cycling / overwriting / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off on On the occasion of a record breaking ride
19
Nov 24

On the occasion of a record breaking ride

Most rides are for the ride themselves. Or for riding with others. A lot of them are for exercise or to enjoy the great outdoors or both. Take a break, unwind, race a friend you can’t beat, go somewhere. Indulgent as they can be, they always seem to carry at least some sort of purpose. But this ride, today, was just for me. I realized, just before I left, that this would be the ride where I broke a personal best for miles pedaled in a year.

It happened right in here.

After that spot, every turn of the crank arm, every loop the chain made, every time I shifted through the cassette would all be new, a record, a best, an achievement.

You don’t think about that over the course of a ride, but it’s there. When the legs protest, you remember it. They’ve stomped and danced and glided through more miles this year than you’ve ever asked of them before. When your lungs don’t ache, maybe it’s for the same reason. When the lactic acid takes a little longer to burn, maybe that’s why. Or all of it could be that you’ve learned a new kind of patience this late into the year.

All of this is racing the sun, trying to stay on the right side of daylight. I set off through town and out the other side, doubling back into the town again, where 10 miles had gone by in the blink of an eye, thinking about the possibilities of what this ride could hold, given the hour and the time of year.

Yesterday I wanted to do this same route, but started too late and wisely changed my plans. This afternoon, which became the early evening as I swooshed and whirred along, felt like a ride that could go on forever.

I thought about that when I stopped, to put on my windbreaker. I was close to home, but determined to take the longer way back, so I mounted the headlight and left the full finger gloves in my pocket, and riding down that three-mile straight stretch of chipseal. It goes on forever because I want it too, particularly today. And through this stretch I feel a melancholy, a paradox that comes up with the truly great rides. It’s going to end soon. And the season will end soon, which is unacceptable. I don’t want this ride to end, either.

Sometimes you want a ride to be over. You have things to do or somehow the fit seems off or you’re just not feeling it, but there are days when you want it to go on forever, and this was one of those days, evenings, now, because the sun has left me and I’m listening to the rubber on my Gatorskins shuzzzz away in the gloaming.

That’s a great road. No traffic, beautiful farm scenery, two little rollers that can make you feel powerful or humble, or a bit of both. I only want that road to end because of what’s waiting at the turn.

At the bottom of that road is the best part of the ride, a brand-new ribbon that you could soft-pedal at 20 miles per hour, but it only lasts four-tenths of a mile, far too short for something so luxurious.

I have to work my way through two parking lots there, and I become aware that my neck has tightened up because my fit is never quite right and, also, I’m a little bummed about how this ride is coming to an end — I have been out for about two hours and heard two voices in that whole time, a crossing guard in town, who told me to “Go ahead honey,” while she held up her stop sign and a woman two towns later who stepped into the crosswalk as I came through the intersection, she laughed and I apologized and she said “Oh, that’s OK,” and we wished each other a great afternoon and you could hear the smile on her face as I pedaled away through a sleepy small town block. It was those two people and me and road noise and the click click click of my bike and this rattle in my headset, a loose screw that I need to tighten — why should any of this end?

I realized I’d put my foot on the ground just three times during this whole ride. Sometimes the timing is right and that was today, and this turn weaving behind the small car dealership and the gas station beside it, I had the timing right, rejoining the highway and a bike lane with no one coming from either direction. The bike lane there sometimes feels huge and sometimes small. Today, it felt small. I felt big. I felt like I could do anything on my bike, even though I can’t. I felt like my machine was asking me to do more, but it certainly, by now, understands my limitations.

This is why you don’t want these rides to end, why you don’t want colder weather to run you indoors, because you eventually tap into something elemental about this. Something basic and cosmic and purposeful and purposeless. I don’t want to lose that. Not for a minute or four months. It takes too long to find again and would require years of continual study to understand or explain it. Besides, we’ve lost too much this year — family and friends and elections and car keys and cyclists and opportunities and remote controls — and how much must we lose? How much is the right amount? But we lose it all, don’t we? And that’s when I heard the Canada geese somewhere to my left, to the west. They’d blended into the dark blue-gray of the sky, making those incessant honks and barks, those beautifully chaotic, continual sounds. They stay over there to the left, in a wildlife sanctuary, between some pastures, harassing the cattle, adding a bit more to the soundtrack as I stand up and suzsh suzsh suzsh my way up the fourth-to-last roller on my ride. You know the one, it tells you how you’re feeling in defiance of everything else you’ve done, and without any consideration for what else is still ahead, three more little hills, in this case.

