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Auburn

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18
Jun 14

Famed raptor dies at Auburn

Tiger, War Eagle VI, has died, the university has announced.

Tiger never yielded, which is what you want out of an eagle that you ask to fly down a field. So long associated with Auburn, she was thought to be among the oldest golden eagles in captivity.

Tiger started that uniquely Auburn tradition, superlative to almost every other pre-game routine everywhere, at the beginning of the 2000 season.

A friend of mine was a member of the service fraternity who took care of her back then, when she lived in the aviary just off the concourse. You could see them training her at a particular time most any afternoon.

When my family came to visit my freshman year I took my grandmother by to meet Tiger. She had her picture made with her. “That’s just something you don’t get to do every day.”

My grandmother did it again the next year too. Then she said “I bet nobody ever gets to do that!”

The first eagle to fly free in Jordan-Hare Stadium soared through the 2006 installment of the Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry. For her last Iron Bowl, the 2005 “Honk if you sacked Brodie” game, Tiger landed near us on the field. They’d named the field itself after Pat Dye. It was Carl Stephen’s last game as the voice of the stadium. Tiger sacked Brodie twice.

During Tiger’s years of mascot service Auburn amassed a record of 75-27 with the SEC championship in 2004.

A grateful nation also asked her to fly in the 2002 Olympics.

After Nova and Spirit took over the pre-game flights, Tiger kept touring and teaching as part of her role at the Southeast Raptor Center.

She helped educate audiences throughout the region. Her likeness remains a fund raiser. Believed to be one of the oldest golden eagles in captivity, Auburn announced today that she has died at 34.

War Eagle! Fly down the field! Ever to conquer, never to yield!

(A brief version of this post appeared at The War Eagle Reader.)

adventures / Auburn / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
17
Jun 14

Back home, probably normal by next week

We spent the day returning the house to order. When you close up shop for a time it only makes sense that you have things to do to return it to a living domicile. I dismissed the seven ninjas who secured the premises and returned to the joys of the simple things of daily life. Little things like laundry.

We spent most of the day, though, wondering what we’d just done. That is a long, long drive.

Allie handles it like a champ:

We don’t let her into the driver’s seat, of course, but she is great otherwise. She has three places in the back seat to recline and pace. She sits on the passenger, she sits in the passenger floorboard. She spends time under the passenger’s seat. You wouldn’t think there would be enough room, or desirable, but she hangs out there some. And she does laps. She travels better than I do, I think.

Since we had nothing in the kitchen we went out for lunch, for veggies. Our order was wrong. Ahh, to be home. This is one of those places where you order and they give you a ticket with a number and then a girl who is trying really hard brings out your food. This was my ticket:

Thirty-four. To be home again.

When I went to the post office to collect the mail, I saw this:

Ahh, it is great to be home.

adventures / Alaska / Auburn / Friday / friends / iPhone / photo / video — Comments Off
30
May 14

Visiting Denali, Day One

We are visiting here for the weekend, which requires a drive about four hours north of Anchorage.

That means that just over … there … somewhere … is Mt. McKinley, the highest point in the country. Jessica drove us to Denali because Adam is on his way to France for work. Some kind of life, no?

The drive was, of course, beautiful. Lots of verdant scenes dotted by small towns and pure-Alaskan wide spots in the road. We saw some wildlife, but not the bigger animals we were seeking:

Also, there are mountains.

I’m taking a lot of pictures of mountains. I’ve noticed. But I’m not the only one:

Today we took a hike alongside the Savage River, which we saw at an elevation of 2,780 feet. Here’s The Yankee:

Perhaps she was taking pictures of a small thing:

Here’s what the hike looked like:

The water, snow melt that was probably 15 minutes old, was perfectly clear.

The rock formations through this little valley are some of the oldest on the continent. The Outer Range of the Alaskan Range are thought to be somewhere between 600 million to more than a billion years old. That little river is believed to be even older than the mountains.

The rocks feature schists, blended ribbons, of quartzite, mica, slate, marble, greenstone and phyllite.

OK, fine, one more mountain shot.

Oh, last thing. We had an Auburn family reunion today. I put the picture on my War Eagle Moments blog. I also met a nice lady from Birmingham as well. She goes to church, she said, with some of my Samford colleagues.

It is a small world, even in big Alaska.

adventures / Auburn / baseball / cycling / friends / I do not know what is happening. / photo / running / swimming / weekend — Comments Off
17
May 14

A race, a game and a cookout :: A fine, full day

This morning we ran the Ft. Benning Reverse Sprint Triathlon. It is a short course, featuring a 5K run, a 20K ride and a 450-meter swim, in that order. Here we are after the finish:

This is the first triathlon we did last year, making this the first time we can compare times to previous efforts on the same course. I have a few things to be pleased with here.

The run is almost perfectly flat, and there are a lot of soldiers in the race, so they dominate the run, of course. You see them at the start and somewhere on the bike course or in the pool, if at all. So I’m not running with those guys, but I pulled away from a few people in the run. In fact, I didn’t get passed at all. My time was still slow, but I shaved a great deal off of last year’s run.

The bike is a super-fast ride with only two real rollers to think about. I was pleased with the ride last year, and I did it in three-and-a-half minutes less time this year. When you look at the average speed I was on the upper-end of average riders and almost break into the fast rider speeds. Only one guy dropped me here, and I’m not sure how. I looked down at my gears on that first roller, looked up and he was gone. I didn’t see him again until I passed him in the last 100 meters of the pool.

