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So yesterday (and I'm retroactively claiming it was to celebrate the longest day / start of summer) Jonathan suggested we go after work and take the Minute Man Bike Trail to its end, him on roller blades, me on bike (not a bad match, given his athleticism, and my lack thereof. Actually I was lagging him a bit.) Looking at the website, I guess I went longer than we thought, maybe 9.5 miles each way, from Arlington Center out to Bedford and back. That's quite a haul for me... I feel pretty good today, though I didn't sleep particularly well.

So here's what the end of the Minuteman looks like, and Jonathan on 'blades (he's actually amazing graceful on those things, like the way those dancers used to be on skates in the 70s) and me on a bike.

(UPDATE: I found this google map of the minuteman on a minuteman pather's blog)

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Literary Bits of the Moment
I just finished Douglas Coupland's "Eleanor Rigby" (Thanks Mr. Ibis and Felisdemens! His sandals will be mailed shortly) a meditation on loneliness and human society in general.

(POTENTIAL SPOILERS AHOY...NOTHING TOO BAD)

Not my favorite Coupland work, lacking the constant flow of neat observations and ideas, but decent. For me the most striking bit was this series of apocalyptic visions of one of the central characters, dealing with MS, raised by foster families, most featuring an odd fundamentalist religious bent. (He sums it up as "This fallen world is going to end, but at least I saw it before the fall" -- it wasn't till I reviewed the book for this entry that I realized that phrase may have sunk into my head and informed my comment I posted yesterday on how we are some future collapsed society's Atlantis.)

The central recurring vision is one of farmers and their wives, burning their seeds and destroying their stores of preserved food, looking up at the sun shining in the all black sky... that scene's narrative gets further revealed throughout the book, but it's the idea of a round white ball of sun against a black sky that I find most sticks in my head.

There were other tableaus and mini-stories:

• burning whales heaving themselves onto beaches
• daisies that shatter
• bales of money that wash up on shore
• trees that go limp and deflate
• a vision where ex-lovers had a bad breakup, and the punishment was rusting a little every time they say each other on the street, like the tin man. In the end they rust frozen in front of each other
• a collapsed building where the digging rescuers find people compressed into diamonds by the force
• guns shooting at loaves of bread
• coyotes stumbling down an empty freeway. eyes are milky
• A new order, cold white lights that burn and die
• A tornado with a halo
• A guy throwing a thrashing body in the trunk of a Chevy
• A 747 the size and shape of a hotel, flying to jerusalem, with stacking chairs instead of seats

Heh, all this disturbing, dream-like imagery makes me want to go catch up on Slow Wave.

UDPATE: nearly forgot one more great quote from the book:

"Again I have to say it, Mom, there's a lot to be said for having a small and manageable dream."