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California / photo / running / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
10
Apr 24

I must be running to something

We started a community-driven 5k series this evening. This required running a 5K. Just right out of the gate, first night of the series, they expect you to run.

Well I’ve got news for them. This was my fifth run of the entire calendar year (and one of those other four was with a suitcase and backpack in tow) and it looked like it. Critically, it felt like it.

The good news is that there are three or four more events in the series during which I can redeem myself and shave a good, solid, 15 seconds off the incredible slow time I offered tonight. But, hey, at least it hurt a lot!

The problem — as ever with running — is that I don’t enjoy it to the degree that I want to do it enough to get back to aging-guy-average. But that’s what it will take to challenge the guy who’s 20 years my junior and making it look easy. This problem isn’t going to solve itself, I suppose.

These sorts of problems often don’t.

It occurs to me that the easiest way to solve that problem is to simply steal that guy’s sneakers.

Here’s another look at the blooms on the lovely purple-leaf sand cherry (prunus x cistena). Enjoy them before they are going.

We really should be engineering a bush or tree that flowers throughout the growing season. Do we have those already? A lab should make them if not. I would have them installed as borders surrounding the property, so that they could be admired from every vantage point.

More signs of life. This is going to go from a pile of sticks to a hydrangea in about the same amount of time it took for me to run 5 kilometers.

Those things really are remarkable. Hard rains and heat and then more hard rains got to them last year. But they just keep growing merrily along. This year we may even prune them on time.

This is our last video from California.

I’m just kidding, there’s still at least a week of nice stuff to work through. But this is the last of the big views.

This is the Bixby Bridge, built in 1932, and the northernmost part of our trip.

Before this bridge was built, Big Sur residents were particularly isolated in the winter. The Old Coast Road a dozen miles away was often closed. This bridge, the longest concrete arch span in the state and, at the time, the highest single-span in the world, came in under budget.

How did they build this bridge in the 1930s? Aliens. But how did those 1930s aliens do it?

Construction took 15 months, beating the two-lane highway, itself an 18-year project, by a half decade. More than 300,000 board feet of Douglas fir timber was used to support the arch during construction. It took two months to construct the falsework alone.

They excavated 4,700 cubic yards of earth and rock and more than 300 tons of reinforcing steel were shipped in by train and narrow one-lane roads. They chose cement because it looked better and was more durable in the elements. That decision required 45,000 sacks of cement, zipped across the river canyon on cable and slings.

The arch ribs are five feet thick at the deck and nine feet thick where they join the towers at their base. The arches are four and one-half feet wide.

In our next videos, we’ll see some more aquatic creatures. It’ll be beautiful, great fun. Come back tomorrow to check it out.

And if anybody complains about their running sneakers disappearing, I have a perfectly sound alibi.

adventures / California / Monday / running / SCUBA / video — Comments Off
18
Mar 24

We’re back! Somehow …

We made it back from California. We were only a little late, but that worked in our favor. But that’s getting ahead of things.

I had two days worth of taco lunch, on Thursday and Friday. Also, on Friday, I did a little two-mile run. That’s two runs this week, and my first two runs of the year. I’ve been spending my time, of course, putting in base miles on the bike. All of which allows me to find ways to get to this old saw: When I see a person riding their bike, I always think, ‘Man, I wish I could ride my bike right now!’ I have never, ever seen anyone run and think, ‘Man, I wish I could go for a run right now!

My run was to the drug store. I should have bought some painkillers for my little run, but the purpose was to get some contact solution. I could have gone to a CVS four-tenths of a mile away, but that’s not a run. Not really.

Anyway, the first run this week was 1.5 miles on a beach boardwalk. This run was downtown, which is a run that, despite the red light, green light, wait for a clear intersection nature of it all, felt like it could go on for forever. Maybe those occasional breaks were why it felt that way.

I saw a bunch of friends, which was delightful. I bumped into a former coworker, who is about to leave the place where we met. She told me how difficult things have become there, which is unfortunate. But she’s excited for what’s next for her, starting next fall, which is exciting. She’s been stretched thin, it appears. Added duties, administrative issues and so on. It all sounds not good. I said, When you get there, and you’re doing just the work you’ve been hired for, the work you want to do, it’ll be a big improvement. And you will have earned that. You’ll just have to be let yourself come to realize that fact. When you do, you’re going to remember how to enjoy all of this again.

Sometimes, I sound like a sage.

The Yankee’s two presentations at the conference were great. Interesting research abounded throughout the conference, none more so than hers. We had a great dinner on Saturday night. On Sunday morning, we were up and out early. To the airport, Jeeves!

