Monday

cycling / Monday / photo — Comments Off on This is mostly about a bike ride, but also pets
18
May 20

This is mostly about a bike ride, but also pets

Today I learned that next week is Memorial Day. Sorta sneaks up on you, doesn’t it?

We get a three-day weekend! I wonder what that will be like. Probably we’ll hang out with the cats, same as everyday. They are having a great time of it all. Phoebe has lately been enjoying the steps in the midday:

Poseidon spends a lot of the day warning off the birds, finding new ways to get into the same kinds of trouble and relying on his cuteness to make us forget about it.

We’ve recently shown them some more windows they haven’t had available to them, but they always come back to the windows that point to the southeast. They get it.

Had a lovely little bike ride today. And by lovely I mean we did hill repeats. You go up a hill, then you go down that hill, then you go up that hill, and then you go down that hill, then you go up that hill, and you realize you’ve lost count already.

So I sing a different song to myself each time. It’s somehow easier to count back the songs than recalling how many times I’ve grimaced over that especially steep spot.

Today I was singing aloud, which has the added bonus of amusing The Yankee when she was going up or down the hill opposite my journey.

(That is not the hill. That’s just part of the ride on either side of the hills. The hill was steep, tree-covered, slick from an earlier rain and featured an embankment on one side and a steep drop-off on the other. Also part of a tree fell over behind me at one point. It was an altogether different vibe than the approximately-a-suburb you have in that photo.)

She’s getting stronger on climbs, and if that continues I’m in real trouble.

So it was a lovely 22-mile ride. We rode past a colleague’s house and I yelled to him from the road, which amuses us, and him, but not his neighbors. Probably that route takes us by someone else we know, but I don’t know where everyone lives, which is a shame for so many reasons.

On my last repeat I went all the way down to the lake, where the boat launch is, and climbed the whole way out. And suddenly I realized why we were only doing the top half of the climb for the repeats. After 13 reps up an 8.6 degree ascent the bottom half of the full climb is a leg breaker, it was a 200-foot ascent over a half-mile with a maximum gradient of 12 percent, which, by then, was enough. And that’s not the point. The hills were the point. which is certainly one wake to look forward to the end of your weekend. And since there was a ride we can return to the irregular-when-I-think-of-it Barns By Bike feature. Look at this beaut!

Remember how, on Friday, we examined the malfunctioning speed on one of the cycling apps? Today it said I was doing 130.7 miles per hour on the first descent. I was not.

I save that kind of speed for the climb back out, where I set PRs on three Strava segments after riding all those hills.

cycling / hobby / Monday / photo — Comments Off on So many photos to enjoy
11
May 20

So many photos to enjoy

Happy late Mother’s Day. I think all of our flowers arrived today. But the cards got there early. One of those years. Mothers, being moms, completely understand.

The cats are doing just fine. Phoebe is in a tunnel phase:

It’d be wrong to ascribe human emotions to cats, of course, but that is one content-looking cat:

I have decided to keep the cats out of my home office for the many breakable things. Any closed door, to a cat, is an opportunity. (A mentality I totally appreciate.) But figure out the pattern, dude. I open the door, you sneak in, I scoop you up and put you back out in the hall. He has not figured out the pattern. So I made a sign.

The Yankee says it was nice of me to put it at eye level. That, I thought, was the best part of the joke.

He disagrees. And he likes to let me know about it.

A view of one of the local lakes from Friday’s lovely bike ride:

One of the apps that I use — there are three — to track rides gives you the maximum speed you hit on each mile segment. There were 35 miles in that particular ride and there are a lot of times that make sense: 27.2, 25.2, 28.8, 24.5, 28.1. If you looked at the terrain or stop signs or things, it tracks very well.

Except for that one spot where, I know I was sprinting, but I’m fairly certain I didn’t hit 2,513.9 miles per hour.

I will accept the data it gives me for a split three miles down the road where it says I was doing 51 mph. Probably I wasn’t — in my experience when you hit about 46 it all starts to feel noticeably different — but I’ll accept it.

