Overcast Labor Day Saturday is a quiet one at the pool.
I’m okay with it.
(thx, Ronan)
Bye, Summer
Monthly Archives: August 2024
5.5 Morning match
I like playing in the 5.5 combo league, where 3.0 and 2.5 players play together. The 2.5 guys are all pretty chill, and they’re new to tennis. There’s no pressure to be on and the matches can be a place to work on different parts of my game.
I didn’t know the zones were in all of the Fitness entries. I guess I really am a Zone 3 man.
Whip
An Acura NSX isn’t the rarest of 90’s sports cars, but we don’t have a lot of them in Richmond.
I didn’t get the antique plate in the photo, but it looked out of place.
I’m a spinner now
I’ve been playing tennis for a few years now, almost exclusively for fun and exercise. It’s been a good sweat and I like hanging out with my tennis friends. I’ve also gotten better at it.
I’ve gotten to a point now, sadly, that my skill has exceeded my fitness, and if I want to keep improving I’m going to need to start exercising and improving my cardio so I can get better at the thing I do for exercise.
I know, I don’t like it either, but here we are.
I have chosen a twice-weekly spin class as the path by which I will collect cardio gains. I used to be an avid recreational cyclist and I’m not unfamiliar with the dark arts of the spin studio. Plus they’re free at the club so the barrier to entry is low.
I never thought of myself as a Zone 3 Man, but the data is the data.
Blue Light
Parking deck safety phone had a cool blue light.
Montana has a lot of nowhere.
Here’s a leftover from that Montana trip. I’ve gotten the SOS thing on the iPhone before but this is the first time I’ve seen the satellite icon.
It makes sense, since Montana is mostly backcountry, but it was weird to see.
Harrisonburg and Staunton Va.
More work miles here. I was sure the novelty of Virginia greenery would start to wear off by now, but it hasn’t happened yet. I do love a scenic overlook.
As fate and fortune would have it, the office I visited was just down the road from the county fairgrounds and the fair was in town. I mean, we had lunch options, but we’d have been fools to go anywhere but the fair.
1/4 fried chicken and a Dr. Wham? Yeah, 1/4 fried chicken and a Dr. Wham.
The fair at lunch doesn’t run the rides, but they’re all ready to go. We also missed the monster truck show the night before, and we were going to miss the tractor pull and demolition derby later in the week (but I did get to meet the guy who hauls the demolition derby’d cars off of the track). I’m just glad those things are happening somewhere.
There were also cows.
Blushing “Sugarcoat’
I’ve been listening to (and loving) this one for a couple of weeks and I cannot remember where I found it. It’s a good one, no doubt. Two married couples make up the band and there’s some excellent Gum Country (my fave record of 2020) vibes and enough guitar fuzz to draw My Bloody Valentine and Lush comparisons.
The album artwork is great, too.
Bozeman 3
I wasn’t in Montana long enough to adjust to the time zone, so I got up early on my last day to catch a hike before I flew home. I am not normally a hiker, but when the trails are right there, a person doesn’t have a choice. I even packed hiking boots.
The Drinking Horse Mountain Trail, built in 2001, is a 2.5-mile hike with 700 feet of elevation. The internet described it as “Easy to Moderate” and “Good for Children”. I figured I chill 90-minute loop would be the best way to wrap my time out west.
Getting places before sunrise is easy when you’re surrounded by mountains.
Even though the trail was a loop, I took a picture of the map just in case. I didn’t need it, but it gave me something to pretend to look at while I was catching my breath.
As I worked my way up the trail, there were plenty of benches to grab photos (and gasp for air. so much gasping). The sun slowly worked it’s way up the valley as I went along. You can see it getting brighter in these photos.
At the top, with the sun over head, you could see everything. It was awesome.
I was gassed. “At least the rest of it is downhill”, I said.
There were a couple of places where you could see a small path off of main trail, where maybe people were adding small spurs to get to photo ops. This one was obviously a path to that treacherous-looking rock formation on the left. The park added the barrier to give folks an extra minute to consider their common sense, I suppose. I didn’t need the extra time.
It is difficult to describe just how steep these switchbacks were. I hope this photo does it justice. There weren’t many on the way down, but it was like this the whole way up. “Easy to Moderate” my ass.
The descent was otherwise a delight. I can’t help but reiterate what a beautiful part of the country this is. Back at the bottom of the trail, having survived the experience, I took a minute to enjoy some of scenes.
I didn’t notice this sign on the way in. It all worked out, though.
And with the hiking done, I rolled out to the airport and home.
The Bozeman airport is really something. I’d go so far as to call it “pleasant”. They really lean into the dinosaur fossils here, but I didn’t have time to get to the big museum with the skeletons. Next time.
Winged Wheel “Big Hotel”
Another in a long line of terrific recommendations from Tracy Wilson’s Courtesy Desk newsletter, Winged Wheel’s “Big Hotel”, is, as she describes:
Impenetrable echoes rumble and then evaporate in hypnotizing swirls as if a raincloud is trying to extinguish a volcanic river of neon molten rock. Willy Wonka could play any portion of Big Hotel in his unsettling boat ride tunnel and I think accomplish the same mesmerizing yet mind expanding journey.
I get serious A Storm In Heaven-era Verve vibes, too. This is one that I’ve streamed enough to buy.