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Auburn / cycling / iPhone / photo / weekend — Comments Off
8
Apr 12

Catching up

The attempt to unload a lot of pictures that haven’t appeared on the site this week. Pretty things to look at for you, easy content for me.

And Happy Easter. Hope you enjoyed it in thought, with family, chocolate and peeps.

From the NCAA gymnastics regionals at Auburn last night. See the lady in the background? She’s the coach at Bowling Green. Also, she was one of The Yankee’s high school gymnastics teammates:

Sure you could do that. Right up until it came time to land:

This Michigan State gymnast had a lot of time to admire the ceiling:

At Georgia they call them Gymdogs:

That’s hardly flattering. When they perform as they did last night they should call them superwomen:

West Virginia had a great turn on the beam:

This is one of the Bowling Green gymnasts. The vault always looks a little painful to me …

She’s trying not to fall. She saved it, but this happened to her a few times. Shame, too, it was a nice routine:

The Auburn Arena is now just in its second year of use. They spent $92.5 million building the thing, and it is a handsome facility. For all of that, though, my favorite feature is that wraparound script:

The moon:

Clouds over the Samford University campus:

Told you I was replacing the seat on my bike. Can you tell which saddle is old and which is new?

I love the way the stickers are peeling away from this sign. How many summers do you think it has seen?

Saturday was just another beautiful day in the loveliest village:

Changing The Yankee’s tire:

Fond de Jante? There is a thin site with that name as a URL, but I doubt this website is official. Nevertheless:

They say dressing well is all about the details. The time spent obsessing is rarely repaid in public acknowledgment. Likewise, when repairing a bicycle, the attention paid to mechanical and aesthetic minutia will seldom be fully appreciated or understood by the rider. But, the worth of neither pursuit is diminished.

It means “inside the rim” or “rim base.” This rim tape is the best.

Auburn / cycling / movies / photo / video / weekend — Comments Off
7
Apr 12

The Hunger Games, the drain defeat and a gymnastics meet

We watched The Hunger Games last night.

It was better than the Twilight Poorly Acted Emolodramas, though I could have done without the insertion of Team Jacob in the third act. It was not as good as its spiritual predecessors, Star Wars and Shakespeare. (And that’s the only time Lucas gets that I’d bet.) I eagerly await the second movie, The Hunger Strikes Back, even if we have to sit through Romeo and Katniss. I’m also looking forward to the inevitable anti-bullying campaign.

Yes, I’m sure the books are dreadful. (Or the best thing since Potter, which might best Steinbeck and Hemingway in that crowd.) I don’t care to read them. Seeing Donald Sutherland as the most normal-looking guy should be left to stand without any further narrative.

Did something incredible today. We lost an earring down a drain yesterday, but it isn’t the kind of drain you can take apart. So we Googled. And then we called everyone we knew to try to borrow a wet-dry vacuum. Finally we found a friend who’s father had a friend. That man let me, a total stranger, borrow his vacuum.

So there we are, hands and knees, trying to figure out a way to get a four-inch hose fit inside a two-inch drain. Ultimately we settled with putting a little drainage tube inside the wet-dry hose. We kept the vacuum by stuffing the excess hose with a washcloth. On the end of the drainage hose we tied off a stocking.

We delicately send the hose down the drain. On the third try, when I was ready to make intubation jokes, I found a second bend in the drain pipe and twisted accordingly. There was the trap. I slowly pulled everything back out. And at the end of the tube, held to the stocking by the power of the vacuum, was this important little earring.

The Yankee sterilized it and put it away for safekeeping. I walked around like a hero for a while. It was a lucky stab, but it saved the day, so this is a “file it away, it might come in handy one day” story. And we couldn’t have done it without the kindness of a friend and a stranger. So this is also an “I love my town” story.

Had a nice little 25-mile ride. I installed the potential new saddle for a test ride. Did a mile or so and realized it wasn’t set right. Off the bike, into the multi-tool. Move the seat approximately three centimeters, making a much better fit.

It is is stiff as possible. Love it.

As I got back in the neighborhood I got heckled by kids: “Get it! Get it! Make those thighs work!”

I tried to put on a good show, but I doubt they were impressed.

Gymnastics regionals were tonight, and they were very impressive.

I enjoy watching them cheer in the background:

Not sure why they are in disguise though …

And, sadly, this is the last time we’ll see Laura Lane tumble:

The co-scholar-athlete of the year is graduating and moving on to other things. Shame, too. She was a lot of fun to watch.

Six teams compete in the regionals. The top two teams in each region advance to the national championship. Auburn finished fourth, posting their second-highest regional score ever. They’ll be somewhere in the teens, probably, in the final gymnastics rankings of the season. And, we counted, about half their routines this year were performed by freshmen.

The future, as they say, is bright.

More gymnastics pictures tomorrow.

cycling / iPhone / photo / Samford / Thursday — Comments Off
5
Apr 12

There are at least three ways to spell “triple”

Meetings. Meetings about copyright laws. Meetings about stories. Meetings about meetings, at least two conversations worth. And then the emails. Emails about inventory. Emails about recruiting. And then there was a meeting about email. And, finally, emails about meetings.

