At least, for those of us denizens of Spartan Nation, it was (my apologies to those of my friends who are sports-disinclined; this will be my last sporting post for a while; I promise).
Against all odds, we won our Cotton Bowl game against the Battling Baptists of Baylor University. The final score was 42-41, but going into the fourth quarter we were behind 41-21, and we hadn't looked very good getting there. For that matter, even given the 21-0 differential in our favor for the final quarter, we didn't look all that good, even then. So many things had to tilt our way, even just to keep us in the game long enough not to lose it. Baylor had to miss a field goal (off the upright!) early in the quarter, which would have put the game out of reach. So when we drove the field to pull within 41-28 with 12 minutes remaining, we still had hopes of winning.
We recovered an onside kick, but then a couple plays later, our quarterback threw the most gawd-awful interception I think I've ever seen (this was far beyond the realms of 'what the hell was he thinking?', WAY past 'what the hell was THAT?'; it was just. . . gawd-awful. . .), which was duly returned 85 yards for the clinching touchdown against us. But wait, the referee is speaking on-camera - "illegal block in the back". So, no touchdown against us, just yet; we're still only down 13. Still and all, we failed to score, we lost the ball, and Baylor's offense, which we never really stopped all day, had the ball again. But Baylor turned the ball back over to us on downs, failing on a 4th-and-2 at our 40-yard line, and this time, we drove the field and scored again, with about 5 minutes left, cutting the margin to 41-35.
Once again, Baylor began marching up the field, eventually lining up for a field goal attempt with just over a minute left, which, if they made it, would put them up nine points, and make it all but impossible for us to score twice with a minute left to play (Just before the field-goal attempt, ESPN's Win Probability Tracker gave the Spartans a 0.4% chance of winning - 1 in 250). But we blocked the field goal, and returned the block to the Baylor 45-yard line. Our QB continued his erratic play, badly missing a couple wide-open receivers, but completing just enough passes to keep the drive alive (converting once on 4th-and-10). We finally scored the tying touchdown with 17 seconds left, and the extra point gave us our only lead of the second half. Baylor got the ball back, but we sacked their quarterback twice, and intercepted his 3rd-down pass to seal the victory.
Looking back at the game, I still don't quite know how we won it. Baylor threw for over 600 passing yards, completing over 70% of their passes. Bryce Petty, their quarterback, was amazing all night long, threading passes through tiny openings to incredibly fast receivers. Our defense, which has been the hallmark of our excellence in recent years, seemed to have no answers for him. But late in the game, we found ways to stop them, or at least, slow them down, just enough to get lucky and win the game. Unbelievable. One of the most incredible never-say-die games I've ever seen, even if I didn't care who won. Which, however, I did. Go Green!
And then, in the evening's playoff games, Oregon beat Florida State, and Ohio State upset Alabama. So, the only two teams to beat us all year will be playing each other for the national championship. Does that make us Number Three?
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Here we are in 2015, and we still don't have any snow to speak of in OurTown. I've been able to ride outdoors right up to the present, even getting in 10 miles on December 30th, before the sub-freezing temperatures just made my toes hurt. I ended with 74 miles in December (I've never even had half that before), and 1110 for the year 2014. Funny to think that I was sweating getting to four digits a month ago, and ended up going over 100 miles past that. Heck, this afternoon, I'm going out for my first 10 miles of the New Year, so 2015 is already well-begun.
Showing posts with label bicycling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bicycling. Show all posts
Friday, January 2, 2015
Sunday, December 14, 2014
A Pair of Heart-Warming Vignettes. . .
Or at least, so they seem to me. . .
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One night recently, Jenn and I were in our bedroom, preparing to retire for the night, when she looked at me, grinning broadly.
"We're doing it!" she said, enthusiastically.
Um, doing what, Sweetheart?
"We always said we wanted to grow old together, and we're doing it! We're growing old! Together!"
What could I say to that? Yes, we are. And there's no-one I'd rather grow old with than you, dear. . .
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I was a recent visitor to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn (a very cool place, if you're at all into historical machinery). At one point, I was walking across an open space past a group of a half-dozen or so girls, who were, I would guess, around seven or eight years of age. One of the girls, bolder than the others, perhaps noting my, um, girthiness, combined with my mostly-white beard and graying hair, approached me to ask, "Are you Santa Claus?"
I smiled at her benignly. "No," I replied. "I'm his brother."
As I walked away, I heard behind me a chatter of excited voices - "That guy is Santa Claus' brother!" "Really?!?" "No, he's not!" "Uh-HUH! He told me!"
And I smiled. . .
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The weather around these parts has been unseasonably warm/dry for December. High 30s/low 40s, and aside from a couple inches the week before Thanksgiving, we really haven't had any snow to speak of. And thus, I've gotten in two rides, for 27 miles, so far in December (and 1063 for the year). I've also flatted three of the last four times I've gone out on my bike (*aaaaarrrrrggggghhhh*). My working hypothesis is that, the roads being just slightly damp this time of year, stones stick to the surface of the tire, and slowly get pounded through to eventually puncture the inner tube. But. . . December miles. I'll take all I can get. . .
(*update, 17 December*)
I finally took my bike in to the shop to see if he could figure out any hidden causes of my recent rash of flats. Turns out, I had three pieces of glass lodged in my tire, none of 'em so deeply that I could discover 'em with the standard run of my fingers across the inside of the tire (I always do that because, you know, if you leave the cause of the flat in place, you're gonna get repeated flats. . .) (D'oh!) So, when I'd go out and ride for 20 miles or so, the little sharp edges would keep poking at the inner tube until, Voila! a complete puncture occurred. So, one new tire later, I'm (I hope) back in business. . .
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One night recently, Jenn and I were in our bedroom, preparing to retire for the night, when she looked at me, grinning broadly.
"We're doing it!" she said, enthusiastically.
Um, doing what, Sweetheart?
"We always said we wanted to grow old together, and we're doing it! We're growing old! Together!"
What could I say to that? Yes, we are. And there's no-one I'd rather grow old with than you, dear. . .
-------------------------
I was a recent visitor to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn (a very cool place, if you're at all into historical machinery). At one point, I was walking across an open space past a group of a half-dozen or so girls, who were, I would guess, around seven or eight years of age. One of the girls, bolder than the others, perhaps noting my, um, girthiness, combined with my mostly-white beard and graying hair, approached me to ask, "Are you Santa Claus?"
I smiled at her benignly. "No," I replied. "I'm his brother."
As I walked away, I heard behind me a chatter of excited voices - "That guy is Santa Claus' brother!" "Really?!?" "No, he's not!" "Uh-HUH! He told me!"
And I smiled. . .
-------------------------
The weather around these parts has been unseasonably warm/dry for December. High 30s/low 40s, and aside from a couple inches the week before Thanksgiving, we really haven't had any snow to speak of. And thus, I've gotten in two rides, for 27 miles, so far in December (and 1063 for the year). I've also flatted three of the last four times I've gone out on my bike (*aaaaarrrrrggggghhhh*). My working hypothesis is that, the roads being just slightly damp this time of year, stones stick to the surface of the tire, and slowly get pounded through to eventually puncture the inner tube. But. . . December miles. I'll take all I can get. . .
(*update, 17 December*)
I finally took my bike in to the shop to see if he could figure out any hidden causes of my recent rash of flats. Turns out, I had three pieces of glass lodged in my tire, none of 'em so deeply that I could discover 'em with the standard run of my fingers across the inside of the tire (I always do that because, you know, if you leave the cause of the flat in place, you're gonna get repeated flats. . .) (D'oh!) So, when I'd go out and ride for 20 miles or so, the little sharp edges would keep poking at the inner tube until, Voila! a complete puncture occurred. So, one new tire later, I'm (I hope) back in business. . .
Sunday, November 30, 2014
So Close. . .
Alas. . .
7M's football team lost a heart-breaker in the Division 5 State Championship game at the big domed stadium in Detroit, to the defending state champs. The final score was 24-20, and we can take some small comfort from the fact that it was one of the more intense, competitive, exciting games of the championship weekend (Michigan crowns 8 state champions, in divisions according to enrollment). . .
Our guys started off slowly, making uncharacteristic mistakes (it's possible they were in awe, or at least a bit jittery, at the whole ambiance of the dome, and the championship stakes), and fell behind 17-0 by the middle of the second quarter. They scored a touchdown just before halftime to make it 17-6 at the half (and those of us who keep track of such things were looking at each other saying, "hey, it's closer than it was in the semis". . .).
In the second half, the defense stiffened, and the offense started to find its rhythm. In the third quarter, we mounted a 96-yard drive to a touchdown, making the score 17-13. The defense stopped the opposing offense, and then the offense went back to work, starting again at our own 4-yard line. They marched up the field and scored the go-ahead touchdown, making the score 20-17 in our favor with just over 7 minutes left in the game (it turns out that that was the first time all year that our opponents had been behind after halftime).
But of course, our opponents didn't become the undefeated defending state champions by going away quietly when things get difficult. They began a slow, painstaking, 17-play drive, converting on fourth down three times, scoring the winning touchdown with a minute left in the game. Hats off to them.
I'm sure that both teams tested each other as severely as either of them had been tested all season. (Cliche alert!) It's just a shame that one of them had to lose (and all the moreso that the loser had to be us). Honestly (Cliche alert, redux) it was a great game, if you didn't care who won (but alas, I did. . .)
7M played a good game. He made a couple tackles (and got his name called over the PA at Ford Field!), and generally contributed to the success of our defense. And he was inconsolable at the final result (as were his teammates and coaches). I'm sure, at some point, they'll all gain some perspective on the privilege they had of just playing in such a game, and taking the champions to the limit of their ability, but for now, getting so close and coming up empty feels maddeningly cruel.
7M is a junior, as are the majority of the starters on the team, so they'll have another opportunity next year. I told 7M after the game that, starting now, he's one of the senior leaders on next year's team, and if they want to go back again and win, it will take even more hard work than what they put in to get so close this year. Nothing whatsoever is guaranteed them; they'll have to earn their spot all over again, and it'll be no easier next year. But they're in a position, having been there once, to understand what it takes. We will see what we will see. . .
But it has been a heck of a ride this time through. I'd love to do it again. . .
-------------------------
I was given a gratuitous gift of temperatures in the 50s this afternoon, so I went out on my bike for 21 miles. Combined with the 13 I did on Thanksgiving morning (which was cold, but clear and dry), I'm at 1036 for the year (and 160 for the month of November). Of course, any December miles are a gift, but as the eminently quotable Yogi Berra once said, it ain't over until it's over. . .
7M's football team lost a heart-breaker in the Division 5 State Championship game at the big domed stadium in Detroit, to the defending state champs. The final score was 24-20, and we can take some small comfort from the fact that it was one of the more intense, competitive, exciting games of the championship weekend (Michigan crowns 8 state champions, in divisions according to enrollment). . .
Our guys started off slowly, making uncharacteristic mistakes (it's possible they were in awe, or at least a bit jittery, at the whole ambiance of the dome, and the championship stakes), and fell behind 17-0 by the middle of the second quarter. They scored a touchdown just before halftime to make it 17-6 at the half (and those of us who keep track of such things were looking at each other saying, "hey, it's closer than it was in the semis". . .).
In the second half, the defense stiffened, and the offense started to find its rhythm. In the third quarter, we mounted a 96-yard drive to a touchdown, making the score 17-13. The defense stopped the opposing offense, and then the offense went back to work, starting again at our own 4-yard line. They marched up the field and scored the go-ahead touchdown, making the score 20-17 in our favor with just over 7 minutes left in the game (it turns out that that was the first time all year that our opponents had been behind after halftime).
But of course, our opponents didn't become the undefeated defending state champions by going away quietly when things get difficult. They began a slow, painstaking, 17-play drive, converting on fourth down three times, scoring the winning touchdown with a minute left in the game. Hats off to them.
I'm sure that both teams tested each other as severely as either of them had been tested all season. (Cliche alert!) It's just a shame that one of them had to lose (and all the moreso that the loser had to be us). Honestly (Cliche alert, redux) it was a great game, if you didn't care who won (but alas, I did. . .)
7M played a good game. He made a couple tackles (and got his name called over the PA at Ford Field!), and generally contributed to the success of our defense. And he was inconsolable at the final result (as were his teammates and coaches). I'm sure, at some point, they'll all gain some perspective on the privilege they had of just playing in such a game, and taking the champions to the limit of their ability, but for now, getting so close and coming up empty feels maddeningly cruel.
7M is a junior, as are the majority of the starters on the team, so they'll have another opportunity next year. I told 7M after the game that, starting now, he's one of the senior leaders on next year's team, and if they want to go back again and win, it will take even more hard work than what they put in to get so close this year. Nothing whatsoever is guaranteed them; they'll have to earn their spot all over again, and it'll be no easier next year. But they're in a position, having been there once, to understand what it takes. We will see what we will see. . .
But it has been a heck of a ride this time through. I'd love to do it again. . .
-------------------------
I was given a gratuitous gift of temperatures in the 50s this afternoon, so I went out on my bike for 21 miles. Combined with the 13 I did on Thanksgiving morning (which was cold, but clear and dry), I'm at 1036 for the year (and 160 for the month of November). Of course, any December miles are a gift, but as the eminently quotable Yogi Berra once said, it ain't over until it's over. . .
Sunday, November 23, 2014
Gooooooooooooal!
(with apologies to Andres Cantor)
As if there weren't enough going on in our life. . .
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This afternoon, I was the beneficiary of a completely gratuitous harmonic convergence ofwarm non-frigid temperatures, dry ice-free roads, no hardly any rain, and no other commitments on my schedule for just long enough to get in a 17-mile bike ride, bringing my total for the year to 1002 miles. At last! It wasn't all that long ago that I was pretty dubious as to whether four-digit miles was even possible. But I made it. A little good news, and a nice dose of endorphins, are much appreciated just now. . .
And of course, the year still has five or six more weeks to run, so we'll see if the tally runs any higher, or not. But at least my 'basic goal' is securely in the books. . .
-------------------------
7M's football team played in the state semi-finals yesterday evening. The team they played had been winning their games by the same kind of lop-sided scores we've been, and they were clearly the best team we've seen all season. Things didn't start out so well for our kids; they trailed, 14-0 at halftime, and looked flustered and out-of-sync. But something clicked in the halftime locker room. They received the second-half kickoff, and drove the field for a touchdown, cutting the deficit to 14-7. Their opponent took the ensuing kickoff and drove down to our 10-yard line. They tried to run a Statue-of-Liberty play, but fumbled, and our kids recovered. Another 90-yard drive, and the score was tied, 14-14. Our defense held, and then the offense drove to another touchdown, with just over three minutes left in the game. The defense held again, and then the offense ran out the clock, with the final score 21-14 in our favor.
It was an incredible game to watch, even if you didn't care who won. The fact that my son was playing for the winning team made it even better. It was good for them to realize that they could dig deep and win a game that hung very much in the balance right to the end. They haven't had many of those this year.
So now, they get to play for the state championship at Ford Field in Detroit next Saturday afternoon. What a thrill for these kids! The team we're playing is the defending state champion, so they won't be overawed by their surroundings, and they won't be intimidated. As hard as the semi-final was to win, the final will surely be even harder. But, what a run! What a great ride!
As if there weren't enough going on in our life. . .
-------------------------
This afternoon, I was the beneficiary of a completely gratuitous harmonic convergence of
And of course, the year still has five or six more weeks to run, so we'll see if the tally runs any higher, or not. But at least my 'basic goal' is securely in the books. . .
-------------------------
7M's football team played in the state semi-finals yesterday evening. The team they played had been winning their games by the same kind of lop-sided scores we've been, and they were clearly the best team we've seen all season. Things didn't start out so well for our kids; they trailed, 14-0 at halftime, and looked flustered and out-of-sync. But something clicked in the halftime locker room. They received the second-half kickoff, and drove the field for a touchdown, cutting the deficit to 14-7. Their opponent took the ensuing kickoff and drove down to our 10-yard line. They tried to run a Statue-of-Liberty play, but fumbled, and our kids recovered. Another 90-yard drive, and the score was tied, 14-14. Our defense held, and then the offense drove to another touchdown, with just over three minutes left in the game. The defense held again, and then the offense ran out the clock, with the final score 21-14 in our favor.
It was an incredible game to watch, even if you didn't care who won. The fact that my son was playing for the winning team made it even better. It was good for them to realize that they could dig deep and win a game that hung very much in the balance right to the end. They haven't had many of those this year.
So now, they get to play for the state championship at Ford Field in Detroit next Saturday afternoon. What a thrill for these kids! The team we're playing is the defending state champion, so they won't be overawed by their surroundings, and they won't be intimidated. As hard as the semi-final was to win, the final will surely be even harder. But, what a run! What a great ride!
(7M is number 33, just right of center)
Saturday, November 15, 2014
Woolly Bear
Or, Science From Your Bicycle Seat. . . Sorta. . .
As I'm out on my bike during the fall months, one of the more common sights I encounter is a woolly-bear caterpillar wriggling across the road as I roll by. I have no idea why the caterpillars like wriggling across the pavement; seems like a kind of death-wish to me. But then, possums are vertebrates and mammals, and I see lots of them along the side of the road, also, but usually in a more, um, deceased configuration. So, brain-mass-for-brain-mass, maybe the woolly-bear caterpillar is actually smarter than the possum, since most of the caterpillars I see are still, you know, actively wriggling.
