Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

cycling / photo / Rowan / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
12
Sep 23

The day that I enjoyed

There’s a little security guard hut between the road and the building I’m teaching in. A human sits in there, checks everyone’s parking pass and raises and lowers the arm. The gentleman that was there last night, as I made my way in for my evening class, was the talkative sort. Asked me where I was headed. I pointed to the right. Going to teach, I said.

What class?

“Journalism. Introduction to New Media, specifically,” I said, unsure if we were chatting or if he was challenging me.

Journalism is old media, he said.

“Yes it is …”

And I want to hold it in my hand!

So we were chatting.

He had a solid 45 seconds ready to go on the subject, and he delivered it in a steady way full of calm, fun conviction, the sort that lets you know he could do two, three, maybe five minutes on this if you wanted and didn’t mind a little roughness around some of his witticisms.

He was right about what he said. You couldn’t help but agree and laugh at his larger point. But, sir, I really need to get parked and go in and log into the 19 services I need to teach this class and …

Have a good one he said, as he pointed roughly in the way I was expected to go.

It’s a night class, so parking was a breeze. We were in the gloaming, but the building was still bustling with activity. I walked into the room and two students were already there. The rest flowed in over the course of the next 20 minutes or so. Owing to the holiday last Monday, and the late start hour of this class, this is the last first class of the semester. They knew it, too, and, by then, students are usually over all of the first day class experiences. Let’s get into this.

So we did. Course outline. Syllabus. The many policies. An icebreaker. Some jokes. A conversation about how we want this class to go — and they got a say in some of the key elements of that. And then I launched into a presentation about new media … I started with some works archeologists have uncovered that date back about 3,500 years. I like doing the history for context. I’m not sure if you need three-plus millennia of context, but it’s so interesting. Here is an Egyptian medical scroll, it isn’t even the oldest medical document we have. Let me tell you what this 65-foot document covered. And occasionally you flash forward. Maybe not to WebMD.com, but you bring it around. And then you jump to another part of the world, another period, and you talk about the story these cave walls told, or the meaning behind this Japanese tale, or the functionality of Ghana’s talking drums.

Then there are the various cultures that used knot-tying systems for record keeping, if not for storytelling. We know of four of them, at least, in various parts of the world, and they all seem unrelated. And so isn’t it interesting how people from different places and times, with different resources and problems, and different needs and degrees of ingenuity solve their problems. I mean, these drums talk. And certain varieties can be heard miles and miles away.

And then you get to a certain point in history, and some of these older technologies give way. Some stick around. Their uses entrenched traditionally, or just important cultural artifacts, or their purposes modified, but people in what we arrogantly think of as modern cultures all start gravitating to the same tech.

It’s a big lecture, and it all winds up with the Lutherans, somehow, because I found a great cartoon image to end the slideshow, making the point that, at least in the western sense, everything we know stems from this moment.

I think the biggest takeaway, though, is they probably won’t want me to lecture them late into the evenings. It’s going to be a group class, and it could be a good one. Thirty or forty percent of them were leaning into it on the first night. I’ll get the rest in due time.

Today, I worked on part of another lecture, which I will give twice on Thursday. And this is the rhythm of things through the end of the semester in mid-December.

I also went for a bike ride because I needed a break and folding laundry didn’t sound fun, comparatively speaking. I was going to do a quick square pattern, a route that I’ve established on four of the closest roads. It’s about nine miles. Do it twice, you can get in a good hour and then get back into whatever. I have a feeling I’m going to do that a lot, which is fine. They’re good roads.

But one of the things that should never be taken for granted about having your feet on two pedals on either side of two wheels is the ability to be spontaneous. Before I’d done the first mile I had a new idea. What about this other road? Where does it go?

It’s a road that we drive for some of our routine trips. Thing is, if it is part of the routine you only your part of the road. And, sure, I could look at that on a map later — and I do for some roads, but the real joy is in simply finding out first hand. So, I figured, I’ll go down that road until my bike computer says I’ve done 10 miles, then I’ll turn around.

When I’d gone three miles I had to amend the idea, because the road ended in a T-intersection. See? I didn’t know the road. Hadn’t consulted a map. If I turned left, I’d go down a hill pretty quickly, which just means riding up it later. But if I turned to the right, it was a gradual thing. So I turned right and found myself racing over some nice false flats, only to run out of that road pretty soon. OK then, I’m going to have to remember landmarks and such. Another right turn, and then another. I stayed on that road until I got to 10 miles — though even though it seemed like it took a lot longer than normal — and then turned around, retracing my route.

