It was the same show we saw last week. It was nearby, a rescheduled event (previously postponed due to severe weather) with inexpensive tickets and we figured, why not?

It was a terrific little venue. Look at the backdrop we had as The Mountain Goats performed.

I mentioned on Friday that the lead singer, John Darnielle, had a small little social media conversation with me. He gave me suggestions on where to begin in his catalog, which I thought was generous of him. So I’ll wind up picking up a few things eventually.

They had a fine set last night, and they have a devoted following, do The Mountain Goats. They finished strong. All their fans were jumping around and the floor, which was someone else’s roof, was bouncing around and I am now “Can we not do that?” years old.

As they left the stage and the road crews came out to set up for Guster, The Mountain Goats fans pulled away from the stage and we moved forward. A thing Guster has been doing is that in one particular song, Ryan Miller has come out into the crowd. Given that this was our fifth time to see them this year, we’ve picked up on the pattern. The other night, my lovely bride said she wanted to try to get where he might come off the stage. She picked the spot and we weaved ourselves right up to the crowd barrier.

There was a little gap between the stage and the crowd, and so we were wondering if he was going to climb down and do this bit. He did. Off the stage onto a monitor, to the ground, and over the barrier. He disappeared into the audience about five people over from us. They kept feeding XLR cable to him as he worked his way all the way to the back of the venue.

The chorus is just …

If you don’t come
I’m doin’ it by myself
If you don’t care
I’ll do it by myself
By myself

… and between each line he has enough time to say “Hi” or interject some random “Where am I going?” thought into the microphone. They kept feeding him cable, he kept shuffling back. That cable run had to be about 60 yards. The chorus continues. In between two lines he says “I think you know where I’m going.” And everyone did. There was a little platform, a little rooftop viewing deck back there. Up the stairs, singing, high-fiving, giving hugs, and so on. And then he has to come back. There are two guys that are pulling the cable back. He’s just playing that chorus. This all takes a while, working through those people, and I’m wondering what the band’s plan is if he doesn’t make it back in time. The other night, he made a stop at the bar and got drinks for the band. On his way back the XLR cable passed over me and knocked my phone out of my hand. And we were only sort of close. But where we found ourselves tonight, Miller walked right by me.

Right by me.

As a finale, they played Boz Scaggs’ “Lido Shuffle,” because, I guess, if you have a guy playing a nice warm saxophone like Matt Douglas in your midst you find a song with a nice sax run. So here’s the big finish.

And, yeah, it sort of did seem like Darnielle pointed right at me.

We pronounced it a grand show, and a lovely venue. We took a subway back to the train station, caught the earlier of two options, and got back to the car without incident. We stopped at a gas station at Hamilton, pronounced we wanted one of everything to drink, and got one drink for each of us.

All talk, the two of us. We got caught behind an accident that shut down the highway, and necessitated a long detour, but made it home at about 1 a.m. Today, I have spent working.

Except for this evening, when we went out for a bike ride. Let me tell you how fast my wife is riding this year.

She wanted to do 25 miles, and she suggested my 25-mile time trial route. If you look at it on a map, it is the world’s most misshapen rectangle. And after the first little bit I decided I would be the rabbit that she got to chase, for as long as I could stay out front. Here I am, out front.

There’s one part of this route that she’s not terribly wild about, and it had a little additional traffic on it this evening that also displeased me. But I lucked out in the traffic pattern and was able to move on through with no problem. By the time she got there the circumstance demanded she be a little more conservative. Before long, I could not see her behind me. But there were turns coming up and I would have plenty of time with both a left and a right to run my eyes back down a long, flat, open road to see her behind me.

Except she was not there. It was just me and the fields. And some livestock from time-to-time.

I can track her progress on an app, so I looked at a certain, specific point. She was nine-tenths of a mile behind me. Now, I’m having a good ride. Legs are strong. Lungs aren’t burning. There’s no wind to push me around. Everything feels just as it should. Plus I had that traffic scenario. And I’m nine-tenths of a mile ahead. She’s safely through all of that and the rest of the route is a simple and safe as you can make it on open roads. So I pedal-pedal-pedal.

