video

adventures / Cozumel / memories / photo / SCUBA / Tuesday / video — Comments Off on The turf and surf menagerie
19
Jul 22

The turf and surf menagerie

Last evening, during a walk, we saw a deer.

We saw two deer, in fact. Who knows how many more were just out of sight, watching us.

We also spotted three rabbits and two squirrels.

The highlight was surely the stray cat that came into our back yard. Poseidon noticed it, and was most emphatic that the interloper be removed. After a time The Yankee went out to check on the cat, and decided it looked like one posted on the local Next Door community. She called the number. We kept the kitty — spooked but healthy and hungry — in our yard until they arrived.

They were nice people. The woman is desperate to find their pet. Last weekend they drove 80 miles one-way to see if a cat was theirs. It was not their cat, but they adopted it anyway. So they are nice and passionate people, and perhaps cat thieves. Who can tell with these things?

And then they … wouldn’t leave. So they were nice, passionate, perhaps cat thieves who did not pick up on the social cues. Who can tell with these things? But they’d come over from a few miles away and it was a break from yard work or research or whatever they were doing. They also offered to take this other cat.

So definitely cat thieves, then.

Somewhere during all of this our neighbors came out to visit and we found ourselves having a party in the side yard.

None of this sounds like much, but they stayed on the porch for a good long while, and it was otherwise a evening, so take this elderberry and be happy with it.

If that’s not enough, congratulate me on completing the Cozumel diving social media project. Since March, I have been uploading daily clips of our diving to Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Tens of people, perhaps, have seen them. But if you missed all of that somehow, just click the Twitter link and you can see them all threaded together.

Or revisit with me those videos in the longer form on YouTube, where dozens of people have watched. I edited them each day of the dives.

I am very popular on the world wide web.

adventures / cycling / Monday / photo / video — Comments Off on Catching up from the weekend
18
Jul 22

Catching up from the weekend

We enjoyed a little bike ride on Saturday morning, trying to beat the heat before the heat beat us. We stopped about 10 miles in to stretch the legs and let the sweat drip, drip, drip onto the cement under a church awning. A man walked by with his dog on a leash. He told the dog, “Do not bark. Do not bark.” And the dog did as he was instructed. He did as he was instructed for as long as he could, and finally he let loose with a deep woof-woof-woof that intimidated me into action. I told the dog I had learned my lesson, and would be on my way. He had saved the day, protected his neighborhood from the outsiders in funny clothes.

The Yankee had already set out to continue her ride, but somehow the dog positioned himself in my route of travel. So I had to wait until the nice gentleman was able to reel him in. He was a very good boy, that dog, and made me leave as soon as possible. I am sure he told everyone about it the rest of the day, for treats and pets and to reassure his people that he was on the job. The sweaty guy dressed funny won’t be back anytime soon. Woof.

Anyway, since she got off ahead of me I had to catch up, which changed the video I was going to make for that ride. But this one is still fun.

I hit 43.7 miles per hour somewhere in here. That’s 70 kilometers, which sounds more impressive — and we’re presently watching the Tour, where everything is in kilometers anyway. So it was a 56 kilometer ride, and I topped out at 70 km. Not bad for a Saturday morning.

Time for the weekly kitty check in. The cats are, happily, doing just fine. And they are, of course, pleased to provide the site’s most popular feature.

Here’s Phoebe hanging out on top of the cat tree.

And here she is, yesterday, sitting in the duffel where we store the massage boots. A little compression therapy for me, a little bag time for her.

Such a character.

And here’s the occasional proof that they do, sometimes get along.

Poseidon is sometimes pretty aggressive and she doesn’t tolerate it very well and it carries over into many of their interactions. This morning she walked up to him and hissed at him for just sitting there. Usually it is the other way around. But sibling rivalries

Poseidon, meantime, works extra hard to be cute and charming, when he’s not being a pill.

He’s just an adventurer at heart. Here he is in the laundry room.

I measured all of this, after I climbed up there and dragged him out. That’s a four-and-a-half foot jump from the top of the washing machine to the top of the cabinet. And the space between that molding and the ceiling is about four inches.

I thought that was pretty agile, even for a cat. Showed that picture to The Yankee and she was not surprised. I complained about having to pull him down from there.

Oh, she said, I just leave him.

