Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

cycling / Instagram / IU / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
03
Sep 19

Bring me …

Water, thirsty photographers long ago noted, can make many compositions just a smidge better. It was true on the shrubs in the front 40:

View this post on Instagram

Morning dew on shrubbery.

A post shared by Kenny Smith (@kennydsmith) on Sep 2, 2019 at 8:27am PDT

We do not have 40 acres on the front of the property. That would require more driveway maintenance than anyone wants to maintain. But we do have shrubs and they have exhibited, of late, days of morning dew.

You could put water on more still life subjects for more compelling photographs, but you don’t always have water. You could carry a water bottle, but that sends mixed signals to the dihydrogen monoxide continued therein. Am I but a drop to be drank? Or am I but a drop to be sprayed on a rose?

Water thinks like this, pretty much immediately, when you try to get it some degree of sentience. And then it’s terrifying. What about the water you put into the pet’s bowl? What of the water you put in that pot to boil? You would never make corn or pasta again, if you began to think water had thoughts and feelings. And dreams! Oh the dreams of water! Only some drops get to fulfill those ocean dreams. Some are adventurers, sure, filling up raging white-capped rivers and eager to plunge down a dramatic waterfall. While some are more tranquil drops indeed — ponds for me, thanks — others are just diligently working their way through several cycles of dew and humidity. But even those drops have plans.

Anyway, since a water bottle is the wrong choice, there’s always a spray bottle. But then you’d have to stuff that in your bag, next to your camera and your other expensive and accumulated electronic things. And you’re not carrying a spray bottle that way. What if you got some of those anarchistic drops of water?

We went for a bike ride and I started out strong and was trying to outrace The Yankee back home. Mostly I’m trying to give her something to pace off of, but she’s very strong and fast and this is not my best year. So the best laid plans and all of that.

Well, she caught and dropped me far too early today. Best laid plans and all of that.

It was one of our most basic routes, designed for decent mileage in a timely fashion. We ride it a lot, which means there’s a place where I figured I might be able to make some progress and cut into her advantage. But she also knows the route, of course, and she never let up in the spot I expected. Before long I couldn’t even see her anymore. She’s very strong and fast.

So I just raced my shadow home:

Never let the shadow win.

Do you know how you never let the shadow win? Always pedal home from the east. The evening sun will be in front of you and your shadow behind.

We ran into the local sports beat reporter at the grocery store. We were shopping for a thing the giant megastore didn’t have, and he strolled by, basket in hand. We discussed and worked our way through most of the college and some of the professional sports in the span of about four minutes, before he had to dash off to the next big event. Beat life never stops, after all.

We could have taken a photo — because secondary sports celebrity! — but he’s our friend. Besides, you don’t take photos in the produce section. You forget you’ve even got your phone there. Probably you left it with the water bottle. Or maybe in the shrubbery.

friends / Monday / photo — Comments Off
02
Sep 19

Three-day cheers

Company this weekend. Friends arrived late Friday night. We watched football on Saturday and we visited a local fruit operation. After we’d enjoyed the public-facing part of the facilities we enjoyed a two-room tour of some of their production operation. You see signs like this:

It is a grape growing concern, founded by a former professor who wanted to share his beverages with friends. And now, thanks to tanks and tubs like this, it is one of the largest such concerns in the country.

OK, top 50. Still, that’s impressive for the middle of somewhere. No one could tell me if that was in terms of acreage, volume, sales, widgets or what.

But who cares? There’s grapes! Also, it is peak summer in almost every way:

Long may she reign:

Company, sadly, left this morning. But it is day three of a weekend, happily. The second-best part of that is that you must only face a four-day work week. But it must still be faced.

Friday / photo — Comments Off
30
Aug 19

Phewwwww

During Ralph Parker’s cubist phase, he drew a lot of inspiration from his brother, Tommy Parker’s work in parking deck stairwells:

Ralph Parker is a misunderstood genius, sure, but everyone around the Parker family knew that Tommy was where it should have started. And probably it was Tommy where it should have stopped, as well. But only after he finished the job.

