Finished Erik Larson's "The Devil in the White City".

First non-fiction I have read in months. Except for a brief mention in a 1961 episode of the Twilight Zone, I knew nothing about Chicago's World Fair before reading this book. (Actually, the Twilight Zone was about the 1933 World Fair. This book was about the 1893 edition.)

I enjoyed learning about the times (It never occurred to me that there was a department whose sole task was to light/extinguish the city's gas lamps or that townspeople of the time got breaking news by standing outside of the newspaper offices.) I was impressed by the size of the undertaking (20,000 men working at one time) and intrigued by the murders, but the author wore me out a bit with too much detail.

Next, I return to The Dark Tower. Volume 3.

Wow.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101970323

Wild scene

Walking to the office in the dark this morning when I hear a quick, frantic ticking sound. I look up to see four or five deer running hard across a large, paved parking lot in “downtown” Clarksburg. Local news has been talking about a problem with the deer population. They may be right.

Chance of rain

Yesterday, after checking the weather radar and seeing a chance of rain, I called my buddy and cancelled our planned ride. He hates riding in bad weather as much as I do so he did not mind, but it got me thinking… There is no way I would have cancelled this ride a couple of months ago. My theory… I backed out, in large part, because I am out of shape and my ego is too big to enjoy riding with others when I am not in near peak form.

Would anybody want to read this and if they did, would I want them to?

Blogs that I am most interested in reading are blogs I would be least likely to write. I enjoy blogs authored by people who appear to have little issue sharing. These authors are not private people. I love to read about others’ training, their wattages, body weights, etc, but I don’t see myself writing this stuff in a blog for everybody (but probably nobody) to see. I enjoy reading other riders’ race reports, but as for me… If I do well in a race, I would not want to write about it, because I may appear immodest. If I do poorly, I certainly don’t want to publicly give my list of stupid excuses.

Why Am I Blogging?

1)  Racing season is over, so I have a lot of free time.

2)  I read a lot and appreciate good writing, but my writing skills leave me agonizing over the simplest multi-sentence email.  By writing one gets better at writing, right?

3)  I might enjoy it.