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I could barely roll out of bed today. Okay, that’s an exaggeration- I rolled out, sent email to work and climbed back in to sleep another three hours. I feel tired and crappy for the second consecutive day and figure that sleeping late, sipping green tea, napping and puttering around the apartment for a day will make me feel better.

From: kpaxton@xxxxxxxx.xxxx.com
To: nedod@xxxxx.org
Subject: Thanks

Dear squi^H^H^H^Hdumbas^H^H^H^H^HRC51 rider headed south on Rt. 12 in Keen (NH) today around 3pm. Thank you for giving me the one wheel salute instead of just waving to me like most people do. I would have waved back, but I was both astonished and distracted. These two guys in a dark blue Crown Victoria with a big light bar on top that had been following me closely for the last few miles and were making me nervous. I don’t know if they just wanted to follow closely or they didn’t like my semi-illegal Hyper-lites[1] and were waiting for me to do something stupid, but I was devoting way too much attention to my speed instead of traffic. As soon as you passed they pulled off on the shoulder and made a U-turn. It made the rest of my ride out of Keen much more enjoyable.
Thanks!


[1] The state troopers pulled up behind me at a red light when my Hyperlites were on. Hyperlites are bright flashing LEDs right above my license plate that come on when I apply the brakes. The LEDs are supposed to make people notice the stopped/stopping motorcycle, but technically only emergency vehicles can have flashing red lights on their vehicles in NH.

I just finished Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. Fantastic read. It is ostensibly a history book but reads as if it were a novel. I have not picked up such well-written and entertaining history in a long time. Larson uses the 1893 Chicago World Fair- The Columbian Exposition- to intertwine the stories of the fair and and the people who built it with the prowling of a serial killer and set the whole in front of the murmuring, then shrieking, jostle of end of the Gilded Age. There is a risk, strictly speaking, of the author being a little elastic with the details and their sequence where it benefits the story. The worst offender in that regard is Gore Vidal, who does not purport to be a historian as he freely colors within the big outlines of the characters and events he has lifted, but Larson skirts that mess and the narratives hold together very well and move briskly while remaining accurate. I was amused to find in the end notes the author’s justification for recreating from news reports, trial records and various accounts his scenario of one of the murders- guilt over stringing together facts in a plausible way- when a lot of writers have held forth whole cloth fabrications as fact without a second thought. Great book. I read it everyday on the subway, during lunch and a few evenings. I can’t recommend it enough.

The Aerostich jacket I bought for my birthday arrived. It fits perfectly. Joy! I can’t wait for a chance to ride. Notice I did not say “test”. Testing would imply finding out if the armor and ballistic nylon hold up in a crash. I’d rather not find out first hand.

That my Christmas Cactus has put out two flower buds. They bloom when given several weeks of short photocycles and cold weather. We’ve had plenty of that.