Brum & Worcs Canal: 5-Ways to the Uni

Actually, this was only one way to the Uni but from Five Ways. I caught the bus from the Med School after a lunchtime meeting and hopped off in Five Ways and joined the canal looking, looking, looking for benchmarks and bolts.

I got to the Somerset Road Bridge and, with most of the walls that ostensibly held bolts now heavily worn or replaced by metal-slat fencing, I can confirm that there is the dictionary definition of fuck all to find there. Up top, as well, there are signs of wall damage to consider.

At the bridge, there should have been two Cut Marks, one each to the northwest sides of the rail and the canal sections of the bridge. But, all I could find was the one boxed with highlighting (canal one) and the graffito bemoaning our ‘korupt’ system.

Determined to succeed if at all possible, I continued back to the labs along Edgbaston Park Road and spotted the faint CM in stone not far from where I turned on to the road (above and detail below).

There was another, similarly hard to spot mark across from the entrance to the campus hotel (listed as Hornton Grange on my old documents)…see if you can spot it:

If you said, “here” then treat yourself to a nice beverage:

A guy walks into a Bar(ber Institute)

There is a standard joke structure involving A, a compound phrase with two or more seemingly redundant components; B, an individual or group supplying the source of irony therein; and, C, one of the components of A that in the context of B yields a punchline and some level of hilarity from ‘none at all’ to ‘uproarious’…vis, “A, or as B would have it, C.”  For instance, “I went out ‘day drinking’ or, as it is known in Britain, ‘drinking’.  

I have desperately desired to make the ‘School of Education’ such a joke but I have been to Arizona State University’s campus and met some students there and, consequently, know that the two components do not necessarily have anything to do with one another.  

I guess the only good response is, as noted on the door of the nearby Barber Institute, “pull the other one“:

November 2019 Run Review and Excess Photo Dump

On the 9th, the first freeze of the season arrived with sleet during the last 1/4 of a 20 mile trot. The sun graffito mocks me.

All change this month with a house purchase (and move), Thanksgiving (and return of the Holiday Run Streak), Impeachment yonder and a snap General Election here.  First, monthly stats:

Miles: 141
Runs: 19
Avg:  7.4 miles/run
Long: 20.4 miles
Pubs on runs: 8, and total: 14
Best pub: King Edward VII

 

The 2019 Holiday Run Streak is the first in a couple of years (these always seem to fall on odd-number years) but at the end of the 2017 effort my inflamed soft tissue injuries dating back to the Ridgeway Challenge were only a few months away from curtailing ALL running for the entire summer of 2018.  In fact, return to form has never completely occurred albeit this year represents a noble effort for an old man.

The rules are dynamic, and this year include a minimum of 3 miles per day but use the ultramarathon training schedule I recently started as a guide for the days with longer runs.  More at the first weekly update, here.

One nice discovery this month was the Harborne Walkway, an old railbed converted to paved foot/bike path running from Harborne into (at least) Smethwick.  Exits onto busy roads but also tunnels under or uses old rail bridges to fly over them.

“Stand for something,” reads the sign one of the background women is carrying at the Mary Macarthur monument in Cradley Heath honouring the trade unionist suffragette who, among a long list of achievements, led a strike of women chain makers here in 1910.  Spotted on a long run on my way to the Wetherspoons a couple miles away:

Another rainy run turned up this monument to the 2nd Boer War with another towering woman (I reckon this is Brittania) flanked by two artillery men:

 

This was the day after Remembrance Day and the sad, solitary tribute of poppies at the base seems fitting to a war about gold, diamonds, and the Boer’s resentment of their British overlords prohibiting slavery nearly a century earlier.  These ladies’ diaphanous gowns were worth the stop:

The running plummeted after the house purchase led us into a pre-move refurbishment rabbit hole.  This is beginning to recover with aforementioned Holiday Streak…its weekly updates will supercede the monthly ones from today.

The Noble Room, Staff House – UniBrum

On a bit of a fish & chips binge, lately, this is the second time I’ve had it at the Noble Room (but the first time was a group lunch and I already was going to seem weird BEFORE starting to photograph my platter).

It’s good F&C here, too.  The batter isn’t especially salty and soaks up vinegar greedily.  The mushy peas and chips are very good (for an institutional cafeteria) and you scoop your own — the chips in the photo obscure the mound of mushy peas I loaded up on.

Sat with another group because there was an empty seat there.  Didn’t know anyone at the table and the only thing I said, as I was daubing up the last of the peas with the last chip, was, “good lord…you’re cursed!” to an Irishman that had just listed every ailment he has suffered since moving to Brum.

