Chilly Willy Duathlon

I assume there has to be some basic level of fitness required to have an enjoyable time on the Bicycle Ride Across Georgia, so I’ve been doing a little cross training, beyond my usual long walks while listening to the Five Hundy By Midnight podcast.

That said, let me go ahead and admit something else aloud for the first time ever:

I hate running.

Hate it.

I’m not sure where the love affair ended, but running was pretty much the only exercise I got during my college years.  One day I just decided I didn’t like it anymore.  Yes, I’ll still do the occasional 5k if it’s a social event or if I have an affinity for the charity (I’m still on the Crohns and Colitis Foundation mailing list from a 5k I ran in 1992), but as far as going out and running, it just feels torturous to me.  And I’m too old to torture myself.

The problem is that my old high school buddy Matthew is an avid runner.  Since he recently got into biking (and has done some rides with me), I think it’s only fair that I do some runs with him.  And this is why we signed up for the Chilly Willy Duathlon.

The event was torture.  Even the biking portion wasn’t fun because I had the major jelly legs after completing the first running segment.  In fact, I practically had to crawl out of the transition zone, an experience not captured, luckily, by the ever-present event photographers.  (There were other incidents as well, like me somehow running off course and having to be directed back on course by Matthew’s attentive wife.)  The second running segment was simply heartbreaking, and I’m blaming that not on my level of fitness, but on the fact that the run was on sand on the beach.  Inhumane.  Absolutely inhumane.

The day wasn’t without enjoyment, of course.  The event took place at the unbelievably beautiful Fort Desoto Park near Tampa, Florida, and we decided to camp at the park over the weekend.  Even though it was February and the event was billed as “Chilly Willy,” the weather couldn’t have been better, with highs in the mid-70s and a light wind and this cumulus clouds you see in cartoon pictures.  The event was also well-organized, and the race t-shirts were pretty swanky.  Oh, and they had strawberry shortcake at the finish line.  Plenty of it.

The only bike in the field with fenders

Of course, the day also had its humor.  I always get a kick out of those not-so-sexy compression socks that triathletes and duathletes wear.  Heck, the triathletes and duathletes themselves are fun to look at, with their body fat percentages of 0.02% and their shaved legs.  There was also the 92-year-old entrant, the oldest triathlete in the state of Florida, who crossed the finish line looking better than I did. 

Finished strong.  Then I puked. 

But I survived.  Yes, I got a nasty case of retrocalcaneal bursitis that kept me from running again for two months (Yes!), but I crossed the finish line in style, sporting the patented Alberto Contador finger-bang pose.  Matthew beat me by at least 15 minutes.

Bicycle Ride Across Georgia, here I come.

Menendez

You know those books — they’re always there — on the gift shop shelves of national parks and historic sites, those paperbacks that were printed in the 1960s by the local college or historical society and never updated, and they all look like they’ve been sitting on the dusty shelf for the past 20 years, but the price is right so you pick it up, feeling somehow culturally empowered by spending $8 on a paperback?  That’s the case with Florida’s Menendez: Captain General of the Ocean Sea, published in 1965 by the St. Augustine Historical Society.

I’m finally getting around to reading it.  It was purchased 12 years ago, and for all that time, I’ve only been pretending to be culturally empowered.

Pedro Menendez de Aviles was another one of those conquistadores employed in the “humane conquest” of the Americas.  (For more on that topic, see my post about Cabeza de Vaca.)  Unlike de Vaca, however, I at least know a little about Menendez, mainly because he was responsible for planting the Spanish flag in the ground at St. Augustine, Florida, and boy oh boy, mom and dad sure loved to take us to St. Augustine for vacations.

There’s a great controversy that pops up every year between the bored historians in New England and the bored historians in Florida about the location of the first “Thanksgiving.”  Of course, the winners write the history, so we all know the story of what happened in Plymouth in 1621, but an argument can be made that Menendez and crew had the first Thanksgiving (complete with Catholic mass, feasting, and socializing with the locals) on September 8, 1565, some 56 years before the pilgrims.  (And yes, we know the exact date because the Spaniards were Catholics, and those Catholics recorded everything.)  I’m not going to make too much of this Florida vs. New England thing, because now I understand that Texas is also claiming to have hosted the first Thanksgiving.  Oi.  But in my heart, I know Florida is the winner.

What I find most intriguing about Pedro Menendez de Aviles y Alonso de la Campa (to use his full name) was what happened at Matanzas Inlet.  Known to historians and college students not sleeping through Florida History 101, the “Massacre at Matanzas” is the story of a bloody mass execution of 111 Frenchman.  I had always associated this gruesome scene as an indicator of Menendez’s cold-blooded nature, but this book put things in a slightly different perspective.  Yes, he killed 111 people, but the book explained that this was a mere matter of practicality.  The Spanish simply didn’t have the manpower or resources to house so many prisoners, so he made the only logical choice.  In his honor, he did spare a few fellow Catholics and those saying they would convert from Protestantism, and the women, and the children.  Hey, that’s something.  But everyone else was killed on the spot.  It was one of those scenes where the movie narrator would say something like “The once-white sand turned crimson with the blood of the French.”

