Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

cycling / Friday / photo — Comments Off
18
Jul 25

I made a time trial

Milder today. Just a summer day on Venus, rather than a July day on the surface of the sun. And it was, for the most part, an ideal summer Friday, passing by uneventfully. So much so that I forgot, until tonight, to finish the laundry.

Why do tonight what solar power can do tomorrow, namely, move the dryer drum around and around and make my clothes toasty and fresh?

While admiring the flowers and the weeds today, I noticed this little hydrangea. It’s smaller shrub, hiding beneath larger things. I’m not sure if I’ve seen him before.

So in our 25 month here, I am still learning new things about the place. I love that. Though, I am glad that at this point most of the things I am learning are small things. They’re more charming and less harmful. And when I say harmful I am thinking of the pocketbook.

Since it wasn’t terrible hot today I set out for an early evening bike ride. Into town, through some neighborhoods, by the park, out into the pastureland again. I eased through a crossroad that has a name for no reason whatsoever, and then up past the rodeo arena. I rode on the closed shoulder.

It’s been closed for more than a year now. Maybe it’ll never re-open again. For now, it’s a nice stress-free stretch of three-quarters of a mile without worrying about traffic. And then you turn right, and into the wind, trying to stay low until you turn left again, driving your way through a cornfield, into the woods, and to the crazy house. The guy that lives there was outside today, doing whatever he was doing, until he stopped to yell at me. Then an overpass, more woods, some rural houses, more woods, two intersections, another overpass — I’m probably doing those out of order, because I’m trying hard through there and not paying attention.

Eventually I get into another neighborhood, which yields to a park which blends into a series of apartment complexes, which heralds the stop sign and the right-hand turn. And then it is four miles of town, businesses, houses, industrial complexes and trees, before turning right once more, the last turn and then seven miles straight home.

This is my 25-mile time trial, which I have just invented. I have done it three times now — once last year and twice this summer — and today’s ride was my fastest. So, of course, I have now added a new page to the spreadsheets. One more thing to track. One more place to try to ride a bit faster, a bit more efficiently.

The real metric, though, is that I had to put my foot on the ground just twice in 25 miles. Nine turns, 11 stop signs or lights, and stopping twice, that’s the real trial.

Funny how you can come to measure your minor successes.

memories / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
17
Jul 25

The kind of heat that’s just painful

One of our bike-riding neighbors sent out a note calling for a ride today, and it just seemed like a bad idea. The heat index, at that moment this afternoon, was 114 miserable degrees.

In my many years of experience with extreme summer weather I can tell you this: nothing over 106 matters. It just reads as pain.

So I did not go for a bike ride today. But I washed clothes. And, also, I watched a documentary I’ve decided to add to my fall class. It’s a little bit older, this documentary, but it includes a few things I didn’t know about a moment I’ve studied a fair amount. The real point will be in our analysis of the film as a product, and I made several pages of notes. It might, in fact, become the first one we watch in the class. Some of the points in it could set a tone.

Anyway, let’s look at some more flowers. It’s difficult to say a hibiscus is sneaky, but this one did sneak up on me this year. One day it was a shrub and then last week, this happened.

I might prefer the hibiscus flowers in their early form. Intricate. Sturdy. Delicate. Full of promise.

Now, this week, the hydrangeas are making their play for attention. We have two of these giant white hydrangeas. And I hope that, this year, we don’t get a torrential rain that ruins them before their show is done.

If we ever design a flowerbed of our own, I’d make the argument that it should be chronologically designed, with each section intending to show off its best work as the season progresses. One thing leading to the next, a calendar of clump, a slower sun dial, if you will.

One that can handle the heat.

cycling / photo / Wednesday — Comments Off
16
Jul 25

Air dense as water

Today’s heat index finally quit at 103 degrees. At some point after that, with the daylight fading and things still as sticky as possible, I set out for a little bike ride.

And this is how you know it is hot and humid. Usually, because of the speed and the wind … let me rephrase … because of the “speed” and the wind you don’t feel a lot of sweat. For a person that can sweat a fair amount, this was a weird sensation to grow used to. I could be out on an extremely hot day and, aside from a bit of it getting into my eyes, I never seemed to sweat — at least until I got home.

About halfway through today’s short little ride, though, I noticed that every inch of my clothing and most of my skin was covered in perspiration. The dew point and the humidity were the same. There was nowhere for the moisture to go.

Not too long after that I ran across this sign. I was on one of the usual roads, and they’d been advertising this closing, so it was not a surprise.

Today might have been the first day of the closure, which was supposed to begin yesterday. And here I remembered one of the many virtues of the bike. I can go where a car can’t go.

