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7
Oct 24

An arbitrary milestone

On Saturday, a beautiful day for a bike ride, I crossed 17,000 miles with this machine. Raced and ridden in six or eight states, I’ve added new derailleurs because of rust, replaced a snapped saddle last fall and swapped out a handful of chains over the years.

It makes all of the right noises, this bike, especially the silent ones. It goes slow uphill, except for those times it’s gone fast. It will go fast downhill if I ask it to. It goes where I steer it, and has always brought me back again. And somewhere along the way it became a breathless place to catch my breath.

Like I said, it was a beautiful day for it. Jump cuts incoming!

Altogether, I got in an easy 82 miles this weekend, including another beautiful sunny afternoon ride with my lovely bride, where we passed the farmers in their late season work.

She was ahead of me much of the time, but then I caught her, and then I attacked on a road near the end, just because the timing was right and I wanted to try to set a new Strava segment PR (which I did). And when I got home, I looked at the times and realized one of our friends holds the record on that segment, one second faster than me. Back to the drawing board.

On the final stretch before we got there, though, she attacked me, and it was well timed.

It was a beautiful weekend of riding.

And, now, back to grading.

Until tomorrow, then, the latest installments of Catober? Poe had the prime spot today, Phoebe will be back to show off her cuteness tomorrow. See them all here.

cycling / memories / music / Re-Listening / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
1
Oct 24

Welcome to Catober!

Welcome to Catober, where we daily highlight the kitties, because once a week isn’t enough. They also get their own posts in October, because they slipped that into their contract when we weren’t looking. So, I’ll take turns highlighting each cat. Tomorrow we’ll have some amazing Phoebe cuteness. You can see the full collection of lovely cat poses right here.

I’m mid-thigh in grading things. Fortunately not hip deep, and only that deep because I stayed up far too late — even for me — grading stuff. And so today I graded stuff. Tonight, I will grade other things.

At this rate I’ll be grading things all day and night tomorrow. I believe I have it paced out so I can finish grading on Thursday. Just in time for this weekend’s stuff to start rolling in for grading next week …

Whoever set this schedule up deserves a talking to. Me, it was me. I deserve a talking to.

Here’s a video I shot on yesterday’s bike ride. There are a lot of fields turning a beautiful, bright yellow just now. I might have caught these just a few minutes too late in the evening for the color to really pop. Still lovely in their own way.

Since it is the beginning of the month, we should check in on the mileage. September was a good month, my best September ever, and it turned into the fourth most miles in any one month, be they ever so humble. And we can see the progression through the first nine months of the year on this neat little chart.

The blue line is this year, the red one is last year, and the steady green one is a simple what if projection of doing 10 miles per day. I’ve been trailing behind that, sadly, since mid July. Now I’m making progress and I’ll be back over the green line before you read this.

And there are some humble, yet cool-to-me milestones coming up on the bike. You’ll be underwhelmed.

I’ll be whelmed.

That’ll be the extent of it.

Let’s get back to the Re-Listening project for a brief update. This is the one where I’m listening to all of my old CDs in the car, in the order in which I acquired them. At some point, I figured I could write about it to pad out the site with a bit of content — share some videos and the like, but these aren’t reviews, because no one cares. So let’s get to it, so I can get caught up. (I’m only behind by three albums, I think.)

We’ll return to 2006 or so, when I picked up a copy of Live’s 1999 record, “The Distance to Here.” It was the band’s fifth studio album, it went platinum in a month, debuted at number four on the Billboard 200 chart, topped the charts in three other countries, and settled into the top 10 in a half dozen more. They promoted three singles from the record, all which became at least moderately successful on the Alternative Airplay chart. But it never really worked for me. This is the last Live album I bought, and by the time Ed Kowalczyk left the band a decade later, I had no idea.

But I have two things here. This works a whole lot better now, for me, than it did back then. It could be a small doses record at the very least. And one or two of these tunes could be sticky — which is sometimes good and sometimes “get out of my head.”

