Rowan


9
Jan 25

Progress is being made

Terrible night of sleep. But the morning’s sleep was better. Usually, I go to bed when I’m dead tired, but I went earlier and just … laid there for about six hours. Also, both cats decided it was my turn to be their personal space heaters. One cat is fine. Both cats are a furnace.

I looked at the weather, and then I looked at the forecasts for family. So, today, after doing a bunch of work, I called my grandfather to see if he was prepared for snow and ice. It seems he’ll have a harder winter weekend than we will. He assured me he is prepared to stay indoors. The porch has already been treated. He has the traditional French toast provisions. He gets the joke, but not being adventurous with cuisine, I doubt he’s ever eaten French toast. Nevertheless, he’s ready to watch the weather come and go. I asked him when it was supposed to warm up for him.

“Springtime!”

Nowhere near soon enough.

Though we’re now forecast to hit 41 degrees this weekend. I might set up a sprinkler and go run around in it.

I spent today working on class stuff for the spring semester. It’s just that for the next 12 days until class begins. Honestly, 12 days probably isn’t enough time. But I have the outlines for the first three weeks of class prepared. Another two or three hours will make me properly prepared to navigate through them. And tomorrow, and part of the weekend, I’ll continue building outlines.

It’s terribly exciting stuff, I know. It is, if you like the subject matter. Lucky for me, I do. We’re going to talk about globalization and media and culture in the first three weeks and, looking through what is in store, I want to talk about them right now, but all those days will be here soon enough, leaving me plenty of time to prepare.

Except there’s never enough time to prepare. The class I’m working on right now meets twice a week, for 75 minutes. I haven’t taught a class of that length in several years. Three, maybe four key points per day. It is a mental shift, and a lot to prepare for.

Tomorrow, I’ll figure out how to boil down the entire history of recorded communication into a class session or two. And then figure out what I can omit for a unit on global cinema, and then another for an entire planet’s worth of television. These are challenging choices.

So, I’m left with the idea that it’s a good thing that I don’t have months and months to prepare; I’d agonize over it. I know that, for certain, because that’s what I’ve done every time I’ve sat down with it over the past several months.

I’ve been working my way through a sprint series of Zwift this week. I’ll do a workout, and then round out the day with some free riding to get about 30 miles in. Yesterday, I did a workout inspired by the outrageous style of Mathieu van der Poel. He’s a six-time world champion in cyclocross, and a world champion in gravel bike. Two titles he currently holds, in fact. He’s been the European champion in mountain bike. He also wins stages in grand tours and in the European monuments and classics. Also, he’s been world champion on the road, too. The exercise was meant to name drop him and try, with a straight face, to convince you that you’re emulating the attacking style of one of the best riders of his or any generation. (There are maybe three generational talents on the road right now, including perhaps the best ever; it is absurd.) Surge and recover and surge and recover. Then go over your threshold some more.

Do that eight times, and you’re just like Mathieu!

The training session has little messages on it, and I was having a good ride, and I was sure it was going to say something laughable like that. “You’re ready to race MvdP!” I was ready to mock it endlessly. But they held off.

From his Tour of Flanders win in 2023

In great news for wattage fans globally, MVDP has even uploaded his power data. You might want to take a seat before reading this next section. Van der Poel averaged a stunning 285 watts for the 6.5 hours with a peak power of 1,406 W. That’s 1,406 watts in the final seconds of a six-hour-and-thirty-four-minute-long race. Most of us could barely say “1,406 watts” at the end of a 280 km ride, let alone hit such a figure. MVDP’s heart rate monitor also had a tough day at the office. With an average heart rate of 141 bpm and a max of 189 bpm, the Dutch superstar’s heart rate was the only thing faster than his speedo(meter).

If you don’t know what that means, it means a lot. It means something nearly incomprehensible to mortal human beings.

I don’t care about watts — I have a shirt that says “More Pulse Less Watts” — but that’s the central metric of the workout. I was doing but a fraction of that yesterday. And I did it for about 90 minutes, rather than all day.

But I set five new Strava PRs yesterday. Four of them on climbs. (Take that, Mathieu!)