I go all of the way down that road, turn at the appointed spot, and then it’s just a four-mile push that I can ride well. (We all have our strengths.) I resolve that, when I get to the end of that leg of the route I will check her progress on the app again. Because there’s no way she’s coming back. Not after being almost a mile back and me on one of my better stretches and having a great ride. I’ve been peaking over my shoulder, but I knew it would be super human. So, at the next turn, I check her progress again, as planned.

She is now three-tenths of a mile behind me.

She has plenty of strengths.

But now I’m on the last leg, it’s just eight miles. Three hills. Most of it in a straight line and long stretches of it with views way out in front of you. So she’ll see me, if she can’t already see me, and then she’ll just magically be there. Or be in front of me.

Should I ride on? Should I wait to let her catch me and then try to speed away again? It isn’t a race, but it is a race. Which is when the mind bets begin. If I can get over this hill … If I can get over that hill … if I make it to the tree line, I might hold her off … if I get to that next stop sign there’s only a small chance of her catching me … if she gets me on the final straight I know I can at least put in a good show as we get back to the neighborhood. I do all of that, and she’s not there. It’s just me and my legs and I made it in first.

Strava tells me this is the fifth time I’ve done this route. And this time was one minute and 16 seconds faster than my previous best. I was only just stopping the app recordings when she wheeled into the driveway behind me.

Later, I asked her when she first saw me after the traffic thing. She described it. She saw a flash of color up ahead, but then realized it was a neighborhood kid riding his bike. And then she saw me. And then she dropped her chain. So she had to stop and dismount, fix that, and still almost caught me at the end. So I dropped her and she essentially caught me twice.

So she’s going to have a super strong triathlon Saturday.

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1
Aug 25

pop-pop-pop

“You should treat yourself to a ride today. It’s pretty spectacular out there.”

My lovely bride had already been out and about. I was sitting still and reading the morning news. But when your beloved encourages you to do a thing, you do a thing, and that’s how the personal revolution began today.

The first day of August is the academic’s traditional day of “What have I done with my summer?!?!” panic. The fall term comes into focus and there’s a lot to do, and it’s a scramble until May. But I’ve been doing some work of late, and today just didn’t feel like it. It was, I was told, pretty spectacular out there.

So I went to the library.

The local public library — which is staffed entirely by volunteers and open for 28 hours a week, but only 24 per week in the summer, which asks you to pay $2 for a card which is provided “Compliments of” a bank in a different town altogether — called yesterday to tell me they’d received a book I’d requested through the interlibrary loan.

Libraries, if you’ll let them (which is to say, if you go more than once) are magical places. But, really, the ILL system lets everything come to your library, even if you have but a small library in your town. About once a year, this time of year, I avail myself of the library for an easy fiction read. (Most things I read throughout the year are news, work-related or history. But there’s always something easy and/or breezy if you’re willing to be seen checking out such a thing.)

So I did that. I’ll read it this weekend, and the revolution will be over and it’ll be back to work on Monday. Or possibly Sunday evening.

I came home and, because it was spectacular, I treated myself to a bike ride. It was blue-gray out. The UV was only a 3. The temperature was 78. After I’d worked up a sweat it felt almost coolish outside. (This is different than the brief bout of cold you might feel with heat exhaustion. It was purely damp clothes, damp skin, and 20 mph winds.

There was one place where, on a straight road, I passed a house with a flag, a restaurant with parking lot flags, and a fire department with two flags. In that brief span, and it couldn’t have been any greater a distance than two city blocks, if you were in a city, the flags were blowing in three different directions.

It was not the fastest ride, but the one place I really tried I easily set a new Strava PR, so there’s that.

After that, it was time to go to the yard. It was time to pick up sticks from yesterday’s storm. Mostly it was just that, five-six, pick up sticks. The magnolia did fine.

But there’s a branch in another tree that will have to come down. Eventually. Somehow. It’s a little high up.

Our poor trees stand no chance in these winds. This weighs heavily upon me.

Then again, a lot does these days. How could it not?

We were trying to count, and we believe this is the fourth time we’ve seen Guster this year now. They just play around us a lot. Or, we are in a place where they do a lot of shows. If it is four times this year, then it’s seven times since we moved here. They’re close by, it’s a good show, so why not go?

