Monday « Kenny Smith | Omnes hic sumus discere.

Monday

adventures / family / Monday / photo — Comments Off
3
Jul 17

Catching up

We are wrapping up a trip to my folks, a four-day visit to the ancestral stomping grounds, and I do mean ancestral. I’ve been brushing up on a few branches of the family tree. Turns out there are parts of my family that have been in northwestern Alabama when the state was merely a territory.

We arrived late Friday, just in time to go to sleep. Woke up Saturday and had a casual day of it. After church yesterday we spent the afternoon with my grandmother. She gave me another branch of the family tree to look into. And then we went to a nearby cemetery and found the grave of my great-great-grandfather.

Apparently, no one knew where he was buried. I figured it out online from a few hundred miles away, thanks to the Internet. After about six minutes of walking through neatly mown grass in the twilight I found the actual marker. You can’t miss it, really. I’m not sure how no one in the family knew. The marker just has his first and middle initials rather than his full name, though, so I suppose that’s part of it. Anyway, there he is, marked by a stone that tells the tell in just seven letters and a few numbers. He died more than a half-century before I was born. He was younger than I am now. He probably worked harder than I ever will. And there, next to him, is his wife, my great-great-grandmother, who died 24 years before I was born. I don’t know anything about them, otherwise, or, today at least, what their parents names were, but I’ve at least proven they existed. I’ve driven by their cemetery all of my life and didn’t know they were there.

Today was a pool day and a cookout day and a dodge the rain day. We went for a quick bike ride and then helped cleaned and then entertained the kids and then jumped in and out of the pool and ducked thunderstorms. I taught a three-year-old how to swim, sort of. It was a fine day, all told, then.

And we’re back here, as well! Back to the old Monday through Friday schedule. And here are a few June pictures to wrap up the month before … well, July 4th … when we’ll be … pretty much stuck in the car all day … So, yeah, enjoy some pictures!

This is a flower on campus that I walk by regularly. There’s really nothing special to it. I was trying to get the ants to cooperate with my phone’s almost-focal length. But I think the pollen became more interesting in the end:

We rode our bikes a fair amount, of course. This is a picture we took on our anniversary, actually. I thought it was nice of The Yankee to slow down and let me catch up:

She’s a nice person like that.

Allie is hard at work, just so you know:

I took this shot the other night at 8:50 p.m. There is a summertime advantage of living so far to the west in the Eastern Time Zone:

Later, that same night, I took this picture:

It is a fine perk, really.

adventures / Instagram / memories / Monday / photo / site / Twitter / video — Comments Off
5
Jun 17

Back in the U.S.A.

We arrived safely and on time and only inconvenienced by the inconveniences of the modern convenience of air travel.

Which is, at times, inconvenient.

But we were well-fed. Customs was a chore, even in the fast lines. And, like all things in New York, the moment you stepped onto the curb you knew exactly where you were and why you didn’t want to be there.

We made it back to the in-laws to find that Allie hadn’t missed us at all:

That was Friday. I flew back yesterday. The Yankee dropped me off at the curb:

I made a video of the flight:

And, now I am back in town, back at the office, back to the regular routine, now with jet lag! If history is any guide, I still have another two days until I can walk that off.

The above video makes the 31st video I’ve produced in the last two weeks. Add to that 103 photos that have also been uploaded to the site. And that’s just what I’ve shared here. So, with the trip well-documented, it seems a good time to take a little break on the blog. There’s an anniversary post coming up, of course. And if anything interesting happens in the next few weeks I’ll throw it here as well. But, otherwise, let’s say hiatus until July. In the meantime, follow along on Twitter and Instagram. They never seem to stop.

adventures / Monday / photo / Scotland / video — Comments Off
29
May 17

Riding across the top of Scotland

We spent the morning and a bit of the afternoon in Durness, shopping and exploring the little artists’ village there. It was originally a military installation that never really got off the ground. Eventually the government invited some folks to come live and work there, and so the artists moved in. After a good long while, they were given the option to buy the little buildings. It is a great little walking area. Everything is close together, the tourists come and browse it all and, in our case, we hit about half the stores and picked up a few souvenirs from some of them. We had chit chat and got some tips for what to do on the last bit of our trip and generally had a casual time of it.

I said it was an artists village. Did I mention the chocolatier? There is a chocolate store there. They call it a factory. It doesn’t quite fit the sense of scale you might imagine, but you can … fudge … a bit on the details.