At the 4-way stop, the one with the haunted house on the corner, a truck hauling a trailer is waiting for me to pass, even though he has the right of way, and I think, not for the first time, it would be great if everyone understood the rules the same way. But he waited, and I did a track stand for a respectful amount of time and finally I went, even though it was his turn, and even here, it felt like I could have held my bike up for forever. But I could not. But it felt like it just then, and now I wonder, maybe my bike doesn’t want this ride to end, either. Is that what it is? We’re both feeling this moment the same way? The air in the tubes and the softness of the grips and the loose-but-tight grip of my cleats in their clipless mates have all made this tiny little magical moment, which is persisting, but also fleeting.

Down and back up again, just two hills to go. I’ve been thinking, for four miles now, about how I didn’t want this ride to end, about that girl I knew in elementary school, some friends from the 10th grade, a professor I once had, the work I must get to. How the mind wanders. How it can wonder in its wanderings! I thought about the incredible feeling I had on my first ride outside this year, the sweet joy and optimism that came with it, and the feeling of this one, right now. I’m starting to think I should write this down and one word falls out of my mouth as I pull the bidon away one last time: Elation.

Sometime, in December, probably, I’ll have to take my bike to the basement and put it on the trainer. I’ll ride away on Zwift for several months. I’ll pedal a bunch, I’ll sweat a lot. I’ll be breathless. I’ll go nowhere. It’s just not the same.

I saw someone on social media yesterday beaming with pride that their oldest kid had learned to ride the day before and she pedaled away yelling, “I feel freeeeeee!” And, kiddo, it never gets better than that. She’s an old pro by now, because you know she was riding yesterday, and again today. So she knows, but it bears repeating. Be home when the lights come on, or for supper, or whenever your parents tell you, but it never gets better than that. It doesn’t have to. How could it? It just stays that perfect. And you can’t get that feeling on a trainer, no matter how many endorphins you tap into.

My average speed fell away, because why would I want this to end? And I circled one of the neighborhoods, the road shaped like a horseshoe. My neighbor built that development. It’s his, and he thinks of it that way. He still plows that road himself if it snows. He probably contributed, then, to those potholes on the backside of it, the ones I dodged in the semi-dark, chin down to the stem, hands over the hoods like a Belgian champion, using the fullness of the subdivision’s road as I turned into the final length of that horseshoe. The flow of a bicycle in the diagonal is a triumph. You feel freeeeeee. And maybe I could do anything my bike wants to do, even if it is a bit slower.

What is speed, anyway? Today, it just seems like a way to end a ride sooner. That’s a fool’s racket. A hustle with no payoff. At the end of that subdivision, I did another reasonable approximation of a track stand to let the traffic clear, so I could turn left, and then quickly right again. Now a car is behind me, and it’s finally fully dark. I charge up the little hill, throwing my bike this way and that up this penultimate roller, looking like a French prima donna, feeling like a million bucks, thinking of those headlights on me, and wondering where they disappeared to. I glanced over as I switched my headlight on, and the car was gone. So now it’s the downhill and it flattens out to the 90-degree turn into the back of our subdivision, the last hill, then a right-hander and around the big circle to the house. Two cyclists we know live back there, but I don’t even think to look in their yards today. I was, I realize now, too taken with imagining the next ride.

I wonder where it will take me, and how my legs will feel about it. I remind myself, once again, to start earlier in the day next time. This ride was 40 great miles, without even that much fuel, or water, considering the temperatures. I could just as easily have done another hour or two, amused by the muses and the thoughts they bring, bemused by how much better this little tale was, because I was fully in composition mode, while my legs brought me home. Some days it feels like they could go on forever. You must take advantage of those, I said to myself for the 6,000th time in the last 15 years of doing this.

