Thursday « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Thursday

Progress is being made

Terrible night of sleep. But the morning’s sleep was better. Usually, I go to bed when I’m dead tired, but I went earlier and just … laid there for about six hours. Also, both cats decided it was my turn to be their personal space heaters. One cat is fine. Both cats are a furnace.

I looked at the weather, and then I looked at the forecasts for family. So, today, after doing a bunch of work, I called my grandfather to see if he was prepared for snow and ice. It seems he’ll have a harder winter weekend than we will. He assured me he is prepared to stay indoors. The porch has already been treated. He has the traditional French toast provisions. He gets the joke, but not being adventurous with cuisine, I doubt he’s ever eaten French toast. Nevertheless, he’s ready to watch the weather come and go. I asked him when it was supposed to warm up for him.

“Springtime!”

Nowhere near soon enough.

Though we’re now forecast to hit 41 degrees this weekend. I might set up a sprinkler and go run around in it.

I spent today working on class stuff for the spring semester. It’s just that for the next 12 days until class begins. Honestly, 12 days probably isn’t enough time. But I have the outlines for the first three weeks of class prepared. Another two or three hours will make me properly prepared to navigate through them. And tomorrow, and part of the weekend, I’ll continue building outlines.

It’s terribly exciting stuff, I know. It is, if you like the subject matter. Lucky for me, I do. We’re going to talk about globalization and media and culture in the first three weeks and, looking through what is in store, I want to talk about them right now, but all those days will be here soon enough, leaving me plenty of time to prepare.

Except there’s never enough time to prepare. The class I’m working on right now meets twice a week, for 75 minutes. I haven’t taught a class of that length in several years. Three, maybe four key points per day. It is a mental shift, and a lot to prepare for.

Tomorrow, I’ll figure out how to boil down the entire history of recorded communication into a class session or two. And then figure out what I can omit for a unit on global cinema, and then another for an entire planet’s worth of television. These are challenging choices.

So, I’m left with the idea that it’s a good thing that I don’t have months and months to prepare; I’d agonize over it. I know that, for certain, because that’s what I’ve done every time I’ve sat down with it over the past several months.

I’ve been working my way through a sprint series of Zwift this week. I’ll do a workout, and then round out the day with some free riding to get about 30 miles in. Yesterday, I did a workout inspired by the outrageous style of Mathieu van der Poel. He’s a six-time world champion in cyclocross, and a world champion in gravel bike. Two titles he currently holds, in fact. He’s been the European champion in mountain bike. He also wins stages in grand tours and in the European monuments and classics. Also, he’s been world champion on the road, too. The exercise was meant to name drop him and try, with a straight face, to convince you that you’re emulating the attacking style of one of the best riders of his or any generation. (There are maybe three generational talents on the road right now, including perhaps the best ever; it is absurd.) Surge and recover and surge and recover. Then go over your threshold some more.

Do that eight times, and you’re just like Mathieu!

The training session has little messages on it, and I was having a good ride, and I was sure it was going to say something laughable like that. “You’re ready to race MvdP!” I was ready to mock it endlessly. But they held off.

From his Tour of Flanders win in 2023 …

In great news for wattage fans globally, MVDP has even uploaded his power data. You might want to take a seat before reading this next section. Van der Poel averaged a stunning 285 watts for the 6.5 hours with a peak power of 1,406 W. That’s 1,406 watts in the final seconds of a six-hour-and-thirty-four-minute-long race. Most of us could barely say “1,406 watts” at the end of a 280 km ride, let alone hit such a figure. MVDP’s heart rate monitor also had a tough day at the office. With an average heart rate of 141 bpm and a max of 189 bpm, the Dutch superstar’s heart rate was the only thing faster than his speedo(meter).

If you don’t know what that means, it means a lot. It means something nearly incomprehensible to mortal human beings.

I don’t care about watts — I have a shirt that says “More Pulse Less Watts” — but that’s the central metric of the workout. I was doing but a fraction of that yesterday. And I did it for about 90 minutes, rather than all day.

But I set five new Strava PRs yesterday. Four of them on climbs. (Take that, Mathieu!)

