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cycling / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
27
Jul 23

Grab some pruners, let’s prune

I spent the morning with a pair of pruning shears in my hands. There were daisies to deadhead. There’s shade on that side of the house that time of day, and there was a great breeze this morning. All the daisies were cut back. It was actually a pleasant outdoor activity, given the heat wave. And now, hopefully, in another two or three weeks the daisies will show us new flowers for the effort.

The big decorative show shrubs also got a little trim. Some other weeds were pulled from the earth. A few more pokeweed plants, some vines, an oddly emerging tree sapling all came out. On the corner, there’s a trellis, it is in the sun at that time of day, which the sprawling roses enjoy. I noticed that amidst the thriving roses there was one, big, dead branch. That needed to be cut away, and I had some pruners right there in my right hand. So I did the thing where you follow it around the other growing things, through the trellis, and down to the earth. That’s when I found out why that one was dead. Someone had cut it, and left it in place.

In took me about two minutes to make four strategic cuts and carefully pull the thorny thing out of the trellis, and away from the happily growing roses. Why no one else had done that will just remain a mystery, right there alongside what that oddly placed light switch in the hall is supposed to do.

There’s an oak tree on the other corner of the house. It has a wonderful little fork right about eye height. Soil got in the crook of that tree somehow or another. And from that soil had emerged a strand of poison ivy. I had one bad run-in with poison ivy in the oughts, and so I carefully cut that back. Then I put away my bucket of weeds, my pruning shears and washed my hands. And then I took a shower, just to be sure. And then I washed my clothes for good measure. (And being careful, and more observant than I was in 2007-or-whatever, I did not get Urushiol on me.)

After some mid-day store errands, I took a little bike ride. It was the absolute hottest part of the day, which wasn’t the problem. The problem was that I stopped for a few minutes in the early going, and that allowed the sweat to pour, rather than evaporate in the wind.

This means sweat is getting in my eyes. And I am, of course, riding on brand new roads. I mean, brand new. I mean, pulling up more than one map to make sure I am following my plan. Because of the sweat stinging away, and alternating eyes, and because they are new roads, I did not follow my plan perfectly. But close enough. Trying new roads on your bicycle is such great fun.

I just could not keep the perspiration from my eyes, and after a half hour or so of that, a strange, full-body sensation came over me. I think that all of the eye rubbing and eye irritation felt a lot like how you feel just after a real big, long cry. And, suddenly, the rest of me figured that out. Now my chest and my lungs and my stomach and everything else is paying attention. What’s wrong? Is something wrong? Something is wrong. Should we be concerned? Emotional protocols activated. We’re tightening everything up! The mind wanders, even when you aren’t aware of it.

Before all of that, I saw what has to be the largest excavator east of the Mississippi. I know there’s not much here to use as scale (other than those two big tractors) just remember, this was mid-bike ride, and I was using one eye at a time.

When I found that closing both eyes was the most comfortable condition, it was time for this little recovery ride to end. Fortunately, I was in the neighborhood. Down one hill, around the corner and up the driveway. Do you know how hard it is time your stop, so you don’t foolishly ram your garage door while riding with your eyes closed? Neither do I, but I thought about trying it.

This was the temperature when I got back inside.

Here’s the thing. I could do that four or five more times and be just fine. A lifetime in sticky subtropical climes means you can easily adjust to the condition. Only, I don’t want to be in a heatwave for that long anymore.

Hours and hours later, I still feel red-eyed.

In the early evening I deadheaded the daisies in the backyard. I pruned a bit on the big beautiful hibiscus bush. I watered a few other plants. And then I set out to fix this door.

This building is a little decorative garden shed. It isn’t wide enough, or deep enough, to walk into. But there are some handy shelves in there. Great for fertilizer and other gardening accessories, and we intend to do that. But, if you’ll notice those two planks right in the middle of the door. They were missing from the door. Today was the day I got around to studying the problem because, really, I want to store gardening accessories in there, but you need to be able to protect them from the elements. So I looked at the door, figuring I could just cut some thin lumber, bluff my way through the tongue-and-groove and have an actual, functioning door, even if it was badly mismatched.

But then I found the two original pieces of lumber.

There are two morals to this little story. The first one is this. The tool you have is not *always* the best tool. Pruners are not staple removers. It seems that the previous owners tried to reattach this wood with staples. They protrude from the outside in, but they did not make it into the cross brace. They were, in fact, just in the way of things. So I pulled out one staple with the pruners and thought, This will work just fine and then, buoyed with the overconfidence that comes with luck, I managed to stab myself in the left thumb.

