cycling « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

cycling

cycling / photo / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
11
Mar 25

First outdoor ride of the year

Yesterday, at the end of class, I gave my students my other bully pulpit lecture. I tell them at the beginning of the term that being at the front of the room allows me to give one or two brief speeches that have little or nothing to do with the class. And yesterday was the day, because today was the day.

That speech is the one about how to pass other road users safely when you’re driving. There are relatively new state laws. People don’t know them very well. I am updating people one room at a time. I have a whole patter about this, because I’ve been doing it for years. I used to do it much more intently.

The whole thing was about being careful to allow cyclists room to safely operate when you pass them. And I won’t tell you what I wear or what color my helmet or my bike is because I want you to be safe and attentive and considerate when you pass all of them them. Because one of them might be me. “And remember,” I used to say in the driest tone of humor I can muster, which is pretty considerable, “I have your grade, right here, in my hand.”

That’s what I used to do, and one semester a student said to me at the end of the term that I’d psyched her out and tensed her up whenever she saw a cyclist. That’s not the point. Nor is it the point to threatened anyone’s grade, of course. It’s a laugh line. After that, it seemed important to point out, “This is a laugh line. But, also, be careful.”

All of this was made much more relevant after my lovely bride’s pickup truck-caused accident in 2022. And it’s relevant since we’ve been doing research in this area the last few months. And it’s relevant because, today, the weather was beautiful and I took my bike off the trainer and put it on the road. (Twenty-two days earlier than last year!) Oh, happy day.

Also it was a momentous day, of sorts. I’ve been sneaking up on this little achievement for a while, and I certainly didn’t want to capture it indoors. So I have slacked off on the trainer, with that in mind. I didn’t really want to do it on a road I know very well, but that’s the risk you run when you are on your normal training roads. Not that it matters, nothing about this matters, but, somewhere, right in here, I reached a mileage equivalent to the earth’s equatorial circumference.

That’s 24,901 miles to you and me. I celebrated by dropping a gel, turning around, and picking it up.

The bullfrogs were cheering me, and summer, on.

In addition to being the first outdoor ride of the year, and the equatorial ride, it was also new bike computer day. New is a relative term. I bought this, used, at the end of last September and mounted it in the cockpit today. The computer I just retired, a Garmin 705 Edge, I bought used in 2020. It was a 2008 release. My new computer is the Garmin 520, which made its way into the wild in 2013, so I’m happily still behind the curve, but it is a half-decade leap forward for me.

And that’s an important five years because the new computer communications with this new light, the Garmin Varia. I got one for The Yankee for her birthday last year, she loves it, and so she got one for me for Christmas. This is no mere light. There’s a radar system here, and it detects approaching vehicles, and then signals the computer, which beeps, turns red on the edges, and displays dots meant to represent the traffic behind you.

It’s a cool little feature. Sometimes, in the right circumstances, you don’t always hear the oncoming vehicles, so it is a nice help. Though you mustn’t think of it as 100 percent accurate. It’s not too bad on false positives, but there seems to be one time of day, if you’re riding in front of a low-in-the-sun sky, that it isn’t perfect. It didn’t pick up the first two cars that passed me on this initial ride today, but I think it caught the rest of them. One extra layer of safety.

What’s nice is that sometimes the headset will beep, because the Varia picks up a vehicle before I hear it. I have developed a three-look technique that seems to help. I glance over my shoulder when the oncoming motorist is well back, when they’ve closed about half the distance and then just before they get to me. And this seems to help them realize that I’ve seen them too. Since I’ve started doing this late last summer, most of my passes have been much better.

But perhaps the best part of the Varia is this. It has different light settings, and I’ve watched this with great amusement while riding behind The Yankee. She leaves her light on a solid setting, but when a car or truck gets to a certain distance away from them, the light starts blinking. Every time, every time, you see the car decelerate and move over.

So if you wandered to this page thinking about bike radar, we’re still in the early days, but big fans of them so far.

Also, because why not, it was new jersey day.

I got a good sale at NeoPro. Full zip, three pockets, they do the job you ask a bike jersey to do, except make me faster and skinnier. They’re bike jerseys.

Now I need to find good sales on bib shorts.

And to go pack. So, if you’ll excuse me.

cycling / Rowan / Thursday — Comments Off
6
Mar 25

I lost a (slow) race!

