Memoir from an Antproof Case

Tonight I finished a book I thought I had read more than 20 years ago, but I had not. I had read a couple of chapters and lost interest. But I have read all of Helprin's other novels and short stories, so I decided to give it another try.

I like it better now, but having finished it, I will not keep it. I won't read it again.  It is the memoir of a grumpy 80 year old. Worse, it is a grumpy 80 year old who loathes coffee. He attacks espresso machines on occasion and has ended friendships and marriages because of his anti-coffee obsession.

For a coffee lover like me, his rants are painful.  Worse I am in the midst of reading the 15th book in the Master and Commander series in which the central characters are two great friends who share a love of music and coffee.  And I just spent a week with a good friend from the Army in the 1970s who has been a Franciscan monk in Germany since shortly after leaving the military during the Cold War.  Bruder Timotheus and I have very different lives, but we share a love of good coffee.

I realized as I read the book, it is also something of a blueprint for my favorite novel by Helprin: Paris in the Present Tense. In both novels the central character is at the end of his life telling a story that begins with losing both of his parents in a brutal, senseless murder.  Both lead lives of love, loss, promise, courage and failed expectations.

But Paris left me wanting to re-read the book and mark passages, which I did. Antproof  left me smiling thinking that this was the trial run before the book I love most.

Since it is Helprin, there are brilliant passages:
The human soul is ordinary, existing by the billion, and on a crowded street you pass souls a thousand times a minute. And yet within the soul is a graceful, shining song more wonderful than the stunning cathedrals that stand over the countryside unique and alone. The simple songs are best. They last into time as inviolably as light.

And Helprin's books always have humor.  This book begins: Call me Oscar Progresso, or for that matter call me anything you want.... following that first line I was ready for a grumpy old narrator.

And the book is dedicated--To Juan Valdez.

Riding with Racers is the Same the World Over

One of the many peletons at Longchamps in Paris

When I ride in Paris in big pack, known around the world as a peloton, the behavior is as universal as the French word that describes the group.  In Paris on two consecutive days, I rode with big groups—twenty to forty riders—who I never met nor shared a common language with, but I could ride inches away from them to the side and front to back for miles with no problems. I speak and read some French, but not at 90% heart rate.

The behavior of the riders was completely predictable. They signaled when leaving the group. When I was in a fast group, riders from slower groups would speed up beside our group, then move into a gap if one appeared, or join our group from the back. Riders moved slightly out of the group to spit or for snot rockets, unless they were in the fastest groups, then they did their best to go straight down and kept on pedaling at a furious pace. 

In the fast groups, the toughest riders are out front, the rest of us draft as best we can and hang on. These groups formed straight pace lines with riders occasionally dropping off the front to rest at the back.  In the slower groups, a younger guy would occasionally pull out of the pack and attack the group, speeding away or becoming the front of a now faster group.  Sometimes they stayed at the front and raised the speed of the group for most of a lap.  Other times, they dropped to the back again as soon as they were caught. 

One beautiful thing to watch is how groups behave when they are overtaken in the narrow stretches at either end of the loop.  Most of the two miles is a 30-foot wide road with room for fast groups to sail past slow groups. But at each end of the loop is a short stretch that is just eight feet wide.  On the west end this 20-meter stretch is a downhill curve. On the east end is a 100-meter lane before the road turns south in front of the entrance to the horse racing track inside the Longchamps oval.

A group spread out five wide approaching the narrow sections will squeeze down to a pace line. The faster group does the same and two long lines either speed through a right bend or share a lane side by side in smooth parallel lines of heavy breathing and 100 rpm pedaling. 

Most of the riders wore black cool-weather tights and jackets. The temperature was in the low fifties both days. A few, the real racers in the groups, wore jerseys and tights from local race teams.  The sponsors, as well as I could make out, were a plumbing store or an electrical shop in the city of Paris or a suburb.  Some of the slower riders, and some of the guys speeding out to attack the group, wore the colors of Tour de France teams from a few years ago.  The fan-boy attire is universally the sign of a rider who is not a member of a local team. 

Unlike America, where closed roads and bike paths draw roller bladers, scooters, dog walkers, strollers and any number of rolling hazards to fast moving bikes, the training race loop is by tradition for cyclists.  Runners use the path on the inside of the loop. If they run on the pavement, they jump off when a large pack approaches. 

Also, bike culture becomes more and more uniform among the faster riders.  People going 9 mph commuting to work in flat cities like Amsterdam, Beijing or Bangkok ride any number of bikes sometimes older than the rider.  The fastest riders have carbon frame bikes of recent vintage with components very like everyone around them. They dress alike, except as noted above, and spend a lot of time training to be faster and better on the bike. 

I love the riding. I love bike culture. And I love being able to fit in with bicyclists in other countries around the world in the common culture we share.  The wheel thing, one could say.