Cranky Old Fox Joins Book Club

I wasn’t going to write today. Last weekend was my mother’s birthday, the first since she died just before Christmas, and I have been thinking of both good memories and regrets.

I’ve also started lifting weights four times a week, which has cut into my morning walks and bike rides. Thankfully, Sarah has been taking me on afternoon walks instead, and I get to point out the birds to her. I haven’t seen any newcomers since last week, but I met a Hair Woodpecker on a bike ride, and was pleased that I knew it wasn’t a Downy. That beak! I have

James Freitas

to thank for teaching me how to tell them apart.

On today’s bike ride, I let a jerk ruin my day. Black Run Preserve was less crowded than usual, so I was glad I chose it as my “easy ride,” the day after Leg Day, something fellow meatheads will understand. There was also the matter of flat tires on my two main bikes—the fat tire Surly Ice Cream Truck, my go-to, and the light Trek Marlin 5, with its shorter, skinnier tires. Out of the shed came my “spare spare,” a barely-ridden Fuji Wendigo fat tire bike, which I’ve been trying to sell for a year. Good that I didn’t. (I told Sarah this is why I need three bikes.)

Funnel web spider webs, first daffodils of spring, REI has fallen for being anti-union

The Fuji still rides well, and I was having a good ride on a quiet day. It was quiet for birds too—there are usually Turkey Vultures overhead, Eastern Towhees singing, and various woodpeckers scolding me, but today I heard only a few chickadees and crows—until it was not quiet at all. Because some jackass on an e-bike was playing his radio.

I don’t commute anymore, so I don’t know how few people use headphones on public transit these days—it was considered asshole behavior when I last took a bus or train—but nobody wants to hear your music in the woods. It’s the whole reason we’re there. On occasion, on dog-walking trails, you’ll get to hear half of somebody’s phone conversation, but you can pretend there is an invisible rabbit¹ they are talking to, if it bothers you that much. People walk and talk. But unless you’re in a city park where the noise level is already high, no one wants to hear your music.

It was a middle-aged white dude, buzzing along on his pedal-assist, which was obvious because he was pedaling slower than Margaret Hamilton’s evil schoolteacher in The Wizard of Oz, yet flying as fast as if he was caught in the same tornado. Now, if you want to ride a moped, that’s your business, but they are not allowed on Black Run’s trails.

Rather than yuck his yum², I made use of my giant balloon tires and took off across the sandy remains of the Aero Haven airport landing strip, where skinny-tired e-bikes fear to tread.

I was happy to find that the Prickly Pear Cactuses have all survived the snow, and soaked up the brief rain that we had. Their flaccid paddles were flopped all over the sand and crumbled asphalt of the old airport, and once again they made me think of how we can survive and persist and persevere.

On the way back to the trailhead, I pulled over for a few dog walkers, who had a fluffy Samoyed, old Golden Retriever, and a chill pibble, and another pair who had two adorable Corgis, including a blue merle. I know that a big goon barreling down a trail on a bike can frighten or excite dogs, and they were all leashed, so I pulled over patiently until they passed. I did the same for two trail runners and an older gent on a mountain bike, even though I was going uphill.

And then I ran into another jackass playing their radio as they flew down a trail on an electric vehicle, this time a One Wheel. He was flying down a MTB trail, perpendicular to my uphill path on the multi-use, and if he didn’t stop, we were going to collide. Maybe you don’t know, but in hiking, uphill has the right of way. Mountain bikers have adopted the same rule.

I’ve worn headphones on rides³, and still heard birds singing around me; this guy didn’t see or hear me because over his radio, and he had to jump off his One Wheel at the last minute as I pedaled past him. I’m not sure he heard me yell, “no one wants to hear your shit,” but yes, I yucked his yum. (Forgive me father, for I have sinned. I’ll say five Hail TikToks and five Our Snapchats.)

You know where I didn’t run into any jerks? At the bookstore, where I joined the Speculative Fiction Book Club. There were only eight of us, discussing The Book of Perilous Dishes by Doina Rusti, translated from the Romanian. I won’t go as far as recommending the book; it was entertaining enough, if difficult to follow because of its two timelines, unique turns of phrase, and a basis on Romanian folklore that isn’t explained in the story or the glossary. Footnotes would’ve been welcome. Much of our discussion was whether it was the book or the translation that we disliked, but we agreed that the story itself was good, and might make a good Studio Ghibli movie. The story involves Patca, a fourteen-year-old would-be potion-master, or “Satorine,” as they are known in her family, who is about to meet her little uncle to learn his secrets, when she finds him and his servants murdered, and herself accused of same. It’s not really a murder mystery—and many of us were unsure if the magic of the spirit-god Sator was real or imaginary until about a hundred pages in—but it was certainly different, and a quick enough read, if the premise interests you. (Also, she mentions “cockchafer beetles” often as an ingredient, which may make you giggle, if you are immature like I am.)

I got along with the group, found them intelligent and interesting readers, and I bought the next club pick, The Road to Roswell by Connie Willis, an author I’ve wanted to read for some time. And they laughed at my jokes, so they are very kind people, and I can use kind people right now.

Before I read the Connie Willis, I’m reading Body by Harry Crews, about a woman bodybuilder at a competition in Jacksonville, when her country family comes to visit and see what she’s been up to. Crews is one of the great storytellers of the American Grotesque, and with all the weightlifting I’ve been doing, this late ‘80s look at bodybuilding and urban Florida colliding with a family who would eat Flannery O’Connor’s The Misfit for breakfast and not even leave the bones for supper… well, it’s a treat. Somewhere between the American satires of Douglas Sirk and John Waters, sits Harry Crews, sipping lemonade outside of a slaughterhouse. If this intrigues you, I’d start with A Feast of Snakes.

When I’m not reading that, my stack of books that I read one chapter at a time has grown considerably. I finished A Year of Birdsong, which had short chapters on 52 birds, one for every week of the year, with QR codes that will play their songs. Taking its place is The Tree Collectors by Amy Stewart, about tree lovers of all kinds, and The Letters of Oliver Sacks, seven hundred pages of them, edited and curated by his longtime editor, Katie Edgar. I look up to few people, but Oliver Sacks is one; not only an accomplished doctor and writer, but also a weightlifter and swimmer, naturalist, gourmand, motorcyclist, and recovered drug addict. Most of my “heroes” have feet of clay, and I recommend not meeting yours, if you haven’t yet, but Sacks is dead and I can’t meet him. I don’t expect to finish his letters anytime soon; I haven’t read all of his books yet, but I will likely read most of them, given the chance.

I’ve also got a Folio Society edition of The Fairytales of the Brothers Grimm, illustrated by Arthur Rackham here; The Art of Atari, which showcases the hand-painted art of the arcade, console, and home computer games of my childhood; Word Perfect by etymologist Suzie Dent, which details one word a day for a year; The Vixen and Other Poems by W.S. Merwin, with only four poems left until I’m done; and The Unreal and the Real, selected stories of Ursula K. Le Guin, which I’m about one-third of the way through. I’m not good at reading short story collections in one go, but this way I can take breaks. I don’t suggest it for everyone, but it works for me; with an attention span shattered by years online, having six or seven books to flip through can make for a fine night of reading, when you know that a single book won’t hold you for long.

1. Harvey starring Jimmy Stewart is an old favorite, here. See photo.

2. As the kids say, these days. To be fair, I think he was the yum-yucker, yucking all over everyone’s yum with his radio, but I am just a cranky old man.

3. Because while I may be a jerk—that’s for you to decide, not me—at least I’m not a jerk who plays loud music in the woods.