Haiku Review: *The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao*

39. Finished _Oscar_Wao_/
Got lots of thinking to do/
Wish I had loved it/
#haiku

http://instagr.am/p/NrXsb_J3uY/

40. _The_Wonderous_Life_/
Of_Oscar_Wao_ intrigued me/
Because of Oscar/
#haiku #oscarwao #junotdiaz

41. Stereotypes fail/
To capture real people trapped/
By ethnicity/
#haiku #oscarwao #junotdiaz

42. Black Latinos can’t/
Publicly Enjoy nerd-dom/
So _Oscar_ was great/
#haiku #oscarwao #junotdiaz

43. Background Machismo/
Of Dominican Culture/
Was troubling though/
#haiku #oscarwao #junotdiaz

44. Yunior’s machismo/
Which kept him from happiness/
Struck me as honest/
#haiku #oscarwao #junotdiaz

45. Lola seemed more sane/
Than the female characters/
Bit too real, really/
#haiku #oscarwao #junotdiaz

46. Grandmother and mom/
Ybón and Ana performed/
Their #wondrous “roles” well/
#haiku #oscarwao #junotdiaz

47. I have been #Oscar/
To each of these female “types”/
It’s painfully true/
#haiku #oscarwao #junotdiaz

48. We #nerds don’t compute/
To “normal” people riding*/
Their #stereotypes/
#haiku #oscarwao #junotdiaz *using

49. Living up to “type”/
Hard for “real men” who don’t fit/
“Their” #stereotypes/
#haiku #oscarwao #junotdiaz

50. These #stereotypes/
Harm AND benefit people/
So we all succumb/
#haiku #oscarwao #junotdiaz

51. _Oscar_Wao_ said this:/
#Dominicans are much more/
Than #merengue shows/
#haiku #oscarwao #junotdiaz

52. Though Junot Díaz/
Resurrected #nerds’ great tale/
He hindered his girls/
#haiku #oscarwao #junotdiaz

53. Women stuck to script/
Of course where #nerds run afoul/
Of culture is #sex/
#haiku #oscarwao #junotdiaz

54. Yunior’s desperate need/
For sexual approval/
Ruins his life too/
#haiku #oscarwao #junotdiaz

55. But society/
Notes the #nerd not the #player/
As does _Oscar_Wao_/
#haiku #oscarwao #junotdiaz

56. I liked _Oscar_Wao_/
But wish we could escape this/
Damned conformity/
#haiku #oscarwao #junotdiaz

Zadie Smith’s *On Beauty* (Summer Read #1)

7/19/12 8:49 pm

Just finished Zadie Smith’s On Beauty. Hmm, where to start? We’re on Fire Island and the kids are at Bingo Night (I’ve been journaling in my notebook and writing haiku journals in my two blogs todayeye and wqueens7). I have made this book last altogether too long.

I liked On Beauty because Smith is a consummate novelist, freighting everything with meaning. Each word is simultaneously informative within the story and about life as well. I really love reading good novels (or novels that I like). It reminds me of what is good about life: everything is simultaneously a fact about the world and a symbol to be interpreted.  (That is one of the things I’ve been meaning to write about, the semiotics of life in the world.)

Three points to to start with, first the most personal and idiosyncratic: Adultery. In 93 or 94 I was a reader for Don McQuade’s Cold War Ethnic Literature course at Berkeley and for that class I read Eat a Bowl of Tea. The plot was not adultery per-se,  but  a wife who is raped and continues to have sex with her rapist because her husband is impotent.  Reading that book as I was in my 1st long term relationship was really hard on me emotionally.  I think it was because I was so insecure about having a girlfriend and I was so happy to be living with Linda and to have had a real connection with a  partner, the idea of a marriage not working out “happily ever after” stylee was horrifying. This time the adulterer is a protagonist.  He’s not terribly likeable, nor is his relationship, but their marriage is a huge part of five lives and the idea of even a bad marriage failing upsets me. It isn’t a bad marriage, just a rote one.  I’d imagine it is like every marriage: habit. To disrupt the routine of a family is, to me, for some reason, terrifying. I guess I’m happy about my life and any threat to it is frightening.

Second, and I guess this is related to the adultery plot, SEX. First, his first affair is with a woman whom he has known for thirty years. Claire recalls recalls seducing him without any desire for him or and real understanding of why she did it.  I, somehow, understand that “Imp of the Perverse” that would make you behave horribly and then deal with the consequences.  I am glad I’ve never cheated on Linda and that it has been a while since I did any of those self destructive behaviors that are, as they say in AA, moving towards a drink. Phew!

