weekend « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

weekend

football / video / weekend — Comments Off
15
Nov 14

South! Alabama

You can’t get tired of these stories, I won’t let you get tired of these kinds of stories. This one has a cute addition to it. South Alabama’s football team signed a kid, Colby Sawyer, and name dropped Alabama and Auburn.

When you’re out-recruiting the Tide and Tigers, good things happen. As you’ll see in this video, the Jaguars are bowl eligible:

South Alabama is bowl eligible for the first time in just their second year in Division I. Some bowl better pick up this program.

Update: How awesome is this? They named Sawyer player of the week.

Pardon me, I have to go put on my Jags shirt.

photo / weekend — Comments Off
9
Nov 14

Catching up

The weekly post of extra photos that haven’t yet landed on the site. We have tons of them, so check ’em out.

Spirit in flight before the Texas A&M game:

And then the flyover from the Aviation Education and Enhancement Program of East Alabama. I believe this is a Yak-9 and two P-47 Thunderbolts:

And the ever-popular fan shots:

My lovely bride, sporting new hair barrettes that her mother made. We’re trying to talk her into a boutique shop business of artisanally made cranium decorations:

The falling leaves, from our afternoon run:

Auburn / iPhone / photo / weekend — Comments Off
8
Nov 14

Texas A&M at Auburn

The slideshow experiment continues. Plenty of things not to like, plenty of things to enjoy.

And look at that sunset!

photo / weekend — Comments Off
2
Nov 14

Catching up

The weekly post of extra pictures. There are always extras. There are extras still, but I shot these yesterday while running, they fit the season and the mood and the others can wait. On with it, then!

This is Hummingbird Lake at Callaway Gardens. And I remembered the time I took my grandmother to Callaway to see the flowers when she visited me in college. Registering for this run or the countless times I’ve passed this exit or even getting there yesterday didn’t do it, but Hummingbird Lake made me think about that trip. Now there are just hummingbirds everywhere in my life. That’s starting to make me happy a little, but just about every other emotion is there too.

The next two shots are of Mountain Creek Lake, which is the largest body of water at Callaway. The Callaway family started digging this out in 1949.

Bluebirds are an important part of the local wildlife, so naturally there’s a Bluebird Lake.

Most of the trees are pines — this is Pine Mountain, Georgia after all — but some of the deciduous leaves are starting to go. Here’s another example at Whippoorwill Lake. There’s a half-mile nature trail here, and ducks during the right season. There probably all gone south for the winter by now, I’d bet:

Here’s one last shot of Mountain Creek Lake, which is the largest body of water in the park. There’s a 1.5 mile unpaved trail around Mountain Creek that drops you down to the water’s edge where you can see turtles, ducks, herons, a richly diverse floral scene and scarred trunks marked up by beavers.

This is part of the beach recreation area at Robin Lake, which, among other things, boasts the annual Masters Water Ski & Wakeboard Tournament. I did not know there was such a thing, but next year they’ll have the 56th annual event tournament:

Running the trail:

adventures / I do not know what is happening. / photo / running / weekend — Comments Off
1
Nov 14

Callaway Twilight 10K

I got to hug my lovely bride today, and it was the most wonderful feeling in the world.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

As is now apparently our way, we find things to do online and then convince each other to do them. That’s how we started doing triathlons and that’s why we did a half ironman relay recently and that’s why we ran a 10K today.

There’s a 5K we did on campus a month or two ago with a friend. She said she liked it. The Yankee liked it. So I looked around for other races, being wary of how far I’m wiling to drive a car to run a distance I can do in my neighborhood. There it was, the Callaway Gardens Twilight 10K, held just over the border into Georgia.

The premise is you get to run around the pretty place and see the Fantasy In Lights Christmas show before it is open to the public. Twilight is a misnomer, but who cares. So we signed up, our friend bailed out because “Brrr it is cold and I’m from New Jersey.” So it was just the two of us, which was fine.

We made our way to Callaway after lunch today — and by after lunch I mean I ate in the car.

We got there just in time. Here’s the scene at the race start:

And here we are, probably less than a mile in, looking strong and having a nice time:

We’re not winning anything, this is just an excuse to exercise some new, pretty place. And, also, to have roadside support like this guy:

We ran through a lot of interesting light decorations that I’m sure pop nicely in the dark. There were speakers blaring thing from the trees — and of course the 12 Days of Christmas section was the one that wouldn’t end. We ran under giant decorations like snowflakes and wreaths and barns and this Santa’s Workshop kind of thing:

And then after six miles you found yourself trotting up the last little hill, turning right and running with Robin Lake on your left and the finish line ahead of you. We pronounced the course is relatively flat and fast. I’d like to really run it and see how slow I am. Ren did really well. It was her first 10K, ever, and she was very pleased with her performance and her time, as she should be. After the run:

It was windy and a little chilly, Somewhere between there and the finish line I got a full, complete, laughing, joyful hug of pride and pleasure and accomplishment. I could write a lot more about that, what that means or what it felt like, but the most important part is this: Don’t ever let go of those too early.