Matching Tracksuits

cycling

The Poster and the Fall

Tuesday 27 April 2021

The Poster

I was out Friday so I could run all the errands and such K would normally run so she could try to rest some and get well. The kids at school took to heart the cliche about cats being away, but they did so in such a way as exceptionally clever kids with good senses of humor would do:

While at the book fair, they bought me a poster of a Korean boyband and hung it in my room. When I came back Friday, I asked them who was responsible. They admitted it with giggles immediately. “I’ll keep it up under one condition,” I said. “You all have to sign it.”

I love the fact that

  1. they thought of doing this as a funny prank;
  2. they were willing to spend the few dollars to pull it off;
  3. they knew me well enough and trusted me enough to know how I’d take it;
  4. they liked me enough to be so silly.

It’s a silly, silly gesture, but a touching one nonetheless.

The Fall

In the evening, when K, E, and I were walking to CVS to pick up a prescription (and L was at sand volleyball practice), it appeared that the Boy had had a bike wreck. He was some distance away, so it wasn’t really clear what was going on. But the bike was clearly down, and there was little to no movement.

I began jogging down the hill toward him. I wasn’t terribly worried because there were no sounds of wailing or pain. But there was no movement.

“I was just waiting for you guys,” he explained with complete nonchalance.

Bike Ride

Friday 23 April 2021

Image from 2004.

Return to Dupont

Friday 9 April 2021

“You guys from out of town?” the cyclist asked coming to a slow stop as he navigated the steep downhill that we were climbing.

“Not really — we’re from Greenville.” I figured being only 50 miles away doesn’t exactly make us tourists.

“Well, most people around here go the opposite way on this loop and go down this hill,” he said, I suppose trying to be helpful, but it came across to me as a little — I don’t know, annoying somehow.

“But what about those of us who enjoy hard climbs?” I wanted to say, but thinking I might be only speaking for myself, I said nothing.

“Yes, it seems like it would be more fun,” K agreed.

Our interlocutor headed off down the hill, and added, as if he’d read my annoyance and wanted to soothe it and simultaneously aggravate it, “Of course, it’s your choice.”

Just before December, we went to Dupont forest for some cycling. It wasn’t exactly what we’d planned. But since then, the Boy has asked us several times when we’re heading back. Today, we finally made it.

And afterward, there was mulch to spread and bikes to wash.

The Day After

Friday 27 November 2020

“Friday, it’s going to be beautiful — warm, sunny, inviting,” K proclaimed earlier this week. “We are going on either a hike or a bike ride.” We headed to Dupont State Forest, which has 40 miles of cycling trails. Off-road trails. I currently have 25mm tires on my bike for commuting (ask me how many times I’ve ridden this year…), which can make any offroading a bit of a challenge, to say the least. What I’ve found is that it’s not a problem going uphill: I can power through most things, and the tires are not that slick (even though they would appear to be so), so keeping up is not a problem. Going downhill is a different story, though. Our nearly-fourteen-year-old leaves K and me behind; our eight-year-old does the same.

I blame it on the tires.

Sunday in the Fall

Sunday 8 November 2020

A perfect Sunday.

We had a lovely morning breakfast.

The Boy got a new bike.

A couple of friends came over for a bonfire.

Sunday Theological Thoughts and a Ride

Sunday 13 September 2020

A Ride

We went for a bike ride this afternoon to our favorite local park. We got an up-close view of a local:

We see them at a distance quite frequently, and they even come into our creek behind our house from time to time, but this is undoubtedly the closest we’ve ever been to one.

Sunday Theological Thoughts

While in Mass today I noticed an oddity that I’d heard many times but never really thought about: just before the congregation recites the Lord’s Prayer, the priest says, “At the Savior’s command and formed by divine teaching, we dare to say…”

“Why ‘dare’?” I thought. “Doesn’t Christianity present God as a father?”

A little research revealed this:

The priest notes what a privilege it is for us to be able to talk to God in this way: “At the Savior’s command and formed by divine teaching, we dare to say …” What is it that we dare to say? “Our Father”. This is precisely what Jesus calls us to do. It underscores the intimate relationship we now have with God because of Jesus’ work of salvation. We share his life because he came to share ours. Through our union in Christ, God has truly become our Father.

Website for Church of St. Vincent DePaul in Singapore

I suppose the argument might be that pre-Jesus, no one would have thought to call God Father. I don’t really know. But there’s always been something of a thread of fear in most theisms, which seems somewhat unhealthy to say the least.

It’s certainly present in the Bible, including this curiosity: “The fear of the Lord leads to life, and whoever has it rests satisfied; he will not be visited by harm” (Proverbs 19:23).