Claire, the woman of the initial affair, is also described as mega fit in the most unattractive way. She is the opposite of his zaftig African American wife physically, and in some ways intellectually and temperamentally.  He doesn’t like her, he just does it because he can. JERK!  I could see falling into that sort of trap if I didn’t try to keep myself spiritually fit.

Victoria, -Vee-, the daughter of an academic rival who sort of seduces him at her mother’s wake, and was the first love of his oldest son, is described as completely beautiful and composed, but also young and immature.  She “sexts” him and manipulates him into a second encounter, where he sees her ugly side and snaps out of it.  Of course, she is nineteen and he is fifty seven.  She is a student and young woman, and he is a father and professor.  There is no simple “right and wrong” here, but I find it possibly excusable:but finally inexcusable.

Her beauty and stereotypical beauty of youth is a social asset and very glamorous, but inappropriate. I liked this part of the novel. The collapse of visual or two dimensional beauty into something other than an asset worked for me. Like Claire Malcolm, the wirey poetess, the babalicious buppy princess, two forms of fetishized women presented to middle aged men like me, are finally shown to be thin, two dimensional wraiths in inappropriate and unequal power relation relationships.  I like that, and in some ways that was the main gristle of the novel for me. however, I think it could have been handled more economically.

The novel ends with no closure. There is huge growth on the part of Howard, but it is incremental. He doesn’t get everything back (like I wanted), but he does make huge steps towards righting himself to a better, more independent and complete person.

One other little thing that bothered me was that the language wasn’t quite right I admire Smith for trying to leave England, but I was bothered by a few misused words (road).

Well, this is hardly a book review, or  even a cogent assessment of the novel, but it is a good personal account of some of the main parts of the novel from my perspective…

The Glossy Shopping Bag

She hurried up the avenue looking for shelter. The rain, now biblical in intensity, was filling the glossy bag. Her clothes were soaked, but they’d dry. The bag, advertising a Madison Avenue shop in rigid plasticized tag was all that she had left of her image of consumer prowess. The shiny bag with the cotton cord handles represented her dream life which her earnings could not support. She had kept it crisp and undamaged through the weeks of her homelessness, folding it flat as she slept on the F train. When the rain accumulated was a pint even, the handles and the bottom seams simultaneously failed. The city papers, her clean underwear and a water bottle fell to the sidewalk. Her homelessness was laid bare to the doorman who helped her pick up the items. He got her a Gristedes’ bag, helped her organize her belongings, then asked her to move from under the Park Avenue awning he was bound to protect.

Autobiography for Class (Draft 2)

Stafford Gregoire

ENG101.1211

Professor Gregoire

30 April 2012

 

the shy[1] rebel

Stafford has always had a strange sense of the world. Even in 1st grade he admired the kid who couldn’t do the normal 1st grade assignment, “naming his parents and grandparents and where they were from.” “Tony” was a kid from down the block and his parents and parents were always around our block. They were from Cambridge, the town we lived in, Stafford could have done the assignment for Tony: “my parents and grandparents are from Cambridge, Massachusetts, just like me,” he should have said in Mrs. Pierce’s 1st grade class. Instead he wet himself in front of the class: “Stafford’s hero!” For some perverse reason, ever since then whenever Stafford encountered a “freak” who couldn’t or wouldn’t “behave normally,” he had a new hero. I think that this is because his parents told him to respect people who stood up for themselves, and never to shame children who refused to conform to the norms of society. Ever since then Stafford has elevated people who refused to conform to society. Personally, I think that he elevates eccentric people to defy conformity and make himself more unique.

As soon as Stafford grew up, he left home. Arrogant, he wanted to make his way in the world on his own as a bicycle messenger. He moved to New York City in 1979, just after the city went bankrupt and was allowed to default by the federal government. The crumbling city was perfect for Stafford because “[t]he small community often tolerates eccentricity. The city, on the contrary, rewards it” (Park, cited in Kidder 307). Like yeast in moist flour or hops in a brewery or a bully on a 3rd world police force, Stafford had found his perfect environment. It is a place where he can live the fantasy The Toronto Star reporter Cheney described as “[l]iving by your own skill and animal cunning, like a gladiator in the Roman amphitheatre, surrounded by fat and decadent citizens” (Cheney A1). Of course, that is a young man’s dream of rebellion. And if you look at most of these imaginary heroes of the street, they prefer to keep these fantasies to themselves. So Stafford lived his fantasy life of an urban warrior.

