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cycling / Monday / photo — Comments Off
24
Apr 23

Just get to the cat pics

I’ve bored the — smart, beautiful, talented — readers of this space aplenty with my hypothesis about how spring in Bloomington doesn’t actually begin until the bike races take place. The women raced Friday in the rain. The men raced Saturday in a drizzle and under overcast skies. This photo, I figured, would be the punchline: this was as blue as it got this weekend.

But later, late on Sunday afternoon, the skies actually improved.

That was as spring-like as it got this weekend, the first weekend of IU’s spring.

But enough about that, because we must quickly pivot to the site’s most popular weekly feature. And, dear friends? Dear — smart, beautiful, talented — friends, today I get to share with you the most absolutely adorable photo ever captured in any context.

Phoebe was sleeping on her paws. She doesn’t normally do this, but it was so cute I had to resist the urge to wake her up with a bunch of big pets.

Do you ever wonder what animals are thinking? I wonder that all of the time.

And then they do something that perfectly encapsulates our understanding of what it means to be insert animal here and I realize I might be over-anthropomorphizing. Anyway, Poseidon remains happily curious about everything, and in-trouble with everything. It’s a good thing, we tell him, that he’s charming. We only wonder why he doesn’t choose to behave that way more often.

The cats are doing just fine.

Three or four or five times a year I have to re-learn the same lesson about taking too many days off my bike. I have now learned it twice this year so far: the first ride back after a too-long break is a little stiff. And so it was, today, when I put my feet on the pedals for the first time in five days. But, I got in the London Pretzel on Zwift, and 35 miles before dinner.

I like how the Union Jack is rippling on that lamp post. This route spends a lot of time in the game’s version of London, but sends you into the Surrey Hills twice. They aren’t the biggest or the hardest climbs in the game, but sometimes they feel like it. The part in the city was pretty fast, but I gave all that speed back on the hills. But once I (finally) got to the top of one of those hills, I got a nice view of the moon. The moon is always full on Zwift, never mind the issues of physical oceanography that would present.

But! I finished sixth in one sprint. I am not a sprinter. And I clocked in a time that was 16th in one of the two climbs. I am also, most definitely, not a climber.

The 2023 Zwift route tracker: 100 routes down, 29 to go.

IU / memories / music / photo / Re-Listening / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
18
Apr 23

Three days until spring

We’re counting down, because it seems a fun thing to do this week really, and I noticed an unusual thing today.

Everything went green. Bright, wavy green in a big, big way all of a sudden. This is a blurry view of the trees from my campus office. Blurry because, I don’t know why, but I like it.

And this is the same tree, just a few moments later, in focus, and from beneath it’s now bountiful limbs.

But that’s different. This is the same tree, roughly from the same angle as the blurry one, though the linear distance is different.

So that’s three photos of the same tree. Forgive me. It’s all so bright and new still, here in the third week of April, and it will take a few more days for the foliage to feel familiar. It’s like the shock of the seasons. There is that indistinct time where you stand at the door and mentally prepare yourself for one condition outside — hot, mild or cold — but then get something different. It is, in fact, the shock of the season.

Three days until the local, officially recognized beginning of spring. Since 2017 it has always arrived the weekend of the Little 500, the two big bike races.

Ha! I just looked at the weather. Friday, the day of the women’s race, the forecast calls for rain, with a high of 58 and a low of 44. The men’s race on Saturday will be under partly cloudy skies. The high is projected at 54, with a low of 34 degrees. Tomorrow, which has no bearing on this whole spring-arrives-with-the-bike-race phenomenon, the high is 82. Weird year.

Anyway, here’s another photo. A different tree. It just looked cool.

Cool, I say.

I was in the studio this evening with the news team, the penultimate news show of the year. It’s a wonderful feeling when a semester winds down, more so when it’s the end of an academic year, but bittersweetly so. For the news crew in particular, we’ll see a few key people graduate, but there’s a whole platoon of freshmen who have this year gained incredible experience for next year. The news side, I am happy to see, will continue to make good strides, having built a nice pipeline, evenly balanced between older and younger students. Now, they’re always growing and growing, helping each other grow, and I pitch in on the little things.

Tomorrow will be another night in the studio, with the sports gang, and that may be their last taping of the year. Bittersweetly so.