It seems somehow to echo what’s said later in Mass, just before going to take communion: “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.” If God is indeed to be seen as a father-figure, who ever talks to their father that way? If my children said they’re not worthy of being in my presence, I would wonder how I’d managed to raise them with such little self-esteem. I don’t even know that you could raise children to think that way without emotionally abusing them. I understand the sense of humility, but this just seems to be a little much. I know, I know — I’m viewing it through a human perspective. That’s all any of us have, though, and it seems, honestly, a little like a cop-out. “Who are we to question the ways of God?” covers a multitude of unanswered prayers.

Saturday

Saturday 1 August 2020

The day began with a challenge: the Swamp Rabbit Trail. Our goal was to ride the whole distance (well, the main part of the trail) and back again — a total of 22 miles. For K and me, it was probably not that big a deal — we’ve ridden further, and faster. For the Girl, it was no big deal: she’s been cycling a lot lately, plus she’s just young and strong. But for the Boy? His longest ride to date was 16 miles, just over a year ago.

Other than being younger and not as strong, he has another disadvantage: a smaller bike that cannot possibly go nearly as fast. Yet he soldiered through.

In the afternoon, he and I finished our summer project. French drain completed and completely hidden.

Ice Cream Ride

Thursday 23 July 2020

In the morning, some more work on the trench. I got out an auger drill attachment to see if we might be able to bust through the clay with that and then come back with a shove to finish the job. In the end, we determined that the mattock (which I learned today comes from the Greek: μάκελλα) was, in fact, the better choice.

In the evening, a little surprise. In a nearby town, there’s a lovely little ice cream shop in an old train station. Looking about for rides on Strava, I figured out that we could in fact ride there by bike without encountering any truly busy road.

And so after dinner, we made the jaunt. It’s nice to go for ice cream and realize when you get back home, you’ve already burned all those calories.

Masks Unmasked and Wheelies

Thursday 16 July 2020

Masks Unmasked

Two facts to begin with: fact one — the governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, issued an executive order today prohibiting cities from mandating masks to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only that, but he is suing Atlanta mayor Keisha Bottoms because she implemented such a mandate.

The lawsuit marks a stunning escalation in the brewing feud between Kemp and Bottoms after the Atlanta mayor introduced her mandatory mask ordinance. Under her order, not wearing a mask within Atlanta’s city limits was punishable by a fine and even up to six months in jail.

But the governor’s office has argued the mayor’s plan is not “legally enforceable” because Kemp signed an executive order that prohibits local action from being more prohibitive than the state’s requirements. (Source)

Fact two — of the states with the highest growth of cases in the US (Florida, South Carolina, Texas, Georgia, and California), four of the five have Republican governors. Florida, South Carolina, and Texas were among the last to shut down and among the first to open back up.

It leaves me wondering what in the hell Republicans think they’re doing. I get the feeling that most of the anti-science individuals and policies come from Republicans. They seem to have a positive fear of science.

Anti-vaxers? Usually Republican. Parents who reject the clear evidence for evolution and want creationism taught in school? Republican. Climate-change-deniers? Republican. Anti-maskers? Republican.

And it’s not just a feeling, not just a perception: there are data to back it up.

I think this pandemic is really highlighting an ugly truth about America that many of us sensed but couldn’t really prove: we can’t help but see it all around us now.

At the other extreme is New Zealand, where politicians let health professionals and scientists make decisions about how to deal with the pandemic. They now have zero active cases. Zero.

But it’s not just who’s making the decisions: it’s also the mentality of the populace. This pandemic is also showing the ugly side of American “freedom-at-all-costs” thinking.

As it stands, I think the rest of the world is now just looking at America and shaking its head. We elected someone who has no business working as a public servant to the highest office in the nation and rejected clear scientific findings regarding the pandemic, which lead us to have historic levels of infection — to the degree that the EU has banned Americans from traveling to Europe.

Wheelies

Today, as we went on our evening walk, the Boy was popping wheelies on his bike. Right now he’s just pulling his front tire off the ground for a fraction of a second. Soon enough he’ll be trying to ride wheelies for as long as he can.

I found myself trying to remember whether I could ride wheelies as a kid. Could I? I honestly can’t remember. It seems plausible and implausible at the same time.

Such is the fragile and unreliable nature of memories.

Tuesday Adventures

Tuesday 14 July 2020

We all woke up at seven this morning. For K, that was sleeping in half an hour; for me, that was my normal wake up time; for E, well, it depends; for L, it was definitely early. Our plan: a morning bike ride on a route that we repeat regularly to check for improvement. After mapping out a route, we headed out. I stuck with the Girl because I knew she would be zooming ahead; K stuck with the Boy because he just doesn’t have the stamina a thirteen-year-old possesses. L and I made the 7 km ride in 24 minutes, which means an average speed of 16 km/h. Not too bad for a then-fussy girl who didn’t even want to get out of bed to begin with.

