We only had the one night of aurora. That was Thursday. Friday night, the sky looked like it always does.
Which isn’t a knock on the night sky, but everyone would have enjoyed another light show.
The rest of these are just photos, and a video, from weekend bike rides, but don’t think of this as yet another bike riding post … well, I suppose you have to for this video. It was a road worth riding down slowly.
Think of it, instead, as a beautiful Saturday afternoon I got to enjoy. Watching you watering your sod …
Or letting a field sit for the weekend …
Or cutting your hay for winter …
Or imagine you sitting inside, wondering if you’d brought all of your equipment in, or left something out somewhere …
I asked my lovely bride if she’d like to go for a ride, just something easy to get outside for a while to enjoy another beautiful autumn day. She considered it, and agreed to an easy ride. I knew I was in trouble when I saw the steely look in her pretty eyes when she settled onto her aerobars.
It took a Strava segment PR and a second-best time on another near the end of the ride to stay in front of her.
More grading today. But I’ve made good progress on this batch of grading and feedback-ing. So many words to write, and metaphors upon which to expand.
I stopped for two things. First, a quick 25-mile ride this afternoon. Nothing like 90 breathless to reinvigorate you to come back, sit down, and sound knowledgeable about the topics at hand.
The other thing I did today was actually something that we did tonight. We went across the river.
Eddie Izzard was in town, touring on a 35-year career, playing some of the hits. We watched a lot of Izzard in the oughts and early teens, so it was fun to see some of the old bits.
This classic bit made the cut tonight.
We heard the Romans, Carthaginians and elephants story. The woman sitting next to me repeated parts of it word for word, which was cute.
And Izzard closed with the Death Star canteen, of course.
It was a fun show. We had front row seats on the mezzanine. Not bad for spur-of-the-moment tickets.
I am deep back into the grading of things which must be graded. Students were reading a piece written by a colleague and new friend in our department on privacy issues around social media platforms. Some of of the student commentary is thoughtful to profound. They’re taking it to heart, which is gratifying.
I started working on this after midnight last night and should wrap this up late Wednesday. Maybe Thursday, if I must.
I did step outside for a break, and found some lovely flowers brightening the backyard.
It is warm and sunny and beautiful in the second week of October, and this can’t last forever.
But it should.
Let’s return to the Re-Listening project. I am listening to all of my old CDs in the car, in the order in which I acquired them. This silly little feature here, then, is where I write about it, to pad out the site. These aren’t reviews, but it does make for a good excuse to put up some good music here. And the Re-Listening project will do both this week, with a 2001 release that I picked up around 2006 or so.
It’s a tribute album, and a solid one at that, honoring the great Hank Williams. I think of this almost exclusively as an in-my-car CD, which is where I listened to it, but that also makes it a bit eerie, given that its Hank Williams. But each track is inspired by greatness by the same man.
It’s an interesting mix, some of these efforts pay direct homage to the original artist, and some are done in the contemporary performer’s style. Just take a look at the track list, it’s a who’s who.
I Can’t Get You Off Of My Mind – Bob Dylan
Long Gone Lonesome Blues – Sheryl Crow
I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry – Keb’ Mo’
Your Cheatin’ Heart – Beck
Lost On The River – Mark Knopfler
You’re Gonna Change (Or I’m Gonna Leave) – Tom Petty
You Win Again – Keith Richards
Alone And Forsaken – Emmylou Harris
I’m A Long Gone Daddy – Hank Williams III
Lovesick Blues – Ryan Adams
Cold, Cold Heart – Lucinda Williams
I Dreamed About Mama Last Night – Johnny Cash
Dylan, who rarely does covers, leads the thing off. Sheryl Crow yodels. Keb’ Mo’ is Keb’ Mo.
Beck is returning to his roots, and it’s beautiful and haunting. Particularly if you’re driving a lonesome highway. And that’s before you remember, “Your Cheating Heart” was the first posthumous release.
I am not a Tom Petty fan, in particular, but his cover of “You’re Gonna Change” is a standout. The Songbird took over “Alone and Forsaken.”
Hank Williams III, for the first 10 years or so of his musical career, did anything he could to distance himself from his father and grandfather. It makes sense, I suppose. When you see him, and you hear him, it’s obvious why he was initially hesitant to go that direction. He is the spitting image of sound and likeness.
Trey is back to doing metal and punk, with some country tinge, I think.
That’s one of the songs I’m always looking forward to when this CD is playing. That, and “Lovesick Blues.”
This record came out some 48 years after Williams died, of hard living, at just 29. The tribute genre was certainly a bit tired by then, but it’s difficult to imagine who could have done this better, or who got left off the playlist. It’s a fine thing, “Timeless,” and if it turned on another generation to The Hillbilly Shakespeare, then it was a project well undertaken.
It’s a record worth having for passive Hank Williams fans, and a good way in for people unfamiliar with his incredible, and unfortunately abbreviated catalog.
What’s next in the Re-Listening project? We’ll find out together, next week!
On Saturday, a beautiful day for a bike ride, I crossed 17,000 miles with this machine. Raced and ridden in six or eight states, I’ve added new derailleurs because of rust, replaced a snapped saddle last fall and swapped out a handful of chains over the years.
It makes all of the right noises, this bike, especially the silent ones. It goes slow uphill, except for those times it’s gone fast. It will go fast downhill if I ask it to. It goes where I steer it, and has always brought me back again. And somewhere along the way it became a breathless place to catch my breath.
Like I said, it was a beautiful day for it. Jump cuts incoming!
Altogether, I got in an easy 82 miles this weekend, including another beautiful sunny afternoon ride with my lovely bride, where we passed the farmers in their late season work.
She was ahead of me much of the time, but then I caught her, and then I attacked on a road near the end, just because the timing was right and I wanted to try to set a new Strava segment PR (which I did). And when I got home, I looked at the times and realized one of our friends holds the record on that segment, one second faster than me. Back to the drawing board.
On the final stretch before we got there, though, she attacked me, and it was well timed.
It was a beautiful weekend of riding.
And, now, back to grading.
Until tomorrow, then, the latest installments of Catober? Poe had the prime spot today, Phoebe will be back to show off her cuteness tomorrow. See them all here.
This round of grading is done. And now the rest of the day I, so deeply immersed in the effort, may just stare at a screen and think, I should really get back to those grades …
But what I really should be doing is getting on with the three or four other projects before me.
What I’ll probably do is look forward to all of the grading I’ll have to do next week.
Anyway, did you see Poseidon in today’s installment of Catober? They’re taking turns. Today was his solo debut for this Catober. He took this role very seriously. Tomorrow it’ll be back to Phoebe’s cuteness. See them all here.
I did not go on a bike ride today. A second rest day seemed important. But I did shoot this video on a ride last week, and I’m trying to clear out some old stuff, so here you go, a road that deserves a slower pace.
This evening I stepped outside to water some plants and take out the garbage and I found some great big blooms on some great big bushes.
It is the first week of October Catober and these guys are just having a show. I choose to see this as a sign of an exceedingly mild and pleasant end to the calendar year, and a warm and dry beginning of the new one.
Because now I have to mildly worry about that for the next four months.
Anyway, a light day today, if only because I thought every other day this week would be thin and they were and I’m tired, and so on. But there will be more tomorrow, plus Catober!