I had a brief conversation with a friend the other day about seeing things by bike. The speeds are different, of course, so you can see and appreciate more. For instance, I’ve driven on this stretch of road now maybe four or five times. I’ve never noticed this sign.

I shot this on the way back. I’ve also never seen this one, which is great, because how can I top the serendipity of the sun setting over the shoulder of the sun?

Near the very end of my little 20 mile ride I got behind a tractor. And the tractor got behind another tractor, this one which was hauling a trailer of fresh crops away from the fields. The second tractor passed the first. And then I passed him, too.

The first tractor had not been going particularly fast, but it disappeared somewhere, and I’ll probably think about that every time I’m on this road I explored today.

I just created three new segments on Strava for various parts of that road, meaning I’ll have to try to go faster next time I come through there. I also added a segment that is a commonly ridden road on the way back home. I could add segments for every stretch of every road that is becoming a part of the new habit, but I’d never know which ones to give a big effort, and where to recover. Segments are usually done going uphill, but I am, of course, much faster going downhill. All of the ones I’ve created, the Strava website tells me, are flat or downhill.

Go figure.

Tonight it was cleaning up a bit outside, watering a few plants, catching up on the Vuelta, writing this, plotting out the next few classes and … that’s enough, really. Oh, and listening to the rain tap on the walls, and the wind howling over everything. That really should be enough. After all, I’ll be writing more lectures tomorrow, and thinking up a good newspaper joke for that guy working the security hut.

adventures / cycling / Monday / photo / video — Comments Off
11
Sep 23

Put some Monday between your toes

What a Monday, eh? In the history of Mondays, this one certainly lands on the list. It is notably surrounded by other such impressive days as Monday. And who can forget, that extra special Monday. Sad Monday makes the list, but you should never forget those happy Mondays. And somewhere, way high up on the list, there’s the special Three Day Weekend Mondays. There’s just no escaping this. Monday is definitely one of the seven days of every week. And even that’s on a list somewhere.

Now, where this week falls on the list of weeks, well that’s still TBD, which is SOP. And highly subjective, too. Weeks being what they are, different for all of us. Or at least many of us. But Mondays! Mondays are a uniquely held condition among everyone with a 21st century working calendar, even if your “Monday” is, say, on Wednesday, you still have them. And this was one of them. Why, we could quibble over the placement of this, but everyone will agree: in the history of Mondays, this was definitely not a Friday.

I spent the day making lecture notes.

So let’s talk about the cats. It is, after, the site’s most popular feature, and far more interesting to most of you than my exploration of ancient Egyptian scrolls, or 1st century Roman architecture or how many copies of the Declaration and the Constitution we still have (26 and 11).

Phoebe does not care about my lectures. But she is delighted to play with this mouse, most any day of the week.

And here, she seems to be on her ledge, looking down at the floor, thinking Later, he will hold that shape in front of me and make me pose for a picture, whatever that is.

I don’t think Phoebe really understands cameras or phones. Not that she isn’t as capable as the next cat, I just don’t think it has occurred to her that she should, which is to say, they don’t matter to her, which might make her smarter than everyone.

Poseidon, on the other hand, he understands this concept perfectly.

He’ll even give you moody suntanning photographs. Some cats are just natural born stars, I guess.

He won’t stay off the counter, though, even though he understands the tall people in the house don’t like it when he’s there. But his defiance gives us an opportunity to admire his footwoork.

So the cats are doing just fine, as you can see.

My lovely bride did a nearby-ish triathlon on Saturday, and so I went for a bike ride on some new roads. Here’s a brand new road. The first part of it was fine. The part after this was likewise in great shape. This stretch, just under a mile I’d say, was brand new. My hypotheses are either someone knew I was coming, or an important county official lives on this stretch of road.

No one knew I was coming.

It was a venture out to get photos for the Wednesday historical marker feature. I track all of those down by bike, and I try to do them in batches, which means a lot of planning, a lot of map-checking mid-ride, but a lot of lovely new views to check out.

Today I saw some old churches. I walked around an 18th century cemetery. There was a message board in that old grave, behind one of the old churches, that basically said “The members who founded this church in 1741 also founded the local militia during the Revolution.” It was a fascinating place.

I also visited two historically important houses, a famous cannon and more. You’ll see them in the next few Wednesdays.

