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memories

Signs, signs, everywhere are signs

Spent a couple of hours on my bike today. (Sounds so nice I want to do it again.) I waited until the afternoon sun was dying out and the heat and the ultraviolet weren’t so oppressive and then I set out for a three stage ride. I cruised over to Opelika, intent on picking up a few more pictures for the Historic Marker Series.

As you may know — or if you don’t know or if you’ve just come back from that link and would like your assumptions confirmed — I’m hitting all of the markers in the county on my bike. I found the locations on the historical society’s website. I made a map, which heads up that page. But I’ve learned that between the descriptions and my best guesses there’s sometime a bit of discrepancy. So I’m fixing the map as I go, but I’m also spending a lot of time just cruising around looking for the signs.

So the second stage of today’s ride was riding around the downtown area of Opelika. This was little more than soft pedaling between red lights and looking confused. There were eight markers downtown. I found that I’d placed four or five accurately on my map.

I found them all. And the biggest inaccuracy was no more than a mile or two off. (That one was purely a guess anyway, so it wasn’t a mistake so much as having no real idea to begin with.) But I found them all. I dat on a bench in the shade in Opelika and had a little snack. I took all of my pictures and then pointed toward home, catching that last one on the way. Turns out I go by it every so often, but I’d never noticed it.

I also found two more signs. The ones I’m photographing are by either the state or the Chattahoochee Commission. The extras were put up by a tourism board and a church. But I was there. I had the chance to read them. Why not?

So I’ll add those to that section of the site eventually too, as always, one a week, on Thursdays.

The third stage of my ride was the return trip home. The sun was falling and the route I’d planned involved a lot of tree cover — meaning darker even a bit earlier — and I had no blinkies on my bike. In cycling the expression is to “put the hammer down.” That doesn’t apply to me, but I put it down anyway.

I average 24 miles per hour over the last eight miles, making it home just before the sky grayed.

And then we worked on paper ideas. Now we just have to write the paper. Meantime, we’re enjoying homemade muffins with fresh picked, locally grown blueberries. I think even the cinnamon was fair trade. It sounds far more ostentatious than it really is. But it is also more delicious than it sounds.

Best story detail of the day:

Leftfielder Nick Clark hustled in, trying to catch a sinking line drive.

“I ran up and at the very end I said, ‘OK, we’ll sacrifice my body,'” Clark said.

Clark went into a diving slide. He caught the ball.

He lost his leg.

The rest of us? We’ve lost the privilege of complaining about aches and pains for the rest of the day.

And, with the death this morning of Rodney King, the Associated Press published their Where Are They Now feature on some of the key players of his beating and the later riots. Some of these aren’t surprising at all.

Years ago I dropped my subscription to Newsweek because of a stupid cover story. And now you can see the latest cover that wasn’t. It was to be an image of President Obama in a hoodie. Here’s why they didn’t publish it:

In the old days, a cover is a cover, and that was it. Today, she says, there’s an “aftermath of imagery” one must take into consideration. Will this cover be used by white supremacists? Will it take a bad turn in its meme lifecycle?

This was to be one of their new artistic covers, because a news photograph is no longer desirable. But Diana of Wales, were she alive today, now that, they think, will move magazines! They get people to talk about the magazine occasionally, but they do nothing for news, or to buttress the once proud reputation of the old magazine. Issue sales are stagnant or barely moving. Advertising is sadly way down. Putting the president in a hoodie isn’t going to help those things.

We’re watching the Clemson-Auburn 2010 game tonight. (I hope Auburn wins!) I’m not sure how they pulled this game off. Clearly the purple and orange set clearly played better in the first half of the game and, if memory serves, for the better part of the third quarter as well. But they never quit, and there was a big hit (there were a lot of those in this game) that limited Clemson’s quarterback. And then that heartbreaking, for them, overtime experience.

Clemson came to play that Saturday night, and they gave the eventual national champions one of the three biggest scares of the year. I talked to some of their fans after the game. That was exactly how they expected the game to play out: a strong start before they found a way to give the game to Auburn.

I took pictures of that game. Had a few good ones, too. You can see some of them here. Watching it tonight, the 2011 beatdown that Clemson gave Auburn is a lot less surprising.

The two teams start the season against one another this fall in Atlanta.

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14
Jun 12

Wheels and bolts and things

My bike at rest. It deserves it.

Not because I’ve been riding a lot, but because yesterday was just hills.

Lots of hills. I rode this one over and over again, finally quitting when my times stopped improving.

