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adventures

At least I didn’t pick the em dash

There are days with things, and there are days that are full. And the fullness of our days defines us, creates the meaning of our time.

Or at least punctuates it.

And we get to choose the punctuation! Today, I chose the ellipses.

We had two meetings on campus today. One committee-type meeting at mid-day, where a committee was loosely formed to do committee things. In the afternoon we had a department meeting, where faculty came together to discuss faculty things. In between those two meetings we had lunch. We re-arranged the office.

I returned to grading things. Then I wrote a proposal for one of our running projects. It’ll get rolled into two or three things, hopefully.

Also I wrote some syllabus language and saw some colleagues.

After the meeting, it was back home, where I worked on another project. And then returned to the grading. I’m getting that all done tonight, even if I have to do it in the morning. You’ll understand if this wraps quickly, I’ve already written a few thousand words today, some of them were pretty good.

I did not use the first ellipses.

adventures / cycling / Monday / photo / video — Comments Off
14
Oct 24

Wasn’t that a beautiful weekend?

We only had the one night of aurora. That was Thursday. Friday night, the sky looked like it always does.

Which isn’t a knock on the night sky, but everyone would have enjoyed another light show.

The rest of these are just photos, and a video, from weekend bike rides, but don’t think of this as yet another bike riding post … well, I suppose you have to for this video. It was a road worth riding down slowly.

Think of it, instead, as a beautiful Saturday afternoon I got to enjoy. Watching you watering your sod …

Or letting a field sit for the weekend …

Or cutting your hay for winter …

Or imagine you sitting inside, wondering if you’d brought all of your equipment in, or left something out somewhere …

I asked my lovely bride if she’d like to go for a ride, just something easy to get outside for a while to enjoy another beautiful autumn day. She considered it, and agreed to an easy ride. I knew I was in trouble when I saw the steely look in her pretty eyes when she settled onto her aerobars.

It took a Strava segment PR and a second-best time on another near the end of the ride to stay in front of her.

To be fair, it was her THIRD workout of the day.

adventures / cycling / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
10
Oct 24

Up in the sky!

If you’re here for the day’s bike ride, and evidence of Halloween, that’s below. But, first, a first.

My first aurora borealis. Solar radiation and the magnetosphere in the night sky made for a lovely light show. Electrons collide with atoms and molecules of the upper atmosphere and isn’t this lovely? Ten photos below, poetry in essay form is not required.

I got in a late 15-mile ride today, a route I’ve come to think of as the neighborhood route. In truth, it includes at least three neighborhoods and several miles of farmland besides.

People around here love Halloween decorations. And, apparently, Halloween isn’t something you can do a little. To welcome the ghouls and goblins, one must go all out.

Believe me when I say, this is one of the more subdued displays.

I bet they give great candy though. How could they not?

adventures / photo / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
9
Oct 24

“No flag, no country; you can’t have one!’

More grading today. But I’ve made good progress on this batch of grading and feedback-ing. So many words to write, and metaphors upon which to expand.

I stopped for two things. First, a quick 25-mile ride this afternoon. Nothing like 90 breathless to reinvigorate you to come back, sit down, and sound knowledgeable about the topics at hand.

The other thing I did today was actually something that we did tonight. We went across the river.

Eddie Izzard was in town, touring on a 35-year career, playing some of the hits. We watched a lot of Izzard in the oughts and early teens, so it was fun to see some of the old bits.

This classic bit made the cut tonight.

We heard the Romans, Carthaginians and elephants story. The woman sitting next to me repeated parts of it word for word, which was cute.

And Izzard closed with the Death Star canteen, of course.

It was a fun show. We had front row seats on the mezzanine. Not bad for spur-of-the-moment tickets.

And now back to grading!

adventures / cycling / Monday / photo / video — Comments Off
7
Oct 24

An arbitrary milestone

On Saturday, a beautiful day for a bike ride, I crossed 17,000 miles with this machine. Raced and ridden in six or eight states, I’ve added new derailleurs because of rust, replaced a snapped saddle last fall and swapped out a handful of chains over the years.

It makes all of the right noises, this bike, especially the silent ones. It goes slow uphill, except for those times it’s gone fast. It will go fast downhill if I ask it to. It goes where I steer it, and has always brought me back again. And somewhere along the way it became a breathless place to catch my breath.

Like I said, it was a beautiful day for it. Jump cuts incoming!

Altogether, I got in an easy 82 miles this weekend, including another beautiful sunny afternoon ride with my lovely bride, where we passed the farmers in their late season work.

She was ahead of me much of the time, but then I caught her, and then I attacked on a road near the end, just because the timing was right and I wanted to try to set a new Strava segment PR (which I did). And when I got home, I looked at the times and realized one of our friends holds the record on that segment, one second faster than me. Back to the drawing board.

On the final stretch before we got there, though, she attacked me, and it was well timed.

It was a beautiful weekend of riding.

And, now, back to grading.

Until tomorrow, then, the latest installments of Catober? Poe had the prime spot today, Phoebe will be back to show off her cuteness tomorrow. See them all here.