The pool was an improvement for me as well, if only because I was barely swimming last year. Remember, I was still dealing with shoulder problems and couldn’t even pretend to freestyle. I was disappointed in my swim today. The lanes were crowded for the first half of the short swim. Meanwhile, it takes me almost that entire distance to get warm anyway. I also had some energy excuses. (I even came up with a phrase for the latter, the red line of regret. I could have redlined the thing. I should have. Then I wouldn’t have regretted what I left in the pool because I was a little tired and winded. I could have been faster, but I didn’t overcome the red line of regret.)

Overall, my time was 17 minutes faster than last year’s race, which was very slow. This year’s was merely slow. But that’s a fair amount of improvement, with plenty of areas in which to continue to grow.

I’m bummed that I won’t get to do that race again for another year now. I want to measure these performances against another effort.

Today was senior day for Auburn baseball. Here the mother of one player and the grandmother of another shared a big hug and a kiss on the cheek of celebration. They’ve been coming to these games for four years. They’re going to miss each other.

They are sweet ladies.

Here’s another one. This is Morgan Jackson, Bo Jackson’s daughter. We’re buds:

This was the last time we’d see the team on the field this season:

My new Aubie gimmick — no one steal it! — is the Aubie selfie:

Another of Aubie, relaxing with the ladies.

Auburn lost the game, 8-1, bringing their season to a close with a 28-28 record (10-20 SEC). But the friendships are the thing: parents of five different players came to say goodbye to us today and then we had a cookout tonight with the nice group of people with whom we sit. That’s not a bad season at all, captured in one sentence.

After the cookout we picked up the traditional post-triathlon celebratory ice cream:

Auburn / baseball / Friday / links / things to read — Comments Off
16
May 14

Where I recall my economics coursework

We made it to 70 degrees today, late in the afternoon. The weather is perfectly pleasant, the spring we somehow missed this year. Soon it’ll be inexplicably hot and no one will be prepared. Acclimation is an important and understated feature, I’m sure of it. This summer we’re going to prove the point.

More baseball this evening. Another unfortunate defeat, 11-3, for the good guys. “A pair of five-run LSU innings were too much for Auburn’s baseball team to overcome” reads the story. That stings, especially since Auburn was only able to put together nine hits on the night. And yet, somehow, Auburn’s very slim post-season hopes remain alive until tomorrow. LSU, meanwhile, has now scored 48 runs in their last 23 innings of ball. They’re just good everywhere.

Things to read … because reading makes you good everywhere, too.

I talked about this in a panel last month. Consumers losing doctors with new insurance plans:

Some consumers who bought insurance under President Barack Obama’s health care law are experiencing buyer’s remorse after realizing that their longtime doctors aren’t accepting the new plans.

Before the law took effect, experts warned that narrow networks could impact patients’ access to care, especially in cheaper plans. But with insurance cards now in hand, consumers are finding their access limited across all price ranges — sometimes even after they were told their plan would include their current doctor.

There will be a significant amount of second-tier disappointment and backlash as it relates to the ACA. People just don’t think about these sorts of things until they have too. And you only discover what your doctor is carrying when you need to see your doctor. That’s how more people are discovering what this legislation is doing. There’s a difference between “coverage” and care. People are just starting to figure that out. Next the premiums will surge. After that there’ll be some period of government “blaming” insurance companies and companies “blaming” the government. And then the bailouts begin. And people will still be looking for a new doctor. (Period.)

FIFA is easily one of the worst organizations in the world operating in daylight. And I like soccer. But what’s going on in Qatar should change that for a lot of people. ‘Untouchable’ FIFA, president Sepp Blatter need to answer for atrocities in Qatar:

Workers’ rights groups and Amnesty International have been shouting about this for a couple years, but Qatar often dismissed the claims, saying things weren’t that bad and advocacy groups were overplaying things. Still under international media pressure, led by the relentless Guardian newspaper in London, the government hired a law firm to conduct its own investigation.

It concluded this week that there have been 964 deaths of migrant workers from Nepal, India and Bangladesh in 2012 and 2013 alone.

How we can look upon a sport that callous escapes me.

Here’s a unique analysis on the far east. Ties with Russia moving in China’s favor:

The highlight of the two-day state visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin to China on Tuesday is probably going to be the signing of the long-awaited 30-year mega gas deal. The Russian media have been speculating such a strong possibility.

[…]

Essentially, an unbalanced relationship is moving progressively in China’s favor by the day. For Russia, it is going to be an entirely new experience, historically speaking, to settle for the role of a junior partner in relations with China. Putin’s visit will be closely watched for signs of new thinking in Moscow.

Do you buy things? You’ve noticed this. Wholesale prices rise by most in more than a year:

Wholesale prices in the U.S. rose in April by the most in more than a year, reflecting broad-based gains that signal the threat of deflation is ebbing as the economy improves.

The 0.6% increase in the producer price index was the biggest since September 2012 and exceeded all estimates in a Bloomberg survey of 69 economists, figures from the Labor Department showed today. Over the past 12 months, costs climbed 2.1%. Food costs jumped by the most in three years.

When was the last time higher food costs was pitched to you as a good thing? Western droughts figure into that, they aren’t good. Putting more and more corn into ethanol figures into that. Your mileage varies on whether that’s good. It takes fuel to get those foodstuffs from the farm to your house. Have you noticed those prices lately? Up next is cost-push inflation.

Meanwhile, here’s a term you’ll want to learn: velocity of money – the speed at which a dollar moves from one transaction to another, the greater its velocity, and the quicker the economy grows. It has been on the decline for five years. Where will it go next? That’ll be a big indicator in the near and medium future.

Our immediate future holds an early morning and a sprint triathlon. So, until next time, happy racing.