Monday « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Monday

cycling / Friday / memories / Monday / photo — Comments Off
1
Mar 21

Welcome to March

It doesn’t feel like spring yet, but it’s gonna. Today, though, I’d just like to feel a bit … less. Or more. I’d like to hurt less and feel like more.

As I mentioned Friday, I had a big weekend of riding. And I’m happy to report that I toughed it out. I fueled terribly, but I survived. I think. This was my view all weekend:

It wasn’t the miles, it was the user error. And also the climbing. I could explain the fueling, but suffice it to say my caloric intake got all out of whack. And I became well aware of that reality on the way to the last climb yesterday. I told you about the Friday ride. Here you can see me in third place on the road on Saturday.

I was not in third place, but it sounds nice, doesn’t it? It wasn’t a race, to me anyway, it was just an excuse to make thousands of tiny circles with my feet, and also to get a cool aerotuck screengrab.

After Saturday’s ride featured 4,124 feet of elevation gained, Sunday was the big day of climbing. You can see even my avatar changed clothes for the bigger 33 mile, 5,617 feet gained effort.

It … hurt. Don’t let the sprint I eeked out at the mountaintop finish fool you. I was so spent I thought I was hallucinating the aurora on the iPad.

And I could barely walk when I got off the bike. (Time for new bike shoes!) After I hobbled upstairs and had a shower I started eating vegetables directly off the cookie sheet. Fueling was a problem because I wasn’t diligent about it because, at the end of the day, I’m riding a bicycle inside the house. It’s easier to be fussy about that, I realized this weekend, if you’re riding way out of town. But if the kitchen is just steps away, different story. And I’ve never really had the opportunity to climb 12,690 feet in one weekend, so I have no frame of reference for this.

It’s a big frame, and this was a great reference.

And I finished the Zwift Haute Route Challenge.

What does that mean? Absolutely nothing, but a sense of mild accomplishment. And it’s more base miles for the year.

We were looking at a giant snow mound at the local big box store.

This was the mound of our affection two weeks ago, on Valentine’s Day, after the first snow.

And here’s the same mound of our laments, a week later, as seen on February 21, after the even larger snow.

And here’s that same mound, this Saturday, on February 28th.

After a bit of weekend rain, and looking at the weather ahead this week … this thing might be gone by next Saturday. That’d be a signal almost-as-happy as returning robins and other springtime birds.

Monday / photo — Comments Off
22
Feb 21

Another week it is, then

This was one of the larger snow mounds at the big box store last weekend. It was before the big snow. Let’s chart it’s progress.

This is that same mound of snow on Saturday.

It was joined by one that was even larger.

We’ll see how long they last. It is warming up a bit this week, but that’s a lot of snow. A colleague, online, is predicting they’ll be with us until mid-March. I hope not, but he may be correct.

If you go out there with a blow dryer to speed up the process that’s cheating. But we’ll allow it.

Yesterday we went to the grocery store. We needed shallots and batteries and figured, it’s a pleasant-ish enough day. Let’s make a walk of it. So we walked up to the grocery store. Two miles, one way. The store did not have shallots. (Dinner was delicious anyway, and I most assuredly drove the shallots joke into the ground.)

On the new pedestrian bridge, on the walk back:

My feet only got a little wet tromping through the snow. Some sidewalks haven’t been cleaned since the last snow, last Tuesday. And that, I suppose, why the city is trying to annex more land, so it can tax it and not clean it.

The meadows look nice though!

The cats are doing fine. They’ve lately noticed that we’re getting a little more sunlight once again. Everyone is grateful for that.

Phoebe is pondering warmer temperatures.

I think she thinks she needs a bath.

She can take care of that herself. I fear the claws. I have some deep scratches from her from weeks ago that haven’t healed yet.

Poseidon knows what’s up. I don’t know what’s up, but he does.

And he’s still trying to convince you he’s cute and adorable and innocent.

Don’t believe it for a second.

hobby / Monday / photo — Comments Off
15
Feb 21

Winter showed up

That was some weekend, wasn’t it? Cold, ominous, and with inexorable weather rolling in for everyone. We had our usual Chick-fil-A on Saturday, a video chat that evening, and took a walk on Sunday just before that weather started making it’s presence known locally.

It came in two waves here. One, last night, with a couple of inches of new snow. This on top of the three or four inches we got last week that never had a chance to melt. And the second wave is coming upon us now, and late into the evening. Forecasters suggest we’ll be getting an inch of snow per hour for a while.

I went into the office today, because that’s what you do. And 15 minutes later the email came down: Work from home, people.

So I left at 2 p.m., because it was really starting to come down. I park in a parking deck at work, and my car was dry, but it was snowing enough to accumulate on the windshield and roof while sitting at a single red light. That, to me, seems like a lot of snow.

