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22
Jun 26

The memory, the bike, the bush, the lightning

We celebrated 17 years of marriage this weekend. I put on the same shirt I wear every year. Her mother gifted it to me years ago. It’s the shirt I was wearing when we got engaged. It was the shirt I wore the night I took this photo, the night before our wedding.

We hired a friend who is a photographer to shoot the big day, and she did a great job with our engagement photos, in a nor’easter, and on our wedding day, just about the hottest place in the country on the hottest weekend of the year. There is no such thing as summer wool.

I made reservations at a local farm-to-table sort of place. There were two whole tables occupied, and by the end of the evening we pretty much had the place to ourselves. It was a nice, quiet dinner to mark the passage of time. Too much time. And not enough. All of it moving so fast. None of it slowing down, which would be the polite thing for time to do.

Seventeen years is really 21. I’ve been counting the days, each one a blessing, but ya know, maybe I should have been counting the laughs and the memories, both of which mean more with every passing … day.

Got back on the bike this weekend. It’s only been, I dunno, a month, which explains a lot. But I had a perfect afternoon for it. The water was low, the clouds high, the breeze in my face, and so on.

It’s good to see that the local farming has continued neatly since I’ve been out this way. Whoever is working this field hasn’t been working in my yard!

Which would be a silly thing to do, but a thing I would appreciate.

Today we went out for a ride together and I get well and thoroughly dropped. The nice thing about it was that this was an out-and-back route, so when she turned around, because she was ahead of me, and came back the other direction it didn’t seem like I was that far behind after all.

But after I turned around, chased back on, caught up, and got dropped again, I was Dropped. And then the clouds rolled in. At least they were in front of me, which means I could monitor my progress, or judge when I was going to get wet.

It was a race, of course. Sometimes you’re determined to win, and sometimes you’re defeated by meteorology.

But, sometimes, it is a draw. I was standing in the driveway, putting things away, when it started to rain.

We have an oversized bush by the garage, and it’ll get trimmed back soon, but the wind and the weight of the rain showed that some of them needed to be cut back sooner. They were in the way of progress, or parking the car. So I grabbed the old hedge shears, and that’s when the lightning and thunder moved in.

I only needed to cut two branches, no, that one, too. Three branches. I only needed to cut three branches. Lightning, rumbling, rolling in from the north. This is how I stayed safe. I waited in between lightning bolts. Then I leaned out, one foot in the drive, one foot in the garage, snip, and then duck back in the garage. Three times, thinking, with a grin, Out here, on the edge of the driveway, si where I’ll do something foolish and hurt myself one day.

But not today. Or tomorrow. I’ll find something to do on the other side of the house tomorrow.

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18
May 26

Suddenly summer

Grades submitted. Held a Zoom meeting this morning for a student employee. We talked for about 35 minutes, which was four more than I wanted to keep the student on the call. That was my fault. It usually is. Now I’m trying to get my email under control. Inbox Zero isn’t happening anytime soon, but I’m hoping to get to Inbox 30 or 40 before this time next week.

It’s a whole thing.

Anyway, one more meeting this week, a long one, on Wednesday. And then on to other things.

We went out for a ride, Saturday. This was the 25 mile time trial. I’d like to think I was going fast on this road. I never go fast on this road.

That’s seven miles and change into the route. By then we’d gone … lessee … roughly all four of the cardinal directions and we’re getting buffeted my breezes and gusts from three of them. About eight miles from there we finally got a tailwind, and for a good long while it felt like a real bike ride, like I knew what I was doing, like I could make the bike, and maybe the road, do anything I wanted. I bunny hopped both rails of a railroad crossing without trying hard. The wheels were humming in a most satisfying way. I was hitting false flats and was still able to accelerate. It was an immensely satisfying feeling, one of the reasons you go out and do this, a feeling I’d have more if I was in just a bit better shape.

And then, suddenly, it was all gone. I didn’t even notice the moment it changed, for it wasn’t even a moment, it was just a different thing. Well, then, as I turned back into the headwind, I resigned to trying to at least pedal smoothly over the last few miles. My lovely bride was up the road and gone. Fueling gone wrong once again, I figured. At mile 22 or so, I saw her taillight ahead of me. About two miles later, I caught up to her, which shouldn’t be happening, considering. She’d bonked. Fueling gone wrong.

