adventures


29
Jan 25

The answer is: it’s about 300 yards, but it isn’t linear

You don’t know how far away it is. How high it is. You don’t know what’s on the back side of it. You could eyeball it, but you’re not really good at that. Most people aren’t very good at that, actually. You can train the eye and a long period of experience would help, but most people don’t devote themselves to that, which is understandable.

Then, most of us don’t have the knowledge to hazard a guess about the mass involved, either. How do you estimate the weight of something that’s a bit far off, that you’re not used to assessing, that you probably don’t understand, not really, something you’d perceive differently if it was up close, anyway.

How large do you suppose that cloud is?

Saw that on the way home today. I think we were talking about the news at the time. Anyway.

We went to campus together today. Mostly because we both had to be there, and also because I dropped my car art the mechanic’s for an oil change and some TLC. I had a class today, then we had a faculty meeting. And after that I spent the evening emailing replies to students. Somehow, it made for a full day that started late in the morning.

In class, I had students do a library book project. It’s important to introduce people to the wonders that take place there. So, since it is the beginning of the semester, I sent them out with a simple assignment. Go pick up a book about media in any other part of the world. Your choice. (It’s a class on international media.) Start reading it, bring the book to class and come tell us about it.

Tell us why you picked it up, and what it is about so far. Tell us what you like about it. Sell the rest of us on checking out that book. And tell us why we might not want to check out the book.

In my mind, this assignment served several purposes. It sent students to libraries, either a local library or the campus library. The library experience! Some people don’t have a lot of those. Of course our campus library is currently under renovation, so their process, while effective, does not offer a true library experience just now. It made the students start talking, which is useful because I intend this to be a talkative style of class. It gave them some momentum in the form of easy points. And it introduces everyone to 16 new books.

We’ll do it again at the end of the semester, when I’ll narrow their choices a bit, when the class has crystalized it’s focus. And we’ll all have even more new books to consider. Someone is going to get beach reading out of this exercise, I can tell.

Me, that someone will probably be me. Four or five of the books I heard about today are books I now want to read.

When they’d all talked a bit about their books I shared one other little thing. I’d run across someone in Chicago who found at her library a family archival kit you could check out for free. Gloves, acid free folders, picture holders, tips on how to start preserving your family’s history. That, I thought, was a really thoughtful idea. So I quickly ran through what the local library here offers beyond all of those wonderful books. You can check out a book club in a bag, for you and seven of your friends. They have a seed bank. They have museum passes for some truly terrific places in the area. There are, of course, movies and music, but also board games and yard games. Different branches run different sorts of workshops all of the time. They have a makers space, with 3D printers and laser cutters and more. Libraries, I told my class, are magical places.

No one disagreed.

After class there was a faculty meeting. We, as faculty, met. There is an agenda, a shared Drive, a tight schedule, and our chair, an altogether fellow who has it all together, runs a good schedule. Somehow, how we always get out right on time, which was 4:45 today. Then the drive home, that cloud, the many emails, and now a late night effort to catch up on the day’s news.

Shoulda stuck with the cloud.


24
Jan 25

We saw The We Also Have Eras show

After a day of email and committee meetings and the like, we went across the river for an evening of frivolity.

We met up with my two-godsisters-in-law (just go with it) and one of their husbands for dinner. We found ourselves in a nice Italian steakhouse themed place with the sort of ambient lighting that suggests a fine establishment. The music suggests you are an extra in a brat pack movie. The waiter suggested a high end experience. The big screen beside our table played … Fight Club … for some reason.

Because just before the appetizers get put on the table, you want that scene about stealing medical waste to make soap.

After the dinner-and-a-movie, we went down the street to see a rock ‘n’ roll show. Guster was in town, kicking off the second leg of their “We Also Have Eras” tour. We saw them on the first leg of this tour, last march in Baltimore. Obviously we were going to see them again. We also saw them last May. We’ve seen the boys from Tufts three times in the last 10 months. I can’t wait to see them again.

