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Night riding

This is almost entirely about this video. Except for the part that isn’t.

And if you’re paying attention — and why wouldn’t you be? — to the background, you might notice that this one deserves the special banner.

When I set out, this was the angle of the sun in the sky. I’d wavered for a while. Should I? Shouldn’t I? And then finally decided to get in a quick 20 miles. By then, and after I’d re-greased my chain and left my water bottle in the garage, it looked like this out.

I took a right to cut through some nice pastureland. Somebody is ready to put up their hay. Some of the livestock owners have hay leftover from last year, mild winter that it was. Maybe that’ll be the case again.

I pedaled through the farm lands, through two residential neighborhoods and a little town ready to stretch out for the evening. Then I was back in the farm fields again.

One left, and then a hard sprint to the next right, and then a charge up this hill.

Soon after which, I turned on my headlight. I love this thing, because it makes night riding possible. The best part of which are the quite roads I can choose. In the last half pf the ride just four cars passed me, and two of those were just at the end.

Equally usefully, is that you can ride at speed. Do you remember how you were taught to not outrun your headlights?

What?

You know, headlights have a certain limited range, a limited thrown, beyond which the light is too diffuse to be effective.

What do you mean, do I remember?

It’s obvious isn’t it?

I’m a narrative construct. I don’t know how to drive.

Right. Well, trust me. It makes sense, even if it isn’t the best advice. See where you’re driving.

Sure, if you say so. But so what?

Similar principle here.

OK, then.

I can pedal happily along at 20 mph and see the road in front of me. Somewhere after that it feels a little curious, but I’m not bombing down hills or doing a lot of sprints in the darkness. Tonight, this light allowed me to do the last five miles with confidence.

Note to self: Spend more time out here.

The gazebo is a nice place. Lots of lovely furniture. Fun lights. A delightful insect choir. And the weather, well now the weather is just perfect for it.

We return once again to We Learn Wednesdays, the feature where we discover the county’s historical markers via bike rides. This is the 43rd installment, and the 75th marker in the We Learn Wednesdays series. And this one is relatively new. It was installed just last year.

This was a thinly populated area. A couple thousand people lived in this broader rural area. It isn’t much more crowded today. The first school was in a house. Then came a building purpose-built as a school in 1845, and then the Lambert Street school. The modern school, after generations of consolidation and change, remembered the teacher at Lambert School for a long time. Mary Elizabeth Remster, who retired in 1943 after 48 years in the classroom, had a future school named after her. That building was consolidated in 1980, meaning it was likely that kids studied under Miss Remster and then saw their grandchildren go to a school named after the woman.

Continuity is important in a small town. When this building was no longer needed as a school in 1925, it became a home. A former student bought it. He married another former student. The Lambert Street school is still in their family, a century later.

Which means there probably aren’t any students still with us who remember the school, but the local historical society is keeping it alive. The man that bought the home was an artist, a craftsman, a businessman. He served in a medical unit in England and France during World War I. He and his wife both passed away in the 1980s. They had eight sons. Theirs remains a prominent family name in that area.

If you’ve missed any markers so far, you can find them all right here.

adventures / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
13
Aug 24

Two nights and one day

Late last night, technically early this morning, I took out the garbage. (Now, isn’t that a way to start a post!?) And it was there that I coined a new phrase. That phrase is “Anything worth doing is worth doing with an LED light.”

The expression came about because I didn’t have my phone on me — always when I need a camera. So I went in to grab my phone, which made me realize that it was too dark to capture my subject. So I went back inside for a camp light. Because somehow, in the darkness, I saw this guy.

My new friend stuck around for quite some time, posing up a storm, allowing me to photograph him in profile. When I turned to get those head-on shots, it got curious and started walking toward me. On the fence post the mantis got bold, and turned to reach out to me. Unfortunately, for the brief moment the air sparring went on, I was unable to get the auto=focus on the phone to cooperate.

And then the mantis jumped, flew, or fell off the post. I was careful, walking away, to make sure it wasn’t underfoot.

I was called for jury duty today. I wasn’t called today, but I had to report today. They called me a month or so ago. It’s an interesting process. I received a postcard in the mail. Log in to the site, create the 4,397th password in your life. Watch a poorly produced 28 minute video extolling the very real virtues of our judicial system. Log back in to the site and certify you watched the video.

You are informed you’ll get messages, via email and text, on when to report for jury duty. And I was told it would be yesterday. But Friday I was told to report today, Tuesday. At noon, thankfully.

They could have said 1:30, because that’s when we finally got pulled into a courtroom. This after checking in and two rounds of taking attendance. People of all ages remember how to say “Here” when their name is called.

