cycling

Alabama / Auburn / cycling / football / links / Thursday — Comments Off on Speaking of …
14
Aug 14

Speaking of …

On my bike ride today, an Alabama fan honked at me three times, because Roll Tide, I guess. But, since it was an Alabama fan, I was really honked at 15 times, wasn’t I?

The SEC Network launched today, with much giddiness and silliness, and football season is around the corner. There will always be Bama jokes, it seems.

Also, on one portion of my ride — which involves a downhill, a turn lane and then an explosion onto a beautiful, freshly paved road — a car pull right out in front of me. The driver panicked. He stopped, filling the entire lane. So he’s perpendicular to traffic, me, because he is no longer making his left turn.

Bikes are agile, but they don’t exactly stop on a dime. The emergency stop, as it were, is to burn up your brakes, slip off the saddle and put your body behind the seat tube. This shifts the mass, and slows things down, but doesn’t mean you’re stopped. Also, I find, it is hard to unclip when you’re behind the seat, so there’s not really a graceful way to put your foot down and burn up your shoes.

Instead of turning, as I’m trying to stop, he’s waving me through, to pass across the front of his car, into the oncoming lane.

This would have been so much better if he’d just looked to his left before he tried to turn to his left.

Later, on the TT segment, I tried to best yesterday’s time. I fairly well buried myself, dropped two other cyclists and improved my time from 9:34 to 9:03. That moved me from seventh to fourth for the year. The leader sits on top with a time of 8:35. I’m not sure if I can find 28 more seconds to shave off that time. Something to shoot for, I guess.

Speaking of cycling, here’s one last incredible Robin Williams story. Famed designer Dario Pegoretti, fighting lymphoma, met Robin Williams at a convention:

“He talked to me about my situation, and gave me a lot of strength,” Dario Pegoretti said from Italy on Wednesday.

At dinner, the virtuoso comic actor and the virtuoso frame-builder talked about bikes, but they also talked about things besides bikes. Williams spoke a little Italian, and his Italian was pretty good. He recalled his visits to Rome, about once meeting Fellini. To everyone’s delight, by the end of the night, he also did an extended Pegoretti impression for the table.

“I was just rolling on the floor,” said one of the dinner guests, Nelson Frazier, a rep for Gita. “It’s the only time I’ve seen Dario pretty much speechless.”

“It was really a beautiful night,” Pegoretti said. “I have so many beautiful memories.”

And speaking of the SEC Network:

Consider the SEC Network as indirect pay-per-view for college football games involving your favorite team.

[…]

According to Sports Business Journal, the network will cost cable companies $1.40 per subscriber in states inside the SEC footprint. If you live outside that footprint, the cost is only 25 cents per subscriber.

If the SBJ report is correct, then the SEC Network could be the third most expensive channel for local viewers. Figures from the Wall Street Journal show ESPN ($6.04) and TNT ($1.48) are the only ones that would charge more.

Right now? No one cares. Football.

cycling / family / food / history / iPhone / journalism / links / photo / things to read / Twitter / Wednesday — 1 Comment
13
Aug 14

A 60 year-old ad, a new sign, a race and food

Last night’s adventures in insomnia included this guy.

Jim

That’s my great-great grandfather, Jim. He was born in the winter of 1871, a year when the crops didn’t come in and the cotton caterpillars ravaged what was there. Jim married Sarah in 1904 and and they lived on a farm that her grandfather bought in 1854. They had 11 children. He died in 1953, his wife in 1970. So while I don’t know them, I did meet one of their kid’s, my great-grandfather. But I don’t remember him. My grandmother remembers her grandparents well, but I don’t know much more than what you find in this paragraph beyond where he’s buried. I do like that bicycle, though. So I found some old newspapers online and I’m looking for mentions, but turn up nothing.

I did find this, though:

In 1953 the church ads told you what the evening’s sermon was going to be about. This one wasn’t about Old Hickory Bourbon, or temperance. The topic was “A Methodist sermon by a Baptist preacher.” A different church had an ad in the next day’s paper, the preacher had promised to answer the question of a generation, “Should a woman wear a hat to church?”

The pressing stuff of their time.

I guess that branch of my family didn’t believe in obituaries, or care for the local paper. I don’t find a mention of him there. Otherwise, he must have been the quiet type. You don’t get in the paper until you do something wrong or something bad happens. Maybe that’s a good sign for the couple.

On my bike ride today, something of a casual ride around the greater neighborhood just to get in a few miles, I passed one of the better church signs I know. They’ve got personality here, as noted by most any previous message, one of the best in recent memory suggesting that you bring your sin and “drop it like it’s hot.”

