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.

adventures / cycling / Monday / photo — Comments Off on Of bikes and bees and bushes and cats and things
11
Jul 22

Of bikes and bees and bushes and cats and things

A quick shot from our Saturday bike ride. This is on the part where we go around a sharp right curve that’s almost a turn. It’s an uphill that’s almost a downhill, or a downhill that is an uphill, I can never decide. The part just before this you can really hammer it. And within just a few feet from here you’re in the Bermuda Triangle of gear selection. It never makes sense.

Immediately after that, though, there’s a left hand turn and she takes off. It’s a three-mile stretch that suits her strong, powerful style. I slowed down, too, because my rear tire was starting to feel a bit spongey and there’s a big downhill ahead that ends at a stop sign. I wanted to be conservative there.

But then you turn left and eventually it turns into a one-mile uphill.

There was another cyclist up ahead. We caught him. I jokingly cautioned him against letting me slow him down when he passed me on the bigger part of the climb. I heard The Yankee giggling at that as I went by her. And then he passed me.

But I caught him again. And then I got stung by some sort of flying insect, just above the knee. It only hurt when I pedaled, which I had to do for another 10 miles or so.

All of it was fun, except for the bee sting.

But I don’t want you to think that all of life is fun and musical and amazing. Today’s big adventure was trimming back a huge shrub in the back yard. It was long overdue.

And now back to your regularly scheduled cat update. No bush chores for them, but they had a big week nevertheless.

Here’s Phoebe enjoying her Sunday evening nap.

We’ve recently moved some furniture around and she has had no problem adjusting to that, as you can tell.

Poseidon is living up to his name, looking for a shower this morning.

I tremble in fear at what he might want tomorrow.

That’s it for now. Please check out my Twitter for more. And you can also see the (still-running!) series of videos I’m uploading daily from our Cozumel dive trip, over on Instagram, too. Speaking of Instagram and cats, did you know that Phoebe and Poseidon have an Instagram account? They do. Check them out.

More tomorrow!

adventures / Friday / music / video — Comments Off on Handle Me With Care
08
Jul 22

Handle Me With Care

I’ve been sharing video this week from the Toad the Wet Sprocket, Gin Blossoms, Barenaked Ladies show we saw last Friday night. As I mentioned here, this is making up for a 2020 show. We bought these tickets in 2019. It was supposed to happen again in 2021, but, finally, here wer were last Friday.

I’d never seen Toad the Wet Sprocket, somehow, but always wanted to. Gin Blossoms I hadn’t seen since college. BNL we saw in 2018, and last week was the fourth or fifth time I’ve seen them.

And then they came out for a one-song encore, an ensemble of all three bands, Something of a supergroup covering The Supergroup. There are 18 platinum, nine gold and one diamond records and something like 30 million total sales and 20 top 10 singles between them. I bet the Wilbury step-brothers would approve of this.

It came as a surprise to me how much I enjoyed that, how happy that song would sound, how happy it’d make me feel.

We left the venue saying it was a great show, saying it was all worth the wait.

adventures / history / music / Thursday / video — Comments Off on It’s raining macaroni
07
Jul 22

It’s raining macaroni

A few more clips from last week’s Barenaked Ladies show to pad out the week. Why not? After all, you don’t hear enough bass solos these days.

That led to this. It was never released as a single, never had a video, and “If I had $1,000,000” hit 13 on the Canadian and UK charts and made it into the US Top 40 and, of course, is a live show staple.

Also, my mother-in-law quotes it to me now, which is the best part.

BNL does rap covers and medleys and they come off as ad libbed, but this has been done before. No one puts “Just A Friend” and “Coincidence” together on a whim.

And they closed the show with a few covers. Devo is always a popular choice.

And then there’s Led Zeppelin. It is 53 years old and still rocks.

Whole Lotta Love was off II, their second album, which Led Zeppelin recorded on tour. It went platinum 12 times. That song was about Jimmy Page’s instrumentation and legendary bluesman Willie Dixon‘s lyrics. (He sued. They settled.) And now, 53 years later, bands with four-decade pedigrees of their own, are still covering their efforts.

I wonder if they had any sense of the staying power of this stuff at the time. Page was 25 at the time they recorded Whole Lotta Love, Robert Plant was 21; John Bonham and John Paul Jones were in between. They closed every concert with that for four years. Now, BNL does, too.

Well, except for the encore, which you’ll see tomorrow.

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