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cycling / photo / television / Thursday / Twitter — Comments Off on Someone’s alarm went off at 5:30 — and then I was awake
18
Feb 21

Someone’s alarm went off at 5:30 — and then I was awake

I think this morning marked the fourth time we’ve shoveled the driveway in the last week or so. It’s a small driveway, thankfully, and this was a light snow. Probably it didn’t even need to be done, but it’s become rote. Get up, examine the pavement, and then eat something, maybe. While our little stretch of paved paradise took an hour and change on Tuesday after the biggest snow, it went quickly today.

Mostly I wanted to do a better job of digging out the nearby fire hydrant. One of my former students did a story on this at his station in Ohio this week and I was somewhat guilted into it. So slush slush and heave ho and, oh, look, the city guy that plows the walking path behind us but not the street in front of us came through and poured his best effort into the road.

Because what you want … nah, what I want … is for you to drive down an untreated road and then hit a snow bank you can’t see right in front of my yard and the electrical boxes and the gas line.

I don’t know anything about plowing roads, and I wonder who around here actually does.

So I got that off the road, just being neighborly and all. And then, since I had fully warmed up my core, I decided to go on a little bike ride.

This is the volcano route on Zwift’s fictional world. Some of the environments they offer are trying to be realistic. Some have a bit of a futuristic feel and this one is pure fantasy. My avatar is riding through a volcano there. You go in the volcano twice on the way up and twice again after you ride to the top of the active volcano.

I’m breathing a bit on the bike in the house, which does not smell of sulfur, could you imagine that in real life?

Anyway, I left my bike in one of the harder gears and just dragged myself all the way to the top of this little climb. It’s a good weekday sort of thing. It doesn’t take even a slow person like me forever, and you can still move around a bit when you’re done. I had an hour this morning, and this is what I did.

Zwift charts the King of the Mountain, which is the fastest person up the route. And the current leader is a name I recognize. Dylan Teuns is much faster than I am. He’s younger, stronger, a climber, more fit and also, and this part is incredibly important, an insanely talented professional cyclist. But today I got to the top of the climb in just under twice the amount of time it took him to do it. So I’m putting him on notice.

I can tell by the number of replies he’s not sent that I’m absolutely in his head.

Anyway, that was my second time up the volcano route, and I shaved a little over a minute off my previous time. So I guess there’s something to that snow shovel warm up.

This evening it was back to the studio. We shot the talk show first, new semester, new soccer season, new host.

And Jevan was on the desk to kick off the semester. Were there gifs? There were gifs.

Thursday nights run into Friday quickly into Fridays. Dinner, dishes, and, now, bedtime. We’ll be back in the studio again tomorrow morning. I’m tired already. Can’t imagine why.

photo / Thursday / Twitter — Comments Off on Questions of a different kind of distance
4
Feb 21

Questions of a different kind of distance

I helped moved a few things from one room to another room today. And, when we were done with that we all sat down, carefully distanced — because we are conscientious about this sort of thing, except for the one guy, who, look, I happened to have a tape measure on me at the time and I ran out several feet of tape and pointed this out and I know you to be a smart individual, step back — and properly masked and all of the usual things, because we’re almost a year into the routine of it, now. Except the one guy, I guess.

Oh, if he were the only one, right? But there’s always the one person, in any walk of life, in any scenario you might think up. Parties, the game, the store, in a social distancing context, there’s always that one individual. And I chant “patience and grace” to myself, and, these days, I’m grateful the mask covers 64 percent of my facial expression.

Anyway, he left, and there’s no point to his presence in this story, or to the story, really. But he went about his day and we all sat down to chat and I sat on a chair that had this sticker on it.

Because, eventually, we all take turns being that guy.

I remember covering a hurricane once where the pre-landfall story of dubious origin was that the authorities were patrolling the areas under evacuation orders and handing out toe tags to anyone that had stuck around. The point being, that there’s a certain type of personality that doesn’t take a hurricane seriously. So, maybe this comparison won’t stand out the way the expert would have hoped. At some point, you get it or you won’t get it. Eleven months in, I’d argue, we’re well past that point. Nevertheless:

The first thing about this is, Well, that was obvious and apparent as a potential problem. The second part is, the sample size is, obviously, demographically skewed. So this is what you’ve have to work from as an observer.