That kind of day.

I took the long way home.

Somewhere in the middle of nowhere, between Calera and Jemison, Ala.:

They’ve moved! But their new location has the same chicken and the same chili. And you know they are good because they’ve deliberately misspelled both words. But don’t go in the old Dari-Delite. The recipes are not there. This is in Clanton, Ala.:

This is a fairly common misspelling if you search the Googles. But you don’t expect to see it quite so … large. Shame this Prattville, Ala. shop is closed, I’d loved to have walked inside and innocently asked them if they’d noticed anything odd about the sign. Or if Mr. Tripple was in today. Even for a muffler man this has to be galling.

The nine A’s though? That’s just brilliant:

Got my bike back from the shop. It now sports two shiny new shifter covers, a new chain and a tightened cassette.

So that will take care of the safety of my hands, a needed replacement — the old chain was starting to stretch and impacting performance — and fixed an obnoxious rattle on country roads.

The lady that runs the place offered to sell me a new seat because she’d noticed my saddle was giving way. When I bought the bike, used, there was one small tear. I recently rubbed two new spots on it in a stupid decision.

She said she’d just purchased a Felt herself, maybe that’s why she asked me about mine earlier this week, and couldn’t use this saddle.

“What am I going to do with an orange seat?” she said she’d asked herself.

And then through the door walks this sap, orange Felt with a frayed seat.

Saddles are a bit personal, though. She offered it to me for $20, and I talked her into a test ride. I’ll try it this weekend and buy it or return it. I gave her my business card, saying “If you don’t hear from me … ”

Turns out her husband works at Samford too. Small world, big bicycle.

cycling / Monday / movies / Samford / video — Comments Off
2
Apr 12

“You have short legs”

Pulled the wheel off my bike and put it in my car. The rest of the bike went in there too. If I turn the fork so it looks like the front is trying to bite a flea and it will just fit inside.

It was time for a trip to the bike shop, one close to campus. The one close to home, which is generally very good, wasn’t interested in helping me replace the shifter cover that I lost last August. After the exposed screw sliced open my finger last month it was time. Felt, the manufacturer, told me to visit a store. The store said talk to Felt. And after we shared that joke, we got down to fixing it.

The part cost $10, which is the cheapest thing on a bike, apparently. It would also make my hands, as this is close to where your hands rest 99 percent of the time. So I left the bike with them, asked for a bit of maintenance and we’d scheduled time so I wouldn’t miss a ride.

I walked it and the lady behind the desk was sizing me up the way an expert tailor can tell your size without a tape measure. She sized me up and, I’m sure, found me lacking. It was like I’d told the tailor I wear one size and he glanced at me and said “No.”

With her glance she wondered about my bike set up. My seat is high. My legs are short. But, she concluded, what works for you works for you. She asked if I liked Felt. I was half-ready for her to tell me it was too much bike for me.

Later I was returning calls and found myself talking with a lady who was perfectly happy to be on the phone.
Happy to chat, happy to help. But she was making me late. There was a field trip to take with my class and timing is everything.

This is the introductory class, where we try to show off as many different parts of the business as possible. Today’s trip was to al.com where I worked from 2004 through 2008. Many of the same faces are still there. I saw three sales people, a designer and a producer I knew. The CEO and the office manager were there too. It was nice to catch up for a bit. Good people there.

We sat in the conference room and the guy that runs the content side of the place talked about what they do, the future, the past, internships and first jobs. The students asked good questions. Cards were distributed. The importance of networking was discussed. They crammed a lot of material in 90 minutes.

Some time back Bill Strickland introduced me to Graeme Obree. Tonight I stumbled onto The Flying Scotsman, a movie about the man, on Netflix.

Here’s the gist: He’s a Scottish cyclist who, in the 90s, set out to break the one-hour distance record. He built a bike from scratch, using parts of his washing machine, basically redesigning cycling all by himself. Only he just missed the record.
So the next day, after waking up all night to stretch his legs, he tried again. And he broke the record. It fell the next week to another racer. He took the mark back again soon after. Along the way he battled the sport’s governing body and his own deeply troubling demons.

Despite this trailer, the story (and the movie) make a compelling tale.

Obree, who did some of the cycling for the film, seemed to like it:

Once you get beyond this being, in part, about going in a circle, it is a good sports movie with a great supporting cast.

And then there’s the record itself:

This guy has held the record since 2005. In 2008 a doping suspension forced him into retirement.

Obree, who insists he’s never doped, is apparently preparing for a human powered land speed record. He wants to break 100 miles per hour. I’ve never even driven my car that fast.

cycling / iPhone / overwriting / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
29
Mar 12

Ride right

The road was quiet. Everyone had gotten to where they needed to be.

It was empty enough that when the occasional car came by it seemed to do so apologetically. They knew they were intruding on the empty asphalt and how lonely it should be.

When the hum of the road is your own noise, and yours alone, that’s worth chasing. That’s the moment you ride for.