So, if we’re keeping score, I have now invested blood and sweat into the new house. Tears, TBD.

Here’s the second moral to the story. The easy, quick, good-enough, halfway solutions to small problems you make will one day be noticed, and questioned, by others. (By now, I could write a dense pamphlet on some of the previous owners’ decisions. Nothing huge, or uncorrectable, but a lot of it curious.) Better to do it right. Or better. Aim higher than good-enough, is the point.

The door on that little gardening building has been repaired. One more thing off the list. (And it’s a fun list! This is going to be fun to accomplish and remove things on this list!) And my thumb, which is perfectly fine, is sporting a cool bandage.

And now there’s a cat laying on my left forearm. That’s either cuddle therapy for the scratch on my thumb or a sign that I should shut down the computer for the night.

adventures / cycling / music / photo / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
26
Jul 23

Ray Stevens was an overdue mention anyway

We started this morning with a bike ride. OK, I started this morning with a PB&J, and then we went on a bike ride. The first 10 miles felt great, just following my lovely bride, jumping ahead on the little hills because I can, but sitting up and waiting for a second or two for the red flash to come through.

The corn is nice and tall. The sun is high. The roads are quiet. Everything is going great.

Somewhere around mile 13 my legs reminded me that they have been underused of late, and they stopped pedaling well in protest. It was squares from there on in, and I have to ride more, I know it, and my legs do, too. But the views were lovely.

And even though my ride was feeling clunky, I did remember to take a photo of this sign which surely means … something.

I think it’s recounting the local legend of the bird that celebrated the building as a deity, and brought it fish sacrifices, in the hopes that the building would give plentiful thermals in return. Silly bird.

Around mile 18 my legs rallied, if only for a moment, and then they stopped being productive at all. There was no more hanging on the wheel. No more catching up, not even on the gentle rollers. I was merely dropped. I managed to set four PRs on Strava. She set PRs on five Strava segments.

After that, The Yankee went for a run.

I sat in the shade.

Today was, I think, the first day I didn’t do anything involved with house settling. That’s about the tasks, not the mentality. That may take a while, I guess. But I did make a list of things to do tomorrow. And a long term list of things we might want to do, one day. Also, I did some paperwork for work, but there’s not really a good tale emerging from paperwork. Not one like this …

Late this afternoon we took some garbage to the garbage taking place.

The waste people decided they don’t manage service in this neighborhood anymore, despite having just closed a contract with the previous owners. And despite evidence — actual garbage cans that will go out tomorrow — of all of our nice neighbors receiving said service. We called this company twice on different days and times, just to see if that was a fluke, but it was not. Not sure what’s going on with that company, but I invoked Smith’s First Rule of Economics.

Don’t make it hard for me to spend my money with you.

So I found another company. Feeling very proud of myself, I shared this information. I didn’t know what the relative rates were, but it turns out this contract will save us a few bucks. They’ll start pickup next week, and deliver one of those giant cans later this week, supposedly. Which meant we took a few bags and some recycling to the transfer station today.

Transfer station being a term that sounds better, but isn’t necessarily an improvement in the olfactory region.

Being a warm summer day, we enjoyed our evening outdoors, and then had a fine steak dinner. It was a wonderful day, thanks for asking. I also introduced my lovely bride to Ray Stevens today. It was a topic that just evolved from a regular conversation. To my great relief, she found him funny, too.

I don’t know what comedy track we’ll get into, but tomorrow could be even better!

music / photo / tabs / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
25
Jul 23

Shocking! I felt shocked! (Because I shocked myself … )

The people that sold us the new house had a giant corner wardrobe in their bedroom. They didn’t take it with them. Left it right where it was. The day we moved in, we moved it to the basement. I had to take it apart, disassembling it around the hard-working movers. They had to carry it, in four pieces, into the basement. Down the stairs, out the front door, around the side, into the garage and downstairs. They strained. They struggled. They did it with good cheer. We felt bad. We tipped them pretty well. We were going to do that anyway, but after that we huddled and agreed to tip them a bit better still. They earned it.

