Yesterday’s fortune cookie could have been an error of syntax.
“Remember three months from this date. Good things are in store for you.”
Maybe it just needs a conjunction: Good things are in a store for you.
So, if I go shopping on July 19th … I might find something nice. Somebody remind me of that.
This week I finished a book I started a few days ago. I read slowly, and intermittently, usually at lunch. But when I fly, as we did last week, that’s extra time, and the pages turn rapidly. So I wrapped up, at lunch on Monday, Matt Seaton’s Escape Artist. I picked it up because Bill Strickland wrote about it a few years ago, quoting from it in an enticing manner:
The road now falls sharply under tree cover. There is no need to pedal; the bike accelerates rapidly past the point where pedaling would be effective. You move into a tuck, making your body as small as you can into the wind, spreading your weight as low and evenly as possible over the bike. In the autumn, your eyes would be scanning the road for wet leaves that can form a skein of slime as treacherous as ice. But the winter’s rains have washed the surface of detritus. Still you watch for potholes and stones.
You are in free-fall, Seaton writes in “The Escape Artist.” You are aware of nothing but the line you need to take. A few minutes before, the sound of your labouring lungs was your constant companion. Now, in the background there is just the roar of the wind and pulsing of blood in your ears.
The road makes a hard bend to the right and then straightens to point directly downhill to the valley floor. If the surface is dry and you are running on good tyres, if the way is clear of traffic and you can use the width of the road, if you have all your courage and wits about you, you can make it round that curve without touching the brakes. You hit forty-five, fifty, right at the apex. You cannot see the exit and it is crucial to pick the right line. If you start running out of road, the camber will be against you, shrugging you off the blacktop. Once committed to a line, it is too late to use the brakes. To crash at this speed is unthinkable.
And then, in a split second, you are round and free. You are still upright, and the road stretches out in front of you again. You cannot believe your luck, you are alive and intact. You feel the chill of the air as the wind slices through layers of clothing, greedily sucking away the body’s heat from damp undergarments and the scorching tears on your cheeks. But the cold does not hurt. You have taken flight.
Strickland wrote “If you read Sitting In regularly, it’s probably because you care at least as much about how riding feels, about what it means – whatever that means – as you do about new gear or the latest news from Europe or our bullet-pointed advice for staying lean (which works, by the way). Go chase down The Escape Artist.”
That excerpt is from the beginning of the book, so when I stretched out the paperback I was excited for what surely must come next, whatever it was. But it peaked early.
Which is a mean thing to say. Seaton is a fine, fine writer. He has a heartbreaking tale, and it is well told in the memoir. It just wasn’t the right thing for me at the time. But if you want a heartbreaking memoir, go for it.
It is doubly mean because, while I don’t understand all of the things Strickland writes about, I love the way he writes. It is a good day when his name pops up in my RSS reader. And so, when you stumble upon someone who’s style you so thoroughly enjoy, you add a bit of heft to their recommendations — well, except Strickland’s clothes and high end endorsements; my money tree is a bit light. And if that recommendation comes up a bit short for what you want or need at the time, then that throws the entire suggestion calculus out of whack.
I’m considering another book he suggested for some later date. Will it be keeping with what I think I’d like? Will I miss there too? Gauging someone’s relative tastes and preferences never gets any easier.
Sometimes the ball doesn’t bounce your way. And sometimes it really doesn’t. And that’s how you find yourself pulling in the infield to try and preserve a nine-run deficit.
A throwing error and two unearned runs later and this metaphor really starts to hurt. And so it was tonight at Samford Stadium- Hitchcock Field at Plainsman Park. Two-time defending national champion South Carolina beat Auburn 12-5. (The Gamecocks are eighth nationally. They’re only in third place in their division right now. SEC baseball is crowded with talent and tough.)
Two nice gentlemen from South Carolina were sitting right behind us. Tomorrow I’m going to ask them if they’re gluttons for baseball punishment. “Are you sure you want some more of this?”
One of those guys said ours was the nicest campus he’d ever seen.
“Glad you’re here, thanks for saying so. Try not to hurt us so bad tomorrow whydoncha?”
Oh one other thing: I bought Counting Crows’ latest release, Underwater Sunshine. on pre-order. It arrived the other day. It is covers old and new. It is stuff they love, that inspired them like Fairpoint Convention and Faces. It is a sonic catalog of new acts like Kasey Anderson and Coby Brown. If you like the Crows, you should go order this now.