So you drive slow, and stay well back. Fortunately not a lot of people were on the roads. I suspect the stay-at-home, the day’s work-from-home and just the wisdom of staying out of this foolish weather kept people safely indoors. Just before I made it to our neighborhood I could see the car ahead of me fishtailing in a roundabout. An ominous sign. After that, three-quarters of a mile, and the treacherous and unkempt roads of the neighborhood, lay between me and my safe, dry garage. So I slowed down even more, because that seems like a thing to do, and Icrept in. You could run it faster. But I made it, just in time to see the birds.

If that cardinal doesn’t impress you, perhaps you’d like to see the eastern bluebird.

We had three at one time, which was a lot for this time of year. These little thrushes should be in the southwest right about now, but they are back, so I’ll take that as a sign.

They come and go through the shrubs and trees and bird feeders. Eventually the bluebirds gave way to warblers.

I would have thought the birds would be all in their nests right now, and building roofs.

The snow makes for a neat backdrop, no?

The cats are doing just fine. They are warm and dry. They probably want to go outside, but I think they’d decide against the idea when their paws got cold. They are lightweights, like me.

They can’t be perfectly untroubled by what’s going on outside. Phoebe is hunkering down, for some reason.

She’s lately developed a new pose that involves swimming over the shoulder.

Poseidon doesn’t know what that’s about, either.

When he’s not traumatizing his sister, or trying to figure out what she’s up to, he’s taking a great interest in laundry. It’s hard to fold sheets when he’s climbing inside of them.

I eventually turned a fitted sheet into a hammock for him and gently swung him back and forth until my arms got tired. I thought it might drive him away, but he liked it. Eventually I set the cat-carrying-sheet back on the floor and wrapped him up inside. You could hear him purring from six feet away. Eventually he climbed out a bit, so I folded the sheets around him. He was perfectly happy to stay like that for quite a while.

Pretty smart cat, sometimes, wouldn’t you say?

hobby / Monday / photo — Comments Off
8
Feb 21

Photos to start the week

This weekend we received a red-bellied woodpecker as a backyard guest.

That’s just what they’re called. He didn’t explain the discrepancy. (The red crown distinguishes the gender, by the way.)

Look at this little guy:

One of his friends gave me my best photo yesterday, bird division:

Of course the cats like the birds. They have strategically placed spots with great sight lines of the menagerie taking place just beyond their reach and on the other side of the inexplicable transparent walls.

What must pets imagine of glass, and us?

Anyway, Phoebe is taking a break from the bird watching. She has the most intense relaxation face you can imagine:

Last month we noted that Poseidon likes to watch car chases with us. Apparently they make Phoebe a little more nervous. She couldn’t watch last week’s historic car chase.

Poseidon, meanwhile, has found himself a hammock bridge. Like he needed the help, or a new place to sleep:

Last night he decided to have a bit of water fresh from the mountain stream.

Better than the several bowls he has available to him.

More tomorrow. Check out the Instagram account that Phoebe and Poseidon run. Keep up with me on Instagram, too. And don’t forget my Twitter account.

See you there!

Monday / photo — Comments Off
1
Feb 21

Mid-winter week

It is sloppy and slushy out there. And cold, bitter, bitter cold. I went in a half hour later than normal. Let someone else’s car warm up the roads a bit. We live in the county, but the city limit is literally just down our road. Our road is never plowed, despite the man who lives on the street who has two trucks with mounted plows. I assume it’s a contractual and liability issue, and maybe one day I’ll see him out and ask him about it. Maybe I can take up a gas money collection to get a path cleaned on our road.

After that first residential street, you find that the next one wasn’t snow and slush and a touch of ice. It was just wet slush. The road after that was just wet. The one after that was basically dry. So, waiting for others to get out and about was a good plan.

Tomorrow it will all be melting. Oh, sweet optimism!

It will be cold, but perhaps not bitterly so. And! It will be sunny, and some of the snow will melt. That picture is from Friday, before the weekend’s weather, which gave us a full blanket. Seeing that melt away will be a treat. But you can’t take too much of that. It’ll get worse before it gets better.

The cats are taking it all in stride, because they stay inside. They don’t want to, but that’s just because they don’t really understand snow. They, of course, understand cold. They’re always burrowing into something, as you learned last week.

Phoebe had a casual Saturday night:

Yesterday, she had a big day of yoga:

This is how she gets down after a cuddly nap. She wants her belly rubbed, and then she’ll stretch out like this for a while and then push off the chair and roll forward. It’s quite athletic.

Poseidon wants you to know he knows how handsome he is:

Sometimes his cuteness makes up for what we’ve termed his high-spiritedness. Sometimes.

He’s listening to The Yankee walking around upstairs. It’s a very intriguing part of the evening. She’s getting ready to call it a night and if the cats didn’t immediately follow her upstairs we have a few moments of this.

Then it is a big sprint! Something more fun than this is happening up there!

Isn’t that just the way of things?