I also, for the first time ever, lost a bolt that holds the cleat in my right cycling shoe. This peculiar chunk of plastic is held to the bottom of the shoe by three bolts, and when the one disappeared, probably in that cemetery, that meant that stopping became a bit tricky.

This is the foot that I unclip for stop signs and red lights and the like. Just before you come to a complete stop, you take the one foot out of the pedal. You leave the other one in because it looks cool, and it helps for getting going again in an efficient matter. To remove the cleat from the pedal, you crisply turn your ankle so that your toes point inward. You hear a loud, satisfying pop and then you can put your foot on the ground in the precise moment you come to a halt.

The problem on this ride was that I lost the inside bolt. The cleat only had two fixed points of contact, and when I’d go to point my toes inward, the cleat, my shoe and my foot just kept moving.

Fortunately, I only had to take my shoe out of the pedal twice more after that bolt disappeared.

The best news is that I figured this would mean I’d finally have an excuse to go spend money at my new local bike shop. But, I figured, let me check the personal inventory first. I’ve had to replace cleats before, from wear and tear, and when you buy new cleats you get a fresh set of bolts and the square washers that go with them. That, I reasoned, didn’t seem like a thing I would throw away.

So I went to the new bike room, and discovered the problem. In the old house, I’d know exactly where these would be. But so many routines, systems and paradigms change when you move. Much as I’m still (and forever will be) trying to figure out all of the light switches, and which stairs make what noise, I have no idea where these bits of hardware might be right now. I didn’t set up the new bike room, my lovely bride did. And they were not in the first place I looked.

They were in the fourth place I looked.

Anyway, popped a new bolt on the shoe, took less time to do than to write the above, I’m ready for the next ride.

I have reached the point in my bike-riding life where there’s a reasonably fair chance I’ll have the part I need already on hand, when I need it. It’s a special feeling.

Sunday we had brunch with some of The Yankee’s family friends. My mother-in-law is a retired nurse, and she is the chief organizer of her nursing school’s class reunions, an annual event that she takes great joy and pride in, and that was this weekend. The end of the festivities was brunch, and it was not too far away from us, so omelettes for everyone.

We were a surprise, and all of these lifelong friends were delighted to see us, but mostly my wife. I watched a septuagenarian hopping, literally jumping for joy, that she got to see her friend’s daughter unexpectedly. It was delightful.

It rained on us on the way there, and then rained terribly hard while we visited. Wind whipped it sideways, giving people mind to talk about storms they remember. And then the rain stopped, and the sun returned, acting for all the world like it had never left.

When the nurses all said their goodbyes, we went to the beach, just two blocks away. The water was a bit chilly, but you still go right down to the line, tempting fate.

I couldn’t decide which of these two I liked best, but this was the one I got a shoe wet on, so I’m saying I suffered for my art and am posting the photo.

Just the one shoe, somehow, and no sand in either one.

I did get photobombed. I always get photobombed. She’s just the cutest when she does that.

It is the beach, I think. Some people just go to 11 when they make it to a beach. She fairly glows.

I’m a little more about the woods that way, but the beach is always fun, he said with a wet sock.

We can be at a beach in 60 minutes from where I’m writing this. The biggest thing that would slow me down is digging up the sand chairs and finding the good sunblock. And there’s woods and plenty of other lovely outdoor scenery along the way as well. But just an hour from this.

Which is what I won’t be able to do just now, because it is back to that class prep.

In closing: an important thing of note about Mondays is that there’s a Tuesday following close behind.

adventures / cycling / Friday / photo / voiceovers — Comments Off
08
Sep 23

Happy World Literacy Day

This is an important day, World Literacy Day, and you’re reading this, so you’re doing part of your part. It’s a day, started in the 1960s, that aims to remind the world of the importance of literacy for individuals and societies, as well as the necessity for increased efforts toward a more literate society.

It could be the class prep I’m doing — literacy is going to come up next week — but a more literacy society should feel like an important task.

After a full day Thursday, I took in the weekend by taking it easy. Which is to say I worked in the home office on things I said I would do next week and set up some of the work I’ll need to do this weekend. But that’s for tomorrow, and Sunday, and Monday. Today, I could do a tiny bit less, and I was grateful for it.

After next week, he told himself, naively, the semester will settle into its own rhythm and you won’t have to spend every day stressing about every thing.

I see no reason why something so elemental should change at this late stage of the game.