The work has something to do with an overpass. In addition to the closure and detour signs, and the barrels, they’ve got barriers up on either side of the bridge. Presently, they are set up to allow a zig-zag access, presumably for the heavy equipment that should be arriving tomorrow or the next day. I suppose you can still get through there in a car, but you’d have to work at it. I didn’t have to slow down.

I might have sped up on the overpass, though. Who knows why they’ve got that bit of the road closed.

Anyway, it was a usual route, one that has the benefit of being well-defined, and quite in the evening. It’s easy to race the darkness on a route you know well.

Here’s a bit of it I don’t think I’ve photographed before. That’s probably not my fault, it’s the asphalt.

There was no wind for this ride. Not even a breeze. And it seems that I can still do an almost decent ride when I’m not battling the breeze. My computer was pleased. Pleased to be going fast for once.

That’s not fast, but respectable by my standards; I’ll take it. I’d take a little cooler weather, but I’m not going to get that in the near future.

photo / Tuesday / winded-intellectual property — Comments Off
15
Jul 25

Forehand, backhand, and the heat

Just your average sunny, hot, sticky day. The heat index got up to 96 or so, and don’t think I didn’t notice, sweating as i was. So it was a good day to stay inside. I’ve been making that call a bit more often than I normally would during the hottest days of late. I’m OK with it.

Anyway, I made productive use of my time. I watched a documentary, about tennis and equity in pay, which I’ll show in class and made a day’s worth of notes about it that we can discuss in a lecture. One more down, too many to count to go. It was a good afternoon in that respect, and a fine documentary. The goal is to sound like a rhetorician before the semester is done. And this doc is one way I’ll start.

I’ll get another one or two down later this week.

Let’s check out some of the flowers in the backyard, which is busy growing just about everything possible. The brown-eyed susans (Rudbeckia triloba) are doing what they do.

These things will grow most any place, but do well in the sun and sandy soil. Guess what we have here where the heavy land and the green sands meet. They’re beautiful, but the wrong signal. We’re on the back half of the summer. And, also, they take over everything. But they’ll be with us for a while. Still, anything denoting the passage of time in the summer is an oddly unwelcome thing.

I believe this is an orange lily, or a Tiger lily (Lilium bulbiferum).

These are native to Europe, you can find them from Spain to Finland to Ukraine. They like altitude, which we don’t have. But they enjoy the warm sun. Our yard has stuff from near and far, so it’s not surprising to see this guy here. It is a bit surprising he’s outgrowing the weeds.

There is weeding that needs doing. But see above, regarding the heat.

errands / Monday / photo — Comments Off
14
Jul 25

Just a little pinch

This week I’ll get back into school work with a gusto! he told himself, until he told himself something else, different, a bit later. It’s really just a question of which day I tell myself that, and the gusto which takes place between now and then.

Let us begin with the site’s most popular weekly feature, checking in with the kitties.

We have a nice picture window in the library, which sits on the front of the house. And there’s a little bench or a shelf there. I thought about putting some cushions down and turning it into a pleasant little reading area. Phoebe beat me to it.

She sits in this box, on a little cat blanket, and enjoys her afternoon naps in the sun. It’s adorable, of course. And reliable. At certain times of day, that’s where she is. (Usually I don’t disturb her as I did for this photo.) And of all of the jealousies between the two cats, this is one place where her brother leaves her alone. And so there will never be a reading nook there, because that is going on.

And here she is looking all cuddly on top of the comforter.

The theme here, then, must be comfort. Here’s Poseidon, who usually tries to eat the plastic, using a resealable bag of trail mix as a pillow.

(Keep that life hack in mind, hikers.)

He came out from his usual afternoon napping spot, wherever that is, to watch a bit of the Tour with me. He likes bike races. Must be the colors and the motion.

So the kitties, you can see, are doing well. We all are just peachy keen. My lovely bride is nursing a calf twinge she got on a run. I am suffering through a bad streak on the bike. Let me tell you about it.

I went out Saturday evening, intending to do about two hours or so. Instead I did 4.3 miles. I got a flat on my back tire. This is the calculus you go through.

Item 1: I am close to home. Given the hour of the day, and the PSI limitations of my small handheld pump, I can’t change the tube and complete the ride I’d intended.

Item 2: Given the hour of the day, and how close I am to home, there’s no need to change this tube here, in this little neighborhood. I’ll just re-inflate the tube and nurse it home. And stop and reinflate as necessary. (Never let me talk myself into that again. — editor.)