Now, some of you will know that there is a folk-legend associated with the woolly worms, as to predicting the harshness of the coming winter (and if you didn't know that before now, you're welcome). The woolly-bear features prominently in the Old Farmer's Almanac's winter prognostications. The legend goes that, the more dark bands on the 'typical' woolly-bear, the harsher the coming winter stands to be (on the theory, I suppose, that the darker bands will absorb more heat, from the scarce amount that's available). Just for totally anecdotal purposes, last fall it was not uncommon to see completely-black woolly-bears, which portended a hard winter. And so it was. Some years ago, I recall seeing several woolly-bears that were all-brown, or even orange, which indicated a particularly mild winter in the offing, and so it was. The actual scientific basis for such predictions is, uh, a matter of some controversy, but there you have it; a peek behind the curtain at the Old Farmer's Almanac.
And in case anybody is wondering, this fall, the woolly-bears I've seen have been pretty nominally-colored, with about the middle third of them brown, and black on the ends. So, at least here in Michigan, that would portend a pretty normal winter, neither harsher nor milder than usual. In case, you know, you were wondering. Just remember, you heard it here first. . .
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On a related front, I got in 25 miles on my bike yesterday (with temps in the mid-30s and a few very scattered snow flakes), bringing my total for the year to 985. Just need to find 15 more miles before winter settles in for the duration. . .
This morning, there's a light dusting of snow on the ground. It wouldn't be enough to keep me from riding, especially with 1000 miles looming so close. But today is Opening Day of Firearm Deer Season in Michigan, and the light dusting of snow will be a boon to the hunters. And those hunters are part of the reason I decided to ride yesterday, and not today. And also why I wear a blaze-orange hoodie on my rides in November. . .
This morning, there's a light dusting of snow on the ground. It wouldn't be enough to keep me from riding, especially with 1000 miles looming so close. But today is Opening Day of Firearm Deer Season in Michigan, and the light dusting of snow will be a boon to the hunters. And those hunters are part of the reason I decided to ride yesterday, and not today. And also why I wear a blaze-orange hoodie on my rides in November. . .
7M's football team won their third-round playoff game Friday night, 49-21. They were behind, 14-12, just a minute before halftime, so the game was closer than the score might seem to indicate. This win puts them in the Division 5 state semi-finals; one more win, and they get to play in the dome in Detroit. Exciting times for those young men, for sure. . .
Sunday, October 26, 2014
Are You Ready for Some Football?
I don't usually post a whole lot about football around these parts, although in recent years, my Spartans have inspired me to wax rhapsodical from time to time. But this weekend was a kind of football-ish harmonic convergence around here. You would be very kind to indulge me. . .
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7M is a high-school junior, and a linebacker for his school's football team. He's pretty darn good (if I may say so myself), and is usually among the leading tacklers for his team. It never gets old, hearing your son's name called over the PA, I tell you.
His team has had a really good season so far, going undefeated, winning their league championship, and qualifying for the state playoffs, besides. This Friday night past, they played another undefeated, highly-ranked team, and won, 27-22. It was the only game all year that they won by less than 30 points. It was actually kinda fun to watch a game that wasn't played with a running clock for most of the second half. . .
The team is sufficiently highly ranked that it wouldn't be a surprise for them to be playing in the domed stadium in Detroit over Thanksgiving weekend (ie, for the state championship). There being four rounds of games to win before that comes to pass, I'll stop short of counting any unhatched chickens. But it's been a fun ride so far. . .
-------------------------
8M played football for the first time in his life this fall. He hasn't been as athletically-inclined as his brothers, and I'm fine with that; he sure doesn't have to have athletic success in order to please me. He has his own really unique personality, and his own set of unique skills and proclivities that make him a really interesting and fun person in his own very estimable right; we're glad to have him in our family, no matter how stunned we were to find ourselves expecting our eighth child deep into our 40s, all those years ago. . .
Anyway, it's been a lot of fun, watching him learn to play the game, progressing from "Where am I? What am I supposed to be doing? I have no clue. . ." to understanding his assignments, and making plays. Last week, he got his name called over the PA for the first time (he made a tackle), and in today's game, he actually carried the ball a couple times. Mind you, I'm not so much living vicariously through the success he's had (such as it is), as I am proud of him making the effort, and learning to do something that he started out utterly clueless of. Very cool. . .
-------------------------
And just for the sake of saying so, I have to mention the way my Spartans man-handled the hated Wolverines over the weekend, the sixth time we've beaten them in the last seven games. Truth to tell, I didn't think that the Spartans played all that well, certainly far short of their best. But even so, they dominated the blue-corn guys from start to finish. It's a sign of how strong our team is, I suppose, that they can dominate their rival while still not playing their best.
I'm still getting used to this whole rivalry-dominance thing. Our friends from down the road have had far more success against us, in my adult lifetime, than we've had against them (though we pretty much owned them in my childhood; just sayin'). I'm just glad (*shedding a small tear*) to have lived long enough to see the tables turned, at least for a while. . .
-------------------------
And then this morning, the Lions played the Sunday Brunch Special from Wembley Stadium in London. That's London, in the UK, not Ontario. Five time zones to the east of here. NFL marketing-types, gotta love 'em. . .
The Leos started out terrible, trailing 21-0 at halftime. But they turned the tables in the second half and ended up pulling out a 22-21 victory on a last-second field goal (some real bizarre doings in those final seconds, which I'll decline to discuss in detail, but it did make things, um interesting).
I'm not quite ready to start calling them "MY Lions" just yet (6-2 and leading the division has gone down in flames too often, too recently, for me to jump on the bandwagon quite this soon). But this could yet turn into one of the better years of my own personal memory. . .
-------------------------
So, lots of football this weekend, all the way from middle-school, to high school, to major-college, to the pros. And all of 'em went according to my own humble rooting interests, which was nice.
And the weather in these parts was spectacular this weekend - mid-60s, brilliant sunshine, cloudless azure skies. . . So I put another 32 miles on my bike, bringing me to 876 miles for the year. Barring any nasty weather wiping out entire weekends, I should just sneak past 1000 before the snow flies. But, we will see what we will see. . .
-------------------------
7M is a high-school junior, and a linebacker for his school's football team. He's pretty darn good (if I may say so myself), and is usually among the leading tacklers for his team. It never gets old, hearing your son's name called over the PA, I tell you.
His team has had a really good season so far, going undefeated, winning their league championship, and qualifying for the state playoffs, besides. This Friday night past, they played another undefeated, highly-ranked team, and won, 27-22. It was the only game all year that they won by less than 30 points. It was actually kinda fun to watch a game that wasn't played with a running clock for most of the second half. . .
The team is sufficiently highly ranked that it wouldn't be a surprise for them to be playing in the domed stadium in Detroit over Thanksgiving weekend (ie, for the state championship). There being four rounds of games to win before that comes to pass, I'll stop short of counting any unhatched chickens. But it's been a fun ride so far. . .
-------------------------
8M played football for the first time in his life this fall. He hasn't been as athletically-inclined as his brothers, and I'm fine with that; he sure doesn't have to have athletic success in order to please me. He has his own really unique personality, and his own set of unique skills and proclivities that make him a really interesting and fun person in his own very estimable right; we're glad to have him in our family, no matter how stunned we were to find ourselves expecting our eighth child deep into our 40s, all those years ago. . .
Anyway, it's been a lot of fun, watching him learn to play the game, progressing from "Where am I? What am I supposed to be doing? I have no clue. . ." to understanding his assignments, and making plays. Last week, he got his name called over the PA for the first time (he made a tackle), and in today's game, he actually carried the ball a couple times. Mind you, I'm not so much living vicariously through the success he's had (such as it is), as I am proud of him making the effort, and learning to do something that he started out utterly clueless of. Very cool. . .
-------------------------
And just for the sake of saying so, I have to mention the way my Spartans man-handled the hated Wolverines over the weekend, the sixth time we've beaten them in the last seven games. Truth to tell, I didn't think that the Spartans played all that well, certainly far short of their best. But even so, they dominated the blue-corn guys from start to finish. It's a sign of how strong our team is, I suppose, that they can dominate their rival while still not playing their best.
I'm still getting used to this whole rivalry-dominance thing. Our friends from down the road have had far more success against us, in my adult lifetime, than we've had against them (though we pretty much owned them in my childhood; just sayin'). I'm just glad (*shedding a small tear*) to have lived long enough to see the tables turned, at least for a while. . .
-------------------------
And then this morning, the Lions played the Sunday Brunch Special from Wembley Stadium in London. That's London, in the UK, not Ontario. Five time zones to the east of here. NFL marketing-types, gotta love 'em. . .
The Leos started out terrible, trailing 21-0 at halftime. But they turned the tables in the second half and ended up pulling out a 22-21 victory on a last-second field goal (some real bizarre doings in those final seconds, which I'll decline to discuss in detail, but it did make things, um interesting).
I'm not quite ready to start calling them "MY Lions" just yet (6-2 and leading the division has gone down in flames too often, too recently, for me to jump on the bandwagon quite this soon). But this could yet turn into one of the better years of my own personal memory. . .
-------------------------
So, lots of football this weekend, all the way from middle-school, to high school, to major-college, to the pros. And all of 'em went according to my own humble rooting interests, which was nice.
And the weather in these parts was spectacular this weekend - mid-60s, brilliant sunshine, cloudless azure skies. . . So I put another 32 miles on my bike, bringing me to 876 miles for the year. Barring any nasty weather wiping out entire weekends, I should just sneak past 1000 before the snow flies. But, we will see what we will see. . .
Sunday, October 19, 2014
Michigan Weather. . .
If you don't like it, goes the saying, wait five minutes. . . it'll change. . .
[This quote is actually attributed to Mark Twain, in reference to New England; I'm not sure Ol' Sam ever even set foot in the State of Michigan. I'm also reasonably sure that pretty much every state not named California has 'borrowed' this quote for itself.
The meteorologist-types of my acquaintance tell me that the Great Lakes actually have a 'moderating' effect on Michigan's climate. But the saying is common among my fellow-Michiganders (or are we Michiganians? I can never remember), whether justly or not. . .]
-------------------------
My Tigers having finished their season early this year, I'm left to talk about . . . the weather.
No, not really. I'll just revert to my other favorite autumnal blogging topic: tracking my bicycling miles.
This has been a tough cycling season for me. First off, last winter was extraordinarily long and cold, and whereas I'm usually out on my bike in early March, this year the snow and ice and cold temperatures didn't abate, so as to allow me to get out on the road, until the very last weekend of March. So I lost nearly a full month at the beginning of the season.
Then in April, I came down with a nasty respiratory virus. My normal protocol in such instances is to get plenty of rest, and cut back on my miles (riding, say, 17 miles instead of 25 or 30; gotta keep the legs working, dontchaknow), and in the fullness of time, the virus runs its course, and I haven't lost too much of my conditioning edge (heck, sometimes, a ride can even have a 'blow-the-gunk-out' effect on my respiratory system). This time, though, every time I put on even very modest miles, my lungs responded by getting even sicker, and threatening to fling small chunks of themselves through the air. I finally went to see my doctor, who prescribed an oral steroid for me, and that, plus a couple weeks off the bike, finally brought me back to my normal, radiant good health. But by that time, it was early May, and I was basically starting over at building up my miles, two months behind schedule.
And so it went. My schedule seemed to conspire against me more than usual, as well. Events like funerals, or marriage-enrichment conferences (Jenn and I started working in marriage-prep classes for our parish this year) kept coming up, pushing my rides to a less-convenient time, and obliging me to ride fewer miles than I'd planned. And then I had a mild relapse of the respiratory virus in August, so I had to skip another ride or two again.
So now, here I am, in mid-October, when I'd normally have something like 1200 miles on my legs and lungs (a couple years ago, I was over 1600 by late October), and wondering how many hundred more I'd be able to get in before the snow flies and the shoulders of the roads are covered with ice, relegating me to the stationary bike for the winter. And I've got 811 miles in for the year.
My 'basic goal' every year is 1000 miles, and I've usually reached that by early/mid-September, so I can set my sights higher. In recent years, I've averaged about 1400 miles a year, give-or-take, but this year, I'll have to be pretty diligent just to make my 'basic goal'.
Which brings us back to the weather. Fall weather can be unpredictable in my part of Michigan, as the seasonal transition takes hold. It is more prone to be rainy and windy during this time of the year, and the temperatures are trending downward. For several years now, I've been blessed to have most of our 'Weather' happen during the week, while I'm at work, and can't get out on the road, anyway. This year, though, the 'weather' has come on the weekends to a greater extent than usual, forcing me to consult forecasts, trying to work my riding schedule around the particular 3 hours when the rain will be taking a break. And of course, that leaves me subject to the, uh, accuracy of the forecasts.
So, three or four times in the last few weeks, I've targeted a three-hour window in the rain pattern, and gotten out on the road at the first sign of non-threatening skies, only to find that, 15 miles out in the countryside, the weather had a different schedule. Riding in the rain is not my favorite thing to do, but once you're out on the road, you don't have much choice. One recent Saturday, I was a little late getting out on the road, when I knew I had about a three-hour rain-free window. So, when I was about five miles from home, the skies opened up, and the wind-machine turned on (20-25 mph, directly into my face, which seemed kinda over-the-top on Mother Nature's part). It only lasted for a mile or so, but you can get awfully cold and wet in a mile of downpour, against a stiff wind. Another time, I left the house under blue skies, with the promise of the weatherman that I had a good, solid three hours before the rain returned. Within three miles, I was being pelted with sleet (SLEET! add my normal 12-mph to the wind-borne velocity of the falling ice-needles against my face, and you have a distinctly unpleasant experience), all the while seeing blue skies off to the west. For the rest of the ride, I was mostly riding under sunny blue skies, but as I turned onto the final 7-mile run back toward home, there was a large, dark, ominous-looking cloud directly ahead of me. Nothing to do but keep riding, and by the time I was even with where the black cloud had been, it had moved off to the east, and I missed getting rained on, for once. Which, you know, was just fine with me.
So anyway, as things sit, I'll have to ride some pretty aggressive miles, and hope that the weather stays ride-able into December, if I hope to make 1000 miles for the season. Which is by no means given.
But then, in the last two weeks, the typically schizoid fall weather, driving rain alternating with bright sunshine, has meant that I've twice driven home at the end of a work day, under a stunningly brilliant double rainbow, so, you know, there's that. . .
[This quote is actually attributed to Mark Twain, in reference to New England; I'm not sure Ol' Sam ever even set foot in the State of Michigan. I'm also reasonably sure that pretty much every state not named California has 'borrowed' this quote for itself.
The meteorologist-types of my acquaintance tell me that the Great Lakes actually have a 'moderating' effect on Michigan's climate. But the saying is common among my fellow-Michiganders (or are we Michiganians? I can never remember), whether justly or not. . .]
-------------------------
My Tigers having finished their season early this year, I'm left to talk about . . . the weather.
No, not really. I'll just revert to my other favorite autumnal blogging topic: tracking my bicycling miles.
This has been a tough cycling season for me. First off, last winter was extraordinarily long and cold, and whereas I'm usually out on my bike in early March, this year the snow and ice and cold temperatures didn't abate, so as to allow me to get out on the road, until the very last weekend of March. So I lost nearly a full month at the beginning of the season.
Then in April, I came down with a nasty respiratory virus. My normal protocol in such instances is to get plenty of rest, and cut back on my miles (riding, say, 17 miles instead of 25 or 30; gotta keep the legs working, dontchaknow), and in the fullness of time, the virus runs its course, and I haven't lost too much of my conditioning edge (heck, sometimes, a ride can even have a 'blow-the-gunk-out' effect on my respiratory system). This time, though, every time I put on even very modest miles, my lungs responded by getting even sicker, and threatening to fling small chunks of themselves through the air. I finally went to see my doctor, who prescribed an oral steroid for me, and that, plus a couple weeks off the bike, finally brought me back to my normal, radiant good health. But by that time, it was early May, and I was basically starting over at building up my miles, two months behind schedule.
And so it went. My schedule seemed to conspire against me more than usual, as well. Events like funerals, or marriage-enrichment conferences (Jenn and I started working in marriage-prep classes for our parish this year) kept coming up, pushing my rides to a less-convenient time, and obliging me to ride fewer miles than I'd planned. And then I had a mild relapse of the respiratory virus in August, so I had to skip another ride or two again.
So now, here I am, in mid-October, when I'd normally have something like 1200 miles on my legs and lungs (a couple years ago, I was over 1600 by late October), and wondering how many hundred more I'd be able to get in before the snow flies and the shoulders of the roads are covered with ice, relegating me to the stationary bike for the winter. And I've got 811 miles in for the year.
My 'basic goal' every year is 1000 miles, and I've usually reached that by early/mid-September, so I can set my sights higher. In recent years, I've averaged about 1400 miles a year, give-or-take, but this year, I'll have to be pretty diligent just to make my 'basic goal'.
