I do not know what is happening.

adventures / I do not know what is happening. / photo / video / Wednesday — Comments Off on Travel day
7
Aug 13

Travel day

Up and at ’em today. We finished packing bags and took to the interstate and across the state line into Georgia and then on to the airport in Atlanta.

I neglected to remove my wallet from my pocket at security — which is pretty standard for me. This alarmed the helpful blue shirt, so he ran it through the X-ray after pronouncing it a big wallet. It was fine, because there’s nothing in my wallet that frightens anyone except the absence of money.

He brought back my wallet and I shared my relief that he’d pronounced it safe for a representative democracy. He asked if he I was a writer, because I was sarcastic and had a beard and “writers don’t care about their facial hair.”

That’s profiling, sir.

So I shaved tonight.

Here are some of the clouds from our flight:

We are officially health nuts. The first thing we did when we got to D.C. was go for a jog. Ran by this place:

WhiteHouse

I was offering people a dollar if they’d just go up to the police and say “Hey, that sure is nice. Who lives there?”

We ran 3.6 miles and it all felt good, which means it felt weird because there is no way that should feel good. But it did.

Jogging wasn’t supposed to be the first thing we did. We had scheduled a Segway tour of the capitol, but our plane was delayed. All three cities involved — where our plan was coming from, where we were departing from and where we were arriving, were all simultaneously socked in. That pushed us back several hours.

And so we did our bit of exercise, got cleaned up and hit Bangkok Thai, close to our hotel. Got a cookie from the CVS surrounded by loud, profane, angry beggars — ahh, D.C. — and then back to the room to iron clothes for tomorrow.

We’ll be conferencing. See you then.

adventures / I do not know what is happening. / maps / photo / weekend — Comments Off on Chattahoochee Challenge
20
Jul 13

Chattahoochee Challenge

We woke up before the sun. We were at the race before the sun. We were mostly ready to race before the sun. This is a triathlon.

I do not know what is happening.

There aren’t really any pictures because The Yankee and I were both in the race and all of our friends are too sensible to be here. And it doesn’t seem as if there were any race photographers. Though I did see one guy on the river overlook taking pictures, so I cleaned up my form for him.

I do not recall if that was before or after I hit the bridge.

I hit a bridge.

But we’ll come to that. This was a time trial start. Apparently this means you don’t go off in waves with people of your gender and age group, but just whenever you get in the water.

We were here:

Chattahoochee River

On the far side of the Chattahoochee River is Russell County in the great state of Alabama. We are standing in the great state of Georgia. There is a gate in that railing and through it we walked down some stairs, all in rubber swim caps and various amounts of spandex and lycra, straining to not hear the starting instructions.

We walked off the stairs and onto a floating pier. There a woman took your race number and you crossed the timing pad and leaped into the water.

This was only a 550-meter swim, and the current in the Chattahoochee was up so everyone’s times were quite good. Even mine, and I haven’t been swimming a lot because the repetitive motion of the freestyle stroke aggravates my shoulder. No matter, my poor and modified breaststroke, plus this current set a time I will likely never better.

So that’s the good news: I improved my time from the Ft. Benning reverse sprint tri earlier this year. The bad news is that I swam into a bridge.

See that bridge? Just to the left of the margin there is one more support column in the water. They told us to stay to the left shore so we all aimed at the buoys and raced. I was about 10 yards away from the column and still managed to swim into the support structure, cracking my right thigh on the thing, hard.

The only other bad part about the swim was exiting. You had to make a 180-degree turn to a boat ramp, meaning you are now fighting the previously helpful current. And the person in front of me at the time decided to do that on his back. Only he couldn’t, because this was some stiff water, and he was swimming on his back. Guy cut me off twice.

Anyway, out of the water, up the hill, a slow transition and then onto the bike.

We soft pedaled this course last night, and found it a nice mix of roads and bike trails and almost entirely flat. It looks like this:

The only problem being that between miles six and seven I flatted my front tire. After a slow change I realized my two CO2 cartridges didn’t work and I managed to ruin the valve for them, too. So I resigned myself to pushing my bike the rest of the way in. Everyone had passed me by now, which was a shame because I had been making some decent time.