Brook’s Sports Bar, UniBrum, Birmingham

Pub #2265:

Went to the Brook’s Sports Bar for lunch on a 45 minute break in a two-day course on programming in R.  “Burger Special” was anything but…on the other hand, at least I got way ahead on my salt allowance for next month.

Here’s some pseudo R-code I came up with:

Brooks_Sports_Bar  <-  data.frame(

look = c(“bleak”, “sterile”),
beer = c(“lager”, “more lager”,  “American craft IPA”),
food = c(“saline”, “dry”, “whaddaya expect?”)
)

If Brooks_Sports_Bar != only_bar_around

{ there_instead <- grep(venue$type = “bar” or “tavern” or “pub”);
go there_instead
}

The Mermaid Bar, UniBrum

Pub #2230:

With a tight window between meetings, I had to choose between lunch or a run.  Oh, sweet sloth and gluttony.

I wandered over to the Mermaid, a small bar in the student centre next to Joe’s, and got some crappy chips and chicken portions.  They had craft beer on, but I opted for Foster’s since I only had that much cash on me.

The music was pleasant enough despite the so-so food.

Mermaids feature all over the campus including the fountain just outside the bar (here’s a link for an explanation of the mermaid obsession).

Oh, right, the motto on the shield is something like, “by struggle, to the heights!”  Looking around the bar, I find the theme to Warner Brother’s cartoons more appropriate…Overture! Curtain! Lights! This is it, we’ll hit the heights!

The Bratby, UniBrum, Birmingham

Pub #2221:

The research groups I am now associated with are a fantastic bunch: smart, funny, collegial, and, as it turns out, friendly.  I actually looked forward to spending a little time with them at the Bratby, the pub in Staff House across from our labs (compare this with my leaving drinks write-up from Oxford).

However, this was technically a work thingy and there are privacy issues involved.  Lovely conversations ensued and it was good to get to know the folk I spend my days with in a less formal setting.  They are all younger than some of my High School classmates’ grandkids, though, so this probably won’t turn into a regular thing but it will be nice on the rare occasion.

 

Go Central, University Centre, Birmingham

Institutional dining halls have not treated me well with respect to fish and chips (Oxford University seemed to see this meal consistently as an ironic art piece more than sustenance, such as here, and here).  But, the catering company at UniBrum treats this as if it is what it is: the National Dish.  Yum yum!  I had this two days in a row and would’ve made it 3 save for the fact that it was the weekend by then.

 

January 2019 Recap/Photo Dump

I’ve been running recreationally — and keeping track of it — for 45 years now; and, in 35 of those I have covered at least 2000 miles per year (and averaging over 2000/year for 42 out of 45). Last year was one of those 3 outliers with just over 1000 miles.  At my current pace, that’s what I would predict for this year, too, but the scaling up, modest though it is, has begun.

So, this low-mileage month was not so bad considering that the enforced convalescence last year to recover from an injury ignored and exacerbated the 2½ years prior means this meek mileage is equal to that logged for the entire 7½ months from mid-May until New Year’s Eve.

The pub count is low, too, but typical for this time of year with 11 for January.

The rest of this post is just a collection of photographs that didn’t make it into other posts this month. Feel free to ask for details, if you think they help…if I agree, I’ll update the descriptions (but try to keep some perspective and dignity).

85.4 miles this month (pitiful, just pitiful but you restart somewhere).
Longest: 6.6 miles
Average: 3.7 miles per run, or 2.75 per day for the month
Pubs: 11
Pubs on runs:  9

And, this is the weird bit–my weight has been a stable 154.7 pounds (±1.01) since losing a little more than 10 pounds (and a world of stress) during the 3 weeks immediately after leaving Oxford.

Here are some of those promised January sightings:

In Weoley Castle:

A little east-southeast of the UniBrum main campus:

Old Joe looming over George I:

Not the first Drug Discovery Club I’ve been involved in, mind you:

Earlier Drug Discovery Club experiences were more like this, though:

I found in Selly Oak what must, from the name, be an old, local asylum for simpletons:

West of my house, there’s a Politically Incorrect industrial park…there are several ways to take “May Pole,” (“permission to pole, granted” or something related to this Chris Rock bit) but certainly no one needs help deciphering the T & A sign:

Laid back is, indeed, the California Way:

The country park near the house is a bucolic setting:

And, on yesterday’s run I found the Edgbaston Cricket Ground where I hope to take in some of the matches:

Blistering cold today with little respite as February starts.  Another of these in 4 weeks….