Today’s workout was a long segment with eight sprints in it. I hated most every second of it. But I kept getting these great canned messages from the app. Usually they are of the “You’re getting stronger,” standard rah-rah. But in today’s workout …

Read the room, Zwift.

After 24 miles going from sprint to sprint to sprint — some of them a bit uphill, mind you — and a few more miles just passing the time, I found I’d set Strava PRs on five of those eight sprint segments.

When they don’t feel especially fast it just means you are especially slow!

cycling / Thursday — Comments Off
2
Jan 25

It has no title as yet

I’m working on this essay, and I can’t decide if it should be serious, or if it should be humorous, or if I am able to thread the needle.

This is all the head work, the biggest part of the process. It doesn’t emerge fully formed, but it coalesces in my mind before I start to type. Then, when I finally do sit down at the keyboard, I just add in the typos, and a little more context than anyone would want. I have a lot of source material to draw from, in this particular case, and it’s all serious. But I want to be mindful of not being a clucking do-gooder with too much serious tone. Heavy tone probably ruins the point. Who wants to read that guy. Also, there’s going to be an issue of understanding in this piece that’s now coming together in my mind. While I’ve been assembling likes and anecdotes and research on it for some time, I am close to overthinking it. Which means it is almost time to put typos to ideas, and out-of-context notions within the confines of the context.

What I think I’m saying is that I need a better writing process. And also about 36 hours in each day. And two unflappable copy editors.

A funny thing happened today. I rode my bike on the trainer. Hated every second of it. One day off, I guess, was not a sufficient recovery from overdoing it last week. So I stopped at 15 miles and resigned myself to trying again tomorrow. Maybe. If I feel like it.

It could be the basement view. It might be the many steps to get back up after a ride. It could be that I haven’t fueled well these last several days.

Whatever it is, I need to get better at it. And soon.

Anyway, there wasn’t much more to today, a day which crept up to 43 degrees, which will be something we can’t say again until mid-February at the earliest. I think this is the year I will utilize the 38-and-under protocol I implemented when we moved north. Roughly, the wording of that agreement said, when it gets to 38 degrees, I don’t have to go outside for anything non-work related if I don’t want to.

Also, there’s a winter storm coming this weekend. So I’ll be outside shoveling snow at some point in the next few days. But, after that, the 38-degree protocol will be observed.

Don’t read that as grouchy, but rather, pragmatic. Much the same as many of us heard from our parents about how there’s nothing good that happens after midnight, nothing important is going to be going on outside at 37 degrees, or colder, either.

Cheery pragmatism, with a great degree charm.

family / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
26
Dec 24

Christmas cats

We had a lovely Christmas, and hope you did too. It was low key, my lovely bride, her parents, just a few small presents, and the traditional prime rib dinner.

The cats, I think, got more presents than the rest of us. And they’re now zonked.

I got a nice stocking and a few fun things to read. We got a grease pig, which is a device you use to clean the chain of your bike. My mother-in-law went to a bike shop and said, “I don’t know what I need. What do I need?” And they said, “We all use this.” And wouldn’t you know it, we don’t have this tool.

I used it this evening, without taking any photo or video evidence, and it made a huge difference. It’s a good gift.

I also received a new light and radar for my bike. This is the same one that I got my lovely bride for her birthday, and it is an impressive feat of lightweight design and engineering. So now, when we get back on the open road, we’ll both be a bit safer. (I’ve pedaled 82 miles these last three days, but the trainer doesn’t require a radar.)

I got her front row seats to a show. There’s also another concert that same weekend. She’s also running a half-marathon that weekend. For Christmas, I got The Yankee a long, exhausting weekend next spring.

We are planning a trip with the in-laws for next summer. Just don’t tell the kitties.

It was a lovely Christmas day. And there’s one more party tomorrow.

books / history / Thursday — Comments Off
19
Dec 24

Three more quick museum notes

Before we went to the museum yesterday, I had a look at the gift shop online, and I knew I wanted one of these, so I picked up one as a little gift for myself. I couldn’t tell you the last time I bought something at a gift shop, and I almost talked myself out of it, but, in the end, I’m glad I got one. This is a lapel pin version of the flag which, according to tradition, George Washington used to denote his headquarters during the war.

Looks fantastic on my lapel.

And then, as we were leaving the gift shop, pleased with my purchase spending four hours in the past, I saw this flag on the opposite wall. This is a reproduction of Washington’s standard.

But wait! While the original is preserved by the museum, and was not on display, this one has a story that would have been unbelievable to the first president.

This reproduction went to space with Sen. John Glenn in 1998, orbiting the earth 134 times, covering 3.6 million miles on the Space Shuttle Discovery, 199 years after Washington died.

Also, I took a quick photos inside the gift shop, so I could see more closely consider the books I want to one day read. I made a list on Amazon, and if you want to see 25 of the best books on display (there were probably 40 or so, total), you can see what I’ll be reading in the future.

photo / Thursday — Comments Off
12
Dec 24

Descartes on moss

On the patio we have an open rectangle, a three sided affair of blocks that stack about hip high in a basic symmetrical design. Inside of that rectangle sits the grill, which we will use less and less as the nights turn colder. The grill is covered and, on especially windy days, I’ll sit a heavy wrought iron chair in front of it, and just on the edge of the cover, hoping to keep it in place.

The grill faces two tables, which always speak to the promise of gatherings and parties and loud and peaceful nights outside in the best of seasons. And beyond are peaceful views of the treelines, the neighbor’s roofs, and so on. On the other side of the grill is a vibrant mishmash of plants from all over. Not all of them are native, but everything seems to prosper here in the soil here, where the heavy land and the green sands meet.

I say that because, just beyond the treeline behind us, just atop this tiny little hill, those soil types come together, a clash and a marriage of ancient geological forces that seem frozen to our human conceptions of time, but are really just passing through and alongside one another over the course of the geological history of everything.

My agronomy professors would be pleased.

Unknown to all of that, and behind that grill, and atop those stones, is this little patch of moss.

I could clean that off. Maybe I should.

But the current thinking is that moss could have been a part of ancient ice ages, some 470 million years ago. It spread on land, the thinking goes, absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, dissolved, formed and altered rocks, which released significant amounts of phosphorus and iron which ended up in the oceans, where it caused massive algal blooms, taking more CO2 from the atmosphere. Then it is a chain of consequences. Small organisms feeding on the nutrients, leaving large areas without oxygen, which caused a mass extinction of marine species, meanwhile the levels of CO2 dropped all over the world, allowing the formation of ice caps on the poles and a few weeks later, we showed up, quoting Descartes and watching Friends.

Moss has long had medicinal purposes around here. The indigenous people at various times used it for bedding, diapers, and first aid, like wound dressing. That was still done through World War I because the stuff can just absorb moisture like someone reading Descartes for the first time. In other times in other parts of the world, it was once a foodstuff. It still has commercial uses. Why would you want to remove something as important as all that?

Someone, and I’m not naming names, picked up a supply of paper products made by people determined to upset the paper product paradigm.

What’s with this wavy perforation pattern?

It apparently started last year and has just now found its way to us. It is an attempt to solve the top problem consumers have … the incomplete tear.

We’ve really stumbled upon a moment in human society here.

If you thought I would go back to Descartes, well, you were right. But he takes us a different way.

I did say that there was some difficulty in expelling from our belief everything we have previously accepted. One reason for this is that before we can decide to doubt, we need some reason for doubting; and that is why in my First Meditation I put forward the principal reasons for doubt. (Replies 5, appendix, AT 9a:204, CSM 2:270)

He makes it clear that we should not extend hyperbolic doubt to practical matters:

I made a very careful distinction between the conduct of life and the contemplation of the truth. As far as the conduct of life is concerned, I am very far from thinking that we should assent only to what is clearly perceived. … from time to time we will have to choose one of many alternatives about which we have no knowledge … (Replies 2, AT 7:149, CSM 2:106)

The man was a 17th century genius philosopher and mathematician. If you try to look up his thoughts on toilet paper … you’ll be disappointed. He also couldn’t handle criticism, and suggested some of his contemporaries work would be best left to the privy.

Less messy than the moss, one supposes.