Monday « Kenny Smith | Omnes hic sumus discere.

Monday

Some Auburn weekend notes

Back at it again, then:

Brian came down this weekend. He pronounced the scoreboard large:

That’s been the attraction this year. The football team has struggled and continues to do so. They got outpaced in the second half by Ole Miss on Saturday. Can’t move the chains, kicking a lot of field goals, struggling to stop talented teams. It doesn’t feel like 4-4, but that’s what the record says.

But that scoreboard! And the eagle flights, of course. Here’s Spirit’s flight from before the game. Note the alternating sections of orange and blue. Looked pretty good on TV, I’m sure.

I just threw that video online without slapping a URL or any other branding on it. How daring! We walked up just in time to get a good spot near her cage, obviously. And then you can see she went all over the stadium. Spirit resides at the Southeast Raptor Center. He has a beak problem that requires regular maintenance, so she’ll always live there and do cool shows and flights like this.

What is interesting to me, the second and third time I watched that video, is the camera work of the production staff. I shot that on my phone, so the lens is wide and has practically no focus. But they’re following her all over the stadium. (When I lose her, just look at the giant scoreboard.) They do a nice job of keeping her in the frame too.

Hey, this is a wild animal. She can, and has, gone all of the places except the ones you expect.

It is a cool thing to see. Scoreboard isn’t bad, either.

cycling / Monday / photo / weekend — Comments Off
26
Oct 15

James Bros Bikes Breast Cancer Awareness ride

Thirty miles in pink jerseys. Mine came direct from Poland. This event was hosted by our local bike shop and started and ended at the state park near home. So naturally we were going to ride. Here’s Ren before the start:

The course took us over a lot of familiar roads. That’s one of the things that happens when you’re riding a local event. It also took us on a few roads we don’t ride enough. That’s also one of the things that happens when you’re riding a local event.

Striking a pose:

Not to worry. That’s on a long, straight flat road with high quality asphalt that we ride all of the time. Excellent sight lines and no one was coming either direction. Also, she’s a graceful artist.

Here we are posing after the ride. Lot of fun with some familiar faces and around some great roads and scenery for such a fine cause.

At the end I rode up the big hill in the park and then we pedaled home. It was a fine ride.

cycling / Monday / photo — Comments Off
19
Oct 15

Just some riding shots

Got out and rode a bit this weekend, putting in 40 easy miles and still trying to figure out where I left my legs. Maybe everything will come back this week, I figure. If not I’ll have to drive over to Georgia and see if I dropped them somewhere.

This is one of the big sprints in town.

My app says I only got up to 27.4 miles per hour. So I’m still tired and sore and slow. Or, normal.

I found a new piece of scenery. Turns out there is a pond at town creek. You have to go behind the park and down some paths to find it. But the view is worth it, even as the sun was going down. This was just to add a few turns to the crankset while running an errand.

You go down this hill, it bends a little to the left and then straightens out and turns back to the right and then you take the hard right into another hill. When there’s a car behind you you can actually handle this little stretch and create some distance between you, which is pretty neat.

The same hill, just looking up the other way.

I got to run an errand on my bike. I never get to do that, because I’m never here for it. Doing it felt good, comforting, somehow. Of course it was up the big hill.

cycling / maps / Monday / photo / running / swimming / triathlon — Comments Off
12
Oct 15

We did a half Ironman this weekend

In Macon, Georgia it rained. We’d traveled over Friday night, stayed in a hotel and woke up early to get rained on. That wouldn’t be a problem. There was to be a fair amount of swimming on Saturday. Then there was lightning and big shuddering clumps of thunder. It rained and rained, everything was cold and wet and the lightning stayed around long enough to drive away the darkness.

For a time it seemed there would be no race. I talked to the race director who spelled out his options. The best option was that we’d have the full race. The longer the storm hovered over us, the less of the race we’d have. And it all came down to the formal start time. So I went back to the car and shivered from the cold rain and waited. I shivered and waited long enough that I started to hope the storm canceled the swim. The swim is my weakest segment of the triathlon. The rest of them aren’t particularly strong, mind you.

The storm pushed on through. And the race started just a few minutes late, which seemed an impressive feat while standing on the beach. Nothing else seemed impressive at the moment, though. I didn’t have enough time to finish my setup in transition, I was tripping over myself trying to put my wetsuit on while hustling down to the beach. I hadn’t had enough time to fill up the water bottles for my bike. It was a bad way to start.

But then the race itself started. It was a wave start. You go in with others in your age group. My age group launched second, so I didn’t have to wait around and get more anxious about it at least. I spent my time trying to count the buoys, make sure the wetsuit was fitting right and was in the water before I knew it.