Only, they didn’t reassemble that wardrobe in the basement, where we will use it as off-season clothes storage. So, late last night and early this morning, I did that work. (Sorta?) It had been three-plus weeks (time flies) since I took it apart. I was in a rush to tear it down back then and I didn’t document where in the MDF all of the little metal parts went. Also, IKEA doesn’t have it listed anymore, and I’ve no idea what they sold it as, so I can’t easily find the manual online.

Today, though, the giant four-part wardrobe is reassembled as three individual pieces. Maybe I’ll make it a two-section wardrobe later this year, when I swap out the clothes. But at 2 this morning, I felt like I’d done enough with it.

Today I raked up the grass clippings from the lawnmower, and stuffed them and a bunch of weeds, mostly pokeweed, in a lawn bag. I also discovered we have an electric fence. Every day there’s something new to discover, and that’s fun. Still don’t know what the extra light switch in the hallway does, but I digress. I was out at the shed and found a small solar panel, pointed west, with a little red cable running to a white cable that runs around the shed, right about at big toe height. It is energized, and it’ll give you a nice, moderate, shock. Not as many volts as you’d get grabbing a hot wire in the house, but a little more than static electricity. No pests in the tool shed, then.

I called the company that makes the solar panel. A nice woman there said this little unit could power a fence that covers three-quarters of a mile. Electric fences don’t take a lot of power, of course, but that’s just remarkable.

Soon after, someone came by to take all of these bad boys off our hands.

It only took three tries to give them away. A guy who came out last week to do some work on the house carried some off to use in his flowerbeds. I advertised them on a Facebook group. Move! Store things in them! Build forts! Put them in your flowerbeds!

A woman agreed to swing by, but she disappeared. From the chat. She disappeared from the chat. I’m sure she’s fine.

So I found another woman who needed boxes. She took them in two trips today. In between, the sky looked like this.

And then, almost magically, those clouds moved on, burned off, disappeared. It was all but instantaneous. The sun came out, bright as ever. And then it rained through the sunshine. I stood in the window and watched it. And, after the shower had passed, I glanced in the large room where cars are normally parked. The boxes were gone. We no longer have a squished warehouse. We now have a garage. About the same time, my lovely bride finished setting up the gym. (Can’t wait to renovate that one of these days.)

We’re making progress every day. So much so that we feel confident in having a bike ride tomorrow. It has been so long since I’ve been on my bike I’m mildly curious if it is, in fact, just like riding a bike.

I need to make some progress on this front as well, closing tabs in my browser, that is. Good for me, then, that it is Tabs Tuesday. These are a few links that I’ve kept open for too long. They might not rise to the level of making a bookmark — which comes at considerable cost, if you read this sentence wrong — but they could be worth memorializing. So I put them here. Let’s see what I’ve been holding onto.

Sometime back I learned about the Artisans Cooperative, which emerged as something of a maker’s revolt from goings on at Etsy. Or, at least that’s what I seem to remember about it.

Artisans Cooperative is crafting a “better” online handmade marketplace, run as a values-aligned, member-owned cooperative.

OUR VALUES
1. Member-owned co-op …

2. Free and fair marketplace …

3. Inclusion …

4. Authentically handmade …

We are in the final stretches of development and getting ready to launch to the public in October 2023.

Good for them. And some of the merchants, the ones I’ve clicked through so far, anyway, do some amazing work. Like, East Ruin.

East Ruin is an archaeology-inspired art & design business for eco- and socially-conscious consumers who value alternatives to extractive production methods.

For a different sort of thing, there’s Maple Creek Vermont.

I started Maple Creek Vermont in the fall of 2020 as an outlet for my creative energy. For as long as I can remember I have had a passion for creating, building, crafting and making. As the son of a carpenter I have been around wood working my entire life and I worked to spend as much time as I could in the wood shop during all levels of my education. From the closet turned wood shop in my kindergarten classroom to the well appointed wood shop on my college campus, I have always felt at home making sawdust.

And check out StellaNCWorks. I’ll definitely be shopping here.

Pottery was the souvenir my parents brought back from every place we went, each piece chosen to represent that place, with the potter’s mark on the bottom. Embracing my home in NC is reflected in my own pottery. It seems appropriate, forming a chunk of the very land itself, through an intimate, engaged process, into a practical object that reflects the plants and animals that share the land. I am inspired by these plant and animal neighbors, by the idea that memories and heirlooms connect us to our loved ones, by things that are made by someone’s hands, and by shared humanity. I explore these ideas to create themes that celebrate the personal connection with nature and with other humans, and often use artifacts of these things—plant leaves, animal footprints, heirloom lace—to shape my work.