After breakfast, the Boy and I set up his wooden train set to take some pictures: he wants to sell it (eBay? Facebook Marketplace? Craig’s List?) since he doesn’t play with it anymore.

Then we did the same with his Duplo blocks. “I haven’t touched those in years!” he proudly informed me. But after we just display them, we have to make something out of them.

One last time.

The afternoon passes with a lot of reading.

The Girl reads Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in its entirety for the second time. It’s the HP book I’ve agreed to read, so she wanted to get through it quickly so I could read it. I struggled through the end of Barnes’s Flaubert’s Parrot — a book I had high hopes for but which ultimately left me disappointed.

In the evening, the Girl played a game of chess with K while E and I went on another bike ride:

And throughout the day, I popped downstairs for the next lesson in the series on Photoshop compositing and ended this evening with this creation:

Next step — apply those newly-learned skills to pictures of my own kids…

Please Advise

Monday 6 July 2020

Over the course of the last few weeks of school, I completed an online course to fulfill my tech proficiency requirement for my teaching certificate. I got a notice from someone in our administration earlier in the year that I needed to take care of that, and so I did. Now, I don’t want to sound rude or anything — it’s not that I think I’m so technologically amazing or anything — but the course I took was, for my level, useless. I learned nothing. It was all just a bunch of busy work for me. But still, busy work or no, it was required. So I got my certificate of completion and put it in our district’s professional development web site.

Shortly after that I received the following email:

Your request for Out-Of-District credit (for ” Collaboration Renewal Greenville”) has been denied.

You must login to Professional Development to view the reason your PD was denied.

Please login to Professional Development, view the reason your PD was denied, and make corrections and resubmit your request, if applicable.

Thank you,

The Professional Development Team

Why they couldn’t tell me the reason in the email is a mystery. I logged back into the professional development site and found the following explanation:

This is SDE credit and must be entered directly onto your certificate at the State Dept. Please email your documentation to [email redacted].

So I loaded the state department of education’s web site and quickly enough determined the email of the individual I needed to contact. I wrote a quick email and attached my documentation:

Ms. B—,

I have completed my tech proficiency course (see attached). My certification ID is: [redacted].

What steps do I need to take to update my certificate?

What was the response?

Good Afternoon G,

I don’t need this information. You will need to follow-up with the Greenville PCS Coordinator. This may be someone in the Greenville District Office.

Note: Technology Proficiency isn’t a requirement for your teaching certificate renewal. As of a few years ago tech proficiency is no longer printed on certificates.

I forwarded it to the district personal with a single sentence: “Please advise.”

On the sunny side of things, I took a bike ride this morning at 6:30 and saw this lovely view as the sun came up:

A Perfect Day

Tuesday 23 June 2020

In the morning, a bike ride. The kids don’t really want to go, but it’s supposed to rain on and off throughout the day, and they need exercise, so I all but force them. L fusses about one thing; E has a wreck (due to his own carelessness) and ends up fussy for some time; I fuss about their fussing. It’s easy to get caught up in the negative and let it chart the day’s course for you if you’re not careful. Not deliberate.

So I try to make things a little more careful, a little more deliberate. We get back and spend a fair amount of time, just the three of us, working on our bikes’ brakes. They’re all squeaking and squawking like feral hogs tied to deranged cats. For each bike, we loosen everything — cables, brake pads, centering screws — and recalibrate everything. As we’re working, I like to think that the kids are enjoying learning something, but I’m not sure. In fact, I rather doubt it. But there’s still some value in this, even if it’s just spending time together solving a problem.

After dinner, the Girl decides she wants to play Hearts with Papa, K, and me. E is across the street playing with neighbors, and he’s not able to follow a game with tricks and trumps just yet, so we play just the four of us.

We play eight hands, and in a surprise — I never win at games — I destroy everyone. L is the nearest to me, and she has almost double the points I have.

After the Boy comes in, he suggests War — he’s just learned it, and he likes it. One of two card games (Uno being the other one) that he enjoys.

I take the opportunity to take a few pictures. In the end, I can’t decide between three action shots, so I include them all. And the other two shots? They’re winning hands the Boy is particularly proud of. In the first one, the Girl gives him rabbit ears; in the second, he’s wised up.

Once I put the Boy to bed, I grab L and take her down to watch a movie. It’s the second night we’ve done this. Last night, I showed her The Help. It’s a good sign when she wants the movie paused when she leaves to get a snack; last night, she paused it herself. Tonight we watch a quirky British romantic comedy, About Time. It’s about making the most of life by looking at each day as a treasure. We all need to be reminded of that from time to time, especially a thirteen-year-old and her cranky father.

Croft and Berries

Monday 15 June 2020

A little bike ride to start summer adventures:

And some blueberries.

Borders, 2013 — Part 2

Friday 14 February 2020

It was a lovely spring afternoon, and I was done with school early, so a bike ride was in order. I decided to go on one of my favorites: dip down into Slovakia that loops back to Lipnica, where I lived.