Which brings us back to the weather. Fall weather can be unpredictable in my part of Michigan, as the seasonal transition takes hold. It is more prone to be rainy and windy during this time of the year, and the temperatures are trending downward. For several years now, I've been blessed to have most of our 'Weather' happen during the week, while I'm at work, and can't get out on the road, anyway. This year, though, the 'weather' has come on the weekends to a greater extent than usual, forcing me to consult forecasts, trying to work my riding schedule around the particular 3 hours when the rain will be taking a break. And of course, that leaves me subject to the, uh, accuracy of the forecasts.
So, three or four times in the last few weeks, I've targeted a three-hour window in the rain pattern, and gotten out on the road at the first sign of non-threatening skies, only to find that, 15 miles out in the countryside, the weather had a different schedule. Riding in the rain is not my favorite thing to do, but once you're out on the road, you don't have much choice. One recent Saturday, I was a little late getting out on the road, when I knew I had about a three-hour rain-free window. So, when I was about five miles from home, the skies opened up, and the wind-machine turned on (20-25 mph, directly into my face, which seemed kinda over-the-top on Mother Nature's part). It only lasted for a mile or so, but you can get awfully cold and wet in a mile of downpour, against a stiff wind. Another time, I left the house under blue skies, with the promise of the weatherman that I had a good, solid three hours before the rain returned. Within three miles, I was being pelted with sleet (SLEET! add my normal 12-mph to the wind-borne velocity of the falling ice-needles against my face, and you have a distinctly unpleasant experience), all the while seeing blue skies off to the west. For the rest of the ride, I was mostly riding under sunny blue skies, but as I turned onto the final 7-mile run back toward home, there was a large, dark, ominous-looking cloud directly ahead of me. Nothing to do but keep riding, and by the time I was even with where the black cloud had been, it had moved off to the east, and I missed getting rained on, for once. Which, you know, was just fine with me.
So anyway, as things sit, I'll have to ride some pretty aggressive miles, and hope that the weather stays ride-able into December, if I hope to make 1000 miles for the season. Which is by no means given.
But then, in the last two weeks, the typically schizoid fall weather, driving rain alternating with bright sunshine, has meant that I've twice driven home at the end of a work day, under a stunningly brilliant double rainbow, so, you know, there's that. . .
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Place Names in Michigan
I was born in Michigan, and I have lived virtually my entire life here. At one time or another, I've traveled to just about every corner of my native state. I'm sure that your states have some pretty fun place names, too (I'm thinking of one small town in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in particular) (also Pee Pee Creek, and its eponymous township, in Pike County, Ohio), but here's a sampler from where I live. . .
-------------------------
In Michigan, we have both a Hell and a Paradise. In Hell, there is, as you might suspect, a bar (called the Dam Site Inn, as it sits next to, you know, a dam), and a post-office/country store/gift shop (called The Handbasket), where you can buy a "We've Been Through Hell Together" bumper sticker, or a miniature baseball bat, bearing the inscription, "Genuine, Official Bat Out of Hell". (Incidentally, the road into Hell from the east is named Darwin Road; just sayin'. . .) On the other hand, Jen and I spent a night in Paradise on our honeymoon (really! It's the closest town to Tahquamenon Falls) (that's ta-KWA-ma-non). . .
We have both a Romulus and a Remus, which are pretty much the polar opposite of twin cities, even aside from the fact that they're 150 miles apart. Romulus is the home of Detroit / Wayne County Metropolitan Airport; Remus is the post office (and that's just about all there is there) closest to the farm where my dad grew up. . .
And not far from Remus is Mount Pleasant, which sits on some of the flattest land in the state of Michigan. Some years ago, there was a waggish bumper sticker proclaiming, "I Climbed Mount Pleasant". . .
Then there's Needmore; I've been there, and they do. . .
And Maybee; or, you know, Maybee not. . .
And speaking of bees, way Up North, there's a tiny village called Topinabee; go ahead, guess how to say it, I'll wait. . . It's top-in-a-BEE. . .
Then there's Paw Paw, which is not far from Kalamazoo, about which more below. As it turns out, it's actually named for the pawpaw fruit which was abundant in the area, once upon a time. Nowadays, it's more-or-less the center of Michigan's southern wine region, besides having a cute name. (And hey, we've got Paw Paw, Ohio's got Pee Pee; anybody care to raise their hand for Poo Poo?)
Michgan's 'Thumb' is home to a couple of my favorites: Bad Axe (which is, you know, a pretty BA name for a town) and Ubly. I understand what a bad axe is, as opposed to a good one; I'm just not sure I'd name a town after one. And then, I imagine the cheerleading squad from Ubly High chanting, "U - B - L - Y, We ain't got no alibi, we're Ubly!" And I wonder if the winner of the local beauty pageant might really be called 'Miss Ubly'. . .
Also in Michigan's Thumb is the village of Yale, pronounced just like the Ivy League university, which hosts the annual Bologna Festival, and elects a Bologna Queen to preside over the festivities. . .
-------------------------
Native-American-derived place names can be an ongoing fount of amusement, for folks whose minds twist that way -
Of course, as I promised, there's Kalamazoo - When I was in college, there was a guy from New Jersey who lived on my dorm floor, who went through most of the fall term insisting that Kalamazoo wasn't a real place, and someone had obviously made it up as a joke. Finally, we introduced him to a guy who was, you know, actually FROM Kalamazoo. . .
And heck, even Michigan itself, which derives from the Ojibwa 'mitchee-gamee' which, in turn, is related to 'gitchee-gumee' (as in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha), meaning 'Big Water', which seems sufficiently self-evident. . .
Also the Manitou Islands, in northern Lake Michigan.
Then there's Muskegon (mus-KEE-gun) and Ontonagon (on-tuh-NOGgin), which, in spite of what they look like, really aren't geometric figures. . .
On the border between Michigan's Upper Peninsula and Wisconsin lies the city of Menominee, which I can't say without imagining a cheesy chorus singing "doot-DOO-du-du-doo" in the background. . .
And of course, the aforementioned Tahquamenon Falls and Topinabee. And even Saginaw, though I've never hitch-hiked there. . .
Also Wequetonsing (wek-weh-TAHN-sing), just because it sounds cool. . .
-------------------------
The French fur traders who roamed the Great Lakes region before the days of settled civilization bequeathed us with some place names that are wonderfully counter-intuitive to English-speakers -
Start with one with which you're probably all familiar - Sault Ste. Marie (known more coloquially as 'The Soo', which is pretty much a dead giveaway for how to pronounce the first French word in the name), meaning, 'St. Mary's Falls, since there is a long stretch of rapids in the St. Mary's River there, which, in the fullness of time, necessitated the digging of the Soo Locks.
There's Mackinac Island and the Straits of Mackinac, spanned by a majestic bridge bearing the same name. The village on the south shore of the straits punted, and called themselves Mackinaw City, with a 'w'; I suppose, because they got tired of tourists from out-of-state calling them Mackin-ACK (somewhere, Billy Joel is singing, 'ack-ack-ack-ack-ack'). . .
Twenty miles or so east of the Straits of Mackinac is Bois Blanc Island ('white woods'). Which all the locals know is pronounced 'Bob-Lo'.
And Cadillac, which is in the opposite corner of the Lower Peninsula from where luxury cars are made. . .
-------------------------
We Michiganders (or Michiganians; I think it's still something of an open question) also seem to have a unique proclivity for 'mispronouncing' place names, particularly ones that have obviously been borrowed from other places and things whose pronunciation is well-established. A few examples -
Lake Orion - Not The Hunter from your star chart; this one is pronounced ORRY-un.
Charlotte - The emPHAsis goes on the second sylLABle: sher-LOTT (some locals aren't very punctilious about the 'r', and it comes out more like 'sha-LOTT'). Once, when I was in college, there was a girl named Charlotte in one of my classes (pronounced in the usual way); one might think, given the large city in North Carolina, and the eponymous children's-story spider, that the pronunciation of her name might seem somewhat obvious, but the instructor kept calling her sher-LOTT, for the entire term. . .
Milan - Named after the city in Italy, right? Maybe, but it's pronounced MY-lun. . .
Chesaning - Just look at it, and you think you know how to say it; but it's chess-NING
Pompeii - POMpey-eye; 'nuff said
And Durand - DOO-rand; I am not making any of this up.
Armada - Think of the Spanish fleet that sailed against England in the 1500s? Try ar-MAY-da. . .
Mikado - In a similar vein, it's mi-KAY-doh
Argentine - the final syllable sounds like the points of a fork (I know, right?)
And, it's not the general, common, pronunciation, but I can't resist mentioning that my mother-in-law (who, I should also mention, I dearly love, and is the best MIL anyone could ever have) pronounces Lake Huron, and the city of Port Huron, at its southern terminus, not HYER-ahn (or maybe HYOO-rawn, if you affect a slightly snooty accent), like most of us do, but homophonically with 'urine' (dropping the leading 'H', and clipping the second syllable just a bit); sometimes the city comes out sounding like 'porch urine', like your dog had an accident. I've not been above asking (teasingly) (very affectionately teasingly) if the water at the southern end of the lake had a yellowish hue, or what. . .
-------------------------
And finally, we come to my favorite river, the Tittabawassee River (pronounced pretty much how it looks: titta-ba-WAH-see); just because it's fun to say 'Tittabawassee'. . .
"Tittabawassee". . . heh. . .
*************************
And wow - yesterday got up to 60F around these parts (and Friday was in the 50s, so the snow was all gone). I really wasn't feeling good. At all. I think I had some kind of very mild flu, or something; just kinda achy and lethargic. But you don't get many 60-degree days in January around here, so I dragged the bike out of the basement and got out for 10 miles, just because. Now, 10 miles is just barely enough to get out to the cornfields and wave before heading back into town. But it's miles; real, live, outdoors-on-the-road miles (and it's odd, how 45 minutes on the road will wear me out WAY more than an hour on the stationary bike indoors). And this is now the 23rd consecutive month in which I've had outdoor miles; the last time I flipped the page on the calendar without any outdoor miles was at the end of February 2011. . .
-------------------------
In Michigan, we have both a Hell and a Paradise. In Hell, there is, as you might suspect, a bar (called the Dam Site Inn, as it sits next to, you know, a dam), and a post-office/country store/gift shop (called The Handbasket), where you can buy a "We've Been Through Hell Together" bumper sticker, or a miniature baseball bat, bearing the inscription, "Genuine, Official Bat Out of Hell". (Incidentally, the road into Hell from the east is named Darwin Road; just sayin'. . .) On the other hand, Jen and I spent a night in Paradise on our honeymoon (really! It's the closest town to Tahquamenon Falls) (that's ta-KWA-ma-non). . .
We have both a Romulus and a Remus, which are pretty much the polar opposite of twin cities, even aside from the fact that they're 150 miles apart. Romulus is the home of Detroit / Wayne County Metropolitan Airport; Remus is the post office (and that's just about all there is there) closest to the farm where my dad grew up. . .
And not far from Remus is Mount Pleasant, which sits on some of the flattest land in the state of Michigan. Some years ago, there was a waggish bumper sticker proclaiming, "I Climbed Mount Pleasant". . .
Then there's Needmore; I've been there, and they do. . .
And Maybee; or, you know, Maybee not. . .
And speaking of bees, way Up North, there's a tiny village called Topinabee; go ahead, guess how to say it, I'll wait. . . It's top-in-a-BEE. . .
Then there's Paw Paw, which is not far from Kalamazoo, about which more below. As it turns out, it's actually named for the pawpaw fruit which was abundant in the area, once upon a time. Nowadays, it's more-or-less the center of Michigan's southern wine region, besides having a cute name. (And hey, we've got Paw Paw, Ohio's got Pee Pee; anybody care to raise their hand for Poo Poo?)
Michgan's 'Thumb' is home to a couple of my favorites: Bad Axe (which is, you know, a pretty BA name for a town) and Ubly. I understand what a bad axe is, as opposed to a good one; I'm just not sure I'd name a town after one. And then, I imagine the cheerleading squad from Ubly High chanting, "U - B - L - Y, We ain't got no alibi, we're Ubly!" And I wonder if the winner of the local beauty pageant might really be called 'Miss Ubly'. . .
Also in Michigan's Thumb is the village of Yale, pronounced just like the Ivy League university, which hosts the annual Bologna Festival, and elects a Bologna Queen to preside over the festivities. . .
-------------------------
Native-American-derived place names can be an ongoing fount of amusement, for folks whose minds twist that way -
Of course, as I promised, there's Kalamazoo - When I was in college, there was a guy from New Jersey who lived on my dorm floor, who went through most of the fall term insisting that Kalamazoo wasn't a real place, and someone had obviously made it up as a joke. Finally, we introduced him to a guy who was, you know, actually FROM Kalamazoo. . .
And heck, even Michigan itself, which derives from the Ojibwa 'mitchee-gamee' which, in turn, is related to 'gitchee-gumee' (as in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha), meaning 'Big Water', which seems sufficiently self-evident. . .
Also the Manitou Islands, in northern Lake Michigan.
Then there's Muskegon (mus-KEE-gun) and Ontonagon (on-tuh-NOGgin), which, in spite of what they look like, really aren't geometric figures. . .
On the border between Michigan's Upper Peninsula and Wisconsin lies the city of Menominee, which I can't say without imagining a cheesy chorus singing "doot-DOO-du-du-doo" in the background. . .
And of course, the aforementioned Tahquamenon Falls and Topinabee. And even Saginaw, though I've never hitch-hiked there. . .
Also Wequetonsing (wek-weh-TAHN-sing), just because it sounds cool. . .
-------------------------
The French fur traders who roamed the Great Lakes region before the days of settled civilization bequeathed us with some place names that are wonderfully counter-intuitive to English-speakers -
Start with one with which you're probably all familiar - Sault Ste. Marie (known more coloquially as 'The Soo', which is pretty much a dead giveaway for how to pronounce the first French word in the name), meaning, 'St. Mary's Falls, since there is a long stretch of rapids in the St. Mary's River there, which, in the fullness of time, necessitated the digging of the Soo Locks.
There's Mackinac Island and the Straits of Mackinac, spanned by a majestic bridge bearing the same name. The village on the south shore of the straits punted, and called themselves Mackinaw City, with a 'w'; I suppose, because they got tired of tourists from out-of-state calling them Mackin-ACK (somewhere, Billy Joel is singing, 'ack-ack-ack-ack-ack'). . .
Twenty miles or so east of the Straits of Mackinac is Bois Blanc Island ('white woods'). Which all the locals know is pronounced 'Bob-Lo'.
And Cadillac, which is in the opposite corner of the Lower Peninsula from where luxury cars are made. . .
-------------------------
We Michiganders (or Michiganians; I think it's still something of an open question) also seem to have a unique proclivity for 'mispronouncing' place names, particularly ones that have obviously been borrowed from other places and things whose pronunciation is well-established. A few examples -
Lake Orion - Not The Hunter from your star chart; this one is pronounced ORRY-un.
Charlotte - The emPHAsis goes on the second sylLABle: sher-LOTT (some locals aren't very punctilious about the 'r', and it comes out more like 'sha-LOTT'). Once, when I was in college, there was a girl named Charlotte in one of my classes (pronounced in the usual way); one might think, given the large city in North Carolina, and the eponymous children's-story spider, that the pronunciation of her name might seem somewhat obvious, but the instructor kept calling her sher-LOTT, for the entire term. . .
Milan - Named after the city in Italy, right? Maybe, but it's pronounced MY-lun. . .
Chesaning - Just look at it, and you think you know how to say it; but it's chess-NING
Pompeii - POMpey-eye; 'nuff said
And Durand - DOO-rand; I am not making any of this up.
Armada - Think of the Spanish fleet that sailed against England in the 1500s? Try ar-MAY-da. . .
Mikado - In a similar vein, it's mi-KAY-doh
Argentine - the final syllable sounds like the points of a fork (I know, right?)
And, it's not the general, common, pronunciation, but I can't resist mentioning that my mother-in-law (who, I should also mention, I dearly love, and is the best MIL anyone could ever have) pronounces Lake Huron, and the city of Port Huron, at its southern terminus, not HYER-ahn (or maybe HYOO-rawn, if you affect a slightly snooty accent), like most of us do, but homophonically with 'urine' (dropping the leading 'H', and clipping the second syllable just a bit); sometimes the city comes out sounding like 'porch urine', like your dog had an accident. I've not been above asking (teasingly) (very affectionately teasingly) if the water at the southern end of the lake had a yellowish hue, or what. . .
-------------------------
And finally, we come to my favorite river, the Tittabawassee River (pronounced pretty much how it looks: titta-ba-WAH-see); just because it's fun to say 'Tittabawassee'. . .
"Tittabawassee". . . heh. . .
*************************
And wow - yesterday got up to 60F around these parts (and Friday was in the 50s, so the snow was all gone). I really wasn't feeling good. At all. I think I had some kind of very mild flu, or something; just kinda achy and lethargic. But you don't get many 60-degree days in January around here, so I dragged the bike out of the basement and got out for 10 miles, just because. Now, 10 miles is just barely enough to get out to the cornfields and wave before heading back into town. But it's miles; real, live, outdoors-on-the-road miles (and it's odd, how 45 minutes on the road will wear me out WAY more than an hour on the stationary bike indoors). And this is now the 23rd consecutive month in which I've had outdoor miles; the last time I flipped the page on the calendar without any outdoor miles was at the end of February 2011. . .
Saturday, December 8, 2012
Briefly. . .
