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There’s a hint of live music below

Well, today was just beautiful. Impossibly so. Sunny, blue skies and temperatures settling into the 70s. There was no ambitious mercury in the thermometer. No overbearing sun. Just this …

… and the promise of another day or two of it afterward.

It was this beautiful. I couldn’t decide what to do with the day. Which was weird.

Finally, I settled on sitting outside and reading. It was a good choice.

It was such a good idea, I did it again, sitting outside this evening, listening to the symphonic crickets, flipping through pages of a book, asking myself why I don’t do this all of the time.

I should do this all of the time. Or at least more.

We return to the Re-Listening project. Regular readers know I’ve been listening to my old CDs in the car, and in the order of their acquisition. We’re in, let’s say it is 2006, listening to a 1998 record that I picked up at a library sale. It’s everyone’s 1990s friend, the Dave Matthews Band.

“Before These Crowded Streets” was their third album. Béla Fleck appears. Alanis Morissette is on it. And so is the virtuoso Tim Reynolds — this being just before he joined the band. It was another successful album, even as they were beginning to change some things up. The instrumentation gets more exotic, the time signature experiments are underway, and the themes got a bit more mature, a bit more worldly.

This was the record that pushed the Titanic soundtrack from atop the Billboard charts. Three singles became hits, the record went platinum four times in the United States.

Some of the best parts of this record are the interludes, usually outtakes, between the songs. And the biggest memory I have about this record is actually from a live show. They play the amphitheater in 1998, supporting this record and the version they did of “Don’t Drink the Water” was just about the most intense thing I could imagine seeing at a yuppie party. Here’s a version from that tour, about three weeks earlier than the show I saw. This is sedate in comparison to my recollection.

They’re still at it, of course. Ten studio albums and something like 17 live albums later. Touring machines, who even knows how many millions of concert tickets they’ve sold at this point. But I know some people who have purchased a lot of them. My god-sisters-in-law (just go with it) and their large entourage see them a lot, probably four or five different dates a year. And they invited us to one of them. It was my third or fifth time seeing them, and my first in 20-plus years.

I don’t think I even mentioned the concert here. We left the show early for some reason that was never explained. The group gathered and walked out and, I said Who doesn’t stay for the false finish, let alone the encore? And the answer was, the crowd of people we were with, for some reason.

Though I blame DMB as the sole culprit in the outlandish ticket prices we’ve seen explode in the last several decades,
they still create a happy crowd. And their tour continues right now. They’re playing the northwest, before heading back east in late September for some festivals, and then a few fall dates in Mexico.

We’ll go north, to Canada, when next we return to the Re-Listening project.

But what will we get into here tomorrow? Be s ure to stop by and find out!

adventures / food / Monday / photo / triathlon / video — Comments Off
19
Aug 24

#GoRenGo

Some many years ago I had a brief passing thought about a photograph project. What would it be like to shoot all of the rust? It has a certain beauty. It says, well, a few different things, if you contemplate it long enough. It’s also everywhere.

And sometimes, I find myself staring at a bit of rust.

When I do, I think of that passing thought. How long would that take? And who are you kidding? How many things would rust away by the time you got back to the starting point? Saturday, when I was looking at that bridge, I wondered, wWhat does all of the rust in the world weigh?

I was staring at that bridge while my lovely bride was checking in for her triathlon. She did a half iron this weekend.

The half iron includes a 1.2 mile swim, in a river, this time. Here, she is exiting the water right on schedule.

Immediately after that, there’s a 56 mile bike ride.

She dropped her chain, and said someone swung out in front of her and ran her off the road. She was OK. At least two different people were less fortunate, and had accidents involving cars. Excellent job securing those semi-controlled roads by the race organizers and local authorities.

And after that 1.2 mile run, and well-paced 56 mile ride, she had a half marathon to wrap up the event. Here she is setting out for the run.

She had a great swim, and she was pleased with her bike ride. But she did not care for her run. Aches and pain and no shade and so on and so forth. Nevertheless, when she made it to the line, she finished with a smile.

And that’s her fifth 70.3, to go alongside her three Ironmen triathlons. And wraps up the best part of the season. I think she has one or two more runs scheduled, just for fun, but everything is for fun from here. (It should all be fun, I say. Finish with a smile, that’s what I say.)

On the way back home today, we stopped at this place. ‘

Because, look, when you tell a trusted friend you are driving through her native neck of the woods and she simply replies that you have to go eat at this place, you take the advice.

Our trusted friend was spot on with that recommendation.

