cycling

cycling / photo / Twitter / Wednesday — Comments Off on So much is unknown from any given point of view
9
Jun 21

So much is unknown from any given point of view

The perspective of walking and distance is an interesting thing. I park in a parking deck when I am at work. The deck is one block from my building. As I crossed onto the middle block today I noticed a fire truck down near where I was walking. And as I got closer I was having this on-again/off-again conversation about how the fire truck was positioned.

It was parked. The lights were on.

It is blocking the entrance and exit to the parking deck.

No it isn’t.

Yes it is. No it isn’t. Yes it is. And so on until, finally, I was there and could tell that the truck was blocking the entrance and exit.

There’s only one. It’s a small parking deck. There are three lanes, two are now devoted to entering and one to leaving. And the truck was blocking the one exit and middle entrance, like so.

I was parked on the second level. Near my car was a campus police cruiser. Unoccupied, but running. Not in a spot, but at one of those hasty angles police sometimes use. It was near another car and one of the corner stairwells. Downstairs were two fire fighters walking out. And another guy, who looked young, had a backpack and a low key fire department shirt on, just loitering at the entrance. You can see him silhouetted above.

And we’ll never know what took place in the parking deck today. It’s a mild curiosity, but, on the other hand, this experience could have been a really lousy day for someone. So that walking perspective is important here, too.

Someone could collect a list of stories like this, little tales with no known outcome, and write an anthology series. I wish I’d started this years ago.

But I suppose I was always too preoccupied with my other You’ll Never Know mind game: What’s the closest I’ve ever come to unwittingly walking over buried treasure?

Boats would count, too. When was I closest to accidentally discovering a lost Spanish galleon?

It’ll make you wonder, that game. But a short-story anthology might actually be more rewarding.

We went for a bike ride this evening. The Yankee has all but gotten her TT bike dialed in, as I feared. And, as I have prophesied, I can’t keep up with her in such a highly refined aero position. She’s too powerful. Also, let’s also blame the gearing. But not my lack of fitness. This too, requires perspective.

That, I also noted on Twitter, is an old gif, and a different bike There was no way in the world I could get my phone out today. I was working too hard to make new art.

So this is how it works now. I have to wait for hills, or rollers, where I know I am sometimes just the tiniest bit better, and really work hard there and close down her advantage incrementally. (It takes many hills.) The rest is guile. Descend those little hills, corner aggressively, win a sprint when she’s just out for her ride and doesn’t know I’m trying to race back ahead of her. Which is how I found myself attacking in a left-hand turn three-miles from the house at 30+ miles per hour.

In her Strava notes, she wrote that it was categorized as an easy ride. It was not easy for me. This is what it takes just to keep up. Perspective.

cycling / Friday / photo / video — Comments Off on Bzzzzzzz
4
Jun 21

Bzzzzzzz

Just in case you’ve managed to not hear the cicadas yet … we are, perhaps, nearing a peak of Brood X here. Today was very noisy, indeed. If you weren’t deep inside a well-insulated building they could become part of the general soundtrack of any given moment.

You’d need to break out some proper field recording equipment to do it justice, I assure you. And in that area, which is on a section of campus that was developed 100-plus years ago, it sounds like you can hear different dialects of cicadas in the trees.

So far in the last few weeks I’ve only had two or three land on me. Each has been far less traumatic than when it happened to me as a child. I don’t remember my young age or the year, but one just flew in and settled on me, in that most cicada way. It was upsetting, that’s what I remember.

It’s been interesting, riding my bike around, how some places seem to have great concentrations of cicadas and others seem to have none. I’m sure there’s some good entomological answer.

Let’s ask the shadow of someone who took an entomology class 25 years ago:

Experts think it has something to do with urban developments since the brood went into hibernation. Maybe older neighborhoods had less soil disturbance in the intervening years. Tree reduction, cement and asphalt addition, are very impactful on the local population’s health. Maybe, also, it has to do with chemicals we put into the earth. Maybe it’s a combination of things, or other natural features, but it’s still something of a mystery. Where you see them is close to where the best part of them went into the soil in 2004, they don’t seem to go far.

And it was a different time back then, no one thought to ask them back then.

That’s what my shadow said on my bike ride today. I heard a lot of them. Saw a few. But none of them landed on me in two hours in the saddle. For which I am grateful.

cycling / Monday / photo — Comments Off on Fruit enough
31
May 21

Fruit enough

Is it possible to have a weekend where you don’t do the things you’d thought you might, but it still feels fruitful? I did get a lot of things off the DVR, after all. And I started on a few things that I’ve been meaning to get to. I made some cufflinks, after all. I am reworking my little business card carrier, too. That’s plenty, right?

No?

OK, fine. I had a pleasant bike ride this evening. Here’s one of the views of a field I went by.

And I took a shadow selfie.

I also had a bike ride Saturday. It was cold then. It was pleasant today. It’ll be gray and drab like five other months of the year here tomorrow, and I’ll have a run tomorrow. It’s fruitful enough.