_____________________________________________________________________

Works Cited

Cheney, P. “Bicycle Couriers in Love with Life on Mean Streets.” Toronto Star, 27 March 1993, A1, A8. Print.

Kidder, Jeffrey. “Appropriating The City: Space, Theory, And Bike Messengers.” Theory & Society 38.3 (2009): 307-328. Academic Search Complete. Web. 23 Apr. 2012.

 

 

---

[1] passive aggressive

Kiko Rides Some More

There were two men delivering oversized sandwiches on bikes that day, a convoy!

It was a really rough two weeks teaching two classes. I have some exciting, but demanding, administrative work, but I am not really clear on how I feel about all of it.  I should say that I am so tied up in things to do that I cannot see the “meta” of my life.  Or, if you prefer, I can’t see the forest for the trees.  But here is the latest on Kiko, and I did a good hour, or two paragraphs at the end, where he has won the race and some observations. (it started here, and was last published here)

That weekend, when Mike and Kiko rode Croak wasn’t there but Kiko was stronger and more able to use the bike Mike was lending him.  The brakes, gears, ride and fit all became more and more comfortable.  In fact Kiko now realized what a bad fit (and bike) he had on Sra Choi’s bike that he had been riding out to Jamaica and back every day for the last few months.  Bent over the impossibly light “bicicleta de papel” as he had named it in the awkward carnero cuerno (ram-horned) handlebars week after week became more comfortable.  He could feel the resistance that his upright work-bike had been subjecting him to and he looked forward to bending down out of the wind.

One weekend, so convinced of the superiority of the lowered position, he went back home and took the handlebars off of a kids’ “racing bike” he found in a vacant lot and replaced the mountain bars on his bike.  Where was a whole sunday of problems to solve concerning the basket, brakes, grip-shifters, but when he had finished they all -,ore or less- worked.  Of course it looked like the eccentric 3rd world piece of engineering that it was, but Kiko was proud of his handiwork and excited about not having to fight the wind everytime someone wanted bacon and eggs delivered to their home.

That same Monday Croak rolled up with his bolsa mesengero pulled tight across his chest like un bandolero de Pancho Villa and laughed at Kiko’s handiwork. “Man look at that, you look like you’re gonna ride back into the 70s with that time machine!”

“I liking the drop bars so I get me some,” explaining with pride, “the gears and brakes they no fit so well, but I make them work just fine, like new as long as I pull forward when I turn.”  In order to get the new handlebars working he had turned the basket sideways, modified some of the hardware with washers, nuts and bolts, used zip-ties in other places.  The handlebar tape that covered the wires from the ill fitting twist shifters and mountain bike brakes was silver.  Kiko had cut the strips in half so that they wouldn’t gather and bubble, but this had caused lots of threads to form like dashboard  hula dancer’s skirt or science fiction cobwebs.

Croak rode with Kiko until his delivery weaving in and out of traffic.  They rode side-by-side in some cases and one or the other would zip in front when they needed to go single file.  Who would take the lead and who would follow was communicated and agreed upon silently with little more than muscle tenses and shrugs.  In these short rides Kiko learned about drafting and pack riding in ways that years in a club pack can never teach.

 

Kiko and Queens: Writing and Thinking and Plotting and Exploring

Been up since 6:30 trying to write on Kiko, but not feeling the flow.  I have done some good writing (which I will include here) but it does not really press the story forward well.  (It starts here, and was last published here) Indeed, it has gone off in two interesting directions: 1. the people in the subdivided house he lives in, which could be thee start of the rooming house story and 2. assimilation as camouflage.  (Spoiler Alert: THIS IS FROM MUCH LATER IN THE STORY) First, let me insert what I’ve written, re-read it, and comment on it:

Kiko liked winning, but the attention was strange.  He had lived in New York for almost three years and he had been anonymous the whole time. He had stayed focused on working and the things of life like getting an apartment, paying bills, sending money home and the rest. Besides that his world was tiny: Mrs. Choi, Santayana, Mr. Duggan (the landlord), Gopi (the upstairs tenant who drives a cab), the Aldebot family (who have one of the other legal apartment in the building), and the Peruvian woman at the envios office where Kiko sent at least $100 back to his family every week (he never knew her name because he was shy, but they had stared and smiled foolishly every week).