The Yankee on her weekend run:

I was on my weekend sit-on-the-deck phase …

I was sitting on the deck to have a Mother’s Day call and watch the birds. Check out this little guy:

You can sit up close to a bird feeder and, if they are hungry enough, most birds will come to accept your not being in the way of their dinner:

Anyway, it was a fine time, a nice long chat about this and that, some pleasant weather for a change and watching the wildlife go by:

Like I’m a nature photographer over here:

A red-winged black bird on the ground, very common in this area:

One of our neighborly cardinals, which aren’t exactly in abundance, but not scarce. I guess that means they are plentiful. There are at least four:

And a nice brief little look at an Indigo bunting:

We call the red-winged blackbird a Superman Bird. You can really see it when he flies. And I guess you’ll have to take my word for it since I only have pictures of it standing around:

And a nice red head finch wrapped up the photo safari on our back deck.

So that was the weekend. And how was yours? And back to the new week. How’s yours shaping up?

Monday / photo — Comments Off on Hindsight and forethought
4
May 20

Hindsight and forethought

So, just getting it out of the way, it’s May and dreary and cold. And it’s going to be that way for days. So that’s something to look forward to, wearing jackets and turning on electric blankets in May.

The cats are doing just fine. Phoebe enjoyed the sun on Friday. Discovering the west-facing windows has been a big boon in our house:

Poseidon found a nice evening perch recently and he would like you to know that space above kitchen cabinets is definitely a preferred design treatment:

We found a really lovely flowering dogwood on today’s walk. It sits in a lot of shade, which may be why it’s a little late to the party, but that just makes the blooming party last longer:

Now that I look at this photograph, here, I think I should have paid more attention to this tree out there:

That’s the way of it, isn’t it? Hindsight and forethought.

cycling / Monday / photo / podcast / video — Comments Off on There’s a podcast and a botched bike ride and some pics
27
Apr 20

There’s a podcast and a botched bike ride and some pics

And how was your weekend? Did you know you just had one of those? We’re all making that joke, now. It’s starting to work its way into television commercials, which is how you know the zeitgeist approves of the usage. But we should also remember that not everyone is in the same at-home condition. And there’s a lot of variance in the stay-at-home concept, of course. And some people don’t have a traditional weekend on Saturdays and Sundays. But you can’t address all of those in one joke, for punchline purposes. You really can’t do it in a small talk shorthand. And you definitely shouldn’t start a long post with it either.

That’s what I learned this weekend.

The cats had a fine time of it. Phoebe at dinner time:

And here’s Poseidon enjoying an afternoon lounging in the sunshine.

And speaking of Poseidon, here’s a cat video:

He never does catch the light. If you sit with that for a few minutes you can make a terrific story. And then you begin to wonder: do cats have revenge stories because of the things we write in our heads, or do we write those tales because cats just fundamentally have revenge on their minds?

Today the cat – light story is about a creature watching a flattened version of a Big Bang. It could be that he has no idea of understanding what he’s seeing. Or maybe he knows precisely what he’s seeing. Maybe that’s where the wonder is.

We could all use a little more wonder these days.

It was a chamber of commerce kind of yesterday, and so we went for a walk in the afternoon.

The flowers I fell for.

No, really, I fell. That was going to be how I started this post, but that sounds scary, and I’m fine. Jammed my shoulder up a little bit. It aches today and it’ll be sore for another day or two and it’ll be fine, I promise.

It was quick trip. The mud slipped out from underfoot and I stuck my arm out, thinking at the last moment I should tuck instead. So I did that, but not completely enough. Mostly it just hurt my pride and got my clothes dirty. So, yeah, I shot a video because if you suffer you should make some art out of it, or something.

That was all the weekend.

Today, I published this conversation with IU’s vice president for research, Fred Cate.