A lack of doing something, I honestly believe, is not a bad thing, maybe it’s even a good thing. The problem is how often I can tell myself that. That thing you wanted to do will still be there tomorrow. And it will, as it has been.

That’s sometimes the problem, amirite?

The kitties are doing just great, thanks for asking. We have had a weekend of quality cuddling and napping and staring at the world outside and napping and being underfoot.

Phoebe is developing an affinity for baskets situated in unusual positions.

They love to hop into the baskets, of course. What a perfect device. They can see out from every side and feel protected and surrounded at the same time. I’m not sure what they are guarding themselves from in our dangerous, dangerous house. But who can argue with evolution?

Poseidon. Poseidon would argue. It’s in his nature. His argument on this particular occasion was “Why am I in here while you are out there? And I am judging you.”

“And you will not like my judgement.”

Seldom do, pal. Seldom do.

adventures / cycling / Friday / ICR / IU / photo / Twitter — Comments Off on Showing off, but just a little
28
May 21

Showing off, but just a little

Quite day at the office. Most everyone had taken the day off for the long weekend — or they were working from home. I talked with one person face-to-face. So, really, it was perhaps an almost-average day.

Here’s a new thing from work. We’re going to be rolling out a lot of this sort of thing before long, just trying to show off the work of colleagues. (Somebody oughta do it.)

I got 10 or 11 cuts from her on that study and her recently published NCAA book, and we’re going to show those off a lot, of course.

Speaking of showing off, she got on her time trial bike this afternoon. Working through the geometry shakedown rides, so still getting everything finely tuned after the latest round of adjustments. It was windy, she was getting acquainted and wearing this rain jacket — because it is cold and stupid here. That jacket parachutes and adds unnecessary wind drag. And she was still cooking.

I jumped ahead of here in a little bit of a road that suits me better than her. I figured I should get ahead and stay ahead because, when she got all of this figured out she’d go right by me. So for the next 10 miles.

She did not catch me. Today. She won’t do it tomorrow, because I will have a great ride tomorrow, but that bike is so fast and she’s so powerful on it that it’s only a matter of time. We rode the last two miles together, because it is a fun little chase. I was holding her wheel and glanced down to see was doing 31 mph (for context: that’s respectably fast) on that last little strip. I’ve ridden thousands of miles with her, so trust me here: she wasn’t even trying.

I need to install rockets on my pedals in the next week or two.

cycling / Monday / photo — Comments Off on The saying of the week
24
May 21

The saying of the week

The weekend felt the appropriate length. It wasn’t too long, but it didn’t fly right by, you know? It was almost just right. Good porridge!

That’s not a saying, and you wonder why. It seems positively continental. ‘How was the train ride?’ Good porridge! ‘Did you see what the PM said?’ Good porridge!

Anyway, casual Friday evening. We had a spaghetti, with a tasteful, understated sauce. On Saturday we went for a bike ride. Warm sun! New roads! Positively misbehaving bike!

It just came back from the bike shop, where they put on a new chain and cables and a front derailleur. Mine was rusted solid and wouldn’t go from the big ring to the little ring. Only a problem on the big hills. And, after nine days in the shop, the bike was ready to ride, even if my legs weren’t. And I could swap from the big ring to the little ring with the satisfying KERRRRRRCHUNK that really signals “the bike shop put the good components on here.” (They did not.) But now I couldn’t swap from the little ring to the big ring. That’s only a problem after the big hills, which is why I was behind my lovely bride all day.

It was a nice few hours on the bike.

KERRRRRRCHUNK.

And so it was that we found ourselves on a new road and a detour sign. I rode up ahead to see if it was passable by bike. I saw a nice lady standing out there doing traffic stuff. Talk about a lonely job. This road was well out in the countryside and she was a quarter mile or so behind this sign.

And the construction was well down the road and out of site from where she was stationed. But she was hoping to go home soon. It was about that time in the afternoon and we had 21 miles yet to go …

It was slow, so of course I want to go back again and see if I can do it faster. But first I have to take my bicycle back to the bike shop.

Yesterday we watched a virtual bike race and then sat out under the shade of a giant umbrella and enjoyed a warm early-summer day and took a pleasant walk and turned a nice day into a relaxing evening. Good porridge!

And so we wrap up our start of the week by the routine check-in with the kitties. Poseidon enjoyed a long nap in this box on the cat tree yesterday:

And we see Phoebe here lounging on a buffet table:

Cat rules, so often- and so well-obeyed, must be a complete and total mystery to a cat. You can’t be on those elevated surfaces over there, because the big hairless cats get the bottle with the water, but these other surfaces, sure why not?

So rational are we, what must they think of us?

I’ll ask them. Maybe they’ll me this week. Maybe they’ve been trying to tell us for ages. They surely do chatter away a lot.

And so, it seems, have I. More tomorrow. I’ve got it all planned out and everything!

First you check me out on Twitter and then surf over Instagram. And did you know that Phoebe and Poseidon have an Instagram account? Phoebe and Poe have an Instagram account. See them, and then come back here tomorrow!

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