Today’s workout was a long segment with eight sprints in it. I hated most every second of it. But I kept getting these great canned messages from the app. Usually they are of the “You’re getting stronger,” standard rah-rah. But in today’s workout …

Read the room, Zwift.

After 24 miles going from sprint to sprint to sprint — some of them a bit uphill, mind you — and a few more miles just passing the time, I found I’d set Strava PRs on five of those eight sprint segments.

When they don’t feel especially fast it just means you are especially slow!


7
Jan 25

I wrote a lot

The thing I was writing yesterday, that I was trying to decide if it should be serious or silly or both? I chickened out and gave it a normal tone. It’s too real to be flip. And too absurd to be serious. So, here are roughly 1,400 words on gambling in sports. It begins:

Welcome to the wide world of losing it all, where you can experience the thrill of maybe and the agony of near certain defeat.

It’s just a matter of when, and how you lose it. And how easy they made it for you to do so. And, also, how much. And how.

If that doesn’t grip you, the rest is a meaty summation of links I’ve been hanging on to for a while. Now I know you’re hooked. I finally wrote the thing because I needed to clean out my inbox. And it’s important.

One of my colleagues wrote to say that he was going to include it in a class. Hopefully not in a “Don’t do it this way” sense.

I was looking up something not too long after this got published and was amazed at how much more stuff had come out, just today, that should go into the thing. The online gambling world moves so, so fast. One more reason to stay away.

Gambling is a thing I could never do — I will never have money that is that disposable — and thus there are many nuances that I don’t have firsthand experience with, but some of the people wrapped up in this have some heartbreaking tales. And it’s skewing younger and younger, as a habit, and, for some, an affliction. Scary stuff.

The snow has not melted. Mostly because it is extremely cold. We watched a neighbor try to blow snow off his driveway today, but it had frozen in spots, and so he was having a difficult time with it. I think my lovely bride pointed it out in the hopes that I would internalize the lesson. He’s a pretty industrious guy, our neighbor, but he must have been busy yesterday since he didn’t get to this chore until today. And so now he struggled because some of the snow had frozen into place. It was good that we cleared ours yesterday.

And it is even better that there’s no more in the forecast, at least until next weekend perhaps. Like all modern playfully superstitious people I will assume that it is because we have a snow blower at the ready.

In our last house, we had a driveway not much longer than the length of a car. A few shovel strokes and you were set. But, last winter, our first winter here, we returned from a trip and found that this driveway is much longer when you measure it in shovel lengths. We came back to a day-or-two old pile of snow six or eight inches deep. And so, we shoveled. Only it was so cold we just stayed cold as we cleared the drive. That was enough for my lovely bride to go buy a snowblower. A few weeks later snow returned to the forecast, I assembled the snowblower as best I could (it was missing four parts) and waited for the snow. I did not add the oil or gas because, I thought, Let’s just see what happens tomorrow. And when that tomorrow came around it was dry as a bone. That was the last threat of snow last winter. So, the blower went into the storage.

Last weekend I brought it out. And remembering that it needed a little extra assembly, we went to the hardware store. I was missing two bolts that held the handle together, and two that hold down the chute. (And, yes, I had to look that up just now.) If there’s one thing in the world I’d like to not do on a Saturday, it’s go to the same place twice. To prevent that, I decided to take the snowblower to the hardware store. Maybe someone there could help me find the appropriately sized hardware. What I’d been using were random bolts and screws I had, and also some bungee straps. But we had the time and opportunity to do this right, plus there’s this great old guy at the hardware store, the sort of fellow that’s done everything and wants to share his knowledge. And I am a sponge, particularly about snow blowers. This is my first one.

Only, he wasn’t there. But a young guy pitched in to help. In fact, he took over the project. I just stood and nodded and thanked him. Maybe I look like the old guy to him. Maybe this getting old thing will have its advantages when I eventually do get old. Anyway, I bought four bolts and two knobs from him. We picked up some bird seed and left.

And this is where you know this story is about the snow blower, but also, Saturday. We left the hardware store and stopped by the drug store. My lovely bride had to pick up a prescription and I wondered around looking at the advancements in cat toys and sleep care. Then we went home. I pulled the snow blower from the back of the car and set out to add the new pieces.

One bolt was missing.