One of the best things about the “We Also Have Eras” tour is the comically bad acting. (They’re playing at making a stage production of the life of the band. It’s amusing, and awkwardly so. Also, they play up the awkward for more amusement.) But they’re also playing stuff that they’d semi-retired. Released in 1998, this was Guster’s first radio hit, breaking into the Billboard Modern Rock chart and introducing us to their second album. The fabled 99X in Atlanta (which is BACK!?) (apparently it is BACK!) was a big part of their early success. The late Sean Demery was the music director and afternoon drive jock and I tuned in everyday, via RealPlayer, and discovered all kinds of new acts. Between what Demery was doing in Atlanta and what Dave Rossi and Scott Register was doing in Birmingham and what music was doing everywhere, it was a great time to be looking for new stuff.

I digress, but they, and this, were a big part of the soundtrack of 1998.

  

I was glad to see some people remembered to bring ping pong balls.

There was a banner, just off to the right, that someone laid over the mezzanine railing. It figures into 2003’s “Come Down Stairs and Say Hello,” though the lyric is obviously mangled for the moment.

I didn’t see it, but someone said when they actually played that song (because it is a show about eras) the person with the sign dropped in the correct lyrics, Be calm, be brave, it’ll be OK.

And here we are after the show. Shivering in the air for another dose of neon. It was 19 degrees.

We’ll see them again in March. Four shows in just 367 days!


14
Jan 25

A most unremarkable day

More editing today. And then we went to a little birthday gathering for the owner of the local bike shop, a friend of ours was celebrating his birthday in his store with his friends and neighbors. It felt small town and happy and great. Do enough of those sorts of things and you’ll begin to feel like you fit in somewhere.

We talked to the bike shop owner, his wife and adult daughter. We saw a guy we run with and a graphic designer we know and a fellow who chatted us up about mountain bike riding.

Then we came home and I edited more stuff for my lovely bride. This one was a seven-page document. That puts the score for the week at 9 pages I’ve asked her to read for me, and 19 she’s asked me to read for her.

Hey, she made dinner. It evens out.

We learned some great news today. Something we worked on last year has led to something … impactful. I’m not sure if it’s something that’s public or not, yet, but it’s exciting.

Otherwise, worked through the day’s email, did a lot of reading, and spent a scant 38 minutes on the bike.

And that, somehow, has been the thrust of a low key day.

At Christmas a few years ago, my wife and I told our parents that we didn’t want presents, but to spend more time with them. And then the pandemic hit. So finally, a year ago, the stars lined up and we were able to take my mother on a trip. It was a lovely little week in Cozumel. We did some diving, we took it easy, ate some great food, did some more diving. It was a great trip. And a year ago, today, that trip was winding up. This was our last lunch there, before we set off for the airport. This was the view we enjoyed at lunch every day.

  

It was 84 degrees down there when we left that day. It was 32 degrees here today.

You shouldn’t judge one day over another, especially if one was a vacation and the other is most unremarkable, but, weather-wise, one was better than the other.


7
Jan 25

I wrote a lot

The thing I was writing yesterday, that I was trying to decide if it should be serious or silly or both? I chickened out and gave it a normal tone. It’s too real to be flip. And too absurd to be serious. So, here are roughly 1,400 words on gambling in sports. It begins:

Welcome to the wide world of losing it all, where you can experience the thrill of maybe and the agony of near certain defeat.

It’s just a matter of when, and how you lose it. And how easy they made it for you to do so. And, also, how much. And how.

If that doesn’t grip you, the rest is a meaty summation of links I’ve been hanging on to for a while. Now I know you’re hooked. I finally wrote the thing because I needed to clean out my inbox. And it’s important.

One of my colleagues wrote to say that he was going to include it in a class. Hopefully not in a “Don’t do it this way” sense.

I was looking up something not too long after this got published and was amazed at how much more stuff had come out, just today, that should go into the thing. The online gambling world moves so, so fast. One more reason to stay away.

Gambling is a thing I could never do — I will never have money that is that disposable — and thus there are many nuances that I don’t have firsthand experience with, but some of the people wrapped up in this have some heartbreaking tales. And it’s skewing younger and younger, as a habit, and, for some, an affliction. Scary stuff.