Today, the temperature is hovering right around freezing, and there's a wet mix of snow and rain intermittently falling from the sky. Besides which, I don't feel very well (too much rich holiday food; or maybe a really mild flu). So, I won't be out on my bike today, the first weekend since February that I haven't been.
I took a vacation day this past Tuesday, to get some medical tests done, and it turned out to be such a nice day that I went out for 24 miles in the afternoon, bringing my total for the year to 1821 miles. I sure didn't see that coming.
There are still a couple weeks left in Calendar Year 2012, so that number could possibly crawl a bit higher. But even if not, my legs, to say nothing of my heart and lungs (or my butt), can be happy with a job well done for this year. . .
I took a vacation day this past Tuesday, to get some medical tests done, and it turned out to be such a nice day that I went out for 24 miles in the afternoon, bringing my total for the year to 1821 miles. I sure didn't see that coming.
There are still a couple weeks left in Calendar Year 2012, so that number could possibly crawl a bit higher. But even if not, my legs, to say nothing of my heart and lungs (or my butt), can be happy with a job well done for this year. . .
Sunday, November 11, 2012
Just Shoot Me. . .
My friend Lime has been posting in recent days/weeks about the joys of her quest for a new job. On one of her recent posts, Daryl left a comment that reminded me, yet again, of a story from my own young life (which actually happened enough years ago as to call into question the actual, factual youth of said life of mine, but whatchagonnado?). . .
-------------------------
Way back when I worked for my previous employer, who was also my first 'real' employer, I was an eager young engineer, fresh out of college. Our company was, in those days, something of a pioneer in bringing the new-fangled Computer-Aided Design (CAD) stuff into regular use in the wheel industry (our motto: 'Re-Inventing the Wheel Daily') (Yes, I know I used that joke in another post, just recently; sue me). That fancy-schmancy CAD stuff had originated in the Aircraft industry, and was fairly new in the Auto industry, but li'l ol' wheel companies like us hadn't much gotten around to it yet, in those days. So it was a kinda cool time to be working there, and my boss got to go on all sorts ofboondoggles trips explaining how a mid-size company like ours was using CAD, and more to the point, how we justified spending that kind of money.
As it turned out, we settled into a bit of an unusual mix of hardware and software, but it worked well for us. Before long, our CAD system had grown to the point that it was beyond the modest abilities of us engineers to maintain it (besides which, we really wanted to be working on 'engineering stuff', not taking care of a bunch of computer hardware and software), so we decided to hire a 'computer guy' to take care of our CAD system for us. We talked to the IT department (which, in those days, was called 'Data Processing'), to see if they had anyone they could assign to us, who could run our quirky little mix of stuff. They didn't have anyone to fit our needs, so we set about looking for someone who could.
Now, we used to go to all the various and sundry 'User's Conferences' for the hardware and software we were using (which, I suppose, is why they were called 'User's Conferences'), and we would meet other folks who were using the same stuff we were, and we'd get new ideas for how to do things differently/better than we were. It was at one of these User's Conferences that we were talking to a young fellow (even younger than me, and that was back when I was still young) who worked for a company that used the exact same quirky mix of hardware and software that we did, so we could talk to each other with a high degree of familiarity with what each other were doing. At one conference, he told us that he was a bit disillusioned with his employer, and inquired as to whether or not we might have a position for him, since he was already familiar with what we were doing.
Well, that just seemed too good to be true. We had just decided to look for someone who could tend our oddball little CAD system, and here was perhaps the one guy in the United States (or the world, for that matter) who could just walk through our door and do the job, from Day One. So we scheduled a set of interviews for him, barely containing our glee at having found the single, best, perfect guy, before we really even started looking.
So, we brought him in and had him talk to our engineering bosses, and everyone agreed that he was perfect for us, almost like the heavens had opened and dropped him in our laps.
The final interview of the day was with our Data Processing guys, mainly as a courtesy, since his job would actually be a 'computer job', even though he'd be working for Engineering. He spoke with the DP guys, then we all went out to dinner, looking ahead to when he could start working for us, and all the ways he'd help us do stuff better, faster, etc, etc. We all shook hands, and he got back on his plane to head home and wait for our offer.
The next day, all the interviewers got together to discuss the interviews, and come to a consensus on what kind of offer to make him. All of the engineering guys were beaming at the way the perfect guy had just fallen so serendipitously into our laps, but the DP guys were strangely silent. When we asked them what they thought, they said, "He doesn't know COBOL." (At this late date, how many of the elderly among you even remember what COBOL was?)
"So what?" we said. "The job doesn't have anything to do with COBOL. He's a perfect fit for what we need. What's COBOL got to do with anything?"
"Well, we have a corporate hiring policy that all DP employees have to know COBOL. And he'll be a DP employee. He doesn't know COBOL, so we can't hire him."
"But he'll be working in Engineering! We'll do his performance reviews, and all his work will be accountable to us!"
"Doesn't matter. He'll be under our organization, and we can't hire anybody who doesn't know COBOL. If he ever wants to transfer away from Engineering, we'll be stuck with him."
"He can take a COBOL class, if he needs to know COBOL."
"But he doesn't know it now, so we can't hire him."
And so it went, back and forth, around and around, for over an hour. We tried to insist that his job shouldn't be under the DP 'umbrella', and that he should be a direct employee of Engineering, but the DP Manager and his VP insisted that anybody who actually touched a computer was part of the DP organization, and at some point, the Director of Engineering and the Engineering VP gave in on that point, and then the battle was lost.
And that's how the perfect guy CAME TO US, looking for a job, but we didn't hire him, over a policy point that had NOTHING to do with, you know, the actual job (to say nothing of the fact that COBOL was already well on its way into obsolescence by then, and had been for a few years).
Looking back, it had way more to do with corporate politics and internal empire-building, and who had the 'cheese' to tell the other one how things were gonna go, than anything else. I'm sure that, by the time the decision was communicated to our erstwhile would-be employee, he was just as happy not to have come to work for us. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised that, at that point, the company had maybe ten years left in its viable lifetime. . .
*************************
Yesterday was a beautiful day around here, what they used to call Indian Summer when I was growing up - it was 65F in the afternoon, just before sunset. I was planning to ride 25-30 miles, but about 5 miles in, I decided that it was so nice that I'd stretch it to 36 (and, you know, you don't get many opportunities to be out in shorts in November, so when they come along, you gotta make the most of 'em). Along with the 25 I rode last weekend, and the 24 I rode on Election Day (which my company very helpfully gave us off), that brought me to 1702 for the year. Oh, yes, I knew exactly how many miles I needed to pass the next milestone; at this time of the year, better to take the miles when you can get them, because you never know when the cold and snow will call the riding season to a screeching halt. I'd have been really frustrated to finish yesterday's ride in the 1690s, and have it snow 6 inches before I could get the last few miles in. And there is snow in the forecast for Monday/Tuesday (it's still pretty rare for it to stay this early, but you never know). So, woo-hoo! and all that. It's been a good year of riding. I don't think 1800 is very likely, but I'll just keep riding, and we'll see where it ends up. . .
-------------------------
Way back when I worked for my previous employer, who was also my first 'real' employer, I was an eager young engineer, fresh out of college. Our company was, in those days, something of a pioneer in bringing the new-fangled Computer-Aided Design (CAD) stuff into regular use in the wheel industry (our motto: 'Re-Inventing the Wheel Daily') (Yes, I know I used that joke in another post, just recently; sue me). That fancy-schmancy CAD stuff had originated in the Aircraft industry, and was fairly new in the Auto industry, but li'l ol' wheel companies like us hadn't much gotten around to it yet, in those days. So it was a kinda cool time to be working there, and my boss got to go on all sorts of
As it turned out, we settled into a bit of an unusual mix of hardware and software, but it worked well for us. Before long, our CAD system had grown to the point that it was beyond the modest abilities of us engineers to maintain it (besides which, we really wanted to be working on 'engineering stuff', not taking care of a bunch of computer hardware and software), so we decided to hire a 'computer guy' to take care of our CAD system for us. We talked to the IT department (which, in those days, was called 'Data Processing'), to see if they had anyone they could assign to us, who could run our quirky little mix of stuff. They didn't have anyone to fit our needs, so we set about looking for someone who could.
Now, we used to go to all the various and sundry 'User's Conferences' for the hardware and software we were using (which, I suppose, is why they were called 'User's Conferences'), and we would meet other folks who were using the same stuff we were, and we'd get new ideas for how to do things differently/better than we were. It was at one of these User's Conferences that we were talking to a young fellow (even younger than me, and that was back when I was still young) who worked for a company that used the exact same quirky mix of hardware and software that we did, so we could talk to each other with a high degree of familiarity with what each other were doing. At one conference, he told us that he was a bit disillusioned with his employer, and inquired as to whether or not we might have a position for him, since he was already familiar with what we were doing.
Well, that just seemed too good to be true. We had just decided to look for someone who could tend our oddball little CAD system, and here was perhaps the one guy in the United States (or the world, for that matter) who could just walk through our door and do the job, from Day One. So we scheduled a set of interviews for him, barely containing our glee at having found the single, best, perfect guy, before we really even started looking.
So, we brought him in and had him talk to our engineering bosses, and everyone agreed that he was perfect for us, almost like the heavens had opened and dropped him in our laps.
The final interview of the day was with our Data Processing guys, mainly as a courtesy, since his job would actually be a 'computer job', even though he'd be working for Engineering. He spoke with the DP guys, then we all went out to dinner, looking ahead to when he could start working for us, and all the ways he'd help us do stuff better, faster, etc, etc. We all shook hands, and he got back on his plane to head home and wait for our offer.
The next day, all the interviewers got together to discuss the interviews, and come to a consensus on what kind of offer to make him. All of the engineering guys were beaming at the way the perfect guy had just fallen so serendipitously into our laps, but the DP guys were strangely silent. When we asked them what they thought, they said, "He doesn't know COBOL." (At this late date, how many of the elderly among you even remember what COBOL was?)
"So what?" we said. "The job doesn't have anything to do with COBOL. He's a perfect fit for what we need. What's COBOL got to do with anything?"
"Well, we have a corporate hiring policy that all DP employees have to know COBOL. And he'll be a DP employee. He doesn't know COBOL, so we can't hire him."
"But he'll be working in Engineering! We'll do his performance reviews, and all his work will be accountable to us!"
"Doesn't matter. He'll be under our organization, and we can't hire anybody who doesn't know COBOL. If he ever wants to transfer away from Engineering, we'll be stuck with him."
"He can take a COBOL class, if he needs to know COBOL."
"But he doesn't know it now, so we can't hire him."
And so it went, back and forth, around and around, for over an hour. We tried to insist that his job shouldn't be under the DP 'umbrella', and that he should be a direct employee of Engineering, but the DP Manager and his VP insisted that anybody who actually touched a computer was part of the DP organization, and at some point, the Director of Engineering and the Engineering VP gave in on that point, and then the battle was lost.
And that's how the perfect guy CAME TO US, looking for a job, but we didn't hire him, over a policy point that had NOTHING to do with, you know, the actual job (to say nothing of the fact that COBOL was already well on its way into obsolescence by then, and had been for a few years).
Looking back, it had way more to do with corporate politics and internal empire-building, and who had the 'cheese' to tell the other one how things were gonna go, than anything else. I'm sure that, by the time the decision was communicated to our erstwhile would-be employee, he was just as happy not to have come to work for us. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised that, at that point, the company had maybe ten years left in its viable lifetime. . .
*************************
Yesterday was a beautiful day around here, what they used to call Indian Summer when I was growing up - it was 65F in the afternoon, just before sunset. I was planning to ride 25-30 miles, but about 5 miles in, I decided that it was so nice that I'd stretch it to 36 (and, you know, you don't get many opportunities to be out in shorts in November, so when they come along, you gotta make the most of 'em). Along with the 25 I rode last weekend, and the 24 I rode on Election Day (which my company very helpfully gave us off), that brought me to 1702 for the year. Oh, yes, I knew exactly how many miles I needed to pass the next milestone; at this time of the year, better to take the miles when you can get them, because you never know when the cold and snow will call the riding season to a screeching halt. I'd have been really frustrated to finish yesterday's ride in the 1690s, and have it snow 6 inches before I could get the last few miles in. And there is snow in the forecast for Monday/Tuesday (it's still pretty rare for it to stay this early, but you never know). So, woo-hoo! and all that. It's been a good year of riding. I don't think 1800 is very likely, but I'll just keep riding, and we'll see where it ends up. . .
Sunday, October 28, 2012
A New PR. . .
All the leaves are down,
And the sky is gray. . .
OK, not quite all of the leaves are down, but about 90% of 'em are, and the ones that are left are mostly all brown and shriveled. But the sky today was a friendly bright blue, with a few puffy white clouds scattered about. The temperature topped out just below 50F, so I broke out the sweats for my ride yesterday.
I did 32 miles, bringing my total for the year to 1617, a full eight miles more than I did two years ago. And still roughly a month left in the riding season, before the snow and ice and cold of winter set in in earnest. So there's still a decent chance that I could go above 1700 miles for the season, and wouldn't that be cool?
-------------------------
And things are not going well for my Tigers. Their ace aside, they've pitched well enough. Actually, they've pitched REALLY well. But their bats have utterly deserted them, especially in clutch situations, like bases-loaded, one out. In a 3-0 hole, it will take a comeback verging on the miraculous (yes, Suldog, I know about your '04 Red Sox; but that's one in how many hundred 7-game series?). This could be over tomorrow, if we don't start getting a few timely hits.
(*sigh*)
At least my Spartans won. . .
And the sky is gray. . .
OK, not quite all of the leaves are down, but about 90% of 'em are, and the ones that are left are mostly all brown and shriveled. But the sky today was a friendly bright blue, with a few puffy white clouds scattered about. The temperature topped out just below 50F, so I broke out the sweats for my ride yesterday.
I did 32 miles, bringing my total for the year to 1617, a full eight miles more than I did two years ago. And still roughly a month left in the riding season, before the snow and ice and cold of winter set in in earnest. So there's still a decent chance that I could go above 1700 miles for the season, and wouldn't that be cool?
-------------------------
And things are not going well for my Tigers. Their ace aside, they've pitched well enough. Actually, they've pitched REALLY well. But their bats have utterly deserted them, especially in clutch situations, like bases-loaded, one out. In a 3-0 hole, it will take a comeback verging on the miraculous (yes, Suldog, I know about your '04 Red Sox; but that's one in how many hundred 7-game series?). This could be over tomorrow, if we don't start getting a few timely hits.
(*sigh*)
At least my Spartans won. . .
Sunday, September 30, 2012
It Just Snapped
By now, I'm sure most of my readers are familiar with my bicycling addiction hobby. In fact, the 35 miles I rode yesterday (a beautiful, sunny 70F-degree day, with cotton-candy cumulus clouds and the first hints of fall color) brought my total for the year to 1502 miles. It's only the second time in the last 15-or-so years that I've reached that many. With the riding season in these parts typically lasting until Thanksgiving or so, there's a strong likelihood that I'll surpass the 1609 I rode in 2010. Woo-hoo!
Anyway, my friend Xavier recently prodded my memory cells for a story that I was sure I'd told before, but I couldn't find it anywhere in my archives. So, here you are. . .
-------------------------
I have always enjoyed cycling. When I was growing up, I would ride my bike from one end of my hometown Up North, to the other, exploring new corners of town that I hadn't seen before, sometimes for many miles in a day, by the time I returned home at dinnertime. My bike was my main form of transportation, in the parts of the year where the sidewalks weren't snow-covered (which, even as far north as we were, was still roughly from April until Thanksgiving) - I would ride my bike to the beach, to my ballgames (both formal and informal), and on my early-morning paper route (my dad would drive me during the winter months; he was The Man!).
When I went to college, I took my old paper-route bike with me. It was a good, sturdy old bike, and not nearly fancy enough for anyone to want to steal it. So, for three years of the five-plus I spent in college, I rode my bike to get around campus. I finally lost that old bike when I lived with some buddies in a house during the summer after my junior year. At the end of the summer, I moved back into the dorm, and left my bike in the garage, figuring I'd come back for it in a couple days. Which I did. But when I went back to retrieve it, the new tenants in the house had run over it with their car, leaving a twisted mess of metal and rubber on the garage floor. At that point, I figured it was their problem, so I left it there.
Not long after Jen and I were married, I bought us both nice touring bikes (hers was a mixte-frame, a type of 'women's' bike that was only around for a few years in the early 80s), and I started riding the back-country roads around Our Town, for tens of miles at a stretch. I quickly found that I much preferred cycling to, say, jogging, as a form of exercise, since I could go fast enough that the scenery changed often enough to be interesting, and turning the pedals was a lot less stressful on my knees and legs than running. Particularly to the northeast of town, there were some really nice, interesting, picturesque routes, that quickly became my favorites.
As I became a more avid cyclist, I made contacts with other avid cyclists, and even convinced a few of my friends to join the ranks. One such friend was a guy named Tony. I convinced him to do DALMAC with me, and before long, we were riding together regularly.
One of my favorite routes goes through some rolling farmland northeast of Our Town. It also passes through some nicely wooded stretches, and the rolling-ness of the terrain, besides being pretty, also makes the cycling interesting. At one stretch, it passes through some low-lying wetlands, where the swampy ground comes right up alongside the roadway.