They also boast the world’s best hot chocolate:

You got to hand-select the bits of chocolate you would chase the hot chocolate with, so that was a nice bonus. And it may or may not be the world’s best hot chocolate, but we agreed it was tasty:

A few quick pictures on our way out of Durness:

And then our right turns continued. We are going across the top of Scotland today. We ran across this just after we’d left the village. Ceannabeinne Beach, is known in its Gaelic name, as the beach of the burn of bereavement and death. There’s a tragic old woman drowned here story. And, almost as sad, there are ruins of former farms where families were forced off their lands. But the beach, just down from the road, and isolated enough to be delightfully empty, is a lovely looking place:

Some time later we pulled into Dunnet Head. Today it was chilly and breezy and felt fairly lonely. You go there to see it. If it had been warmer we might have stayed a bit longer, and that would have been OK, too. Anyway, this is the northernmost point of the mainland British Isles.

Though Scotland also records its actual northernmost point on an island some 170 miles in the distance.

We did not swim out there.

We sea kayaked.

(We didn’t do that, either. Thankfully no one had that idea.)

That rock type is called Old Red Sandstone, by the way. You can see it here, Ireland, Norway, Greenland and on the northeastern seaboard of North America.

adventures / history / Monday / Scotland — Comments Off
22
May 17

Edinburg to Inverlochy to Fort William to Inverness

We’ve set off for the Highlands on a grand adventure! And this is where the geography started to change.

You go over a hill, round two curves and the landscape is entirely different:

It is rugged and scrappy and harsh:

And it holds a brutal beauty all its own, which is impossible to capture in just one or two pictures:

So let’s try a panorama. Click to embiggen and scroll around:

This is St. John’s Episcopal Church. Looks ancient, but is pretty young for these parts. It was built in 1842:

That church is in the village of Ballachulish, which is where the mountains and a lake and a river estuary meet. This is the time of year to visit, because of all of the bluebells:

This church may well wind up as the video on the front page of the site, soon …

Opposite the church is Loch Leven. Pronounce it “Li’ un,” or, in the local Gaelic, as “Lee’ oon.” Click to embiggen and scroll around:

Lunch was in Fort William — a charming little tourist town with about 10,000 residents and a history dating back to the 17th century when the English were busy dealing with the Scots and, later, to control them through force. It is named after William of Orange, the Duke of Cumberland, who the Scots called “Butcher Cumberland.” I had a nice steak and ale pie there.

We stopped off in a light drizzle at Inverlochy Castle. I made a video:

And then we made our way up near Inverness, where our B’n’B is. We’ll stay for two nights in a room with a view of Loch Ness. As in …

Didn’t see Nessie today, though we have a fine vantage point:

After dinner in a pub in Inverness — I do enjoy pub food just a bit too much, I know — we got back to Kimcraigan just in time for a great light show. A double rainbow. Again, click to scroll around in the larger version:

Tomorrow, we’re finding Nessie.

cycling / Monday / photo / video — Comments Off
15
May 17

Mondays never have clever post titles

The best restive kind of weekend. Slept in and and then did only what I wanted to do on Saturday. This included turning on lights seldom used and in random combinations throughout the evening. Also, I cleaned out the leftovers from the refrigerator. To most people this means dragging the garbage can over and doing the transfer of goods routine. Or the Transfer of Foodstuffs That Were Once Good and No Longer Are routine.

Me, I just ate them. Two dishes from last week that made their way into the fridge were lunch and dinner on Saturday. Then I cleaned my office.

Sunday, I made the mother’s day calls, went to the grocery store, watched a bike race and road my bicycle.

I made several passes on that deer, so I got plenty of fuzzy photos:

Also, nearby, was a rabbit:

Maybe they’ll both come over and help with the next set of leftovers.

Today, back to the office, where things are taking place and some work is getting down and meetings are being held. Then home and, while walking to the car, I saw another rabbit:

I’m guessing it was a different rabbit. It could be the same one. The two sightings were only about a mile or so apart. I don’t know why that first rabbit would need to hop this direction, but it is possible. (Not pictured, another rabbit, which was hiding in the shrubbery.)

And then another bike ride. I did an hour in a low gear, mashing and lifting the pedals as quickly as I can, on the flattest course I could find, where I still managed to gain 503 feet over 16 miles. But I held my highest pace of the year so far. That deserves a handlebar shot:

And another ride tomorrow.