This week’s note:

sign

It is a quiet little church, a lovely little place:

church

I also learned during this ride that I was on one of the local segments that the cycling apps chart as races. Without knowing it, I currently have the eighth fastest time on it for the year. I’ll have to try it again tomorrow to see if I can go any faster.

For dinner, we grilled pork chops and had beans which we discovered a few weeks ago:

dinner

I said to the lady that made them, a family friend, “You must give me your recipe or — ” which was the moment a look of embarrassment crossed her face. ” — or tell me what brand they are, because they are just about the best beans I’ve ever had.”

And they were. And they are. Also, they are from a can — Margaret Holmes. We discovered we didn’t necessarily need the lard — which is fine. The lady that made them, she’s a retired school teacher. She told me that her father, a man I knew a bit, was so old-fashioned the type that would not allow anything in his home that involved shortcuts. In this case that meant no canned foods. He made an exception for Margaret Holmes.

That’s an endorsement.

Things to read … because there’s probably something worth endorsing in here somewhere.

First, the journalism stuff:

How digital retailing could roil local media

Solving the Journalism Riddle — Somehow

Radio Disney Moving Off Air to Digital

If Disney is making that move …

Closer to home, 108 immigrant children relocated to Alabama in last 3 weeks:

Included among the children are those from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador who have crossed into the U.S. as part of a massive wave of immigration that has set off a humanitarian crisis and political firestorm.

The data does not include information on where the children were placed or whether they are residing with family members or foster care. The children will remain with the sponsors until a judge orders they be deported; until they turn 18 and are transferred back to DHS; or they are given permission to stay by immigrantion courts.

Finally, Ferguson:

cycling / iPhone / journalism / links / photo / things to read / Tuesday — Comments Off on Larry Langford will miss the World Games
12
Aug 14

Larry Langford will miss the World Games

I’m in the slow and frustrating process of trying to add a few more miles back into my typical bike ride. I probably complain about this all of the time: this or that doesn’t allow for as much time in the saddle as I’d like.

Life is really hard, right?

This spring and summer my time has been split between triathlon training and travel and other worthwhile pursuits, but that takes its own sort of toll on a guy with already shaky form. So it was that I set out today to add a few more miles than the small amount of miles I’ve been doing recently. And I cracked nicely, right about here:

road

A friend, and fellow rider, sent me this article and suggested I not worry about it so much.

“I would distinguish ‘easy’ from ‘slow.’ Easy doesn’t mean always going slow, but going at a pace that’s comfortable.”

Indeed, what I consider slow is twice as fast as my girlfriend would go—whereas Fabian Cancellara, out for a casual spin, would drop me as if I were doing a track stand. Novices and unenlightened amateurs see good riders going fast without realizing they might also be going easy—hence the perception that you must ride strenuously to be good.

“Quality training is when you go fast compared to the effort you feel like you’re making,” Saifer explained to me. “If it feels mellow but you’re actually going pretty quick, that’s great. But if you start out hammering, and then you find you’re tired for the rest of the ride, it’s not benefiting you. Those are junk miles.”

Junk miles was what I found today, there was a great deal of hanging on, and hoping the county had flattened a few of the hills I’d chosen for myself.

They had not.

But, I told myself, the next time I add five more miles to the total, it won’t be as bad as this. We’ll see.

Things to read … because reading helps us all see. We’ll start with the journalism stuff.

Attacked on the job: A Post-Dispatch photographer’s tale

The growing pay gap between journalism and public relations

Over 4,000 BuzzFeed Posts Have Completely Disappeared

Teaching the Digital Media Revolution Without Disregarding the Past

It’s a true fact!!! People who edit things no longer neeeded

That last one I’m passing out in class this fall.

I’m pretty sure there’s no way we make it to a point where the next revelation in this huge story is a good revelation. It all just seems more shameful at every unfortunate turn. Local VA finds another 1,146 unread patient images:

A review of the imaging system at the Central Alabama Veterans Health Care System prompted by 900 lost X-rays revealed there were an additional 1,146 unread patient exams going back to 2011.

According to a statement from CAVHCS, they conducted a “broader review” of the imaging system but didn’t specify what the review involved. CAVHCS generated a report dating back to 2001, when the imaging software was installed, and didn’t find any unread exams from before 2009.

Birmingham one of three to submit bid for 2021 World Games:

The Magic City has submitted a bid to host the eleventh edition of the World Games in 2021.

Birmingham had until the end of July to place a bid to host the games and it was announced Monday that the city made the cut for the final three bidding municipalities. The games will feature more than 30 sports like Tug of War, Sumo and Water Ski, according to a release.

Not quite the Olympics that former mayor (and current guest of the federal prison in Ashland, Kentucky — until 2023) Larry Langford had hoped for, but it is something.

