February 6, 2002

The Cyclist

This photo would be from the Summer of Love when I was fifteen. Very few images survive of my bike-riding adventures. The first time I ever successfully maintained balance on a bike, I was ten plus. With the Duffey brothers exhorting me, I managed to coast fifty yards down Clement St. until I married the first telephone pole I could find.
I was the last kid I knew to learn how to ride a bike, tie my shoes or light a match. For every geographical, mathematical and historical fact or idea I grasped, I sacrificed some measure of physical dexterity. When I began to do crossword puzzles, I was suddenly no longer able to dance.

February 4, 2002

The Mountaineer


This picture is incomprehensible to me. When in the name of God have I ever been willingly near a cliff or precipice. My nuts clench and twist when even Wile E. Coyote goes shooting off a mountainside. Since I'm roughly fourteen when this shot was taken, I would have been fifteen before I figured out how to get myself down.