This is what happened next. The Los Angeles city government conspired to ruin everything. We’d received an email on Saturday from the car rental people warning us that construction between their lots and the airport was slowing everything down. Arrive early, they suggested. We did. Returning the car was easy. The shuttles to the airport were non-existent, stuck in traffic somewhere around wherever. This, despite an early morning flight, backed up customers at the rental car lot. On the third bus, we were able to board the bus. The driver was awesome, but she was flabbergasted. The construction project had reduced the lanes to the international airport to a minimal level. After a long, long, long time on the bus, we just got off and ran the last mile and change, backpack and suitcase in tow. (So look! Three runs in one week!)

After which, the federal government conspired to make it worse. At Terminal 5 at LAX, there are two TSA agents tasked with the important job of checking driver’s licenses. Yesterday morning, there was a man and a woman on the job. Around two corners — not counting the serpentine crown lanes — I managed to get in the woman’s line. This was good! The man’s scanner was barely working, which meant that every third passenger or so he had to walk over and borrow the woman’s gear. The woman, for her part, left her duty station three times. The time was ticking. And I missed the boarding window.

Fortunately, my flight crew was stuck in the nightmare outside, as well. And that was the only way I made that plane. When the first part of security theater had been satisfied and my ID was finally checked, an older woman came to the front of the line, asking if she could go ahead. Her flight was leaving in eight minutes and so on and so forth. Everyone was in this boat, I was sure of it. The TSA agent said she’d have to ask permission of everyone in front of her to cut the line. I knew my flight crew was still trying to fight their way in, so I invited her to break in line in front of me. With one authoritatively dismissive tone, I convinced the dismissive ID experts that she was with me.

At the take walk-around-in-your-socks portion of the security, the old woman said she’d lived here for 40 years and she’d never seen it like this. She said she, too, ran from the road. She said she was 75 years old.

She had time to tell me all of these things because the scanner image specialist left his duty station twice.

“Safety,” one of them tiredly said over and over, “is my priority.”

Somehow that explains why people kept leaving their posts.

Anyway, we made the plane, but I only made it because the flight crew had trouble getting in.

The flight was fine. Long, but short. Seemed to take an entire day, especially with jumping three time zones. On the other hand, we flew across the entire nation. Lunch was airport food on the plane, chewing quickly, hoping to avoid cooties. Dinner was from a rest stop Shake Shack at 11:30 p.m. But, hey, it’s milkshake season.

It was a great trip. Our only problem over the whole trip, as it turned out, had to do with getting home.

I have a lot of video from the trip, and that’ll be something I dole out over the next however long that takes. But I’ll give you a hint.

Come back, or better yet, subscribe to the RSS feed for many, many more videos from the Pacific Coast.

I shot, I dunno, maybe 15 or 20 videos that will just be Peacefully Enjoy The Moment videos. I suppose that speaks most of all to how pleasant the trip was. But I haven’t counted how many videos I have, so I’ve no idea how many and how long we’ll enjoy from that trip.

For example, I’m still adding video from our New Year’s diving trip. This one just has a lot of fish, and then a barracuda with great camera sense.

I’ve probably got a few more videos from that trip, and then maybe I’ll just pull out some single shots for posterity’s sake. Video runs never really end here, but this post must. I must finish my prep for this evening’s class.

adventures / Alabama / family / Monday / New Jersey / photo / running — Comments Off
1
Jan 24

2023 2024

Happy New Year! Are you over it yet?

Bah humbug to that, I say. This is going to be a great year! For a time. We’re in control of our perceptions about things from there. So, I say to you, have a great ~~2023~~ 2024. Happy new year. Peace on earth, good will toward man. Additionally, here’s to food in your belly, spare items when and where you need them, and minimal downtime of your internet connectivity.

Let’s look at some photos I took last week, which will be the official wrap up of last year, here, on the official keeper of such things.

(kennysmith.org, the official keeper of such things — since 2004.)

I’ve come to think of this as the daily commute of the Canada geese. I don’t know why they’re still around here. Shouldn’t they be flying south? Instead, it’s just to the southwest in the morning, and the northeast each evening. Maybe they’re doing test flights or getting in the base miles.

So there I was in a Mexican restaurant, washing my hands, and I saw this by the door. At first, I was amused by the name of the product. And then, I chuckled at the location of the can. That gave way to appreciating the accidental photo composition, which was quickly replaced by wondering why I was doing all of that before dinner.

I went to the bank, a branch, or possibly just a company itself, that never gets visited. The one teller was surprised to see a person walk through the front door. It was all solid and old and quiet and vacant. But I liked this chair.

Same seat, from the other side, just so we can admire the craftmanship of the upholstery.

The branch manager was a young woman, swift and certain and equally surprised by seeing a human being in her workplace. It struck me as a nice place to spend a part of a career.