So this is how it happened, and it actually shows Menendez’s brilliance.  In 1565, the French had control of Fort Caroline, located at the mouth of the St. John’s River.  The Spanish wanted that fort, so Menendez was sent to take it over.  As he was chillaxin’ in Saint Augustine, the French decided that they wanted Saint Augustine for themselves.  They loaded up most of their men and arms and just about made it to the intended target when a mother of a hurricane rolled in, wreaking havoc on their plans to attack.  The never made landfall.  Instead, the hurricane left a trail of wrecked ships south from St. Augustine as far away as Daytona Beach and Cape Canaveral.  Nearly wetting his pants at the French predicament, Menendez knew that Fort Caroline was left with a skeletal crew.  He gathered his men and walked in the hurricane some 35 miles to Fort Caroline, sometimes up to their waists in flood water.  Menendez and his men easily overtook Fort Caroline (even though there were still about 200 Frenchman inside). On the return to St. Augustine, some local Native Americans told Menendez that the French shipwreck survivors were on the beach just south at the Matanzas Inlet.  (Okay, so that wasn’t the name of the inlet.  Yet.   Matanzas means The Slaughters.)  Menendez and his men surrounded the survivors at the inlet, and well, that’s about it. 

Near the inlet is Fort Matanzas, which was built much later, in the 1740s by the Spanish, as a way to guard the back entrance to Saint Augustine.  It’s a fun little fort, open to visitors via a pleasant boat ride provided by the National Park Service.  This is something I’d definitely like to include on the Florida Trip.  Every time I’ve been to the fort, I’ve seen touring cyclists stopping at the historic site for lunch or a break.

So, Mr. Menendez, I’m sorry that I misjudged you all these years.  You did what you had to do to preserve Florida for the king.  And now, those sands on the shores of the Matanzas Inlet are white as can be.  I know.  I took my daughter on her first St. Augustine trip last month.

P.S.  I’ve read so much about Fort Caroline, but I’ve never been there.  It seems like a logical destination for the Florida Trip.

Cloaked

So I teach tenth graders.  “Core” tenth graders, which is what they call the regular kids.  In some circles, it’s an insult.  Like, “Oh my God, you have to teach core?” with the same expression you would use to say, “Oh my God, she gave you chlamydia?”    But for me, it’s the group of kids that I can relate to the most.  After all, I was a core kid, and I love teaching kids like me.

Anyway, the reason this is important is because most of these kids don’t do a lot of recreational reading.  And when they do, it’s more Lois Duncan than Marcel Proust.   I don’t mind, actually, because there’s a lot to be said about Holes and Killing Mr. Griffin and the Twilight series.  When I was a kid, there really weren’t many of these young-adult books to choose from (in fact, they hadn’t even invented the term “YA” yet), unless you were into Judy Bloom.  (And oh, all the times I’ve read that tattered copy of Forever.)

Anyway, I’ve been trying to stay current with my YA reading when I stumbled upon Cloaked by Alex Flinn.  It’s no Harry Potter, but what is?  Instead, it’s an interesting stew of various well-known and little-known fairy tales, like “The Frog Prince,” “The Fisherman and His Wife,” “The Valiant Tailor,” and “The Six Swans.”  It’s fantasy in a real-world setting.

And the reason I stumbled upon this book in the first place?  It’s set in Miami, with jaunts (via magical cloak, of course) to Key Largo and Key Biscayne.

I admit I have a love/hate relationship with Miami.  As a kid, I loved it.  Arriving in Miami meant an end to all that slow-moving traffic on Interstate 95 through insignificant communities like Boca Raton and Hollywood.  It was the gateway to the Florida Keys, and it contained its own charms as well, like Monkey Jungle, Coral Castle, and the now-shuttered Planet Ocean.   Later, when I was old enough to explore the world on my own, I discovered Miami Beach, later known as South Miami Beach, later known as SoBe.  (I’ll update the blog when the name changes again.)  That’s when I first fell in love with art deco, and SoBe has plenty of it.  Anytime I see art deco architecture, I’m immediately whisked away to those memories of Miami Beach, even if those memories include sharing the bunk beds of a warm-moist hostel with overly loud Australians on holiday.

When I was working at Disney in the early 1990s, I remember reading daily updates about Miami in the Orlando Sentinel.  It was, apparently, turning into a war zone.  Tourists were being robbed and murdered daily.  Miami was a black eye on the entire state, and the tourism industry nearly dried up.  The bureaucrats, however, eventually responded, first by eliminating the K-Car designation (for years, all rental cars had license plates that began with a “K,” making it pretty easy to pick out the tourists), and later by putting up giant smiling sunshine faces on the interstate exit signs where tourists were less likely to be assassinated.  (They also re-routed some of the routes to/from the airport to avoid sketchy areas.) 