Take this incredible woman’s story, for example.

The third, and equally important thing is, this won’t get better as we slide down the age scale.

What if we brought in the people from Chick-fil-A, Amazon, the IRS and each community’s most successful delivery start up and start a super group?

Don’t you just love when your brain seizes on a bit of history?

I spent some time looking through the online records. Mr. Hall was a man of some achievement and professional notoriety. As always, you’re getting the thinnest of outline notes in newspaper form. But what I’ve learned leaves a lot of interesting questions that you’d like to have answered these many decades hence.

So if anyone knows their grandchildren or great-grandchildren … send them my way for a quick conversation.

Covid-19 / Twitter / Wednesday — Comments Off on Et tunc tardius primo cursim
3
Feb 21

Et tunc tardius primo cursim

The front page of my site is now working correctly and I am so tired. These two things aren’t related.

I’d been having some sort of small code issue or a security certificate issue and it occurred to me that I could get the host provider’s tech support people to look at it. And 11 minutes later they’d fixed the thing. Modern technology is amazing. That person is in California or Hong Kong or Texas or who knows where. They received a note from me, ascertained the problem, owing, no doubt, to my excellent description, and fixed everything for me. And I just waned them to point out the error. But now it is fixed. So that’s one less thing. Which is good. There are always more things.

I am tired because I spent too much time on yesterday’s car chase that stretched into today. I just don’t bounce back from three hours of sleep like I used to.

Even more importantly, it doesn’t seem like the badge of honor it once did.

So I’m tired, you see. Which is probably why this is bumming me out. I’ve had my Covid-19 vaccine — now what can I safely do? Your questions answered.

First of all, I have not had my vaccine. This state just made it into their 65+ range on Monday. Second, if you can’t click that link the best summary is: Once you’ve got your shots, continue to wear masks and continue to stay away from people and don’t take trips and don’t eat at restaurants and don’t hang out with friends, if you have them. So it’s kind of the same as it was yesterday. So it is exactly the same as yesterday. The idea here is you have to have some still amorphous percentage of the population vaccinated and those rates aren’t going to be reached anytime soon. At all.

I’m so happy for people who are getting their vaccines. (I know some of them now!) And I am quite frustrated for those people who have told me their parents or grandparents can’t get signed up. I guess I understand the hesitancy of others, to a point.

All these dominoes have to fall, nearly simultaneously, for us to contemplate getting back to “normal,” which will never be the same.

You noticed the group not included above are the willfully stubborn. Good luck to all of them, since they’re never getting on board.

Consider that video while reading this.

Meanwhile, I have lost count of people I know, or am related to, who have been ill, hospitalized, re-hospitalized and so on and/or have died from this. So, yeah, there’s never going to be a “normal,” just a new thing people pretend to accept while hundreds of thousands of people, or more, are hurting, healing and aching forevermore.

Not every day can be treated with equal parts good cheer and British Steel.

More on Twitter, check me out on Instagram and more On Topic with IU podcasts as well.

adventures / photo / Thursday / Twitter — Comments Off on Leave it
21
Jan 21

Leave it

On our walk late this afternoon, when it was unseasonably warm, you could hear it before you could see it. There was a breeze blowing and cars whirring by and it was all punctuated by our conversation but there was a crinkling, crunchy dispute of it all.

We’d already seen one driver, breaking the state’s hands free law, almost rear-end a pickup. We were making our turns based on maximizing the weak winter sun. We were talking about trips we couldn’t take when the dry parchment sound set upon the ears. Those dry, plaintive leaves, still hanging on in defiance, rustling in the wind.

