Holding steady in my Chair by the Corner Window (see last week’s post). In fact, it’s snowing now, and seems likely to keep snowing for most of the day. This allows me to look up from my book, note the lovely but unwelcoming landscape, and congratulate myself on being cozy and warm.

Last week I read “River Dogs,” given to me by old friend Bill Hutchison. It’s a collection of understated Raymond Carveresque short stories set in northern New England farm country, in which the human characters have about the same emotional range as the cows they raise. Then Benjamin Labatut’s engaging “When We Cease to Understand the World,” after which I spent a short spell geeked out on collating events in Charles Roberts Anderson’s “Melville in the South Seas” with Jay Leyda’s “The Melville Log,” which tracks every moment of Melville’s life for which there is documentary evidence. Specifically, Anderson’s contention that runaway whaleman Herman Melville departed Tahiti on November 9, 1842, which is unsupported by Leyda (the very sort of reading in which book dealers are likely to overindulge), then a quick corrective read of a book about bicycling, which is the subject, more or less, of this post.

Of course, a steady diet of sitting and reading would likely drive me nuts – which is probably why I never pursued an academic career. Last Wednesday and Thursday I rose from my chair and took a short New England buying trip. (Winter time, for those of you not in the know, is an excellent season for road trips. Assuming the weather cooperates, dealers are generally happy to see you and your checkbook, and high-quality items more likely to emerge from back rooms than in the summer, when business is booming.) Long story short, it was a good trip. I even found a book to take back to my chair by the corner window. It was called “Bike for Life: How to Ride to 100.”

I enjoy riding my road bike and, as a person of the elderly pursuasion, I’ve become interested in discovering ways that will  help me continue to enjoy riding my road bike for however many years of functionality are left to me. I read a lot of books and website info on the topic, so naturally I devoured this new book as soon as I got back to my chair.

It was terrible. An absolute ripoff. Analog click bait.

Two authors bragging about how much they’d accomplished, mostly in ultra-rides of 200+ miles, and lots of interviews with similar athletes. Plenty of empty promises, generic beginner tips, and information of such a general level as to be utterly useless. For example, did you know how important it was for bike riders to get a good night’s sleep?

It pissed me off. I resolved to send an email to the lead writer, a man named Roy M. Wallack, telling him he should be ashamed of himself, as a dedicated cyclist and professional writer, for doing such hack work. In search of an up-to-date email address, I googled “Roy M. Wallack, journalist” and found the following article from the “Los Angeles Times,” December 20, 2020

Writer and adventurer Roy Wallack dies after mountain biking accident

That pretty much shut me up. He never even made it to 65.