I wonder if the chair was comfortable.

In my life, I have traveled some, I have not seen every place and every thing. So this is probably in error, but: I’ve never seen these colors of winter anywhere but in the ancestral haunts. They’re limping through a severe drought just now, and so the clover is a mystery, but the grass is always like this in the winter, and the leaves are always like that this time of year, curled, desiccated and showing no hint of their previous beauty. Here, though, it always just feels like a pause between seasons rather than an end of one. I don’t know why that is.

I saw this house one night. I don’t know the story of that pig, but you get the sense it must be important to someone inside. There’s just the one, and they carefully spotlit the thing.

I believe this one was taken the same night. We were standing in the driveway talking to the neighbors when I looked up.

I haven’t done a lot of running this year because, well, I’d rather ride my bike. Or swim laps. Or do most any other thing I can think of. And so the running has been minimal. I did a two-mile run in the neighborhood, and late in the week we did the dam run. My lovely bride likes the dam run, an out-and-back that we do on most every trip back to the valley. You park in a park’s parking lot, run a mile over a long bridge, then up a hill for three-tenths of a mile, and then work your way along some beautifully maintained TVA trails, until you get to the Wilson Dam. We run halfway across the dam, and then turn back. Here you’re looking back at the bridge, the Singing River Bridge, from the dam.

That route gives you a 10K. I haven’t run a 10K since last December, in Savannah, because see above. With that in mind, given the cool air, the late hour, and the unambitious mist that couldn’t turn itself into a real rain, I told my lovely bride that I would run with her until I couldn’t. And then I would trail along, and double back when she met me again. So there we were, still together at the dam.

And there she went, back across the dam and back toward the car. So I just … kept on running. Caught her, passed her and then we wound up finishing the run together, victorious yawp and all.

That night, I believe it was, my mother suggested Chinese takeout food. We went to pick it up and, there on the counter next to the register, were these two boxes. For some reason, the idea of buying fortune cookies by the batch amused me.

When we got back, I passed out the food and my lovely bride quickly pronounced the little soup chips to be the good ones. I’m not sure how she knew that while they were all still in the baggie, but she was correct. And they were better, and less expensive, than the cookies.

We saw this in the airport on Saturday night in Nashville. Sunday morning, after weather elsewhere delayed our plane, we got back home long after 2 a.m. But we got back. The night before last, then, I made it to bed at about 3:30 a.m. After a week of almost getting on a regular sleep schedule, establishing a routine that would approach a normal person’s sleep schedule, I am immediately back to this.

But the art dangling from the ceiling was cool. We looked at that wondering what it was made of, and how many different sorts of places you could install that. (Not many.)

Last night, we did a thing we weren’t able to do before Christmas. We went to one of the charming nearby small towns and walked among the lights and looked at the store fronts along a half-mile stretch on Main Street. We drive through it from time to time and, daylight or at night, it is perfectly charming. But, finally, we walked and lingered and enjoyed. Lots of antiques, two book stores, three chiropractors, boutique clothing, rental spaces, restaurants and so on. Perfectly charming. It only took us six months to explore it a bit.

This was on one end of our little walk.

I know this fire company traces its roots back to 1704. (The oldest formal unit in the country is found in Boston. It is only 25 years older.) Given the age, and the prominent placement, there’s a great story behind that bell you can see upstairs. I’ll have to ask around about that.

Tomorrow, I’ll show you what was on the other end of our walk. And, probably, talk about riding bikes and whatever else comes up.

Happy 2024!

adventures / memories / photo / running / Thursday — Comments Off
23
Nov 23

Happy Thanksgiving

The in-laws are here. They came down last night and will spend a few days. Today, my uncle-in-law also came in. Later, there’s turkey to eat. So this is, notably, brief.

We went out for the turkey trot this morning. We were huffing for the stuffing. Hopping potholes for casseroles. Wheezed for the peas. Hying for the pie. And so on.

Look! I’ve almost got anime hair!

It’s not that I’m getting slower, it’s that I don’t run much, and never run up that many hills.

We’re also marking the fifth anniversary of the time my father-in-law smack talked his way into a Trivial Pursuit contest that he had no chance of winning. The pain was so bad he accused us of memorizing the cards. And though memorizing Trivial Pursuit cards sounds like something I’d do, I have a closet full of Trivial Pursuit games.

Near the end of the game, we got this stupid question, the orange one at the bottom.

I said, “It just so happens that I live with one of the nation’s foremost Olympic scholars. Take it away, Dr. Smith,” and I walked out of the room. And, of course, she drilled it.

For some reason, I also knew the answer to that question. (It was two.)

