The Recipe

I guess it started with the ribs and slaw at Huckleberry’s BBQ, and the dive in Fanning Springs while spitwad sized raindrops plopped all over the surface of the water. On top was about 8 feet of tannic Suwanee River water. This warm water laid on the cold topaz spring water below like a 151 floater.

A couple of nights sleeping in Mom’s spare bed, where I always sleep the unworried and collapsing sleep you only get when you have no doubts you are where you are supposed to be at the moment.

I watched the Gulf showing out in all kinds of aggressive ways before the sun came up at Bean Point, the northernmost tip of the island and a dramatic view of Tampa Bay and the wide open sea. I saw four thunderstorms scattered in a skirmish line across the morning and knew I would be driving in them and all the storms yet to cross that rise where the earth slants away towards Mexico.

A hellish soaking whiteout drive up the Interstate yesterday, and a good night’s sleep in my own bed, equally restful as the spare one at Mom’s but different. No lilting dreams of caring people smiling, but back to dreams of dismantling apparatae of unspecified purpose and putting it in boxes, but nobody cares about our weird dreams.

A visit to the doctor, wherever death lurks he has not announced himself, nor left clues of any kind. In the face of such evidence how can you not ride, and ride joyfully? 103 degrees says the van, at 5:00 P:M? We will ride for the shade and enjoy the easing of the temperature as the day slips away.

The legs feel too good for caution. I smile and try to turn the screws a little bit, but old CC is not impressed, and when we see him riding the other way, and he joins us, and he thumps us through a mulchy bracken of ticks and vines clinging, neither is Dogyboy impressed.

And yet here we are, riding the day down in summer, and death will have to be patient.

Juancho