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adventures / photo / Thursday / video — Comments Off
29
Aug 19

Almost average, even.

I wondered yesterday about the prospects of maintaining color continuity over the course of the long term. There were blue and tan elements. And so there are today, as well.

I only took this picture to put on Instagram, because, at the end of the day, I wasn’t sure if it was a good look or not. The reviews have been good so far. One follower chimed in “You know I have opinions,” but left it at that. Owing to the flush of information through the Instahose I will now never know what those opinions are. I am sure, though, that this was a bad choice.

Really, it is just a good way to keep track of when I wore what.

We had a bike ride this evening, the last Thursday evening ride I’ll have for a good long while, since we’ll start back up with the television shoots next week. Best not to dwell on the absence of rides for now though. Look! The tar snakes are making a smiley face!

Was there video? You bet there was video, and the audio totally goes with that tie!

I PRed three segments on Strava on this ride. It was one of my better rides of the year to date. Which is something I should have progressively been saying since about June, but the feeling returns when the feeling returns. The title of that workout on Strava became the title of this post. No one considered that in post-post-neo-modernism-ish time we’d have to title our workouts, but that’s the world for you. Wherever you go, there better be a post for it. How else will Buckaroo Bonsai know where you are? Anyway, now, the trick is to get as much out of these more pleasant feeling rides as possible, dovetailing as they are with shorter days and milder temperatures.

And, naturally, I won’t be able to ride again for another four or five days.

More on Twitter and please check me out on Instagram, as well.

photo / Wednesday — Comments Off
28
Aug 19

This is about wheels, which I have, and color wheels, which I do not have

I got my bike out of the bike shop yesterday. They called Monday to tell me it was ready, I finally picked it up yesterday. It went in for a new spoke, after I snapped an old one last week. I also added on an overdue tune up and a badly needed new chain. To celebrate the work, and the happy reunion, I wore my bicycle cufflinks yesterday:

I also picked up a new stem. It seems my bike might be too small, and that’s causing some hand problems. Nothing lasting, just a nerve compression that makes riding less enjoyable than it should be. And my ongoing foot issue (which does largely feel fine and might actually be improving with time and stretching exercises, but we’ll see in the next month or two) might actually be exacerbating my problems issue. This is all very specific stuff in that odd way of things: technical if you don’t ride, basic if you are a cyclist.

Anyway, one solution is too change to an angled stem. My old one was a flat, 0-degree, number. It made for an aggressive posture. Now we go to the other extreme. This is a Salsa aftermarket stem, set on a full 25-degree angle:

The angle stem raises up the headset, giving the cockpit a different orientation and puts the handlebars in such a place that I am not falling over to grab hold. This might help with the hand discomfort I’ve been experiencing of late. It isn’t as aesthetically pleasing in any way, but cheaper than a new bicycle, and feels a lot different, even on the first ride:

I wonder what it will feel like on the eighth or ninth ride.

But, hey, it isn’t all bikes around here. Or even cufflinks about bikes. (Those were a gift from my mother, by the way.) Sometimes it is just about the tie. But, really, it is about the shirt. And this is a new one! I got it online and on sale. And what do you know, yesterday’s bike jersey matches today’s tie:

I can’t keep this color continuity up for forever, of course. Or can I? I wonder.

photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
27
Aug 19

Here’s a thing

You’ve got your mirrors. And you’ve got your planes. And, in retrospect, putting the two together was a big idea. Maybe no one figured on putting one on the side of the fuselage. I suppose it was an aero thing. And there’s not a rearview mirror because you can’t see out of the back of the plane.

Why, yes, we’re still nursing our way through pictures from last week. Why not? There’s good stuff here! How often do you get to see the lights on the landing gear of a 757?

I like the access panels. I don’t know why. They’re not really any different than an electrical outlet cover, or the gas door on my car. Maybe it is the writing:

How do they move the cargo off the planes? With the help of a lot of tiny, tiny wheels. Rust optional:

The next time I get a squished box, I’ll have to keep this in mind. They really do put a lot into these cargo containers:

They look like this, those containers. Their exterior shape is dependent upon where it is designed to go inside the plane. No space is wasted.

It’s interesting. You think your package is late or lost and wonder how that could be. How could they get this wrong? Why not do this one thing this other way, which corresponds with the idea I just came up with? And then you go to a distribution node, see a tiny slice of the operations working on one plane for a few minutes at one of the dozen or so hubs around the world and you realize: you really don’t know anything about this. It’s a modern miracle that it works so frequently. It’s amazing your things can cover such great distances in such a short time. We live in amazing, squished box times.

adventures / Monday / photo — Comments Off
26
Aug 19

The new photo game

As I mentioned last week, The Yankee and I invented a new game. We take photos of nonsensical things for arcane reasons. The game is made up and the points don’t matter, but we had a good time with it. She won this first round, but only barely. Here are a few of my efforts. Remember, friends, I am a professional.

Cream and cream:

I was accused of staging this photograph, but that was before we had rules about staging our shots. (I totally staged that shot.)

I think this one speaks for itself:

From the utilitarian nihilism of the postal system and boxes in general, to the practicality of asphalt paint:

And then of course there’s Max, the standee. I thought this was a great submission in the game at the time, but this game can change on you in a hurry. That’s what Max taught me:

Wouldn’t it be a shame if I lost this game on the Max shot? This game needs rules. That’s what I’ve learned today. Give me rules and a camera and I can put out a good effort. Without that, though, these pictures are just going to get interesting eventually. I am a professional.

friends / IU / journalism / memories / photo / Wednesday — Comments Off
21
Aug 19

Dateline Springs Valley

Classes start on Monday, but I’m out of the office for the rest of the week. So it was fortuitous that a former student stopped by just before quitting time this afternoon. And I was so pleased he thought to do so. He’s a newspaper man, now, and he wanted to give me his first edition.

The paperwork hasn’t even cleared and he’s already got seven bylines and a handful of photographs in his first paper.

Auston started in television, became an anchor and a talk show guest and worked his way up to being the sports director for the campus station. He was simultaneously driving up to Indianapolis and interning at one of the stations while working on his senior year classes. Somewhere along the way he decided he’d like to try his hand at print. Maybe it was one he was podcasting, or writing for one of the local sports websites. (Students can do so much these days, and the smart ones, like Auston, do all they can.

Anyway, now he’s a freshly graduated student and will become the new sports editor of one of the nearby weekly newspapers and cover two schools in a way that they deserve to be covered, a way that only dedicated weeklies can cover them. It’s going to be a great job for him, a fair launching pad to a promising young career. I couldn’t be more excited for him.

Not too long ago I learned that another former student, Sydney, who has run about five newspapers and won more awards than she can hang on an office wall, is moving up in her career into the world of book publishing.

It is wonderful when former students keep in touch and let you know how things are progressing for them. Some time back I created a map to chart everyone’s moves. Students, when they leave campus, can become mysteries or colleagues, but when you are lucky they come to think of you as a friend. I prefer that idea. Classes begin Monday, and they’ll end whenever the calendar tells us to wrap it up, but the friendships can be lasting.