Rowan « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Rowan

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18
Aug 25

Do not remove, in parts or in toto

Much progress was made, for a workday, for a Monday. I finished the notes and slides for a key lecture. One more of those and this particular class will be all but set. Which is great because the fall term is hurtling toward us quickly. So I am motivated, and wide-eyed, looking at those deadlines. I’ll wrap this up tomorrow. And then I’ll start work on finished the prep for my last class. Fortunately, all the materials are gathered, and I have good help to get it done. It’s just a matter of doing the eye-squinting part of finishing it, and polishing the product.

I’m still finding typos in things for this other class. And while that is mortifying — even as it is, at present, intended for an audience of me — I am making my peace with it. I’m just never going to consistently punctuate bullet points correctly. If you’re wondering if you do it right, and we all wonder, well, it is complicated.

I don’t want to say I’ve fallen into the “What does it matter” camp, but I do understand the allure of the “They’re bullet points, what does it matter” argument. There’s a difference there, and you’d do well to distinguish between the two. If you’re having difficulty in doing so, I have spelled out the argument in the following:

Just kidding.

Saturday afternoon, after my pretty decent little Friday night ride, we went out for another. She said she was up for an easy ride. And this is part of what that looked like. See her? Up the road?

I think this is about as far back as she got from me. Also, I’m not sure where that shade was, but today’s route needed more of it. I was tired and it was hard, not easy, and also warm.

When I did catch back up to her, I did not go way up the road, but rode alongside, trying to grab a good shot for the socials.

Sunday, I saw this. Please read the sign. And please do not remove.

You know, right away, they’ve had problems with that. You wonder how many times they’ve had that problem, that finally motivated the addition to the sign. You wonder how it was removed. Did people push the cart away? Did they tie it to their bumper and drive it away? And what’s the top speed on an oversized cart of this sort, anyway? What’s the lead on your rope or chain? And can it hold up to a sharp right turn?

Alas, a closer look will show you they’ve taken further anti-theft measures.

Or, else, the local prankster is thumbing his nose at the sign one part at a time.

I saw that as we were on our way to a swim. My lovely bride found a 5K swim to do, and I found some shade to sit in. Here she is, looking over the start of the course. Apparently, it was a swim around that little island out there.

Anyway, she did it, emerging pleased with the course, the ability to see the buoys after a mid-day (rather than an early morning) start. That was her longest swim in a couple of years, prior to her big bike crash. So she spent the rest of the evening rubbing her shoulder. Also, we basked at the local creamery.

And then, today I worked. This evening, so pleased was I with my progress, that I went out for a ride in 69-degree temperatures. It was overcast and pleasant and I timed this one just right, getting back right before darkness landed on the road in front of me.

Did you know you can ask Siri for sunset times where you are? That comes in handy for evening rides, as it was for this 23-mile effort.

Now, to work on another lecture …

adventures / cycling / photo / Rowan / Tuesday — Comments Off
12
Aug 25

Catching up on the weekend

It’s a big week of doing work. A big week of working. So this probably will be a light week here, while I’m busy being productive finishing syllabi, making Canvas come to life, pulling together lecture notes and the like. And then there’s the endless doubt and self-recrimination that always comes with taking on, and creating, new classes. Am I doing this right? Is it right? Is it enough?

Is it too much? Will it hold up to scrutiny? Can others also find it interesting? Am I going to meet the class objectives? Will it be well received? Will we want to offer this again?

I’d feel this way about it if someone gave me an immortally successful class that was failproof.

I might feel this way with a class I’d built that was always successful, too. But I have somehow never had a lot of opportunity to test that concept. My chair noted in my contract packet last spring that I’m flexible and amendable to taking on new courses at the last minute. It was kind of him to say, but that’s perhaps not the reputation you want to burnish. Constantly building and learning and mastering new material is a fun challenge, but it can be a challenge — especially if you want to really master it.

This term I am teaching classes seven, eight and nine here. It’s my fifth semester here. There’s a certain amount of psychic energy involved in all of that.

The good news is that I can worry over this a little more. Perhaps, by 2027, I’ll have finally built out all my own courses. My own corner, indeed.

