Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

cycling / Monday / photo — Comments Off
28
Apr 25

Three great rides

I went out for a little bike ride on Saturday, the best sort of ride, the kind where there’s no route, no plan at all, and you just find out what happens. This is much more fun than estimating a time or distance, and far more fun than the normal enterprise of planning a route. Saturday I just went … that way.

And so I went by the historic haunted house and past the church and down the three stretches of a road named after a town which was named after a plantation. From there, I turned left. Part of this road I know, in the reverse direction, because it is one of the regular routes. But I did not turn onto either of those two roads. I just kept going passed this barn.

There were clouds in the sky, something to keep an eye on, but i was going in another direction.

Over this way, for example, we had beautiful skies. And so I just kept pedaling. I contemplated alternated lefts and rights, but figured I would be sure to mess that up on the way back.

I just kept going straight, because the road allowed for it. Passed the houses and the woods and the cattle.

At some point I passed a “Now enterting” county sign. I hadn’t even realized I’d left the county, but now I was back. I’d been riding a straight line, but it was maybe a circle?

Maybe that explains the thunder, and then the rain, and possibly the small hail. It was raining, hard; I was 20 miles from home and who knows where this misbehaving storm cloud was headed.

I turned around, laughing, and started back. I had to do about two miles in the rain, but dried out for the last hour or so in the sunniest weather possible. It was 40 miles, round-trip, and at one point I went 11 miles without seeing a car.

And that’s how a spontaneous trip becomes a planned route. I’ll be doing that again.

Sunday afternoon I did the now-usual 15-mile route. I met this tractor near the house.

Nice of the guy to wave. Then, on the way back, I passed another tractor. This one was tilling right by the side of the road.

And that guy waved, too.

Me and my shadow are quite popular, sometimes.

Today’s ride was one of the standard 21-mile routes. (We have two of those.) And in this ride, an oddly misshapen rectangle, I encounter a dozen stop signs, seven turns and two railroad crossings. I did not have to put my foot on the ground the first time.

That’s a great ride, too.

Friday / memories / music / Re-Listening / video — Comments Off
25
Apr 25

Time for some air guitar

Since I’m well behind — but when am I not? — let’s return to the Re-Listening project.

The Re-Listening project, for anyone still here after such a dynamite introduction, is where I’m listening to all of my old CDs in the car, mostly in their order of acquisition, and writing about them here. I say mostly because these discs are all kept in CD books, if you remember those, and I got a bit out of order. Anyway, we’re in 2001 at this point. And so what we’re doing here is talking about music from more than two decades ago. But not so much about the music, but whatever might come with it. These are more memories than reviews — because who needs reviews? — but, really, an excuse to put a little music here, while padding out the space.

So we go back to the by-now over-commercialized realm of alt and roots rock. What I mean is that we’re beginning today by talking about the second studio album by Train. One of the better songs on the record was the lead track, and third single, which settled at 21 on the US Billboard Adult Top 40 and peaked at 40 on the US Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart. And if ever there was a song you shouldn’t listen to after YouTube’s compression algorithms work their magic, this is it.

Anyway, I was working at a place that was playing a lot of Train. And I think I saw them twice on this tour. They played a two-night stretch at a now defunct venue in Birmingham, and I saw them on the second night, an amphitheater instead of a small concert hall. Also, we ran into these guys at breakfast the next morning. Let’s say they had had a long night. Later that year, I saw them at a bigger venue.

One of the deep cuts is a personal favorite.

It got mixed reviews at the time, this record, and you can still hear that unevenness today. Nothing on here is bad, but not much really stands out, which is I guess what everyone wanted at that point. Everything pretty well holds up with the passage of time. But, for the most part, it is, and was, pretty much what we’d come to expect from the band.

Still went double platinum, though.

Train are still touring, and they’ll return to the U.S. this summer, though it’s not the same band, if that matters. Over the years 18 people have been a part of the group. Pat Monahan, the vocalist, is the only founding member of the band left.

Up next, Athenaeum’s “Radiance.” This was an alt pop band from North Carolina, a group of guys that got together in the 8th grade and then played together for 15 years or so. This was their debut record, and it made it to 46 on the Billboard Heatseekers chart, a minor success in 1998. I bought it much later. The record was powered by this single.

You go through the first four tracks and think, “Here’s a band with a good rhythm section, one distortion pedal and a few clever lyrics. Probably the kids not challenged or interested in school.” And then they change it up a bit on track 5 and fool you.

I haven’t listened to this in a long time, and that’s the reaction I had this time through, and I bet I had a similar thought when I first played it.

I’m in a chat with a younger member of my extended family where we share music back and forth. We’re getting pretty close to understanding each other’s tastes at this point. Every now and then I send him something and he slips a knife in between my ribs. “Yeah, that sounds like the 90s.”

How do you argue that?

Also, this sounds exactly like the 90s.

I have a feeling they played a lot of school dances. I bet this was a big hit when it came time for a slow number.

The band folded in 2004. Some of the members are still making music, performing, or as songwriters and studio musicians. One of them is an associate professor at Clemson.

