Shooting fireworks tonight, I became transfixed by the out-of-focus stuff.
I’m pretty sure this is what it turns into in our memory anyway: blurry, in slow motion, with muffled sounds.
And with a URL in the bottom in the bottom right corner.
Something weird happened with Auburn’s fireworks tonight, which meant two finales, and a few extra and random things that seemed entirely out of sequence. Here’s the first, and final, finale.*
(*I’ve wanted to write a sentence like that for a long time.)
Happy Fourth. Happy Independence Day. Let freedom ring.
Thursday / video — Comments Off on Opelika’s Freedom Celebration03 Jul 14
The neighboring town does their fireworks a night early. Who needs to wait?
It is a pretty good show, launched from their high school’s track and field facility. Across the street is a junior college, and diagonally you’ll find a strip mall. All three of those properties are filled with cars and lawn chairs and screaming kids. The high school campus has a lot of inflatable games and plenty of activities before the sun goes down. There’s live music, skydivers and more.
And than about 20 minutes of fireworks, leading up to the finale.
They gathered in the stadium of the 2,000 student school in the town of 56,000, which is a suburb of Atlanta. His coaches talked and his college coaches talked and his father talked and the sun set a remarkable shade of orange and blue and people thought, “Oh, Phil is a painter.”
And they lit candles and laughed and hugged and shared tears for what they’ve lost, what we’ve lost, and tried to imagine what his family has lost. And none of it was enough, but a lot of it was just right. There are eulogies and then there are eulogies. And this video played:
I rode one of the regular routes today. I did it in new cycling shoes. I couldn’t decide if trying new shoes less than two weeks before a triathlon was a good idea, and I still can’t decide, but here we are. It will take me a while to figure them out and how to avoid mishaps with them, but they are lighter.
Why all of that matters, in as much as it does. You’re familiar with the fairy tale of the princess and the pea? I’m a lot like that on the bike, which is to say I’m an elite athlete in tune with myself and the machinery I’m using. Of course that’s not the case, but I notice things that make The Yankee roll her eyes.
When I swapped from Continental tires to kevlar trainers, I noticed a big drop off in performance. When I swapped from the kevlar tires to Gatorskins, I noticed an improvement. When I changed water bottles, I could tell the new ones were heavier. I didn’t notice that in my hand, mind you, but I filled them up, put them in their cages and pedaled away and felt it within just a few strokes.
So these shoes are lighter. And, in cycling, lighter is better. I feel like they pull up better, too. These are clipless shoes, of course, which bolt you onto the pedals. They have two advantages, allowing you to pull up on your pedal stroke as well as push down. This exercises some different leg muscles. Also, the pros use them and you want to look like them despite the different sensations and the possibility of disaster that comes with them.
Falling in clipless shoes is something of a rite of passage. I’ve done it a few times. Once in front of a police officer and once in front of fire fighters. Both were embarrassing and only slightly painful. It takes a bit of time to train your foot to come out of the pedals and to do it in time. Hence the falling and the rite of passage and the skinned elbows and things.
With these new shoes, they feel like I’m starting over with the whole thing. That’s odd since the cleats are exactly the same. The pedals are exactly the same. The shoe feels different, and the sole is different, and I am the prince with the pea.
So I rode 18 miles and ran a 5K today. It was very warm out, both times. Also, I’ve been dragging the last few days and am in one of the inexplicable phases of not eating very much. It felt pretty good, though.
I do not know what is happening.
Nice picture and all .. You don’t often expect great lines from Instagram, but this one has it.
In honor of America, and the U.S. Men’s National Team:
Here’s the team’s hype video:
And, this, easily, is one of the most amazing pre-game packages you’ve ever seen:
If you find a better one, let me know.
The game was revealing and frustrating and pretty much what we expected. Tim Howard was nothing short of impeccable, Belgium was fulfilling their destiny. The U.S. never really played to their potential. The defense still has holes. We lost another starter to another hamstring. And despite all of that it fell to an agonizingly close piece of physics, the bend of an ankle, the arc of one ball and a great, great spirit. The U.S. played hard, even when they weren’t playing well. If the young members of this team improves, and the work that’s going into the larger program nationwide pans out, there are big things ahead. And they’ll play like it.
Tim Howard, briefly, was the Secretary of Defense. He was a lot of things today, becoming the newest and best meme of the day — since that’s the way we talk to one another now, this is worth noting. He was surely impressive, and he deserved a better defense in front of him.
Things to read … because you deserve to have great things to read.
Just the links, because the links should be good enough today.
Here’s what I did last month. The red is on the bike, which was limited. The dark blue is running and the light blue is in the pool, which was especially limited. It isn’t nearly enough for where I’d like to be.
