photo « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

photo

Wheels and bolts and things

My bike at rest. It deserves it.

Not because I’ve been riding a lot, but because yesterday was just hills.

Lots of hills. I rode this one over and over again, finally quitting when my times stopped improving.

So I did 15 miles of hills yesterday. That’s a lot of stomping on the bike for a guy with big feet like me. Thirty more miles today. Just as I got back home I glanced down at the odometer.

That’s for the year. So I’m only about 450 miles behind where I want to be on the year. I’ll catch up eventually.

The story about the faucet: This would be a great entry to the running page on fixing things in our house. I don’t have a category for it. It is too late to add one now and I’d probably just name it something hateful anyway. But we can now add to a list of repair jobs that include the air conditioner (twice), the shower, refrigerator, dish washer (twice), washing machine, the toilets (three times between them) and more.

We’ve lived here for less than two years.

So the kitchen faucet developed a drip. We found a certain way that you could turn the nozzle and the handle to minimize the problem. This worked for a while. And then it stopped working. And earlier this week the drip almost became a stream.

I’ve tried to take the faucet apart before so I could replace the washers, but the water is so hard here that all of the innards (plumbing term!) were fused together. I tried this for a few days. I tried this with WD-40 and various other things found in the cabinets and garage.

Having failed at this simple task I decided to just replace the entire faucet. So out from the cabinet came all of the cleaning supplies. Under the sink went my head. The supply lines, I discovered, were also fused on the faucet end. OK, then. I’ll just take it apart and pull the supply lines up from the top and buy new stinking supply lines with my brand new faucet that has to be installed because I can’t take the old one apart to install $.75 worth of rubber gaskets to it.

I’m thrilled.

The supply lines were disconnected from the bottom. I disconnected the sprayer nozzle. I freed one of the nuts that attaches the faucet to the sink from underneath.

The sink, you’ll notice if you spend enough time in the cabinets, is a great two tub cast iron deal. This is the most sturdy thing we own, I’m certain of it. That and the other nut that is attaching the faucet to the sink. That joker was fused with the bolt in the worst way. But underneath that nut was a concave washer type thing (more plumbing terminology!). It, too, was rusting.

And so it was that I found myself donning goggles, grabbing a screwdriver and just stabbing the crap out of that washer type thing. The plan was to punch out so much of that rust-crusted impediment and then just pull everything out from the top.

Which, eventually, I did.

So we went to Lowe’s and bought a new faucet. Nothing they had matched exactly, but that’s OK because we needed a working sink.

And we got in trouble at Lowe’s too! They have those rolling ladder step things and we moved one into the aisle to inspect the faucets above our line of sight. An old guy with a ponytail and a red vest took exception to this. I understood his point — safety is important — but he also understood mine. There is no one around in the store to give you any help. I know this because I’d done this exact same thing on this exact same aisle for more than 10 minutes last night. There were no red vests to be found. So I went to Home Depot, which is literally right across the street. And I stayed on their faucet aisle for even longer, and there were no orange aprons to be found.

Which brought up a great conversation about all of this online. In the middle of which came the Home Depot social media person with the “Oh no! Sorry to hear that! Which store were you in?” It might have been rude, but I said “Is it unfair to say “All of them”? Based on the responses I received from others the rep on floor help is staggeringly poor.”

The social media person did not write back to that.

The Lowe’s red vest with the ponytail came back later, as we were wrapping up our choices, and commiserated on the faucet problem. He knew they had a floor problem. I’m sure the Lowe’s managers do too; they just don’t care. Home Depot? Same thing.

But it gave me time to see things like this, the paper towel holder!

You’ve never seen such excitement for such a prosaic tool! It holds your paper towels! Above the countertop! It holds! Paper towels!

This, at a glance, is simply disturbing:

A jaundiced hand emerging from the wall, holding some sort of Matrix device. Or is it from Alien? Or is it Elvis’ alternative universe microphone. Don’t sing into this one though, you’ll just drown.

Or you could go into our backyard:

It rained a lot today.

Oh, and I installed the new faucet. Took eight minutes. It better work for years.

Auburn / football / journalism / photo / Tuesday / Twitter — Comments Off
12
Jun 12

Just current events

If I may wrap my head around the journalism of our big shooting story — and this is my site, so I say that I can — I’ll recall something I said to The Yankee on Sunday. She was driving as we headed home from our rafting excursion. I was reading aloud the emerging news on the Saturday night shooting.

“They might stumble at first, but The Plainsman staff will do a great job of covering this story.”

I said that with pride, knowing they might struggle a bit because they are, after all, students. But I know what they are capable of because I was a part of that staff once. And it has been a great paper for decades. And I was right. They did a great job covering the story. You can see their continuing coverage here.

If you are interested in how the sausage is made Dr. John Carvalho wrote a piece for The War Eagle Reader on the subject.

Covering that first big story is always hard, but they’ve done very well so far. I’m proud for them. Shame they had to have a story like this, but it shows their promise, demonstrates their hard work and will, hopefully, give them confidence to go with the sudden attention they are receiving.