Today was a long day in the car; there was a lot of reading Wikipedia to pass the time. Tomorrow, it’ll be back to work.

cycling / history / markers / photo / video / We Learn Wednesdays / Wednesday — Comments Off
14
Aug 24

Night riding

This is almost entirely about this video. Except for the part that isn’t.

And if you’re paying attention — and why wouldn’t you be? — to the background, you might notice that this one deserves the special banner.

When I set out, this was the angle of the sun in the sky. I’d wavered for a while. Should I? Shouldn’t I? And then finally decided to get in a quick 20 miles. By then, and after I’d re-greased my chain and left my water bottle in the garage, it looked like this out.

I took a right to cut through some nice pastureland. Somebody is ready to put up their hay. Some of the livestock owners have hay leftover from last year, mild winter that it was. Maybe that’ll be the case again.

I pedaled through the farm lands, through two residential neighborhoods and a little town ready to stretch out for the evening. Then I was back in the farm fields again.

One left, and then a hard sprint to the next right, and then a charge up this hill.

Soon after which, I turned on my headlight. I love this thing, because it makes night riding possible. The best part of which are the quite roads I can choose. In the last half pf the ride just four cars passed me, and two of those were just at the end.

Equally usefully, is that you can ride at speed. Do you remember how you were taught to not outrun your headlights?

What?

You know, headlights have a certain limited range, a limited thrown, beyond which the light is too diffuse to be effective.

What do you mean, do I remember?

It’s obvious isn’t it?

I’m a narrative construct. I don’t know how to drive.

Right. Well, trust me. It makes sense, even if it isn’t the best advice. See where you’re driving.

Sure, if you say so. But so what?

Similar principle here.

OK, then.

I can pedal happily along at 20 mph and see the road in front of me. Somewhere after that it feels a little curious, but I’m not bombing down hills or doing a lot of sprints in the darkness. Tonight, this light allowed me to do the last five miles with confidence.

Note to self: Spend more time out here.

The gazebo is a nice place. Lots of lovely furniture. Fun lights. A delightful insect choir. And the weather, well now the weather is just perfect for it.

We return once again to We Learn Wednesdays, the feature where we discover the county’s historical markers via bike rides. This is the 43rd installment, and the 75th marker in the We Learn Wednesdays series. And this one is relatively new. It was installed just last year.

This was a thinly populated area. A couple thousand people lived in this broader rural area. It isn’t much more crowded today. The first school was in a house. Then came a building purpose-built as a school in 1845, and then the Lambert Street school. The modern school, after generations of consolidation and change, remembered the teacher at Lambert School for a long time. Mary Elizabeth Remster, who retired in 1943 after 48 years in the classroom, had a future school named after her. That building was consolidated in 1980, meaning it was likely that kids studied under Miss Remster and then saw their grandchildren go to a school named after the woman.

Continuity is important in a small town. When this building was no longer needed as a school in 1925, it became a home. A former student bought it. He married another former student. The Lambert Street school is still in their family, a century later.

Which means there probably aren’t any students still with us who remember the school, but the local historical society is keeping it alive. The man that bought the home was an artist, a craftsman, a businessman. He served in a medical unit in England and France during World War I. He and his wife both passed away in the 1980s. They had eight sons. Theirs remains a prominent family name in that area.

If you’ve missed any markers so far, you can find them all right here.

adventures / photo / site / Thursday / triathlon / video — Comments Off
1
Aug 24

New stuff in the routine

At the beginning of each month I do a lot of important and boring things. I create a few new subdirectories for the site. I delete a bunch of stuff from the desktop of my computer. I update a document that holds a lot of standard code shortcuts that I use.

And so on. It is all terribly exciting.

One other interesting thing that I do is update the images on the front page. The rotating photos now feature a small piece of something we saw in California this spring. Head on over to the front page to check those out. It’ll take you 54 seconds for the rotation to carry you through. We’ll be right here when you get back.

My joking complaint about triathlons is that they start too early. We need hobbies, I say, that cost less and don’t start at dawn; if they don’t require too much running, more the better.

So, last night, because the story of this day began last night, as so many of them do, my lovely bride told me that she’d signed up for a super sprint triathlon she found a half hour away. And would I like to go? Also, the race started at 6:30 in the p.m.

Since that was my complaint, it seemed only fair that I should go in support.

Super sprints are short, but I had a long swim the day before, and I haven’t run in a while, so it’s just support, and that’s probably for the better. I’ve done one super sprint, thinking, at the finish line, that I am not able to get everything going in the right direction in those short distances.

Which is a shame, since they are shorter, and I am slow.