We had a lovely bike ride today. I have two new tubes and two new tires. Same old legs, though. So it wasn’t especially fast on my part. And when I’m not especially fast that means I have to chase my lovely bride for the whole ride. As seen in this video.

No superlatives were set. But! On four Strava segments I was one second off a PR. That’s an odd bit of consistency, really. You have to accidentally not push on a lot to get right up to the magic number, but stop just short of a new time. It was a nice ride. The new tires felt smooth and supple. There was a lot of sun; it was warm and it is always nice to say you took a lunch ride.

I might take another lunch ride tomorrow!

This afternoon, I warmed up the recording equipment. I have to build a small studio — it is on the very long To Do list — but, today, I had to record a few bits for someone. Two scripts about psychology. Four pages. Lots of inflection. A few takes, just to be sure.

Took about an hour, from start to edit to send.

Just like that, my voiceover career is back on some sort of track. And, I made that banner for it, too.

And now it is the weekend, a perfectly, beautifully mild evening. Time to stop writing this, and go try that.

Enjoy your own weekend. Remember, you deserve it.

adventures / memories / Rowan / Thursday — Comments Off
07
Sep 23

First day of school

I’d ironed yesterday. All of my things were together. The only thing left to do was wake up, check, have something for breakfast, check, get ready to go to campus, check, and, finally, have my first day of the new school year … on the third day of the new school year …

And so that was the first half of the day.

Our schedules are pretty similar on Thursdays, just like the old days, so we drove in together, just like the old days. And I mean the old days, going back a lifetime or two ago. The mid-oughts. There was a gas crunch, as I recall, so we carpooled. Some days I would drive her to Red Mountain and drop her off at WBRC. Some days she would go over the mountain and downtown to Pepper Place to put me in my office at 6 a.m. I have vague memories of that, and they’re not vague because of the early call time. This was 17, 18 years ago, I think.

And here we are today. My lovely bride had to get her newly issued computer. (Still waiting, myself.) And the place to go for that is just one building over from where I’ll spend the semester. We cruised through two full parking lots and finally found a spot behind the building. We walked around the front, said our good lucks and I went inside. She went on for hardware and to teach two classes elsewhere on campus.

I wandered most of the halls until I found my classroom, plenty of time, clock on my side. I think it would have been more direct, though, if I’d just gone in the back door. Such is life in a new place. There was a class still underway in my class, so I decided to walk the halls until I stumbled upon the offices of one of the departments I’m working with and met a few people. I sat in the copy room and checked a few emails, whiled away some time and then headed back to that class.

This is where I invoke the memory of a guy I used to work with. Chris was an MCO at a television station but, before that, he was an RN.

Chris, I said one day, if you can do that, why are you doing this?

He pointed at the screen, punched a bunch of random buttons on his panels and, with a wicked grin, cranked the chroma key, changing the color of everyone on the TV screen at that moment, and surely making people watching at home wonder if they were having a mental or physical episode. But it didn’t last long because with deft and practiced hands Chris reset everything to its proper position and the TV show continued on.

“No matter what happens here, nobody died,” he said.

I’ve repeated that to myself as a joke for all of the years hence — I mean it that way here, too — but that’s grim.

There were 15 people in my first class. A few non-traditional students, a range of people freshmen-to-seniors, and a lot of interested faces. We talked about the class and all of the usual first day things and, before I knew it, I was ready to send them on their way.

There’s just long enough between that class and my next one to sneak a comically late lunch, so I did that, finishing a sandwich as the early arrivals for the next group trickled in.

There are 15 people in that class too, a range of college experience, but mostly freshmen. We talked about the class and syllabus. It’s the same class, and so I realized pretty quickly that I’ll live in fear, all semester, of wondering what I’ve omitted because I think I said it, and what I’m repeating because I’m afraid I’ve omitted it. Also, the very tip of my nose started itching. No idea why. But you know noses. Once you address the matter, it just gets worse. It’s hard to make a point about the exercise planned in week 10 of your course when you’re trying to scratch the first two layers of epidermis off your nose. But, before I knew it, I was tired of talking. The second class wrapped a bit earlier than the first, but it was after 5 p.m. and no one minded. All of the important information was still conveyed.

All of the brave and hearty ones, the ones who stick in the class, I’ll see next Thursday.

It’s an intro to production class, They’ll be learning about camera movements, shot composition, audio capture and a bit of light production. They’ll go into the studio and do some mock leads and tags. It’s a lot of fun. I hope they have fun. I really hope I can teach them a fair amount.

