The weekly post that pretends to be a post by sharing extra photographs that you haven’t seen anywhere yet! Brilliant!
This little girl was at the race yesterday. She was waiting for her father to get out of the water and move on to his bike ride. Unfortunately, he couldn’t swim fast enough to keep her attention. When he finally did stride out of the water, though, she was excited. Once she figured out that was dad. Those swim caps are not cool.
Riders coming back in from the bike course. This time I didn’t take pictures of random bikes in the transition area. Instead, just a few people riding:
After the race, driving home, having lunch, cleaning up and then going to the tailgate we were already exhausted.
We tailgate with some lovely people, the kind of folks you’d like to be around, friendly, open and engaging, from all over, all walks of life and all in different industries. The ages range over probably 15 years, but everyone gets along famously and it looks like something out of central casting. If the script called for extravagantly good food in a small tent outside a big stadium.
And today I almost fell asleep in that tent watching a football game on the flat screen. Life is good to you like that, sometimes. We looked at each other and decided we had to say bye to our friends and go inside or they’d all pose for tacky Christmas cards while we had sleeping, unknowing expressions on slack, exhausted faces.
So inside the stadium we went. The eagle flew. The band marched. The speakers blared. Two teams came out and only one would emerge undefeated. Arkansas State, as you might have heard, lost their coach to Auburn last year, so there was an instant storyline. Plus the need for Auburn to see more from their brand new quarterback who had been on campus for about four weeks total and looked a bit nervous in his first game.
Also, people really wanted to see a big play. That was one of those things missing from last weekend’s win. There were some “So close!” moments, but this isn’t horseshoes.
So here’s the big play:
Nick Marshall flicks the ball with ease — because the guy might still be working on synching up with his receivers, but he can throw the ball to Georgia.
Fifty yards down field Sammie Coates runs right under the sailing ball and right away from this hapless defender. Twenty yards of sprinting led to six points.
Auburn controlled the game throughout. The Wolves amassed over 400 yards of offense, but couldn’t score a touchdown. As they say, there were positives and negatives, but the home team won. And here are there fans:
Early morning. Bad night of sleep. Comfortable hotel bed, but I’m lately struggling. Shoulder, other shoulder, neck, old age, perhaps. It’ll get better. But that doesn’t keep me from being tired today. But what a day!
This is at the largest sand beach in Georgia (non-ocean category), at John Tanner Park. We were here for a race earlier in the year, and this time The Yankee was out to show an even better time than she did on this same course in the late spring.
Here she is starting the 600 meter swim. She’s one of the pink dots. If this were video you’d know her from the almost perfect stroke. A lot of people are flailing around in these things.
You can just see some canoes and jet skis out there for the just-in-cases-of life. I only saw them fish out one person today. Everyone else did well, including this girl, who came out of the water third in her division:
And then off through the transition with an incredible time and then out to the 14 mile bike course. I rode this course the last time we were here. It has some hills. And they are different hills than we have at home. (You can have different kinds of hills.) These hills require you to keep working over the top of them, which is sometimes easier said than done. And yet, her she was, blowing away her previous time, sneaking inside the goal that she had set up.
And at the end of it all, there was great success. She finished second, and fairly close to the winner, time-wise. There will be a great rivalry at these events when they start up again next season.
Today the sky was bright and the sun was mild through the morning and everyone had a lovely time. I saw a man and a woman each lay down their bike right by the transition area. An older gentleman wrecked his bike coming back into the park. There is a speed bump and he tried to go over it, instead he twisted his ankle and scrapped up his shoulder and put his bicycle in every condition except the one he liked.
I saw him after the race. He was moving a little gingerly, but in good spirits.
Returned to see the new orthopedic surgeon today after our first meeting two weeks ago and the bone scan last week. The first good news remains that I did not grow wings or a third eye or gain a mutant power from the radiology. Not that I expected I would. The radiologist said that rarely happens. One assumes that we’re in the clear there, especially since it didn’t come up when the doctor today discussed the results of the scan.
So he’s looking at the collarbone area, the purpose of the scan being to rule out any bone problems. He said there are none. He probably said some other things, but I stopped listening. It is one thing to see your own bones. It is another to see your own skull.
At the end of the day we can say the bone is fine. And your own skull is creepy.
Now we’ve ruled out nerves, rotator cuff and the bones. We’re down to the hardware and muscular problems. The hardware is an issue, but as I told the doctor, if your magic wand only works once I’d say let’s use it on the shoulder.
So he’s sending me to more physical therapy, a different set of therapists. The phrase I get to use now is scapular stabilization dysfunction. The doctor keeps saying that an accident such as mine involved a great deal of physical trauma.
Because, 14 months later, you want more therapy and a three-word title attached to your problem. (I don’t mean to complain, but … ) We agreed that my shoulder and its recovery have not reached their optimal condition. The good news is that, being muscular, there is improvement to be had. So we’re pleased with that.
Conveniently the new therapy center is close by the doctor’s office, so we set that up. I get to start next week.
Alabama’s 2013 summer went into the books as one of the coolest summers in the 131-year record, with an average high temperature that was almost 2° cooler than seasonal norms.
How cool was it?
For the three months of “meteorological” summer no station in Alabama hit 100 degrees. If that holds up (we won’t have all of the temperature data for a few days and the folks at the Southeastern Regional Climate Center are keeping an eye out), this summer will be only the fourth time that has happened since 1883. The others were 1965, 1994 and 2001.
Three times in the last 20 years. Most unusual.
And now, all you need to know about foreign policy as it relates to Syria in four videos:
He didn’t …
Except when he did …
The guy that works for him says so …
And this, the most egregious of it all:
Someone approached our top diplomat and said “We’ll pay for it.” And he said, “OK.”
As opposed to kicking them out of the room or hanging up on them or pointing out that this would make us mercenaries.
Shameful.
Oh, and it sounds less and less like that piece of adventurism would simply be cruise missiles from the sea:
Securing Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles and the facilities that produced them would likely require the U.S. to send more than 75,000 ground troops into the Middle Eastern country, MailOnline learned Wednesday.
That estimate comes from a secret memorandum the U.S. Department of Defense prepared for President Obama in early 2012.
U.S. Central Command arrived at the figure of 75,000 ground troops as part of a written series of military options for dealing with Bashar al-Assad more than 18 months ago, long before the U.S. confirmed internally that the Syrian dictator was using the weapons against rebel factions within his borders.
Tim Siedell has the final word:
Scarlett Johansson is engaged. And just like that I'm fine with bombing Syria. Bomb everywhere. I don't care anymore.
A lot of time in the car. But a lot got done. One of those days.
Meetings were held to discuss Digital Video Center policies. Things were taught to students and learned by me. Plans and logistics were heard and arranged. Emails … were emailed. One of those days.
Which is not to say there was anything wrong with it at all, because there was not anything wrong with it.
The Crimson had a meeting this morning, so I stayed out of their newsroom. You don’t want to put your snout in all of their activities. As an adviser of an independent publication you have to pick your spots.
So when I was there later I saw this on their wall-sized chalkboard:
Sounds like they’re off to a good start for the year.