Two locals, not in the race, came along after I’d already walked my bike about a mile and offered the use of their hand pump. They gave me some air and disappeared into the morning mist. I finished my route passing random casual cyclists and runners, dragging a complete and total angry attitude around the rest of the course.

I finally made it back to the transition area and set out for the run. I was the last person to join the course, a meandering thing that weaves through a streets perpendicular to the Chattahoochee in lovely downtown Columbus.

And I learned an important truth. Everyone in Columbus lies.

“Almost there!” doesn’t mean what you think it means.

I crossed paths with the last three runners on the route as they were in a double-back section of the course and the first guy said “The turnaround is at that fence!”

This was encouraging. Made it to that fence and the route continued. The last lady said “The turnaround is at that cop!”

Well. I can see him, so a little more then. I reached the officer and he says, “Around the corner is where you turn around!”

I round the corner and still have half a block to go. But I made the turn and retraced my steps, meaning I had finished half the run.

Now the helpful police officers, ready to go home after a busy morning of protecting us in intersections, are starting to cheer me on. “Almost there! Almost there!”

No, I’m not. I pointed out to one officer that everyone is saying that, and I’d like a number please. About one more mile, he said. That, I told him over my shoulder, is not almost there.

Then a motorcycle officer decided he’d ride his machine behind me and cheer me on. So I’m now a part of the slowest speed chase in the history of Columbus law enforcement. He’s telling me “Almost there! Almost there!” as I’m actively coming to disdain the concept of motorcycle police, and I grew up on CHiPs.

More officers, more cheering and this really is starting to feel like more than a 5K and my leg is going numb. I’d wondered if running blocks would have a positive or negative psychological effect since we’ve been running on a wooded path. Now I know.

“Home stretch. Almost there!”

I was at least thinking clearly enough — remember, I’ve been thoroughly and disproportionately angry since I had a flat tire, which was after I swam into a stupid bridge — that I chose to not say anything crass to an officer of the law.

The home stretch lasted forever, and I tracked down one of those last three runners. I was poised to close the gap, but they started singing to her at the finish line. It was her birthday, so I pulled up. The emcee announced me as the last runner, and I wanted to take the mic and ask the organizers where this supposed SAG wagon of theirs was. And then question the Army Corps of Engineers or whomever put that bridge up because, really. But I got my happy little finishers medal. I found the oranges and the electrolyte drinks.

So in about an hour I went from “This is the stupidest thing ever” to “Maybe I should make my evaluation about the merit of a healthy exercise on a day when things go as they are supposed to. That’d be fair. And why are you mad about something intended to be fun, anyway?”

I didn’t get to see the posted times at the race because I wisely chose a sports massage on my thigh. Later, as I peeled my tri-suit off, I found a red mark on my upper quad, about six or seven inches long and shaped like a hook. The sports therapist said she could feel precisely where it was. Ice and movement, she said.

Naturally we came home and I took a nap.

Later in the evening the race times were posted to the website. My pre-race goals were to survive and finish, to improve “somewhat” on my swim time and improve “significantly” on my run time, to not be last overall and to not be last in my age group,

I achieved the first goal, obviously. My swim time was impressive, thanks Chattahoochee. My run time from the Ft. Benning race was very slow as we’d “trained” exactly three times before that race. In reality there was no choice but to improve, and happily, I did, dropping 20 percent off that terrible time. As it was a time trial start my being the last person on the course didn’t necessarily mean I was last overall. Indeed, I was fourth from the last among the men. In my age bracket, a five-year span, I was third from last. So I’d like to thank the tube that went flat inside my kevlar tire for putting me in such a mood.

If I took The Yankee’s bike time — she had a fine race, of course, burning everyone up in the swim and all but the most serious cyclists on the road — then I would have moved up about 20 slots. But that means nothing. My “bad luck” was a flat. Big deal.

Now I have to set new goals. I’d like to stay close to this swim pace, purely wishful thinking on my part owing to the rapid current of the river. In my next race I’m also going to cut another four or five minutes off my run.