(Update: WHNT-19, the Huntsville, Ala. CBS affiliate did a story on The Plainsman’s newsgathering. See it here.

There was another press conference today, though there was not much new to say. The suspect is still at large. Desmonte Leonard, authorities believe, was at the house they targeted last night. The thought is that he was able to move on before the Montgomery police, Auburn police, FBI, state troopers, U.S. Marshals and four other agencies arrived on the scene.

The only other news was that the reward for information leading to his arrest now sits at $30,000. And law enforcement is openly telling the public they’re tired of being misled. They’re offering Class C felonies to anyone who gets in the way.

I dislike that that this has become a football story. It is hard not to, though. Two former players were killed. One, Ladarious Phillips, was transferring to Jacksonville State (The heartbreaking version of his story is that his new coach, Jack Crowe, had expected him at JSU much early this summer. He was, apparently, having a tough time making that change, though, and so the wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time motif has even greater significance. Phillips everybody loved. He was 290 pounds and could do a backflip flat-footed with a big smile. The stories people tell of him in his hometown of nearby Roanoke, Ala., about being a father figure to young children, even when he apparently didn’t have one around himself, are sad and uplifting and heartbreaking. The other, Ed Christian, retired because of a back injury. He was still a student, though, a Georgia boy who, by all accounts I’ve read, also had a fine reputation.

Another current player, Eric Mack, was injured, but is expected to make a complete recovery. Whether he’ll play football again, Auburn coach Gene Chizik said, is right now immaterial.

But there were others, too, not affiliated with the football program. DeMario Pitts was a local boy, and he is dead at 20, leaving behind a son and daughter. Xavier D. Moss was killed at 19. John Robertson is in critical condition at a Birmingham hospital. The 20-year-old was shot in the head.

This is clearly beyond the scope of a football program, or an athletic department or even a university.

But, still, Chizik stood before the media today. Still shaken, exhausted and determined, he stood before this sign and said he wasn’t thinking about football at all. He was thinking about his players, and those families:

I noticed that sign in the spring, when I had the pleasure of hearing a presentation of a much happier sort in that same meeting room. But that sign means something even more profound this week than when it is normally read by football players thinking of Xs and Os.

And so this is a football story, though it shouldn’t be. But maybe it had to be, because that’s one of the things we do best. So let’s make this a football story, and Chizik the reluctant healer.

While no coach wants this kind of added work in their job, I’m sure most would do quiet well in these terrible circumstances. But Gene Chizik will be great. I think he’s a pretty good coach, but I’ve long thought he was a better man.

Oh, and the other big news: The Advance layoff meetings start today. In Huntsville, Birmingham and Mobile newspaper staffers are going into one-on-one meetings and being told whether they’ll have a future with the new company. Scary times for all those people.

I have friends in those newsrooms and have read the bylines or seen the efforts of others’ anonymous work for years, decades. No one wants to be a situation like this personally, but the future is here, says the company, and they’re changing for their future. Tough for everyone. Some 400 people are said to lose their jobs.

Later: Desmonte Leonard is in custody. He turned himself in to the U.S. Marshals in Montgomery this evening. Apparently he’d been negotiating with them for a good part of the day. Happily he’s been arrested without anyone else being hurt. And now the legal process can begin.

I mentioned this on Twitter, and I don’t want to overstate the point or anything, but we were at Mellow Mushroom when the news of his arrest was announced. You could fellow the atmosphere in the room change just a bit. Now, maybe, all of those families can begin to copy a tiny bit with their grief.

adventures / iPhone / memories / photo / weekend — Comments Off
10
Jun 12

Whitewater rafting the Ocoee River

On our way home we stopped by Ocoee Outdoors to spend part of the day on the water. It was overcast and cool. The high was in the low 70s. Our guide said on this day last year — they’d consulted their records — it was 98 degrees. He’s been working here for 27 years he said, but he’s never seen the weather so mild.

We wore spray jackets, because the Ocoee River is always a chilly river and we were going to get rained on too.

We did not get out of the boat, but here’s a picture of a picture from a previous trip several years ago:

It would have looked like that today, but with more shivering.

Part of what we rafted down today was used in the 1996 Olympics. This, the guide said, was like car crash alley. Plenty of people would line the banks to watch you fall out. We did not. Here’s the bridge we went under:

And some of the views we drifted and paddled through:

You’d get warm from paddling and think A little bit of the river would be nice right now. And then a rapid would come along and splash everyone, disabusing you of that notion.

The best rafting on the river is Ocoee Outdoors. We’ve gone with them for years and years, and I easily recommend them to you. Everyone is incredibly personable, competent and safe. They, of course, have a photographer staking out the key places to sell you pictures of your experience. We saw him coming today and mugged for the camera. Should I buy these?

Great trip.

adventures / friends / iPhone / memories / photo / weekend — Comments Off
9
Jun 12

Andrew gets married

Early in the day I said to The Yankee that if you looked at the entire Saturday — the wedding, the reception and the after party — that this would be the perfect Andrew day.