The other thought was centered around this show at a concert. I saw the band at a festival when they were touring on this record. They closed their set with this song, and they were working out the instrumentation so that, one-by-one, the band slipped away off the darkened stage. Then there was only Kowalczyk, and the whole sweaty crowd was singing along and he stopped strumming his guitar, they kept singing, and he waved and walked off. It was better than this version, which came about some years later, but similar.

Kowalczyk rejoined the band after a few years away. And then he fired the band. They were all, as I recall, southeastern Pennsylvania high school classmates who got their break soon after, and became a 10-years-later overnight success. And now, they’re taking turns suing each other or some such. Kowalczyk is touring with the name, but all new band mates. They just came off the road from a midwestern swing last week.

In the next installation of the Re-Listening project, we’ll try out a pretty decent tribute album I’d entirely forgotten about — which is entirely the point.

And now, back to grading. And next for you, more Catober!

cycling / Monday / photo / video — Comments Off
30
Sep 24

Who needs focus?

As we wrap up September we’re always really gearing up for October. By the end of this month, the only thing there is to miss is summer, but you have to give that up eventually anyway, so you may as well look ahead. Indeed, this evening, I spun around the front porch sign. The “Hello Summer” side is hidden. The much more nuanced “Welcome” is now on display.

To see that sign you have to walk between two oversized shrub trees. And in that greenery there live some artists. I am hesitant to ask them to leave, because they do some beautiful work.

And they keep the bugs at a manageable level. Or at least they’re supposed to. Who knows. Right now it’s gnat season and the arachnid artists must surely be either full or overwhelmed.

I got in 85 miles on the bike this weekend, and I’ve also realized this weekend that I’m behind on sharing these incredibly high value videos I’ve shot recently. Here’s one that, I think, you haven’t seen yet. I was on a new-to=me road, open fields on either side, and these birds were relaxing on a power line. At least until I went by. The road ended in a T-intersection with a busier road, so I just doubled back. The birds had just enough time to re-settle, until …

The good news, I guess, is that I have several videos to use here in the next several days.

Here’s a road I rode down today.

When I got to the end of that road I turned to the right, and that new road sent me right across this picturesque view.

From there it was more woods, and then back into the farmland. The evidence of people wrapping up another season’s work. This farmer has five of these little trailers parked on the edge of this field, a little non-moving parade.

I had a quick meeting on campus this evening. I made it in time, but then couldn’t find a parking space — a problem on campuses everywhere since cars were allowed on campus. When that was over, and I headed home, I ran across this great big tractor.

It was of such a great size that I couldn’t even get what it was hauling. This, on a U.S. highway. Because there are fields down that road that need to be worked, too.

He must have driven down that road a good way. There’s nothing but the university, suburbs and a wildlife management area over the next several miles. I wonder if he’s got a good horn on board.

That’s how we’ll wrap up September. Sixty-five photos, five videos, four weeks of classes, nine swims and 19 bike rides and one day trip out of town. And probably some other stuff, because none of that seems like a lot. We’ll have to work on that for next month.

You know what next month brings, right? Right? If you don’t know, watch this space.

cycling / football / Thursday / video — Comments Off
26
Sep 24

I also wrote something for somewhere else

This has been the strangest week. It has disappeared I know not where. Even as I make an accounting of what I’ve done, and not done, each day, there are big blocks of time that seemed to have evaporated. When I look back upon it, this will be a frustrating week, as it has been mysterious and strange. More could have gotten done, but that would have required … I don’t know what it would have required. Like I said, it has been a mystery.

I did write this, this week.

It was 4th and 4 and the quarterback was scrambling for a red zone first down. His team was down three scores, but Tua Tagovailoa was trying to keep his Dolphins in the game. Tagovailoa’s collision with Buffalo’s Damar Hamlin knocked him out of the game, and perhaps changed his team’s fortunes. Tagovailoa was diagnosed with his third confirmed concussion.

Sports fans who aren’t neuroscientists saw that awkward posture of his arms and fingers, commonly called fencing, and knew he wasn’t well. His doctors would use that fencing response as one part of their diagnosis. Fencing, if you’ll allow a simplistic medical explanation, is a reaction that occurs when a blow impacts the brainstem.

Later, the piece gets into Kylen Granson’s Guardian Cap, and a hot-off-the-presses survey of retired NFL football players that has some powerful implications.

