A buddy who lives up in Detroit e-mailed me yesterday. He says he reads the BRC every day but finds it somewhat limited in scope. Apparently I only write about bicycles, bicycling, and bicyclers.
He believes that this topic can only be mined for so much good material and it will eventually go stale.
It made me stop and think.
What the hell else do I have to say?
Politics? Nobody wants to hear it and I get angry too easily.
Love? I wouldn’t know the first thing about it. I mean, I could say I love kicking S’quatch’s ass on the trail, but that isn’t the same thing.
Updates on the family and kids? The family is fine and if there are kids, they haven’t found me yet.
Then it occurred to me, there is one other venue where I live out my scintillating, beyond the red carpet life. My back porch, and specifically, the dartboard.
Surely Mr. Detroit remembers the sting of defeat and the CHUNK-ping! of steel sinking in the bullseye. The dartboard is my television.
It isn’t a glamorous setting, especially this time of year. It is very damp out there, and gear mountain constantly threatens to invade the “social area”, but I tell you what, a lot of dudes would experience missing limb syndrome if porch operations came to a halt.
There is a word in Spanish, querencia, that is used to describe the place in the ring where the bull chooses to make his stand against the matador, the pecadores, and the inevitability of his demise.
This dirty porch is mine. Where is yours?
Juancho el Toro
Mine’s the kitchen table by the big picture window.
In spite of the limited scope of these missives, it’s true I look forward to reading Juancho’s singular outlook on life. You would too if you were holed up in a cube overlooking the Detroit River. In the same way a romance or fantasy novel can make you forget your surroundings, so too does an entertaining weblog. You’ll notice I used the long form of this word rather than the shorter “blog”. I think sometimes people can be a bit lazy in their use of language. As for Juancho’s backporch, I have many fond memories but the sting of defeat isn’t one of them. Perhaps my memory is deteriorating with age but I don’t think so. In any case, every man needs a spot in which to dig in and make their last stand and I respect Juancho’s choice. But for me, it seems, this life has passed me by and I have only the memories, and Professor Slaw, to keep me warm at night.
Well I don’t know if it was the intention of Dr. Detroit and Juancho or not, but do you really have to make me cry?! As I sat on your back porch just a few weeks ago, Juancho (you knew I’d been there, right?!), I remembered with much fondness the many times I walloped you all at that very dart board… Oh wait… that wasn’t me, that was Dr. Detroit! Needless to say, we miss you and those lazy, fun-filled evenings. Thanks for keeping us in the loop through this weblog.
Sure, back up your man. I see how it is. Of course we will settle this in November. Sorry I missed you, but glad you got to visit the porch. Thanks for speaking up on my world wide web log.
I have two spots: 1. The long, seedy sectional in our family room, where I can uncoil to my full extent, give my spine a break, and doze away the cares of the day. 2. The paint on the basketball court of the Christian Life Center at 1st Baptist Church of Tallahassee, where I patrol at lunchtime two days a week waiting for hobbits to drive the lane.