We went to a soccer game on Saturday night. It was the last game of the regular season for the Hoosiers, who are looking to make a postseason run to their ninth national championship. And on this last night Indiana and the Spartans played shutout soccer for 90 minutes.
And then they played 10 minutes of a tense overtime.
And then they played nine more minutes of a second overtime. In the final moment, IU looked to capitalize on another set piece with the freshman Mason Toye lined up a direct kick:
I knew he was going to put the game-winner in and run right to my camera. It’s a skill.
We went for a run on Saturday, this was The Yankee’s first run since her Ironman. (She’s ahead of a mere mortal’s schedule.) It was short, but it was fast. She’s passing me and blurry!
So I mentioned fall is here. Just in case it disappears in 15 mintues, here are a few photographs:
You can never really capture autumn:
It never keeps us from trying. It’s a vain attempt to forestall winter, a desperate ego, that wants more sunshine and warmth.
Or is that just me?
Today, it was raining, and this evening was a perfect time for a 2.65 mile neighborhood run. I’m documenting this because it won’t be long, now, before I’ll be missing days like this:
IU / photo / Thursday — Comments Off on Let’s get autumnal 19 Oct 17
It is suddenly starting to feel like fall around here. You can even sense it indoors, in the studio. Probably not, not really anyway. Studios exist in their own time without time. We have a half dozen windows in that studio, but three of them face a building and you have to be standing in one section of the room to see the real outdoors from the other three windows. Studios aren’t hermetically perfect, but we’d like it more if they were. You can feel the fall, because your mind has been processing all of the sensory perceptions and that’s not the easiest thing to dismiss. So you can be in a studio and think it is autumn, because that’s what you saw and smelled and felt before you walked into the building. But in here, the season is always: studio.
Up in the offices, definitely:
In the parking deck, sure:
And throughout the evening, it is becoming clear, the seasons are changing:
Indiana / photo / Wednesday — Comments Off on Pictures of a countryside drive 18 Oct 17
Back to work today, but we’re kind of dragging after a long weekend. So there’s not a lot going on today, or maybe for much of the week, who knows. So here are some pictures of pictures.
We were out at this hipster restaurant in Louisville on Saturday evening. In the hallway there were several quality prints of old country music acts. Here’s one now:
Merle Haggard knew hard times. He was in and out of jails as a teen and finally a series of prison circumstances convinced him to turn his life around. And then he heard Johnny Cash perform at San Quentin. Haggard returned to music and launched a career that included more than three dozen number one hits. The Working Man passed away just last year.
They met at WLW, Cincinnati, in the 1940s and were married for 52 years. She was an acclaimed fiddler. He became a legend. They both starred on Hee Haw. Born Ramona Riggins, in Indiana, she remarried after Grandpa died in 1998. She played professionally for more than half a century and passed away in 2015, at 91.
And this is Johnny Cash:
That photo was taken in January 1968, the day he recorded his live record at Folsom Prison. The record was released that May and “At Folsom Prison” was, of course, a huge success and revitalized Cash’s career. It hit number one on the country charts and landed in the top 15 of the national album chart. It climbed to number seven on charts in both Norway and the U.K.
Saturday in Louisville. Sunday in Louisville. Today in Louisville and then back in the car. But yesterday, let me tell you about yesterday.
A person doesn’t enter into endurance racing lightly. Well, sure, we were at an Italian restaurant several years ago and decided we’d try some triathlons. But there are different lengths. And you train differently for all of them. Some of them require more time. And you don’t enter into that kind of commitment lightly.
The Yankee ran under a banner last night that she’s been working for for over six months.
Along the way, there has been a marathon and a national championship in the Olympic distance and some smaller tuneup races and hours and hours and hours and hours of training. You don’t enter into these things lightly.
These events, these long, physically and mentally grueling events are achievable, but they take a person doing the work. And then doing some more. They take time to figure out. How will your body react in the heat? How will your guy feel with this fuel or that fuel? You have to learn about what your body is really telling you, how to listen to it and when to ignore it. You put some things on hold and you hit some benchmarks that you wouldn’t have previously considered. You keep doing that until some of those achievements almost become a matter of course. And then you wind down in preparation of the big day.
And on the big day you wake up very early. You’ve lugged all of your stuff down to the starting area, you wiggle into your swimsuit and put your cap on and you wait for your part of the race to start. And when that happens, you swim. At this distance that’s a 2.4-mile swim, this time in the Ohio River. You climb out of the river and run up the ramp and get peeled out of your swimsuit. You throw on your helmet, your bike shoes and set out on a 112-mile ride. There’s wind and rain and dogs and hills and you come in off that ride, which is no small thing on a bike, and then you take off your helmet and change shoes. And then you set out for a 26.2-mile run.
And you smile a lot.
That’s The Yankee’s experience. She had a great race. I saw her all of those times and jogged alongside her for a few moments. I caught up to her again halfway through the run and gave her a great big hug and a kiss. She was in great shape, so it was just down to wait at the finish line, for her and two of her friends.
And speaking of the finish line, this is what some people did when they got there:
Even if you aren’t interested in doing these yourself, you should go and watch the finish line sometime. The energy is palpable, and incredible. And you’ll see there a lot of friends and family looking like this:
None of them entered into this lightly, but many of them felt light on their feet when they finished. It was later, and today, and for the next several days, when they’ll feel the extent of such an impressive accomplishment.