It is important here to say I’ve seen these guys play, off-and-on, for more than a quarter of a century now. It’s become a joke, who has opened for them. They sell custom-shirts that they’ll print at the venue, so you can make yourself known as a hipster by signifying which Grammy-winner-to-be you saw with them. I think Jump, Little Children might have opened for them the first time I was able to catch a show. (Unless I’m forgetting an even earlier one.) All of which is to say, they are a fun band and they do terrific fan work and it doesn’t always sound exactly like their studio stuff. But, in all of those years, or the last four year shows this year, or any show I’ve seen of theirs in six or seven states, they don’t seem to do a lot of ad lib jams.

But, tonight, I just happened to be holding my phone at the right time for this little diddy.

Look how much fun they’re having! That may be the best part of the whole thing.

The Mountain Goats opened for Guster. This past year I’ve suddenly heard a lot about The Mountain Goats. When this show came up I thought I should learn about The Mountain Goats. But then I got distracted and, finally, I decided, just find out live. And I’m glad I did. I understand what everyone is talking about. I mentioned this on Bluesky.

Finally got to see @themountaingoats.bsky.social.

I understand what everyone was saying. I get it now.

[image or embed]

— Kenny Smith (@kennysmith.bsky.social) August 1, 2025 at 8:05 PM

One of the guys in the band wrote me back, right after the show was over. That was about the point when I was looking over their catalog: 22 studio albums, four compilation albums, three live albums, not to mention many EPs and demos that are floating around out there. That’s a lot to contemplate. I don’t think I need to be a completist here, but there’s not enough time in the day to learn where to pick up on something new that’s already so robust. (It’s concept albums everywhere and sequels decades on and so on.) Where to even begin?

And then the guy in the band gave me album recommendations.

So that’s nice. And just as soon as I get through three other musical stacks of things I’m doing … I’ll be doing this.

They’ll have pumped out nine more albums by then.

Anyway, we’re contemplating seeing them again Monday night, because they’ll all be close by again. And why not? Also, Monday, it’s back to work. And I’ll share one or two other videos from this show. (One including The Mountain Goats.) And then, Tuesday, it is working on campus. Meetings and everything.

And, Wednesday, I’ll start making syllabi. Then it gets real.

Unless it is pretty spectacular out again.

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31
Jul 25

Storm riders

We’ve been reliably told — or so the weather reports would tell us — that the heat wave will break. The storms that rolled in this afternoon were pushed through by a cold front. That happened in the mid-afternoon, and the phones erupted with obnoxious sounds urging us to take action. And to also plug in and turn on the weather radio. (Note to self …)

I was standing over my lovely bride’s shoulder in her home office when this happened. So two phones in close proximity made great big wah-wah sounds. Tornado warning. And all the little towns and crossroads listed seemed relevant. Seek shelter now, and all of that.

So we went to the basement. Twenty-five months in this house, and that’s the first time.

We stayed down there about a half-hour, which was probably about 10 minutes longer than necessary. The local TV meteorologists have a large DMA to cover, and they seem to think that other communities also deserve attention. But, finally, between what they were showing and what I could see on the radar apps, the storm that suggested rotation passed over to the north and west of us.

Hopefully everyone is OK. Things look good for the most part, here. It rained all through the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, so we couldn’t do a complete inspection.

For now, I know this. I sure could go for some days in the 80s, and I’m not talking about the decade.

So maybe we’ll stop roasting. Or is it broiling? That all depends on the humidity settings. We did a bit of both this morning, when we went out for a quick ride. You know, before it got hot.

I have convinced myself that I don’t handle the heat as well as I used to. Or can do. It takes some habituation, and the other part of this is that I’m not particularly enthused by the idea of suffering through it to the extent necessary. What once felt like a badge of honor now just feels like There’s other stuff to do, too, ya know …

So after a time, I went slowly. Because of the heat. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Somewhere in here — not here, but on this ride — I crossed 20,000 miles on my Specialized.

