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We’ve been here long enough to get off the plane, get our rental car and check into our hotel.
The guy at Hertz called me broke and the girl at the hotel called me old.
But the scenery is beautiful! More, in a bit, from our first adventure of the trip.
Spent a few hours in the plane, departing from Atlanta and arriving in Portland. This is Mt. Hood, just before we touched down.
We lost three time zones and about 30 degrees on this flight.
No one is complaining about this last part.
The Acropolis, in Athens, Greece, as seen on our refrigerator. Wouldn’t you rather be in Athens today?
Well, no. The heat index here was about 99 today. It snuck up to around 107 there. Winner, the fridge, where everything is about 34 degrees.
From mid-July through September everything is weighted along a linear graph of atmospheric heat and thermal conductivity. At any place where those two lines meet on the chart, you want to minimize your exposure because, really.
I like a good summer. The Yankee finds this a bit odd. But there’s nothing wrong with a good dose of heat. There’s something magical about stomping through a bit of humidity. We get plenty of each. But as I get a little older, I’m changing my opinion just a bit. Two years ago, in a September filled with the mid and upper 90s, I’d just had enough. And we still had a warm October to look forward to as well.
So heat is good. Limited doses should be applied. Late May through August, I can deal with that. September should demonstrate a little flexibility.
And comparing the seasonal averages, I might not runaway to Greece to avoid the heat.
Back to the map, then.
Pedaled 35.8 miles this morning. And, as I told The Yankee (who beat me home today) I bonked so hard I physically felt it. There I was, struggling along, wondering if it was too early to start trying to count the remaining hills in my head when it felt as if a 10 pound weight had been dropped upon each shoulder.
The last six miles were done in sheer defiance.
But it was a lovely day for a ride. Bright, quiet, few cars on the road as I moved away from town before “rush hour” and stayed in the country for most of the ride.
One of my goals is to pass a moving car. Just getting up from a redlight doesn’t count. Waiting for a safe path to turn doesn’t count. I almost had one in the neighborhood once. He was adhering strictly to the speed limit and if I’d only had a little more juice left in my legs I might have made it a compelling race. Thought I had another one today:
Yes, tractors would count. He turned off just before I caught up to him. Chicken. I’d entertained the notion of following him, but he went down a gravel road. I, too, am a chicken. The fun of it was that, had I not slowed to compose a photograph I might have overtaken him.
Tractors would count.
One of the nice parts about the route we took this morning is that much of it is so far out in the middle of nowhere you can go miles without seeing a car. You also have great scenery:
I love that stuff, and this area is full of fields that used to feature working houses or barns that are now storage or little more than rusty, rotting windbreaks. Occasionally you get to see things you aren’t really sure about:
Maybe it isn’t a mirage. Couldn’t say. This was on a stretch of road I’ve pedaled on once before, notable for the calm, quiet pastureland and that there is no store for miles and miles around. You instinctively nurse your water through here, even on a hot July day, because you don’t know when you’ll find a place with more to sell you.
Near that house:
I’m always on the lookout for a flat field with a lone tree and nothing in the background but horizon. The parts of the world I live in are too hilly and too covered in trees to see it, but somewhere on the great plains this place exists. I don’t know why I look for that setting, but I have an urge to take a photograph of it. I look and I look, and I find neat little places like that. You probably wouldn’t even notice that from a car. I speak from experience, having spent countless hours on sleepy country roads driving from one family dream to another family event.
I thought of this on my ride today. I have a list of questions I’m going to ask should I ever get to speak with someone in Management in Heaven. One question is “How close did I get to walking over buried treasure?” Another is “Was my purpose something small, like not letting someone off the phone so that they could not leave their home and narrowly miss a horrible accident? Or was it bigger, like eating all of the Little Debbie snack cakes?” I have a whole list. And now this: “How much time did I spend on little two lane country roads?” I wouldn’t ask that out of despair, at least not anymore, but out of wonder. There can be a great joy that can be found in getting from here to there, even on paths you’ve taken your entire life.
Or on new paths. Today I found myself at an intersection that featured an old country dining restaurant, a decrepit fireworks stand, a Dollar General, a stand-alone ice dispenser and a random country grocery store. I’m going back with a fistful of dollars.
The Yankee took me to lunch today. She wanted salad, so we visited Panera, where they now give you a pager, ask for your social security number, blood type, mother’s maiden name and the lotto numbers you play. When your food is ready they call your name.
I had a brief chat with the guy at the pickup counter.
Are the pagers broken?
“No … “
And that was it. They don’t use them, his voice trailed off as if he hadn’t considered being asked such a question, as if the local franchise had been unsure, all this time, about how to use those big chunks of black plastic. How does the home office know what is happening in all of the various satellites operating under their signage near and far?