And now we’re two albums closer to being caught up. Probably still a dozen behind …

cycling / Thursday — Comments Off
24
Apr 25

There’s always more, and never enough

I spent the full day grading outlines. This is a four-week assignment, and students are two weeks in. The first stage is picking some sort of social media platform. The second stage, which they finished Monday, involves observing and coding the platform. The third stage, which is due in a few weeks, is a rough draft of the audit they are tasked to do. The final is due three weeks form now. It’s a good project. My job is to provide feedback that helps them along the way.

Also, I have something like 67 of these to work through.

It is time intensive, however. The need to offer specific, stylized, feedback means this took Tuesday, today, and also part of tomorrow.

Also, it is the project that launches a thousand emails. Month-long projects can do that.

I did call it a day just in time for an early evening bike ride. I went out a road named after neighborhoods which are named after plantations. I descended down a big hill named after a local 18th century farmer. The hill drops into town, which I pedaled out of after a quick mile, past the park, and the farms.

I went through the pastureland and wineries. And I soft-pedaled through two neighborhoods, just to get to 16 miles, to mostly make a complete ride before dinner. There will be more this weekend.

More rides this weekend. But also dinners. And probably more grading and feedback

cycling / photo / Rowan / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
23
Apr 25

Advertising and bikes, but not bike ads

In my international media class today, we talked about some facets of advertising. I had them read a few things, and a few students did the readings. And I had them watch a few videos, because, believe it or not, videos about how advertising works will always elicit some conversation.

Here’s one of the videos.

They really got into the Coke video. I enjoyed seeing the Coca-Cola products from other parts of the world.

And I also shared this video with them, which discusses women in advertising. Jean Kilbourne has been a model, an author, a filmmaker and an activist. And this is one of her now classic pieces where she dissects the ideals of beauty. Or starts to. You can’t get into all of it in a single 7-minute clip. In retrospect, I should have made this a full day’s worth of class.

The takeaway I leave them with is that there is an argument to me made that advertising is a form of journalism, or at least a glimpse of the contemporary record keeping of any given time. Kilbourne talks about how ads sell values, they sell images and concepts and, thus, normalcy. Ads are who we are. We can also say that attitudes in culture inform our ads.

More and more, I realize I should be turning this in to a culture class.

And then I sent them away with the happy thought that Kilbourne points out that there are some attitudes we need to get away from in this current portrayal of advertising (which had been de rigueur for decades before that production, and has remained so in the decades since) because “What’s at stake for all of us is our ability to have authentic and freely chosen lives, nothing less.

Next week they’ll be reading and talking about hijab advertisements, the economic globalization of ads, fragmentation and, of course, Stanley Cups.

Next week is our last week of class, somehow.

I’m only just now starting to get to know these people.

This evening I had enough daylight for a 26-mile ride. I reversed one of my usual courses, heading through one small town to the river, and then over into a neighboring city. Then I fought six miles of winds through woods and subdivisions, and then took a turn through the farms. Horses were the theme today.

I also went past the fields now turning green, most of the work still being done below the soil, and also past the vineyards. And more horses.

On this road, there is a bike lane, and I am obliged to ride in a bike lane when there is a lane. Usually this is fine, but they come with their own challenges.

This wash out will never not be the case right there. Busy little stretch of roadway, too.

cycling / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
22
Apr 25

I guess distances accurately

The cats have gracefully argued that they haven’t graced the page in almost two weeks. They remind me that they’re almost the sole cause of site traffic around here. I don’t know if they’re right about that, but they are the most popular feature here. Sometimes, they’re the only feature here. So, we should show them off.

I tried to get them to type this up, but they’re a little heavy on the keys. They also don’t have a firm grasp of punctuation, or what the space bar does.

What they lack in keyboard etiquette they make up for in patiently posing.

Phoebe was enjoying a little sunny afternoon time in the dining room.

Poseidon has his choice of boxes on which to sit.

The kitties are doing great, in other words. They are miffed about not landing on the site on Monday, though. And they’ve been letting me hear about it all day.

I had a nice 30 mile-bike ride today, over mostly the usual roads. Out to the river and back from the river and over to town, riding right across on Main Street, and then out past the edge of town. I was on a quiet two-lane road when I saw a woman walking from the other direction. Long pants. Hoodie. It was a warm spring evening. She raised her voice as I went by, asking if this was the way to the next town. Without slowing down, because she was not in distress, I yelled back over my shoulder, “Take this left and you’ll go left again, but it’s 15 miles from here.” It was almost 7 p.m. by then. I looked on a map later, and she was exactly 15 miles away on foot. I hope she made it to an Uber.

I crossed over Yorketown to Pierson, and then crossed Yorktown (there is a place where Yorketown and Yorktown intersect, and I wonder how many people have noticed that outside of this little town). I skirted the west side of the town limits, and then rode through the pastureland to get back home. If it sounds romantic, you don’t know the half of it.

This, though, was only my fifth ride of the month. I waited for forever for new tires to arrive. We traveled. There was work. This is all getting in the way of my accumulation of miles and shouting out directions to random passersby. Like I know where I’m going.