OLNTV: Why Al?

Posted on 2006-07-10 by frank

Another year, another Tour de France, another three weeks of listening to Al Trautwig make fun of Bob Roll.

I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but he’s even more intolerable this year as he knows enough to be dangerous. Last night I caught up on the time trial footage I missed while on a car trip on Saturday, and heard him trying to invoke images of previous time trials, for example, and I wish I remembered his exact words, “the one where Lance passed Jan Ullrich — such an air of finality!” Ugh!

And following the trend of television networks taking weird names, OLNTV is changing its name to ‘Versus’ in September. So we have the network that’s going to be ‘Man vs. Man, Man vs. Beast or Team vs. Team’.

Sorry, I just thought about Man vs. Fish while drinking my morning coffee and ended up with the coffee up my nose. When do we get to watch OLNTV, Sanity, and Reason versus the Focus Group?

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The Great Bel Air Turtle Races

Posted on 2006-07-06 by frank

We’re visiting Andrea’s family for the 4th of July week, having packed our small family, including Finley, but unfortunately minus the cats, in to the car for the 631 mile drive from our house to theirs. Obviously I missed a golden opportunity for ridiculous photos that I’ll have to remedy on the return trip!

4th of July in Bel Air is a medley of festivities, starting far too early at 6:45 AM with the raising of the flag, and ramping the excitement continually up and up through the way with hamster and turtle races. We never made it to the flag raising since we hadn’t even gotten through the coffee on the couch part of the morning, but we did get to the hamster races at 9:00 AM. You can see some folks were quite excited about this one, but the hamster races were quickly out-shone by the upcoming Turtle Races, complete with several hundred turtles organized into at least 30 heats of 10 turtles each. The line for entrants looked to be about a quarter mile long, single file, with some kids holding buckets or boxes with multiple turtles.

We’ve got a great plan to make the turtle races even MORE exciting next year, which I can’t reveal because while I’m certain they’re not illegal, are probably the sort of thing where you’re better off asking forgiveness rather than permission, but which will involve a wagon and a turtle named Tiny Turbo.

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The long way

Posted on 2006-06-20 by frank

So this is what happens when an avid cyclist lives too close to work, knows he has too much yard work to do in the evening to justify going on a group ride, and is awakened at 5:40 AM by his dog sneezing repeatedly and then barking incessantly at something or other out the front window when he is kicked out of the bedroom for the sneezing.

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Red Hugh’s in the King George location

Posted on 2006-06-19 by frank

Every so often we decide we’ll go spend an afternoon in downtown Augusta. I’ve written about it several times before, so I’ll just say it’s with a tiny bit of optimism and hope we head downtown early on a Sunday afternoon to grab some lunch at a nice, shaded outdoor spot, have a nice walk, and maybe afterwards, if the walk is long enough, stop somewhere for a pint.

There’s been some turnover in the places on Artist’s Row, a short block of gallerys and such that’s been around since the late 1990’s, and they’ve gained a small, independent bookstore, which unfortunately isn’t open on Sunday. As usual there isn’t a lot of shopping to be done on a Sunday with all the stores and most of the restaurants closed, but you can tell from the full rubbish bins and also, in certain places, the smell, that there’s been a late-night party in the last few days.

While we were walking towards the lower numbers of Broad Street, a small red car with a young couple inside stopped us to ask if there was anyplace open to get a bite to eat. I can understand their question — we’ve lived in the area over five years now and we still have trouble predicting what will be open when we venture downtown. We suggested the relatively new 1102 Broad Street, which had a small brunch crowd, or Pizza Joint, where we were headed. I think they ended up at White Elephant, because we passed their car parked in front on our way back up the street.

Pizza Joint was at about 50% capacity outside, and after lunch when I went inside to wash the sandwich bits off my face and hands, I was surprised to see it was nearly full inside.

As we walked past the deserted Augusta Commons, we noticed the Bermuda grass there is starting to look a bit shabby — I’m not a turfgrass expert but aren’t there higher-traffic grasses they could have used instead of that?

The walk was quite nice regardless of the opportunities for consumerism. It was hot, but there was a refreshingly cool breeze blowing in from somewhere that kept us from sweltering. At the intersection of 8th Street and the Riverwalk, we were heartily pleased to see the old King George location has finally got a proper tennant — Red Hugh’s Irish Pub! The ambience was pretty good, certainly a bit cleaner and not as old or worn as most of the true pubs I’m used to, but a friendly and inviting place to stop by for a break. The place was by no means crowded, but a slow, steady stream of customers kept the bar area nearly full, which is about the best I would expect of a pub early on a Sunday afternoon!

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The Chain

Posted on 2006-06-10 by frank

The bicycle chain is an amazingly device, efficiently transferring power from one direction to another when run over a set of sprockets.

My last bike ride before today’s adventure was commuting to work on Monday. I spent my week at business development activities for my job, partly demonstrating our products at a booth of a local trade show, and the rest of the time visiting a potential customer in another state. After a slowly crazy half-day of travel on Friday, when I was wasting time at the mercy of Delta Airlines, and could have been home for two and a half hours by the time I arrived at home, if only I’d driven instead of flown, I awoke around 7 AM today.

It was another of those days I knew I was going on a ride, no internal debate to enhance my motivation was necessary. I jumped out of bed and got all my stuff together, figuring I’d ride up to meet the group ride leaving Patriot’s Park at 8 AM. It took me a few minutes longer than I expected to get ready and leave, because I got halfway down my street and realized I’d forgotten my gloves. I hammered my way up William Few Parkway to the designated meeting location; I arrived with only twenty seconds to spare, but those rides rarely leave on time so I knew no one had left without me.

I was not greeted at the park by the usual sight of cyclists preparing for the saturday morning ride ritual. No, instead, I was greeted by a nearly-empty parking lot. There were two other vehicles present, and I suspect one of them had been there overnight. The only activity at the park this morning was someone exercising their greyhound on one of the baseball diamonds.

I waited till five minutes after the hour, then headed off on my own. Later in the day when I was dropping my injured bicycle off at Chain Reaction, Phil told me he pulled in to Patriot’s Park at 6 minutes after 8, and that must have been me he saw riding off by myself.

Yes, I did say “injured bicycle.” I had a great ride, and thought a lot about how a nice, hard bike ride is a great way to feel back at home after a quick business trip. 2.26 miles from home I was feeling nicely worn out and looking forward to being home, having a snack, and playing with Elizabeth, when going up a hill I noticed a strange clicking noise. I listened for a bit and thought it was coming from my pedals. A bit further, I heard a louder clunk and lost my forward momentum. I thought I’d thrown my chain, but when I stopped to put it back on, it was broken! I pulled it out of the drivetrain and put it in one of my jersey pockets, then proceeded to walk up the hills and coast down the hills to get home.

Regular readers, all two of you, may recall a recent post where I got two flat tires and had to walk home from that, too. Well, this is the second time in two weeks I’ve had to walk home from a bicycle ride! After how many years of riding a bike and never a major incident? What’s going on here? I should ask my mom if Mercury is in retrograde or something.

So, that’s how my road bike ended up at my LBS for the second time this month, and since they don’t carry campy-compatible chains, I won’t get it back until Tuesday at the earliest, and when I ride tomorrow, it’ll be on the trails!

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