So it isn’t the first time he’s made that leap.

cycling / memories / photo / Thursday / video — Comments Off on Tour update: Hors catégorie means beyond cat-egorization
14
Jul 22

Tour update: Hors catégorie means beyond cat-egorization

Poseidon is now very interested in this year’s Tour de France.

It seems Poseidon needs Tadej Pogačar, seen here in the white jersey, to be chasing the overall lead. Pogačar is the two-time defending champion, but yesterday he lost control of this year’s tour in some incredible bike racing. It’s difficult to encapsulate exactly what transpired across the French countryside in a four-minute clip, but here are a few highlights from the now legendary Col du Granon, a hors catégorie, seven-mile climb that goes up 3,474 feet, topping out at almost 8,000 feet above sea level.

The can-do-no-wrong wunderkind was finally hurt yesterday. All those attacks by the Jumbo-Visma super team paid off. It wasn’t quite tectonic, but close enough in road cycling. It took two-and-a-half years for the best riders in the world to exploit a weakness in Pogačar, meaning this was something really special.

That further means that, today, the final day in the Alps, the defending champion had to start chasing. In the photo above Pogačar was attacking his main foe, and current yellow-jersey wearer, Jonas Vingegaard, on Alpe d’Huez.

He could not pull any time back on the Danish Macaulay Culkin lookalike. It is a two-minute and 26-second race at the moment. This has our cat’s attention.

But this is not a new thing for Poseidon. Here he is last year, taking in the first stage of the 2021 Tour.

Maybe he hears the word peloton and thinks he’s going to get pets. Maybe the word bidon is too similar to Poseidon. Perhaps, because of his aggressive nature, he misunderstands the use of the word attack. Or it could be that the best joke is the one from the headline. Maybe he’s hors catégorie.

adventures / cycling / video / Wednesday — Comments Off on Nat sound included
13
Jul 22

Nat sound included

The Yankee asked me to shoot a video of her on our bike ride this evening. So that took precedence of my other video plans. She was making a video and needed some B-roll, but she gave me carte blanche. So I settled on a clip of her going by me. Which means I had to be in front of her. And I decided, for some poorly oxygenated reason, to do this in a place where I’ve never taken any footage of her before.

Which means I had to stay ahead. And then I had to wait for her to come by.

But this is the sound I hear when she goes by.

I did set a PR on one Strava segment, though, and spent the entire rest of the ride, from that moment, trying to catch back up to her. Finally I did, but only on our street.

cycling / Instagram / photo / Tuesday / Twitter / video — Comments Off on Two points
12
Jul 22

Two points

I photo my thumb accidentally took while idly fiddling with my phone and watching the news and waiting for The Next Thing of the Day.

Two points if you can figure that out. I know what it is, but I’ll be impressed if anyone here can take two points off of my hands.

The Next Thing of the Day proved easy and uneventful. Started on time, ended on time, everything in the middle was assuredly a smash hit. A Tuesday to be remembered! If you could make the normal Tuesday stand out somehow or another.

Two points if you can figure that out, too.

In my idle chatter I mentioned I had a tube going on my bike. I took it off and found just the tiniest little hole seeping air. I was tempted to slap some super glue on it and experiment, but, in another sign of my own maturity and wisdom, decided this was not a profitable experiment.

You can wrap a tube in a dollar bill to finish a ride in a pinch. (Two points if you get it right on the first try!) But I was already at the house, and not in that pinch. If you’re lucky, though, the currency can hold up for weeks. I can also buy another inner tube and just be done with it. We have a small stack for just such an occasion. I went to the room where we keep stacks of things and found that we have one spare inner tube.

This does not a stack make.

Opened the little box, pulled out the tube, prepared it for installation and …

So I had to put my spare on my back wheel. The spare is the one you carry with you, not the one from the room where we keep stacks of things. That means I don’t have a spare to carry on the bike. So tomorrow’s ride will feature a new back tire, and one with a tiny pinhole on the wall. I should throw a dollar bill in there, too. Juuuust in case.

I always carry a few bucks on the bike. (Two points to me for being prepared.) You never know when a ride goes farther, or takes longer, and you want to stop at a store for water or extra fuel. And, also, for emergency tire patching.

One last point. They’re in the Alps in the Tour.

Click through that mini-thread and you get four little photos that the world feed used as cutaway shots.

The Alps get more intriguing all of the time.

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →