Friday

cycling / Friday / photo — Comments Off on Ridin’ into the weekend
16
Sep 22

Ridin’ into the weekend

One of the night shift spiders was happy to show off his work in the yard this morning. May you catch many insects, spider. And stay outside, why don’t ya?

I rode in early enough this morning to enjoy the long shadows. Right after this I tried my new game, to see how far I could coast without turning a pedal.

I made it one mile after which, with two of the softest pedal strokes ever recorded, I made it to the next little place I could glide. This is possible because, depending on which map you prefer, that mile is a descent of 87 or 79 feet. You also have to go through three stop sign-controlled intersections, over a bike lane that students walk in and around both foot and car traffic.

Meaning, if I didn’t have to worry about all of that I could do the last tenth of a mile while coasting. Meaning I could do 22 percent of this bike commute without turning a pedal.

Meaning I’m going to try this one day when no one is around, I guess.

After work — which featured the traditional studio time, punctuated by meetings and other meetings and then some spontaneous meetings — I celebrated the weekend, with a bike ride out to the lake to see The Yankee swim. It was a surprise! We were all surprised.

Her and her swimming friends came in just a few minutes later. We had a discussion about which of the two routes had the easiest climb away from the lake. Everyone there was a cyclist, so it led to a discussion about steepness and duration.

The way I came, the consensus opinion emerged, was longer, the other route was steeper.

Well, turns out they are about the same, because both roads away from the lake are routes up the same hill. So I chose the second route, because we all agreed that maybe it was easier and, besides, I couldn’t really remember the last time I went that way.

Before that climb started, though, I impulsively called an audible and took a right turn. I knew where that road headed. I haven’t been up this road since 2020, and it, of course, was the longest, hardest climb available to me. Precisely what I was trying to avoid.

But I set two PRs as I inched up the spine of that hill, and that impulsive decision let me add on a few more fun miles to the day.

Which was a lovely thought right about here …

Which is also where I remembered that my lovely bride said something about another bike ride tomorrow morning.

cycling / Friday / photo / video — Comments Off on Look ma, more corn!
9
Sep 22

Look ma, more corn!

I spent much of the day cleaning up my inbox. If you ignore your inbox for the better part of a week it can take the better part of a day to read through everything.

I’m beginning to unravel the mystery of where my days go. It’s all Quora and Pinterest and spam.

The highlight, then, was a little bike ride in the evening. What a great way to bring in a weekend during a week off!

I’m trying to not think of my work inbox, which has also been neglected for a week.

So I distracted myself on my bike ride by going down a road I normally ride up. Up and down are generally relative, of course, but this one has a certain downhill feel to it in this direction.

It was interesting how a simple change of direction on even a seldom-used road changed the tenor of the ride. Indeed, my wheels were humming differently through there.

That road took me out toward the local dirt track, which was ready to make their Friday night noise.

The only problem there is that for almost a mile in any direction the speedway races drown out the sound of any cars coming up behind me. This was most disconcerting.

But, oh, what a pleasant 20 miles. A light and easy way to bring in the weekend.

May your shadow be in front of you all weekend.

adventures / Friday / music / video — Comments Off on Handle Me With Care
2
Sep 22

Handle Me With Care

cycling / Friday / IU / photo / video — Comments Off on The rare ambling ride
26
Aug 22

The rare ambling ride

My afternoon meetings were canceled. It was a slow-moving Friday, then. And that’s just fine! I disposed of some balloons that had lost their helium. (Helium atoms are small enough to leak through the balloon and escape. Now you’ve learned something today.)

Someone buys balloons for a few of the opening week festivities and, is it just me or do they deflate faster these days? Anyway, the balloons get moved around from space to space for this reception and that welcome and so on, until they’re just rolling around on the floor. Someone has to deal with them, and I went to graduate school, so it may as well be me.

I use scissors to put a small slit in the base of each balloon so the air can escape and to avoid a lot of popping sounds. No need to cause a panic, I’m already causing a mess. Those ribbons go everywhere when you’re cutting them free of the weighted base, in this case another balloon filled with sand.

But that was only the fourth or fifth most exciting thing that happened today. There was also watching the work at the nearby Poplars Building. The cleanup continues, today starring a few excavators moving rubble from here to there. You can just see them in between the trees.

Perhaps next week they’ll get back to scraping down the building. The point of this exercise is to see the progress of the destructive process, after all.

Then again, there’s rain in the forecast for the first part of the week.

I rode my bike to work, as I have been doing these last several weeks. But that’s taken the place of normal bike rides, for the most part. And also I’m carrying my bag, and riding through the city and it’s just not the same. So I decided to ride this evening. But, I figured, instead of starting at the house I could use campus as my jumping off point, and ride to the other side of town, which is rare.

So here’s my shadow selfie tapping out the miles on one of the only flat roads around for miles.

I’d laid out this route on a map and then mostly followed it from memory. It was a lumpy route.

