Andrei Codrescu and I: Learning to Drive

I've never been a very self-confident driver, but I was doing okay until a crash on Mother's Day this month. A friend and I had just seen the play The Most Dangerous Highway in the World!

No one was hurt, but my car was totaled, and I couldn't move it into a safe lane, so we waited for more than 15 minutes for the Highway Patrol to come and get us out of harm's way.  My friend's seat belt grabbed her so tightly that she felt she'd been hit, so she underwent a lot of tests, both in the fire truck and at General Hospital.  Everything checked out fine, but it was traumatic.

I now have a replacement car, but I feel like a new, inexperienced driver.

Yesterday I walked ten miles in preparation for a section of the Camino de Santiago, and that didn't seem like any distance at all compared to driving my car out of the garage.

So I was amused when today's reading in The Art of Pilgrimage included an anecdote about Andrei Codrescu, who was offered the chance to make a movie about roadside attractions traveling through Florida.  He wanted to do it but couldn't drive, so they asked him whether he'd like to learn.  

"Would I like to drive?  Would a fish like to fly?  Would a child like to grow up?  Would an elephant like to be a swan?  Was it a matter of wanting to, or was it more like an impossible cross-species dream, a magical transformation?" 

  He did learn, though, and the result was Road Scholar:  Coast to Coast Late in the Century. 

  Maybe there's hope for me.

On the Wobbly Camino?

Reading a Bas Bleu mail order catalog with my brother, I discovered a book called Wobble to Death, a murder mystery that takes place around a six-day, 500-mile race that was popular in London in the 1870's, before the Camino de Santiago de Compostela became the commercial success it is now.  (I love Spain, so that's nothing against the Camino!)

Since a friend and I are "doing" a small part of the Camino--about 110 miles, from Cebreriro to Santiago instead of the 500 mile trek that most do (eventually if not all in one whack), I was intrigued by this 500-mile race done not in a month or 50 days but in 6 days!  (Intrigued is not the same as inspired.)

I ordered the book, which arrived yesterday, and have underlined key phrases:

"I've seen nothing so internally barbarous as a six-day race."
"You got to take the first hundred fast.  Get well in front, Bill, and we'll ease up later."

(Bill is my walking partner's name.)

"He's all right for five hundred easy.
His training?  "No butter, sugar or cheese since August.  Purging with Cockle's pills.  His feet won't blister, neither.  We've had them in alum and water regular.  And he's run on the roads two hours daily these six weeks."

Bill, are you listening?

Of course, it describes the participants, the majority of whom "moved more like sacrificial victims than gladiators striding into the arena."

Another day I'll cite the ones that "finish the week in coffins."

There's also mention of the all-important socks:  I shall want a change at noon.  Be sure to air the new pair for at least two hours.  And I shall want you to have a sponge and vinegar ready in case I require it later...

I've just begun chapter two, which relates the rule against wearing spiked boots or shoes.

But now it's time for me to take a two-hour walk from my house with the view of the ocean to a friend's house facing the Bay.

For Peter Pan on her 70th birthday

I was just watching The Way with Martin Sheen, and  heard the Gendarme say that he wanted to walk the Camino for the fourth time "when I'm seventy, God willing."

That was the latest in a series of references I've seen or heard to the age of 70 as a marker of Old Age.

But now it's not the latest because coming into my e-mail I see this from Berkeley Rep:

For Peter Pan on her 70th birthday—a fanciful and moving look at growing up versus growing old within a family. In the wake of their father’s death, five siblings are driven to reconnect with childhood dreams and confront the inevitability of the passage of time. Les Waters helms this transcendent West Coast premiere.

A Plant-Based Take Out

I enjoyed the Asian Coalition dinner more than ever this year--even though we missed Bob Irwin, who always makes it fun--because the group was so spirited, and we got to go together, all six of us, in a silver pick-up truck.  (I'd volunteered to sit in the back with cargo, but it turned out not to be necessary.)

The dinner provided a lot of dishes but only two vegan ones:  Braised tofu with broccoli and mushrooms & greens.

But at the end of the evening, Mo-Shuet Tam, whose truck we got to ride in, urged me to take the table's flower arrangement, which I did because it was plant-based!