To this day, I still fear Miami as it was in the early 1990s.  But reading Cloaked has me eager to go back, and if I can find a way to include a ride through SoBe, I’ll do it.  I know the Overseas Heritage Trail has beefed up the bicycle-friendly southern approach to the town, and there seems to be a pretty good network of bike lanes.  I even think one of the Adventure Cycle routes goes through Miami Beach.  I want to be a part of the world that exits in this novel, where grand art deco hotels like the Coral Reef Grand line the strip, and the hotels have shops in them like portrayed in the novel, shoe repair shops, because this is a world where shoes are repaired rather than tossed aside and replaced.   Rum-dipped Cuban cigars (okay, you’re in my fantasy now, not in the book) are enjoyed on a veranda overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, with smells from the Cuban cafe wafting through the air and the sounds of smoothly spoken Spanish lurk in the distance.

South Beach

The Rest of Miami

In many ways, I could relate to Johnny in the book.   This little gem had me laughing out loud:

“Mom and I spent most of our vacations camping in Key Largo because that’s as far as we can afford to go.  We always drive south on U.S. 1 with its endless fast-food joints, strip malls, and gas stations.  After an hour we reach the road with blue water on both sides.”

I can relate.  Besides the family trips to Key Largo, I remember one spring break where a college buddy and I were trailing my love interest south.  We knew she was staying at her dad’s company’s condo in Key West, but we made it as far as the seven-mile bridge and realized we were running low on gas money and patience.  Mainly patience.  We spent the week in Key Largo and never made it the extra two hours to Key West.

 I’ll see you again, Miami.  I promise.

Florida. Russia. Whatever.

 

My exploration of literature for the Florida Trip has been postponed by one of my students.  Normally, my English 10 students don’t recommend great literature.  I love them all, but they just don’t — as a general rule — see the beauty in quality writing.  (If I see another book report about Holes, I’m going to go postal.) My journalism students, however, are a more varied lot, and the occasional AP student graces my room.  Such is the case with Chase, who asked me what I was currently reading.

I told him about the Florida Trip.  He didn’t seem impressed with my list of books.

“Have you ever read Crime and Punishment?” he asked.

“Of course!” I said.  “In high school.”

This is a lie.  It’s the same lie I use when I’m a bit embarrassed that I haven’t read an important piece of literature.  When my students ask my opinon of a book, I remind them that I graduated in 1988 and I don’t really remember a lot of the details of anything that happened in the 80s. They always say something like, “Holy crap.  That was a long time ago.  Never mind.  Do you need to sit down?”  The only exception to this scenario is Heart of Darkness, which I really haven’t read since high school, but I loved it and I remember every single detail.

“Well, I’m reading Crime and Punishment right now, and I’m a little curious about your reaction to it.”

And, quite unexpectedly, he presented me a copy of the book for Christmas, a gift that probably breaks the new Alabama ethics rule because the book has resale value.  The irony of this no longer shocks me.

So, I’ve been reading Crime and Punishment, and I’m loving it.  Those Russian novelists craft characters like no one else in the world.

And I’m glad that Chase gave me this little break from reading about the Florida trip.

 

 

 

To Have and Have Not

I love Hemingway, but I certainly haven’t read his entire catalog.  To Have and Have Not was one of those novels that slipped under my radar, until, of course, I started doing research for the Florida Trip.  Since I always associated Hemingway with Key West, I was surprised to learn that he did very little writing while in the state of Florida.  In fact, this is perhaps the only novel that was written mostly in the state, and it’s his only novel that takes place in the United States.

The older I get, the more I realize that my life is becoming further and further removed from the Hemingway Hero.  Yes, I want to be that guy that drinks too much, fights, kills all sorts of animals, smokes, ravages women, fights some more, and mistreats his wife, but alas, my life decisions prevent it.  Perhaps that’s the mystique of the Hemingway Hero.  It’s every man’s dream to live like Harry Morgan, perhaps in the same way that all women want to be Martha Stewart.  (All women want to be Martha Stewart, no?)

“That night I was sitting in the living room smoking a cigar and drinking a whiskey and listening to Gracie Allen on the radio.”

The Florida influences are obvious in this novel, but it’s also clear that Hemingway’s heart was with Cuba.  As Harry reluctantly turns to a life of smuggling in order to survive (he was a “have” who became a “have not” in a twist of fate brought upon by another “have”), we see that Cuba is the paradise of the novel.  But even paradise has its price, and the a revolution serves as an appropriate backdrop for the action.

“Bacardi.”

In terms of manliness, this book has it all: a protagonist who’s always ready for a fight (even when his arm is shot off), a domesticated hooker, a first mate with a rum obsession, a Chinese gangster named Mr. Chin, one of the most depressing yet tantalizing sex scenes in the course of human history, and lots of talk about boats.

And of course, it has a Hemingway Hero.

“Him, like he was, snotty and strong and quick, and like some kind of expensive animal.  It would always get me just to watch him move.  I was so lucky all that time to have him.  His luck went bad first in Cuba.  Then it kept right worse and worse until a Cuban killed him.”

The director of the film adaptation said that Hemingway admitted To Have and Have Not was his worst published novel, “a bunch of junk.”

And who am I to argue with Ernest Hemingway.