The snow has not melted. Mostly because it is extremely cold. We watched a neighbor try to blow snow off his driveway today, but it had frozen in spots, and so he was having a difficult time with it. I think my lovely bride pointed it out in the hopes that I would internalize the lesson. He’s a pretty industrious guy, our neighbor, but he must have been busy yesterday since he didn’t get to this chore until today. And so now he struggled because some of the snow had frozen into place. It was good that we cleared ours yesterday.

And it is even better that there’s no more in the forecast, at least until next weekend perhaps. Like all modern playfully superstitious people I will assume that it is because we have a snow blower at the ready.

In our last house, we had a driveway not much longer than the length of a car. A few shovel strokes and you were set. But, last winter, our first winter here, we returned from a trip and found that this driveway is much longer when you measure it in shovel lengths. We came back to a day-or-two old pile of snow six or eight inches deep. And so, we shoveled. Only it was so cold we just stayed cold as we cleared the drive. That was enough for my lovely bride to go buy a snowblower. A few weeks later snow returned to the forecast, I assembled the snowblower as best I could (it was missing four parts) and waited for the snow. I did not add the oil or gas because, I thought, Let’s just see what happens tomorrow. And when that tomorrow came around it was dry as a bone. That was the last threat of snow last winter. So, the blower went into the storage.

Last weekend I brought it out. And remembering that it needed a little extra assembly, we went to the hardware store. I was missing two bolts that held the handle together, and two that hold down the chute. (And, yes, I had to look that up just now.) If there’s one thing in the world I’d like to not do on a Saturday, it’s go to the same place twice. To prevent that, I decided to take the snowblower to the hardware store. Maybe someone there could help me find the appropriately sized hardware. What I’d been using were random bolts and screws I had, and also some bungee straps. But we had the time and opportunity to do this right, plus there’s this great old guy at the hardware store, the sort of fellow that’s done everything and wants to share his knowledge. And I am a sponge, particularly about snow blowers. This is my first one.

Only, he wasn’t there. But a young guy pitched in to help. In fact, he took over the project. I just stood and nodded and thanked him. Maybe I look like the old guy to him. Maybe this getting old thing will have its advantages when I eventually do get old. Anyway, I bought four bolts and two knobs from him. We picked up some bird seed and left.

And this is where you know this story is about the snow blower, but also, Saturday. We left the hardware store and stopped by the drug store. My lovely bride had to pick up a prescription and I wondered around looking at the advancements in cat toys and sleep care. Then we went home. I pulled the snow blower from the back of the car and set out to add the new pieces.

One bolt was missing.

Now I’m going back to the hardware store for the second time, which is the thing I didn’t want to do twice on a Saturday. Only my car won’t start. It’s been cold. The battery was sluggish. I hadn’t driven it in several days. I tried again. It cranked. I drove to the hardware store, left it running, locked it up, went inside, and found the bolt I needed.

The guy saw me.

“Oh no! Did it not work?”

Just missing a part. He was sure he’d picked it out for me. I was ready to pay. He would have none of it. It’s a galvanized thing and costs about $.40 cents and so I didn’t mind. He surely did pick it out for me, it probably just got lost in transit. But he would have none of it, and he insisted I take the part. And maybe the hardware store, twice, isn’t such a bad thing.

Then I drove over to an auto parts store, to test my battery. The guy came out, shivered through the test, and suggested it was just the cold. That’s what I expected, but I figured I had the time and I could get ahead of this for once. It just needed to charge, he said. Keep it running for a while, he said, let the alternator do its work.

I continued the drive, and filled up the tank, and then slowly drove home the long way. It cranked just fine after that. We’ll try it again tomorrow, as part of another domestic tale that will most surely be worth your time.

Anyway, it did snow yesterday, but not enough to seem to need the snow blower, I thought. Later, I was reading posts and realized that is a value judgment people actually make. Maybe I had that one right.

But the snow blower is here. Ready. Ready to not be used. Because we’re playfully superstitious about this.