One time, Tony and I were riding through this wetland stretch, when we espied a large snapping turtle by the side of the road, his front paws on the pavement, poised to head out onto the roadway, where the imminent end of his existence, in the form of being squashed by a passing truck, certainly awaited him. This was a BIG turtle; a typical snapper in these parts might be anywhere from 8-12 inches in shell diameter, but this guy was at least 15 inches across.
Tony and I rolled our bikes to a stop, first, just because we wanted to take a look at a truly impressive, and duly formidable-looking, critter. And, noting how poorly-directed he was, we contemplated how we might redirect him back toward the marsh he'd crawled out of, while simultaneously maintaining the structural integrity of all our fingers, and other body parts.
I suppose that, if we'd been more experienced in dealing with snapping turtles, we might have attempted the old grab-his-tail maneuver, but that seemed fraught with peril for someone, like Tony or me, who didn't really know what he was doing. We thought about nudging his hind-quarters with our shod feet, but that didn't seem so smart, either.
Finally, Tony hit upon an idea. He unclipped the pump that he carried with him on his bike (in case, you know, he had to fix a flat, or anything like that), and thought that perhaps he could use the pump as a prod, to move the turtle around, and get him headed back toward the swamp.
In those days, the external tube of those frame-mounted pumps was usually aluminum, but the central piston-shaft was steel, maybe a quarter-inch in diameter; a fairly stout chunk of metal.
So Tony began prodding the critter in the area of his front shoulder, pressing on his hard shell, so as not to press into any soft flesh. He shoved it once, twice, and again, turning it by 30 degrees or so from where it had been pointed. He smiled - his plan was working!
About that time, the turtle decided that it had had quite enough of being jacked around by Tony's bike pump, thank-you-very-much. BOOM! It struck out with its head, snapping the pump in two, even through the steel shaft. Tony was left holding half a pump, looking dumbly at it, muttering, "My pump. . ." And we looked at each other, with looks of 'man, are we glad we didn't try to use any of our actual body parts on it. . .'
Actually, I'm not sure we were quite deterred by the mangling of Tony's pump. We looked around, finding a stick about three feet long, and an inch in diameter, and tried to repeat the pump strategy, but the turtle, figuring he'd already made his point, was in no mood to endure any more jostling, and he quickly did to the stick what he'd done to Tony's pump. And at that point, we figured, you know, we tried, but the turtle just didn't want our help. So we got back on our bikes and rode on.
"Stupid turtle!" Tony called over his shoulder as we rolled away. "I hope you get run over!" Then he turned back to me and muttered, "Damn turtle broke my pump!
-------------------------
I half-expected to see, the next time we passed that way, a week or two hence, the gooey squashed remains of our snappy friend. Flattened turtle shells are not an uncommon sight along the side of the road, after all. But we never did see anything that looked remotely like the shattered remnants of a 15-inch snapping turtle. So, you know, maybe he didn't need our help after all. . .
Anyway, my friend Xavier recently prodded my memory cells for a story that I was sure I'd told before, but I couldn't find it anywhere in my archives. So, here you are. . .
-------------------------
I have always enjoyed cycling. When I was growing up, I would ride my bike from one end of my hometown Up North, to the other, exploring new corners of town that I hadn't seen before, sometimes for many miles in a day, by the time I returned home at dinnertime. My bike was my main form of transportation, in the parts of the year where the sidewalks weren't snow-covered (which, even as far north as we were, was still roughly from April until Thanksgiving) - I would ride my bike to the beach, to my ballgames (both formal and informal), and on my early-morning paper route (my dad would drive me during the winter months; he was The Man!).
When I went to college, I took my old paper-route bike with me. It was a good, sturdy old bike, and not nearly fancy enough for anyone to want to steal it. So, for three years of the five-plus I spent in college, I rode my bike to get around campus. I finally lost that old bike when I lived with some buddies in a house during the summer after my junior year. At the end of the summer, I moved back into the dorm, and left my bike in the garage, figuring I'd come back for it in a couple days. Which I did. But when I went back to retrieve it, the new tenants in the house had run over it with their car, leaving a twisted mess of metal and rubber on the garage floor. At that point, I figured it was their problem, so I left it there.
Not long after Jen and I were married, I bought us both nice touring bikes (hers was a mixte-frame, a type of 'women's' bike that was only around for a few years in the early 80s), and I started riding the back-country roads around Our Town, for tens of miles at a stretch. I quickly found that I much preferred cycling to, say, jogging, as a form of exercise, since I could go fast enough that the scenery changed often enough to be interesting, and turning the pedals was a lot less stressful on my knees and legs than running. Particularly to the northeast of town, there were some really nice, interesting, picturesque routes, that quickly became my favorites.
As I became a more avid cyclist, I made contacts with other avid cyclists, and even convinced a few of my friends to join the ranks. One such friend was a guy named Tony. I convinced him to do DALMAC with me, and before long, we were riding together regularly.
One of my favorite routes goes through some rolling farmland northeast of Our Town. It also passes through some nicely wooded stretches, and the rolling-ness of the terrain, besides being pretty, also makes the cycling interesting. At one stretch, it passes through some low-lying wetlands, where the swampy ground comes right up alongside the roadway.
One time, Tony and I were riding through this wetland stretch, when we espied a large snapping turtle by the side of the road, his front paws on the pavement, poised to head out onto the roadway, where the imminent end of his existence, in the form of being squashed by a passing truck, certainly awaited him. This was a BIG turtle; a typical snapper in these parts might be anywhere from 8-12 inches in shell diameter, but this guy was at least 15 inches across.
Tony and I rolled our bikes to a stop, first, just because we wanted to take a look at a truly impressive, and duly formidable-looking, critter. And, noting how poorly-directed he was, we contemplated how we might redirect him back toward the marsh he'd crawled out of, while simultaneously maintaining the structural integrity of all our fingers, and other body parts.
I suppose that, if we'd been more experienced in dealing with snapping turtles, we might have attempted the old grab-his-tail maneuver, but that seemed fraught with peril for someone, like Tony or me, who didn't really know what he was doing. We thought about nudging his hind-quarters with our shod feet, but that didn't seem so smart, either.
Finally, Tony hit upon an idea. He unclipped the pump that he carried with him on his bike (in case, you know, he had to fix a flat, or anything like that), and thought that perhaps he could use the pump as a prod, to move the turtle around, and get him headed back toward the swamp.
In those days, the external tube of those frame-mounted pumps was usually aluminum, but the central piston-shaft was steel, maybe a quarter-inch in diameter; a fairly stout chunk of metal.
So Tony began prodding the critter in the area of his front shoulder, pressing on his hard shell, so as not to press into any soft flesh. He shoved it once, twice, and again, turning it by 30 degrees or so from where it had been pointed. He smiled - his plan was working!
About that time, the turtle decided that it had had quite enough of being jacked around by Tony's bike pump, thank-you-very-much. BOOM! It struck out with its head, snapping the pump in two, even through the steel shaft. Tony was left holding half a pump, looking dumbly at it, muttering, "My pump. . ." And we looked at each other, with looks of 'man, are we glad we didn't try to use any of our actual body parts on it. . .'
Actually, I'm not sure we were quite deterred by the mangling of Tony's pump. We looked around, finding a stick about three feet long, and an inch in diameter, and tried to repeat the pump strategy, but the turtle, figuring he'd already made his point, was in no mood to endure any more jostling, and he quickly did to the stick what he'd done to Tony's pump. And at that point, we figured, you know, we tried, but the turtle just didn't want our help. So we got back on our bikes and rode on.
"Stupid turtle!" Tony called over his shoulder as we rolled away. "I hope you get run over!" Then he turned back to me and muttered, "Damn turtle broke my pump!
-------------------------
I half-expected to see, the next time we passed that way, a week or two hence, the gooey squashed remains of our snappy friend. Flattened turtle shells are not an uncommon sight along the side of the road, after all. But we never did see anything that looked remotely like the shattered remnants of a 15-inch snapping turtle. So, you know, maybe he didn't need our help after all. . .
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Can't We All Just Get Along?
It's no secret to anyone who has read this humble blog of mine, that I'm a somewhat avid bicyclist, riding an average of roughly 1400 miles per year for the past five years (and on a pace to well surpass that this year). Personally, I can't imagine a more appealing workout than a good bike ride. I'm out in the fresh air and sunshine (most of the time), and at roughly 15 mph, the scenery around me changes enough to be interesting, over the course of 30 or 40 miles, which is a typical ride for me. There are not many things more enjoyable to me than riding out among the trees and cornfields on a crisp, 60-degree October afternoon, at the peak of the fall color. Or even an unseasonably warm November day, with the first snow of the season still on the fields as I ride past them. . .
The only downside to cycling is that I'm always riding on roads built for motor vehicles, and those vehicles are typically 10-20 times heavier than I am, and moving 3-5 times faster than I am. If it were ever to come down to a direct contest between me and a motor vehicle over which of us gets to occupy a given hunk of space at a given time, I am a loser, every single time, and painfully so, if I'm even so lucky as to survive the encounter.
Fortunately, the area in which I live is, for the most part, a happy place in which to ride a bicycle. Paved, lightly-traveled back roads are plentiful and abundant, so I am not often perceived as being 'in the way' by the vehicle traffic, and there is also a fairly sizeable cycling population, so drivers are more-or-less used to encountering bicycles, and know how to account for our presence. The 'Rules of the Road' tell me I should ride 'as far to the right as practical', and, by and large, when I do that, the vehicle traffic and I get along just fine. So, happy-happy, and all that. . .
-------------------------
None of which is to say that the close proximity of large, fast, metallic vehicles and small, slow, soft, pedal-powered humans is devoid of danger. Not all of my fellow-citizens are quite so mellow as what I've described, when they encounter my two-wheeled self on a lightly-traveled country road. Especially when the road in question curves a bit, or includes a few hills, and the clear sight-lines aren't so long that a car can safely pass me without a second thought, there can be a certain 'Impatience Factor', and I try to be conscientious about paying attention to the 'time-costs' that my presence imposes on my fellow-travellers. As I crest a hill, I will always check the oncoming traffic situation as soon as I can, and, if the road is clear, I'll wave a car past me, well before he can see it with his own eyes. Likewise if someone is waiting behind me on a curve. I've had a few 'close calls', where a driver's impatience has nearly led to a 'traffic incident', such as an evasive maneuver when he tried to pass me without a clear sight-line, and an oncoming car suddenly appeared. Surprisingly few, though, all things considered.
Motorcyclists often complain that they're 'invisible' to four-wheeled traffic, and bicyclists are, if anything, even less visible than motorcyclists (and a lot less noisy). Because we're small, slow, and way off to the right, some drivers simply don't notice us (which is probably one of the reasons cycling clothing tends to be garishly brightly-colored). Once, I was riding past a residential subdivision, on a road commonly used by cyclists to make the transition from 'In Town' to the cornfields, when a car drove up from one of the neighborhood streets to my right, as it met the 'main' road upon which I was riding. In such situations, I try, if I possibly can, to make eye contact with the driver, to assure myself that he sees me, and has accounted for my presence. Something in this driver's behavior, though, made me uneasy (perhaps it was because the wheels never completely stopped rolling, and I saw the driver's head turn to look straight in my direction, yet the wheels continued to roll). I saw that the car was angling itself for a right turn, so I drifted out into the lane as I approached the intersection, prepared to cross over into the oncoming lane (which was safely clear), in case my worst fears were realized. Sure enough, the driver pulled out to make her right turn, right into the space I would have been occupying had I not moved over. Once the car had completed its turn, I was directly alongside the driver's window. With my hand, I thumped on the driver's window, startling her. She rolled down the window, her face flushed, and sputtered, "I didn't even see you." I could only shake my head. I mean, what could I say to that? "Pay attention!"?
The biggest problems I've had with cars, though, have tended to come from a set of drivers for whom my mere presence on the side of the road, even in the utter absence of any other traffic, is an affront to their sense of the order, balance and harmony of the Universe, or at least their own peace of mind, and to afford me even a few feet of clearance as they speed past, seems an outrageous imposition. I've had a few rear-view mirrors tickle the hairs on my left elbow, though none have actually made contact with me. I've been called a 'faggot' several times by toothlesscretins gentlemen shouting out the windows of their rusty pickup trucks (I gather that this is meant as a negative appraisal of the fashionability of my lycra cycling shorts). This may or may not be accompanied by a short-range serenade on their horn, which seems to add to the general mirth of the situation, from their perspective. Another fellow followed me up a hill, serenading me with shouts of 'Lardass!' until he finally crested the hill and went on his way (I may or may not have patted my own ass, tacitly inviting him to kiss it, in response). My younger self had a hard time letting such provocations pass, but as I've grown older (and perhaps wiser; or maybe just less inclined to bother with the a**holes), I'm more likely than I used to be to just wave as they head down the road, (happily) away from me. . .
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A couple stories from my life on the road stand out in my memory.
The first was way back in 1984. Jen and I were on a tour that crossed Michigan's Lower Peninsula from west-to-east, carrying two-year-old 1F in a plastic kid-seat on the back of my bike. The tour began on a Sunday morning, in the city of South Haven. There were something on the order of 700 cyclists, slowly stringing ourselves out over the back roads heading inland from Lake Michigan. Early in the ride, our differences in speed hadn't had a chance to separate the riders very much, and for the first few miles, we were pretty much a continuous string of bikes, riding single-file along the right-hand edge of the pavement.
Suddenly, behind me, I heard a commotion. Checking my rear-view mirror (I've always had a rear-view mirror on my bike; I can't imagine being out among the vehicles without one), I saw a car barreling up, along the long file of cyclists. As it got closer, I heard the horn. The driver was leaning on his horn continuously, without let-up, as he made his way along the line of bikes. As he drew alongside me, I saw that the driver, and his wife in the passenger seat, and two teenaged sons in the back, were all dressed in their Sunday best, obviously on their way to church. And we were harshing his peace. As he passed me, I saw his left arm extended upward out the driver's-side window, sending us all the middle-finger salute, making sure that none of us missed his message.
Nothing classier than that, let me tell you. What a wonderful example you're setting for your sons; and your wife must be very proud, too. What church did you say you belong to? Anyway, say 'Hi' to God for me, OK, friend?
Sheesh.
My other story happened a few years later. I was riding one of my regular routes near Our Town, south of the mega-university campus. That area, south of campus, is generally pretty congenial for cyclists. It's mostly research farms owned by the university, and the heavier-traveled roads through the area have paved shoulders (or 'bike lanes', if you prefer), which afford us three feet or so of ride-able space, without the vehicle traffic even having to swerve to avoid us.
On this particular day, though, I was riding on one of the 'lesser' roads. It was paved, but the shoulder was dirt/gravel, so I was hugging the white stripe marking the edge of the pavement. As is typically the case, there were hardly any cars on the road, anyway, and almost never two cars in both opposing lanes at the same time.
A carload of college students passed me, heading north, toward the main campus. They gave me a half-lane of clearance, which is entirely generous, so I thought nothing of it. A couple hundred yards ahead of me, they pulled off to the side of the road. Again, I thought nothing of it; perhaps they were lost, and needed to consult a map, or whatever.
As I rode on, they stayed on the side of the road, and before long, I was coming to the point where I would have to pull out into the lane to pass them, and I hoped that they remembered that I was there, and didn't pull out into me (or onto me) as I rode by.
When I was within ten yards or so of their rear bumper, just as I was preparing to swing around, suddenly the car lurched forward, spinning its rear tires and spraying me with dirt and gravel, honking the horn, its occupants laughing as they squealed their tires on down the pavement. In the gravel shower, I didn't even have the opportunity to get their plate number. (damn!) I have no idea what I might or might not have done to provoke such an attack, but that's probably about the worst behavior I've ever suffered at the hands of a driver.
So, all things considered, not too bad at all. . .
The only downside to cycling is that I'm always riding on roads built for motor vehicles, and those vehicles are typically 10-20 times heavier than I am, and moving 3-5 times faster than I am. If it were ever to come down to a direct contest between me and a motor vehicle over which of us gets to occupy a given hunk of space at a given time, I am a loser, every single time, and painfully so, if I'm even so lucky as to survive the encounter.
Fortunately, the area in which I live is, for the most part, a happy place in which to ride a bicycle. Paved, lightly-traveled back roads are plentiful and abundant, so I am not often perceived as being 'in the way' by the vehicle traffic, and there is also a fairly sizeable cycling population, so drivers are more-or-less used to encountering bicycles, and know how to account for our presence. The 'Rules of the Road' tell me I should ride 'as far to the right as practical', and, by and large, when I do that, the vehicle traffic and I get along just fine. So, happy-happy, and all that. . .
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None of which is to say that the close proximity of large, fast, metallic vehicles and small, slow, soft, pedal-powered humans is devoid of danger. Not all of my fellow-citizens are quite so mellow as what I've described, when they encounter my two-wheeled self on a lightly-traveled country road. Especially when the road in question curves a bit, or includes a few hills, and the clear sight-lines aren't so long that a car can safely pass me without a second thought, there can be a certain 'Impatience Factor', and I try to be conscientious about paying attention to the 'time-costs' that my presence imposes on my fellow-travellers. As I crest a hill, I will always check the oncoming traffic situation as soon as I can, and, if the road is clear, I'll wave a car past me, well before he can see it with his own eyes. Likewise if someone is waiting behind me on a curve. I've had a few 'close calls', where a driver's impatience has nearly led to a 'traffic incident', such as an evasive maneuver when he tried to pass me without a clear sight-line, and an oncoming car suddenly appeared. Surprisingly few, though, all things considered.