When I first started making my own pottery, it was driven by the need for a perfect vessel for a particular food: a plate for sardines with a line of mustard, bowls for pho, a big tea mug. Making clumsy pottery taught me lessons about making things better: about handle shape appropriate for leverage on a big mug, flat bottoms that don’t retain dishwater when drying upside down, shapes and edges that are comfortable for hands and lips. I make pottery for people who love the art in the practical, who love useful things made by someone’s hands.

(It also happens to be beautiful work.)

I discovered a bramble vine in the yard the other day. So now I’m reading up. Brambles: Pesky garden weed or delicious summer treat.

Brambles are bush-like, thorny plants with arching canes that are all in the Rubus family of plants. This includes the common blackberry, raspberry (including red, black and yellow) and the less common dewberry and thimbleberry. Many of these species are grown or bred for their wonderful fruit, and there are many wild-growing brambles as well. Wild bramble fruits are generally smaller than their cultivated, on-farm cousins, but are more packed with flavor! It’s almost “brambleberry” foraging and harvesting time now; if you see anything in the woods that looks like store-bought raspberry or blackberry, it’s safe to eat! There are no poisonous look-alikes to worry about.

There is good news and bad news about plants in the bramble family. The plants root easily, they spread out, and they give off fruit every year. If you are trying to establish them in your garden, you’ll likely be successful; they are quite vigorous. Another plus is that they are an incredibly rich (and common) source of pollen for pollinators of all types. Expect new plants to bear fruit in their second year.

And there’s always something new to learn about peaches, too. There’s so much to learn about peaches. They aren’t at all intimidating.

Less intimidating: the 54 tabs still open on my browser.

Just two more clips from last week’s Barenaked Ladies show. I didn’t include the encore. These days BNL brings out their supporting acts (Del Amitri and Five For Fighting on this leg of the tour) and they do a cover. They’re doing Steve Miller Band’s “Jet Airliner.” (It’s fine, I guess. Last year, though, they did “Handle Me With Care.” It was much better. Here’s the version they did in Cincinnati. And this is the version they did in Indianapolis.)

There was a freestyle rap, an Ed Robertson staple. And they mixed it into a medley with a Taylor Swift song. I am counting this as having attended a Taylor Swift show.

Tyler Stewart came out from behind the drums for the big finish. And it’s a pretty robust singalong. Think of it another way: this is a 40-year-old song, a staple of another band’s catalog, and everyone, or at least the guys, are all singing along.

When Joe Elliot screamed it in 1983 “Rock of Ages reached 16 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and number one on the Top Tracks Rock chart. No one forgets Def Leppard — who are playing seven dates across the U.S. next month.

But enough about music. There’s a lot more of that to come. Tomorrow we’ll dive back into the Re-Listening project, because I am very behind, and that’s making me itchy.

Monday / photo / swimming / video — Comments Off
24
Jul 23

The one with the Kraft dinner reference

No point in making you wait, let’s jump in to the most popular feature of the week, after which everything will be a big letdown, but that’s the risk I run on Mondays. If I run this part late, you might skip everything else in disgust, or just go elsewhere. If I do it early, everything else has to be compared against this cuteness.

I mean, really.

I’d like to know what it is about the landing Phoebe likes so much. Good vantage points to both parts of the house? The ability to stop foot traffic? Because that stops traffic every time.

I understand, at least, the naps and stretches in the sunlight.

Most of our windows face either east or west, so they get good daylight. Not quite as good as being outside, though, right Poseidon?

He got outside once this weekend, and in the garage several times. He’s pretty good at timing his sprints. He has no idea what to do when he gets outside, but he makes a big effort. And he’s judgmental when he fails in the effort.

But he’s also trying a new tactic. If he can hide in the grocery bags, maybe no one will see him, and when we move them back to the car, that’s when he’ll make his break.

He’s hidden so well, no one can possibly know.

How can anything else compare to all that cuteness?

Saturday we played in the water. Scrubbed and treated and vacuumed, anything to stay out of the sun and heat. Also, some of it was easier to do in and under the water than above it. And, when all of that was done, I spontaneously decided to go for a swim.

And so it was that I slowly accumulated enough laps in the pool to be able to tell you that I swam 1,650 yards. This was my fifth swim in the last two weeks. It was also my first mile since the 17th. Of November. November 2015. Somehow, I was still able to move my arms afterward.

