Keith Snyder's Blog, page 11

THE NIGHT MEN on Kindle

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Old Saybrook

For the first two legs of the ride (five total), I was braced for the big hills that were going to take me out of the game. There were a lot of small-to-medium rollers in the first leg, call it forty miles or so, and I was getting winded from too-long undertraining and comfort eating. The website says 3000 feet of climbing per 100K.

I started 25 minutes late, having ridden the wrong way out of the hotel (cf. "Jews wandering in deserts," previously), and then I lost more during the first leg ...

Provisioning

A month ago I swore off Twitter and Facebook until this book draft is done. I've maintained that promise, but progress has been slow. Life's been such that my heart's not in much of anything right now. I don't know if the draft will be done this year, as I'd hoped, though I did kill a character last week—which seems to be a pivot, at 120,000 words, into a rough third act.

But there are goals, and then there are promises, and one thing I'm good at—sometimes the only thing, it seems, and...

And now he's one of us

A few nights ago we were talking about fossils—I'd made sure it was a dog in the example, but that wasn't removed enough, it should have been a trilobyte—and he broke down and said he didn't want to die, he doesn't want to not—to never see nothing again—not never—not see, not see anything, and why does God want to make everybody and then make everybody all die all the time? He doesn't want to die.

So here we are. We've arrived. No, sweetheart, I don't think there's heaven, where Aidan's...

August night ride

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On a night like this

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warm air wrapping your body

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crickets more desolate than silence

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small things rustling in leaves

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your sweat and the lush air

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smudging the boundary between you

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and the humid atmosphere

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there should be perfume

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and a lover's whisper

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and a blues band

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but your silence

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and the whir of the chain

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are their own music

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distant traffic

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is its own whisper

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and memory

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is perfume

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Faeries

D.C.: Lloyd, why do you have to be like this?

Lloyd Dobler: 'Cause I'm a guy. I have pride.

Corey Flood: You're not a guy.

Lloyd Dobler: I am.

Corey Flood: No. The world is full of guys. Be a man. Don't be a guy.

Men can swoon.

Guys can eat stuff out of jars with their fingers.

Which men can do too. It's not a subtle skill. But probably not while feeling pretty.
***

I wrote last about the things my boys bring out in me. There are also things I've lost. The relentless...

Two summer days

July 17, 2010

Tomorrow is the NYC 200K, the only brevet I'll do this year that starts near me. Each brevet or training ride means Kathleen has to be a single parent of two small children for the duration, so this morning after we all rode to the Farmer's Market and got some vegetables we'll throw away next week, she disappeared for her compensatory day off and the boys and I went to Payson, the smallest of the playgrounds in our neighborhood.

Mac has been off his training wheels for weeks...

Some other title besides "600K"

Mile 218 can be an awkward location for a sleep stop along a 373-mile brevet because it's near the halfway point, which some randonneurs find too early. They want a 400K, a rest, and then a 200K, not two big old unwieldy back-to-back 300s. But there's also been a counter-argument floating around that says when it's over 90° and high humidity, you want to rest during the hottest part of the day, and a lot of riders will be arriving at that house between noon and sundown.

Me—it doesn't matter ...

Race

One day when I was little, I ran into the house calling Mommy, Mommy, there's a black man outside! This was in North Hollywood in the early '70s.



Since my mother was a forward-looking liberal-type person who had chosen the "color-blind" approach with her children, this was cause for concern. I led her out over the porch to the sidewalk, and there he was. The black man.



Black shirt, black pants, black hat, black shoes.



White guy.



My mom loves this story.



I've always assumed I'd follow s...

Noives

One thing I'm afraid of is heat. I'm not one of your small tropical persons.



On last year's 400K, I lost all kinds of time struggling from shade tree to shade tree through a sweltering afternoon that I should have experienced much further along the route, having built up enough time cushion that I could take a break somewhere cool—except I'd stopped early in the ride to help someone I shouldn't have helped. He wasn't prepared, and as time dragged on during the repair stop, that fact became i...