Reading the book, though, inspired me to search my teaching archives.  The last time I taught Hemingway was nearly 14 years ago when we covered The Old Man and the Sea in my pre-AP/IB English 10 class.  Most of my notes make no sense to me, but I did find the following quote, which I probably wrote on the board and used as a foundation for a 1000-word essay assignment: “A man can be destroyed, but not defeated.”  I bet my students loved that one.

“He started to walk off down the dock looking longer than a day without breakfast.  Then he turned and came back.”

Failure. Hope. Redirection.

So, Nanowrimo didn’t end the way it was supposed to.  Life got in the way, and I didn’t get the novel finished.  I am a Nanoloser.  The good news is that none of my students were Nanowrimo winners this year, so I don’t feel that I let them down.

In an It’s-a-Small-World-After-All twist, the professional editor that I worked with for two years at the National Writing Project Professional Writing Retreats has just become Executive Director of Nanowrimo.  Good luck to you, Grant!  Grant is one of those people that you hope never fades into the sunset…although I have to admit the last time I worked with Grant at the NWP Annual Meeting at the Contemporary Resort at Walt Disney World provided the absolute best working conditions possible.  It’s an unbelievable feeling to put in a good morning of work and then meet the family at the Magic Kingdom for lunch.  I thought that day would be my last memory with Grant, but maybe our paths will cross again.

Although the Florida Project has been postponed (more later), I’ve still been doing my reading, despite the fact I haven’t blogged about it.  I’ve been immersed in The Book Lover’s Guide to Florida by Kevin McCarthy.  This is an amazing book.  If I have a criticism it’s that it’s too detailed, but it sure has been keeping me busy.  I have expanded my reading list substantially.

 

So, why has the Florida Trip been postponed?  On the same day my father told me that he was sending me money for Christmas and my birthday, I gave an email from BRAG saying that the tentative route for the Bicycle Ride Across Georgia was available.  It was accompanied by a registration form that, if postmarked by December 31, guaranteed the 2012 ride at 2011 prices.  Guess where my Christmas and birthday money went?

So I plan to do BRAG in the summer of 2012 and the Florida Trip in the summer of 2013.  I’ve been wanting to do BRAG for years, but it was always a dream until my summer job with the National Writing Project ended last year.  Now I have my summers free.  The tentative route has BRAG 2012 hitting north Georgia (starting in Chattanooga).  It’s absolutely beautiful up there.  I’m giddy.

It’s Time to Write

For the third consecutive year, I’ll be doing Nanowrimo.  The uninformed should just go check out the website, but the short version is that it stands for National Novel Writing Month, and it’s the time for would-be novelists to pretend they’re writers and create a 50,000-word between November 1 and November 30.

It’s really great fun coming up with 1,667 words a day.  Every freakin’ day.

My novel on the first year turned into a bit of an epic, and I did part two the second year.  This time, my goal is to edit everything down and have a completed novel in relatively good shape, you know, something I could send to grandma for Christmas.  I mean, it’s time to get this thing moving along.  I even have my own banner:

If that doesn’t sell books, nothing will.

So this means that I’m about to set off on another November of adventure, late nights, and avoiding family obligations.  I can’t wait!  It also means I’ll probably have to set down some of the Florida literature for a while.  Then again, I also do my best work when I’m reading someone with a style similar to mine, and Carl Hiaasen certainly fulfills that requirement.  And lookie there…he’s from Florida.

The Yearling

“I hate you.  I hope you die.  I hope I never see you agin.”

And just like that, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’  The Yearling takes me right back to my childhood.  But, already, I digress.

If There Eyes Were Watching God is the Florida-based book that everyone says you should read, The Yearling is the one that everyone has actually read.  Except me.  This is another hole in my education.  It’s a hole that I almost filled myself over the years, but I was afraid this was going to be another Old Yeller or Where the Red Fern Grows, and I’m generally not a guy that enjoys blubbering like a baby when reading for fun.

You're going to shoot me, aren't you?

I’ll be honest: I hated the first 33 percent of this book.  (The beauty of reading on a Kindle is that it gives percentages rather than pages, so you can always be the ultraspecific pompous ass at Starbucks saying things like “The Best 14% of Huckleberry Finn is when he’s off the raft” or “That last 4% of Macbeth has more blood imagery than the first 9%, don’t you think?”)

But around the 33% mark, Penny got himself bit by a rattlesnake and said, “Ol’ Death going to git me yit,” and I knew I was one-third of the way into a real winner.  I can’t blame Rawlings for the slow start (there is, after all, a lot of characterization to develop and flutter-mills to build), but I sure was thinking about abandoning things for awhile there.  Then things got a little nuts, with Penny, rattlesnake venom racing through his veins, unexpectedly shooting a deer.

“Now Jody knew his father was insane. Penny did not cut the throat, but slashed into the belly.  He laid the carcass wide open.  The pulse still throbbed in the throat.  Penny slashed out the liver.  Kneeling, he changed his knife to his left hand.  He turned his right arm and stared again at the twin punctures.  They were now closed.  The forearm was thick-swollen and blackening.  The sweat stood out on his forehead.  He cut quickly across the wound.  A dark blood gushed and he pressed the warm liver against the incision.  He said in a hushed voice, ‘I kin feel it draw–‘.  He pressed harder.  He took the meat away and looked at it.  It was a venomous green.”

