Watch Mr. Lizard

 I’ll bet no one else here has beaten four lizards in a road race recently.

I was biking down the sidewalk coming home from writing in Newberry, and suddenly I flushed four lizards out of the grass. Must have been deep in conversation. They tore ass down the concrete for four or five feet, keeping pace with me, and then dove back into the grass.

Maybe they were playing chicken. Nyah, nyah, big ole mammal can’t catch me. I do hope I at least brought some excitement into their reptilian lives. (If they were playing chicken, does that mean they’re evolving?)

Newberry’s pretty far, a 29.9-mile round trip. Nice cool ride when I took off, but pushing 90 when I came back, just before noon. Think I’ll stick closer to home. Got three pages written, though.

(I know, Mitch, most people pushing 90 can’t even ride a bicycle.)

My usual loop to work is either a short 3.4-mile one, up to the nearest coffee house, or eight miles to the Starbucks on campus at Santa Fe Community College. Or twelve miles to Kay’s, if I have time. Kay’s, not a chain, is run by an old Chinese guy, who I guess is named Kay, who has good pastry. Twelve or thirteen miles in the opposite direction, town and back, takes me to Coffee Culture, the best place. But I don’t like to go to the same place all the time. And I save an hour riding time ( = lose an hour of exercise) going to the nearby one.

Somebody said well, you must think a lot about your writing while you’re on the bike. Actually, I don’t; I sort of watch where I’m going. Every now and then something will percolate up through the subconscious. Maybe a half-dozen times in the past twenty years, I’ve stopped to write down a note.

The writing on Work Done for Hire has been going well, a few pages a day. Nice to be home for an extended period.

Had the gang over for A Game of Thrones last night. Continuing to be excellent television. Reading Tender is the Night, which takes a while getting started, but suddenly shifts into high gear and is hard to put down.

Joe