The secret to success as a Mexican in New York was to be invisible.  Look as much like every other Mexican as you could: avoid personal attention. The average New Yorker, of each and every type, categorizes people into broad types.  This is both a method of taxonomy and navigation as “threat assessment.” Mexicans, to most Americans are just “hispanic.”

However, even to other Latinos, Mexicans fall into the indigenous tribes of their ancestors, so Kiko, being from the south, looked like Guatalatecas y Hondureños (o Catrachos). He had not assumed the city ways of the more cosmopolitan Mexicans, and so was never mistaken for the Salvadorans or Mexicans from the north.

The truth is Kiko is a New Yorker, shopping at the clothing stores of Jamaica and Corona, wearing the vaguely hip-hop inspired gear of the broad swath of Queens immigrants.  Indeed Gopi’s friend Ali had the exact same outfit (a vaguely Hilfiger-ish jeans and Armani-Exchange knock-off shirt, with an pair of fake Timberlands) last Friday after he had gone to mosque. Needless to say he had worn it in the manner befitting all Bengalis, with no Latino flair.

Where does assimilation end and camouflage begin?  All across Queens, from Jamaica to Astoria, men and women come from other parts of the world and try to adapt their personalities and styles to their new surroundings.  They imitate the happy well fed youths of Manhattan (where most of them work), their co-workers who serve as guides to this new world of New York, and any friends that they may have known back home (provided they respect the “friend”). They want to look like someone who belongs there, but not as if they are trying too hard.  Oddly, the best model for this camouflage is tourists from ciudad Mexico, Sao Paolo or Cartagena: wealthy children who have looked north on Television all of their lives. They adapt the MTV styles to Telefuturo realities back home and field test them on the streets of Manhattan.

 

I really like this, though it is a real distraction from the Bike Racer story I set out to write.  It strikes me as true in a way that I have not really read or seen anywhere else.  If I digress like this Kiko’s story will be a novel.  It has the outlines of the rooming house story I want to tell separately mixed in seemlessly with Kiko’s story.  In fact the only discordant note is the Peruvian love interest.  (I want to deal with inter-latino dating as a way to highlight most [gringo] New Yorker’s ignorance of the differences between the nations of the continent of South America).

The Irish American Landlord who didn’t flee immigration and multiculturalism to his Queens neighborhood will also be an interesting lens to look at Queens through.  His profiteering by subdividing his home into cells should prove an interesting examination of the freemarket and who benefits from it.  The question is do I make him an alcoholic or more of a conscious agent of change?

Gopi the cabbie (hindu?) and his friend Ali (muslim) could be an interesting arc. Indeed, as I write this the idea of making them lovers in the brokeback mountain vein strikes me as provocative.  One of them could start to be better assimilated and start to go to gay bars, while the other might need the approval of the home community.

Then we can heal the south asian muslim-hindu rift as well as explore the freedom that a megacity offers. Hindu-Muslim tensions would be a perfect metaphor for Arab-Israeli strife, just jettisoning the eurocentrism in most examinations of these problems.

Kingston, the West-Indian with a city job is a wild card.  He could be anything from “Slim Nate” the addict-dealer of “My Belletristic Bottom” to a hard-working yardie hustler who knows what to do in a huge unruly city like New York.  Indeed his Caribbean  experience with lawlessness and bureaucracy (what if he has a London back-story) might make him the ultimate trickster figure in a seemingly civilized but really ungovernable New York. Maybe he can know a slim Nate, an amoral petty addict and dealer who has a similar job with the City.

I guess What I’d like is some votes on which way to go with this from any of my regular readers (though I am hardly a regular writer).  Do you think I should spread the Kiko story out, or cut this from it.  Since it is out of sequence, and there are pages and pages of plotting and writing between where the last place I left Kiko and here after he wins his first race, where this is from, I submit to you what I should do, stay focused on Kiko’s racing, OR, spread it out to his life as a New Yorker.

Please vote.