Of course, Penny lived, and the dead and liverless deer was the mother of the yearling himself, Flag.  This has to be ne of my favorite animal-based scenes ever, perhaps second only to the horse stud chapter in Tom Wolfe’s A Man in Full.  I’m not sure where Rawlings got the idea that you can extract venom using a warm liver, but it sure sounds logical to me.  At boy scout camp, we learned that we could suck on each other’s snakebite wounds to remove venom, and we spent hours upon hours sucking on each other’s elbows and knees and heels.  (That’s normal, right?)  Alas, I learned later that this isn’t really an optimal solution as the venom will then move from the body of the suckee to the body of the sucker. 

The final 66% of the novel is a good read, and I can see why this is a classic and half the world has read it.  It has a gang fight that rivals anything that happens in West Side Story (although it’s not quite up to the level of the street fight in Anchorman), and the scenes of early Florida create quite a memorable impression.  It seems that the action takes place around Cross Creek, in the Ocala area, with jaunts to St. Augustine and Jacksonville and Salt Springs, which makes me wonder if that’s the same Salt Springs I visited as a kid.

My biggest issue — perhaps my only issue — with the novel is that Penny’s wife Ma Baxter is described as obese far more times than I’m comfortable with.  (Her “bulk” was referred to at least six times.)  Do you think Rawlings had fat issues?  I was waiting for her to use the phrase “crippling fat,” but to her credit, she never did.  Okay, she’s fat.  We get it.  

Now don’t get me wrong.  There are some nice zingers that I really enjoyed, like when Ma Baxter requested four yards of material to make herself some new clothes:

“But seems to me four yards won’t no more’n make you a pair o’ drawers.”

The Yearling is also a funny book, making me think that Rawlings knows you’re expecting the baby deer to die so she might as well throw a few chuckles your way.  I loved the note the doctor left on his door when he evacuated for the hurricane:

“I have gone toward the ocean where this much water ain’t so peculiar.  I mean to stay drunk until the storm is over.  I will be somewhere between here and the ocean.  Please don’t come after me unless it’s a broke neck or a baby.  Doc.  P.S. If it’s a broke neck no use anyway.” 

I guess this is what life was like before FEMA. And is also made me realize that it seems a hurricane is a requirement of any book set in Florida.

At any rate, I don’t want to print any spoilers here in case there’s another human who hasn’t read the book, but yes, the yearling dies at the end.  Surprisingly, though, it’s more Of Mice and Men than Where the Red Fern Grows.  There.  I’ve said enough.

As far as the Tour is concerned, I’ll have to do a little more research about places to visit.  It seems that there’s a Yearling Trail in the Ocala National Forest, and the five-and-a-half-mile route circles Pat’s Island, the inspiration for Baxter’s Island in the book.  (I also read that the book was made into a movie starring Gregory Peck.  He did something else besides To Kill a Mockingbird?  Blasphemy!  “Stand up, Scout.  Your father’s passin’.”)

And I’ll end this commentary with the infinite wisdom of little Jody Baxter:

“Women were all right when they cooked good things to eat.  The rest of the time they did nothing but make trouble.”

The Open Boat

Hey, Billie. The GPS ain't working again.

So here’s another reason I have an issue with my high school English teachers. (My students would say, “We be beefin'”).  In eleventh grade, we read Stephen Crane’s “The Open Boat.”  I was bored, of course, but I was bored by most of the stories we read in high school.  My beef is that the teacher didn’t make any connection between the story and Florida.  Now,  23 years after graduating, I find out that the story was inspired by Crane’s own shipwreck off the coast of Florida in 1896.  (Specifically, the Commodore sunk off the coast of Daytona Beach, a mere 90 miles from my classroom at Melbourne Central Catholic High School.)  The boat was headed from Jacksonville to Cuba, and it was a known smuggling ship.  Crane was onboard as a journalist, of sorts.  (Again, to any teachers out there, this is information your students might find interesting.)

So, of course, I reread the story this week.  I’m afraid to say that I found it just as boring, but at least I was aware that the Mosquito Inlet in the story is now known as Ponce de Leon inlet, just south of Daytona.  And I’ve been there, several times.  I think I have pictures of myself at the top of the lighthouse wearing a very cool 1980s Van Halen painter’s cap.   

As a more experienced reader now than I was in high school, I see the appeal of the story.  It’s certainly the classic conflict of man versus nature, but without the instinct versus intellect that makes Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” one of my faves.  (What’s added though, to Crane’s benefit, is the cold, uncaring, outside world that’s completely indifferent to our individual longing for survival.  From a seagull to an empty lighthouse to the towering waves themselves, it seems that no one gives a rat’s butt about the four guys in the boat.)  I also love how Billie the Oiler, the most polite member of the crew, is the only one to die.  (If I’m correct, I think he also did the most rowing to get them to safety.) There’s a life lesson for you, kiddos.