So I pumped the tube to about 50 PSI, owing to the limitation of my pump, and set out for home. A quarter of a mile later, I’m doing it again. And in another quarter of a mile, again. Now we know the rate of air seepage. It’ll be every quarter of a mile. The direct route is 3.5 miles home. OK then.

Some kind soul stops their car asking if I’m OK. I’m OK. Another cyclist comes from behind and checks in. He patiently waits to see me on the road again and I take off, knowing he’ll be catching me again in a quarter of a mile. And what do you know!? There I am and there he is. This time he uses his pump, which is better. More air. Maybe I can go a bit longer. Another car stops. Still great! Anyway, my new cycling friend, a pleasant fellow named Mike who rides with a speaker lashed to his handlebars, helps me inflate the tire and off I go again. Now we both know the score. I am just trying to ride this flat to the top of the hill to stop in the shade once more. Because, after that, it’s a downhill and an uphill and, anyway, I stop and he catches me for the third time. He is very kind and if I’d known he’d been back there I would have just changed the stupid tube three miles ago because this has gotten awkward. One more inflation, one more round of sincere thanks and my encouraging him to not stop for me next time because I’m almost home and, anyway, he’s trying to go somewhere too. And so I mystify him with the parlance of my people …

“Ppreciate it.”

… and we each pedal on.

So my 30-some mile ride Saturday turned into a 4.3-mile ride and a 3.5-mile return farce.

This set up nicely for a Sunday afternoon ride. The Yankee has decided that she can try riding again with her calf and so off we go. She’s fine. I know this because she passed me at one point and I said What happened to taking it easy? She looked down at her computer and said “I’m only doing 130 watts.” I looked down at mine and said, I ask because I’m doing 21 miles per hour and getting dropped, so …

And about 10 miles later she did drop me, and I started feeling the heat.

Or, put another way, it was hot outside. I went through three water bottles in an hour, which is a really high rate for me. And I eased up a bit on the way back home because I didn’t like how it all felt and I know better. And I still had a (relatively, for me) good speed.

This evening we were supposed to go for a ride with a neighbor, but then the lightning and the rain showed up.

So, then, the highlight of the day was heading over to the medical laboratory this afternoon. They have the right sort of name to be a thinly veiled, not-very-well-thought-out evil henchman front in a movie. It’d be cooler if they had a few Tesla coils with surging electricity zipping through the place. Instead, it’s an old brick building, sharing space with a tanning salon and a kids dance studio. It’s a five-star dance studio, though, and that somehow offsets the two stars that the blood lab receives online.

Does anyone take online reviews seriously? I don’t. I would say something like “Is that really a four-star pizza place, or is that a Martinsville four-star pizza place?” Meaning, all of this is relative. That’s usually a good joke and a wry observation, but in this case, a woman is going to stick a needle into my arm …

Anyway, standard issue blood draw. Checking the numbers. Prove I’m healthy and blessed, well, not beyond measure because every one of these tests is measuring something or other, and all on different scales — including a Martinsville scale! — to throw you off as a patient and consumer.

I had the paperwork. The website for the testing place said I needed an appointment. My lovely bride, who has been there before for similar basic tests, said that’s not necessary. So I fasted the requested amount of testing time and then went in. The woman at the desk finally got around to me. I said, I have these orders, but otherwise no idea what I need to do. She pointed me to a little tablet kiosk. So, on the one hand, I don’t have to hand over my documents, and on still another hand, she did not give me a clipboard. On a third hand, the check-in process was done at my speed, which is reasonably fast. But, on a third, another place to scan your insurance card and type in more emails and phone numbers and … look, last year some place scanned my palm to establish my identity in the system and, off putting as that was, maybe it was better.

Anyway, a young man was called back for whatever was required of him there. When they built this office they did dry wall about 80 percent up to the ceiling, so you can hear everything, both over the lid and through the thinnest gypsum board on the market. He was having a tough time. The woman said, “Stay with me. Stay upright. I’m here by myself and don’t want to pick you up.” She kept his attention. He kept complaining. Which, I guess, gave him something to focus on. But it was pitiful when he said “Can we just pause?” and she the technician said “You can’t stop blood.”

And he was just doing a simple blood draw. I know this because the technician, who was also working the desk, was the woman who drew my blood. And don’t you know I wanted to cause a scene so as to cover for that young man. I did not, though. This poor woman, working solo while her trainee was actually out to lunch, was dealing with enough.

Instead, when I exited through the lobby I looked to the old man in a neck brace awaiting his turn and said, It’s brutal back there!

He just smiled and pointed to his walker.

After which I raced home to have lunch because my food fast was about 15 hours old.

He wrote, just before dinnertime.