There are days when it never gets old, days like this one. Not the fastest or a technically superior ride, not the first new road discovered, but just a ride for me, filled, in that last little bit, with hopes and fears and love and dreams. My dreams never grow weary.

cycling / food / friends / Monday / Philadelphia / photo — Comments Off on We tried Malaysian, that was delicious
18
Nov 24

We tried Malaysian, that was delicious

This weekend I improved my bike hipster cred with this new-to-me vintage belt buckle. I’d prefer that it was blue or orange or red, but the green will, I’m sure, grow on me.

I haven’t spent a lot of time looking, but I hadn’t run across a buckle like that before, rear derailleur looking all abstract, looking ready to climb. And when you know, you know, you know? So I bought it, and now it’s daily wear.

I have three daily wear belt buckles, which means I’m dangerously close to starting a collection. If I add three or four more I’d have a complete biographical collection. But I probably shouldn’t do that.

We went over the river on Friday night. A friend of almost 20 years from back home was in town. He used to live up here, too. And he was back for a conference, and heading up to New York to see his family. So we ventured over to pick him up for dinner.

And before we got there, we saw this sign.

Hmmmm …

We drove right beneath city hall. Built using brick, white marble and limestone, it is the world’s largest free-standing masonry building and was the world’s tallest habitable building when it opened in 1894.

Designed to be the world’s tallest building, it was surpassed during the phase of construction by the Washington Monument, the Eiffel Tower, and Turin, Italy’s Mole Antonelliana. The Mole Antonelliana, a few feet taller, suffered a spire collapse in a storm, and so this building stands a bit taller.

I’m sure we’ll discover more about it at some point in the future.

Our friend, Andre, suggested we try a Malaysian restaurant, Kampar, which has been shortlisted for a James Beard Award. While we waited the hostess gave me a new way to ask restaurant staff about their favorite dishes. She said the rendang daging was the reason she worked there. So we ordered that, and several other family-style dishes. And I’d work there for the rendang daging, too. It was a sweet, tender, slow-cooked meat. It offset the pickled vegetables well. Then, opposite that was a fried chicken done in a style that, by rights, I should not have enjoyed as much as I did. (But I want some more, even now, just thinking about it.)

So everything was great. We had about three bites before my lovely bride and I looked at each other and said, almost simultaneously, that my mother would like to try this place. So we’ll bring her when she comes up.

The weather is holding up. I got in 65 miles of riding this weekend, all of it just around the familiar neighborhoods. I’m trying to squeeze in every mile possible. You know the feeling, I’m sure, chasing the thing to forestall the thing.

That made sense right about here.

Now if this mild weather will just last until spring …

Auburn / Friday / Glomerata / history / photo — Comments Off on The 1954 Glomerata, part 11
15
Nov 24

The 1954 Glomerata, part 11

Venerable old Milwaukee County Stadium was opened in 1953. The Milwaukee Braves and the Green Bay Packers played there, as the MIlwaukee Brewers would later. The Sitting Bull Monument, on Standing Rock Indian Reservation in South Dakota, was built that same year. Plans for the Tomb of the Unknown Revolutionary War Soldier in Philadelphia began in 1954.

The top television shows at the time were The Milton Berle Show, You Bet Your Life, Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts, Dragnet and I Love Lucy.

Kitty Kallen was atop the charts. Perry Como, Rosemary Clooney, the Crew-Cuts and Jo Stafford — my favorite of the era — all had huge hits.

People read a lot of Annemarie Selinko (Désirée), A.J. Cronin (Beyond This Place), Samuel Shellabarger (Lord Vanity) and Morton Thompson (Not as a Stranger) who all held the New York Times bestseller spot during the period. Yeah, I haven’t heard of any of those, either.

That was 1953 and 1954. Let’s see what else people were doing.

This is the 11th installment of our glance through the Glomerata. (Find ’em all — Part one, part two, part three, part four, part five, part six, part seven, part eight, part nine, and part 10.) All of them will wind up in the Glomerata section (eventually). You can see others, here. Or maybe you’d like to click through to see all the covers. I wouldn’t blame you. They’re quite handsome. The university hosts their collection here.

This is one of those photos they use to fill space at the beginning of each new section. We’re heading into “Activities and Snap Shots” and I was not expecting this in a wholesome book about the 1950s. I’m not here to pass judgement, but this was probably someone’s grandmother several decades later.

The editors of this yearbook should have thought about that when they were in their 20s, is all.