I might write a lot there, if I can think of enough things to write about.

This evening I settled on a nice new 10-mile loop of roads I ride all the time. But two circuits makes … wait a minute … I’ve got enough toes for this … 20 miles.

You pass some horses on that circuit.

And if you do the 20 mile version you pass them a second time.

They also don’t know where this week has gone.

cycling / history / markers / Rowan / swimming / We Learn Wednesdays / Wednesday — Comments Off
25
Sep 24

Just needs more

I’ve neglected to mention this here, I think, but I have the good fortune to work with a group taking an active role in cycling safety. It’s exciting watching these signs, and their message, pop up around town. It’s just one element of a long, long term project, but awareness and education are critically important.

The people doing this work are motivated for their own safety and their mindfulness of other cyclists. They’ve got the ear of the community, and the local state lawmakers.It’s impressive, and I hope the group can keep their momentum going.

Here, the state law requires motorists to move over a lane, or to allow for at least four feet to safely pass cyclists (and other non-motorists). Four whole feet!

Do you know the laws about safely passing cyclists in your state? You can look them up right here, and I’ll thank you for saving lives every time you drive.

We went to campus today and it’s a miracle we made it at all because I kept slowing us down, somehow. It got to that not-quite-comedy-of-errors level, culminating in finding zero parking in several consecutive walks. But we made it. And then we went for a swim.

It was my first indoor swim in a long time. There were lane ropes and lifeguards and chlorine and everything. Also, there was the mystery of when I would slip into the rhythm of swimming back and forth, back and forth. It finally happened, I’m not sure where I was in the swim. But I know where I was when I got pulled from the pool. The lap swim was over, some other people were wandering in and doing some organized looking stretching and warming up.

I said, “Do I have enough time to do 50 more?” But I was told I did not. And so I finished with a slow version of my 1,700 yards.

But, man, you never really know how useful that extra 50 could have been. It could have really made the difference!

After that we meant to a meeting in our department. There was food, and there was work. A handful of the faculty members were working on some important department-type language. On the third or fourth run through someone tossed a joke my way, being the newbie and all. I said, “Hey, you want to get all caught up in details, you’ve invited the right guy.”

Ultimately, the work got done. Everyone seemed pleased by it. I got a phrase or two into the finished product, phrases I may forget, so I’ll just point to all of them. I was just happy to be there.

We return once again to We Learn Wednesdays, the feature which finds me riding my bike around the county, hunting for historical markers. This is the 49th installment, and the 81st marker in the We Learn Wednesdays series. (Assuming I have faithfully and accurately kept count.) And this time, we have to try to figure out why a post office has a historic marker.

This installment features the fabled form letter of plaques.

I love the National Registry markers, but I appreciate, even more, the local ones with some information on them. And it will never not disappoint me that the Registry doesn’t contain an extant explanation of all of the places they acknowledge. In this case, however, you can’t even find this post office on the list! Anyway, here’s the building.

The first post office opened there, or around there, in November of 1903. But the first post office in these parts, I read elsewhere, was created by legislation in 1792. Either way, 18th or early 20th century, they served very rural routes, I would imagine. Also, the first airmail flew out of the county in 1938, it was a gimmick marking the 20th anniversary of airmail. It possessed all of the 1930s pomp and circumstance a small town could muster. There were special envelopes and handlers. The mail bag was taken to the airfield by a fire truck, where other special handlers took part. The Boy Scouts turned out to witness the occasion, and so on. The mail flew to a town about 30 miles away.

And not related to this, but interestingly, I also read an anecdote of an airmail pilot who crashed his plane in 1918 one county away. He was trying to land, but some livestock got in the way. He made another pass, had engine trouble and wound up crash landing. Broke his machine up, but he lived. The mail got delivered. It was the second day of airmail in the U.S. On the same day as the first local airmail, commemorating 20 years of airmail, that pilot had a nationwide conversation on this thing called radio …

Also, historically speaking, a lot of mail has been delivered over the many years. Too much of it bills.

Next week, I’ll probably have similarly limited success on our next marker, but we’re here to try. If you have missed any markers so far, you can find them all right here.