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books / cycling / memories / video / weekend — Comments Off
16
Jul 11

Soggy, crab cakes and “big hair, dread-a-locks”

“Hurry, so we can ride before the rain.”

Didn’t quite work out that way. On the other hand, the silver lining of those drunken, soggy, incontinent clouds, is that I think I discovered the secret. Somehow it seemed easier to go up hills with three pounds of water in my shoes.

I think the weight helped push the pedals.

So we rode 17.19 miles. The temperature when we got home was a brilliant 73 — we saw a guy in a hoodie, in Alabama in July — so that was grand. For a time it was hard to see. The rain was actually refreshing and cool. It was patently dumb, so I called an end to the ride. The Yankee said “It will stop by the time we get home.” It did. She is very smart.

But by then we were home. And we resolved that this better be a pause, and the heavens better populate our fine community with feral cats and dogs learning about gravity, or else we would kick ourselves for packing it in.

It rained more.

We made shrimp and crab cakes from Whitey’s in Florida, and corn and tomato salad from Ajax Diner in Mississippi as this week’s experiment from the Off the Eaten Path book. Both tasty, but I think there’s only so many ways a corn and tomato side can turn out. Now, the shrimp and crab cakes were almost divine. Not bad for two people who’ve never made them before.

How long did it say to fry them? I asked this after taking over, because the oil was popping and burning my now very upset, in pain co-chef. On one of the last crab cakes a bit of oil jumped out of the skillet and headed directly to my face. My flinching to the left — and truly, it was only a flinch — meant the dollop of hot burning sulfurous dripping sauce landed on the bridge of my nose, rather than in my left eye. Next time I’m breaking out the shop goggles.

Shop goggles, I say. I probably have some from my high school in a box somewhere. Everyone hated the shop goggles, but we were teenagers:we hated everything that had to do with safety and responsibility and sanity. It is amazing all of those people graduated with ten fingers.

I believe our teachers — fine, fine gentlemen — would have built a XX Days Without An Accident sign if only their students wouldn’t have interpreted it as a challenge. I’d tell you stories, but OSHA’s statute of limitations has not yet expired, and I graduated from high school 16 years ago.

Anyway, I am now the only person in North America to have eaten crab cakes with a dollop of aloe vera on just the bridge of his nose. If we’d made them earlier in the day I could have been the only person in North America to have eaten crab cakes with a dollop of aloe vera on just the bridge of his nose and wet socks, a feat that may never be duplicated.

We’re aiming high around here; it is the weekend.

Oh, need a tune stuck in your head?

Don’t even pretend to be upset. You’re sharing that with everyone in your office come Monday.

cycling / errands / Friday / video — Comments Off
15
Jul 11

No, we need the small shrimp

The good people at the grocery store must think we are trouble, or in trouble. It doesn’t take long before we are playfully picking on one another there. I fuss about the bill, the size of the box, why we are there two days in a row. And on and on. Today, the cashier a nice older lady who just liked to be out working and around people, did not exactly know what to make of us.

She should have seen us pondering the bananas, or looking for the quinoa.

Not sure what that is, but there are precisely two options for the grain, just down the aisle from an entire United Nations of rice selections. Perhaps it is the failed supply that could not go into Grape Nuts. There was a cereal I always wanted to try.

Maybe at an early age it was the Seinfeldian paradox that interested me. You open the box, there’s no grapes, no nuts. What gives?

Maybe it was the notion of breakfast on the beach, or the punctual milk man. Perhaps it was the poor man’s Sally Kellerman, or the guy who was the first person in his circle to hear Michael Bolton AND got the Grape Nuts jingle.

So, yeah. At the store again. We’re making dinner from a recipe book tomorrow night and that requires the precise amount of vegetables and seafood treats, and also a spice called Old Bay, which seems like something that should be discovered in your great uncle’s medicine cabinet. (I was informed we had the Old Bay. Good, I thought, I’m not spending $2.26 on that.

Grape Nuts is still around, but struggling. Wikipedia blames the many owners of Post. I think it was this spot:

It is an SNL bit with no soundtrack, a bad idea with a microwave, and a repudiation of every suburban Aspen thing the entertainment industry would dare imagine about the rest of the country.

You can imagine how that conversation started.

“We’ll need flannel, frost on the windows, a woman undisturbed by a studio in her kitchen and quiet kids who know when to shut up and just eat their cereal or they will go to school hungry!”

