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.
Time for a bike ride, and since we went in the late afternoon and we headed generally north and east that means it’s time for a shadooooooow sellllllfie …
It was also the day for me to go the wrong way because I got the roads confused and The Yankee had to chase me down which was no easy feat today because I had good legs and yet she managed to eventually do it anyway because I looked over my shoulder and saw the look on her face and then sat up and, yes, run-on sentences do happen a lot in cycling. It has something to do with the breathing, I think.
So we turned around and went the right direction, determined to not speak of this again. It only added on one extra mile, so she didn’t have to chase me far, because she is a strong rider, but my legs held up throughout the day. This is what’s important, look at that water:
There were people fishing on the causeway as we went through. Everyone is ready to enjoy some nice weather, which we’ve only had it intermittently here. That’s a crime against humanity, I’m pretty sure.
Anyway, that’s just after the big downhill, which one app tracked me at 134.4 miles per hour. I was not going 134.4 miles per hour. That’d be very fast, indeed, and I think the app is wrong in a lot of ways, begging the question: Why?
So you go down the descent then you take a hard left and you find yourself on a road that you can somehow hit 25-27 miles per hour without even pedaling. Then there’s the water and that’s when she caught me:
And then the climb out. This is where our barn by bike feature of the day comes in, and, yes, that is an uphill and not a camera tilt trick:
Is there a video? There is a video. On this particular route the video is from the last smooth, easy part before the hard part, and before the water.
It would be tempting to rush through here and attack the long series of rollers that turn into an uphill before the long downhill and the next eventual climb. It’d be fun to turn this into a bunch of big sweeping sines, as Bill Strickland called them:
I was riding in long, gradual curves that stretched nearly from the right shoulder of the road out to and sometimes past the yellow line on the left, then back and out and again the same.
[…]
The sine curve to me is more of an undulation, an expression of the natural beauty of movement, and the beauty of natural movement: a lover’s body in moments of passion beyond thought, for instance.
Or a bicycle rider in one of those rare interludes when the pure sheer pleasure of being a bicycle rider can be expressed only through an extended series of line-to-line swoops. The road sine is one of the most spontaneous and unsophisticated acts of cycling, and it begins and occurs and continues in some kind of complete state of unexamined and unself-conscious motion.
Bill Strickland is a brilliant writer and I love that description. I do it all the time on the bike. I always think of that passage when I do.
But never right here; never at the fence.
Somehow, I always find myself doing that other ultimate sign of freedom. I get to just the right spot on that road, just ahead of us here, and let it go and coast. I’ll float almost as far as momentum and enthusiasm will take me. And then start working my way uphill.
Talked with Tom Duszynski again, because the world needs to hear from epidemiologists and I’m part of the world and I want to give learned and thoughtful people a place to speak to people who want to hear real things and not bombast.
Wash your hands. And if you’re out on a bike or out on a trail or just in the backyard, have a great weekend.
photo / Thursday — Comments Off on Putting April behind us 30 Apr 20
And we’re wrapping up this month with a few more leftover photos from the big camera. Because it’s been that kind of week, and we’re ready to move on through it to the next week which will, no doubt, feel decidedly better for reasons that have nothing to do with any discernible, tangible reason, but nevertheless.
Today marks the beginning of my eighth week of work-from-home. And I’m very fortunate, lucky, privileged and blessed. All of those descriptors apply. But the last few days, nevertheless, have brought on a certain gauzy meh. Tomorrow I’m going to change it up, apply a shock to the system, create some momentum and power through. It’ll be great!
I just had to work through this little bit, and a lot of us did. A lot of people also didn’t have the luxury of it that I’ve had and I’m more than aware of all of that. Grace and patience were my two words at the beginning. I hope I’ve practiced that as it pertains to others, and this week I’m applying it to myself. Next week, all systems go.
Anyway, a few photos. This one is definitely getting used again, probably:
I took this one, and re-sized it and put it here, just because I love what a proper camera can do with the depth of field. My phone’s camera won’t do that. Yet.
Flower budding from a tree? Have to take a picture of that. It’s the rule.
And I will see you all tomorrow, next month, May.
photo / podcast / Wednesday — Comments Off on If the photos don’t make sounds the podcast will 29 Apr 20
Remember how, a few days back I said I had to catch up on photos that I’d taken on my DSLR? We’re back to doing that today. These next few photos are from a walk we took … I dunno, three lifetimes or two weeks ago. Forgive me. I seem, today, to be having the day that a lot of people have been struggling with for the last four or five weeks. It’s something you bounce back from sooner or later, I’m sure.
Anyway, some version of a few of these are going to get used elsewhere on the site. (There are big plans! OK, average-sized plans. Alright, alright, very small plans with no real import at all.) Let’s see how they look!
Neighborhood trees in full bloom:
And I think we found our winner from that batch.
And some dandelions in the yard. This is a tough head-to-head competition here:
I know which one I think, but what about you?
Today on the show we talked computer and network and data security with Andrew Korty, who has the title chief information security officer. It’s easy to imagine a person with a title like that standing behind the captain on the bridge and scowling, but that’s just television. Andrew probably just has three or five computer monitors and a lot of blinking lights and some operating software that doesn’t exist beyond a television set.
I learned some things in there, and you might too. Primarily that I am supposed to pay attention to my IT experts. Who knew?
Won’t you give it a listen?
photo / Tuesday / video — Comments Off on A walk through the woods 28 Apr 20
It was definitely a get-outside sort of day today. So I traipsed through the woods for lunch, and saw these young red-tailed hawks who were on the prowl:
Flowers I found down by the creek bed:
The trees are finally getting ready to speak their piece around here:
I’m still trying to figure this out …
… it’s a managed field surrounded by woods that’s out of immediate use and there’s that old tree just waiting. I am pretty sure I am on someone’s prop —
I am from the South, as I feel compelled to remind people all the time. So that sort of thing isn’t odd to me at all. Someone was burning things and they sat out there to monitor the fire.
But I have also read a lot of the Southern Gothics, and this little setting just off to the side was a bit more unnerving:
When authors write about the trees and hills, this is the sort of thing many of them have in mind, I am sure of it:
And just a small batch of pretty wildflowers I saw on my walk:
