I'm at Escalante Grand Staircase National Monument, or at least right near it in the town of Escalante. A million things have happened. I spent the night before last sleeping outside in a brutal cold front but I still have all my finger, toes and my nose. Utah looks like another planet and they people make it even more disorienting cause they are all mormons and the innkeepers do things like make the european tourists who are unmarried but travelling together sit through morality lectures.
Almost all of the weakness has been driven out of me. When I see a hill I no longer fear it I just go up it. The process of me going forward on my bike is now almost toally involuntary. The other day in a motel I woke up in the morning and i thought "there is no possible way a brother like me is getting on that bike today" cause my whole body was in pain and I was tired and wanted to watch the giants/rockies game. but 25 minutes later I was forcing myself up a steep grade road. i also realize that even though the giants have matt cain, their wild card bid is not shaping up to be real exciting baseball.
the right way to go on a trip like this is with wool and steel. wear an all wool jersey, anything else will stink and will either be too cold or too hot. ride an all steel bike. anything else will be too rattle-y and will break. wool and steel. think about it, if conan were taking a bike trip would he wear a nylon/wool/spandex blend?
Also I take back everything I said about NPR. They are great. I'm lucky to be able to get paul harvey and rush limbaugh on my radio in the canyons. If you tell me the first two lines of anyh song in the top ten country singles charts I can tell you the chorus cause it's only country stations out here. I did hear bon jovi's 'dead or alive' which is good cause i am actually riding on a steel horse. i saw the wire on HBO if you don't watch it you should. Don't worry if you haven't seen an episode yet, it's like trainspotting or clockwork orange where the dialect becomes easy to understand after a little while. I also saw a movie where andy griffith was a small town preacher trying to raise kids and a black and white movie which i think was from the 70s about a travelling con man/bible salesman and a little girl that travels with him in the 1930s. the guy may have been beau or jeff bridges. what movie was this does anyone know?
my favorite subjects for movies are con men and time travel. if a movie has either of those things in it i'll watch. i think a good movie would be one about time travelling con men but i'm not sure how it would work. I tried to watch the movie where al pacino and matthew mcconaughey are football gamblers but fuck that movie.
A guy told me that spinach no longer exists, it blew my mind.
devin flew into utah and will meet me soon. he should have flown into las vegas cause i am closer to there now. victor, pay your phone bill so you can figure out a way to get here. take a bus east on h-way 50 or something. i may make it to SF by my birthday, if I don't I will eat a hostess cupcake with a candle it. if they don't have hostess cupcakes then i'll eat a sno-ball.
I want to dedicate all riding for this week to all of my friends who got married this summer or are getting married soon: tarita fazio, peter geniella, ben wood, howard slobodin, andy granelli, chris perkins and esecially ari rosen, whose wedding I couldn't attend cause I was in Western Kansas. I'd hoped I would get hit by a car so that I could attend but it didn't work out.
If any of my former students are still reading this, let me know if you want to get an internship at this place right by ITHS which will teach you how to fix bicycles. i think it also gets you into college. it's the sort of thing that i'm jealous of you guys for having around you. The other thing is PS1, the art museum that you guys never go to and that the school has no relationshiup with. it's one of the greatest art museums in the country and it's like three blocks away.
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hey, thanks for the dedication. i've been reading this from the beginning but i'm only commenting now, which is pretty selfish of me. its true that spinach has ceased to exist. i tried to buy some yesterday... nothing. have you ever noticed how intensely chipper mormons tend to be? maybe it has something to do with jesus coming tomorrow and taking only them, while the rest of us burn in eternal hell stench. anyway, i'm jealous of your free wheelin' ways, man.
oh, one other thing. you can add lowell iles (you may remember him as blowell) to the list of people getting married soon. he's marrying a girl named emiko he met in japan.
i had spinach on saturday right before it disappeared. i wish i had an effective way to tie this anecdote to popeye->robin williams->my hate of robin williams->my idea for the slasher version of patch adams, but work was stressful today, so my brain isn't functioning correctly.
mormons are weird.
also, phil, i think the movie you're thinking of with the bible salesman is paper moon. it's a classic. not a bridges in the lead, though, it's ryan o'neal.
The spinach disappeared because there is an outbreak of E.coli...now you know. Hope you and Devin are have a marvelous ride.
Will we make any money doing this internship?
the one time i went to ps1. i was robbed by 2 black men and a white man. they constantly yelled "drop to the ground and dont look at my face" i vowed never to go back again.
hey phil. its arthur from ITHS. too bad i started reading your blog so late and if only i went to your class when i had the chance.
its crazy what you're doing and i hope i can do the same one day. good luck green.
about the spinach--
i had a meeting at noon and there was leftover spinach salad and some bread from a seminar. i immediately made two large spinach salad sandwiches. after eating the sammies and sitting through a meeting, i returned to my desk/computer only to find the headlines telling me that the spinach had do-do in it and was going to kill me if, at least, wreck my innards. needless to say, i spend the remainder of the day worrying about my mortality. however, as you can see, i'm still here and E. coli is a punk.
driving in a car is still more dangerous than eating cow-shit laden spinach. but all the places in manhattan switched over to arugala.
our father thinks there are cougars "lurking by the side of the road ...waiting for cycylists" in utah, which is granting alot of intentionality and malice to cougars, I think.
in re: the wire - it is all true.
and happy 30th.
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