That was shot in 1993, and it comes off like everyone in the frame is over-medicated before it became the raison de-pharm. And it was all downhill from there. Microwave your milk? Again, Mom?

Anyway. It was raining when we were ready to leave the grocery store. We’d packed along the save the earth bags and then forgot them in the car. I’d offered to fetch them, but felines and canines were demonstrating terminal velocity in the parking lot. The nice, clean cut young man who helpful packed our plastic bags and secretly loathes the chore of it offered to carry them out. I laughed and said, Good for you. I didn’t think you’d offer to get rained on. But no need, sir.

These people have no use for conversation with you. They seem surprised that you’d try. Their dynamic is groceries? Outside? Are you sure?

One guy chatted me up last fall, one of the guys who would not take no for an answer. He was one of those types of people you meet and, later, you have a tinge of relief that door-to-door encyclopedia salesmen are no longer working your neighborhood. He would be this man. He wished to talk football. And also washing dishes.

He would have been marvelous at selling the first six volumes of the set, but you’d have trouble maintaining the pretense of needing books H through Z.

We need rain. We are in a severe drought. And it has looked all day as if it would rain. Really, I don’t recall a summer with more of a threat of rain, but less actual precipitation. One eye spent most of the day watching the radar, studying little blips moving in every direction, wondering if the famous Southern boomers would develop from nowhere.

Finally, after hours of this, I grew frustrated with waiting for the rain and hit the bike. My plan was to make a big loop around the neighborhood. It gives me two entrances toward home and one area with stores that can be a refuge if necessary. This was a bad ride, even by my considerably low standards. Cramped my calf, burned up my quads and couldn’t hold a pace. I did only 12 miles and the rain was the only thing I paced. I am surprised and disappointed by how poorly I feel on the bike after just a week off. But i’ll lower the saddle a bit again tomorrow and see how that feels.

Mostly, I have to remind myself, I am not these guys:

Tour all weekend, the 1989 Iron Bowl tomorrow, the Women’s World Cup final on Sunday. Great weekend of sports. Also there will be riding and crabcakes and coding. Oh, yes, we’re doing work this weekend! I’ll be coding and staring at magazines and spreadsheets until my eyes hurt.

Much like riding the bike, or visiting the grocery store, this doesn’t take long.

Auburn / cycling / history / links / photo / Thursday — 1 Comment
14
Jul 11

Stuck in the 1930s

Rode my bike today for the first time in eight days. Rode Wednesday of last week, overslept Thursday, broke the bike on Friday, got it back Tuesday, was rainish Wednesday and here we are.

So we set out and I pedaled on for about three miles. Hit a stop sign to wait for The Yankee — and make adjustments to my saddle — when a fine little wave of nausea rolled over me. The sun is shining, the heat is blaring and I’m hunched over like the guy who might have had the bad borscht. Oh I was fine, it was just the dizzies and the light headedness that got me. I’m blaming the eight days off.

Figuring the last thing anyone needed was an embarrassing blackout incident I called it a ride and, slowly, pedaled my way back home. So, after watched three days of wonderful Tour de France coverage, my triumphant return was just shy of nine miles. That’s just disappointing.

But I’m fine, thanks.

Spent a little bit of time tracking this guy down:

That’s Earle Smith, Alabama Polytechnic class of 1930. He’s a 2nd lieutenant in the University’s ROTC in this photograph. He was also a baseball player, the football team manager, a member of the literary society and other things during his time in school.

He’s important because The War Eagle Reader was running a feature on him. Seems that just before the war came to him in North Africa, he took a tour of the deserts of Egypt. His guide walked him up to the Sphinx and, as the story was retold goes, he paid the guide to look away and hand over a chisel. Smith (no relation) chiseled War Eagle into the old monument.

And then he got his nose bloodied by Rommel before ultimately defeating Hitler.

What happened to the army captain after his sandy vandalism is a modern mystery. The story made its way into the student paper in 1944, so one presumes he came home from the war. He’d majored in secondary education so I assume he taught for 10 years or so before the war got in his way. Maybe he came home and was able to easily get back to the business of raising his kids and wondering how his students got such wacky thoughts in their heads. He would have been teaching right up until the mid-1960s, after all.

But that’s just speculation. The Internet doesn’t know what became of the man.