Park Bench Philosopher

Park Bench Philosopher 

Park bench philosopher/
Discoursing on life’s meaning/

His certainty binds him/
To the bench he sits on/

Long ago he chose “to know”/
Everything his own way/

Evicting human doubt/
Bound him to that park bench/

Curiosity’s doubt/
Would have long-ago freed him/

Instead (to impress some girl?)/
He chose “omnipotence”/

He sounds like a professor/
To those who will listen/

Those who know, however/
See a bug trapped in amber/

The sap is his creation/
Sticky discourse of self/

Importance eludes him/
In his fabrication/

From within sticky lies/
He builds isolation/

A fortress as concrete/
As the prison’s he describes/

As his butch bona-fides/
Riker’s Island Vacation/

Though he’s never traveled/
Far from the green park bench/

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

The Reaper Wore a Hoodie

The reaper wore a hoodie/
Sitting on the corner bench/

He offered me a dap/
And loudly asked how I was/

I expected a long robe/
and a long old-time sickle/

He took his white headphones out/
I heard noise as he swiped it off/

I asked him where his scythe was/
And he smiled and chewed his gum/

“People think that we gods don’t change/
that eternal means stuck in time/

“In the style that they think matters:/
Their favorite time in history/

He looked off at the six lane highway/
And seemed to collect his thoughts/

“People think humans evolve/
But their gods remain antiques/

“They trap us in a history/
Where the harshest demands are made/

“Like we can’t learn anything/
From our eternities of life/

“I’m the ‘reaper’ because you/
used to have to farm constantly/

“Now I should be ‘collections’/
or the ‘syndicate’s muscle‘/

“But the love of books trap me/
In a medieval metaphor/

“Some love chivalry, kings, knights/
And old-fashioned peonage/

“To show their faithful love of God/
(That plantation has gone global)/

But we gods are much kinder now/
Same rules though, no-one stays alive/

But fealty and obeisance/
Like animal sacrifices/

“No longer pleases us that much/
You do those for human leaders/

“Who want the power of their fathers/
To bully and command the people/

“WE don’t give a rat’s gray ass/
What you eat, where you pray, or/

“Who-the-fuck you think God is/
Because you will all come back home/

“And there’s no place for the wicked;/
The good and bad lodge together/

“In eternity you get to see/
Things more clearly. and good and evil/

“Only make sense to those with flesh/
‘Bad‘ is like mold, or rain, or pain/

“Something absolutely needed/
-But the fleshed cannot know why”/

He watched the traffic speed along/
And frowned a bit as it slowed/

He raised his stubbled chin and the cars/
Sped back up like an unclogged drain/

“Why can’t we understand?” I asked/
and he sadly smiled, weighing the bat/

“Rules and consequences matter/
To you children of the flesh/

“Your finite bodies and minds/
With their wants, loves, needs and greed/

“Need the charnel race track” he said/
Glancing at the speeding cars/

“Because eternity lacks/
A speed limit or any rules/

“But those little rules of the flesh/
Also enable desire/

“All that you crave, all that ‘matters’/
In eternity is a plague/

“The things you fight for will soon be/
Like mosquitoes: trivial”/

He heard the siren and looked up/
Back to where the traffic came from/

Cast a glance at me like a ball[1]/
Lifted his bat to his shoulder/

Adjusted his grip, twirled it upward/
And watched the spot where the chase/

Would round the highway’s slow curve/
He let life come to him fast/ V

And swung after the chase had passed/
And the police car swerved, flipped/

And slid along the highway/
Wheels in the air like a turtle/

He smiled and walked away as/
I heard screaming and saw fire/

The reaper wore a hoodie/

Sitting on the corner bench/

 

He offered me a dap/

And loudly asked how I was/

 

I expected a long robe/

and a long old-time sickle/

 

He took his white headphones out/

I heard noise as he swiped it off/

 

I asked him where his scythe was/

And he smiled and chewed his gum/

 

“People think that we gods don’t change/

that eternal means stuck in time/

 

“In the style that they think matters:/

Their favorite time in history/

 

He looked off at the six lane highway/

And seemed to collect his thoughts/

 

“People think humans evolve/

But their gods remain antiques/

 

“They trap us in a history/

Where the harshest demands are made/

 

“Like we can’t learn anything/

From our eternities of life/

 

“I’m the ‘reaper’ because you/

used to have to farm constantly/

 

“Now I should be ‘collections’/

or the ‘syndicate’s muscle‘/

 

 ”But the love of books trap me/

In a medieval metaphor/

 

“Some love chivalry, kings, knights/

 And old-fashioned peonage/

 

“To show their faithful love of God/

(That plantation has gone global)/

 

But we gods are much kinder now/

Same rules though, no-one stays alive/

 

But fealty and obeisance/

Like animal sacrifices/

 

“No longer pleases us that much/

You do those for human leaders/

 