After class, waiting on my ride, I had time to run through some email, and start building a calendar. This won’t be a conventional schedule, this semester — I’m beginning to wonder if there’s ever going to be a conventional schedule — and so now I’m trying to decide what to do with my free time and when to make my free time. But first, the basics, what day is the first day of my week? Is Thursday the first day of my week? Is Thursday the last day of my week?

And that was basically my day, because almost six hours of listening to myself talk is just about enough, thank you. Except at home, there was a bit of early grading (syllabus quizzes are easy points, and it makes the diligent student hunt for details within the 12-page document) and starting to think about how to set up next week’s classes. Oh, and my third class, which will begin next Monday.

Right now, the early vote is for Thursday to be the last day of my week. Though I’m considering something innovative: making Monday both the first, and last, day of the week.

Later, I decided to change my bike tires. I’ve had three flats on my rear wheel in the last three weeks. One could be wear. Another could be anything. A third, that’s probably user error. Plus my tires were mismatched in age. I don’t remember which is the newer. And the one on the front wheel looks like it could fall apart any day now.

So, before tomorrow’s bike ride, two new tires. Here’s how that went tonight.

I took the front wheel off the bike. Struggled, in a most unusual and almost embarrassing way, to remove the tire from the wheel. Finally got that off, and then started putting this guy on.

Gatorskins are great. They’re heavy. They’re durable. You wouldn’t race them because of all of that, but I don’t race. They’ll run forever. One of these has been on my bike for two years. My receipts say I last bought a set in 2013. So tonight’s effort should serve me well for a good long while.

The downside to a Gatorskin is that they are difficult to put on the first time. (The secret, if you can’t get it completely fitted, is to heat the stubborn bit of the tire with a hair dryer.) But I’m getting better at it. (No hair dryer needed.) Tire on, tube in, tire seated. Inflate.

Take the back wheel of the bike, remove that tire. I found a little sliver of metal inside that had escaped my earlier notice. So I know what caused at least the third flat.

Speaking of, the tube on the front wheel is leaking inside the brand new tire.

And this is why you don’t immediately slap it back on the frame, I said to myself.

Which was a nice thing to say, since it was congratulatory. The wheel wasn’t back on the frame, but I did have to take the tube out. I found a tiny leak right in the seam. Maybe I damaged it. Maybe Continental tubes are the most temperamental tubes on the market. Anyway, old tube out, new tube in. Gatorskin seated. Inflate.

Back to the rear wheel then. Repeat that process. Decided I’ll keep both old tires. One can go on the trainer. The other … well, in a bit I’m going to google recycling and repurposing bike tires.

Both are inflated. Neither are mounted on the bike frame. Let’s see what they do overnight. (Update: They were fine.) And now I’ll have two new tubes and two new tires for tomorrow’s bike ride. It’ll be a great day. And this one was good, too. But I hope yours was even better.

markers / music / photo / Re-Listening / Rowan / video / We Learn Wednesdays / Wednesday — Comments Off
06
Sep 23

Ready to just do it already

First classes are tomorrow. Last minute dashes to be prepared are today. I got a decent haircut, learned things about cowlicks, and ironed some clothes. When it’s open-the-ironing-board official you know it is getting real.

I’ve also semi-prepared the things I’m going to discuss in class so much that they now seem less interesting to me. And some of these things are interesting! Some of them are about the syllabus. And everyone loves syllabus day. So tomorrow is the first first day for two classes. My last first day is Monday night. I’ll start finishing that class prep on Saturday.

Tomorrow, it is two afternoon classes, and I know most of their pros and cons, schedule-wise. But Monday, it is a night class, that’s new to me. And it’s the last schedule block of the day. Because of Memorial Day, that means the 6 p.m. Monday night class will be the last first day of the semester. I’m sure all of the students in there will be over ice breakers. No pressure whatsoever.

But before that, there’s tomorrow. (It’ll be fine.)

This is the sixth installment of my tracking down the local historical markers. I’m doing this by bike, by the way, which is one good way to go a little slower, sometimes, and learn some roads I wouldn’t otherwise try. Counting today’s installment, I’ll have seen 13 of the 115 markers found in the Historical Marker Database. What will we learn a bit about today? Something that doesn’t exist anymore!

Here’s the first marker.