And not swim into a bridge.

cycling / history / I do not know what is happening. / Ireland / music / photo / Tuesday / video — Comments Off on Cycling the Dingle peninsula
25
Jun 13

Cycling the Dingle peninsula

We decided this morning that our current host is like the Irish grandmother we didn’t know we had. The rooms are a bit small, and the WiFi has the curious ability to stop at our front door, but it is clean. The gentleman of the house, Tim, is a retired police officer. His guardia station can be seen from the dining room window. A 30 second commute, he said. Mrs. Eileen made a delicious breakfast and fussed over us continually. One of the other current guests, she said, has been coming to visit her every year for a decade. It isn’t especially hard to see why. You’re just dropping by to spend a night or two with an old friend here. It is lovely.

We went out for a bicycle ride today. Here was our route, zoom in and follow along:

This is just under two miles into the ride and we’re just getting started. We met some nice folks from the D.C. area and swapped pictures with them. Figured it would be the sort of thing where we leap frogged one another all day, but we only saw them one more time.

Here’s a lovely little waterfall we found in Ventry, just under five miles into the ride:

That waterfall is very close to the Dunbeg Fort, or Dun Beag, which is dated to about 2,500 years old. There’s a sign here that quotes National Geographic “one of the very few oldest historical monuments that we have left in this planet.”

So, being history nerds, we started counting things older. Never mind that now, though:

She does handstands at forts and on beaches and other interesting places:

And planks. (She’s taking them back.)

The fort consists of four ditches and five mounds, with dry stone masonry. It was originally a straight rampart, but later work made it circular. There were guardhouses and the remains of a square Clochaun, a dry-stone hut with a corbelled roof, a building technique common in this part of the country’s history. There is also a Souterrain, or a manmade cave if you like, that likely dates to the Iron Age. It was probably used for storage, refuge and passageway.

There’s an active geological fault here, the signs say, which has contributed to some erosion of the original earthworks.

And various reasonable yoga poses, merging old forts with old fitness disciplines in the world. Because she can:

Off to the other side of Dun Beag:

These next several are in the Slea Head area, when we were about 10 miles into the ride. Adam is beginning to think this activity disagrees with him:

Here’s a little more local history:

Is this not the coolest piece of road? A different version of this picture is going into the headers on this page and is presently the image on my home page, too:

We took a lunch break at the Great Blasket Centre, which is full of hardscrabble history. There’s still quite a bit of ancient Gaelic culture in this area, they say.

We found the Reasc Monastery about 20 miles into our journey. It is thought to date to the 6th century and featured seven of those Clochaun huts, six of which were arranged in pairs for the monks’ residences, you’ve just learned a bit about. There is a graveyard with 42 graves and the remains of a slab shrine.

There was a small church oratory here, of course. The area around it was used as a children’s burial ground after the monastery was abandoned.

It is important to note, when you see those Clochauns, or beehive huts, that the re-creations, or remains, honor an important part of the shared European heritage. During the dark ages, places like these huts were where the educated people, typically high ranking church members, lived. These were the people that played a significant role in keeping literacy alive.

You can peer at the walls of the monastery and see what was original and what had been reconstructed by archeologists. (There was a tarpaper layer noting the difference.) And if you wonder where the original stones went, my guess would be into the walls that mark pastures everywhere. here.

At least 10 of these types of slab stones have been recovered from the site. The cross inscriptions of the Reask stones also feature spiral designs and the letters DNE, which you can only barely make out here perhaps. The abbreviation is for Domine, which is Latin for “O Lord.”

This is the Kilmalkedar church, a 12th century structure on a sight that is religiously important back to at least the 7th century. Some of the artifacts here go well beyond that, even. The Hiberno-Romanesque church includes a nave and chancel. The chancel is thought to have been a later addition. The Saint’s Road, a pilgrimage trail to Mount Brandon, passes between the church and the nearby house of St Brendan. There’s a prominent medieval cemetery here, a sundial, cross slabs and this holed ogham stone.

Some literature suggests that stone had been there nine centuries before the church went up, some of the engravings support that idea. It marked a grave, which has suggested that this was holy ground even in the pre-Christian era. The hole was drilled through so people could come to seal a deal—standing on the graves of their ancestors and in front of the house of God by touching thumbs through this stone. People renew their wedding vows there, too.

You go into the church through this romanesque doorway. It has three orders and a round head with a projecting hood made from red and green stone. The keystone is a carved head. As we learned at Cashel these head carvings often had a role in warding off evil spirits. So perhaps this one was a sentry as well:

We finished our ride with a long, easy 300 foot climb as the sun set over Smerwick Harbor. In 1580 600 Italian and Spanish troops (sent by the pope to aid a rebellion) surrendered here to the English, and were slaughtered for their trouble. Have a nice day!