“Who want the power of their fathers/

 To bully and command the people/

 

“WE don’t give a rat’s gray ass/

What you eat, where you pray, or/

 

“Who-the-fuck you think God is/

Because you will all come back home/

 

“And there’s no place for the wicked;/

The good and bad lodge together/

 

“In eternity you get to see/

Things more clearly. and good and evil/

 

“Only make sense to those with flesh/

‘Bad‘ is like mold, or rain, or pain/

 

“Something absolutely needed/

-But the fleshed cannot know why”/

 

He watched the traffic speed along/

And frowned a bit as it slowed/

 

He raised his stubbled chin and the cars/

Sped back up like an unclogged drain/

 

“Why can’t we understand?” I asked/

and he sadly smiled, weighing the bat/

 

“Rules and consequences matter/

To you children of the flesh/

 

“Your finite bodies and minds/

With their wants, loves, needs and greed/

 

“Need the charnel race track” he said/

Glancing at the speeding cars/

 

“Because eternity lacks/

A speed limit or any rules/

 

“But those little rules of the flesh/

Also enable desire/

 

“All that you crave, all that ‘matters’/

In eternity is a plague/

 

“The things you fight for will soon be/

Like mosquitoes: trivial”/

 

He heard the siren and looked up/

Back to where the traffic came from/

 

Cast a glance at me like a ball[1]/

Lifted his bat to his shoulder/

 

Adjusted his grip, twirled it upward/

And watched the spot where the chase/

 

Would round the highway’s slow curve/

He let life come to him fast/

 

And swung after the chase had passed/

And the police car swerved, flipped/

 

And slid along the highway/

Wheels in the air like a turtle/

 

He smiled and walked away as/

I heard screaming and saw fire/

Tattoo Two

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urchinTracker();

Tattoo II

The blue lightning bolts that
Traced the flat plain between
His pelvis and the six pack
That defined his pelvis,

The once jaunty flourish
Etched into the beauty
Of youth incarnate
Tantalized toward

Pubes unseen below a flat
Hip-hugger-tummy called
Desire aloud to all who
Lust for primal youth

The tattoos that once
Vanished behind overpriced
Jeans now ride the rolls

Of fat that taste-desire
Filled his skin with.
Those tattoos now lie
Flaccid in the creases that

His mushroom cloud belly
Drops on his lap of fat

Kiko Learns Pack Procedure

Here’s more of Kiko’s Tale.  He’s back, our delivery guy, (if only your intrepid scribe was as dedicated and regular as Kiko). Here Kiko meets another aspect of the City Cycling world, a singular character named Croak. There’s more the pipeline.

And of course, if you want to start from the beginning, go here.  IF this link doesn’t work you can search “Kiko” on this blog and feel yourway back to the beginning by hitting “previous entries” two or three times.

“Kiko, this is Croak,” Mike said gesturing to the chest of the hard 40-something man there by the side of the highway. It was a strange place this road between leafy houses and the trench the LIE was in, and it seemed stranger with Croak there. They all hopped on their bikes, Kiko having locked up Sra Choi’s bike and taken off the baggy jeans and t-shirt he’d worn over the kit. With his street clothes removed Croak and Mike both saw the broad chest and shoulders of Kiko’s Indian ancestry looking like a barrel of muscle barely contained by his mule-like ribs.

The three of them set off with Mike leading to start. As they hit the city limits in about 20 minutes Croak took over and it was not so easy for Kiko to keep up. Mike pulled 20 inches off their line and pedaled more slowly so that Croak and Kiko passed him and he fell back into their slipstream. Croak , a narrow man, rode hard and pulled them at a pace that Mike had not. Inside of Kiko there was a smile on his heart because he was finally being challenged. Kiko dug deep and kept up with florescent advert without much trouble, but he was riding harder and he knew that they were covering a lot of road in a little time. The smile in his chest was his pride at going so fast and working so hard as a team.

20 minutes alter Croak jumped out of line, fell back two places and clicked back into the line like a safe’s tumbler. Kiko kept the pace, maintaining his rhythm and cadence in perfect tight circles. He felt the extra resistance of being in front so he dropped the gear one level and spun away. After a time he felt he was spinning too much and he shifted again, increasing his speed. He didn’t know this but behind him mike had to dig much deeper to keep up and Croak’s face broke into an ear-to-ear grin as he clung to mike’s wheel for every jewel of energy savings that Mike’s big Irish draft offered.