The fire ring isn’t there anymore. And I had this wrong. I thought this footprint would have been where it went. And I figured it was some sort of bell. Ring! Ring! Fire! Fire! Come out and fight the fire! Ring! Ring!

But this is what it looked like, and it was installed right next to that marker. This is a Google Maps image from the summer of 2016.

By the next time the Google car through, in 2019, the fire ring was gone. And you can see that the other spot, where I thought the fire ring would have been, had some other sort of monument or marker. It was also removed before September of 2019.

There’s another marker, elsewhere, for another fire ring. It’s next on the list to visit. Maybe, if it still there, we can figure out more about the mysteries of the fire ring.

But, for right now, if you look just past the marker above, you’ll see another one. And this wordy little document has been sitting here for generations.

And here’s the bridge the old timers were celebrating.

Now, I don’t know if that’s fertilizer runoff or some sort of punk rock algae bloom, but I’m not swimming in that lake, or fishing it, anytime soon. There were some people fishing in the lake the day I took this photo.

The marker says in some places the flood was 20 feet above normal and, in this location, it reached the top of the current bridge. That’s difficult to imagine, given the flatness of the surrounding flat terrain. (That’s how flat it is. Flat flat flat.) That sounds like a lot of water spreading out, and so it was. A tropical storm dumped 24 inches of rain in half a day at a gauge just 13 miles away. Dams failed, and a railway bridge that ran over this lake … well, here’s a thousand words on that from The Times.

But that date, the dedication date of the new bridge? That was 15 months after the flood. That’s not what stands out. Sure, it is 981 months, to the day, from me writing this, but that’s not it either.

December 6th, 1941, a Saturday. Imagine, the next day the members of the Board of Freeholders (a term no longer in use, having rebranded as county commissioners just a few years ago) woke up, all proud of their efforts, saw their neighbors, went to church, or whatever else their normal habits might have been. And, by dinnertime that night war was no longer a looming shadow. What everyone had feared had come at last. That bridge may have been the last thing built around here for a while.

If you’ve missed some of the early markers, look under the blog category We Learn Wednesdays. What will we learn next week? Come back and see.

We also return to the Re-Listening project, which is aptly named. I’m listening to all of my old CDs in the car, in the order in which I acquired them. I’m writing a bit about them all here, to play some music, to see if I can scour up a memory and, sometimes, like today, pad the place with some extra content. These aren’t reviews — because who cares? — but they’re sometimes fun.

And this time, we’re in the early summer of 2003. Train’s “My Private Nation” was released, their third studio album, and I liked Train. I liked Train three albums worth, and this was the third one I purchased. (They’ve released seven more records since then, the most recent being in May of last year.) This record went platinum, their fifth platinum certification, and ended 2003 at number six on the Billboard 200. A lot of people liked this record. (And five of their subsequent records have ended a year in the top 20. A lot of people like Train. Go give them some grief.)

They released four singles in support of the record. “Calling All Angels,” you’ll remember, was a big hit. “When I Look to the Sky” was moderately successful and, I think, the place where I’d almost had enough. “Get to Me” made it to number six on the Billboard Hot Adult Top 40 Tracks, and is still catchy two decades later. Though I’m not sure if I ever listened to that in the company of another human being.

That could have been a function of 2003. Early morning shifts — my first hit was at 4:30 a.m., which meant I was going into the studio before 4 a.m. most days, which meant my first alarm went off at 2:30 a.m., — shape your social life.

This was not an early morning listen, though. I was singing along in the car to people with a deeper register than Pat Monahan has. Also, right about here on the CD, I think I was starting to discover the Train formula.

Despite that, though, there’s still charming little imagery sprinkled throughout.

For my money, the last track on the album is the best one. And one of the best in their catalog.

Five years later a guy named David Nail covered it and had a moderate success on the country charts. What does that sound like?

It’s a cover.

Anyway. The first time I saw Train was on a small festival stage about 45 seconds before they became a supernova. And then I saw them in the now demolished Five Points Music Hall. I think I caught them once or twice more in bigger places. Then one morning I finished an early morning shift and bumped into them at a breakfast place. They didn’t look prepared for breakfast. This would have been 2001 or 2002. I didn’t see them, I don’t think, when they toured this record. And soon after this members of the band started changing and it would feel like an entirely different show if you went these days I bet. Monahan is the only original member left.

If you want to find out, Train is on tour right now. Let me know if they’re still doing the Zeppelin covers.