Here are several extra shots from the day’s ride, mixed with music we heard with dinner last night:

We coasted back into Dingle town, got back to our B&B and cleaned up for dinner at The Dingle Pub. After all of that bike riding, 29 miles and almost 1,000 feet of climbing, on rental bikes he was beat. He kept saying “I do not know what is happening.”

adventures / cycling / I do not know what is happening. / maps / photo / weekend — Comments Off on Just ran a triathlon
11
May 13

Just ran a triathlon

I do not know what is happening.

bodymarks

About a month ago at dinner The Yankee says “I have a crazy idea for you.” This turned out to be “Let’s run a reverse triathlon.”

She’s a good swimmer. We’re both middlingly average cyclists. Neither is much of a runner. So that’s why we’ve recently been running. The trail near us, I mentioned, is safely removed from the road and conveniently measured at 5K. She did four installments on the Couch to 5K plan. I did three. We realized the kinds of in-shape we are does not fall under the “running” category. I also learned this same lesson over my three recent swimming adventures. On the basis of three runs and three swims, and not really knowing how my shoulder would feel about the whole thing anyway, I decided last night to run a triathlon.

We load up the bikes at about 4:45 this morning and head to the nearby Army installation where this will be held. We’ve read that it is a good race for beginners and for people just starting their training for the year. It is mostly flat and typically casual. Those were good things, both in our rationalization and in practice.

A reverse tri, as you might imagine, is done in the opposite order — running, then cycling, then swimming. She thought this would be good because we could get the worst part out of the way. So we start the run at 8:01 — which is a time I’d forgotten occurs on a Saturday. All of the military members, who run everywhere constantly, and the serious athletes take off at an inspirational clip. There’s one small hill to climb on the run, and that’s only a block into the thing.

I make it about a mile before my legs started to bother me. Told you I wasn’t much of a runner. Cramps in the calves tend to slow anyone down, though, so I took it in a limping stride through the rest of the 5K. The running-shuffling-fast walking thing was no fun, but I focused on the upcoming bike leg and before long there we were, changing shoes and chasing people down on wheels.

Which we did. I was happy to pass a lot of people on the bike. My calf complaints disappeared. I couldn’t figure out why my left hip felt numb. But the first half of the route I had a personal best pace. This without trying overly hard because after a 5K run-shuffle and a 20K ride I still had the matter of swimming to do. And I’ve never done all of these things before in one day, so I was consciously trying to save a little bit of energy.

Here was the bike route, which featured one section that made me feel like an actual, competent cyclist:

Got off the bike and realized I couldn’t put any weight on my right foot. I am standing there with one sock on. If I sit down I’m afraid I won’t be able to stand up. I contemplate swimming in a sock. But somehow, I forget already how, the problem was resolved and I made my way to the pool. This transition was long enough for someone who I caught on the first leg of the bike route to catch me again. I was nominated as the inaugural president of the “Runs like garbage but can ride a bike” club.

I take it as a high honor.

The pool was cold. The Yankee — who was also competing in her first triathlon and nursing some aches and pains herself — said it felt great, like an ice bath. The last part was true.

She got in the ice bath and had a fine swim. No one passed her. No one passed her on the bike, either, except me, and we just took turns going by one another. In the pool, though, I just scooted along with a breast stroke and a side stroke since I can’t freestyle very well with my shoulder, which felt good throughout the day.

We didn’t win any prizes — this time — but she was awesome. And we each achieved our individual goals.

I wanted to finish the triathlon and physically feel decent when I did. That was the real one. The silly, made-up-this morning ones included not being the last guy to finish. I also didn’t want to be the last guy in my age group. I didn’t want all of the girls to beat me. And I achieved all of those things. The other important goal was to establish a baseline. Now I have a number to improve upon, should I ever do this again.

The run was terrible, and something to work on, but everything else was pretty decent, considering.

The volunteers were all nice and encouraging. This sort of thing actually helped: “Go anonymous person I’ll never see or think about after finishing this sentence; you are doing a great job, which is to say we haven’t called the ambulance on you thus far, despite your inherent struggles as reflected in how many people are in front of you and your overall pace!”