Motorcyclists often complain that they're 'invisible' to four-wheeled traffic, and bicyclists are, if anything, even less visible than motorcyclists (and a lot less noisy). Because we're small, slow, and way off to the right, some drivers simply don't notice us (which is probably one of the reasons cycling clothing tends to be garishly brightly-colored). Once, I was riding past a residential subdivision, on a road commonly used by cyclists to make the transition from 'In Town' to the cornfields, when a car drove up from one of the neighborhood streets to my right, as it met the 'main' road upon which I was riding. In such situations, I try, if I possibly can, to make eye contact with the driver, to assure myself that he sees me, and has accounted for my presence. Something in this driver's behavior, though, made me uneasy (perhaps it was because the wheels never completely stopped rolling, and I saw the driver's head turn to look straight in my direction, yet the wheels continued to roll). I saw that the car was angling itself for a right turn, so I drifted out into the lane as I approached the intersection, prepared to cross over into the oncoming lane (which was safely clear), in case my worst fears were realized. Sure enough, the driver pulled out to make her right turn, right into the space I would have been occupying had I not moved over. Once the car had completed its turn, I was directly alongside the driver's window. With my hand, I thumped on the driver's window, startling her. She rolled down the window, her face flushed, and sputtered, "I didn't even see you." I could only shake my head. I mean, what could I say to that? "Pay attention!"?
The biggest problems I've had with cars, though, have tended to come from a set of drivers for whom my mere presence on the side of the road, even in the utter absence of any other traffic, is an affront to their sense of the order, balance and harmony of the Universe, or at least their own peace of mind, and to afford me even a few feet of clearance as they speed past, seems an outrageous imposition. I've had a few rear-view mirrors tickle the hairs on my left elbow, though none have actually made contact with me. I've been called a 'faggot' several times by toothless
-------------------------
A couple stories from my life on the road stand out in my memory.
The first was way back in 1984. Jen and I were on a tour that crossed Michigan's Lower Peninsula from west-to-east, carrying two-year-old 1F in a plastic kid-seat on the back of my bike. The tour began on a Sunday morning, in the city of South Haven. There were something on the order of 700 cyclists, slowly stringing ourselves out over the back roads heading inland from Lake Michigan. Early in the ride, our differences in speed hadn't had a chance to separate the riders very much, and for the first few miles, we were pretty much a continuous string of bikes, riding single-file along the right-hand edge of the pavement.
Suddenly, behind me, I heard a commotion. Checking my rear-view mirror (I've always had a rear-view mirror on my bike; I can't imagine being out among the vehicles without one), I saw a car barreling up, along the long file of cyclists. As it got closer, I heard the horn. The driver was leaning on his horn continuously, without let-up, as he made his way along the line of bikes. As he drew alongside me, I saw that the driver, and his wife in the passenger seat, and two teenaged sons in the back, were all dressed in their Sunday best, obviously on their way to church. And we were harshing his peace. As he passed me, I saw his left arm extended upward out the driver's-side window, sending us all the middle-finger salute, making sure that none of us missed his message.
Nothing classier than that, let me tell you. What a wonderful example you're setting for your sons; and your wife must be very proud, too. What church did you say you belong to? Anyway, say 'Hi' to God for me, OK, friend?
Sheesh.
My other story happened a few years later. I was riding one of my regular routes near Our Town, south of the mega-university campus. That area, south of campus, is generally pretty congenial for cyclists. It's mostly research farms owned by the university, and the heavier-traveled roads through the area have paved shoulders (or 'bike lanes', if you prefer), which afford us three feet or so of ride-able space, without the vehicle traffic even having to swerve to avoid us.
On this particular day, though, I was riding on one of the 'lesser' roads. It was paved, but the shoulder was dirt/gravel, so I was hugging the white stripe marking the edge of the pavement. As is typically the case, there were hardly any cars on the road, anyway, and almost never two cars in both opposing lanes at the same time.
A carload of college students passed me, heading north, toward the main campus. They gave me a half-lane of clearance, which is entirely generous, so I thought nothing of it. A couple hundred yards ahead of me, they pulled off to the side of the road. Again, I thought nothing of it; perhaps they were lost, and needed to consult a map, or whatever.
As I rode on, they stayed on the side of the road, and before long, I was coming to the point where I would have to pull out into the lane to pass them, and I hoped that they remembered that I was there, and didn't pull out into me (or onto me) as I rode by.
When I was within ten yards or so of their rear bumper, just as I was preparing to swing around, suddenly the car lurched forward, spinning its rear tires and spraying me with dirt and gravel, honking the horn, its occupants laughing as they squealed their tires on down the pavement. In the gravel shower, I didn't even have the opportunity to get their plate number. (damn!) I have no idea what I might or might not have done to provoke such an attack, but that's probably about the worst behavior I've ever suffered at the hands of a driver.
So, all things considered, not too bad at all. . .
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Here, Boy!
My good blog-friend Bijoux wrote a post a while back about her aversion for dogs, which jogged my memory banks for a story or two or three from my own young life (doesn't everything?). . .
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In theory, I like dogs; I really do - loyalty and obedience, and all that (and, as a father of eight human children, I appreciate obedience where I can get it. . .) But my actual history with those of the canine persuasion is a good deal more, um, checkered.
One of my earliest canine memories goes back to when I was 2 or 3 years old, when a dog bit me on my hand. I remember almost nothing about it (including anything I might or might not have done to provoke the critter), except my crying, and my mom washing my hand in the bathroom sink. After that, I vaguely recall being a bit more fearful of dogs than the average, but thankfully, it hasn't carried through my whole life, by any means.
When I was in high school, my best friend had a dog - a fat little beagle/basset/dachshund whose stubby legs weren't long enough to keep his corpulent belly off the floor, and whom the family had dubbed 'Hippo' (I think his actual name was 'Tiffy', or something like that, but my buddy only ever called him 'Hippo', so Hippo he was, as far as I was concerned). Hippo was one of those 'doorbell dogs' who came running to the door in full threatening bark-mode whenever the doorbell rang. If someone was expected, and coming to their house for the first time, my friend would often say, just before opening the door, "No! Down, Hippo! Don't kill!" thus leaving the arriving guest a second or so to contemplate on the words 'hippo' and 'kill'. Then he'd open the door, and the guest would collapse in laughter (or relief) at the thought of this little sliding ball of pudge inflicting any harm on anything.
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I'd sorta like to be 'dog people', but we really aren't. When 1F was a toddler, we got a little black lab puppy, and I'm pretty sure we ruined the poor thing, just being overly harsh with it, and making him timid. By the time we sent him back to the animal shelter, his snout had broken out in puppy-zits, and we were looking at an amazingly hefty vet bill to get them treated.
We did get one solid benefit from that poor little dog, though - he taught 1F not to go into the street. She had just learned to walk around the time we got the dog, and she was enjoying the independence that bipedal mobility afforded her. So we were training her and the dog to stay out of the street roughly simultaneously. So when the dog would drop his paws over the edge of the curb, we'd swat him with the proverbial rolled-up newspaper. The dog wasn't too bright, and he ended up on the receiving end of quite a few swats. 1F, though, was a clever girl, and she saw what happened to the dog when he went in the street, and she reasoned, plainly enough that, if you go into street, Mom and Dad will whack you; and she wanted no part of that for herself. We never had an issue with our daughter running into the street - she could run on ahead of us by 50 yards, and when she got to the curb, she'd stop on a dime and wait for us. So, you know, there's that. . .
I've spoken frequently about my bicycling hobby, and anyone who rides very many miles at all on a bicycle will sooner or later be chased by a dog. There was one dog, whose house was toward the end of one of my regular rides, so I was usually a bit tired by the time I was riding past his house. This dog was smart. Devious, even. One of the first times he came after me, he was hiding under the porch, and I, having no clue that I should even be concerned about his presence, was riding along, minding my own business, when out of nowhere, this black-brown streak of noise and teeth was sprinting across the lawn, and in no time, he was at my heels, and I was in full-panicked sprint mode. He chased me for a hundred yards or so, then trotted back to his porch, content in his own mind that he'd taken care of such threat as I posed to his master's security, while I waited for my adrenaline levels to return to semi-normal. After that, virtually every time I rode past that house, he'd run on me, coming from a different angle every time. One time, I rode onto his stretch of the road, vigilantly scanning the left side of the road, where his house was, when he ambushed me from the right. Damn thing. . .
A riding buddy eventually showed me how to use my frame-mounted pump to great dog-proofing effect. When I'd be chased by a dog, I'd unclip my pump and just point it at the dog. A few 'hunting-type' dogs would take it for a gun, and immediately back off. If the beast persisted, it looked to him like a two-foot-long stick, and he'd guage his distance to stay just out of range. I'd raise my arm to swing the 'stick' at him, but the pump had another foot or so of length tied up in the pump-stroke. So when I'd swing it, it would get longer as it swung, and often as not, crack the animal across his snout. A few whacks like that, and they didn't chase quite so threateningly anymore. One time, in the fall, I was riding past a house, and the owner was in the yard, raking his leaves, when his dog bolted after me. As I sprinted for the sake of the continued structural integrity of my ankle, the owner yelled at me. "Do me a favor!" he called. "Kick him right in the head!" Well, OK, since you asked nice, and all. . .
Another time, I was out on a ride, and maybe 15 miles from home, or so, when a long-legged dog came loping up alongside me, and just ran along with me, at an easy gait, for mile after mile. When we got to be a few miles from where he'd first joined me, I began to get concerned that he was getting to be quite a ways from home, so I broke into a sprint, to try and lose him, but nothing doing; that dog could simply outrun me, if I put it to the test. So I just kept riding, and the dog loped along, five feet or so off the roadway, as if he thought we were riding buddies, or somesuch. Finally, we got back into the city where I live. I rode up over a steep freeway overpass, and down into the city neighborhood; I had maybe another half-mile to go before I was home, when suddenly, my canine companion peeled off and disappeared into the neighborhood, never to be seen again. I'll never know if he was running away from home, or back to it, but he just buddied-up with me for 15 miles, about an hour's riding.
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When our kids were small, we had several, uh, 'adventures' with neighborhood dogs. At one point, our next-door neighbors 'inherited' a dog from a deceased relative. It turned out that the dog had been rather severely abused by his previous owner, and in the course of it, he developed quite a mean streak. His favorite trick was to hide behind trees (or under porches, or wherever was handy), and then charge after an unsuspecting child, fangs bared, barking loudly and aggressively. One time, he took after 1F when she was maybe 6 or 7, on her way to school in the morning, and scared her to where she had to come back home and change her clothes. I had a talk with my neighbor, and the dog was more effectively constrained after that.
Another time, when 1F was maybe 2 years old, we were visiting friends of ours who lived out in the country, and they had a collie who loved to run in their fields, but was getting on in years, and a little cranky. We had actually ridden our bikes out to their place (towing 1F along in a little trailer), maybe 30 miles or so one way, and we were getting ready to get back on our bikes for the ride home. 1F bent down to pet the doggie good-bye, and the dog gave her a nip full on her face. It wasn't a serious, angry, I-mean-to-tear-you-up bite, it was just an annoyed, 'leave-me-alone-kid' nip. But it left four little puncture wounds, two on each cheek. When I heard her crying, and saw blood on her face, you can well believe that my paternal protective instincts kicked in, and I was all over that dog, kicking it again and again, while our friends' kids cried, "Daddy, he's killing our dog!" Quite a scene. Perhaps amazingly, our friendship survived. Jen got 1F cleaned up, and she was fine, if rather seriously frightened. I think our friends had to have the dog put down not long afterward. . .
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But the story that prompts the title of this post happened a few years later. We were still living in the same house, the one just previous to our present house. The block we lived on, and a block or two in any direction, was pretty dense with school-age children, and in the summer months, there would be any number of games going on in the street, pretty much from one end to the other. Somewhere in there, a family moved in around the corner from us, and they had a rambunctious and aggressive dog that they were either disinclined or incompetent to do much about controlling. In the first couple weeks after they moved in, there were several episodes of the dog breaking loose on a warm, sunny afternoon, when there were a few dozen kids playing in the street. The dog woud go barking and running around, threatening the kids, and throwing our little corner of urban serenity into a tizzy. After the dog had run amok for a few minutes, its owner would saunter around the corner, calling its name, and, when she finally saw her dog, she would exasperatedly try to get the dog to come to her, which, of course, the dog was disinclined to do, and it took several more minutes before the dog could finally be brought to heel, and order restored.
After a few such episodes, a couple other neighborhood dads and I urged our new neighbor to get a better handle on controlling her dog, and we were told, in so many words, to pound sand. So I called the city's Animal Control desk, and informed them of the situation. I also asked what I, as a citizen, was within my rights to do, as far as threats to my own person, or those of my children; I was told that, if the dog attacked any of us on our own property, I could take whatever measures I deemed necessary to stop the dog from attacking. I thanked the person and hung up.
Sure enough, within a couple days, the kids were out playing in the street again, and here came our canine aggressor, right on schedule. I went into my house and got my baseball bat, then stood on my sidewalk whistling, and calling, "Here, boy!" The dog stopped and looked at me, not sure what he should do. For several seconds, he wavered between coming toward me, or resuming his chasing of the neighborhood kids. He took a couple steps in my direction just as his owner came sauntering around the corner, as she always did. When she saw me standing in front of my house with a baseball bat, she began to shriek at her dog to come to her, which only confused the dog even more, but it did give her time to run to her dog and rescue him from evil me and my baseball bat. As she led him back home, she directed some choice words my way. To which I simply said, "Take care of your dog; don't let him chase our kids, or you will lose him."
And you know, things were much better after that. . .
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In theory, I like dogs; I really do - loyalty and obedience, and all that (and, as a father of eight human children, I appreciate obedience where I can get it. . .) But my actual history with those of the canine persuasion is a good deal more, um, checkered.
One of my earliest canine memories goes back to when I was 2 or 3 years old, when a dog bit me on my hand. I remember almost nothing about it (including anything I might or might not have done to provoke the critter), except my crying, and my mom washing my hand in the bathroom sink. After that, I vaguely recall being a bit more fearful of dogs than the average, but thankfully, it hasn't carried through my whole life, by any means.
When I was in high school, my best friend had a dog - a fat little beagle/basset/dachshund whose stubby legs weren't long enough to keep his corpulent belly off the floor, and whom the family had dubbed 'Hippo' (I think his actual name was 'Tiffy', or something like that, but my buddy only ever called him 'Hippo', so Hippo he was, as far as I was concerned). Hippo was one of those 'doorbell dogs' who came running to the door in full threatening bark-mode whenever the doorbell rang. If someone was expected, and coming to their house for the first time, my friend would often say, just before opening the door, "No! Down, Hippo! Don't kill!" thus leaving the arriving guest a second or so to contemplate on the words 'hippo' and 'kill'. Then he'd open the door, and the guest would collapse in laughter (or relief) at the thought of this little sliding ball of pudge inflicting any harm on anything.
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I'd sorta like to be 'dog people', but we really aren't. When 1F was a toddler, we got a little black lab puppy, and I'm pretty sure we ruined the poor thing, just being overly harsh with it, and making him timid. By the time we sent him back to the animal shelter, his snout had broken out in puppy-zits, and we were looking at an amazingly hefty vet bill to get them treated.
We did get one solid benefit from that poor little dog, though - he taught 1F not to go into the street. She had just learned to walk around the time we got the dog, and she was enjoying the independence that bipedal mobility afforded her. So we were training her and the dog to stay out of the street roughly simultaneously. So when the dog would drop his paws over the edge of the curb, we'd swat him with the proverbial rolled-up newspaper. The dog wasn't too bright, and he ended up on the receiving end of quite a few swats. 1F, though, was a clever girl, and she saw what happened to the dog when he went in the street, and she reasoned, plainly enough that, if you go into street, Mom and Dad will whack you; and she wanted no part of that for herself. We never had an issue with our daughter running into the street - she could run on ahead of us by 50 yards, and when she got to the curb, she'd stop on a dime and wait for us. So, you know, there's that. . .
I've spoken frequently about my bicycling hobby, and anyone who rides very many miles at all on a bicycle will sooner or later be chased by a dog. There was one dog, whose house was toward the end of one of my regular rides, so I was usually a bit tired by the time I was riding past his house. This dog was smart. Devious, even. One of the first times he came after me, he was hiding under the porch, and I, having no clue that I should even be concerned about his presence, was riding along, minding my own business, when out of nowhere, this black-brown streak of noise and teeth was sprinting across the lawn, and in no time, he was at my heels, and I was in full-panicked sprint mode. He chased me for a hundred yards or so, then trotted back to his porch, content in his own mind that he'd taken care of such threat as I posed to his master's security, while I waited for my adrenaline levels to return to semi-normal. After that, virtually every time I rode past that house, he'd run on me, coming from a different angle every time. One time, I rode onto his stretch of the road, vigilantly scanning the left side of the road, where his house was, when he ambushed me from the right. Damn thing. . .