As far as The Tour, I think a stop at the Ponce de Leon Lighthouse, aka the Mosquito Island Lifesaving Station, is in order.  Maybe I’ll get lucky and one of the Disney cruise ships out of Cape Canaveral will go down while I’m in the area.

Here are some excerpts from the story that I liked:

“The surf’s roar was dulled, but its tone was, nevertheless, thunderous and mighty.”

“There is a certain immovable quality to a shore, and the correspondent wondered at it amid the confusion of the sea.”

“The wind came stronger, and sometimes a wave suddenly raged out like a mountain-cat and there was to be seen the sheen and sparkle of a broken crest.”

(Wow.  I can’t wait to show that one to my students.  It’s a single-sentence example of both a simile and the passive voice. Crane, you devil.)

“When it came night, the white waves paced to and fro in the moonlight, and the wind brought the sound of the great sea’s voice to the men on shore, and they felt that they could then be interpreters.”

Their Eyes Were Watching God

These Aren't The Spark Notes

Apparently, my study of Florida literature simply must begin with Zora Neale Huston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God.  How I graduated from an accredited high school in the state of Florida without reading this book is beyond me, but I guess that’s to be expected when your English 10 and English 12 teachers go on maternity leave and the class spends 2 months on adverbial phrases and a seemingly impossible three months on the first four acts of The Tragedy of Julius Caesar.  When the teacher came back, we never read Act V.  The movie sufficed.  (Or maybe the problem was that it was a Catholic school.  I like to blame Catholicism for a lot of what’s wrong with me.)

I actually have a local connection to Hurston, strangely.  Although she claims to be Floridian by birth, she was actually born in Notasulga, Alabama, a town about 20 miles from Auburn.  I’ve been there on numerous bike rides.  It’s not a destination unto itself, but it does have a convenience store and roads with little traffic, like most of East Central Alabama.  The next time I’m in town (and “town” is defined loosely when it comes to Notasulga, Alabama), I’ll have to snoop around for a historical marker or something.  I really find it odd that one of America’s best novelists hailed from there.  I really need to stop being so judgmental.

Hurston’s birth claim, though, is Eatonville, Florida, the first incorporated black town in the country, and the setting for Their Eyes Where Watching God.  I’ll have to do a little looking before the Tour to see if there’s anything worthwhile to see in Eatonville.  It seems there should be, but the Internets aren’t providing much info.  I’m also a little concerned that Eatonville is so close to (just north of) Orlando, a city not particularly well known for being bicycle-friendly.  Actually, it’s downright bicycle hostile.  (It’s never made Bicycling magazine’s top-50 bicycle-friendly lists.  In related news, the Orlando/Kissimmee metropolitan area has been ranked the most dangerous place in the country for pedestrians.)  But again, there’s still plenty time for planning.  I won’t bore you with all these mundane details.  Just some of them.

Their Eyes was published in 1937,  a little late for it to ride on the coattails of the Harlem Renaissance.  For that reason, and along with some unfair and harsh criticism by Richard Wright, the book mostly disappeared from the world (as did Hurston herself, falling into poverty and residing in a welfare home), finally experiencing a resurgence of sorts when Alice Walker spread the gospel in the 1960s. 

The Walker connection continues.  In 1973, she went to Fort Pierce, Florida, to find Hurston’s grave, which was unmarked and overrun with weeds.  The grave she found, and it’s probably the correct one, was later inscribed “A Genius of the South.”  Now, again, I went to high school in Melbourne, less than 50 miles from Fort Pierce, and I think it’s the pinnacle of literary injustice that I was unfamiliar with Hurston until about twenty years after graduation.  At any rate, the Tour will include a visit to the grave.  Guaranteed.

I enjoyed reading the book.  I don’t think I’d agree that it’s the most important example of African-American literature about the South, but I do think it survives in several contexts.  The careful reader will notice the difference between Janie and “man,” so it’s definitely worthy of a feminist approach, even though I found Janie quite pathetic at times.  Personally, I think it’s a good snapshot of life in Florida from a relatively unexplored perspective.  I see it also as a quest for independence, as Janie seems to grow as a human as she moves from husband to husband to husband.  If nothing else, it provides some great Southern dialect that shows Hurston had an ear for detail.  Oh, that dialect!  If I could program my time machine, I’d go back to that welfare home in January of 1960 and beg Zora to do a reading.

If nothing else, I’m indebted to Hurston for giving me a new way to refer to the deceased, or the people I’d like to soon be deceased after I give ’em a knuckle sandwich: “Cemetery dead.”  That’s real-talk, people.

The novel’s opening line is, perhaps, one of the best I’ve read in American literature:

“Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.”

If I make it to Eatonville on the Tour, I’m sure I’ll see some of the scenery that inspired many of the descriptions in the novel.  (Janie also spends considerable time in the Everglades, and Miami, and Palm Beach, so this is a four-fer.)  My highlights and dog-ears mainly seem to focus on this description:

“De noise uh de owls skeered me; da limbs of dem cypress trees took to crawlin’ and movin’ round after dark, and two three times Ah heered panthers prowlin’ round.  But nothin’ never hurt me ’cause de Lawd knowed how it was.”

