cycling « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

cycling

cycling / Monday / photo / video — Comments Off
5
Oct 20

Autumn showed up

Enjoyed a little bike ride in the warmth of Saturday afternoon. We are in that season where it is too chilly to want to ride in the morning. And the evening cools off just in time to go back inside. But, in between, it can be perfect.

So we had the usual bike ride weaving through the nearby neighborhoods and around the eastern side of town. No legs, but plenty of heart, some good smiles and a fine amount of fun.

Not too much fun, just the proper, moderate, amount. Not so much that you overdo it, but enough to make you want to go try to have a similar amount of fun. So, sometime in the next week, I’ll go have another ride with the appropriate amount of enjoyment. Nothing gluttonous, mind you, something perfectly unassuming.

But if I pile on the miles I can collect a personal best for the year.

What to do, what to do.

In addition to this being Catober, it’s also leaf season. It’s a bit dry just now, but maybe that won’t keep us from a nice, long leaf turn. If it hasn’t rained in a while maybe it’ll hold off for another month or so. It’s dry, but rain is nature’s big achoo around here. One shower and the leaves are everywhere. And trees don’t wear masks.

So, as long as it lasts, be warned: the photos around here will be soothing and/or reflective for a while:

The and/or construction is seldom used with great effect, but, I have found, it works when discussing the transitory nature of trees.

There’s also that sky rolling in, the one I dread for most of the next six months or so. The first real indication of that rolled in yesterday.

Autumn isn’t worth it, but I have no say in these things. It happens whether I want it to, or not. I am in the middle of it whether I want to be, or not. So, cheerily, one must find ways to rationalize it and take whatever advantage you can.

The maple in the backyard gives a nice going away present, at least.

It’s weird. You spend the summer dreading the autumn. I don’t mind autumn itself, but it’s signal. When the skies get gray and the tempers swing wildly and the leaves go, I know I’ll spend the autumn dreading the winter and “spring.” There should be a better way to look at that. Yet to find it.

adventures / cycling / photo / Wednesday — Comments Off
30
Sep 20

Always agree to the ‘Let’s go ride bikes!’ sentiment*

Well that debate was something, wasn’t it? About 70 million people watched it last night. And if you watched the debate that’d be enough. But more people caught up to bits and pieces of it today. That, in this case, might have actually been more deflating.

So we went for a bike ride. I thought it would be too dark, because even the sky had become gloomy and overcast this afternoon. I saw a cyclist just before I turned into the neighborhood and thought about how he didn’t really stand out from the background. But I was wrong about the light, because about the time we got out for a quick and easy hour ride we enjoyed the best light of the day.

It was brilliant, in the sense that has to do with golden light.

The legs felt good, the lungs felt good and the weather was suddenly lovely and maybe it was all the perfect distraction.

^{*This is always a Note To Self.}

cycling / errands / Monday / photo / video — Comments Off
28
Sep 20

How I roll

Wake up with a morning show. They’re always so cheery and bright. Our students produce one of those. Here’s today’s episode.

I did a morning show for two years in college, and then I worked morning drive for pretty much my entire news career.

I’m a night owl and I think I’m still recovering.

I’ll spend some time from this year recovering, psychologically, from flat tires.

I had yet another one on Saturday. I think that’s six, maybe seven, this year. It’s always the back. And it’s probably entirely a mixture of bad luck and user error. Probably more the latter than I’d like to admit.

But there I sat, a brand new tube in the tire and it punctured about 15 miles in to its life, I was getting ready for a short, hard Strava segment when the tube gave way. The Yankee was right behind me and she stopped with me. I carry a hand pump and a spare tube, so I sent her on ahead. And I worked on this dumb thing a while, first in the sunshine, and then I crossed the street to sit in the shade.

A guy rode along on his bike and he offered to stop. We talked bikes and routes and I borrowed his better pump. And for a moment it seemed normal, and I think we both remembered at about the same time we should be standing a bit farther apart. About that time I had the new tube in place and inflated and so I soft pedaled my way home.

See, the thing is I ride at about 110 psi on a regular day, and a good hand pump will get you up to about 70 psi. And that’s just spongy enough to go a bit slower and smell the roses.

We went to get gas this morning. Made good use of those grocery store loyalty points, too.

We go and fill both cars up together to get the most of our savings. I said, As far as I can recall, this is the first time I’ve filled up since May 30th.

The Yankee thinks we got gas in July. Maybe. It’s hard to say. The point being, we’re driving so little that a tank of gas goes a long way. A normal week, right now, is four trips to campus and maybe a journey out to get takeout for Saturday lunch. That comes out to about 35 or 40 miles for me. I’ll take that.

And if I start riding my bike back to work … if I can avoid the flats …

cycling / Monday / video — Comments Off
21
Sep 20

We changed it up this weekend

We loaded our bikes up on the car and drove to Indy and rode the Monon Trail. This is one of those former-railroad-routes-turned-paved recreational path. It was a get-out-of-the-house move. It was also a ride-somewhere-else move. And a go-slow move. It was, perhaps most importantly, an enjoy-a-lovely-day-out move.

Here’s part of the trail, way on the north side of town:

And after we turned around at the far end and were riding back toward the car, I decided to shoot some slow-motion videos. You see it in sports all the time, let’s see if I could pull one off myself:

That’s not bad for 19 or 20 miles per hour. Let’s try one more, just to see how much of a fluke the first one was.

It was a nice change.

cycling / Monday / photo / podcast — Comments Off
14
Sep 20

Interviewing my wife

We had a nice bike ride over the weekend. I took it easy, nursing an old guy’s bike. (I have come to appreciate the wisdom of listening to my some of my aches and a few of my pains.)

The Yankee did hill repeats:

I did sprint repeats. She might have still been faster, though.

If you go down this hill, all the way down it, you can make it to the lake. And then you’ll wonder if you should regret that decision because theres only the one way back up and you’re on a bicycle. The bottom of the ascent starts out at 12-14 degrees, but averages out for a nice 4-degree climb.

We saw some nice roadside flowers, too.

Also, I interviewed her Friday. When you have a distinguished and renowned sports media scholar who has a home office just around the corner from your own, you book the interview. The premise is “We had the usual amount of sports, and then no sports, and now we have every sport imaginable!”

On Topic with IU · On Topic with IU — Talking about the return of sports with Dr. Lauren Smith

For the record, it was no easier to get her booked, but it was more fun talk to her and easier to edit. Which balanced out the difficulty of trying to write questions about things she talks about all the time. This is an issue for all of these experts: Come, please, talk about your understanding of your life’s work in a basic way. The difference being I’ve heard her talk about it for years, and, with these other people, I send them a cold call email, interview them, thank them for their time and later send them an email link.

If I got one wrong here, or, worse, left one out …

Every now and then I try to encourage her to do any number of shows of her own. One day I’ll find the right idea. Then I’ll get to edit some more of that brilliance.