So I did 15 miles of hills yesterday. That’s a lot of stomping on the bike for a guy with big feet like me. Thirty more miles today. Just as I got back home I glanced down at the odometer.

That’s for the year. So I’m only about 450 miles behind where I want to be on the year. I’ll catch up eventually.

The story about the faucet: This would be a great entry to the running page on fixing things in our house. I don’t have a category for it. It is too late to add one now and I’d probably just name it something hateful anyway. But we can now add to a list of repair jobs that include the air conditioner (twice), the shower, refrigerator, dish washer (twice), washing machine, the toilets (three times between them) and more.

We’ve lived here for less than two years.

So the kitchen faucet developed a drip. We found a certain way that you could turn the nozzle and the handle to minimize the problem. This worked for a while. And then it stopped working. And earlier this week the drip almost became a stream.

I’ve tried to take the faucet apart before so I could replace the washers, but the water is so hard here that all of the innards (plumbing term!) were fused together. I tried this for a few days. I tried this with WD-40 and various other things found in the cabinets and garage.

Having failed at this simple task I decided to just replace the entire faucet. So out from the cabinet came all of the cleaning supplies. Under the sink went my head. The supply lines, I discovered, were also fused on the faucet end. OK, then. I’ll just take it apart and pull the supply lines up from the top and buy new stinking supply lines with my brand new faucet that has to be installed because I can’t take the old one apart to install $.75 worth of rubber gaskets to it.

I’m thrilled.

The supply lines were disconnected from the bottom. I disconnected the sprayer nozzle. I freed one of the nuts that attaches the faucet to the sink from underneath.

The sink, you’ll notice if you spend enough time in the cabinets, is a great two tub cast iron deal. This is the most sturdy thing we own, I’m certain of it. That and the other nut that is attaching the faucet to the sink. That joker was fused with the bolt in the worst way. But underneath that nut was a concave washer type thing (more plumbing terminology!). It, too, was rusting.

And so it was that I found myself donning goggles, grabbing a screwdriver and just stabbing the crap out of that washer type thing. The plan was to punch out so much of that rust-crusted impediment and then just pull everything out from the top.

Which, eventually, I did.

So we went to Lowe’s and bought a new faucet. Nothing they had matched exactly, but that’s OK because we needed a working sink.

And we got in trouble at Lowe’s too! They have those rolling ladder step things and we moved one into the aisle to inspect the faucets above our line of sight. An old guy with a ponytail and a red vest took exception to this. I understood his point — safety is important — but he also understood mine. There is no one around in the store to give you any help. I know this because I’d done this exact same thing on this exact same aisle for more than 10 minutes last night. There were no red vests to be found. So I went to Home Depot, which is literally right across the street. And I stayed on their faucet aisle for even longer, and there were no orange aprons to be found.

Which brought up a great conversation about all of this online. In the middle of which came the Home Depot social media person with the “Oh no! Sorry to hear that! Which store were you in?” It might have been rude, but I said “Is it unfair to say “All of them”? Based on the responses I received from others the rep on floor help is staggeringly poor.”

The social media person did not write back to that.

The Lowe’s red vest with the ponytail came back later, as we were wrapping up our choices, and commiserated on the faucet problem. He knew they had a floor problem. I’m sure the Lowe’s managers do too; they just don’t care. Home Depot? Same thing.

But it gave me time to see things like this, the paper towel holder!

You’ve never seen such excitement for such a prosaic tool! It holds your paper towels! Above the countertop! It holds! Paper towels!

This, at a glance, is simply disturbing:

A jaundiced hand emerging from the wall, holding some sort of Matrix device. Or is it from Alien? Or is it Elvis’ alternative universe microphone. Don’t sing into this one though, you’ll just drown.

Or you could go into our backyard:

It rained a lot today.

Oh, and I installed the new faucet. Took eight minutes. It better work for years.

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10
Jun 12

Whitewater rafting the Ocoee River

On our way home we stopped by Ocoee Outdoors to spend part of the day on the water. It was overcast and cool. The high was in the low 70s. Our guide said on this day last year — they’d consulted their records — it was 98 degrees. He’s been working here for 27 years he said, but he’s never seen the weather so mild.

We wore spray jackets, because the Ocoee River is always a chilly river and we were going to get rained on too.

We did not get out of the boat, but here’s a picture of a picture from a previous trip several years ago:

It would have looked like that today, but with more shivering.