I liked Panera better before the prices went up and the cups got tiny, back when there was a little craft on display in their sandwich making process. Today I had warm soup dipped from a warming vase and a sandwich with cold cuts. This will run you about seven bucks. The cups, though, are the thing that get you. The Panera drink glass is now the size of most people’s water cups. The Panera water cup is a diminutive thimble. As if they have a staff member, the guy who’s on this mysterious “Pager Duty” walking the floor making sure no one ordered a water and pumped in a little carbonated lemonade instead.
Give the place credit, though. This particular Panera actually has seating, a concept which is as foreign in most of their restaurants as the pagers. This is a happy accident. This Panera is in a strip mall and was previously a … my memory and the Internet don’t recall what it was, let’s call it a specialty boutique retail store of indistinct origin or business model. They’ve capitalized on the space, and there are plenty of tabletops. In fact the room segments itself nicely, along the front are the college kids, in the back are the silver foxes.
We try to sit in the middle.
Links and stuff: Students at the University of Alabama put this little video together on life after the April tornado. Do check it out:
There’s plenty still to do around the state in recovery. A lot of that has been done so far by way of social media, and no one has been more prominently centered than James Spann. He’s a humble guy who downplays his role, but if ever a meteorologist was a hero before, during and after a storm, he’s your guy. He’s talking here at the recent TedxRedMountain event.
You want pictures? The Atlantic is running a deep photo essay on World War II. Good stuff.
You want words? Brooks Conrad is a baseball player, the kind you might celebrate because he came up the hard way and made it through grit and perseverance. And then there was the night when his life all but came unglued. You don’t have to be a huge baseball fan or even a Braves fan (I’m neither.) for this story.
When in doubt, blame it on your mother.
We are watching the 1989 Iron Bowl, it is like giving an education, really. The Yankee, you see, was up north and not yet interested in football. When she moved to the South she said her allegiance was for sale. Whatever big time football game someone took her to first would be the team she’d cheer for.
I took her to an Auburn game, and she was hooked.
Here’s Carl Stephens with some of the best words in the world. I recorded that at the game that night. We sat in the upper deck, on the west side over the 20 yard line. As we’d only been dating a few short months by that time I was trying to play it cool and not sound too overwhelming, but there’s so many things you have to know about this place. How Auburn played that night wasn’t one of them, as the Tigers came out flat in their season opener. But that was 2005.
This is about 1989. For some lovely reason the local television stations have taken to filling weekend programming with old Auburn football games this summer. This is brilliant television, really, and there’s no better choice than the first Iron Bowl in Auburn. Pat Dye called it the most emotional moment in school history. David Housel, who’s never been shy about bad historical hyperbole, likened it to reaching the promised land. The players that played there that day said the place has never been louder or more crazed or desperately intense.
Take it away, Jim Nantz:
Is it football season yet?
So we’ve watched the first three quarters, and it is great to see Reggie Slack — who’s selling insurance these days after a cup of coffee in the NFL and a Grey Cup appearance in the CFL. The third play of the game:
It is nice to see Keith McCants again, who was just an incredibly talented, scary good football player.
He’s had some legal problems, but by all accounts is the guy you root for. And he’s lobbying, on his Facebook page, to be on the next season of Dances With the Stars. Seems that his career is now mostly Retired Star Football player, but becoming a star in the South may let you do that. The best part is just hearing the crowd and the marching bands, before the stadium was filled with piped in music. You can forget the original atmosphere if you aren’t careful.
Haven’t shown her this yet:
Seriously. Can it be football season now?
Rode 38.5 miles on the bike today. Felt very nice and the sun only came out late in the journey. Saw this:
It is like they are saying “A payphone! Use me!” This now costs $.50. I couldn’t tell you the last time I used a pay phone, so this $.15 increase was a novel surprise. Perhaps the calls should get cheaper as demand has gone down …
I would say pay phones, perhaps like pawn shops and check cashing stores, should be a status indicator, but that phone was at a nice gas station in a fine part of town. We got Gatorade there and pedaled on.
Great soccer game today. The U.S. women’s side was quite good, but not great. The Japanese played solid, but not spectacular. The Americans couldn’t close the deal and the Japanese ladies would not quit, coming from behind twice to force penalty kicks. And from there the sense of inevitability gave way to a little disbelief. But the Japanese were great and deserving winners.
More to the point, that was 120 minutes of great, clean sport, played well by two teams. It was wonderful see a contest about the game, not about some scandal or overwrought subtext — the healing of Japan thing got overplayed, but that was unavoidable. This was 11 a side playing hard and, for the most part, playing very well. Great experience, even if the other team won.
Now if only the spectators and media would be more interested prior to the Big Game, but perhaps one of these days. What was intriguing was how the narrative for the Americans was not about gender or equality, but about sport and competition. There’s a subtle shift that started taking place in the televised coverage that is worth noting.
Steaks on the grill tonight. We low-grilled the meat, baked potatoes and fried some okra. After dinner we commemoration National Ice Cream Day by buying a pint on a cone at Bruster’s. They close at 10. They aren’t really amused when you show up at 9:45, but we got the obligatory ice cream celebration in just under the gun.
It is a tough life, I tell you.