People sat quietly, scanning their phone, reading books and so on, and then a deputy who takes his courthouse duty Very Seriously commanded us to go upstairs to the courtroom. So we did. A moment later he came in and said, no not this second floor courtroom, but the courtroom on the third floor. And, thus, he lightened up a bit and found himself able to make a joke or two. Meanwhile, I’m thinking, someone in the courtroom upstairs is potentially counting on some of these people.

We made it into the courtroom. Two prosecutors, a defense attorney and his client. The judge and three clerk/staff members. Two deputies. On the way into the room we received a pencil and a seven-page document. These were the voir dire questions. The judge explained a few things, had us watch an even lower quality video, and then read the entire seven-page voir dire document to us. Then, he brought in the partial jury. It seemed they need to find four more people. So the clerk would call a name from this selection pool, and the person would go the bench. They played white noise in the courtroom so the rest of us couldn’t hear the private conversations. This went on, one by one, until the jury was full.

My name did not get called. At the end of it, it took about three hours, the judge said our service was fulfilled and thanked us. Everyone fairly well scrambled from the courtroom, as if you’d pulled a fire alarm.

The trial is scheduled to run through mid-September, which would have been a problem at work, so I’m glad I did not have to go through voir dire. Just as well. It’s a double murder trial. As I’m no longer under consideration for the jury, I tried to look it up, but it was four years ago in a virtual news desert, so there aren’t a lot of details available.

Tonight, we went outside to see if we could catch the end of the Perseids. It was a perfect night for it. Nice and mild, with a beautiful cricket symphony coming from our right.

I saw two, maybe three. My lovely bride saw four.

cycling / Monday / photo — Comments Off
12
Aug 24

The chocolate was a bust — how often do you say that?

I tried a new smoothie today. Because we have a lot of peaches, you see. The go-to has been a simple peach, ice, dash of milk and honey. And, recently, I swapped out the honey for a bit of brown sugar. That’s been a hit.

Just to experiment, though, because when you have bushels of peaches and a powerful blender everything seems viable, I decided to take out the brown sugar and add a chunk of chocolate. It did not turn into a nice brown color, because it was a chunk that just turned into bits. Thousands of tiny little bits. I guess I was hoping I’d wind up with a peach flavored Frosty … which the people from Wendy’s should call me about … but that’s not what happened here.

It wasn’t the best smoothie ever, but it was a worthy experiment. That little chocolate bunny gave its chocolate life for me to find that out.

I think we have some jelly beans somewhere … maybe I should try those next …

I will not try those next. Why tamper with what works?

Let’s get right to the site’s most popular weekly feature. I know it is, because they tell me it is. They, of course, being the kitties.

I’m a sucker for whenever Phoebe sleeps on her paw. Not sure what it is, other than just about the cutest thing she can do while she’s napping.

I was telling a story on Poseidon the other day. It was a common tale around here. One where I get to blame him for whatever is going on. It’s a high percentage play because he’s usually very much the cause of things. And just as I told that story I had to go down to the basement to fetch this or that.

The basement is a wondrous place to the cats, because we don’t allow them down there. I know, for a fact, that if we let them come and go they wouldn’t be interested at all. But, while the basement is cat friendly, it isn’t cat proof. So they don’t get to go. And just as I was heading to the basement he made a run. He’s good at timing these things, but he didn’t win out this time. He covered it well, though. He wasn’t darting for the basement, you see, he just needed to rub his chin on the door.

Poseidon has also recently discovered an interest in corn husks, but they aren’t a good treat for cats. So the corn, even the fresh picked stuff, goes directly into the refrigerator. Which means he must try to also go into the refrigerator.

If we get too much corn, we are keeping it in the laundry room, because we have cats and when you have cats you put your corn in the laundry room. He, of course, needs to be in there constantly.

So the cats, you can see, are doing very well, thank you.

I’m getting pretty good at timing out evening rides. This is why I did not get in a ride this evening. I waited too late, doing other things. (Two of those things had to do with peaches.) On Saturday, however, I set out at 6:35 for a 25 mile ride.

That still left a lot of time to enjoy the views through the corn fields.

Oh, I had lights a plenty. There’s a blinkie on my seat post all the time. In my back pocket, in the evenings, I carry a little four buck triangle light that I got for Christmas last year. It shines right through the material so well I’m going to pick up some more the next time I’m at the hardware store.

For the front I have my trusty One80 bike light. I saw their head lamps on Instagram, a runner I follow swore by them. I bought the Yankee one, she loved it. I bought myself one. And then they pushed those bike lights. I got one for both of us. She doesn’t particularly care for night riding, but I do, and I think those lamps are so great I bought two more of them, just to keep on a shelf in the basement — where the cats aren’t allowed.

I passed one stunning barn on the way back — I took a different road, for the different views, and it turns out to have worked very well for that time of day.