Part of what we rafted down today was used in the 1996 Olympics. This, the guide said, was like car crash alley. Plenty of people would line the banks to watch you fall out. We did not. Here’s the bridge we went under:

And some of the views we drifted and paddled through:

You’d get warm from paddling and think A little bit of the river would be nice right now. And then a rapid would come along and splash everyone, disabusing you of that notion.

The best rafting on the river is Ocoee Outdoors. We’ve gone with them for years and years, and I easily recommend them to you. Everyone is incredibly personable, competent and safe. They, of course, have a photographer staking out the key places to sell you pictures of your experience. We saw him coming today and mugged for the camera. Should I buy these?

Great trip.

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9
Jun 12

Andrew gets married

Early in the day I said to The Yankee that if you looked at the entire Saturday — the wedding, the reception and the after party — that this would be the perfect Andrew day.

We went to graduate school with Andrew. He did his bachelor’s at AUM and then went to Florida, worked at a few newspapers, did a master’s at FSU and then his PhD at Alabama. He’s a thoughtful, smart, articulate, crazed guy. We love him to death. He’s on the faculty at East Tennessee State and we wish he were closer so we could see him more often.

I’ve always wanted to see Andrew mad, because he is hysterical when he is faux mad. The truth of it, though, is that he’s a heck of a nice guy. We’ve watched big football games together. We’ve tried every Indian restaurant we can find. He’s helped us move. When my grandfather died Andrew was at a conference in Chicago with The Yankee. I texted her the news, she told him and he said “When do we leave?” That, to me, means as much as anything else that I like about the guy.

He’s an unabashed Alabama fan, but some things must be excused.

So he met this nice young lady who teaches middle school. And now time and love and all that cheesy stuff have brought them here.

They got married in a public park in the oldest city in Tennessee. There were family and friends that they’ve each grown up with. Not too few and not too many. The ceremony was brief and to the point. Simple and effective. Andrew, The Yankee said, was doing what we’ve come to call the Academic Nod — bobbing his head at each point of emphasis and agreement, each one of them, with a thoughtful look of contemplation, agreement and acceptance — as the bride said her vows.

I missed that. I was too busy watching this:

That is the father of the bride. “Her mother. And I,” he had just said. There was this great little half-a-beat of a moment in there. Writing it here, it just feels like it needed a bit of extra punctuation. He had the best, most sure and clear voice when he gave her away.

And then he retreated a few steps back up the hill, standing near us as we stood in the warm June sunlight. And this lady — whom I did not have the pleasure of meeting — got her hand gripped vigorously throughout the ceremony. I can’t imagine the watching-your-child-get-married experience of course, but I wanted to tell the man that his new son-in-law is one of the good guys.

Here they are wrapping up the nuptials:

We walked just down the street to the town’s visitor’s center. There’s an event room there and the tables were decked out with food and all the normal stuff you’d find at a wedding reception. One of Andrew’s college buddies had been tasked with making a play list. We made fun of it mercilessly — because that’s what this crowd does. The kids that were there put on a great dance revue. It involved lots of twirling.

Later, after changing clothes back at our hotel, we stopped back by the happy couple’s new home and spent the evening with all the 30somethings. The sky was warm. The crickets were out. There was more music and lots of laughter. As the twilight turned to darkness the laughter grew louder. Spending more than a few minutes with the bride, we had a great time watching this new person interact with our old friend. It’s easy to see how they get along.

And I was right, the entire day was just like Andrew.

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1
Jun 12

But, hey, this will be quick

We had dinner with our friend Paige tonight. Drove up to her house.

She let me take a picture of the famous Rory:

This is only slightly intimidating. I was shooting her cat with my phone. Paige is a photographer on the side. In fact, she shot our engagement:

It was 17 degrees with about nine inches of snow on the ground. Maybe more. We shot those at a park up the street from The Yankee’s parents’ home, a park where she’d played as a child. There’s a pavilion there. Under that roof, there was six inches of snow covering everything.

The next year she shot our wedding in Savannah.

It was well into the triple-digits that day.

It seems we can’t all get together without severe weather, so naturally it rained tonight.

By the time we got back home there was lots of rain.

We ate dinner at a Thai place called Somewhere in Bangkok. Good food, lousy website. The server was … well, she was as American as could be.

Today I fixed a printer problem, which is a piece of equipment normally beyond me. Samford won a huge baseball game in NCAA regional play. I uploaded three pictures to the Tumblr blog.

Also, don’t forget to check out Twitter.

Yeah it is thin. I’m not spending a lot of time on the computer just now.