And how’s this for a bicycle-friendly quote, even though it had nothing to do with bicycles:

“She had learned how to talk some and leave some.  She was a rut in the road.  Plenty of life beneath the surface but it was kept beaten down by the wheels.”

 
And the Travelogue Humor Award goes to this little gem:

“We’se goin’ back tuh Miami where folks is civilized.” 

Ms. Hurston, I’m sorry it took me so long to meet ya.

Pascua de Florida

When I’m bored and feeling particularly unmanly, I generally grab a Hemingway biography off my bookshelf and read tales of alcoholism, big game hunting, and misogyny. It really is great fun.

This morning, I found a copy of A.E. Hotchner’s Papa Hemingway.  I haven’t read it before, and judging from the yellow sticker on the cover, I purchased it for ten cents at a garage sale.  There isn’t an index, so I couldn’t do my usual routine with a new Hemingway book and look up all the references to “colon” (try it some time).  Instead, I just breezed through the pictures in the middle.  There he is shirtless at the typewriter; there he is with Black Dog in Cuba; there he is playing matador for Ava Gardner; there he is using a rifle to shoot a cigarette out of the mouth of a birthday party attendee.  (That guy had stories to tell for a lifetime.)

Then this fell out of the book:

 

And on the back:

I’ve been to the Hemingway House a few times, mainly when I was a kid, most recently on Spring Break of my freshman year in college when a friend and I chased a girl all the way to Key West.  (She eventually got away.  Twice.)  I always saw the Florida/Hemingway connection as more of a tourism gimmick than anything else. Maybe it was just my naiveté (probably it was my naiveté), but the only real takeaway for me was the unsuccessful search for the famous six-toed cats.

But here are Jim and Dorothy living it up in Florida and having the time of their lives.  From my hobby as a philatelist (don’t tell anyone), I know the date was somewhere in the early 1970s, based on the eight-cent Eisenhower stamp (Scott #1402, thank you).

Jim and Dorothy seem to making the rounds in Florida, touring Key West on Tuesday and then heading out to Ft. Lauderdale. 

And the weather?  “Delightful.”

I see Dorothy and Jim slathered in sunscreen, their black socks reaching to the knee, their sandals covered in an entire vacation’s worth of sand and mosquito repellant and foot sweat.  They’re well rested because their room at the Flamingo Motor Court has one of those Magic Fingers devices hooked up to the bed, and Jim — always the planner — brought along two rolls of quarters.  They can’t believe that the sun is actually shining and the temperature are in the 70s in February, something that never happens back in Springfield.  They’re already thinking about buying a modular home in Boca and riding out their golden years in the Sunshine State.

And this is my eureka moment.

Could it be that Florida might make the ideal bike tour?  There aren’t mountains and streams, but there is that unmistakeable Florida charm that has bewitched New Jersey snowbirds and retirees for years.

I grew up in Florida, so I’ll always have fondness for the place, but could it, perhaps, be a placed that I’d actually like to explore?

I know, Thomas Wolfe, you can’t go home again.  But what if you never really appreciated home the first time around? 

And could the focus of the tour be … wait for it … literature?  Besides Hemingway, I’m not really sure that Florida has a rich literary heritage.  I’ll have to research this and get back to you.

But I’m excited.

A Literary Tour of Florida.  Who woulda thunk it?  Thanks, Jim and Dorothy.

P.S.  In the same book was the following newspaper clipping.  It appears that Louisa was very proud of Choon B. Choi.  I’m proud of him, too.

Tours de Jour

I’ve been thinking about my first tour for years, but now that I don’t have the excuse of not having a suitable bicycle, it’s time to start thinking about this for real.  That’s scary.

There are plenty of tours I’d like to do.  The top of the list is probably the Blue Ridge Parkway, 469 miles of slowly moving traffic from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina to the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia.  It has lots of climbing and lots of history, and it passes through one of my favorite places in the East: Asheville, North Carolina.  The Smokies have a lot of personal history with me, including my first hike with my father (Abrams Falls) and more trips than I can count on the Appalachian Trail from Cosby to Mt. Cammerer.

Closer to home is the Natchez Trace Parkway, 444 miles through Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee.  It’s really a shame that I live to close and I’ve never even gone out there for a day.  They say it’s spectacualr…and grossly underused.

Third on the list is the C&O Towpath and the Great Allegheny Passage Trail, combining together to make a 388-mile trail from Washington, D.C. to the outskirts of Pittsburgh.  I spent a month in Pittsburgh one weekend, and I’d like to relive it.  (Old joke, I know.)  My supervisor at the community college has done the trail, and he gave me some literature that makes me want to leave tomorrow.  One drawback is that the trail is mainly gravel, not paved, but I don’t think this will be a problem with the 32mm tires on my new bike (as compared to the 23mm tires on the Guerciotti.)