It was her second intense workout of the day.

Later in the day, the sky turned into these odd colors.

Then, today, I went out for a ride at around 11 a.m., because it was still mild. Mild meaning mid-80s. One of my apps blipped and thinks that, for a quarter of a mile, I was doing 230+ mph. I was not riding 230+ mph. I did, later, record a third of a mile at 27 miles per hour, which I haven’t done in a while, and, sometime after that, a 20 mph mile, notable only because much of it was up a slight incline and that’s where I decided it was too hot to keep going. Eventually, you’ll get too hot and mess up somehow.

It was 92 degrees when I got back to the house. Calling it was probably the right idea.

We’re going to have three days of 90s in the row here in the middle of May. The seasons mean nothing anymore.

I’m still living in the happy memories of our wonderful Irish vacation and sharing extra videos that we didn’t get to at the time. Enjoy. I still am!

This is the last week of this feature. (For now, anyway.) We are going to spend it all looking at the majesty of Malin Head, the northernmost part of Ireland.

cycling / Ireland / memories / photo / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
12
May 26

I can see the miles ahead

My last finals and projects are rolling in now. They’re all due by 11:59 tonight. The original deadline was that same time last night, but after the Canvas outage last week I pushed it a day. It seemed the polite thing to do, and doesn’t crimp my schedule. All of my final grades must be submitted by the 18th. I started the day with 96 more things to assess and the final grades to tally and submit. The last part goes quickly. And I began chipping away at the final projects today.

And they go fairly quickly. This is work my online class does. They’ve been studying social media platforms all semester and in last six weeks or so we’ve been on a four-part journey of examining a particular platform of their choice. (Most these days are choosing TikTok and Instagram. It’s all about personal trends.) The first stage is simple, pick your platform, write an introduction and rationale, which get modified as the project moves along. The second stage is that they have to start coding the platform’s tools according to one of the key readings of the semester. They begin analyzing their data and putting that into the outline form of this project. By the third stage, having finished their coding, they are essentially the rough draft of a platform audit. All of these get a lot of feedback from me, which I am happy to provide and hope they find useful. It does take time. But for this, the fourth assignment in the project, they are submitting their final, finished audit. No feedback necessary. I just get to read the thing (some of which I’ve now read two or three times) and make sure everything is present and where it needs to be.

And also their final, which is an essay. So 48 of both of those, 96 things. But I spent much of today working through the audits that came in before the deadline. I’ll spend tomorrow and Thursday and maybe Friday, finishing this off.

To celebrate, as I often do, I went for a bike ride. This was the ride where I got a couple of three-minute miles, which I don’t do that often anymore. This was the ride where I decided to start adding on a few extra miles. I was going to do 25, but I was riding well. The weather was lovely …

… and I told myself that this was the ride where I would start building up some real mileage. This is what I tell myself every year. For 16 years now I’ve told myself this. And almost every time something — a trip, responsibilities, illness, motivation, extreme heat, life — gets in the way of that. I just want to be fit enough to go out and ride to some place for five or six hours, see the sun like this on the way back in …

… and have enough energy to want to do it again the next day.

The other thing I want to do is to find a nice shade-filled park a couple, ride there, carry a book, sit under a tree and read a while, and then come back home. There are a few parks around town here, but that’s more like a thing you’d do to break up an afternoon — if you were the break-up-an-afternoon sort (I am not) — not take on as a challenge.

One of these would be easier than the others. I just need to figure out how to not sweat through a book while I ride.

A third thing I’d like to do — and I don’t want to become a bikepacker, because I’m too old to ride long distances, sleep on the ground, and ride long distances the next day — is to get a hammock and ride long distances, string up my hammock …

Actually, no, that seems like a lot of work.

Just long distances, and then other rides to faraway parks. And daily 30-milers like today’s ride, which was a lot of fun.

I’m still living in the happy memories of our wonderful Irish vacation. So, I’m sharing extra videos that we didn’t get to at the time. It was a great vacation. I have a lot of footage. This will go on for some time. Enjoy it with me, won’t you?

This beautiful little spot is Ros Guill.