We went to graduate school with Andrew. He did his bachelor’s at AUM and then went to Florida, worked at a few newspapers, did a master’s at FSU and then his PhD at Alabama. He’s a thoughtful, smart, articulate, crazed guy. We love him to death. He’s on the faculty at East Tennessee State and we wish he were closer so we could see him more often.

I’ve always wanted to see Andrew mad, because he is hysterical when he is faux mad. The truth of it, though, is that he’s a heck of a nice guy. We’ve watched big football games together. We’ve tried every Indian restaurant we can find. He’s helped us move. When my grandfather died Andrew was at a conference in Chicago with The Yankee. I texted her the news, she told him and he said “When do we leave?” That, to me, means as much as anything else that I like about the guy.

He’s an unabashed Alabama fan, but some things must be excused.

So he met this nice young lady who teaches middle school. And now time and love and all that cheesy stuff have brought them here.

They got married in a public park in the oldest city in Tennessee. There were family and friends that they’ve each grown up with. Not too few and not too many. The ceremony was brief and to the point. Simple and effective. Andrew, The Yankee said, was doing what we’ve come to call the Academic Nod — bobbing his head at each point of emphasis and agreement, each one of them, with a thoughtful look of contemplation, agreement and acceptance — as the bride said her vows.

I missed that. I was too busy watching this:

That is the father of the bride. “Her mother. And I,” he had just said. There was this great little half-a-beat of a moment in there. Writing it here, it just feels like it needed a bit of extra punctuation. He had the best, most sure and clear voice when he gave her away.

And then he retreated a few steps back up the hill, standing near us as we stood in the warm June sunlight. And this lady — whom I did not have the pleasure of meeting — got her hand gripped vigorously throughout the ceremony. I can’t imagine the watching-your-child-get-married experience of course, but I wanted to tell the man that his new son-in-law is one of the good guys.

Here they are wrapping up the nuptials:

We walked just down the street to the town’s visitor’s center. There’s an event room there and the tables were decked out with food and all the normal stuff you’d find at a wedding reception. One of Andrew’s college buddies had been tasked with making a play list. We made fun of it mercilessly — because that’s what this crowd does. The kids that were there put on a great dance revue. It involved lots of twirling.

Later, after changing clothes back at our hotel, we stopped back by the happy couple’s new home and spent the evening with all the 30somethings. The sky was warm. The crickets were out. There was more music and lots of laughter. As the twilight turned to darkness the laughter grew louder. Spending more than a few minutes with the bride, we had a great time watching this new person interact with our old friend. It’s easy to see how they get along.

And I was right, the entire day was just like Andrew.

adventures / Friday / friends / iPhone / photo — Comments Off
8
Jun 12

Travel day

A random billboard:

I did not mean to suggest yesterday that I dislike travel. We do it a lot, and while I enjoy being at home there is a great deal to be said about being on the road.

The lower Appalachian Mountains, for example, are so beautiful. There’s just such a verdant and pastoral feeling, and so it was not a bad thing that the GPS took us off of the interstate and sent us through tiny towns that most people a county over had never heard of. The hills and mountains are majestic, and we could only think of seeing this in the fall, in those four or six pitch-perfect days of leaf turn that we get in the South, and how bad it would hurt to ride up these roads on our bikes.

It is beautiful country. And then you drive in front of some of the worst highway kitsch on this side of the Mississippi. But what can you do. Mountains, like the autumn they inspired today, are on that list of things a photograph can’t share. No matter how wide or tight, no matter the filter or the Photoshop technique, they’re just too powerful for a lens.

We’re visiting friends for the weekend — there’s a wedding. Also, our hotel has freshly made cookies. See? Another great thing about travel.

A small group of us found our way to some bad local pizza joint tonight. Apparently, the locals later told us, you don’t go there for the pizza. (Or the calzones, as I can now tell you.)

They do have what is apparently the most impressive beer selection in town. I couldn’t say, but they did have an entire page worth of brands. And their gimmick was that if you drank each in a 30-day period you got some sort of silly little reward. I can’t imagine eating that many bad calzones in a month, even if I was thirsty for 40 pints of beer.

We said we were from out of town, which only started the server in on the other promotional gimmick. You could get a four-ounce sample of each brand. And if you can drink them all in an hour, and not throw up, or otherwise cause a scene (it was very important that she told us this part) then you got the drinks free.

One presumes you’d pay for the eventual alcohol poisoning.

I can’t imagine trying that. I had a hard time imagining the person who would try that. She said one person had successfully completed the sample-sized challenge. A short person. I’m not sure what his size had to do with it. I’m fairly sure he wasn’t eating, though. Later we heard from someone that others have tried it and created an embarrassing situation for themselves, which finally explained the importance of the waitress’ caveat. You get kicked out, the deal is off and you have to pay. Again, in more ways than one.

Why would a person do this to themselves?

So we met the bride tonight. Lovely lady. We went to school at Alabama with the groom. We saw his brother and father again. We met his mother. They are lovely people. There was a small group up from the groom’s undergraduate days and we listened to them tell now ancient stories, which have surely gotten better in time.

The best stories always do. I hope they get a story or two like that out of their big weekend.