It seems we’re always playing catchup on the Re-Listening project, and that’s what we’re doing today. We’re doing that with Alanis Morissette’s “Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie.” The album was released in November of 1998, but I picked it up in early 1999. It was another freebie, and, through the Re-Listening project I have discerned a pattern. I didn’t always fall in love with the freebies I picked up way back when.

From this remove, my time with Alanis Morissette feels like a stream of consciousness ple goes like this: Jagged Little Pill has been everywhere for two years, no need to buy that. Also my roommate has a copy, so … Dave Coulier!? The next one, I’ll get the next one. Oh, there it is on the giveaway table (probably) so put that in the pile.

The album debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 and set a record for the highest first-week sales by a female artist, a record she held for two years. It stayed on the Billboard 200 for a solid six months, and has moved millions of units … but, because it is the music industry, being triple platinum after “Jagged Little Pill” was 16-times platinum in the US, this was underwhelming. (The music industry is weird.) And I’m going to gloss over all of it.

I’ve listened to it. I tried to dive into it. I paid attention to every track this time through. There are 17 tracks here, the runtime is almost 72 minutes. It’s a long record, one which has never resonated with me. I find that odd, since we all watched her grow up. Grew up at the same time, whatever. The woman has lived her entire life in front of the public eye, all of the stages and phases a person goes through, we’ve seen them. For 1998, this was fine, but watching an artist’s march through life leaves a different sort of longitudinal vulnerability. Some of this feels dated now, though, that I finally figured out what always troubled me here. It’s the background tracks. There’s just too much nasally, head voice harmony on here.

Anyway, the stream of consciousness takes us far beyond this 1998 record, end with the best song, the best performance, I’ve ever heard Morissette do. This was July of 2020, just the right mood during that first Covid summer. Sadly, NBC has taken the original video down. Here’s a taste of it.

It was a perfect performance: a poignant song, a new record, eight years since the last and a full family in her orbit. This is the Alanis Morissette my stream of consciousness is most interested in now, not the 24-year-old from “Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie” but the confident, multitasking woman at a new kind of peak of her powers. That’s the one worth re-listening to.

adventures / cycling / Monday / music / photo / Re-Listening / video — Comments Off
17
Apr 23

Four days until spring

The cats demanded to be at the top of the post. The cats know, I’m sure, that they’re the most popular thing going on here. And so Phoebe was happy to pose with a little playful sass.

(And if you think that’s cute, just wait until you see her next photo here. I took it tonight. It’s the most adorable thing in kitty world.)

Poseidon, meantime, is practicing his impersonation of a statue … while we bounce his bouncy ball all around the house.

I’m about half convinced he only plays to make us play, so he can stare at us. Anyway, the cats are doing just great, thanks for asking, and they’re happy with the extra sun and warmer temperatures they’re experiencing lately.

I had a nice 30-mile ride this weekend. It was hard, in that it didn’t feel easy. But it was the sort of hard that made the overall time a bit faster. The sort that made the legs hurt, that made me a little bit delirious, apparently. This was the best picture.

The Yankee said I must be riding well, because I dropped her twice, and she said she was riding hard. Then again, she caught me, twice, while I fought through the teensiest headwind. So she is riding well, which spells trouble for me in keeping up with her the rest of the year.

Anyway, that was a part of the weekend’s exercise, and not at all the part that makes for sore muscles today. Something in that area between the bicep and the forearm — what’s that called, the elbow? — is protesting mightily today. I am in that phase of a new ache and/or pain where I am still learning the motions that hurt, so if you see me moving slowly to starboard, that’s why.

One of the trees outside the building has reached full bloom, the full I’ll-miss-this-when-they’re-gone stage. The blooms are funny things. You can spend all winter looking at sticks pointing this way and that, waiting. One day you see those little bulbs, those hopeful signals of the future. And then you see the blooms — or the buds if you’re really slow and careful — a few at first, and then the entire symphony.

Just in time for you get used to the inevitability, the persistence of those beautiful colors, it all turns green. Then there’s that day or two required to get used to seeing all of that bright, bright green again.

It’d be nice to have trees that bloomed at different times, is all. And if I had a field carefully arranged with all of them on display in a way that always shows color. I wonder what that would look like. I imagine a gentle incline and spiraling trees, and mounds and mounds of upkeep. That’d really aggravate the arm.

