Words, Music, & Outdoor Adventures

I”ve been reading everything I can from the library and internet about Thomas Wolfe. The 100th anniversary of the publication of Of Time and the River, Pat Conroy wrote this essay for the novel. Pat Conroy wrote The Great Santini and Price of Tide. The two writers had a common background: growing up in the south, abusive fathers, and love of language. These are my favorite quotes from the essay that spoke to me and why Wolfe is one of my favorite writers to read over and over again.

The Bookis impact on me was so viscerally powerful that I consider the reading of it as one of the pivotal events of my life.

He grabs you by the throat and makes you feel the whole world as it pours out of him. This is not only his gift; it is his genius, his fate, and the only place his art could take him.

His prose style was charged, poetic n each sentence a mule train loaded with too much meaning and beauty at the same time.

My identification with this one extravagantly American and exaggeratedly Southern writer was so complete as to border on the demented and the mystical. His life has long served as the oxgoad to the passion and inflammation I bring to all discussions of art. His work has served me as inspiration, kindling of the spirit, prime mover, home place and Book of Common Prayer.

I think he tells more of the truth about the world he found himself in than anyone else. Anyone.

All the rest of us [writers] know when to pull back, to let up, to ease off Oe Only one of us in the history of the world tried to go to the moon every time he sat down to write a sentence and this is the fabulous, otherworldly, larger-that-life, myth-driven mountain boy, Thomas Wolfe.

My favorite writers write about ordinary life: George Eliot, Thomas Wolfe, Willa Cather. Here is an exerpt from today’s writer’s almanac.

……
she always had doubts about her abilities as a writer. Her husband had to hide the reviews of her work so that she wouldn’t read them and become depressed. When she was working on her novel Middlemarch, she often reread her previous books and agonized over the idea that she would never be able to write that well again and all her best work was behind her.

Middlemarch made Eliot rich and famous. In the last years of her life, thousands of women wrote letters to her saying that she had described their lives, and asking for her advice in their marriages and careers. George Eliot wrote, “If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.”

Vienna Billy Joel
…..
But you know that when the truth is told
That you can get what you want
Or you can just get old
You’re gonna kick off before you even get halfway through
When will you realize…Vienna waits for you

Slow down you’re doing fine
You can’t be everything you want to be
Before your time
Although it’s so romantic on the borderline tonight
Too bad but it’s the life you lead
You’re so ahead of yourself
That you forgot what you need
Though you can see when you’re wrong
You know you can’t always see when you’re right

You got your passion you got your pride
But don’t you know that only fools are satisfied?
Dream on but don’t imagine they’ll all come true
When will you realize
Vienna waits for you

From trifuel.com: Misconception # 1. Miles = Speed. Going farther does not necessarily mean getting faster. If you put in a lot of weekly miles, but lack any specific training, you are really only (over) training your endurance. If you want to run, bike, or swim fast, you must run, bike, or swim fast. This means interval training for strength, power, aerobic capacity, and lactate threshold training. If your goal is to build endurance, it is not necessary to go more than 10-15% over race distance. Only a portion of your training should be dedicated to building and maintaining endurance. The rest should be shorter, more specific workouts that address your specific limiters

1) Steamboat Pentathlon
2) Half Ironman
3) Triathlon - Denver, Steamboat, one other location TBD
4) Running Series
5) Steamboat Marathon

525,600 minutes, 525,000 moments so dear. 525,600 minutes - how do you measure, measure a year? In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee. In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife. In 525,600 minutes - how do you measure a year in the life?
525,600 minutes! 525,000 journeys to plan. 525,600 minutes - how can you measure the life of a woman or man?

In truths that she learned, or in times that he cried. In bridges he burned, or the way that she died.

Itis time now to sing out, tho the story never ends let’s celebrate remember a year in the life of friends.

Ain’t nothing out here to me
The Road and the Radio
Looking for an exit
And the song that I might know

Counting down the memories
Adding up the miles
Searching for a feeling
I ain’t felt in awhile

Clarity and inspiration
Happiness is a destination
That’s hard to find
It may take some time
But in my mind theres something more
And I’ll open up a brand new door
And find the strength to close the ones I left behind
And I’ll get there leaning on some friends I know
The Road and the Radio

Spent the night in Carolina
Got up early out of bed
Bought a red bull and roadmap and an old Stones cassette
Set my sights southbound
No reason or ryhme
Threw up a prayer just lookin’
Just lookin’ for a sign

But in my mind theres something more
And I’ll open up a brand new door
And find the strength to close the ones I left behind
And I’ll get there leaning on some friends I know
The Road and the Radio