There are two things about the swim everyone must consider. First, the cliche is that the race isn’t won in the swim, but it can be lost there. Well. I am no danger to the guys who were going to win the race. The second thing is that you have to try to not get your heart rate too elevated in the swim. It is a marathon, not a sprint. Well, a half marathon, but that’s a few hours away.

I’m swimming about 3,000 yards per workout in the pool right now. So I know I can cover the distance, which is 2,100 yards, or 1.2 miles. I know from experience that the first 300 yards of my swim are the worst. It takes that long to get my arms warmed up. I just wanted to keep my group in site for that long. I was pleased when my arms came around early in the swim and I was still surrounded by swim caps. And then I managed to hang on to the back of the pack throughout the rest of the swim, despite getting completely turned around in the lake twice. And by completely, I mean, facing the wrong direction.

Out of the water, off the beach, up the hill and into transition. I finished my prep, because I missed out early in the rainy setup period. Ran my bike over to the nearest barely-working water fountain and then started pedaling out of Macon’s Sandy Beach Park.

For 56 miles I pedaled. The course was described in such a way that led you to believe it was moderately flat. It was a little more hilly than that. More problematic was that the hills are a different kind of climb than what we’re accustomed to at home. That probably makes more sense if you spend a lot of time struggling to get up a hill. But it was a nice course; the roads were quiet, the route was pretty. The only real civilization was Roberta, a town of about 1,000 people, that served as the turnaround point.

I had to stop a few times, once for an apparel problem, once to refill water bottles and so on, and I was rather disappointed in my overall ride. I blame the hills. Around mile 53 I was ready to be done. Around mile 40 was when I let out my first harsh exclamation of the day. We drove the course the night before and I predicted when that would happen and I was right.

Before that I saw the cool Georgia Post building, which is on the National Register of Historic Places.

I also saw a really great old store sign that I wanted to go back and snap a picture. I didn’t stop on my ride, though, and we didn’t go back. This was about 17 miles into the course:

Which brings us to the run. After swimming 1.2 miles and riding 56 miles up and down the hills of central Georgia, I had to run 13.1 miles through the shadeless subdivisions of a few neighborhoods.

Remember, I said at mile 53 I was done? I found I was done again after the first mile of the run. And then at the fourth mile. This problem recurred pretty much on cue between miles eight through 12. But I got that emotional, finisher’s bit of steam after that.

I finished within four minutes of my worst-case scenario time. (Which was very slow, because I am quite slow.) We got our pictures taken at the finish line and, what do you know, we got the car loaded up just as another round of rain came through.

Saturday, we conquered 70.3.

I do not know what is happening.

journalism / Monday / photo — Comments Off
5
Oct 15

How long does it take you to ride up Everest, anyway?

Here is my social media practices class. They’re pretending to like me, I’m sure. Also, I was using this for an app demonstration, so they were interested in that a little. It is a fun group, and will hopefully be even better as the term goes along:

Things to read: They call it “Everesting.” You climb to the elevation of Mt. Everest. On our state’s highest mountain you’re going to have a 190-mile day in the saddle:

The cyclists returned to the base at about 35-minute intervals, after completing 9-mile laps around a segment of the mountain. For energy boosts, they took shots of maple syrup.

Hard. Core.

Here are two stories from Oregon that need to be read. These are the sorts that would sort of be diminished by excerpts, but give them a look.

‘Heroic’ Veteran Chris Mintz Was Shot 7 Times

Oregon shooting hero tells gunman, ‘It’s my son’s birthday today’

This is an interesting read for those interested in the craft of journalism, How a reporter captured the moment a fifth grader found out she was HIV positive:

THE MOMENT 10-YEAR-OLD JJ learned she has HIV had been carefully orchestrated for months. But for reporter John Woodrow Cox, documenting this moment and the events leading up to it were an exercise in not telling: not writing crucial details that would reveal JJ’s identity to the public, not attending events where his own identity as a reporter could compromise JJ’s privacy. “Our priority was not to expose her,” Cox says.

JJ, a fifth-grader, is one of the many children who have been born with HIV since the AIDS crisis started in the 1980s. She nearly died from pneumonia at birth. She struggled to take the medications necessary to manage her illness, along with ADHD and, later, depression. During all of this, her doctors at Children’s National Medical Center and her adoptive mother, Lee, worried over the appropriate time to tell her about her manageable but stigmatized disease.

Finally, this is said to be every photograph an astronaut has taken on the moon. You’ll like that.