Of course, with the help of the Adventure Cycling Association (if you’re not a member, join now), I could do any of the cross-country tours listed on their excellent frequently updated maps.  The newest trail, the Underground Railroad, running from Mobile, Alabama, to Erie Pennsylvania, is particularly intriguing because of the history.  From the buzz among the cycling community (and yes, we have a community — won’t you sit down and have some coffee?), this is the perfect trail for a multi-day tour.

Out west there’s the Pacific Coast Highway, 800 miles of Coastal California (and Oregon).  I think this is the trip of a lifetime.  I’ll be sure to do it before the big quake comes and the entire country west of Utah disappears.

I’ve never heard of anyone else doing it, but I’d love to ride US. 50, “The Loneliest Road in America,” also known as the “Extraterrestrial Highway.” A nice base of operations might be Las Vegas.  I’d love to ride to Rachel, Nevada, and observe the government keeping secrets from us at Area 51. I’ve been there, just not on a bike.  Considering I got my rental Chevy Cavalier up to 95 miles an hour (thanks, Alamo!) and didn’t see another car for most of the trip, I think this might make a good cycling destination.  Then again, there’s the heat of the Mohave Desert, but it’s a dry heat, and dry heats apparently don’t even count.

If I wanted something more suported, I’d love to take one of the cross-country rides organized by America by Bicycle.  One of their tour leaders is Mike Munk, a heckuva nice guy and member of the Montgomery Bike Club who taught me, in a safety course, how to ride 50 yards while looking backwards.  That’s a skill that might someday come in handy.

So, I guess the easy part was getting the bike.  The hard part is going to be choosing a destination.  I think that’s a good problem to have.

Meet My Sexy New Girlfriend

For years, I’ve been a semi-serious cyclist, but I longed for a true touring bike.  This is rare in the world of cycling: Poll cyclists, and I’m sure you’ll find a Trek Madone is at least thirty-times more lust inducing than a Surly Long Haul Trucker.)  Three years of searching on eBay led to nothing.  One day, at a particular time in my life when I had a little extra money, I noticed that Nashbar had a new steel-framed touring bike with everything I was looking for.  Now, I’m all about supporting the local bike shop, but this was an absolute steal, listed at $999 but selling for $650.  The only problem was that they were still on order from Asia, so they’d be backordered just a bit.  Perhaps another problem is that, since I’d be ordering from the inaugural shipment, there wasn’t anyone on the Internets who could give me a review of the bike.  Preliminary talk said it looked similar to a Windsor Tourist or a Fuji Touring.

I emailed Nashbar to see if they could give me an estimate on how long the sale price was valid, and they responded with the usual “No one knows that information — our prices change daily.  Order now so you don’t lose out.”

I emailed Nashbar once more to inquire about frame sizing, and, surprisingly, received a quick response from some guy at Performance Bike, the parent company of Nashbar.  He sent me the specs and geometry  that weren’t even available on the website yet.

I did some measuring, found my probable ideal frame size, and plunked down my Mastercard and purchased the little known Nashbar Steel Touring Bike before the $650 price went away.  Surprisingly, something went a little screwy with the Nashbar checkout process and they only charged me about $10 for shipping.

About three weeks later, FED-EX delivered a giant box, more than a week before I was expecting it.  As I was tearing into the box, I noticed that some of the components were much different from what was described on the Nashbar website.  About a week later, I finally checked the website again, and sure enough, the new specs were listed, along with a new list price: $1400.

I guess there’s something to be said about ordering while the product is still being spec’d at the factory.  I’ll discuss the upgrades later, but the biggest change is that it arrived with Shimano 105 components, a nice improvement over the Sora setup on my Guerciotti.

You know you think I'm sexy

I’ll have to take it to a shop for them to give it the once-over and suggest upgrades, but right now, I’m pretty pleased with it.  When the money becomes available, I’m immediately going to upgrade the pedals (perhaps something from Velo-Orange), add stainless steel water bottle cages, and perhaps look into a nice leather B-17 saddle from Brooks.

But for now, I just want to ride it.  Let me put down the Cheetohs and give it a whirl.

The Obligatory Introduction

Welcome to my fourth blog.

Blogs 1-3 were created for various writing groups and classes, and they always felt a lot like working.  This blog is for fun.  And as a 41-year-old English teacher (high school and college) with a four-year-old daughter, I have a lot of time for fun.

The blog will focus on my ten-year dream of buying a touring bicycle and heading out on the open road.  Hopefully there will be a lot of family touring in my future, perhaps when my daughter graduates beyond Wal-Mart bikes with Dora and Disney Princess paint schemes, or maybe, just maybe, when I entice my wife to take to the open road on a shiny new Trek.  (She, though, might appreciate a Disney Princess paint scheme.)

But for now, the dream of touring on two wheels is just for me.  And this blog will chronicle those misadventures.  And since I’m a literary nerd, expect some of the kind of conversation you only get at the water cooler in the teacher’s lounge.

 

John

 

P.S.  Actually, we don’t have a water cooler in our teachers’ lounge.  Just three microwave ovens and lots of dead roaches with Lean Cuisine residue on their little lips.

P.P.S.  You should really follow me on twitter.  I’m told I’m hilarious.