I had a chat with the brushwacking guys again today. I was just getting back from my ride and one of the crew expressed quite a bit of interest in my bicycle. I told him I ride 4,000 miles per year and at least for another year I wasn't exaggerating.
The only thing left is the 160 rides, I like to do that. I start the season intending to do 160 rides averaging 25 miles per ride. So far this year I have 154 rides averaging 26 miles per ride. The original goal of 160 still is at least a slight possibility. But even if I don't get there, considering the 15 days in France and the week in October lying down with the sniffles, 154 is a number I can be OK with.
It doesn't look like it is quite over yet.
Riding in the fall . . . really interesting shadows and spectacular light. There are lots of opportunities for good photos.
I have featured this scene probably several times previously. It is an irrevocable sign of things to come when they put up wooden barriers to hold the frozen water in so that children can play hockey outdoors.
That's the boards newly up at Langford Park.Here is part of what I published last year on this date. The photo is of the Minnesota Vietnam Veterans Memorial in the State Capitol approach. The inscription is a quotation from the poem, "The Young Dead Soldiers Do Not Speak", by Archibald MacLeish. The inscription reads, "We were young. We have died. Remember us."
Here is the complete poem:The young dead soldiers do not speak.
Nevertheless, they are heard in the still houses:
who has not heard them?
They have a silence that speaks for them at night
and when the clock counts.
They say: We were young. We have died.
Remember us.
They say: We have done what we could
but until it is finished it is not done.
They say: We have given our lives but until it is finished
no one can know what our lives gave.
They say: Our deaths are not ours: they are yours,
they will mean what you make them.
They say: Whether our lives and our deaths were for
peace and a new hope or for nothing we cannot say,
it is you who must say this.
We leave you our deaths. Give them their meaning.
We were young, they say. We have died; remember us.
2 comments:
First, congratulations on the 4,006 miles. That's extraordinary.
I had to rack my brain for a while to figure out why Archibald MacLeash was such a familiar name. (Okay, I googled it.) I read the play JB in my senior year of high school and it made a big impact on me. Though not big enough to be able to place it 50 years later, I guess. Trials of Job. He does have a way with words.
That would be MacLeish, of course.
I really like the photo of the golden trees. Late fall color, late fall light, late fall shadows. Beautiful.
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