That evening we got dinner at Barnsboro Inn:

On March 19, 1776, John Barnes petitioned the judges of the Gloucester County Court to license his house, at the intersection of five main roads in Mantua Township, as a tavern. “An Inn at this said house is much wanting,” he stated in his petition, “as there is not one on said road nearer than eight miles on one side and five on the other.”

[…]

In Barnes’ honor, the community, originally called Lodgetown after an early settler, Benjamin Lodge, was renamed Barnesborough, later shortened to Barnesboro. For reasons not wholly clear, the settlement at one time was known as Lousetown.

The Tavern itself has undergone name changes during its nearly 300-year history. It was known as the Spread Eagle, the Crooked Billet Inn, and the Barnsboro Hotel before its present designation as the Barnsboro Inn.

Lousetown: one of those names you’re glad you learn about after your visit.

We had ice cream at a local overpriced ice cream place, and then caught dusk in the car.

We lounged about the rest of the weekend, visited a farm market and got some produce. I walked through the pretty things in our yard. I pulled weeds and started studying up on peaches because …

Later, I’ll learn all about grapes.

Also, the hibiscus just exploded seemingly overnight.

And I killed three lantern flies. You’re welcome, America.

Last night we dined on the sidewalk in front of place called The Red Hen. We were sat by perhaps the most aggressively no eye contact person I’ve ever met — and we just moved here from the midwest. To make up for it, the waiter was full of eye contact. I had the chicken sandwich … it was right there in the name … and it was good. Everyone enjoyed their meal and the pleasant evening temperatures and it was, all around, just a lovely little weekend.

Before I share a few more clips from the concert we attended last weekend, let’s look at the sign on the side of the venue. A classic.

I bet that came with the 2018 renovation. The Metropolitan Opera House was built in 1908. At the time, it was the largest theater of the sort in the world. A big handful of opera companies used it into the Great Depression. At times it was a movie theater, a ballroom, a sports venue and, from the 1950s to the 1988, a church. Now it’s a concert venue. This sign is definitely original.

And since the name is right there on the sign, let’s hear some music. Here’s the classic, “If I Had a 1,000,000.” Sing along.

And there was also a Harry Styles, a-ha, Rodgers and Hammerstein medley. There’s always a medley, I just want to know how they get from A-B. Soundcheck must be amusing.

I’ll put the last couple of videos from the show up tomorrow. For now, I should find something to be productive about.

adventures / cycling / errands / history / photo / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
18
Jul 23

A full day’s worth

This morning we took The Yankee’s car to a mechanic. It was a planned event. She needed an oil change and, I suspected, a radiator flush. She searched around, found a place that got great reviews, and made an appointment so, literally, a planned event.

I followed her over, we met the guy, sitting three rooms deep into his shop. Large fellow, sleeveless shirt, bandana on his head. Hunting paraphernalia on his desk. There were fishing rods in the corner, a Dale Earnhardt flag hanging on the wall. I felt like I understood him right away.

We left the car, which he said would be ready this afternoon. We headed back, stopping off at the grocery store for a few lunch supplies. The afternoon passed easily enough. I believe I was finishing up a bit of reading and writing on LinkedIn when she said the mechanic called and her car was ready. So we went back over, the first half of the short trip entirely by memory. And the car was ready! Windows rolled down. Key in the ignition. Inside, she paid the fellow. Cash. He made change, from his pocket. He said the radiator flush was the right call. Said he tested it. So we established I knew what I was talking about, that he’d work on both of our cars, his prices are fair and, possibly, he doesn’t hold up progress by slow-walking maintenance work.

If that’d been it, that would have been a day’s worth, right there.

At the house, she said, there was something she wanted to show me. Turns out, we’ve got a peach tree.

Five varieties of peaches grow here. Now we have to become peach experts.

There are also some tomato plants out back. Do you know who is a tomato expert?

And there’s a corner of Lactuca sativa. Funny, you just don’t think of growing your own lettuce.

This is something called clammy goosefoot, an herb from Australia. I don’t know what you’d use it for, and I have yet to find a site that screams “You simply MUST put this on your pasta.” So probably I won’t.

But we also found some chives …

Nearby was the oregano.

And, of course, the sage.

We’re going to have to determine the schedules for all of these plants now. And, if that had been it, that would have been a day’s worth. But no.