So I was well stocked in illumination products, but it turns out I didn’t need them. Oh, I turned on my blinkie and the one I carry in my jersey pocket, a bit more visibility for the distracted drivers behind you never hurt anyone, but I figured I would get all the way back home before I needed to use much of my front light. If anything, I figured, there is one dark patch where it might be necessary.

A strange thing happened on the back half of my ride. I didn’t realize it until I was almost all the way back home, but my legs came back. I don’t know where they’ve been since roughly mid May, but everything else felt a little sluggish and even slower than normal since then. Saturday night, however, there was plenty of power and energy.

This is all relative, of course. Relative to this point in life, and all of that. But compared to the rest of the summer, the second half of this ride was great. And kinda almost approaching a reasonable speed.

I don’t want to say I was a super man, or anything. Maybe I was just inspired by this view. Because, as I looked to my left and saw that gravel drive and that farm and that sunset I thought, If a kid grew up there, he had a great chance to play Clark Kent.

And so I made it home with daylight to spare. Not much. But still.

Maybe my legs are returning. I bet its the peaches.

Friday / photo / swimming — Comments Off
9
Aug 24

Two things I can’t do at once

We pause from our regular Friday style of yearbook posts because I have to take and edit the photos that we’ll feature in that next installment. But, since we completed our glance of 1944 last week, we’ll give 1955 a cursory look starting in a week or two. Which also gives me time to update the archive on 1944. That’ll be done by the time I end this post, just you wait and see.

(Or see right now. Our casual glance of the 1944 Glomerata is now live in the Glomerata section. You can also see others, here. Or, to just see the beautiful book covers, go here. The university hosts their complete collection here.)

Anyway, another gray day here. Some rain. Outer bands of the remnants of the big storm that landed on Florida and did a slow motion burnout on Georgia and South Carolina coastline.

It was windy, just another afternoon of 25 mile per hour gusts, and a lovely persistent rain that made you wonder why you weren’t spending the time in a good book.

I can’t tell you how often I wonder that these days, no matter what the weather is.

Finally, I figured, at that point where the afternoon turns into evening, that if going outside meant getting wet, I could spend the time doing laps.

And this is that story.

The first 700 yards or so were a little clunky. Each of the pool was an opportunity to ask myself, “Why are you doing this to yourself?” It wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t good. Good for me, I should say. Quality is a unique and relative condition, and you never see that distinction quite so clearly as you do in things you do poorly, but you’ve been able to distinguish your own improvement. And if you’ve ever done that think next to people who are among the best in the world at it, you understand the level from which you begin, so that you more keenly discern the .28 percent improvement you might make over time.

So the first 700 wasn’t good for my normal meager abilities, and I knew it. But after that my arms or my legs or my lungs or my mind, or some combination of them, all finally slipped into gear and it became a good, for me, swim.

And so it was that I breezed past 1,000 yards, didn’t even really notice anything on the way to 2,000 yards, and, suddenly, I was at 3,000 yards.

“Suddenly,” also being a relative term and, in this case, one concerned purely with perception rather than pace.

I learned something about swimming, or myself, or about my swimming today. I can’t write while I am doing laps. I do a lot of sentence and thought forming, emails, lectures, you name it, while I am just going about my day. This is my process. When I sit down to actually type things it becomes an exercise of recall and, sometimes, actual editing.

But in the pool, I’m busy counting laps. I repeat the lap number over and over, with every left-hand stroke. “Forty-one, 41, 41, 41.” There’s nowhere in there that I could get out more than the two main points of something I am mulling over right now, lest I lose count.

Was I on 41 or 43?

And, yet, somehow, I don’t even notice the middle third of a swim as I plod my way through it.

Anyway, I got in 3,520 yards this evening. That’s two miles to you and me.

On the other hand, I wasn’t tired or sore, after, which helps to explain the incredibly slow pace of it all, I am sure.

The sky above, after it stopped raining, looked like that. This system broke up a heat wave, gave us some rain and now it will have the courtesy to move on out of here. We’re expecting sunny and mid-80s through the weekend and beyond.

Let’s see how we handle all of that.

photo / Thursday — Comments Off
8
Aug 24

Nature’s candy in my hand

A friend came over for a visit today. While she was distracted, I put two bags of peaches in her car. A basket’s worth of peaches, right there in the front seat. So this status update isn’t exactly accurate.

We only have five baskets of peaches in the kitchen right now. And I had a giant smoothie. We’ll still have a week or more of peaches to bring in. And a lot of these have to be given away. So, again, come and get some peaches.

By the weekend, we will be hurling them at the neighbors.

Elsewhere, we’re getting rain from the former hurricane in the Gulf. The temperatures have dipped a bit, into the 70s, and it’s been a good day to stay inside and catch up on things.

There are many things on which I am behind. But I am now trimming things off the To Do list, and deleting emails from the inbox. I’m calling it productive.

ANd now I have to go get some more peaches off the ground.