Sabina

Today, I sat through the opening statements of a murder trial. Sabina, the young woman whose life ended in an act of senseless brutality, was the daughter of my friend, a friend to my children, a child who was as welcome in my home as any member of my family.

Listening to an opening statement in a murder trial is not like listening to a eulogy. At a trial, death, not life, is the focus, and Sabina was so full of life.

Life is short, precious and fragile. Enjoy it. Live it. Treasure it.

Friday Writings for Randos - INSIGHT

{Friday Writings for Randos - A weekly post that features pieces from other writers that touch some facet of the Randonneuring experience, even if that was not the author's intent. It's stuff that's best read out loud - slowly.} This week it's:

INSIGHT

 by Mairi MacInnes

We plunged down from the summit

      over the slither of scree

till the path jackknifed

      over clints round a baldish moor

and across cloughs sets in its side

      and welded fields, a hundred of them,

with thorns embedded, and into iron 

      woods, faintly aromatic, on a precipice

harboured in boulders taller than Stonehenge,

Friday Writings for Randos - Rule 9

{Friday Writings for Randos - A weekly post that features pieces from other writers that touch some facet of the Randonneuring experience, even if that was not the author's intent. It's stuff that's best read out loud - slowly.} This week it's:

Rule #9

a cup of coffee and a ditch nap

The New York Times ran an article on how to use coffee to get the most out of a roadside nap. Coffee and a ditch nap? Hmm Sounds useful. Here's a link: coffee nap.

One day's journey into night: an account from the 2012 PA Fleche

The 2012 Pennsylvania Fleche took place the weekend of April 14.

Time is a challenge of the Fleche. A Fleche takes 24 hours to ride. You ride it straight through and, with the possible exception of a few stolen moments of closed eye bliss, you ride it without sleep.

T.S. Eliot called April the cruelest month. In Pennsylvania, April lives up to his description. April can bring cold, rain, thunder, lightning, hail or heat. Sometimes, all on the same day. April all too often breaks its promise of showers and flowers. If you are going to ride for 24 hours straight in April, you pack for contingencies. 

Friday Writings for Randos: The Old Man and the Sea

{Friday Writings for Randos - A weekly post that features pieces from other writers that touch some facet of the Randonneuring experience, even if that was not the author's intent. It's stuff that's best read out loud - slowly.} This week it's:.

An excerpt from 

The Old Man and the Sea 

by Ernest Hemingway

But four hours later the fish was still swimming steadily out to sea, towing the skiff, and the old man was still braced solidly with the line across his back. 

Friday Writings for Randos - in celebration of surviving

{Friday Writings for Randos - A weekly post that features pieces from other writers that touch some facet of the Randonneuring experience, even if that was not the author's intent. It's stuff that's best read out loud - slowly.} This week it's:.

in celebration of surviving

by Chuck Miller