For, you see, we went to join this running club. But, for the second week in a row, they no showed. They are, in fact, running away from us.

Which is fine, because ~~I need someone to chase~~ I wasn’t going to run this evening anyway. It usually works like this. I think Rest day? Schmest day! And then, the next day, I realize the error in that thought, and the wisdom in a rest day. So today, I did not run, or anything else, because I had eight days of workouts (be they ever so humble) in a row, and 11 days in the last 12.

Tomorrow I’ll … exercise … or something.

Instead of running, we got milkshakes. Dinner. We got dinner. And also milkshakes. We carried that back to the house and watched today’s stage of the Tour de France. And here’s the thing about the Tour … it’s 21 days of racing and this is the 110th edition and that means there’s a lot of history and trivia and wonderful anecdotes and a lot of it, until recently, wasn’t kept with baseball statistic precision. We did know, coming into this stage, that this was the third-narrowest time differential (10 seconds) between first and second place riders after 15 completed stages. We knew that because the TV producers made a fine graphic telling us about it.

Also, you know, it’s a bike race. Real roads, differing technologies and external circumstances and terrain and routes and all of that. It’s hard to compare the apples and pears of the time differential in this year’s race with the leading comparable statistic, which was four seconds between Jos Hoevenaers and Federico Bahamontes in 1959.

Bahamontes wound up winning, Hoevenaers finshed eighth, down 11-plus minutes. But everything about the style of the race was different then.

It also seems difficult to compare the tight affairs of this year’s Tour with the legendary 1989 race, which was a 50-second race on the last day, ultimately won by Greg Lemond by eight seconds. Someone put together the Lemond and Laurent Fignon time trial side-by-side.

Evolving cycling technology is coming into play here. Lemond, on the left, has aero bars and a new teardrop-shaped aerodynamic helmet. He only used the disc wheel on the back. Fignon ran two disc wheels, which leaves you more susceptible to crosswinds. Also, Fignon road a conventional style. It got so silly after the fact that people also speculated that, had he cut his hair, Fignon would have avoided eight seconds of air drag.

I’ve heard Lemond say, more than once now, that he was told Laurent Fignon was haunted by that race for the rest of his life. That he walked around counting eight seconds. Fignon, in his autobiography, wrote “You never stop grieving over an event like that.”

Anyway, that was the closest finish in history, but after 15 stages, the difference between them in first and second was 40 seconds.

It’d be a bit easier to compare the technology of today to the second closest, the 2008 edition, where Frank Schleck, of Luxembourg, was leading Australian Cadel Evans by eight whole seconds after 15 stages. (Also, bikeraceinfo.com reminds me that Austrian Bernhard Kohl was in between them, down only seven seconds to Schleck. Kohl later confessed to doping, so he disappears from the official records.) Eight seconds! Neither of those guys won the Tour.

At least that looks familiar. Modern. It’s only 15 years ago, and those riders have all retired, but the names are familiar. Indeed, I remember that particular tour. The technology and nutrition have jumped significantly ahead in the generations hence. Even the way they race, in terms of strategy and tactics, has been evolving since then. It’s the same, but different, remember.

But this year’s tour will be difficult to forget. Today …

Time trials aren’t usually very interesting to me, but I’d love to know how this ranks historically. The guy in second place, two-time Tour winner Tadej Pogacar, started the day down 10 seconds, and he had an incredible ride. The only problem was the guy behind him, his rival, the defending champion and current leader, Jonas Vingegaard, had an incredibler ride. A gobsmacking ride. Watching the time gaps grow at the checks was something that strained credulity. You could tell he was riding hard, working for it, riding well. It was in the body language right away. But that stage was a deconstruction. This is a place I actually want more statistics. Has a time trial ever done such a thing to an evenly matched opponent? SBS offered a slightly more technical comparative look of the two rivals.

What started the day as a tense, 10-second race finished a mind-boggling one minute and 48 second race between the two best road racers in the world. This will be hard to forget. And there are more mountains to come.

If that’d been it, that would have been a day’s worth, but no.

Because I also updated and upgraded a deadbolt. I only messed up two parts, and it only took several more minutes than the directions promised. But, it is installed. It is square. It matches the door knob. And, importantly, it is functional.

Each entry and exit through that door will now be reported to the ninja barracks out back, via a military grade wifi network, so that they can monitor and approve of all of the comings and goings.

When they aren’t worrying over that oregano.