Crossing into Slovakia was no problem. I made my way around Orava Lake, through Trstena and to the border at Sucha Hora (“Dry Mountain”), where I duly handed over my passport to the border guards. The Slovak guards stamped it and gave it to the Polish guard.

“Gdzie pan mieszka?” he asked.

“I live in Lipnica,” I replied.

The guard thumbed through my passport like the bloke in Mis, and then he looked at me with a puzzled look. “But how?”

At the time, I didn’t have a valid work visa: I was in the process of renewing it, following all the protocols the fine folks in Krakow had laid out, and they had assured me I had nothing to worry about. And yet here I was, on the border, starting to worry.

I explained my situation to guard, but he insisted he couldn’t grant me entry. “You don’t have a valid visa,” he said.

“Yes,” I explained, “but you can’t keep me out for that reason. Perhaps you could suggest I can’t live and work here, but you have to let me in on at least a tourist visa, which means a stamp of the passport and off I go.” I didn’t say exactly that — I used much more diplomatic terms, but that was the general idea.

“But you don’t have a visa,” he insisted, waking into his little office and punching some things up on the computer.

I stood there, dressed in my Lycra shorts and top for cycling, having only a bit of cash in my jersey pocket, and wondering what I would do if this guy seriously didn’t let me in. A friend of mine was one of the head border guards at the Chyzne border crossing, so I thought I would just ride back there. But what if he wasn’t working? How could I pull this all off? I was tired; it was nearing sunset; I had very little money. Disaster seemed just over the next hill.

The guard came back and gave me my passport, waving me through with a smile. “We’ll let you through this time,” he said, “but it would have been a different story for me if I were flying to America without a visa, wouldn’t it?” His smile grew.

“That’s what this is about,” I thought. “Someone in your family — a sister, a brother-in-law — got turned away from the States on some technicality, and now you’re having a little fun.” Naturally, I said none of this. I simply thanked him, took my passport, and rode as fast as I could over the border, which was actually another half-kilometer or so from the crossing station.

In 2013, we drove through that crossing, which was empty due to Poland’s and Slovakia’s mutual EU membership. It looked exactly as it had a decade earlier.

Borders, 2013 — Part 1

Climbing

Thursday 25 July 2019

Growing up, I did a lot of bike riding. It was very safe in our neighborhood, for there was only one way in and out — no thru-traffic. There were a couple of hills in our neighborhood that were awfully fun to ride down but not terribly fun to ride up.

5-Fullscreen capture 8102014 113843 AM

Of these two, Lynnwood Drive was the most easily conquered. There was nothing too terribly steep, and with some patience and determination, I could make it up the street.

2-Fullscreen capture 8102014 113325 AM

Going one way. Going the other was more challenging. The hill was shorter but steeper. Having a single-gear bike, I found my legs burning and barely moving by the time I made it to the top.

1-Fullscreen capture 8102014 113315 AM

But Norwood — Norwood was unthinkable. It was unimaginable to ride up Norwood; one had to stop push. To a kid of seven or eight with a single-speed bike, it looked like the Alpe d’Huez without the switch-backs: just one, steep climb that felt like at least a 37% slope.

3-Fullscreen capture 8102014 113402 AM

Our own street, Lamont, was the easiest of the three — just a stead, upward grind

4-Fullscreen capture 8102014 113745 AM

I imagine this is much the same way E views some of the short climbs in our neighborhood. After all, all the above thoughts were based on my perception as a kid of about E’s age.

E could take all these hills without a problem. So far this summer, he’s ridden 180 miles with me…

Big Monday

Monday 22 July 2019

The first order of the day: get the front end alignment done on the Paddy Wagon (or minivan as others might call it). The Boy, learning that I was going to take the car and ride my bike back, insisted on going with me.

Second, later in the day, a playdate with D, his best friend in kindergarten who changed schools for first grade. D’s mother, R, was a Spanish teacher at my school, and it just so happened that our boys were in the same class, and it just so happened that they became great friends, independent of any intervention from parents. The playdate included almost everything the Boy loves, namely Legos and swimming.

Later, eat an enormous dinner: salmon, potatoes, and one of his absolute favorites, asparagus. (How many seven-year-olds love asparagus, mushrooms, and blood sausage?)

Clean Plate

Finally, after a little rest to let the food settle, go on a seven-mile bike ride.

Any wonder he went to sleep almost immediately?

Taking Mama Out For a Ride

Sunday 21 July 2019

We took K out for a ride — the ride that we almost always go on — and it was interesting: the Boy was out-riding K on some of the climbs, climbs that just a few months ago he couldn’t make without stopping. Today, he took a couple of those climbs two, three times.

“We’ve got a strong little cyclist,” I said.

“Yes, we do.”