We don’t spend a lot of time here on buildings, because buildings are only interesting in certain ways and certain times. And, usually, they’re unchanging. But this one is new. At least it was in 1954, when it opened that January. Sometime after that, all of these people posed for the moment.

It’s difficult to imagine Foy Hall — Foy Student Union in my day — as new. It was awkward when I started, a structure that would was a vestigial branch of modernism that didn’t fit in with the Georgia colonial architectural style that predominates. By the time I graduated it had changed. I practically lived there. The newspaper was housed there, and so was the radio station. It had that old, tired feeling a building can adopt when everyone knows it is on its last legs. The care isn’t as frequent. Resources and time are spent elsewhere. Offices move to sexier places. Everything feels a little careworn.

Which is a shame. The building, just the Student Union to the people in that photograph, would later be named after the beloved Dean James Foy, who was the dean of student affairs in 1954. In fact, this yearbook was dedicated to him. You read about him a few months ago.

Here’s Foy Hall today, or at least in 2016, and from almost the same angle.

A few years back the university built a brand new building that serves as the student union. Let’s have a quick look at what it was like way back when.

This photo was too small in the book, but it’s fascinating. The cutline tells us “Display boards keep students well informed on campus activities.”

It is probably not real, but I think I have a memory of someone telling me about these things. I don’t remember the actual boards, but I know where they were.

I also know right where this room was. It doesn’t look like that today, thank goodness. With windows above your eye line, and nothing to but that relentless brick wall, you really didn’t need whatever is going on in the background, too.

This is from Homecoming, a 16-7 win over Florida. And that’s Miss Homecoming, Joan Davidson. She graduated in 1955 and became an elementary school teacher in her hometown, married her college sweetheart and they had four sons. Her husband, George, died in 1971, and when Joan remarried she added three stepdaughters to her family.

She was president of the Junior League, a director at a nursing home, and a board member of Joan was a dedicated member of this community, having served as the President of the Junior League of Columbus, served on the boards of a nursing home, the local historic foundation and chamber of commerce. She passed away in 2020, celebrated by a family of seven children, 15 grandchildren and eight great grandchildren.

She’s standing there with George Uthlaut, who we met a while back. He was a senior studying chemical engineering, a real BMOC, and became successful in oil and gas exploration and production, first with Exxon for more than 30 years, and then with Enron Oil and Gas. He and his wife, Dot, volunteered in their local hospital for 35 years, visiting patients weekly. He’s still with us and they’re living happily in Texas.

This is a pretty basic formation, really. I could do that. I could do that today!

And by “that” I mean stand there and look pleasant and casual while a woman stood on my quad. I wonder what the cheer was. I wonder what it was like to have only seven cheerleaders. There are 21 today.

Also, they had puppets. It is unclear if these are props for this photo or something they used. Maybe pom-pom technology hadn’t really caught on by the 1950s. I must confess to some ignorance of cheerleader history.

That’s Jean Dudley on the left. She married her high school sweetheart. She died in 2020, survived by her husband of 63 years, a guy who was studying mechanical engineering in this yearbook. Together, they raised a family of three sons, eight grandchildren, and ten great grandchildren. Her husband, John, did two years at Auburn, and then transferred to Penn’s Wharton School of Business. He became a stockbroker and a financial adviser. He died in 2022.

The one on the right is Ann Wilson. She’s from Mobile, and after she graduated from Auburn she got a master’s degree from Alabama. She became a social worker, working at the county level, then worked in state pensions, served in FEMA for several years and went back to state-level work. She had five children, and she’s still with us.

The woman in the middle has the incredibly exotic name of Catherine Cole, and it’s a bit too difficult to dig her out of the interwebs.

Hey, look, it’s the Auburn Knights! They were formed in 1928, and they’re still going strong today. Over the years they’ve earned and maintained a terrific reputation. Now, as then, they toured all over the region, playing colleges and clubs.

On the drums is Jerry Micklic, from suburban Birmingham. When he put down the sticks he went home and ran a business for 60 years. He died in 2014, the father of three, grandfather of four.

Betty Jean Brown was the singer for the Knights. She was a freshman. She stayed in Auburn, where she taught elementary school, sold real estate, played piano for her church and sang in the choir for 60 years. She’s somewhere in this reunion choir.