But I am a great observer of races. I am well practiced in this area. And, of all of the races we’ve done, I don’t recall having seen one with a flyover.

She’s out there, somewhere. She’s the one swimmer among much of the thrashing. It was just a 500 meter swim, and even then, the water was shallow enough that some of the dudes just stood up in the last 50 or so and waded in.

They all looked gross. This little pond is fed by this, South Branch Rancocas Creek. And it isn’t as nice as you might imagine here. There was a fine black particulate. The Millpond mildew. Something thinner than rubber, and thicker than dust, clung to everything. Whatever was contracted from this event will be given a name in due time.

The bike leg, she said, was nice. Good pavement, fast roads.

The run was one big loop. Neither that, nor the bike ride, would wipe away that stuff that latched on to everyone in the water.

When we left, because it was an early evening tri, we timed the sunset just right. I liked it. Almost didn’t take it. But I did, and I’m glad for it.

We celebrated with Chick-fil-A. The triathlon, not that last photo.

memories / music / photo / Re-Listening / swimming / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
16
Jul 24

‘Step high and light’

Just when you thought the sinusitis was done with you, the head thickens once again. Otherwise? Feel great! Except for right around the middle of the head. It’s just a head pressure thing, a let me go and move on abut my day thing, an enough already thing. It’ll be fine soon.

So, it’s back to the OTC pills.

I treated myself to a nice long swim today. The water was warm, 92 degrees the thermometer said, and it is true what swimmers say, you swim faster in colder water.

That’s why I went slow, you see. Has nothing to do with taking forever to get my arms warmed up. Nothing to do with poor form. Nothing to do the continued head cold recovery. It was all about the warm water.

But I did have a nice 3,000 yards of it.

It gave me a lot of time to think of something legendary swim coach David Marsh told me. He has won 12 national team championships and 89 individual NCAA champions, and he’s coached 49 Olympians, so you come around to thinking he knows a thing or two about what happens in a pool.

On a show I hosted, he told me, “You have to respect someone willing to spend hours and hours, swimming hundreds of laps, to shave a thousandth of a second off of their best time.”

I didn’t swim a lot then, but I thought I understood his point. But now, swimming lots of laps of my own, I appreciate the point a bit more.

See? I’m slow in the pool.

I’m never shaving anything off my time.

But I bet if Marsh stopped by, he could give me two pointers that would improve everything.

Too bad he’s busy just now, Olympic year and all.

We return to the Re-Listening project. I’ve been playing all of my old CDs in my car, in the order of their acquisition. The real point is to just enjoy the music, but I’ve doubled my value by using it as a way to pad out the site with a few memories and some good music. These aren’t reviews, far from it; there are enough of those, and then some, out there. Besides, we’re going back to 2005, or 2006, to discuss a 2000 record.

I picked up “Smile” without knowing anything about it, because I’d been fully bitten by The Jayhawks bug. It was their sixth studio album, and it was a move in a somewhat new direction for the band from Minnesota. The alt-country, jangle-pop sound gave way to a more straightforward pop, sonically.

“Smile” reached number 129 on the Billboard 200 and number 14 on Billboard’s Top Internet Albums chart, which no one knew existed.

If you picked up this album, the first sounds you heard were also the title track.

It isn’t entirely devoid of the jangle-pop sound we all loved so much. But you can chart the progression all throughout the record.

But you couldn’t overlook the new direction. Probably it didn’t sit well with the purists, but Gary Olson was gone (for the first time) and this was their second album without him. It was like they were looking for something. And it took a little getting used to.

They were clearly exploring new distortion pedals. If you sit with it, though, the lyrics are still strong in spirit. Most importantly, the harmonies were still shimmering.

This was always a car CD for me. A lot of back-and-forth to work, 20 or 25 minutes at a time, for quite a while. I was probably late a lot. Hurried parking lots and the like. I remember I bombarded The Yankee with it, because we were carpooling at the time, but she preferred other Jayhawks records, I think. I also think it’s hard to go wrong. What you get, across their catalog, is material for a lot of different moods.

The Jayhawks are going back on the road next month. And, in October, they’ll be playing a show about two-and-a-half hours from us. This was the first band my lovely bride and I saw together. They were about that same distance away that night. And the next day we decided we, in our late 20s, were too old for driving that far and back in one night for a show, with work the day after. (We were both working morning drive at the time and being in the newsroom at 6 a.m. the next day was not easy or pleasant.)

But this show is on a Saturday. Something to think about.

And with that we are, for the time being, caught up in the Re-Listening project. But there are still about 150 CDs to hear again, and share with you.

Come back tomorrow, we’ll talk about a neat little light.