Childhood cancer survivors going to Rangers vs Rays baseball game:

That picture was in the June 8 edition of The Birmingham News and caught the eye of Susannah Higgins Moreland. Moreland read about the boys’ mothers meeting in a waiting room at Children’s of Alabama when the boys were toddlers and diagnosed with ALL (acute lymphoblastic leukemia).

According to Children’s of Alabama, every year 150 Alabama children are diagnosed with cancer.

“It’s a life-changing diagnosis that is devastating to the family and is the first step of a grueling treatment journey,” said Kathy Bowers with Children’s of Alabama.

During that journey, the boys grew to become close friends and each others biggest fans on the baseball diamond.

Some recovery. Study: New jobs pay 23% less than those lost during the Great Recession:

The results sync with those of the National Employment Law Project which finds that during the recovery (measured from February 2010 to February 2014), employment gains have been concentrated in lower-wage industries.

This is an amazing feature, just over a decade old, on Robin Williams, the cyclist. Robin Williams: “I’m Lucky to Have Bikes in My Life”:

He also admires how the racers mirror his own go-for-broke style. “These guys spend everything they have, day after day,” he says. A typical Williams stand-up performance is nearly 2 hours long, and reviews of last summer’s comedy tour universally marveled at the entertainer’s exhaustive drive. Biking, Williams, says, helps sustain that drive. The sport became especially important to him as a substitute for a darker passion; in the 1980s, just before seriously taking up the sport, Williams struggled with a well-publicized drug habit.

An important angle to the sad Williams story. Suicide contagion and social media: The dangers of sharing ‘Genie, you’re free’:

More than 270,000 people have shared the tweet, which means that, per the analytics site Topsy, as many as 69 million people have seen it.

The problem? It violates well-established public health standards for how we talk about suicide.

That’s the first place I’ve seen this mentioned. It should be discussed more.

cycling / photo / running / Thursday — Comments Off on The difference between riding and running
7
Aug 14

The difference between riding and running

I always watch other people ride and think “I wish I could be on my bike right now.” I’ve never watched people run and thought “I would love a great jog right about now.”

Maybe I just don’t run enough — and I thought about a run tonight, but I was too spent from my brief little bike ride. Maybe I haven’t jogged enough in the aggregate. Either way, the run is never is good as the ride. The road looks different, moves differently and feels different in every way.

road

(I’d never see the curves that way on foot.)

Maybe a good run just doesn’t teach me as many things as even a mediocre ride.

I dropped three riders on my first hill of the day. So I can be capable enough in my weakest part of the ride, if I know when to do it. I’m a fairly instinctive attacker. It felt great to swing out from that little group and go over them. I have something almost approaching a decent uphill sprint. I can be strong, in short bursts, even if I haven’t been using my legs recently. And it feels good to fly up a hill, to get to the top, look back and not see anyone there.

I struggled with my pedals, again, and had to stop to straighten the cleat in my shoe, again. So that means finding a parking lot, stopping, pulling out the multitool, taking off the shoe and tightening the screws. I think I learned why I got these shoes for a song. Those three people never did catch up. I must have dropped them hard. Unless they turned. But I take the optimistic view about these things on the bike.

I rode up and down my favorite parking deck, practicing the 180-degree turns at both ends. I probably enjoy that too much, the incline isn’t too bad and there’s all that descending to do.

I passed two other cyclists, but one of them was a kid on a sidewalk. Also, I apparently now own the top spot in one of the local sprint segments. This was all supposed to be a slow and easy ride, but my fast is so slow, I’ve learned, that I can’t tell a difference.

I did not run. There was nothing to learn from it. Maybe tomorrow evening.

cycling / errands / Monday / video — Comments Off on My neck, shoulders and back hate Mondays
28
Jul 14

My neck, shoulders and back hate Mondays

The return of the neck and shoulder issues. Apparently they don’t like Mondays. This was the worst day of it since last Monday, after all. Odd considering the high quality massage I received — it hurt and felt so good — just yesterday.

Barely made it out of bed today, and then just staggered painfully to the floor. Things finally loosened up a little bit in the afternoon. I made it to the post office and got the lawn mowed. Most of the rest of the day I spent looking for some position that didn’t feel painful. It was an exercise in near futility.

After dinner with friends we stepped outside and almost everything returned to normal. I was so happy to only have a sore neck!

So I’ll leave you with this. Europcar rider Kevin Reza picked up the helmet and camera of a Tour de France fan. I haven’t mentioned the tour here at all this year, but this is an usual look at one tiny sliver of the three-week race.

Europcar finished fifth in the team race. Reza finished 73rd overall in his second Tour de France. He has 11 podiums and three wins.

Apparently, the owner of the camera contacted him online and the team sent the helmet pack. Now, I’m sure, this will become the thing to do. As if the selfies weren’t bad enough.

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