I’ve been having this conversation with a guy out west about a relative he had who fought, and died, in the Pacific. Maj. Adam Hallmark is the modern military man. His fourth cousin was Dean Hallmark, who I wrote about earlier this year. Interesting little story.

Anyway, Adam has come across big stores of new information since we first talked and he sent me some pictures this week.

This is thought to be Auburn, possibly campus, in 1936:

Dean Hallmark would recognize just 15 buildings on campus today, not counting the president’s mansion and the chapel.

This is Glenn Avenue:

I haven’t driven the length of it yet for the express purpose of comparing it to this photograph, but I’m betting nothing in this picture remains. And it is a shame about that motorcycle.

UPDATE (Sept 13, 2011): Adam just forwarded along pictures of the ticket books athletes received to attend sporting events back in the 1930s. This is his fourth-cousin’s and, as you can see, is in excellent condition:

It was also never used:

Before magnetic strips and photo IDs they had a funny way of making sure you weren’t stealing someone else’s ticket:

General appearance? I bet you couldn’t say that today.

cycling / iPhone / links / memories / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
12
Jul 11

The heat’s fault

I learned how to swing a golf club in weather not too different from this, about three miles from here in fact, about 13 years ago. That field is now being developed for … something not involved with poor uses of a 5-iron.

That seemed more polite than saying “Someone mentioned on Twitter that their heat index was 109 today. I live in a place that makes 109 seem pleasant. The heat index here was 119 here today.”

Because that’s just obnoxious, especially since I’m not making that up.

So I was a little sad I had not yet retrieved my bike, because I would have absolutely ridden at 119, at least for a few miles, just to say I had done it. That’s the sort of thing that makes my grandparents scoff and question my decision-making.

My bike was ready. It was ready on Saturday, but they would not let me pick it up until today. I waited and waited for them to call, but they did not. So I finally went over for a visit. Paid for the two tuneups and bought new CO2 cartridges.

We had a discussion on the value of the decimal point. This particular one was worth 62 dollars, and I’m glad we talked about it as it worked out in my favor. Loaded my car up, bursting into a terrific sweat just wrestling the thing in the car. Got home, unloaded the bike, and my sweat glands proved their efficiency by again jumping into service as I put the front wheel back on. This is a quick release wheel. It takes just a few seconds to slide it into the fork, seat the hub, put the brakes over the rim, tighten the brakes and the release. It was … warm out.

Picked up The Yankee at the Atlanta Airport, home of useful signs and traffic jams.

You know that place on the curb where you drop off people and pick them up, even though the airport, police and all of us agree no one else (except you, of course) should be allowed to do so? Atlanta, in addition to the shuttles, park-n-rides, MARTA, on-site lots, cabs and so on, has a two-tiered curb system. If you were exiting the airport, you’d walk out from baggage, through a door into a sultry Georgia evening and see three lanes of cars. Then you’d see a covered pedestrian refuge island. And then you’d see three more lanes of cars. Beyond that is one of the many parking decks. It is the six lanes that draw your attention, for they are a mess.

But pedestrian pickup dynamics are interesting. My first pass through the airport the inside lanes were an unmitigated disaster. So I chose the outer route. I happened to be right on time, which really meant six minutes early, so I had to do the loop again. I texted “Go to the outside lanes.”

By the time I came around for my second pass the inside lanes were sparsely populated. The outer three lanes were wrecked. Partly because of the several Atlanta PD cruisers in violation of some still-unread section of the Patriot Act prohibiting parking within a four mile radius of airports, Republicans or George Bush. The other reason the outer lanes were wrecked was because of civilian cars parked and abandoned in the pickup area in direct violation of the Patriot Act, the 28th Amendment and common human decency.

So on my third pass I chose the inside three lanes, because the cruisers and the parked cars had not moved in the 75 seconds it took for my return pass. These were moving smoothly on my second circle, but they were gridlock this time through. All three lanes were stalled, mostly because of the double-parking, diagonal attempts at preventing door dings from someone from Gwinnett County. Atlantans know this to be true.

I finally picked up my best girl from her weekend home — there was a god-niece’s baptismal to attend — and we head for home. But not before stopping at Sprayberry’s, where I visited last week. She didn’t get to go, since I’d already dropped her off at the airport by then. Tonight we closed the place, reveling in the best 9 p.m.-is-late-night atmosphere that small town Georgia has to offer. She pronounced the barbecue very good, which it is. I had the Lewis Grizzard special — barbecue, stew and perhaps the best onion rings ever — I felt a just a little more Southern. It is possible.