So this also marks the fifth anniversary of the day my father-in-law swore off Trivial Pursuit.

Now, having caught my breath from this morning’s run, it is time to think of all of the many things for which I am thankful. And to carve the turkey. This is my job for reasons that have never been discussed, and I take it seriously. After five or siz more birds, I might be pretty good at it.

cycling / Delaware / Monday / photo / running — Comments Off
6
Nov 23

And it all made for a full weekend

The cats, what with the end of Catober last week, miss all of the extra attention. They never get any attention, of course. And so Catober is a big time of year. There’s the big comedown after that which, I think, is how we started doing the weekly check ins with the kitties. No matter the origin, this is the most popular weekly feature on the site.

Poseidon, so desperate for attention he resorts to gymnastics. A pole sault, if you will.

The etymology of sault is fun. It hasn’t been used with any frequency in almost 200 years. There should be a site that brings this language back to life, but it is not this site.

From colonial French sault, 17c. alternative spelling of saut “to leap,” from Latin saltus, from salire “to leap” (see salient (adj.)). Middle English sault, borrowed from Old French, was “a leap; an assault.”

Phoebe, never a big Francophile, is unimpressed by his catlike prowess. She can do tricks too, you can almost hear her sigh, but she doesn’t have to.

We think she’s more Italiano. When we first got these two, he’d respond to a strong Nein!. So we decided he was a katze. Phoebe did not care for the German, but we were able to get her attention by calling her a gatto, so we decided she’s Italian. They’re siblings. You figure it out.

On Friday, when I was preparing for my weekly visit to the inconvenience center, I found this red maple on my car.

We don’t have a red maple tree in our yard. Not one that I’ve found, anyway. There is a Crimson King maple, which stands out throughout the growing season with rich, dark leaves. But it diminished with no flourish, and then the tree sneezed one day last week and now half the tree is bare.

Tomorrow, we’ll discuss our trees a bit more.

Here is a leaf that is mine. I tracked this inside the house today. It’s from a plant, a golden leaved pineapple sage. I have to bring it inside … just as soon as I unscrew the planter from the railing.

That was an innovation by the previous owners. I now have to dig into this planter and remove a wood screw and wonder why, in good spirits and cheer, they decided to do that.

It was a busy weekend, athletically speaking. If, that is, you’ll allow for the most generous use of the term “athletically” possible under the constraints of our language. I had a 25-mile ride on Friday. Saturday, we enjoyed the mild weather and had a 30-mile ride. And there’s me, riding out under the canopy of color, over a carpet of other colors.

Maybe the orange gilet did not provide enough contrast in that particular moment.

We passed this guy late into the ride, just before darkness fell upon us. Think of it, he’s out working in his fields on a Saturday night. What else could he be doing? But that’s the job.

I wonder if it’s his field or if he works for the company that owns the equipment and they’ve been contracted to do the work. Who knows how that part works around here, or if it makes much of a difference. It’s getting late into a weekend day and he’s still putting in the hours. The crops that grow in that field might feed you or me, though, or his own family directly. And so he’s putting in the after-season work. I like to give that person a little nod of appreciation as I pass by.

A different version of that photo will eventually become a footer on the site.

We did a 5K Sunday. Here’s the shirt from the fund raiser.

Nine soldiers returning from World War 2 service started that place in 1946. It seems they were underwhelmed by the local VFW and American Legion options. They bounced around a few locations for a while, and interest waned, until they got their own spot in 1953. As the years marched on, they re-branded from Delaware Veterans of WWII Inc., to Delaware Veterans Post #1. Non-veterans have been able to join since the 1970s.

And they’ve been doing this little event for 25 years now. I told our group I only do runs on arbitrarily important anniversaries. Good cause, good year? I’ll run.

It’s a marginally hilly course, for a 5K, with the added benefit of my god-sister-in-law’s home. Their kids were out cheering us on, cowbells and all. You have to get in your best stride when you’re running in front of the little ones, just in case they know good form and decide to start judging you. It was good fun.

After that, we had a Sunday evening ride, a quick 11 miles of wondering why the sun was disappearing so rapidly.

Just clearing the legs out, riding easy at 18 miles per hour.

And then on today’s bike adventure, I put in 25 miles just to keep things moving. Here’s a colorful tree in our neighborhood. This one is, thankfully, not our responsibility, but we are enjoying the show at the moment.

And, not too far away, on the other end of the ride, a colorful show of a different sort.

Before I’d gotten far beyond that big orange maple I realized that this was going to be a ride for miles, not for speed. My legs felt so heavy and tired. And then I managed to produce one of my fastest half hours ever. I had a 23.18 mile per hour split in there. And then, when I turned and the wind shifted, everything returned to normal. Just like riding a bike.