weekend « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

weekend

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8
Sep 13

Catching up

The weekly post that pretends to be a post by sharing extra photographs that you haven’t seen anywhere yet! Brilliant!

This little girl was at the race yesterday. She was waiting for her father to get out of the water and move on to his bike ride. Unfortunately, he couldn’t swim fast enough to keep her attention. When he finally did stride out of the water, though, she was excited. Once she figured out that was dad. Those swim caps are not cool.

Riders coming back in from the bike course. This time I didn’t take pictures of random bikes in the transition area. Instead, just a few people riding:

The moon over Auburn, Ala.

Auburn / football / photo / weekend — Comments Off
7
Sep 13

Arkansas State at Auburn

After the race, driving home, having lunch, cleaning up and then going to the tailgate we were already exhausted.

We tailgate with some lovely people, the kind of folks you’d like to be around, friendly, open and engaging, from all over, all walks of life and all in different industries. The ages range over probably 15 years, but everyone gets along famously and it looks like something out of central casting. If the script called for extravagantly good food in a small tent outside a big stadium.

And today I almost fell asleep in that tent watching a football game on the flat screen. Life is good to you like that, sometimes. We looked at each other and decided we had to say bye to our friends and go inside or they’d all pose for tacky Christmas cards while we had sleeping, unknowing expressions on slack, exhausted faces.

So inside the stadium we went. The eagle flew. The band marched. The speakers blared. Two teams came out and only one would emerge undefeated. Arkansas State, as you might have heard, lost their coach to Auburn last year, so there was an instant storyline. Plus the need for Auburn to see more from their brand new quarterback who had been on campus for about four weeks total and looked a bit nervous in his first game.

Also, people really wanted to see a big play. That was one of those things missing from last weekend’s win. There were some “So close!” moments, but this isn’t horseshoes.

So here’s the big play:

Nick Marshall flicks the ball with ease — because the guy might still be working on synching up with his receivers, but he can throw the ball to Georgia.

Fifty yards down field Sammie Coates runs right under the sailing ball and right away from this hapless defender. Twenty yards of sprinting led to six points.

Auburn controlled the game throughout. The Wolves amassed over 400 yards of offense, but couldn’t score a touchdown. As they say, there were positives and negatives, but the home team won. And here are there fans:

adventures / cycling / photo / weekend — Comments Off
7
Sep 13

The John Tanner Park aquabike

Early morning. Bad night of sleep. Comfortable hotel bed, but I’m lately struggling. Shoulder, other shoulder, neck, old age, perhaps. It’ll get better. But that doesn’t keep me from being tired today. But what a day!

This is at the largest sand beach in Georgia (non-ocean category), at John Tanner Park. We were here for a race earlier in the year, and this time The Yankee was out to show an even better time than she did on this same course in the late spring.

Here she is starting the 600 meter swim. She’s one of the pink dots. If this were video you’d know her from the almost perfect stroke. A lot of people are flailing around in these things.

You can just see some canoes and jet skis out there for the just-in-cases-of life. I only saw them fish out one person today. Everyone else did well, including this girl, who came out of the water third in her division:

And then off through the transition with an incredible time and then out to the 14 mile bike course. I rode this course the last time we were here. It has some hills. And they are different hills than we have at home. (You can have different kinds of hills.) These hills require you to keep working over the top of them, which is sometimes easier said than done. And yet, her she was, blowing away her previous time, sneaking inside the goal that she had set up.

And at the end of it all, there was great success. She finished second, and fairly close to the winner, time-wise. There will be a great rivalry at these events when they start up again next season.

Today the sky was bright and the sun was mild through the morning and everyone had a lovely time. I saw a man and a woman each lay down their bike right by the transition area. An older gentleman wrecked his bike coming back into the park. There is a speed bump and he tried to go over it, instead he twisted his ankle and scrapped up his shoulder and put his bicycle in every condition except the one he liked.

I saw him after the race. He was moving a little gingerly, but in good spirits.

And so now we have more race bling at home.

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1
Sep 13

Catching up

The weekly post that puts extra pictures up instead of anything terribly substantive. So let’s get on with it, then.

For as long as I’ve had this I’ve wondered about the team that counted out the information spaces. How many letters did they need? Surely the design was based on something inherently practical like dashboard width and availability, but I’ve always liked to think it was about making sure the right artists’ names would be properly displayed. So when the words work out just right, like half this band’s name, it makes me smile:

The library will be closed tomorrow for bacon:

Met this gentleman the other day. He gave me directions when I was off on some new road on my bicycle. He gave me his card and said to call him if I needed help. On the front his title was listed as Grandbuddy. On the back was this picture. It isn’t the easiest thing to see in this shot, but all the kids are wearing mustaches, too:

Nothing about this makes any sense, and should be properly disposed of immediately. The guy was at Texas A&M, signing Alabama headshots for an Auburn restaurant and saying Aloha. That’s Dennis Franchione for you:

For reasons that were never made clear, someone brought Ric Flair’s championship belt to the tailgate yesterday. People were wearing it. Strangers were stopping by offering to buy it. It was a legitimately heavy piece of bling:

photo / video / weekend — Comments Off
25
Aug 13

Catching up

The Sunday post with extra pictures!

Allie, disagreeing with something the humans said:

Even slower than the sulfured stuff! We’d describe how, but it wouldn’t take long enough! That’s how slow our product is. It is barely viscuous! A semi-solid, even!

When you read the sign it is obvious: someone got to the clearance wine.

A butterfly we saw at the nursery:

Here’s a video of that butterfly!