She and her husband were married for 67 years before his death. They raised two sons and three grandchildren. They toured all over the country in their RV. It seemed a lovely little life. She passed away in 2021.

There’s no context included for this photo. It’s on a page highlighting skits. They must have been funny.

All of these will wind up in the Glomerata section (eventually). You can see others, here. Or maybe you’d like to click through to see all the covers. The university hosts their collection here.

photo / Thursday — Comments Off on Anyone else need anything assessed?
14
Nov 24

Anyone else need anything assessed?

The grading continued throughout the day. And then, finally, at just about dinner time, it was completed. That’s four classes worth of assignments, which I somehow managed to stretch into three solid days of grading.

I really should get more efficient with that.

Anyway, a few photos to mark the passing of the day.

I stepped outside for a few minutes to take a little break and accomplish something other than filling out rubrics and saw that this tree is once again too ambitious by about four months.

Maybe that’s just the way of it. I think I noticed this same thing on the same tree last year, though. I’ll have to pay attention the leaves next year to see what kind of tree it is, so I can look into this. Some mysteries are worth the seasons.

I put a blinky on a cup. We’re putting blinkies on all of the things.

I do not know why, but it could be that I’m getting a little punchy.

adventures / photo / Rowan / Wednesday — Comments Off on Walking around on campus
13
Nov 24

Walking around on campus

I put together a new look today. The classic gray sports coat, an off-setting light blue shirt. It came together pretty well, even as I struggled with the photo composition. I’m sure it was the natural light coming from the office window to my right.

The pocket square was a gift from my mother-in-law.

That poppy I got in Canada when The Yankee and I were in Ottawa for a conference in 2009. I wore that as we walked through the Canadian capital city. When we got home from that trip we stopped by a restaurant on the way home from the airport, a small little Italian restaurant. The guy that owned it still worked there every day, and he was at the register that night. When we went up to pay he choked up just a little bit, thanked me for wearing that flower, and pointed to the 8×10 photo on the counter. “My son,” he said, rubbing the top of the frame. The picture was of a U.S. Marine in his dress blues.

They all look the same, because they’re Marines, but they’re all different when you stare into the eyes. The modern Corps has only had so many changes to that photograph. They look just about the same, no matter the era. But that print was aged. Faded. The Marine, young and strong, but now gone. That man saw him every day at his store. And so now I wear that flower not just on Memorial Day, but throughout that week, to remember.

That tie was my uncle’s tie. His daughter, my cousin, sent it to me. After he died they gave a bunch of his ties to people at the funeral, but I couldn’t take one. She went through them later and found one for me. His preference in ties was louder than mine, and I don’t know how she worked all that out, but she pulled an understated one for me. I got it yesterday, somehow glad I hadn’t taken one then, but eternally proud for having received one now. And so I wore it today. That was a real gentleman’s tie.

On campus today we went to the university assembled, a regular presentation from the president. He’s a fascinating guy. Good at his job. A real leader — and that’s not a guarantee among university presidents. But Dr. Ali Houshmand is a real talent. He’s served in the role for 12 years, and has overseen a lot of growth, and continues to do so. The university assembled was an opportunity to talk a little about the future.

We sat on the front row.

On Wednesdays I usually talk about markers and local history, but today I thought I’d talk just a tiny bit about this campus’s history.

In the early 1900’s the state found they needed a third normal school — a school for teachers. The locals here lobbied for it to be housed in their community. By 1917, 107 residents raised more than $7,000 to purchase 25 acres. They told the state they’d give it to them if they picked their town for the school’s location. The 25 acres had belonged to the Whitney family, whp ran the famous Whitney Glass Works in the 19th century. On the property was the Whitney mansion and the carriage house.

The state saw the community’s enthusiasm, the free 25 acres, the beautiful location, the train lines and agriculture success and decided this was the right spot for a campus. And both buildings still stand. This is the back of the Carriage House, which we walked by after the big meeting.

The Carriage House is one of the oldest buildings on campus and is now used for our University Publications. You might think that’s why I liked it, but, really, I just enjoyed the texture of the cedar shake shingles.

Whitney Mansion is an Italianate architectural style. It was the president’s home until 1998, and is now it’s a museum and meeting center. I’ll show it to you one day, probably in the spring.

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