Had a recent work run that took me to Roanoke, Marion, and Abingdon Virginia. It was a good chunk of driving to a part of the state I hadn’t yet visited. I took the non-highway route to Roanoke, because it’s pretty.
Good breakfast and a clean mid-2000’s 4Runner.
Abingdon has a special charm, and a revolutionary-war-era Tavern that now holds a great steak house.
There isn’t a way back from Abingdon that isn’t on Interstate 81, but there were still some sights.
I finally got back into pickup truck life. While I loved my little car, the utility of the pickup is just too useful to ignore. Even for a poser (not diesel, no gun rack, no Punisher sticker) such as myself.
I didn’t waste any time in making two runs to the dump this weekend, though, so it’s not a complete pose.
We took one of the two spots to advance out of the USTA Sectionals this weekend. I was only available to play one of the matches, but we won our line and the team won handily. This is the same kind of thing we did a few years back when we went out to USTA Team Nationals (as 3.0 players, “the best of the worst”).
The weather had been dodgy all weekend so we played an adjusted format that greatly shortened the match, in an effort to get as much tennis in before the rain as we could. It wasn’t a crushing physical task, thank goodness, but it was still muggy enough to get up a good sweat.
We go again in three weeks. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Another too-hot day with a USTA match. We didn’t get going until 2:30 and man, it was rough. It was the first time this summer I was paying attention to my heart rate in-match. It broke 160bpm a few times, which is where I start to reconsider my choices. Even with generous breaks for water and shade, things were dicy.
I played pretty well, which was no small feat given the temperature and crushing sun. My serve held most of the match and my ground strokes were consistent. That’s a few matches in a row they they’ve been decent. I *might* be getting better.
Those improvements were balanced out by a hysterical inability to hit a volley at the net. Like, it was bad-bad.
It was my first win at 3.5, too. Also, holy shit it was hot.
Twenty one years ago I got a wild hair and spent a steamy holiday Friday afternoon installing Movable Type.
I can’t tell you how long it took me to find and resize that image of a glass of milk.
It was revelatory, following some printed instructions to install some code on a server which would enable me to be just like Kottke. I read more than a handful of blogs back then, but he was the inspiration. The archetype of what blogs were.
I harbored hopes that I might get some traction as a poor-man’s kottke (or a “we have kottke at home” in modern parlance), but that didn’t pan out. I lacked the drive to post with the necessary consistancy (obvs.).
That said, I am glad to have had this blog as a place to occasionally burp a thought or photo into the world.
A crucial discovery of my mid-life has been the concept of “friend with a boat”. I’m definitely a “land” guy, but I can see the appeal of having a boat to go out and do water stuff. I certainly don’t have the resources (or temperament) to have a boat and all that boat-owning entails, but we have friends who do, and it’s a credit to them as people that they’re willing to invite us out on the water in the summer.
Sometimes you see pelicans.
Sometimes you see a forklift putting a boat away in the barn.
Other times, you spend 4 hours casting lines trying to catch bluefish, but the only thing you hook is a floatation cushion that blew off of some boat.
It’s always cool to grab a Maps screengrab so see where you were, though.
Also, boat dogs!
I got added to a 3.5 roster this summer (I am a 3.0 player, so a 3.5 team is the next level up) and I have been lucky(?) to get a couple of matches because so many of the other folks have scheduling conflicts. This morning’s match was inside, in an effort to hide from the sun. So while we were, in fact, spared the sun, the dead and humid air inside was so much worse for me. I had trouble holding the racquet and eventually wilted from the heat. We lost 4-6, 0-6. I’m 0-3 in this league so far. It makes some sense, because I’m playing against better players, but man it’s a bummer to get repeatedly worked.
It’s been a sweaty time here in the RVA this summer. I’ve been trying to get out and do/see some cool stuff, but then I can only post about it if I get some photos. I try to spend my time practicing gratitude and manifesting abundance, you know, the classics, so it’s been a while between posts.
I’ve decided to try to play some more golf this year, and that’s what that photo up there is about. I usually play one round a year, that I get as a birthday present. For 2024, I took some steps to get a little more “serious”. I got my clubs re-gripped, so they’re closer to an appropriate size for my dumb paws. I’ve also hit the range a couple of times to practice. I’ve played twice this year already, which has been great for me. I’m a poor golfer, but I know the rules (and etiquette) and I play fast and I’m good for some laughs, so I’m welcome as a 4th with better golfers.
It also helps that a person can have a couple of cold pops during a round. I especially enjoy a sport where a beer or two isn’t going to hurt, and might even help.
May 7th is a day that holds a couple of key memories for me, sports-wise.
Bartolo Colon’s only career home run cemented his status as a folk hero for the New York Mets and for me as a fully-portioned gentleman athlete. I still get some goosebumps when I watch it.
May 7th was also the date for the one of the greatest comebacks in the history of sport. Liverpool erased a 0-3 deficit in the 2nd leg of the Champions League semi-final to win over Leo Messi’s Barcelona, punctuated by Divock Origi scoring on Trent Alexander-Arnold’s corner taken quickly.
I still watch this a couple of times a year. It gets me every time.