Also on that flat section, I found a nice optical illusion. This road parallels the interstate, and there’s little more than a jersey barrier with glare shields separating the two roads. At about 25 miles per hour the shadows started going the wrong direction.

About 20 miles in, and starting the evening turn back to campus I ran across this sign. Normally, taking pictures of signs is a waste of time, and they’re never a good photograph, but knowing I had a few climbs ahead of me, it gave me a little chuckle.

It isn’t a barn by bike, but a bin by bike fits the bill. I’m assuming this corn will be going in there before long. (I set out on this long ride with no fuel and only one water bottle and, yes, at one point some of those cornfields seemed like a good idea. (That would have been a bad idea.))

There is a fire station out on this route that has a water fountain in the parking lot. They’ve even labeled it “water for bikers.” Pretty thoughtful of them. And I took advantage of that handy resource coming and going. There’s a big hill by that station, and since I went by it twice that means I went down the hill and up the hill. I don’t know if I’ve ever been down it before, but I did so with some hesitancy because who knows how it will go. It fit with the theme of most of the ride and I seemed a bit cautious and unsure of everything. When I came back that way I was just four seconds off my fastest ever ascent of that hill. Fast for me, then, slow by every other possible metric.

In between the hills, though, you do get some flat stuff. This is in some little valley that would probably be otherwise unremarkable, but for the angle of the sun as I was passing through.

I got back to town, and to campus, after a two-hour ride. Then I had to put my backpack back on my shoulders, now heavier than normal.

It was after 7 p.m. by then, of course, and the flow of traffic was all different, so the most amusing thing happened. I did the whole commute — across campus, through two neighborhoods and a huge commercial district, and then back into my neighborhood without having to take my foot out of the pedals. That was a goal I devised and said out loud just two weeks ago. Speak it into existence, as they say. That really works!

I want to win the lottery.

Friday / IU / photo / Twitter — Comments Off on Smelling the last weekend of the summer break
19
Aug 22

Smelling the last weekend of the summer break

This roly poly was wondering around on this same piece of cement when I left the office yesterday. It’s a few feet off the ground. There’s an unused, but soil-filled planter on the one side. And off the other, it’s just a wall toward the ground. The planter itself helps frame in an ancient set of stairs. The stairs an artifact of one of the building’s two previous uses. Our building was once the library, and then an administrative building, and now a haunt for crustaceans.

Also a bunch of people work inside, and students build their dreams there, of course. But this guy was wondering around yesterday evening, looking for some food. He was there when I arrived early this morning. Breakfast time for bugs.

I stop by that planter to fish a mask out of my bag, to find my keys in another pocket, to enjoy a few more seconds without florescent lights.

Today I had to be in the office early because of an early event. My presence was requested at this event so that I might say hello, smile behind my mask and point. I also, as tradition would have it, opened a door for someone.

T-shirts were passed out, because t-shirts are still currency on the inside.

My story is giggling at watching everyone wonder about that inverted question mark.

Everyone wonders about that inverted question mark.

I’ve stopped questioning such things. My questions are now directed as this building. You know, I’ve got an opportunity to run a nice little feature and then they stop doing the most obvious work on it a week ago yesterday.

The crew working on it have been doing some stuff at the ground level, and the building’s footprint is surrounded by streets on three sides, and then an alley and a parking deck in the back. There’s most assuredly a good and practical reason for pausing the destruction, if it’s only the debris-management version of moving around the vegetables on your plate.

This is a better drone view of the building, by the way.

At any rate, we’ll put this on pause until they start pulling down more of the building. Someone has to find the lost keys to that orange machine again before long, after all.

I had to stay on campus after hours today as well. Funny how that works. Nothing like a good 10-plus hour Friday to set the stage for the semester. (The semester begins next Monday.) But, with that done, I did leave just before 6:30. I’ve been taking a slightly different bike route this week, and the almost-90 minute difference changed the light to a nice warm golden hue. Some of the smells were different, as well.

At the place where the campus and the residential housing meet there was a vague burnt Texas toast smell in the air, and then some low quality fabric softener. After passing through those two neighborhoods, you cross a big road, and then cut across a strip mall, where you can easily pick up notes of bad marinara. That sticks in your mind until you ride back into the woods. There, the seasons are beginning to change, and your nose is the first to tell you so. There’s the tiniest bit of old leaf and soil in the air. If you had a fire burning, for some reason (it was in the 80s today) you’d have the entire cozy fall feeling.

Back home, the August lily is in bloom. They’ve gotten tall in the last few weeks, and now their long buds have unwrapped, showing a white, sparkling flower. Because the flowers are so top heavy that they’ll droop if someone doesn’t stake them. That clove-like smell turns into something sweetly fragrant to compete with the rose bushes, which are likewise still going strong — ours, here, has done its work for the year — and people that care about blackberry are cutting back the old canes. Even dealing with the blackberry you feel like summer will last forever, and it very surely might.

Me? Here? I’m just watching the trees, willing their leaves to stay green, and spraying water on things on the ground. Maybe I’ll meet some more roly polies.

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