It’s funny, the idea of trips. We had three scheduled last year that were canceled, plus probably three holiday visits. I don’t think I’ve been anywhere since Christmas of 2019. I mean anywhere farther than I’ve pedaled my bicycle. The Yankee has made a few trips to make appointments in Indianapolis, and that’s it for both of us. The curiosity of a staycation has been satisfied, and continues on. We, like the leaves, are still hanging on. But, lately, I’ve spent idle time planning other interesting trips that one might do. These don’t rise to the level of let’s make plans, but, rather ‘Wouldn’t that be neat?’ My favorite one was a four or five day bike-riding trip through New York … or a vacation home that’s both far away from everywhere, and yet easy to reach, and warm … or a B&B somewhere quiet. Crinkly, crunchy leaves would be required.

There’s another cold snap coming this weekend, and maybe some snow and ice, so a few more of those leaves may fall away before we find ourselves there again sometime next week. And while it is too early to think this way, in just 11 long weeks or so, those proud leaves will be replaced by a new generation of green sunlight collectors, and we can pretend like some of this never happened. But only some of it.

adventures / cycling / history / Twitter / Wednesday — Comments Off on Inauguration Day, riding with Bo
20
Jan 21

Inauguration Day, riding with Bo

There was something pointed and determined and grim about the inaugural. They are, by design, designed in certain ways. And the impressive thing about this particular speech was that it hit all the hallmarks in keeping with the formula, so as to not sound as out-of-left-field as the previous one, and yet, it took it’s own tone. A historical one, in a way. Which is obvious, you might say, because these speeches are written for our contemporaries, but also our posterity. And that is true.

Today’s speech, though, seemed like a tone from a different time. This was an early nation kind of speech. It’s themes were humility and the continuation of our style of government. It was not global, but looking inward and to our own society, focusing on work, health care, safe schools, the coronavirus. It was foundational, and attitudinal, warning against the bitter extremes “anger, resentment and hatred, extremism, lawlessness, violence.”

A speech such as this finds its themes formed by the world around them. So you must think of the capitol city as it is today, the country and the mood of it as it is today. That’s how the text sought to strike a balance between basic aspiration and some more densely brooding spirits of the dangers to democracy, pinned with the needs to preach unity and togetherness.

It was a speech out of time, and a speech absolutely for the time. What an unusual time.

It will be interesting, and important, to see how this inaugural speech is viewed through the long lens of time. But for now, today, it does feel as though a tiny bit of breath you’ve somehow held onto for some time can now, finally, at last, be exhaled.

This evening we had the chance to go on a bike ride with a hero and a celebrity.

Bo had, you can tell, already warmed up a bit. And that is why he took off and left everyone. Never mind the fact that he’s 58 and is bionic. Bo can absolutely fly on a bicycle. If this was about anyone who isn’t already a superhuman, I would suspect video game shenanigans.

Put it this way. On this ride there were 49 Strava segments and I PRed 31 of them. I had the ride of the year — indeed, the ride of the last several years. I never had a chance stay with the lead groups. Never. None. And Bo was somewhere out ahead of all of them. Except for The Yankee. She was in front of him at some point, of course. But he was also answering questions from people on the ride. The same old questions, with charm and good cheer.

(You should not try the bat breaking trick(s) at home.)

Years ago there was a video of two sports reporters who took a bat out back of their newspaper and tried to do everything they could think of to break a bat like Bo Jackson. It looked painful. They looked silly, which they embraced. And they failed. I can’t find the video anymore.

Anyway, this wasn’t a nostalgia trip, this is a fund raising exercise. Good cause? Great cause.

This is the 10th anniversary of Bo Bikes Bama, and the second year with the Zwift installment, apparently. Zwift have become big supporters of the fast man who’s well up the road.

Where can you donate? So glad you asked. Over the years these bike rides and the surrounding efforts have raised more than $2 million for the Alabama Governor’s Emergency Relief Fund. Bo Jackson’s efforts in the community have helped bankroll relief projects, the construction of 68 safe rooms and developed other disaster preparedness resources.

There’s no group ride this year, owing to the pandemic. But there is a ride from home fund raiser and another Zwift ride, in April. I plan on being easily dropped in that one, too.

Goodnight, Bo.

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