I understand paint swatches, but this is a public building, which means the personal investment of pretty much everyone is reduced. So this isn’t about determining the proper shade of gunmetal to use when considering the morning sun comes in from yonder window.

Sometimes just enough might not be enough, though. I bet they didn’t even take a carpenter’s square to the corners to make sure they hit this at 90 degrees.

The square in a rectangle is an evocative look, I must say.

Eventually some white hat vandal — Those are still a thing, right? They’re still around? — will figure out if they scrawl nonsense on the whole wall then, some 18 months later, everything will get painted.

And that’s really all I have to say about today, which is mercifully behind us. We have some company coming in later tonight to spend the weekend, which will be lovely. So bring on the three-day.

I hope yours is lovely.

adventures / photo / Thursday / video — Comments Off
29
Aug 19

Almost average, even.

I wondered yesterday about the prospects of maintaining color continuity over the course of the long term. There were blue and tan elements. And so there are today, as well.

I only took this picture to put on Instagram, because, at the end of the day, I wasn’t sure if it was a good look or not. The reviews have been good so far. One follower chimed in “You know I have opinions,” but left it at that. Owing to the flush of information through the Instahose I will now never know what those opinions are. I am sure, though, that this was a bad choice.

Really, it is just a good way to keep track of when I wore what.

We had a bike ride this evening, the last Thursday evening ride I’ll have for a good long while, since we’ll start back up with the television shoots next week. Best not to dwell on the absence of rides for now though. Look! The tar snakes are making a smiley face!

Was there video? You bet there was video, and the audio totally goes with that tie!

I PRed three segments on Strava on this ride. It was one of my better rides of the year to date. Which is something I should have progressively been saying since about June, but the feeling returns when the feeling returns. The title of that workout on Strava became the title of this post. No one considered that in post-post-neo-modernism-ish time we’d have to title our workouts, but that’s the world for you. Wherever you go, there better be a post for it. How else will Buckaroo Bonsai know where you are? Anyway, now, the trick is to get as much out of these more pleasant feeling rides as possible, dovetailing as they are with shorter days and milder temperatures.

And, naturally, I won’t be able to ride again for another four or five days.

More on Twitter and please check me out on Instagram, as well.

photo / Wednesday — Comments Off
28
Aug 19

This is about wheels, which I have, and color wheels, which I do not have

I got my bike out of the bike shop yesterday. They called Monday to tell me it was ready, I finally picked it up yesterday. It went in for a new spoke, after I snapped an old one last week. I also added on an overdue tune up and a badly needed new chain. To celebrate the work, and the happy reunion, I wore my bicycle cufflinks yesterday:

I also picked up a new stem. It seems my bike might be too small, and that’s causing some hand problems. Nothing lasting, just a nerve compression that makes riding less enjoyable than it should be. And my ongoing foot issue (which does largely feel fine and might actually be improving with time and stretching exercises, but we’ll see in the next month or two) might actually be exacerbating my problems issue. This is all very specific stuff in that odd way of things: technical if you don’t ride, basic if you are a cyclist.

Anyway, one solution is too change to an angled stem. My old one was a flat, 0-degree, number. It made for an aggressive posture. Now we go to the other extreme. This is a Salsa aftermarket stem, set on a full 25-degree angle:

The angle stem raises up the headset, giving the cockpit a different orientation and puts the handlebars in such a place that I am not falling over to grab hold. This might help with the hand discomfort I’ve been experiencing of late. It isn’t as aesthetically pleasing in any way, but cheaper than a new bicycle, and feels a lot different, even on the first ride:

I wonder what it will feel like on the eighth or ninth ride.

But, hey, it isn’t all bikes around here. Or even cufflinks about bikes. (Those were a gift from my mother, by the way.) Sometimes it is just about the tie. But, really, it is about the shirt. And this is a new one! I got it online and on sale. And what do you know, yesterday’s bike jersey matches today’s tie:

I can’t keep this color continuity up for forever, of course. Or can I? I wonder.