My review of Middle Age: A Romance by Joyce Carol Oates

Middle Age: A Romance by Joyce Carol Oates
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was a challenging read. What is it about? Who is Adam Berendt? Why does his early exit resonate with so many people? What's up with the Aristotle / Odin symbolism? Doesn't matter. Watching his life reorient so many other people's lives in their middle age is the story. Some fly right, some fly wrong. Joyce Carol Oates singular, dispassionate voice is so perfect for this story, or vice versa. It's like the people in John Updike's _Couples_ were reassembled twenty years later, in this book, but illustrated with a very different light. Worth a read.


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The Wheel in California

Overland Monthly Vol. XXII July - December 1893

THE WHEEL IN CALIFORNIA. 

HERE, there and everywhere they flit, gliding away on their silent steeds as quickly and suddenly as they approach, leaving no dust or trace behind them to mark their course, and giving the surprised pedestrian but a momentary glimpse of the silent wheel. Often it is without warning that the cyclist sweeps by, but in the dusk or twilight the faint tinkle of his bell or the hoarser sound of the bicycle horn warns the passer-by of the near approach of the wheelmen.

San Francisco Call, Volume 73, Number 159, 8 May 1893 - FURIOUS RIDING - 100-mile relay race

San Francisco Call, Volume 73, Number 159, 8 May 1893

FURIOUS RIDING.

The Hundred Mile Relay Bicycle Race. 

ACMES BEAT THE BAY CITYS. 

A Splendid Record Established for California Which Has Not Been Equaled in the East.

T was a great day for the cyclers yesterday, when the much-talked-of 100-mile relay bicycle race between picked riders from the Bay City Wheelmen of San Francisco and the Acme Athletic Club of Oakland was ridden and won.

Great is the joy in Oakland, for the heavy boys from across the bay took the lightweights from the sandhill city into camp without much fuss or scattering of feathers.

The start was made at 9 A. M. yesterday and at precisely 2:48:51 3-5 P. M. the last rider of the Acme team crossed the finish line completing the relay 100-mile run in the remarkably fast time of 5 hrs. 43 min. 51 3-5 sec, beating the Bay City's finisher just 10 min. 48 2-5 sec.

San Francisco Call, Volume 73, Number 85, 23 February 1893 - RACING ON WHEELS - A Pacific Coast Record Broken.

San Leandro triangle

This is one of the first articles from the 'golden era' (my words, bike riding and racing 1880-1910) in SF Bay Area newspapers where I've read discussion of things like drafting, drinking while racing, the concept of a 'time trial'. Our modern 40km time trial course comes from 25-mile races against the clock like this. I love the glimpse into current bike culture; scorchers in dusty cut-offs, folks turning out to watch and to promenade on bikes. You can see a racing culture developing, with this, the first assemblage on this course, for racing it in a district format, for a championship. Look at the long list of officials who made this happen, and the amount of work that went into preparing and protecting the course. Of course, no automobiles existed, so farmers carts, trains, trolleys and foot / hoof traffic were the concerns. This article also keys into what made the bicycle so fascinating; speed, and the ability of the human body to generate it, and for how long those bodies could hold it. The U.S. record for 40km time trial is 47:35.37, by John Frey at altitude, in Moriarty, N.M., 9/2/90. John was going a bit faster than 19 miles an hour, but bear in mind that these racers in 1893 were on single-speeds, on rough, dirt roads, riding on what we might now call 'gravel bikes'. I'm not sure exactly what training was like back then - I'd like to know - but I'm guessing it was not quite the same as now. And technology and science have improved athlete's abilities quite a bit; I'll leave that comment for interpretation. I'll put a few more comments in the text. I hope you enjoy this. I've been editing the text from https://cdnc.ucr.edu archives, which is generated by Optical Character Recognition (OCR) - basically robots scan the newspapers and interpret the content. I find the articles from the 'golden age' of bike riding and racing, edit the content - sometimes by doing the OCR myself if from newspapers.com - and then paste it here, add graphics, research and hyperlink it. I hope you enjoy it. I do.

RACING ON WHEELS

A Pacific Coast Record Broken. 

San Leandro Triangle

The San Leandro Triangle 

If you start to read about cycling during the 1880 - 1910 era in the Bay Area, you quickly come across many mentions of the "San Leandro Triangle". There are 161 results for it in the California Digital Newspaper Collection, 392 results at newspapers.com and google returns 477. It was a common course, I think because it was relatively flat - these bikes had no gears, and the racers were really fascinated with speed and distance records - and because it was pretty country at the time, and it was accessible from rail (Fruitvale Station in Oakland, near the current BART Fruitvale Station) and boat in a nice city. (Oakland) The route to it, on the "San Leandro Road", AKA the "Haywards Road" was scenic and a nice spin for spectators.  Later, motorcycle and car races were run over the course.

San Francisco Call, Volume 74, Number 35, 5 July 1893 - THE RACE ON WHEELS - California Division L. A. W. Championships

San Francisco Call, Volume 74, Number 35, 5 July 1893

THE RACE ON WHEELS.

The great race meeting of the California Division League of American Wheelmen, under the auspices of the Bay City Wheelmen, was brought to a most glorious and successful conclusion yesterday afternoon at Central Park.