A riding buddy eventually showed me how to use my frame-mounted pump to great dog-proofing effect. When I'd be chased by a dog, I'd unclip my pump and just point it at the dog. A few 'hunting-type' dogs would take it for a gun, and immediately back off. If the beast persisted, it looked to him like a two-foot-long stick, and he'd guage his distance to stay just out of range. I'd raise my arm to swing the 'stick' at him, but the pump had another foot or so of length tied up in the pump-stroke. So when I'd swing it, it would get longer as it swung, and often as not, crack the animal across his snout. A few whacks like that, and they didn't chase quite so threateningly anymore. One time, in the fall, I was riding past a house, and the owner was in the yard, raking his leaves, when his dog bolted after me. As I sprinted for the sake of the continued structural integrity of my ankle, the owner yelled at me. "Do me a favor!" he called. "Kick him right in the head!" Well, OK, since you asked nice, and all. . .
Another time, I was out on a ride, and maybe 15 miles from home, or so, when a long-legged dog came loping up alongside me, and just ran along with me, at an easy gait, for mile after mile. When we got to be a few miles from where he'd first joined me, I began to get concerned that he was getting to be quite a ways from home, so I broke into a sprint, to try and lose him, but nothing doing; that dog could simply outrun me, if I put it to the test. So I just kept riding, and the dog loped along, five feet or so off the roadway, as if he thought we were riding buddies, or somesuch. Finally, we got back into the city where I live. I rode up over a steep freeway overpass, and down into the city neighborhood; I had maybe another half-mile to go before I was home, when suddenly, my canine companion peeled off and disappeared into the neighborhood, never to be seen again. I'll never know if he was running away from home, or back to it, but he just buddied-up with me for 15 miles, about an hour's riding.
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When our kids were small, we had several, uh, 'adventures' with neighborhood dogs. At one point, our next-door neighbors 'inherited' a dog from a deceased relative. It turned out that the dog had been rather severely abused by his previous owner, and in the course of it, he developed quite a mean streak. His favorite trick was to hide behind trees (or under porches, or wherever was handy), and then charge after an unsuspecting child, fangs bared, barking loudly and aggressively. One time, he took after 1F when she was maybe 6 or 7, on her way to school in the morning, and scared her to where she had to come back home and change her clothes. I had a talk with my neighbor, and the dog was more effectively constrained after that.
Another time, when 1F was maybe 2 years old, we were visiting friends of ours who lived out in the country, and they had a collie who loved to run in their fields, but was getting on in years, and a little cranky. We had actually ridden our bikes out to their place (towing 1F along in a little trailer), maybe 30 miles or so one way, and we were getting ready to get back on our bikes for the ride home. 1F bent down to pet the doggie good-bye, and the dog gave her a nip full on her face. It wasn't a serious, angry, I-mean-to-tear-you-up bite, it was just an annoyed, 'leave-me-alone-kid' nip. But it left four little puncture wounds, two on each cheek. When I heard her crying, and saw blood on her face, you can well believe that my paternal protective instincts kicked in, and I was all over that dog, kicking it again and again, while our friends' kids cried, "Daddy, he's killing our dog!" Quite a scene. Perhaps amazingly, our friendship survived. Jen got 1F cleaned up, and she was fine, if rather seriously frightened. I think our friends had to have the dog put down not long afterward. . .
-------------------------
But the story that prompts the title of this post happened a few years later. We were still living in the same house, the one just previous to our present house. The block we lived on, and a block or two in any direction, was pretty dense with school-age children, and in the summer months, there would be any number of games going on in the street, pretty much from one end to the other. Somewhere in there, a family moved in around the corner from us, and they had a rambunctious and aggressive dog that they were either disinclined or incompetent to do much about controlling. In the first couple weeks after they moved in, there were several episodes of the dog breaking loose on a warm, sunny afternoon, when there were a few dozen kids playing in the street. The dog woud go barking and running around, threatening the kids, and throwing our little corner of urban serenity into a tizzy. After the dog had run amok for a few minutes, its owner would saunter around the corner, calling its name, and, when she finally saw her dog, she would exasperatedly try to get the dog to come to her, which, of course, the dog was disinclined to do, and it took several more minutes before the dog could finally be brought to heel, and order restored.
After a few such episodes, a couple other neighborhood dads and I urged our new neighbor to get a better handle on controlling her dog, and we were told, in so many words, to pound sand. So I called the city's Animal Control desk, and informed them of the situation. I also asked what I, as a citizen, was within my rights to do, as far as threats to my own person, or those of my children; I was told that, if the dog attacked any of us on our own property, I could take whatever measures I deemed necessary to stop the dog from attacking. I thanked the person and hung up.
Sure enough, within a couple days, the kids were out playing in the street again, and here came our canine aggressor, right on schedule. I went into my house and got my baseball bat, then stood on my sidewalk whistling, and calling, "Here, boy!" The dog stopped and looked at me, not sure what he should do. For several seconds, he wavered between coming toward me, or resuming his chasing of the neighborhood kids. He took a couple steps in my direction just as his owner came sauntering around the corner, as she always did. When she saw me standing in front of my house with a baseball bat, she began to shriek at her dog to come to her, which only confused the dog even more, but it did give her time to run to her dog and rescue him from evil me and my baseball bat. As she led him back home, she directed some choice words my way. To which I simply said, "Take care of your dog; don't let him chase our kids, or you will lose him."
And you know, things were much better after that. . .
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Winter Miles
Yesterday, it was in the mid-40s (F) here, warm and sunny, the nicest day of a whole week of nice days, which, taken together, served to rid the ground here (and, what is more to the point for my purposes in this post, the roads) of the six inches or so of snow that we got a week-and-a-half ago. So (you knew I was gonna get around to this, didn't you?), I got to go out on my bike. 14 miles. In February. Which I haven't done in many, many years. Woo-hoo!
Together with the 39 miles I got out on the road in January, I now have 53 miles for 2012, which is fairly typical for my total by the end of March. Add that to the 56 miles I got to ride in December, and I've done over 100 miles in the three winter months, during which any miles at all are pure gravy. So, 100 miles of gravy; and there's still three more weekends left in February. I checked my records, and the last time I actually got out on the road in each of December, January and February was '91-'92. Just to time-scale it for you, Jen was newly pregnant with the fifth of our eight children at the time. So, you know, it's been a while. . .
I've got a decent stationary bike that I typically use in the winter months. It's not so bad, to spin the pedals while I watch a football or basketball game, with snow blanketing the ground. But it's nothing like actually getting out on the road. The first few miles, my legs, and even more, my lungs, are getting used to the idea of working quite that hard again. But once they get 'dialed back in', it's just pure joy to be out in the fresh air and sunshine.
The cynical part of me wonders how many feet of snow we'll get in March and April, to take back the miles that the mild winter has given. But, you know, tomorrow's troubles are enough for tomorrow. Or something like that. . .
-------------------------
And, since today is Super Bowl Sunday (and whoop-de-freakin'-doo, eh?), I'll re-post, at no extra charge, my recipe for Jalapeño Cheese Dip, which has become a traditional staple of SBs at our house:
1 24oz container cottage cheese
1 16oz container sour cream
Together with the 39 miles I got out on the road in January, I now have 53 miles for 2012, which is fairly typical for my total by the end of March. Add that to the 56 miles I got to ride in December, and I've done over 100 miles in the three winter months, during which any miles at all are pure gravy. So, 100 miles of gravy; and there's still three more weekends left in February. I checked my records, and the last time I actually got out on the road in each of December, January and February was '91-'92. Just to time-scale it for you, Jen was newly pregnant with the fifth of our eight children at the time. So, you know, it's been a while. . .
I've got a decent stationary bike that I typically use in the winter months. It's not so bad, to spin the pedals while I watch a football or basketball game, with snow blanketing the ground. But it's nothing like actually getting out on the road. The first few miles, my legs, and even more, my lungs, are getting used to the idea of working quite that hard again. But once they get 'dialed back in', it's just pure joy to be out in the fresh air and sunshine.
The cynical part of me wonders how many feet of snow we'll get in March and April, to take back the miles that the mild winter has given. But, you know, tomorrow's troubles are enough for tomorrow. Or something like that. . .
-------------------------
And, since today is Super Bowl Sunday (and whoop-de-freakin'-doo, eh?), I'll re-post, at no extra charge, my recipe for Jalapeño Cheese Dip, which has become a traditional staple of SBs at our house:
1 24oz container cottage cheese
1 16oz container sour cream
(just recently, we've taken to substituting plain Greek yogurt)
2 cups shredded cheese – Monterrey Jack or mozzarella
(Pepper Jack is also good)
3-5 chopped green onions or scallions
3-5 garlic toes, pressed or minced
1-3 jalapeño peppers, chopped
(mix in a habañero pepper for a hotter bite)
(This is the basic recipe; we have also occasionally added other ingredients, like salsa, chili powder, or cayenne powder, as variations; feel free to be as creative as you feel like)
Combine ingredients at least 24 hours before serving, and refrigerate; serve with tortilla chips (we like blue corn best, but we’re not dogmatic about it), and DON’T rub your eyes (or any other 'sensitive tissues') without first washing your hands, preferably a few times. . .
2 cups shredded cheese – Monterrey Jack or mozzarella
(Pepper Jack is also good)
3-5 chopped green onions or scallions
3-5 garlic toes, pressed or minced
1-3 jalapeño peppers, chopped
(mix in a habañero pepper for a hotter bite)
(This is the basic recipe; we have also occasionally added other ingredients, like salsa, chili powder, or cayenne powder, as variations; feel free to be as creative as you feel like)
Combine ingredients at least 24 hours before serving, and refrigerate; serve with tortilla chips (we like blue corn best, but we’re not dogmatic about it), and DON’T rub your eyes (or any other 'sensitive tissues') without first washing your hands, preferably a few times. . .
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Good Day, Sunshine; or, A Day In the Life
As I mentioned in my previous post, I've been considering burning my last day of vacation for 2011 on the first sunny, 40-degree day that came along, so as to sneak in one more ride on my bike before pulling down the curtain on the riding season. In checking the online weather forecasts, I came to the easy conclusion that yesterday was that day. . .
Besides which, I've piled up a few of those 'getting-ready-for-winter' projects that needed to get done, and the weekends have seemed to fill up with other things (what with Christmas approaching, and all that). And last week's snowfall was a major warning shot across my bow. The fact that it melted off so quickly can only be counted to God's mercy. . .
First, I needed a pair of new front tires on my car (in order to hold down the magnitude of single expenditures, I usually buy tires in pairs - fronts and rears, staggered by a few months so as not to hit the budget all at once). I've known that for a while, and last week's snow served to accentuate the urgency of it. But it's always a bit of a hassle to pull off. Weekends, as I said, tend to fill up with other stuff, and it's hard to set aside the 1-2 hours just sitting in the waiting room. Sometimes, Jen and I will trade cars for the day, so she can cover that detail for me, but her schedule is fuller than it used to be, and it's not such a simple matter for her, either. So, having the day off, I showed up at the tire store at the opening bell, to get in at the front of the line. And then, Jen had an errand for me to run, at a store walking distance up the street from the tire place, so I was gainfully engaged while the car was being worked on. An hour after dropping the car off, I had my new tires, and Jen had some staples restocked in the pantry.
Next was the roof. Our back roof has always had a pretty significant ice-damming problem, and a key component of our strategy for dealing with that has been a heat tape which we run in a zigzag pattern over the bottom three feet or so of the roof. But this past spring, we had our back roof re-shingled, and the roofers had to remove the heat tape in order to put the new shingles down (heck, just to get the old shingles off). So, once the new roof was in place, I needed to re-install the heat tape. It would have been smart of me to do it in the summertime, or at least the early fall, when the asphalt of the shingles was still reasonably soft and pliable; but I wasn't that smart. And again, last week's snowfall highlighted the urgency of getting the heat tape done; that the snow melted so quickly was pure grace from God.
So, after I returned from the tire store, I grabbed 5M, and the two of us went to work - he worked on the roof, installing the clips for the tops of the zigzags, while I worked from a ladder along the edge of the roof. We borrowed 6F's blow-dryer to soften the asphalt in the localized areas where we needed to mount the clips. The process is a little bit tedious, involving mounting the clips, running the tape through the clips, and then going back and readjusting everything to get the tape where it needs to be, while more-or-less matching the length of the tape to the required coverage area. It was a bit chilly out - high 30s (F), but the blow-dryer kept our hands warmer than they'd otherwise have been, and the sun was shining. We finished in a little over an hour, and now our new back roof is ready for winter's onslaught.
Having finished both of those, it was still before 1PM, so there was plenty of time for me to go out on another 17-mile bike ride, which, with the sun shining brightly, was a very happy one, even if it was a few degrees colder than last Saturday's ride had been (and the wind wasn't blowing quite so hard, either, so that was nice, too). I even had time to ride over to the bike shop when I'd finished my ride, because the ride had exposed my need for a new rear tire on the bike, as well.
I went home, showered, and was preparing to take a short nap, when 7M reminded me that he had a basketball game on the other end of town last night. With my long commute, I hardly ever get to his week-night games, so I had a rare opportunity, which I was only too happy to take (his team played their worst game of the season, so far, but he seemed reasonably philosophical about it afterward; perhaps my presence helped him reach such equanimity) (or, you know, perhaps my presence had nothing to do with it; who knows?)
So - one solitary vacation day, in the middle of the week, in December. And what a day it turned out to be. . .
Besides which, I've piled up a few of those 'getting-ready-for-winter' projects that needed to get done, and the weekends have seemed to fill up with other things (what with Christmas approaching, and all that). And last week's snowfall was a major warning shot across my bow. The fact that it melted off so quickly can only be counted to God's mercy. . .
First, I needed a pair of new front tires on my car (in order to hold down the magnitude of single expenditures, I usually buy tires in pairs - fronts and rears, staggered by a few months so as not to hit the budget all at once). I've known that for a while, and last week's snow served to accentuate the urgency of it. But it's always a bit of a hassle to pull off. Weekends, as I said, tend to fill up with other stuff, and it's hard to set aside the 1-2 hours just sitting in the waiting room. Sometimes, Jen and I will trade cars for the day, so she can cover that detail for me, but her schedule is fuller than it used to be, and it's not such a simple matter for her, either. So, having the day off, I showed up at the tire store at the opening bell, to get in at the front of the line. And then, Jen had an errand for me to run, at a store walking distance up the street from the tire place, so I was gainfully engaged while the car was being worked on. An hour after dropping the car off, I had my new tires, and Jen had some staples restocked in the pantry.
Next was the roof. Our back roof has always had a pretty significant ice-damming problem, and a key component of our strategy for dealing with that has been a heat tape which we run in a zigzag pattern over the bottom three feet or so of the roof. But this past spring, we had our back roof re-shingled, and the roofers had to remove the heat tape in order to put the new shingles down (heck, just to get the old shingles off). So, once the new roof was in place, I needed to re-install the heat tape. It would have been smart of me to do it in the summertime, or at least the early fall, when the asphalt of the shingles was still reasonably soft and pliable; but I wasn't that smart. And again, last week's snowfall highlighted the urgency of getting the heat tape done; that the snow melted so quickly was pure grace from God.
So, after I returned from the tire store, I grabbed 5M, and the two of us went to work - he worked on the roof, installing the clips for the tops of the zigzags, while I worked from a ladder along the edge of the roof. We borrowed 6F's blow-dryer to soften the asphalt in the localized areas where we needed to mount the clips. The process is a little bit tedious, involving mounting the clips, running the tape through the clips, and then going back and readjusting everything to get the tape where it needs to be, while more-or-less matching the length of the tape to the required coverage area. It was a bit chilly out - high 30s (F), but the blow-dryer kept our hands warmer than they'd otherwise have been, and the sun was shining. We finished in a little over an hour, and now our new back roof is ready for winter's onslaught.
Having finished both of those, it was still before 1PM, so there was plenty of time for me to go out on another 17-mile bike ride, which, with the sun shining brightly, was a very happy one, even if it was a few degrees colder than last Saturday's ride had been (and the wind wasn't blowing quite so hard, either, so that was nice, too). I even had time to ride over to the bike shop when I'd finished my ride, because the ride had exposed my need for a new rear tire on the bike, as well.
I went home, showered, and was preparing to take a short nap, when 7M reminded me that he had a basketball game on the other end of town last night. With my long commute, I hardly ever get to his week-night games, so I had a rare opportunity, which I was only too happy to take (his team played their worst game of the season, so far, but he seemed reasonably philosophical about it afterward; perhaps my presence helped him reach such equanimity) (or, you know, perhaps my presence had nothing to do with it; who knows?)
So - one solitary vacation day, in the middle of the week, in December. And what a day it turned out to be. . .
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Miles and Miles to Go. . .
For the last five years (roughly coinciding with my renewed commitment to seriously riding my bike), the weather around the turn from November to December has just been uncanny - within a day either side of the First of December, we've gotten the first significant snowfall of the year, which stays on the ground, and marks the change in temperatures from generally above freezing to generally below. Meaning that, once the snow comes to stay, it really stays, and my riding season is effectively ended. Five years in a row. You'd think that, one of those years, the Sender of Snow would slack off just long enough for me to sneak in a quick 15 or 20 miles on the 3rd, or the 5th maybe, but no dice.