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11
May 26

Line and pole rod

How was your weekend? Here it was … variable. Coolish on Saturday morning. It felt almost damp. (That’s a meteorological observation where I’m from, and it differs from humidity.) The mercury struggled to get to 67 degrees. The temperature peaked before noon and started falling away soon after. Sunday it was 81 degrees and it finally rained.

Recently a read a paper from a colleague who is an atmospheric scientist. She and her co-authors were discussing how highly variable springs are just the new normal around here now. Climate change in daily life. It’s hurting the crops. Because the agricultural sector needs more challenges right now.

Today we topped out at 69 degrees. Tomorrow we’ll have variable skies and be in the mid-70s. One of these things is late spring. They can’t all be late spring.

Saturday morning we went out for a ride with the neighbors. The guy up front lives just behind us. The woman closest to me in the photo lives about a mile away. There’s at least two other cyclists in between these houses. We could start a little roadie gang.

We should start a little roadie gang. Only, I, being neither fast enough or talented enough, am not the biggest fan of group rides. Three or four people is probably my comfort limit, and I like them to be spread a bit, rather like that photo. Some people are crowders, should bumping, handlebar rubbing riders, and I’m too frail for all of that.

Today, I woke up, sent a reminder note to my online class about their adjusted deadlines, and then went out to the creek. The purpose was to pretend to do a little fly fishing. But, really, I could just sit next to that, walk along the bank, or put on those waders and just go out there and stand in it for the better part of a day and be happy. And hey, that’s what i did.

I caught one good fish, a beautiful 16-inch rainbow trout. Slipped him right back in the water, and he went and told all of his friends to take a good look before trying to eat anything else. His messaging worked. I got a lot of nibbles, a few on the line, but couldn’t bring anything else in the rest of the day.

Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter at all. I’d probably rather not hook them if I’m not going to keep them, and these are catch-and-release. Some people like the gear — and there sure is a lot of it in fly fishing. Some people like the puzzle and the challenge. I could stand right here and listen to the woods and unwind until my toes grow cold from the water and I’ll get everything I need out of the experience.

It’s funny. I’ve been on this little body of water twice and our host is keen to coach me up. I think he thinks I’ve never been fishing before or something. I have now been fly fishing three times. Twice with him. But I grew up with a Zebco and spent a lot of time with bobbers and worms and liver bait and bass lures. Even then, I enjoyed the peacefulness and the company, most of all. But my guy here on this river — they call it a river, I’m not sure it rises to that level — was taking it personal that I wasn’t getting more fish. He’s a big technique guy. He feels the real thrill of bringing them in. I think he’s trying to appreciate every little part of his sport. And he’s a pretty good teacher, even if he has a lousy student. He’s got my casting and line management techniques down to an almost manageable level. There’s a real satisfaction in placing it where you want it to go, as opposed to in a tree. It’s satisfying when the cast feels just right. Just being under those trees is more so.

This is part of the view at Island Roy.

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7
May 26

Score one for edtech

Today was finals day. Two classes had their finals due this afternoon. These were done remotely and submitted online. To celebrate we, of course, went for a bike ride. It was a fast 20-miler, and then I got right back to it. I started the day knowing I had 144 papers to read, and knowing that 48 of those were going to come in today.

And for that hour, just a bit more than an hour, my empty mind drifted over to the questions I’d asked on the two finals. One class had four simple questions. Two hypotheticals I was asking the students to work through, and then two questions that were a tiny bit subjective. In the other class I had the students watch a program and answer a bunch of questions about it. You can run through all of those questions quite a few times while you’re not thinking about anything else.

I hope I caught all of my typos. I hope the students did well. I hope it was all clever enough to let them show what they’ve learned, how they’re thinking, what they’ve possibly gained from their time in my class.

Not too long after we got in, Canvas, the platform the university uses for online classwork, crashed and died.

One class had finished their allotted final window. The other was mid-final. About four people hadn’t submitted their final yet. Well.

Also, my online students have their submissions due on Monday. Who knows how long Canvas will be down? And some of those students manage very regimented schedules. Well.

There was nothing more from the university than that. During finals. Well.

(Update: It came back overnight, in fact, not too long after I shared my contingency plans with all of those students with work still outstanding. Problem solved. Can kicked down the road. Everything is now due next Tuesday.)

But I can start grading that one final right now. (Mini-update: They’re doing well.)

That is the view at Ballymastocker Strand.