Meanwhile, back over in the Re-Listening project, where I’m enjoying all of my old CDs in the order of acquisition, we are now in January (or February) of 1999. I remember being excited about this, I remember looking forward to playing this for friends, and having some of these songs appear on the radio. It was my second live double-album, which just wasn’t something that came out a lot by then.

It was Dave Matthews fourth album, but this wasn’t the Dave Matthews Band, it was Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds, in the first of their third album, and before Reynolds formally joined DMB. (Everybody caught up in all of that?)

Anyway, Live at Luther College at number two debuted on the Billboard Hot 200 in February, Silkk the Shocker kept it out of the top spot, with Brittney Spears climbing fast. Despite all of that, it stayed on the chart for 51 weeks.

This was recorded in 1996, so by the time fans had this disc in their hands in 1999 six or seven of the new songs were comfortable, familiar, hits. But there was still some new stuff to explore.

I liked this one right away, it’s a jam band experiment of acoustic guitar jazz masquerading as a pop tune deep cut.

And the other song that blew our minds, the one I played for everyone, was this one.

That’s what a virtuoso sounds like. I don’t know anything about anything about playing a guitar, but I put this on a lot, and for a long time, wondering what it must have looked like. Clearly, there’s a loop machine in there, but there’s still a lot of mastery to observe.

Fortunately, decades later, Tim Reynolds is still playing with the form, and people started recording it on their phones.

I saw Dave Matthews Band later that summer, the last time I caught them live — just before all of the tickets got outrageous. They have 5 North American dates coming up this summer, and I’m sure they’ll be great shows full of the truly devoted. Reynolds will be at those shows according to his website. Matthews and Reynolds, meanwhile, released two more live double discs, in 2007 and 2010. I had no idea about that until just now, but there should be one or two more DMB CDs coming up in the Re-Listening project. But we have to get through a few more fillers this week.

Friday / photo — Comments Off
14
Apr 23

Quick peektures

The lawn was just mown. The dandelions were waiting for their moment. Their moment is now.

This weekend, the shrubs are getting their ears lowered. I wonder what’s lurking in there, waiting for their moment.

Let’s check in on the apple tree once again. The blooms won’t be there long, he told himself again. Enjoy them while you can, he reminded himself, thinking of times past when he didn’t.

I’ll do it more tomorrow, he said forgetfully, half distracted by whatever else.

I did look out the kitchen sick window as I did the dishes this evening. It faces the west, and it was the right time for that glance. I finished up the washing quickly — there’s surely something that I’ll have to wash again tomorrow — so I could go out and see this for 15 seconds.

There are duplexes across the street, designed solely to obscure my view — and, I guess, for people to live in — but when you get the really vibrant one, you can enjoy some incredible colors above the silhouetted faux-dormers.

Nice way to start the weekend.

books / cycling / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
13
Apr 23

The one where he complains about spring for a change

The apple tree is abloom. You would be forgiven for thinking that we are in spring. But, alas, I know better. I know better because, now in my seventh April here, I know better. And, also, I can read the forecast. It might break 45 degrees on Saturday.

Spring will not begin here until next weekend, the running of the Little 500 bike races mark the official recognition of the seasons changing here. Our first year it happened during the actual race — a soft, subtle, two hour transition that you could actually feel if you were sitting there attentively, desperate.

Even as I note that spring does not begin until the third week of April, I should note that this has been a mild winter. But! There’s still a week-and-a-half to go …

I had a nice, brisk ride this evening. My lovely bride was sitting in the backyard, enjoying the weather and reading, I was sweating, going up a virtual hill on Zwift. But I had, on this stage, three of my favorite visuals on the game. The windmill, the mountain which creates its own weather system and an empty road.

At times, this route was fast, at times it was slow. So like every other ride, really. But I got in 33 miles, and that’s not bad for a Thursday, even if, just at the end, right about at 90 minutes, I started getting bored. I think it has something to do with being indoors on a nice weather day.

I am reading John Dower’s Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. I am 11 percent in, the stage is set, the context is in place, and the truly memorable anecdotes are now appearing.

That repeal was just three weeks before the American occupation ended. Despite some advocates, daylight saving time has never been restored in that nation. If the author puts a half-paragraph into something like that, you’re going to get a lot in the coming pages. And there are a lot of pages, a lot to cover, socially, politically, economically, culturally. But, at least, we know how they felt about springing the clocks forward.