Now I’m going back to the hardware store for the second time, which is the thing I didn’t want to do twice on a Saturday. Only my car won’t start. It’s been cold. The battery was sluggish. I hadn’t driven it in several days. I tried again. It cranked. I drove to the hardware store, left it running, locked it up, went inside, and found the bolt I needed.

The guy saw me.

“Oh no! Did it not work?”

Just missing a part. He was sure he’d picked it out for me. I was ready to pay. He would have none of it. It’s a galvanized thing and costs about $.40 cents and so I didn’t mind. He surely did pick it out for me, it probably just got lost in transit. But he would have none of it, and he insisted I take the part. And maybe the hardware store, twice, isn’t such a bad thing.

Then I drove over to an auto parts store, to test my battery. The guy came out, shivered through the test, and suggested it was just the cold. That’s what I expected, but I figured I had the time and I could get ahead of this for once. It just needed to charge, he said. Keep it running for a while, he said, let the alternator do its work.

I continued the drive, and filled up the tank, and then slowly drove home the long way. It cranked just fine after that. We’ll try it again tomorrow, as part of another domestic tale that will most surely be worth your time.

Anyway, it did snow yesterday, but not enough to seem to need the snow blower, I thought. Later, I was reading posts and realized that is a value judgment people actually make. Maybe I had that one right.

But the snow blower is here. Ready. Ready to not be used. Because we’re playfully superstitious about this.

Ten years ago, today … and I’m not making this a regular feature, but I mentioned it in passing yesterday and it’s super cold here and this is a nice change of pace … we were in the south Caribbean. Specifically, here:

This is the famous California lighthouse in Aruba. It was built between 1914-1916. Topping out at 100 feet, the stone was quarried on the island. The lighthouse is named after this part of the island, which was named after a 1910 shipwreck. The SS California was traveling from Liverpool to Central America and people on board were having a party when the ship ran aground at midnight. The next day the locals saw the damage and waded out to pick up the vessel’s cargo: merchandise, furniture, clothes, and other provisions. They took it all down to Oranjestad to sell it.

We’d gotten there by bus, but the return bus did not return. We started walking. It’s an island, but it’s a long walk, about eight miles as I recall. Finally, a bus which seemed to have the business model of picking up stranded hitchhikers gave us a lift. And then we rented a cab from a lovely woman who was proud to give us a great tour of her home, full of history, demographic insights, and natural medicinal remedy tips. She took us to her brother’s house so we could see iguanas, because they were always in his yard.

We’d hired her for a 90-minute tour, but she turned into an almost three-hour experience.

Aruba is a desert island. And they have the cacti to prove it.

(Click to embiggen.)

She also took us to these picturesque places, like this inlet by the Bushiribana ruins — a gold smelter used to extract gold from the nearby hills for about a decade in the early part of the 19th century — on the eastern side of the island.

I just found her on Instagram. She’s still showing off her island home with that same incredibly warm, welcoming hospitality. I just uploaded a picture we took with her 10 years ago today and tagged her in it. I hope she’s doing well. That was a great trip, Aruba was just one day of it, and the time we spent riding around with her is a real standout moment in a trip that was, truly, filled with them.

I’m not going to do a reminiscence post about the whole trip or make a regular deal out of 10-years-ago today. (It’s all in the archives here, if you want it.) I only wrote all of that because there’s something like a 57-degree temperature swing between here and Oranjestad.

This evening, after an afternoon of profitable work — emails were answered, a syllabus was formatted, etc. — I went downstairs to give my bike a try. I did a 15-mile sprint session in Neokyo. Three spring segments at about 30 miles per hour (so it is confirmed, I am getting slower), but one PR and … what the heck is that?!?!?

Then I rode another 15-mile segment elsewhere, and passed 95 other people along the way. They didn’t know that we were racing, but that’s more of their concern than mine.

So it was that I got back on the bike, for the third time of the new year, and felt much better about it. Time off is a good thing.

But now I’m behind on the mileage spreadsheet … so time off has drawbacks?

Until tomorrow, when I return with tales of unimaginable exploits and feats, ” rel=”noopener” target=”_blank”>go read that column on gambling.


17
Dec 24

The grading is going well

Two of my classes are now completed! Except for the grading, which I am doing now. At midnight the submission window closed, and students had a final essay exam and a critical study of a social media platform to get in before that deadline. Now I’m just working my way through three dozen essays and as many audits.