Anyway.

There’s something about my Saturday bike ride I’m trying to get off my chest. This was one of those rides where I wanted to change up from the usual routes. Sometimes the best surprises come from simply asking the question: what’s down that way? So I did some very familiar roads, and then I got to a particular place and turned left instead of the usual right. I was rewarded with some lovely tree-covered roads, a delightful change of pace considering how often we’re riding out in the open air wind here. I was under those trees, in that shade and on those close-in curvy roads long enough that when I got funneled back out into the farmland again it was a bit of a shock. So bright! And wide open!

About the time I adjusted to that again, I realized where I was. I’d come this way before, but in the other direction. Then I saw a sign which told me which town was in each direction and I was clearly oriented. And so I’ve put another few roads together in the mental map.

It was about that time that I saw a little blinking light well ahead of me. Another cyclist! Instead of turning around, I decided I’d go catch that person, which I did about a mile later. Before that, though, I experienced a dangerous pass from a truck hauling a trailer loaded with a Bobcat. The truck would have been bad enough, but it was one of those that felt like you were going to get sucked under the trailer. I suspect you’d need to experience that to really appreciate it.

So when I got up to the other cyclist, I asked him how his day was. I asked him how that truck had been for him. He gave me a grim half-smile, which allowed him long enough to play it cool. “He gave me about a foot.”

And, friends, that’s not OK. Nor should we play like it is.

Since it was Saturday, and I had a long bike ride, and elsewhere my lovely bride set a new PR in the Olympic distance tri, we celebrated with a custard.

At the same time, all of this is still going on outside.

And there’s easily more than a week of that to go. No scurvy will be had in August.

Yesterday i tore myself away from the computer for 90 minutes for a bike ride. I did my 25-mile time trial route and took 36 seconds off my previous best, which was just last week. Making me think that I might be close to topping out. Or that there are still a lot of gains to be made. Anything is possible.

Either way, the corn is coming along nicely. Sometimes you whip out the camera and shoot something at 19 mph without even looking at the composition, and it works out pretty well.

Hopefully the next one will, too.

cycling / photo / Rowan / Wednesday — Comments Off
6
Aug 25

Progress continues to be made

Just another mild, gray August day. Weird in the ways that any day can be when it’s warm, but pleasant, but overcast. Is this cloud cover? Is it Canada on fire? Why do both feel equally ominous when clearly one is worse than the other?

I went to campus today to visit with a colleague. We are discussing a class and she has been most generous with her time and thoughts and we had a nice hour-long chat today. I came away from it with several pages of notes. And now I can complete my preparations for that class. The rest will just be execution.

Pretty soon I’ll have two of these classes under control. I’m not sure if I am behind schedule or right on time. It depends on when the thought occur.

I also went downstairs to the classroom I’ll be in this fall to test the equipment and play some videos. I had seven to try and six worked perfectly. The other will too, in time. And, for that, I have time. That class only needs a few supplemental sets of notes and two extra bits of source material before I can call it done. And that’s what the rest of this week will be about.

But if you ask me right now, it’s that other other class that’ll keep me stressed out between now and December. So far, it is just a few pages of notes. Helpful, structurally useful, but hardly complete. Fortunately, I live with, and share a campus office with, a person who knows all about that class. The material I know. The sequence of the class is what I have to wrap my arms around. And being fully prepared is what next week will be about.

When I got home my lovely bride was off riding her bike and doing a run with the tri club. So I set off for a quick evening ride. Just 15 miles to be moving in the breeze. To feel a few raindrops on my skin. To enjoy those brilliant August skies.

This was our basic “You’ve got an hour to ride” route. It’s a simple out-and-back, and there are a few places you can add a loop or two to make an easy 20 miler if you like. But let me demonstrate to you what I’ve been complaining about, when I’ve lately been complaining about the wind.

When I headed out, NNW, I get to the next little crossroads town and there are two flag poles. Flag poles, hold flags, of course, and flags are useful for telling a story. On the way out, I passed two flags that said “right-to-left crosswind.” And a reasonable one, too, these flags were on full display, and that wasn’t surprising because I had been experiencing for 18 minutes. When I came back reversing my course and on my way home, 12 minutes later, the first flag said “left-to-right crosswind.” The other said “headwind.”

