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Look! Up in the air!

I got setup on Zwift and a new indoor trainer this weekend, a gift from my lovely bride. Let’s see how bad this can hurt me.

Quite a bit, it turns out. That was a Saturday afternoon introduction ride, and for the next several rides, I’m sure, I’ll try to formulate the way that this style of riding is similar, and completely different, to being on the road. And I can’t wait to try to get better next week!

We had a nice walk on Sunday. The park nearest us was closed for surfacing repairs, said the sign. But the swings were open. And she is excellent at flying through the air.

She got that high because I helped push a little. We agreed that the days of high-altitude ejections was behind us. Knees and age and all that. But you’re always a kid again on a proper swing set.

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Speaking of flying through the air, I finished up the David McCullough book, The Wright Brothers, last night. This was certainly one way to end a chapter on a down note.

I enjoy McCullough’s work, and have read about half of his immensely well-regarded catalog. This book seemed a bit rushed in the back-half, however. Having worked through the significant achievement of flight, the book glosses over training of Walter Brookins in Montgomery, Alabama and others elsewhere, the barnstorming and so on. It’s not the authoritative text, and is hardly extant, but it’s a good opening read on the Wright family.

Speaking of up in the sky, saw this cloud on this evening’s walk. I guess I was thinking about antique flight because, in the few moments before I could to a clear view of it, the shape reminded me of a dirigible.

Clouds being some of the most ephemeral and over-observed items available to us, it probably looked like a dozen things to a dozen different sets of eyes while it was lazing about today’s calm sky. What was your bunny was someone else’s turtle and my steampunk airship.

Planetary movement being predictable in ways that clouds are not, we all knew to go outside and look this evening. And, here, we had a good glimpse of the mislabeled Christmas Star.

I was sure, when I first read of the Great Conjuction a month or so ago, that we wouldn’t be able to see it because of the season’s regular dose of cloud cover — almost as predictable as the planets! — but we had a brilliantly clear and cool night.

And if you, like me, wondered if this or a similar planetary conjunction might have been central to the Christmas story, some astronomers who know how to calculate those things did the math and said, maybe, possibly, but also perhaps not.

bespoke / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
17
Dec 20

My left breast pockets are natty

This evening I spent a bit of time making new pocket squares. Making is the wrong word. It’s not as if I acquired the cotton seeds and cultivated the crop, spun out the fabric, dyed it and so on.

I found some DIY instructions online, is all. It was on a manly site. A how to site, without the patriarchal and chauvinistic overtones. The point, essentially, was a jacket without a pocket square is naked, indeed. And a splash of color is, in fact, the accent you’re looking for.

And now I make my own pocket squares. Here’s today’s batch:

It’s quite simple and straightforward, really. Really straightforward. It’s “Why did I have to look that up? A few seconds of reasoning would have demonstrated that, ‘Hey, these are squares.'”

Really, you just have to clean up the edges. The rest is in how you decide to fold the squares.

So that adds 12 to the collection. I have 17 more to make, pastels mostly — hooray spring! — and about seven more own the way. If you had those to the other six or seven I have, that’s a lot.

The problem becomes which one to wear. Tomorrow, I think, a dark blue will work. Simple, understated, matches the cufflinks.

cycling / photo / Wednesday — Comments Off
16
Dec 20

A most heated debate

We’ve come to the end of the unseasonably nice weather. Now we are down to the seasonably, inexorably normal weather. It isn’t all bad, you get about 15 minutes of sunlight a day, most days. And the tree nearest the back door is still holding on to some of it’s leaves, for some reason. They’re still green, even. The tree doesn’t know what to make of all of this, either.

Anyway, the outdoor riding is probably done until March or April, cruel a notion as that is. Forty degrees seems to be my threshold, and we won’t see a lot of that for a while. So, it’s inside we go, to the bike room!

It is the room with my bike in it. I will pedal furious circles and go nowhere, slowly.

But the windows will get a nice foggy appearance over the course of an hour or so.

There has erupted a minor controversy around here — meaning in the house, meaning only myself — about whether miles on the trainer count as miles. And, finally, after protests and demonstrations and heated debate — meaning I talked about it out loud and my lovely wife had to hear me utter three sentences on the subject — it was agreed that those miles do count.

So 20 miles today, and the annual tally can continue. We’re just setting all sorts of records this year. (Why, yes, there’s a spreadsheet charting these things.)

And these are the sort of updates you can expect for the next few weeks, I hope.

hobby / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
15
Dec 20

We had a visitor

I was having lunch when The Yankee sent me a text, from upstairs, to look out into the backyard. Her office overlooks the bird feeders in the backyard, and the maple tree that guards them. And, in that tree, a patient sentinel sat, this red shouldered hawk who watched them come and go.

Anyway, he stayed for a while, and I had the opportunity to observe him from our upstairs raptor blind. Enjoy!

Probably he was looking for one of the critters that sneak up to eat seeds on the ground. There are a few squirrels and at least one chipmunk and who knows how many moles. This hawk doesn’t want moles, but I’d like him to give them a shot.

I took 33 photos. And these are the best ones.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a good shot of him flying off. He went in a hurry.

And he went without a snack.

But we did enjoy the visit.

I hope he comes back soon.

Hope you do, too. There could be a menagerie around here.

adventures / memories / Monday / photo — Comments Off
14
Dec 20

They were hungry, I’m sure

Another week has begun, and so we are here, to charm you with your regular update about the cats. Over the weekend I had to open their most recent food delivery. Being cats, they were very interested.

Poseidon saw the box coming out of the storage closet and was intent right away.

I thought if I put it up on the counter I could do the things I needed to do — open the box, pull out the bag, and transfer the important information, like the proportions and the calendar progress, the date I opened it and all the nerdy things you would write on a bag of cat food. I don’t know why I thought I could do it on the counter unimpeded, since the cats spent most of their time on it despite by wishes.

I put the box, including the food and Poseidon, on the floor and pulled the bag out from under him. He was fine with it. Back on the counter went the bag. And up to the counter came Phoebe.

Who could write on a bag in permanent marker around a face like that?

Chewy, which has been dependable throughout, has text printed on the box encouraging you to keep the cardboard, because cats like boxes. We’ve got plenty of boxes around the house, thank you very much, Chewy. We will recycle it, though.

Today is the anniversary of the beginning of our engagement. It was twelve years ago today that we were under Our Tree in Savannah, the same place we spent a day on our first trip and the place we return on every visit. (We were supposed to visit again this spring, alas.) The next year we got married just across the street. I asked her if she would like to have more adventures with me.

And we’ve had great adventures, every day! And still plenty more to come. There’s tomorrow, and Wednesday and Thursday and that’s just the normal, daily stuff. Most times, those are the best adventures of all.