Today was the day I was to put my contracting packet behind me. I’ve worked on varying versions of this for weeks, and I reached the finish line, both in what I could do and what I could tolerate, last night. It’s a helpful process in several respects, but it is also time intensive and there are other things I need to be doing.

So I went to campus today because a colleague who is on this particular committee wanted to see what the new CMS the university is using looks like. He’s been frustrated by the rollout of the new process, which is function of where you are standing. Most of my confusion with the process has been of my own doing. There are a few things that they’ll improve on for future versions of this process — you have to go through this every few years — but that will surely improve. My colleague’s perspective shows him some other things. The guy is a rock star, and he’s been incredibly helpful through this whole process. It might not be that every department has a guy like him to help the new people, which would be a shame. He’s definitely been a huge and helpful part of this for me. So I brought him an afternoon coffee and we sat down to look at the new upload system.

I stopped at Dunkin. And then I couldn’t get into the parking deck at work, so I had to drive around while his coffee cooled and looked for a parking space. I wound up parking some ways away, and walked in, while the coffee kept cooling. I assume that’s what it does. I don’t know anything about coffee. And, really I just wanted to get to the office on time and get my packet uploaded and move on to anything else.

The new uploading system we were testing has been perhaps the easiest part of the process. Even still, there were a few unexpected things. Nothing that can’t be overcome. Also, they had my title and department wrong.

So I couldn’t complete the process. Perhaps tomorrow. Tomorrow is the day I will put my contracting packet behind me. It better be tomorrow; the thing is due tomorrow night. It’s complete, and the only thing left to do is upload the files. Most anyone can do that and I am what they call tech savvy.

Not sure why we call people such a thing.

1785, slang, “practical sense, intelligence, knowledge of the world;” also a verb, “to know, to understand;” a West Indies pidgin borrowing of French savez(-vous)? “do you know?” or Spanish sabe (usted) “you know,” the verb in both from Vulgar Latin *sapere, from Latin sapere “be wise, be knowing” (see sapient). The adjective, of persons, is attested by 1905, from the noun. Related: Savvily; savviness.

I guess that’s why.

Anyway, got home, took care of about three weeks worth of email, and then celebrated by doing … not much else today, and enjoying the reflective glow of having this behind me.

And then I went downstairs and basked in the glow of the Zwift screen. I decided to try a race. I think I’ve done three races, now. The first one I don’t even remember. I did one a few weeks ago in a group I had no business being in. The field split up right away and I managed to come in at the front of the second group, with two other people who were pushing me on the last climb.

Today, I chose a flat course, and I followed Zwift’s suggestion. The game will tell you where you should be racing based on your recent performance. And based on my performance I should be in the category that’s one step above physical therapy.

When the time came to begin the group all spun into action together and I found myself right at the front of the ground. I took a photo for proof, because who would believe it?

Second place! I stayed right up front for about seven miles, about 70 percent over my threshold and wondering how long I could stay there. The answer is: about seven miles.

The front of the field left me behind, I faded in the last mile and the next group came up to race me to the line.

And then I rode on for another 10 miles, at a much slower pace because it turns out I was also under-fueled, just to see how long it would take to lower my heart rate. Not too long, it turns out. That’s cardiovascular quality for you. Where it went in the last few minutes of that race we’ll never know.

And the long-range forecast suggests that next week I might be riding outside!

cycling / photo / Rowan / Wednesday — Comments Off
26
Feb 25

Didn’t even realize this was the last Wednesday of February

On campus today, remembering some great advice I once reserved from a former news director, and some equally good advice I received from a faculty colleague, I talked scheduling. It was one of those things you plan ahead about what things you should highlight and discuss, and then suddenly it all disappears when you sit down to do it. Oh well, main points shared. Camaraderie achieved. No one’s lunch was interrupted. Also, I set up another meeting for next week, because I want to be the appointment guy, not the walk in and interrupt your flow guy. That’s how you develop real camaraderie, I’m sure of it.

Anyway, my fall classes look set. A conversation I had last week was fruitful in making some changes. I am not accustomed to having this sort of say in things. Three interesting classes, including one I am designing, but all of them are new to me. New ones take a little more work. I’m going to be proposing and hopefully designing a lot of new classes in the next few years. That’s the plan. Fortunately, I have a notebook devoted exclusively to just these ideas. I wonder how long it will take me to fill that one up.

In class today, we discussed television. Monday we did the same, mostly formats and history. But today it was Ghana, Kyrgyzstan, India. No one saw that coming before I gave the class a reading list.