There’s something on the menu there, the Houston Special, which is the stew on a barbecue sandwich. This is named after Houston Sprayberry, the founder of the place (established in 1926). I did not order it, but dipped some of my stew over the pork. If anyone ever asks me what a grandpa plate tastes, this is the answer. I can imagine every old man in the region eating this. Probably they are torturing the language as they do so, while enjoying their sandwich and looking forward to a Neehi or a Moon Pie or some other regional thing. They are imparting a lifetime of wisdom and defiance on an impressionable young person who is not interested in stew on a sandwich who is thinking Stew is a stew. It should not be on a sandwich. Ironically, dropping the extra pork into the stew tasted entirely different.

Links: This is a piece of poignancy making the rounds, father and son at the first shuttle launch, and again at the last. But if you really want to get misty eyed over pictures, Dear Photograph. Give it a try. You’ll catch the premise immediately, there’s a universal call to appeal there, and you’ll realize looking through the full site is worth the time.

Birds. On radar.

And, now, the most obvious story you’ll read this week, the one that makes you question the scruples and decency of a union which would make such ridiculous claims. (Hint: this is about teachers.) Dr. Joe Morton, the state school superintendent, is retiring. He seems a good man. I’ve interviewed him several times. The AEA recently published a hit piece on the guy. And now, on the way out the door, he’s having to defend himself. But for what?

In a recent issue of the Alabama Education Association’s Alabama School Journal, AEA Associate Executive Secretary Joe Reed said Morton has been “openly hostile” to public educators and that Morton proposed that more teachers have their certificates revoked than past superintendents.

Morton told the state school board Tuesday that Reed’s assertions are “incorrect and wrong minded.”

Morton said he takes the revocation of certificates very seriously and that most revocations he recommended involved teachers using illegal drugs, having inappropriate sexual contact with students or committing crimes.

Just a little more evidence: the union is not in it for the kids.

If you were wondering, my golf swing has never improved that much. I blame the crushing heat.

cycling / memories / movies / video / weekend — Comments Off
9
Jul 11

Sizzle and ouch

Lord, it was hot today. Walked out onto the back porch and was slightly baked by the convection currents. The thermometer suggested the heat index was 110 degrees.

I have a reasonable tolerance of heat, but be it psychological or physical, anything over 106 just hurts.*

So I hid inside and read. I watched a little television. I caught up on the site. Everything is up-to-date. The July photo gallery is current. Until very recently the photo gallery section was criminally behind. No more.

Also, I transferred a lot of video from blip.tv to boxes holding iframes here. Blip is great. I still use them, but I like to have them linked on the home site, too. So that got done.

Late in the afternoon, when it was only 92 or so, I took The Yankee’s bike to the bike store for a tuneup.

“You’re the guy that brought in the Felt, right?”

That’s right. Good memory.

“I fixed it. It will be ready on Tuesday.”

These are nice guys, they give good advice and have actually offered us a few freebies, but I hope they never run the world. Dropped my bike off late Friday. It was ready by late Saturday. I can pick it up on Tuesday?

I caught up on Falling Skies, TNT’s newest superlatively promoted summer program. Aliens invaded and they’re stilling kids. Somehow John Carter, who left ER to become a librarian and then a professor of history, must save them.

The acting is a bit wooden, but it is post-apocalyptic with optimism, and so that deserves a look. My rule of thumb for science fiction is three episodes. Intrigue me by then or lose me forever. I’m giving Falling Skies a fourth episode, but only because of Will Patton. Tomorrow night’s episode better give me something more. (I’m sure they’re all rushing in to re-write and re-shoot as they read this.)

I even cleaned off a bit of the Netflix queue. Watched it already? Delete. Indy film? You get a short leash. I nixed one this evening because, for the first three minutes there was no dialog. There was a lovely window shot, an introduction to two characters who just stared at each other and then a dream sequence. Three minutes worth of this. Gone.

I did watch One Week, which offers a grim scenario — you get a cancer diagnosis, decide you don’t like much about your life and then buy a motorcycle.

Even if you don’t care for the movie, the scenery is worth seeing alone. Beautifully shot film.

*When we got married the heat index was around 122 degrees. We were married outdoors. We are very smart.