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A s long as I'm going to jog as a means of staving off poor fitness (to be perfectly clear: I would prefer not to), my satel-lited path may as well produce an apparition of something running faster than I can, like this outline of a Mooninite (Err) trucking through our subdivision. What an impressively high kick! This is joggraphy, the earth-writing counterpart to sky writing, which has been in decline with environmental concerns about contrails bouncing the sun's heat, about pollution, about the impermanence of words written in smoke and vapor. Satellite assisted, telephonetic earth-writing: probably somebody has already created profound body of work adopting an aesthetic more sophisticated than this one. For even though I am artistically satisfied (to the point of resting for several consecutive days) with the Sprinting Err, my next even bigger jog will be of a slow, aging former athlete hunched over and wincing as he peels blood- and sweat-soaked socks from blistering, cracked feet.
And: I'm tempted to qualify the time and pace shown above. It's pretty close to my usual pace, which is, of course, an unusual pace insofar as it often includes a mile with Yoki (who must be pulled along and who is a laggardly beast of burden past one mile), interruptions to allow Y. to do what tired dogs do to take "breaks" along the first leg of the route, and a parkour-like digression in front of Mr. Dogcrap's house. He's the one whose sidewalk is, shall I say, littered. Saturday's run, screen-capped above, was a full family outing, meaning D. and I took turns pushing the jogging stroller (inside of which Is. drew figures with markers, paper, and a lapdesk; maybe she drew Mooninites). I realize that's a lot of qualifying, considering I'm content with 10-minute miles.
Added: Apparently GPS writing is all the rage among Ayn Rand fans.
S unday's game in the Ann Arbor Men's League was special. It was the final game of the regular season. With a win, we would move into a three-way tie for first place, at 7-3. We were facing a youthful, full-court-pressing team from Washtenaw CC (their club team, if you will, although they have a deep bench, a coach, and, for Sunday night's game, cheerleaders). I haven't played in a game with cheerleaders since 1995; they even twiddled their fingers in the air when we shot free throws.
Our group has been up and down this year. We started 5-0, which was good enough to lock up a sponsor for the state tournament later this month in Midland (why it is in Midland, I have no idea, since all eight teams are from SE Michigan). We started the season with ten guys, more than most carry. One--the only guy older than me on our team or in the division--decided to quit for reasons I won't bother going into. That left us with nine. Several of our early games were 40+ point routes (against teams in a division below ours). One was a triple OT win against a team that later beat us by 40--our poorest outing of the season. The other two losses came to a close rival; we lost one of those by four points, the other by five. So: although we finished in a first-place tie, we wouldn't win any of the tie-breakers based on head to head matchups or point differential. So it goes. I don't know how they'll settle who gets the trophy.
Why was Sunday's game special? Well, aside from the eventfulness of playing against a "team" of 18 and 19 year-olds (i.e., babies who were born the same year I graduated high school), instead of having our usual nine players, we had five. Four didn't show up because of Winter Break, injuries, absent-mindedness, I don't know. We hadn't been short-handed like this before. I am too old to be nervous about basketball games in a recreational league. But: it was going to be difficult to hold off a team of fit, pressing youth for four quarters.
The game started off smoothly enough. We were down 31-29 at halftime. Nobody was in foul trouble. I had just one foul in the first half, and fouls are as you might expect the main concern when playing without a single sub. A couple of bad plays (or bad calls or both) can leave you in the unwinnable mismatch, four vs. five. Next, something terrible: in the first 1:24 of the third quarter, I was called for three fouls: two blocking fouls, which might have been charges were I willing to fall onto my back (I'm not), and an official's hallucination. The new problem: four fouls with 6:36 remaining in the third quarter.
We adjusted (put me on the right frontcourt corner of a 2-3 zone). And--this is why it was special, mostly--I managed to finish the game without fouling out. Also, we won by 12 or 13 points, entirely because our team defense was excellent. We held them to something like 20 points for the second half.
I'm blogging it because I'm pretty sure this is the last league game I'll ever play in. I will travel to Midland in late March for the state tournament. After that, the only basketball I play will be lunchtime pickup games with EMU's regulars twice each week. I still enjoy playing for fitness, recreation, and communion, but I like being able to skip a day when I want to, I like being able to go home when I'm done for the day, and I like being able to walk one building over from my office to play among people I know (and who are not absurdly competitive).
O ne second I was on my bike. The next second I was off my bike.
I had no choice but to ditch it. Only, upon ditching it, I also turned my ankle.
