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“Now yellow waxen lights Shall wait on honey love”

But what a day of beautiful light:

That was in the afternoon, sitting in the backyard enjoying the shadows passing through the grass. That was after lunch and a very brief bike ride and some school work. It was before a trip to the big box store and the big warehouse store.

On the way home we saw this light:

It isn’t cold, it isn’t hot, it isn’t really anything at all, just bright and golden and perfect. What a lovely day.

Then the football game happened. In three BCS games the last four years Alabama has outgained their opponents 1,176 to 670 yards. The Tide have outscored Texas/LSU/Notre Dame a combined 100-35. Tonight was a demolition, an anti-climax. A coronation, really, after the SEC championship game.

At halftime Notre Dame’s coach said the best plan was for Alabama to not come back out in the second half. He might have been understating it.

After the game the sideline reporter Tom Rinaldi said to Nick Saban: “Enjoy it if you can.”

All of that said so much.

So my Notre Dame shirt that I got last year during our trip to South Bend was as helpful as I thought it would be. Death, taxes, Saban; Alabama is a dynastic juggernaut.

Beautiful day, though.

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5
Jan 13

Return to the saddle once more

Wake up!

Your time of slumber is over, Cateye and Felt. I have many, many miles to start adding back into my routine. And today is the day that slowly starts. Today is my first day on the road since the crash and the subsequent surgery.

Looking back on those helmet photographs in the crash post makes me queasy. Thinking about how that lousy ER wasn’t concerned at all about my head just makes me angry.

Time marches on and now I can pedal on. I have a new tire on my bike, a Gatorskin. Everything is tuned up. I put on a pair of bibs for the first time since June — I’ve been riding the stationary in normal lycra. The bib strap goes right over my collarbone, which I hadn’t even considered, and that was the first thing that came to mind when I pulled on the straps.

Put on a jersey, threw on my new cycling jacket — a lovely Christmas gift this year. Filled the water bottles, put on the bike shoes, noted I was missing a glove and searched that out. Filled the tires with air. Put on my new helmet, which was a gift from my mother not too long after I crashed. Matches my bike almost perfectly and was a great way to inspire. I’ve thought a lot about that new helmet while recovering.

Walked the bike outside. Felt a bit anxious about it. I told The Yankee, right about here:

I don’t normally get too worked up about things, but there are questions. Will I remember how to balance? Can I clip out of the pedals without embarrassing myself? Can I manage to stay upright? What happens the first time I really I have to lean into the handlebars? Will the shifting still make sense? What will I do when I see debris in the road?

That’s what caused the accident, after all.

Turns out, as she said when I clipped in, it is just like riding a bike. So I stood over the frame and smiled and pedaled off to the road behind our house, where I start to warm my legs.

There was a lot of energy in my legs today, but my lungs felt impressively shriveled. That’s OK though. This was just a refresher ride. I have to figure out how it all feels and what I can hold up to. I’m a long way from doing real miles, and that’s sad and —

Ow. My neck is stiff. I’ll blame forgetting the cycling posture. But I did a little warmup ride. I had to climb one little hill. I felt gassed, but not terribly embarrassed should anyone see me. I’ve got a great scar I can use as an excuse and this is just day one.

So a few weeks, I said, of just getting everything back under me. And then I can think about miles and fitness. But I’m riding again.

Riding again.

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4
Jan 13

Restaurants, sunsets and the bike shop

We had lunch at Chick-fil-A, which was thoroughly uneventful. We were there because another place in town, where we have tried to visit now on consecutive days, was closed.

Big Blue Bagel, downtown, had a message on their white board yesterday. “Closed for the holidays.” It noted they would re-open on Jan. 3rd. Which was yesterday. I checked. But they were closed.

That’s one way to run a business.

So we visited for lunch today. Closed. The white board had a breakfast special, so someone had been there. Now the place was locked up tight.

There are no hours on the door. No hours on the website. That’s one way to run a business. One of the review sites says they are open for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Maybe they are not open in between.

Oh look, they are for sale. And use frames! That’s one way to run a website.

So Big Blue Bagel has now officially broken Smith’s First Law: Don’t make it hard for me to spend my money with you.

I was on the fence about the entire thing, but then I read the reviews on the review sites. They get fairly well panned, which strikes me as a bit difficult to do in a college town. C’est la bagel.

Visited the library. Did library things. Got ran out of the library, because they close the library at 5 p.m. “You don’t need learnin’ that bad, boy.”

That’s OK. We walked out to see this:

We have some of the best sunsets in the world here. I’m biased, I’m sure, but I realized that in undergrad and I haven’t been any place that consistently shows off enough to change my mind since then. Tonight’s wasn’t even trying hard, and I couldn’t get into position for the big finale fast enough, but the sky is just gorgeous.