So when we had a run of warm weekends this November, I was hopeful that maybe this year, winter would hold off a few days, and I'd be able to get a few December miles in. And all the moreso, since, as of Thanksgiving weekend, I was at 1388 miles for the year, and it would only take a dozen miles for me to pass 1400.
But, when I checked the weather forecast Tuesday afternoon, Our Town was predicted to get 6-10 inches of snow. Which is a lot of snow, especially for the first real snow of the season. I took my laptop home from work, and made arrangements to work from home on Wednesday if the forecast proved accurate. Which it did. The snow started falling Tuesday evening, as I was maybe 20 miles from home at the end of my commute, and it snowed hard all night and into Wednesday morning. When we went out to shovel the sidewalk and driveway, by golly, there was anywhere from six to ten inches of wet, heavy snow on the ground.
So I called my boss, and told him I'd be staying home. He seemed surprised, since where he lived, they'd only gotten a bit more than an inch. So I checked the weather map online, and it turned out that the 'snow belt' ran right up the middle of Michigan's mitten, virtually centered on Our Town. Fifty miles to the east, or fifty miles to the west of us, barely an inch of snow fell, but from the Ohio/Indiana border, running right up the middle of Michigan, it was 6-10.
So I just laughed, and noted ruefully that Wednesday was the Last Day of November. Right on schedule. But Wednesday itself was a pretty warm day, with high temperatures going into the 40s (Fahrenheit), so even by the time we went to bed on Wednesday, there was quite a bit less snow on the ground than there had been that morning. Our street, which is only two blocks long, and a dead end, never did get plowed, but by the end of Wednesday, we had no problem getting in and out with our cars. So, for a 6-10-inch snowfall, it was pretty benign, as such things go.
But of course, there's a big difference between what you can reasonably drive a car through, and what you can reasonably ride a bike in. Patches of ice aren't that big a deal in a car, but on a bike they can be treacherous. And, riding as we do along the edge of the pavement, if the snow significantly impinges on the available pavement, it quickly becomes a pretty dicey situation, sharing even less pavement than usual with the motorized vehicles, which are ten times heavier, and at least three times faster, than I am. So I was not particularly hopeful that I would be able to get a real, outdoors-on-the-pavement ride in.
Thursday and Friday were warm-ish (for December), with high temperatures in the upper 30s (F), which is above freezing, but won't turn snow into water at a very rapid rate. Plus, we got maybe another half-inch or so over Thurday night.
Yesterday morning, it was overcast, but again in the low 40s. I wasn't optimistic, but I really wanted to ride. So, after my usual round of morning errands, I decided to reconnoiter the route I would take if I did ride. And I found that the pavement, for the most part, was clear and dry, especially on the country back roads that I'd mainly be riding on. The busier country roads all have paved shoulders, and even those were clear. The biggest problems were all in the city, and they were manageable, if I just exercised some common-sensical caution.
So I scurried home, got into my 40-degree riding gear (regular riding gear, with an extra pair of wool socks, sweat pants, and a blaze-orange hoodie, and real gloves with fingers and everything) and got out on the road. I had a great ride (especially once I got out of town) - 17 miles, brisk fresh air, and no significant issues with the motor-vehicles. My heart, lungs, and legs hummed happily along, and I even got home in time to get to 7M's basketball game (and before the rain started).
So it's 1405 and counting. I've got one more vacation day left for this year, and I'm thinking of burning it on a 40+-degree day, should one pop up in the middle of the week, and get one more ride in, before I pack it in for the winter, and take my bike for its annual winter tune-up.
Man, this is just more fun than a human being ought to be allowed to have. . .
-------------------------
And alas, my Spartans went down to defeat in the Inaugural Big Ten Championship game last night. Great game, if you didn't care who won; we've had a few of those with the Badgers, in recent years.
(*sigh*)
Honestly, though, in August, I'd never have expected us to be this good again. I figured we'd be good, but our graduation losses from last year's co-championship team, along with a really gruelling schedule, seemed to portend a small regression, at least in the wins and losses. But here we were, playing for another conference championship. Whaddya know. . . maybe, just maybe, we're becoming pretty good.
Wouldn't that be fun?
So when we had a run of warm weekends this November, I was hopeful that maybe this year, winter would hold off a few days, and I'd be able to get a few December miles in. And all the moreso, since, as of Thanksgiving weekend, I was at 1388 miles for the year, and it would only take a dozen miles for me to pass 1400.
But, when I checked the weather forecast Tuesday afternoon, Our Town was predicted to get 6-10 inches of snow. Which is a lot of snow, especially for the first real snow of the season. I took my laptop home from work, and made arrangements to work from home on Wednesday if the forecast proved accurate. Which it did. The snow started falling Tuesday evening, as I was maybe 20 miles from home at the end of my commute, and it snowed hard all night and into Wednesday morning. When we went out to shovel the sidewalk and driveway, by golly, there was anywhere from six to ten inches of wet, heavy snow on the ground.
So I called my boss, and told him I'd be staying home. He seemed surprised, since where he lived, they'd only gotten a bit more than an inch. So I checked the weather map online, and it turned out that the 'snow belt' ran right up the middle of Michigan's mitten, virtually centered on Our Town. Fifty miles to the east, or fifty miles to the west of us, barely an inch of snow fell, but from the Ohio/Indiana border, running right up the middle of Michigan, it was 6-10.
So I just laughed, and noted ruefully that Wednesday was the Last Day of November. Right on schedule. But Wednesday itself was a pretty warm day, with high temperatures going into the 40s (Fahrenheit), so even by the time we went to bed on Wednesday, there was quite a bit less snow on the ground than there had been that morning. Our street, which is only two blocks long, and a dead end, never did get plowed, but by the end of Wednesday, we had no problem getting in and out with our cars. So, for a 6-10-inch snowfall, it was pretty benign, as such things go.
But of course, there's a big difference between what you can reasonably drive a car through, and what you can reasonably ride a bike in. Patches of ice aren't that big a deal in a car, but on a bike they can be treacherous. And, riding as we do along the edge of the pavement, if the snow significantly impinges on the available pavement, it quickly becomes a pretty dicey situation, sharing even less pavement than usual with the motorized vehicles, which are ten times heavier, and at least three times faster, than I am. So I was not particularly hopeful that I would be able to get a real, outdoors-on-the-pavement ride in.
Thursday and Friday were warm-ish (for December), with high temperatures in the upper 30s (F), which is above freezing, but won't turn snow into water at a very rapid rate. Plus, we got maybe another half-inch or so over Thurday night.
Yesterday morning, it was overcast, but again in the low 40s. I wasn't optimistic, but I really wanted to ride. So, after my usual round of morning errands, I decided to reconnoiter the route I would take if I did ride. And I found that the pavement, for the most part, was clear and dry, especially on the country back roads that I'd mainly be riding on. The busier country roads all have paved shoulders, and even those were clear. The biggest problems were all in the city, and they were manageable, if I just exercised some common-sensical caution.
So I scurried home, got into my 40-degree riding gear (regular riding gear, with an extra pair of wool socks, sweat pants, and a blaze-orange hoodie, and real gloves with fingers and everything) and got out on the road. I had a great ride (especially once I got out of town) - 17 miles, brisk fresh air, and no significant issues with the motor-vehicles. My heart, lungs, and legs hummed happily along, and I even got home in time to get to 7M's basketball game (and before the rain started).
So it's 1405 and counting. I've got one more vacation day left for this year, and I'm thinking of burning it on a 40+-degree day, should one pop up in the middle of the week, and get one more ride in, before I pack it in for the winter, and take my bike for its annual winter tune-up.
Man, this is just more fun than a human being ought to be allowed to have. . .
-------------------------
And alas, my Spartans went down to defeat in the Inaugural Big Ten Championship game last night. Great game, if you didn't care who won; we've had a few of those with the Badgers, in recent years.
(*sigh*)
Honestly, though, in August, I'd never have expected us to be this good again. I figured we'd be good, but our graduation losses from last year's co-championship team, along with a really gruelling schedule, seemed to portend a small regression, at least in the wins and losses. But here we were, playing for another conference championship. Whaddya know. . . maybe, just maybe, we're becoming pretty good.
Wouldn't that be fun?
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Advent. . . Eventually
We had a good time at my sister's for Thanksgiving. It was the first major holiday without Dad. It wasn't this deep melancholy thing; in fact, my brother, who is the executor of Dad's estate, brought some of the last of Dad's things to have us sort through, and take what we wanted. I took an old tie-tack of Dad's, that was a 'working' pair of square gears. It was very emblematic of Dad, and something an engineer like me can appreciate.
My sister is in the process of a divorce from her husband of 31 years (they were married the same summer as Jen and me). So, for her sake, it was probably good to have some company to fill her house for the holiday; and filling houses is something our family excels at. . .
Alas, the Lions lost, and the less said about that, the better, probably. . .
But my Spartans finished their second consecutive football season with double-digit wins, something that's never been done before in school history (although, to be perfectly fair, our best teams, back in the 50s and 60s, only played nine or ten games, so double-digit seasons were a little harder to come by. . .)
-------------------------
We got to spend some time with our grandchildren and their parents yesterday evening, and had a really warm, wonderful time together. Some really fine kids, being raised really well, there. . .
-------------------------
We've had a surplus of warm (albeit windy) Saturdays this November. So, the 30 miles I rode yesterday brought me to a total of 1388 for the year. If I can get in one ride in December (which I haven't done in fifteen years or so), I'll sneak past 1400 again. Wish me luck. . .
OK, then. . . on to the main event. . .
*************************
This next is a re-post of something I wrote back in 2006 (and re-posted again last year. Who knows? Maybe this will end up being a Tradition around here. . .)
At any rate, 'tis the season. . . And while I'm at it, I'll give a shout-out to my good friend Suldog, whose 'Thanksgiving Comes First' campaign against premature Christmas-y-ness partially inspired my dredging this up from the archives. . .
-------------------------
In our culture, the Friday after Thanksgiving marks the more-or-less 'official' beginning of the commercial season of 'Christmas', with the sales, the extended hours at the malls, special advertisements, etc., etc (although, honestly, the stores have been in 'Christmas mode' pretty much since they took down the Halloween stuff; maybe even before that). It's what much, if not most, of our culture thinks of when they think of 'Christmas', but less and less does it have any discernible connection with the actual content and meaning of Christmas.
One time I was visiting family in a large, midwestern city over Thanksgiving, and the following day, the local TV news had several reporters on site at various malls, doing interviews with shoppers. They asked one guy what the 'true meaning of Christmas' was, and he said, "We gotta get out here and spend money to keep the economy going strong." I am not making this up; he actually said that.
I sometimes wish that they would come up with a different name for the year-end consumerist feeding-frenzy. Just leave Christmas out of it. Or, maybe we should come up with another name for the celebration of Christ's Birth and Incarnation. Let 'em have 'Christmas' for the 'shopping season' - admit that we've lost it, and start over with a new name.
(*sigh*)
Anyway, today is the First Sunday of Advent - the beginning of the Christian season of spiritual preparation for Christmas. As I've gone along, I've come to really love Advent, imperfectly though I may observe it. In rough terms, Advent is to Christmas what Lent is to Easter, just with not quite the same 'penitential' emphasis. Rightly done, Advent is a time of contemplation, a time to step back from the normal frenzy of daily life, take a few deep breaths, and anticipate the coming joy of Christmas. Advent is pretty much the polar opposite of 'consumer Christmas'. Pausing for contemplation is not a thing Americans are terribly inclined to do (perhaps I should rather say it's a thing that we're inclined to do terribly).
In the larger American culture, the 'Christmas season' runs from the Friday after Thanksgiving until Christmas Day, but in traditional Christian circles, the Christmas season begins on Christmas Day and runs until Epiphany (January 6) - thus, the 'Twelve Days of Christmas'. So, when most of our neighbors are finished with Christmas, we're just getting started. It always perplexes me just a bit to see all the Christmas trees out on the curb on the 26th; when Jen was a kid, Catholics didn't even put their trees up until Christmas Eve. And, just as I'm getting pumped to sing 'Joy to the World' and 'O Come, All Ye Faithful', most of my neighbors are sick of hearing them.
Maybe I should blame it on the Magi - they started the whole giving-gifts-at-Christmas thing. I doubt they had any clue how far it would get out-of-hand, though.
When it comes right down to it, though, I suppose I've got to admit that my spiritual preparation for Christmas is my own responsibility. It's not up to American culture to get me spiritually prepared. It might be nice if the culture were more supportive (or even just less disruptive) of what I'm trying to accomplish, but it is what it is.
So, our family is setting out on Advent. If, over the next few weeks, I seem a little reticent and low-key about Christmas, you'll understand, won't you? And then, if I'm getting all Christmas-y just when you're getting tired of it all, you'd be very kind to indulge me. In the meantime, I'll be over here, singing 'O Come, O Come Emmanuel', in a minor key. . .
My sister is in the process of a divorce from her husband of 31 years (they were married the same summer as Jen and me). So, for her sake, it was probably good to have some company to fill her house for the holiday; and filling houses is something our family excels at. . .
Alas, the Lions lost, and the less said about that, the better, probably. . .
But my Spartans finished their second consecutive football season with double-digit wins, something that's never been done before in school history (although, to be perfectly fair, our best teams, back in the 50s and 60s, only played nine or ten games, so double-digit seasons were a little harder to come by. . .)
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We got to spend some time with our grandchildren and their parents yesterday evening, and had a really warm, wonderful time together. Some really fine kids, being raised really well, there. . .
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We've had a surplus of warm (albeit windy) Saturdays this November. So, the 30 miles I rode yesterday brought me to a total of 1388 for the year. If I can get in one ride in December (which I haven't done in fifteen years or so), I'll sneak past 1400 again. Wish me luck. . .
OK, then. . . on to the main event. . .
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This next is a re-post of something I wrote back in 2006 (and re-posted again last year. Who knows? Maybe this will end up being a Tradition around here. . .)
At any rate, 'tis the season. . . And while I'm at it, I'll give a shout-out to my good friend Suldog, whose 'Thanksgiving Comes First' campaign against premature Christmas-y-ness partially inspired my dredging this up from the archives. . .
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In our culture, the Friday after Thanksgiving marks the more-or-less 'official' beginning of the commercial season of 'Christmas', with the sales, the extended hours at the malls, special advertisements, etc., etc (although, honestly, the stores have been in 'Christmas mode' pretty much since they took down the Halloween stuff; maybe even before that). It's what much, if not most, of our culture thinks of when they think of 'Christmas', but less and less does it have any discernible connection with the actual content and meaning of Christmas.
One time I was visiting family in a large, midwestern city over Thanksgiving, and the following day, the local TV news had several reporters on site at various malls, doing interviews with shoppers. They asked one guy what the 'true meaning of Christmas' was, and he said, "We gotta get out here and spend money to keep the economy going strong." I am not making this up; he actually said that.
I sometimes wish that they would come up with a different name for the year-end consumerist feeding-frenzy. Just leave Christmas out of it. Or, maybe we should come up with another name for the celebration of Christ's Birth and Incarnation. Let 'em have 'Christmas' for the 'shopping season' - admit that we've lost it, and start over with a new name.
(*sigh*)
Anyway, today is the First Sunday of Advent - the beginning of the Christian season of spiritual preparation for Christmas. As I've gone along, I've come to really love Advent, imperfectly though I may observe it. In rough terms, Advent is to Christmas what Lent is to Easter, just with not quite the same 'penitential' emphasis. Rightly done, Advent is a time of contemplation, a time to step back from the normal frenzy of daily life, take a few deep breaths, and anticipate the coming joy of Christmas. Advent is pretty much the polar opposite of 'consumer Christmas'. Pausing for contemplation is not a thing Americans are terribly inclined to do (perhaps I should rather say it's a thing that we're inclined to do terribly).
In the larger American culture, the 'Christmas season' runs from the Friday after Thanksgiving until Christmas Day, but in traditional Christian circles, the Christmas season begins on Christmas Day and runs until Epiphany (January 6) - thus, the 'Twelve Days of Christmas'. So, when most of our neighbors are finished with Christmas, we're just getting started. It always perplexes me just a bit to see all the Christmas trees out on the curb on the 26th; when Jen was a kid, Catholics didn't even put their trees up until Christmas Eve. And, just as I'm getting pumped to sing 'Joy to the World' and 'O Come, All Ye Faithful', most of my neighbors are sick of hearing them.
Maybe I should blame it on the Magi - they started the whole giving-gifts-at-Christmas thing. I doubt they had any clue how far it would get out-of-hand, though.
When it comes right down to it, though, I suppose I've got to admit that my spiritual preparation for Christmas is my own responsibility. It's not up to American culture to get me spiritually prepared. It might be nice if the culture were more supportive (or even just less disruptive) of what I'm trying to accomplish, but it is what it is.
So, our family is setting out on Advent. If, over the next few weeks, I seem a little reticent and low-key about Christmas, you'll understand, won't you? And then, if I'm getting all Christmas-y just when you're getting tired of it all, you'd be very kind to indulge me. In the meantime, I'll be over here, singing 'O Come, O Come Emmanuel', in a minor key. . .
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