It went like this: Riding along on the grass as we exited the Barry Park playground last evening, D. and Is. (in the tot-seat) ahead of me, I came upon a dip--a three-foot rise from the park lawn to the road. Crept slowly, approaching the dip. Rode up the dip. I had the strange feeling that the front tire was lifting too much, like I was pulling a wheelie. But it touched down again, and when it did, the front wheel lurched just enough to create a momentary loss of balance. I was moving too slowly! So I tried unsuccessfully to eject: I put down my right foot, rolled my ankle, and belly flopped onto the bicycle and then onto the ground where I came to rest part on the pavement and part on the gravel. A bona fide, aww inspiring wipeout.
When the dust settled, Is. was explaining to D. that I just tipped right over. When I could breathe again, I got back on and finished the ride. The damages weren't all that bad. Wind knocked out of me (and today very sore ribs) from where the bike seat broke phase one of The Fall, a badly bruised left palm, a scrape on my right forearm, and mildly skinned knees. I'd say there were about the same number of witnesses as when I took a spill on the treadmill at the YMCA back in March. No other falls to speak of in 2009, but there was a close call on a campus visit. By "close," I mean that with coffee in one hand and a loaded computer bag over the other shoulder I did a hard Charleston-style step on the ice (similar to what you'll see when the playhead is at 0:29)
spilled coffee into the air, and then caught the coffee back in the cup without any loss, regained my balance, and carried on with the short walk. It wasn't a fall, but it did have all of the excitement of a fall, none of the pain or humiliation.
I've written about bike crashes here before, but I intend to make this the last entry on the subject.
R an across this clip with Is. this morning. Of course, it's not as though I need more material for my Scrabulous autoludography.
Just reflecting somberly on of all the bingos I might have played if Y had come.
B elieve it or not, I've been playing Scrabulous less frequently in recent weeks. Still, because the game developers make it so easy to grab columnized data on the bingos laid down over a given period of time, I couldn't resist fiddling around with some post-game (maybe post-fall-season) bubble chart analysis using Many Eyes.
Also, because posting one's trophies so openly risks projecting an aura of excessive pride, I have to add that I'm not all that accomplished of a Scrabble player (i.e., I've never won anything other than the occasional match). This fall I have grown accustomed to keeping Scrabulous open in a tab each morning while I write. When my writing mojo plummets, as it does from time to time, into the deeps of 'what ever am I going for here?', I mouse over and play a word. Call it productive digression.
I guess this also means that for as long as I am working on the dissertation every M-F morning, I will cautiously accept all* Scrabulous challenges.
* This conditional promise no longer applies after you have defeated me once.
I dragged my feet (a dragging not only of reluctance, but of aging joints, stiffness, soreness), and then I succumbed to pressures to join a recreational basketball team for the next ten weeks. It's been almost a year since the strange pinch that blossomed into weeks and weeks of appointments, scans, and eventually a cortisone injection late last spring. I really don't know whether the cartilage ulceration will, yet again, ulcerate, but I also think of this as a last chance to play hoops. If not now, when?
I haven't ever played in many rec leagues. After high school, when I was seventeen and taking a freshman courseload at Central Michigan, I joined a team in the men's league in the old high school gymnasium every Sunday. We didn't win many games. The sponsor was one of the local saw mills, Maeder Bros., I think. And later, after I finished undergrad work and took my first post-bacc. gig around Saginaw, Mich., I joined up with a squad from Bay City sponsored by Green's Tavern. Kelly green tops. It was very much about the post-game beers back at Green's. And local lore had it that Bay City sported more bars per capita than any other U.S. city. That right? And it was with Green's Tavern that I regained my confidence after season-ending right shoulder surgery the year before, my final season at alma mater. Later on, in Kansas City, there were a couple of leagues, but nothing memorable--more pick-up and open gym gatherings than anything else.
Without going into the full details, I'm on a sponsored team again. Playing in a suburban Syracuse church league. No practices. Just games. Forty-minute running clock (the last two minutes of each half, it stops). And the best part: six fouls. Plenty for a running clock. The division we're in assumes the names of programs in the Big Ten, and because we're the new team, I'm told we'll be known as Penn State. When I said to the team captain, "Penn State?!," he said, "I can probably still change it to Minnesota." And then Penn State was back to sounding okay (a judgment applied exclusively in the domain of hoops). Tip-off tomorrow, in the name of once-a-week fun and decompression. May it go well enough that I'm able to mention it again.
Added: Game 1 was a 63-44 loss to one of stronger teams in the league. I was able to walk the stairs to get out of the gym afterward, so that's something. Ended with five fouls (three ticky-tacks in the first half, and one that should've been a charge to bring me to five).
I n a rare basketball exhibition last night between mater1 and mater2, mater1 won, 103-99, in overtime.