It was fascinating, I asked him to touch on all these different kinds of research, covering a big handful of disciplines from multiple schools on two or three campuses and he got them all. He’s really good at giving overviews. And there’s some great quotes in there. I like the one near the end, about how you’d be hard pressed to find some slice of life in the state (and beyond) not being touched by IU’s coronavirus research. It’s impactful.

I want to talk about all of them.

The view of the sky from just before our bike ride:

It was a weirdly frustrating ride all the way around. But the important thing is that today was hill repeats. Which means finding a hill and going up it over and over again. It makes you a stronger climber and, brother, I need that.

The really important thing is that today hill repeats meant going up the hill just four times before I had another flat. Allow me to visualize this for you:

That’s four flats in the last two weeks, and under Gatorskins, too. Gatorskins being an ultra tough tire meant to protect the fragile little inner tubes. So me and the Gators and the Mavic rims are going to have a long talk tomorrow, because this is getting expensive.

Have a great start to your week, which may or may not be well underway, or even great. But if it ain’t, do try to make it so.

cycling / journalism / Monday / photo / podcast — Comments Off on Some walks, a bike ride, a podcast, some cats
20
Apr 20

Some walks, a bike ride, a podcast, some cats

And your weekend? Was it functionally much different than your week? Unless, of course, you’re going into work still, in which case I apologize for the joke. But that’s all we can do with it, is joke and laugh, and then work from home or wish we could, or, in far too many sad cases, wish we could work from somewhere.

I get to work from home. I’m very fortunate indeed. And not a day goes by that I don’t spend a lot of time thinking of that. I do it a lot more than during the walk from bedroom to kitchen to home office, too.

One of the things I got to do today for work was this little program …

Elizabeth Malatestinic teaches human resource management in the Kelley School of Business at IUPUI. So she’s the one that onboards. I don’t know if she’s the person who came up with that term. It seems unlikely, but I didn’t think to ask. Anyway, she does HR, and we discussed what we should be able to expect from our bosses, what they can get out of us right now, managing the work-at-home dynamic and some other things. It actually is an interesting and useful conversation. But you’re only going to know that if you take my word for it and press the play button.

Press the play button.

Did you press the play button yet?

The cats are grand. Phoebe is studying yoga:

She has since decided to give it a try. She does it with a sense of panache that can inspire us all:

Poseidon has been studying yoga as well. Less interested, but nevertheless:

He’s a nice cat, when he’s being cuddly, and not a jerk to someone.

That cat is going through toddlerhood and adolescence simultaneously, and he’s going to be doing it for the rest of time, which is definitely something to look forward to.

On a walk yesterday we passed some carefully planted roadside trees and it reminded me of how I always make the same disappointed joke every year about maples being nature’s first quitters. It’s true. They are. It is disappointing, and then brilliant, and then just sad like all of the rest. But give the maples their due: They are some of the first ones back on the job, too.

Which is part of the twisted logic of acceptance: Oh, look at the beautiful early leaves! … As we approach the last week of April …

I am showing off the mask a friend made for me. She is crafty and has skills and a desire to help others and even me and I am very fortunate, plus it matches my eyes:

And a shadow selfie from today’s ride, which was notable only for the hill repeats.

You’re supposed to go up a hill for several minutes, descend and then start over again. Only I manage to do it based on the distance, because looking for that quirky tree or, like today, the discarded mattress on the side of the road is easier than staring at my bike computer. So looking at the data now, I went longer the first time, a bit shorter the second time, and then faster the next four times before slowing down for the next several climbs. Hey, it’s all slow and uphill to me. Also, I had negative splits on the back of the ride, which better be the case after 45 minutes or so of going uphill.

At one point this car was coming from the other direction right at the place where I was turning around. The hill continues on, so I have to keep riding, waiting for the car to pass so I can try to do a 180 at a suboptimal speed. Except this guy slows, rolls down his window and says “Steep ain’t it!?”

Hadn’t noticed, neighbor. Hadn’t noticed.

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →