Tuesday « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Tuesday

cycling / IU / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
9
Aug 16

Turn right at the corn

I helped install one of these today:

Sadly it was in a classroom and not in our house. But it’ll look great in the class nevertheless. Except for the fingerprint smudges I left on it. That might sound passive-aggressive, but smudges can be cleaned, so don’t think of it that way, OK?

On our bike ride this evening:

We’ve been this way a few times now and I like this site. You hang a right and then you have the corn on your left. You go up the hill, take a big curve and a punchy little roller and then a long straight up to stop sign that means you’re almost done. It is a nice four miles and 15 minutes.

Here’s the next leg in that final stretch, where The Yankee and Stephen are pacing me home:

I think this should be a thing: Where were you the last time you heard The BoDeans?

Because you never forget Closer to Free. (Or most any of the rest of their catalog, really.)

adventures / cycling / history / Indiana / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
2
Aug 16

Revolutionary canvas and defying physics

On the loading dock today was this large canvas roller. These things intrigue me to no end, even as I know I will likely never have a real use for them myself. But that’s the way of it. Great logo, too:

Dandux is a product of C.R. Daniels, Inc. That company started out in New York City, but was purchased by the Trumpbour brothers soon after, in 1920. They moved to New Jersey, and now also have two custom facilities in Tennessee and Maryland, where this particular roller was produced. The second generation Trumpbour men at Daniels have passed away in recent years and you can find their obits online. They both had military service, which continues a long tradition in their family. Apparently eight of their Trumpbour ancestors fought in the Revolutionary War.

Favorite tidbit, Edward Trumpbour Jr. did not suffer mediocrity, “or as he would say ‘Meatballs.'”

Let’s find out about those 18th century Trumpbours … seems they were of Dutch descent. And at least some of them were enlisted in New York’s Ulster regiments as Tories. Two of the men from that era died in Canada in the 1800s, which is where a lot of Loyalists found themselves during and after the Revolution. Maybe we’re too far removed, in the sense of family history, to talk about the brother-against-brother aspect of that war, but here, it seems, we might have an example of it.

Anyway, their great-great-great-and-so-on grandchildren are still here.

We rode our bikes, where I thought nothing of Trumpbours or ducks or canvas or any other thing. If you chase fast people like The Yankee you don’t have time to think:

I took a bunch of pictures of her on this stretch of the bike ride, one of the few places I could pull alongside. But she kept outrunning my focus, which was weird. She wasn’t approaching the speed of light, but she was somehow defeating it nevertheless.

I did improve on a half-mile climb by four seconds. The cycling app says I presently have the third-fastest time up that climb for the year, which can only mean that most people don’t ride all the way down to the boat ramp and then back up. There’s no way my pitifully slow time should be on a leaderboard.

IU / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
19
Jul 16

On campus

I do not always understand art. Seldom, do I understand art, more probably. I’ve come to enjoy one explanation of art, even as I now only paraphrase it and can’t properly attribute it. Art, said the forgotten-by-me sage, is intended to be transportive, to take you away from your world and into another.

Or some such thing like that. It is a nice idea. And so, when I see this on the IU campus I think I have been placed inside a giant Hot Wheels track:

Here’s the door and sign of the old building. The Media School will be moving out of there in a few days:

And here’s Franklin Hall, the new building. It was built in 1907, has been a library and an administrative building, and is now coming out of a three-year, $21 million renovation. That’s where the Media School is moving to:

My office is around back from there. But much more impressive, inside, is the main atrium, which is dominated by a 26-foot by 12-foot by 4-inches thick screen with six Directv tuners. You can do presentations via computers and play video games on this guy, too:

Opposite that main entrance above is the Jordan River. (They really should call it a creek, but when in Rome … )

This little creek runs around my office, which sits on one of the building’s back corners:

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5
Jul 16

First day at the new job

Had to happen eventually, going back to work, I mean. We have everything unpacked and most things are settled. Except for the hanging of picture frames. We might need some help with that, so come on up.

Anyway, reported for duty today. This is the new building:

I’ve been reading Ernie Pyle for years. As best I can tell I first mentioned him on this site 10 years ago. And some long time before that I first read his columns. He was an incredible rider, and he’s from Indiana and attended the university. He’d come back home from time to time to see his family and friends. He’d come to campus once in a while, too. And he’s still beloved here. His desk is here, this building is named after him. He has a statue that was installed in recent years, and that’s over at the location of the new building. I’m sure we’ll get around to explaining all of that here in time. For now, I’m at Ernie Pyle Hall, who could have seen that coming? Soon, we’ll be in a newly renovated facility. Pretty fancy upgrades all the way around.

This is a small part of the student union. They say its one of the largest in the country. They have a bowling alley and a barber shop and a bakery inside. Also, no kidding, a hotel:

This will take some explaining. Friends took us to this restaurant when we were up here at the first of the year. On a lark I tried a sort of burger I wouldn’t ordinarily order. It was delicious. We came back tonight for the first time, but they’d taken it off the menu. Didn’t sell. (Because I hadn’t gotten here yet, I guess.) I was so stunned and saddened that it took me even longer to think up a backup order, much to the delight and consternation of The Yankee and a friend of ours who was up visiting some family. I finally settled on this James Beard Foundation prize winning burger. It was OK, but not as good as what I wanted.

Now, the waiter, this poor guy who had to deal with me, he got the chef to give him the recipe for the mythical Cuban Frita burger:

Going to have to try to make that soon.

Bloomington / cycling / Indiana / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
28
Jun 16

My app says I rode my bike 90 mph today (I didn’t)

We found a spooky barn on our bike ride today. How often do you see a barn like this?

That’s probably a little over halfway along in today’s 30-mile route. It was at the top of a long slow climb. You get up there and before you can catch your breath you are wondering about the people that lived there. House on one side of the road, two little barns on this side, all right at the top of a round hill.

Which is better than being at the bottom of the hill, but you go through there thinking, Man, mechanized automobiles are great. Isn’t it great we didn’t have to haul these materials up here by hand?

Or that’s what I’d think, anyway.

Coneflowers we found somewhere else along the way:

We stopped four times on our ride today. And that’s OK. Great day for it. Everything is growing and in the full splendor of summer. It is a sight. You want to see it all, and hold it, and then find a way to keep it for forever, because you know the season and the beauty won’t last forever. But it should. Even when it shouldn’t, it should, even when you know why it can’t.

It’s not yet July, you shouldn’t be thinking about the winter.

I thought I would take a picture of my bicycle tire:

Seemed like a good idea at the time. I’d just mounted the thing, after all. Now I need to swap the other one, so the wheel doesn’t feel bad.