Look how close together these flagpoles are!

I’m hardly an expert in this, but Strava tells me I’ve passed by that spot, at least going one way, 48 times. So I know a little bit. And it doesn’t take a northern European or a meteorologist to look behind that fire station and see that the background doesn’t change between in that short a distance, 269 feet!

But the wind surely can.

We’ve been on an animal cracker kick lately, and I’ve noticed that we somehow purchased the generative AI version of animals. These are the animals from Pandora, better known to the Na’vi, than us.

And if they aren’t “James Cameron Presents: Animal Crackers” just which planet are these mutant animal crackers from?

photo / Rowan / Wednesday — Comments Off
30
Jul 25

That’s a good thing

Someone decided that Zoom meetings should last an hour. That’s probably too long, but you can get a lot of stuff done in an hour. And that’s a good thing. There’s always the pleasant surprise when some of them wrap up even more quickly. On the other hand, sometimes they can run longer. And at 90 minutes today, I tried the first of the “thanks” and “goodbyes.” Later, I was more successful with the “thank yous” and “get outta heres.”

It was a beneficial meeting. I got a page full of notes. Some clarity was brought to plans. We have two separate steps of action to take, and also another new role for me at the office.

If anyone is keeping track, I’m now sitting on five departmental committees, and chairing one of them. I’m also on a university committee. And then I have this new thing, which has to do with social media, which I regard as a hazing prank. There’s also the Center, for which I write. I wrote something today, in fact. And then I am doing new class preps seven, eight and nine this term. I have been here four terms so far.

The social media thing is directing a student employee who is working on departmental socials. This is as hard as you want it to be, and can be as fruitful as you want it to be. The good news is that I have a returning student to help light the way, and it is a person I’ve had in two classes, so we have some familiarity. And we have a meeting set for tomorrow, now. So two meetings, two days in a row, and it’s July.

I’m not even on the clock, technically.

Speaking of social media, I braved Instagram today, trying to search for something from both my memory and the even more vague and forgetful algorithm. Finally got frustrated with the whole enterprise, which led me to this funny, not self-referential haha, but also not self-aware haha.

It doesn’t become self-aware, in my view, until it cleans up its act.

The thing I wrote, which should be published later this week, is a 1,200 word column about baseball. It’s not hard. It’s fun — except for the part where my computer crashed. That was a setback. And that took up most of the rest of the day, a day which was just too hot to do anything else but to sit and sweat. And have meetings.

The herb I mentioned last week? Spearmint. And, friend, we have a lot of it.

Not pictured: the rest of it.

You can use it in teas, salads, ointments and chew on the leaves. (The novelty of that one wears off quickly.) You can preserve it. Why you need to preserve spearmint escapes me. You can’t get rid of the stuff.

I have also, today, settled on the schedule of my Criticism class. I selected two more great readings for it today. One or two more of those and the full outline will be complete, leaving me just the course, the syllabus and the slides to make. So I’m on schedule? Because, like everyone else, I forgot there is a 31st day in July. Yay! More time to work during my time off! (It’s a good thing.)

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21
May 25

Why is it cold?

Another day, another meeting. More departmental stuff, this time over appetizers. It was a meeting scheduled for two hours — so not a retreat, by rule — that somehow wound up going about three-and-a-half hours.

And then, of course, there was being chummy with friends and colleagues. The usual sort of thing where you plot to take over the world. It’s a delightful time with smart people. We’ve built — and I guess I get to add myself to this now — the second largest program on campus. It is also thought to be the largest sports media program in the country. So they’re smart and talented and we have these common goals and it’s all quite delightful.

Except for the part where we were standing out in a parking lot chatting and, on May 21st, I could see my breath. That’s some wild weather.

Anyway, here’s another look at the lovely paenoia out front.

And, nearby, this iris I don’t understand at all. But it is quite striking just now.

Tomorrow, it will be warmer. A whole two degrees warmer. And on Friday, we might see the sun and 60 degrees, which would be a nice thing to experience in the last third of May.