Smoke gets in your eyes

As I headed out for work this morning, I caught a whiff of smoke. My first thought was "leaves", followed by a flickering montage of images from my early childhood. Back then, it was perfectly acceptable to rake the year's crop of fallen leaves into piles and then burn them—although I can't imagine my memory has that right. Folks must've at least put them in the 50-gallon drums that everyone used for burning trash back then.

"The fires scorched more than 663,000 acres — more than 1,000 square miles or about two-thirds the size of Rhode Island..."

(CBS) GROOM, Texas

That's not what I was smelling, obviously. Not in the scraped-clean-of-trees, multi-laned concrete streeted suburb of Allen. I'm pretty sure I was smelling the misfortune of fellow Texans suffering through the wildfires burning in the panhandle. At the risk of sounding like I'm trying to be philosophical before my second cup of coffee, it reminded me of how we're all connected.

I gave my lawn its first mowing of the season on Friday evening, and I'm still sore from trimming and edging on Saturday. By Sunday, the very-green grass had grown with such enthusiasm that it's looking like it needs to be mown again—especially after the heavy rains that came during the night.

And yet, this morning I smell smoke. Hundreds of miles away, the ground and foliage are so dry and there's so much land burning that I can smell it here, in my cubicle, inside a sealed building.

Weekend Update

As bad as the weekend was for the folks suffering through wildfires, it was great for me. With my physical therapist's permission, I did a bit of riding on my road bike just to see if the combination of anti-inflammatory drugs, PT, and a higher stem have ameliorated my neck pain. Saturday morning, I went out with a leisurely-paced novice group for a little under 25 miles. The pain had kicked in by about 18 miles, but it wasn't unbearable and I seemed bounce back more quickly once I finished the ride. Not great, but an improvement.

Then yesterday, I participated in a group riding clinic subsidized by the PBA and conducted by the notorious "Bikin' Mike" Keel. For close to two hours, Mike shared with the group his philosophies and experience gained from 30+ years of cycling. It brought into sharp relief the disparity between the right way to ride in a group and the way the group dynamic actually plays out during most club rides.

Which is why it was all the more interesting when Mike shared with us that he'd be doing ride leader training for the Plano club in the near future. This is A Good Thing™, I think.

Anyway, once the lecture had concluded we all unloaded our bikes. Grinning in perverse anticipation of the five miles of 23 mph southerly headwinds (with 30 mph gusts) we'd face, we formed up a double line and prepared to ride to "The Crit Site" where we'd practice paceline techniques.

"The Crit Site", as it's known to area cyclists, is actually a commercial development that never quite got off the ground. With its smooth, wide concrete streets and unobscured field of view, it has become a popular site for bike racing criteriums. In our case, it was a perfect place to get used to drafting a foot or two off another rider's rear wheel without having to worry about watching for vehicular traffic (because there is none). Yesterday's winds provided an added instructional bonus, because we could really tell when we were in the "sweet spot" of the draft. And, because we were riding on a loop, we got to experience how different drafting positions work better depending on which direction the wind is coming from.

On the ride back to the cars, we were stopped at a traffic light and I took a look around. Neat lettering painted across the inside of two large shop windows read "CROISS   ANTS".

"You hear a lot about ants in Texas," I thought aloud, "but mostly just fire ants. What's a croiss ant?"

"I think they're French," the spry older gentleman next to me suggested.

"Hmm. Doesn't croiss mean cross in French?" I asked, disingenuously misspelling croix.

Mrs. Malaprop would have been so proud.

"Maybe they're some sort of army ants," I continued, warming to the subject. "Ants Templar. But you'd think the Ants Templar would be pretty aggressive. Why haven't I had to wage war on them in my yard?"

"It's obvious," I heard from behind me. "They're French."

(If you're still waiting for the punch line, I hope you have a comfortable chair.)

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