Ten years ago, today … and I’m not making this a regular feature, but I mentioned it in passing yesterday and it’s super cold here and this is a nice change of pace … we were in the south Caribbean. Specifically, here:

This is the famous California lighthouse in Aruba. It was built between 1914-1916. Topping out at 100 feet, the stone was quarried on the island. The lighthouse is named after this part of the island, which was named after a 1910 shipwreck. The SS California was traveling from Liverpool to Central America and people on board were having a party when the ship ran aground at midnight. The next day the locals saw the damage and waded out to pick up the vessel’s cargo: merchandise, furniture, clothes, and other provisions. They took it all down to Oranjestad to sell it.

We’d gotten there by bus, but the return bus did not return. We started walking. It’s an island, but it’s a long walk, about eight miles as I recall. Finally, a bus which seemed to have the business model of picking up stranded hitchhikers gave us a lift. And then we rented a cab from a lovely woman who was proud to give us a great tour of her home, full of history, demographic insights, and natural medicinal remedy tips. She took us to her brother’s house so we could see iguanas, because they were always in his yard.

We’d hired her for a 90-minute tour, but she turned into an almost three-hour experience.

Aruba is a desert island. And they have the cacti to prove it.

(Click to embiggen.)

She also took us to these picturesque places, like this inlet by the Bushiribana ruins — a gold smelter used to extract gold from the nearby hills for about a decade in the early part of the 19th century — on the eastern side of the island.

I just found her on Instagram. She’s still showing off her island home with that same incredibly warm, welcoming hospitality. I just uploaded a picture we took with her 10 years ago today and tagged her in it. I hope she’s doing well. That was a great trip, Aruba was just one day of it, and the time we spent riding around with her is a real standout moment in a trip that was, truly, filled with them.

I’m not going to do a reminiscence post about the whole trip or make a regular deal out of 10-years-ago today. (It’s all in the archives here, if you want it.) I only wrote all of that because there’s something like a 57-degree temperature swing between here and Oranjestad.

This evening, after an afternoon of profitable work — emails were answered, a syllabus was formatted, etc. — I went downstairs to give my bike a try. I did a 15-mile sprint session in Neokyo. Three spring segments at about 30 miles per hour (so it is confirmed, I am getting slower), but one PR and … what the heck is that?!?!?

Then I rode another 15-mile segment elsewhere, and passed 95 other people along the way. They didn’t know that we were racing, but that’s more of their concern than mine.

So it was that I got back on the bike, for the third time of the new year, and felt much better about it. Time off is a good thing.

But now I’m behind on the mileage spreadsheet … so time off has drawbacks?

Until tomorrow, when I return with tales of unimaginable exploits and feats, ” rel=”noopener” target=”_blank”>go read that column on gambling.


6
Jan 25

Snow day

It snowed, as forecast.

Not that you’d doubt it, because you’re trusting souls. And I, being forthright with the readers here, have given no reason for you to not believe me. But maybe you haven’t seen snow in a while. Here is a bit of hastily gather evidence from this morning.

  

We enjoyed chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast, as is the snowy tradition.

By last night, we were hoping for snow just to have the pancakes.

It was a pleasant sight, and not nearly as bad as anticipated. The birds are out eating seeds. The roads are more quiet. Much of everything is closed for the day. The power never blinked. My kind of terror dome.

This afternoon, when the snow had finally exhausted itself, we went out to shovel the driveway.

Oh, I prepared the snow blower, but we only had three, maybe four inches of snow. That didn’t seem worth putting oil and gas in the blower, honestly. So I shoveled the sidewalk before my lovely bride realized it, and had gotten started on the driveway when she came outside. So we did that.

Then I looked over at our elderly neighbor’s driveway. It was cleaned. And then I thought, you know, another of our neighbors is out of town right now. Won’t be back until tomorrow, and has two or three new joints. Maybe that person shouldn’t be out there shoveling day old snow after a week of transnational travel. So we shoveled that driveway, too.

I thought it’d be a nice surprise. A nice mystery. But I looked up, and they have a camera covering the driveway, of course. Technology.

Once again in our yard, I did a quick inspection for snow related issues and noted the patio table, with some delight.

For some reason I want waffle fries now, though.

And that’s been today. Tomorrow will be different.

Ten years ago today, we were doing this …

Reading as we lazily sailed to the south Caribbean.

We might have been smarter in 2015 than we are today.