"Oh, boy!" cried Darby Suckling...

What to do? I got home from the Thanksgiving visit, planning to go out tonight and found my Amazon order -- it's not one, but two books, which I now realize I should never buy more than one book at a time, to avoid trying to read them together... Anyway, I'm about 35 pages into The Road and it's already broken my heart, and I'm a page into Against the Day, which is where I got the quote for this post's title.

Good Thanksgiving visit: Mom & Dad, Uncle Pat, Chris & Tara & not-so-young Christopher, and Tara's parents, a full table for the turkey dinner. A little birthday cake for Uncle Pat afterwards, and I was as stuffed as that bird... Stayed up into the wee hours & watched "Jaws" with my parents.

Today was a singlespeed ride at Huber Woods and Hartshorne Parks (near Red Bank, NJ, ie near where I grew up), where I was joined by my friends, new club members Joe and Dawn. They're from up near Allamuchy, but have been wanting to check these trails out. Happy to oblige, and it was nice to ride there with someone for a change, almost like showing the place off.

I think I will go out.

Woodland Hijinks

Sals Trailwork: Rich and Spanky
Originally uploaded by donXfive.

By the way, we did trailwork at Sals on Sunday. Pretty big crew: besides me there was Doug, Dave, Bob R, Bernie, Spanky, Joey V, and Greg & Judy. We were basically prepping a new trail, which didn't need much more than rake-and-ride (a little benchcutting here & there), and got a good chunk of the trail done.

Towards the end of it we saw a bunch of ATV'ers riding illegally in the area, and someone got ticked off enought to call the police. As we were waiting for something to happen (two of us went to meet the cops at a nearby parking lot), the ATV's basically rode right up to us, ruining the trail as they went -- we accosted them as they were bushwacking, before they got to our new stuff, and Joe managed to keep the situation defused but we basically made them back out and leave, and also found out where they parked their trailers. Well, we relayed this info to the guys hanging with the cops, who dispatched a squad car and busted these dudes just as they fgot back to their cars. Some were from Jersey (like they told us they all were) but a few were locals. It should have been a $300 fine each, but they all got off with a warning.

Ack Ack A Dack

Morning weigh-in: 184.5#, 11.5% BF

Got a call the other day from my high school friend Mike B, telling that another HS friend, Steve Spodak, was in the hospital. Congestive heart failure, difficulty breathing, diabetes -- if you saw Steve or know him, you really wouldn't be surprised: he's always been pretty heavy, and sort of out of control with the food/drink issues (among many other things).

Apparently, he was hanging with yet another old friend (Bob N, who is now, amazingly, a radiologist), and Bob happened to notice the breathing & made him get it checked out, which is what landed Steve in the hospital. I talked to Mike after he visited; it sounds like Steve is kind of in denial about his health problems, since he was trying to get someone to bring him a cheeseburger from the cafeteria, or at least a Coke from the vending machine. Hmmm, sounds so familiar...

Got a Spodak on my back,
It's a Spodak attack!

Reading: Just finished rereading Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 and Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. Just in time too, since I got an email from Amazon, saying they just shipped Pynchon's new (woo-hoo!) Against the Day and McCarthy's new The Road. They should both be here by the weekend.