Because they've never played, the significance of this result--even for an exhibition--is that a modest NAIA program won a dab of respect by outshining the only NCAA Div. I program between Columbia and Lawrence, even if the Roos are a low-mid major practically unknown to the world outside Kansas City. Park has a second-year coach, two transfers from CMU, and a few other guys I coached, knew as campers, or played with during my seven year stint working in athletics at mater1. Of course, it'd be equally satisfying for mater1 to bounce Wm. Jewell this weekend, now that my expectations for a good season have been piqued. Apparently that's what winning does, converting impassivity to alumni pressure overnight.
V isited the orthopedic doc today. Sat down with a doctor's double...a helper, something or other like clinician's assistant, who reported that the knee problem won't require surgery. You sure that's my file? The meniscus is intact. Healthy. The source of pain, which is quite real I'd add, happens to be a 5mm "cartilage ulceration" on the end of the leg bone (I can't remember which one...femur?). Beats the heck out of a cartilage uncertaination. The asst. said it's a condition resembling arthritis, although "it's not arthritis." Good. Good.
In short I've been cleared for low-impact stuff to be moderated only by the pain (walking, naps, watching NCAAs). And slighter (decreasing) pain lingers, but it's not as bad as it once was. Swelling is the explanation--the same cause of the electickle nerve-shocks I get on the bottom of my foot when I stand up every now and then. Long term outlook: four to six weeks and it'll be like nothing ever went wrong. Possible remainder: a tiny pock will remain in the cartilage, the memory of this ulceration.
And so I feel like a jerk for crying foul to blogspace, for wallowing in the many em/sym/anti/pathies of you all. But a relieved jerk, a delighted, grateful jerk, encouraged now that I can get some more action out of my basketball sneakers, return to the hardwoods before the end of the semester and not be forced to pass on the Native Vision camp in early June. And I did get to try on some of the wildest shorts ever for the MRI. If a team was decked out in these duds for the NCAAs, I'd foresee them to the championship on style alone (reminds me of the bible college I watched play in KC a few years ago that wore warm-up pants for the game. To the coach: You guys want to change off those warm-up pants? Coach: We play in them. To the coach: Oh.)
Enough. Got D.'s birthday to celebrate.
I 'm just back from Dick's Sporting Goods at the local shopping mall where I was attempting to exchange one dartboard for another (dang, this makes it sound like I've been en route for days, since my last blog entry even). Why the exchange? We'd been stringing along on half-commitments, shamelessly doling out one-of-these-dayses to Ph. as a way to defer the purchase of a dartboard for the basement. Finally, yesterday, I splurged on the board. It's nothing extravagant, but for the price one would think it would come with everything advertised on the box, including two sets of crappy darts. Got the package home, however, and tacked up the board before learning that the darts themselves had escaped the package. They were nowhere to be found. You can imagine our disappointment; gloom overflowed. I'd even picked up an open-patella knee sleeve at Dick's to keep my loose and slippery left knee-parts compacted while heaving the darts at the basement wall.
So back to Dick's I went late this afternoon. They had one other dartboard on the shelf like the one I bought yesterday. Perfect. Until I opened it and found that it, too, was missing the small bag of dart parts. No bag. No darts. No other boards like it (next closest, a thirty-dollar upgrade). So I went ahead and picked up a set of soft-tips, talked the asst. manager into giving me them at a significant discount. Completed: a dartboard and darts for the basement.
N ever heard of competitive search-a-word? Me neither. Until today. My sister-in-law--visiting from Colorado Springs--severely and thoroughly kicked my ass at the competitive search-a-word. Get set. Go.
She aced her puzzle in 3 minutes, 35 seconds. Me with mine: 9 minutes, 22 seconds. Pummeled me at the word search. But I'm not so much disappointed as awe-filled (close to aw-ful). Twenty-one words in just over three minutes is the sort of computer-like pattern-finding that proves a supremely trained eye (with a pinch o' luck).
In case you're in the mood for practicing, here's a search-a-word from the most common search terms at Earth Wide Moth in June. Yeah...enjoy?
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E ntered two pools this season. One:
And the other:
G ot my rear kicked at least six or seven times by this guy. First college game I ever broke into the starting lineup (at center..WTH? You want me to play where?) was against the Bearcats--1993. We got busted up, to be sure; was always that way when we traveled to Lebanon, Ill. They were running a sideline break in those days. Only beat Statham & co. once as a player. Took 'em down at home during my junior season when they were rated #17 nationally. Vivid for lots of good reasons; nostalgia added now that he won praise on Sportscenter this week for being winningest coach. Just glad to contribute.
Always more to say, but I'm writing my bleary head off this week.
Postied by 