That’s roughly 300-plus pages of material to read through this week, plus two other classes that will continue for one more week beyond. So, guess what! This is another light week!

But, hey, the grass is still bright and green in mid-December, and in the middle of a serious drought!

I went outside just to take that photo. I’d gone downstairs for a late lunch, looked out the southwestern facing window and saw that wonderfully verdant view.

While I was out there, this flew overhead.

Those aren’t drones. That’s maneuvers! These aren’t drones, either.

This joke will never not be funny.

Back to work, then.


3
Dec 24

Never not grading

I am reading students’ reactions The Social Dilemma, a docu-drama on Netflix. They have to watch the full program and then describe one phenomenon that jumps out at them, and then apply one of the concepts or theories we have discussed in the class this semester to try to better understand it.

Why any of us, including myself, continue to use social media after going through one of my classes I’ll never know.

Well, for me I know. News.

In my other classes, I am looking over slide decks and quizzes and other papers. I’m not sure if the goal is to stay in the curve or get ahead of it. Maybe I’m just preemptively trying to get in the curve.

At any rate, this was my view today.

It’s important, every so often, to look up, and to look out.


13
Nov 24

Walking around on campus

I put together a new look today. The classic gray sports coat, an off-setting light blue shirt. It came together pretty well, even as I struggled with the photo composition. I’m sure it was the natural light coming from the office window to my right.

The pocket square was a gift from my mother-in-law.

That poppy I got in Canada when The Yankee and I were in Ottawa for a conference in 2009. I wore that as we walked through the Canadian capital city. When we got home from that trip we stopped by a restaurant on the way home from the airport, a small little Italian restaurant. The guy that owned it still worked there every day, and he was at the register that night. When we went up to pay he choked up just a little bit, thanked me for wearing that flower, and pointed to the 8×10 photo on the counter. “My son,” he said, rubbing the top of the frame. The picture was of a U.S. Marine in his dress blues.

They all look the same, because they’re Marines, but they’re all different when you stare into the eyes. The modern Corps has only had so many changes to that photograph. They look just about the same, no matter the era. But that print was aged. Faded. The Marine, young and strong, but now gone. That man saw him every day at his store. And so now I wear that flower not just on Memorial Day, but throughout that week, to remember.

That tie was my uncle’s tie. His daughter, my cousin, sent it to me. After he died they gave a bunch of his ties to people at the funeral, but I couldn’t take one. She went through them later and found one for me. His preference in ties was louder than mine, and I don’t know how she worked all that out, but she pulled an understated one for me. I got it yesterday, somehow glad I hadn’t taken one then, but eternally proud for having received one now. And so I wore it today. That was a real gentleman’s tie.

On campus today we went to the university assembled, a regular presentation from the president. He’s a fascinating guy. Good at his job. A real leader — and that’s not a guarantee among university presidents. But Dr. Ali Houshmand is a real talent. He’s served in the role for 12 years, and has overseen a lot of growth, and continues to do so. The university assembled was an opportunity to talk a little about the future.

We sat on the front row.

On Wednesdays I usually talk about markers and local history, but today I thought I’d talk just a tiny bit about this campus’s history.

In the early 1900’s the state found they needed a third normal school — a school for teachers. The locals here lobbied for it to be housed in their community. By 1917, 107 residents raised more than $7,000 to purchase 25 acres. They told the state they’d give it to them if they picked their town for the school’s location. The 25 acres had belonged to the Whitney family, whp ran the famous Whitney Glass Works in the 19th century. On the property was the Whitney mansion and the carriage house.

The state saw the community’s enthusiasm, the free 25 acres, the beautiful location, the train lines and agriculture success and decided this was the right spot for a campus. And both buildings still stand. This is the back of the Carriage House, which we walked by after the big meeting.

The Carriage House is one of the oldest buildings on campus and is now used for our University Publications. You might think that’s why I liked it, but, really, I just enjoyed the texture of the cedar shake shingles.

Whitney Mansion is an Italianate architectural style. It was the president’s home until 1998, and is now it’s a museum and meeting center. I’ll show it to you one day, probably in the spring.