Orange and blue and all that. Pollutants hanging over Montgomery 50 miles to the west help too.

Picked up my bike. Everyone was in the shop this evening. My derailleurs have been adjusted. Almost everything works again. I can fix the last little bit myself, because I know how to Google this part.

If you know the right nomenclature you can fix most anything yourself these days. If you have the proper tools.

Spoke with the owner about the proper tools. Bicycle maintenance has an improbable amount of specialty equipment — turns out you can’t make every change with a crescent wrench — for most of us this is daunting and unrealistic. I expressed my interest in knowing more.

I’d like to appreciate the art of maintenance a bit. And are there classes for this sort of thing? I don’t want to be a guy who tears down the bike and greases the ball bearings, but I also don’t want to be the guy in the shop every two months with the next thing I should be able to do on my own. It seems counter-intuitive, I know, like that’s asking you to take money out of your pocket, but …

There are classes. He told me about a great one in Colorado, if I’m ever out that way. And he said he’d be happy to teach me more. Make a list of things you’d like to know, he said. We can haggle over rates for a private lesson, he said, using the modules this class in Colorado uses. It wouldn’t be just turning a wrench. This was an important point he wanted to make. This won’t just be “turn wrench here” stuff.

After all these years in school a few hours learning about spoke tension doesn’t bother me too much.

Now I just need to make a list of things I’d like to learn. And ride.

That’s tomorrow.

collarbone / cycling / iPhone / photo / Wednesday — Comments Off
2
Jan 13

I actually thought about making a montage

I opened a box that was delivered sometime in September. Inside was a new Gatorskin for my bicycle. So I flipped the frame, pulled on the rear quick release, spun the tire out of the chain and dug for a tire lever.

I have red tire levers, and they get a bit grimy because everything about my bike seems to get dirty. There’s a smear of grease on the hook that got there who knows how. There are nice deep grooves in the plastic at the hook from sliding around the frame, pulling the bead and freeing the tube.

I did all of that today, too. I took out this massive looking Gatorskin and wrapped it around the back wheel. That wheel has been sporting a trainer tire — which has no tread and is designed to spin on a silver drum — since my big crash. Since it is time to ride again the trainer came off. The new Gatorskin, designed to defeat pebbles and glass and things, went on.

I haven’t changed a tire in months, but it comes back to you. Just like, well, you know.

So I put the tube in the tire and mount it all to the wheel. Pick up the chain, set the wheel into the forkend, wedge it through the brakes and double check the chain. All of this felt like a bad sports montage in a Disney movie, the kind where the character is on the way to a significant personal achievement.

Spin the wheel and we’re one step closer to riding again.

Spin the wheel and notice an unusual noise.

After a bit I notice the chain is rubbing on the derailleur. This is peculiar. More work, examining other derailleurs in the house, a furrowing of the brow. Some online research, which was unusually unhelpful. A big, long sigh.

I have to go to the local bike shop, where we can all laugh at my simple questions. Load up the car, drive over there:

Of course.

Cycling insists on teaching me patience.

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31
Dec 12

Travel day

Up and at ’em and at ’em and at ’em. Finished the packing, had a brunch with my father-in-law at a local diner. Packed up the car and he took us to the airport. They put on a wonderful Christmas, my in-laws.

Shame about the traveling though. This trip started with a four hour drive. Figure in the time from the parking spot to the airport, the airport wait, the two hours in the plane and then the 45 minutes or so to their home and you have an entire day of travel. On the other hand, a full day of travel means moving something like nine degrees to the north. It snowed on me there.

The downside to a lovely visit, though, is the return trip. So we packed our bags with all of our things and Christmas plunder — Santa was far too good, as I was not — and then went through the tiny local airport, onto the windy tarmac and into the tiny plane.

We landed in Atlanta, the plane took off late but landed more or less on time. Caught the shuttle to the car and saw this:

And that’s what happens when you move nine degrees south in latitude.

Tonight we had barbecue and celebrated the new year with friends. One of them used the word “bifurcated” in a conversation about 1980s music — you can tell he’s in a doctoral program. Another discussed the capabilities of his kevlar vest. He works with the ABI. The fire chief stopped by, because he is a friend of the host. One woman pronounced every song her favorite. Another guy, a financier, managed the impossible task of being in three different conversations in two different physical locations of the party.

Most of that was before the counting down and the silly string and noisemakers.

We all decided that it was beyond time for 2012 to be gone. In that boundless optimism that comes along when you’re through with one year some resolved that 2013 can only be better.

It started out with momentum, after all. We laughed at Mayans and watched the Senate, kicking and screaming, doing something resembling their job. At a party full of blue collar and white collar people, it was good to see people who still work hard, believe in themselves and what they do. That’s what a new year’s optimism is all about, belief in one’s self.

Good to have when you’re going around the sun.