I was surprised.

And by this, too: I think I want to do another triathlon.

Now we have this open question: How many triathlons must one complete to be considered a triathlete?

adventures / Friday / history / I do not know what is happening. / memories / Twitter / video — Comments Off on At least it wasn’t a sneeze
10
May 13

At least it wasn’t a sneeze

Do you believe in ghosts? That is the weirdest dateline I’ve seen for a story in a while, particularly since it isn’t specific, and the story is hardly comprehensive. Also it is … lacking. It refers to video and audio and all manner of things the ghost hunters — believers and skeptics alike — use to search for ghosts. But it doesn’t share any of them.

I suppose my first personal ghost story — that didn’t have to do with the great Kathryn Tucker Windam’s 13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey which were amazing reads that haunted every child that cracked the spine of the text — were stories from some family member. It seems they had friends who lived in a civil war officer’s home. They’d go over to play cards and every so often the spirit, according to their story, wanted a little recognition. So he’d make noise upstairs somewhere. They’d acknowledge him aloud and all would be well.

We had a neighbor once who said her house was haunted, but that was the sort of thing that kids would tell to other kids. I probably said our house was haunted too. She said that her ghost would open doors and things. So one day we opened every cabinet and drawer in her kitchen. Before she went into the kitchen and noticed it her dad came home. He was not pleased.

My high school, which was a 1930s WPA project, had a restroom light that liked to be on. No one could explain that. The school doubled as something of a community center, so it never shut down promptly at 3 p.m., which meant someone had to always be on hand. This poor math teacher somehow managed to have that job and that light drove him crazy. (It was a short trip.) So we decided there was a ghost in the boys restroom in the junior high wing.

Every now and then we’d try to trick people into thinking there were floating orbs in an old cemetery in our neighborhood. This was before, as far as I know, we knew that people talked about floating orbs, so at least we had good details. I noticed years later there was a Revolutionary War veteran buried there, which is still one of my favorite things about the place:

Lawley

A geneaology site says about John Lawley, who moved there in the 18-teens:

The land was productive and required but little labor to produce the necessaries of life. The woods were a hunters paradise a paradise abounding in deer, turkey, with some panther and bear. The winters were not so cold then as now. Cattle and horses were raised in the woods and afforded all the butter beef and milk that was needed. Not with- the glowing description given to prospective settlers, these early men and women and children knew the meaning of hard work and sacrifice, but knew, too, the delight of living in a new land.

He lived as a royal subject and then as an American under Washington through Andrew Jackson. He died an old man, in 1832. But he’s probably not a ghost.

We have a lot of those tales in the South, which is the foundation of the story initially linked above. There’s supposed to be a ghost of a soldier in the chapel at Auburn. The Roundhouse at the University of Alabama has a similar story. Here’s a Georgia one that landed in my inbox today, in fact, with supposed photographic proof. In Savannah the dead are an industry unto themselves, and the ghost tours are an important tourist activity:

I’ve never seen any ghosts. But I have been to a few battlefields.

Stuff from Twitter: because why not?

I have this feeling that it all get worse before it gets better.

I looked at the drought monitor today and saw something unusual:

Drought

That chart is updated weekly. Last week the two southernmost counties, Mobile and Baldwin, still had a good deal of yellow covering them. And then it rained about eight inches in one night down there. This is the first time since 2010 that no county in the state has not reported dry or drought conditions.

Pretty tough times in the plains states, though. James Lileks, last week on the drought breaking in Minnesota:

well, well, what do you know: the drought lifts. The dryness of the last few years is forgotten as the mean reasserts itself over the long run of the decade, which itself will be a wink, a blip, an inhalation to the next decades exhalation, just as the universe itself is a bang at the start and a great collapse at the end, like two flaps of a heart valve. Assuming there’s enough matter to cause the universe to contract, that is. I hope so. I hate the idea that it begins with a great gust of matter, spreads and cools and ends in silence. Because that would make the universe, in essence, a sneeze.

Swam 1,200 meters today. When I went down the pool to start that last lap The Yankee — who is a champion swimmer, mind you — said “If you do 16 it’ll be a mile.”

Don’t tell me that.

But I did get in three-quarters of a mile. And then I rode 15 miles on my bicycle, just because it was a longer way home.

I do not know what is happening.

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