Did you know the differences between how television works in all of those places? It starts with culture, is heavily influenced by the local languages, or regional historical politics, and, also, topography. Kyrgyzstan, for example, is incredibly mountainous, which limits what we think of as cable and over-the-air television. Also, their past with, and proximity to, Russia figures into what goes on television there, primarily cities versus rural, and you can probably guess the breakdown from there. For Ghanaian television, it’s a balance of history, cultural mores, and importing other products. India is similar, but not at all the same. There are so many languages, so many places where different parts of the country’s people overlap that television is a curious mix. And when the outsiders came, in the early 1990s, there was a lot of pushback. India knew something about invasions, and imported television was seen as a cultural invasion, and not at all welcome. Apparently that has subsided, but I bet there’s some older folks who remember that feeling well. Culture, it keeps coming back to culture. What you’ve got, what you’ll accept from other places, and what other places (the U.S. and Europe in these case, primarily) are offering.

Happily, a bunch of young people who don’t watch a lot of television themselves are going along for the conversation. And next week we’ll talk journalism. It’s a survey of a variety of media forms around the world, and it’s a lot of fun.

The view on the drive home.

This is how I know the days are getting longer. I don’t arrive in the driveway in darkness. I am pleased with this progression.

I haven’t been on my bike in four days, and it showed. Also, today’s route had two climbs in it, so I took my time, enjoying the two-hour effort, and covering 34 miles.

Just one Strava PR today, and it was a climb. It might have been the one pictured here, but they all look the same to me. I do wonder, though, why the avatars don’t get cold. If you pulled off and stopped pedaling, he’d just stand there waiting for you. But, way up there, he should be shivering. Instead, he is immune to the weather, the higher altitude, all of it. He just keeps pedaling, so long as I do.

I have to stop making excuses to not ride. “Schedules” and “work” and “dinner.” Whatever. I should probably ride uphill more. It’s not like my avatar will mind.

cycling / Friday / video — Comments Off
7
Feb 25

See you in a week

I went to campus three days this week. And if that sounds like a complaint, it is not. Looking ahead, I’ll be on campus every day next week. That’s not a complaint, either. I’ll still have to find to do a full week’s worth of work away from campus, as well. It’s going to be a busy one.

I think I’ll take the week off from the site, just to get in all of the grading and the writing and the other stuff I’ll be doing just to keep my nose above water.

So, sadly, this post will be the placeholder for the next week.

Look! Here’s a shot from today’s 20-mile ride.

Just another month or two of riding in the basement. I’m over riding in the basement.

At lunchtime today, I heard them. And then the sky darkened. The light literally, actually, dimmed. And when I got outside …

They flew from the fields to the southwest, over the house, across the road, did a giant loop over Joe The Elder’s place, and then came back for more.

They come and they go, and then they don’t come back the rest of the day. The ideal way to enjoy a noisy, noisy air show.

Catch you on the flip side. (If the birds don’t get me.)

cycling / Rowan / site / Thursday — Comments Off
6
Feb 25

True or false or maybe

I am floating rib deep into grading. I have 60-something quizzes to work through, and of course, there are plenty of other things as well. So let’s just get through this, shall we?

I have updated the art on the front page. It looks a lot like this.

Head on over to kennysmith.org to see the whole thing. If you sit with it for 50 seconds, you’ll see the whole assortment of 10 new photographs that I took on a beautiful spring day in central California last year. We were waiting for a lunch order over this beautiful bit of sand and sea. And I’ve held on to these photos specifically just to get through the interminable second half of winter.

I had a short bike ride this evening. It took me high into the snowcapped mountains. But I want you to look off to the side of this photo. Do you see that road?

That’s the radio tower bonus climb, sure to strike fear in the hearts of every exhausted rider, who has already slogged their way up the Epic KOM, climbing 1,364 feet over 5.9 miles from sea level. That bonus climb is an even sharper three-quarters of a mile, with an average gradient of 12.8 percent, demanding another 492 feet of ascent. I hate it.

But the route didn’t take up to that tower. I just pedaled right by, to my great relief (I don’t always know where a route will take me) and then back down into the tree line, where the green things grow, and the windmills mill.

In total, it was just a 22 mile ride, and pretty slow, even for me. But I did somehow collect four PRs on Strava segments along the away, including on two climbs.

Small wins are huge wins.

And, now, back to getting ready for more work.