I’ve been saying that’s when I’ll spring for myself a new bike. But that means shopping. And analysis. And agonizing. This is not a hobby bereft of details. And people love their specs. I’d like to be over bike specs, but you can hardly avoid them to get the fit and function you’re after.

Also, this is expensive. Buying a bike is the fourth most expensive thing I’ve ever purchased, after my home, my car, and a pound of ground beef.

So if you want to help me shop, or start a GoFundMe …

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28
Jul 25

Tripping sillies

A quick shot from our Saturday afternoon bike ride. Not pictured is my lovely bride, who was way, way ahead of me by this point. It’s not a race, but it is a competition, you know? And, lately, I’ve been getting it handed to me.

Anyway, she’s up there somewhere. That was the first route we discovered when we moved here. It’s a solid 23 or 24 mile loop. And it’s been improved by a red light at a key intersection. This is also the route where the hub on my rear wheel shattered earlier this year. I looked down at the computer when I got to the spot. It was 10 miles into the ride. (I’m sure I knew that then, because I would have looked at the same computer, but who can remember these things in such granular detail?) That would have been a long way to walk home, but my lovely bride came back and picked me up. She was ahead of me that day, too, and don’t think I didn’t put all of that together in my head while I was struggling through a headwind.

There’s a place on that route where you’re going into a cross-headwind one direction, and you take two quick lefts, such that you are going 180 degrees the opposite of the direction from whence you just came. And when you do that, you just get a crosswind.

These breezes aren’t fair, is what I’m saying.

There was a concert, which I totally forgot about.

And a kids birthday party, which we totally forgot about. We put in a small appearance. They had a rope climbing course above us all. I did not get invited to take the climb, but someone did. Looked fun.

There was also a rail system in the ceiling which let you fly around in the air, a perpendicular superhero. Some people would stay up there all day. There were also wall climbing areas, and American Ninja Warrior-inspired leaping set ups. And, of course, video games. Upstairs was where the birthday party room was, and the kids that we went to see had a guy who was working on just his fourth party.

I asked him if he had any horror stories yet. He’s already seen some things.

The kids loved him, and that’s what counts. Except for the No Flipping rule on the trampolines, it seemed everyone had a good time.

Everything else is moving swiftly. I got a brief on a class I’m teaching in the fall. (Two more of those to go.) I have about six days of a second class to flesh out. Meetings start Wednesday. The stress and “Why aren’t syllabi things that magically appear in the middle of the night?” panic will begin soon after.

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24
Jul 25

It starts with the next one

A great deal of weeding was done this week. Hours and hours of it, to be honest. So much so, that you can now smell the fragrant smells of some of the herbs (not pictured) you aren’t sure that you really want. The herbs that grow in such abundance you know you’ll never need them all. There aren’t enough recipes or neighbors for those things. But they smell like summer, and now they’re commanding the nostrils’ attention, a sensory system which was, until yesterday and today, previously overwhelmed by the site of so many weeds. But now the flower beds all look pretty grand.

There are also flowers to deadhead. And maybe I’ll do that one day. And then, in a week or so: the peaches.

But, first more heat, and a lot of it.

Went out for a bike ride this morning which was a great big ol’ bust. We set out to do my little 25-mile time trial, and I was so proud to introduce it to my lovely bride. Proud if for no other reason than that she didn’t know all of the turns, so she’d have to ride with me, rather than drop me in the wind somewhere. (She’s much stronger in the wind than I am.)

But we were about 10 miles in and I flatted. I glanced down to try to ascertain what was going on and at that same time, in front of me, she almost got whacked by a car coming out from the right. We’re sensitive to that sort of thing, as you might imagine. So she collected herself and went on … somewhere. I sat under a shade tree and replaced yet another tube. That makes five for the season.

And then I think I might have punctured the new tube on the way back in. I was too frustrated to check. All one must do is go out tomorrow, squeeze the back tire and mutter Belgian cycling oaths.

Look, I have a blessed life, exceedingly so, and I can’t really want for much. These, however, are the things I want for at the moment: to fall asleep at regular times consistently, to go one, maybe two whole months without having a service call at the house (looking at you, August and September) and to have maybe a dozen high quality bike rides in a row.

Starting, one hopes, with the next one.