My baseball knowledge needs polishing. I left the game on Thursday under the impression that the local team had lost 6-2. Apparently they actually won, 3-1.
An alcohol-free week is never as much fun as a free alcohol week. I managed to scale the working week without the distraction of a hangover, but made up for it this morning. It was the morning after last night’s session at the hotel’s gloomy island bar, where I chewed the cross-cultural fat with Frank the barman and a few locals. Baseball, Bob Dylan, George W and Iraq, and the joy of atheism. The usual agenda items got ticked off before we did. Wheat beer is a fine lubricant, oozing across the world, from Dusseldorf to Nashua via Shepherds Bush. I can recommend the Sam Adams.
It’s been a tiring day, though not, alas, anything to do with running. Sedentary fatigue. I sit here in my hotel room at midnight with a glass of fine Californian sparkling wine in my hand, peering at a map, reflecting on the 300 miles I drove today, most of them on minor, twisting, rural roads through the low-lying clouds of the White Mountains, a glorious national park in the north of New Hampshire. The wooded hills and cool, rocky cascades are spectacular, and combined with the lovely Shaker villages and incessant drizzle, managed to present me with a delightful hybrid of England and the monsoon season in Nepal. I could live with a calm civility like this.
As always, one of the best parts of driving in the US is the radio. I spent much of the afternoon enjoying The Next Big Thing on Public Radio. You can listen to the show here, though I doubt if that link will remain current for very long, so catch it if you can. It’s the one featuring the extraordinary Regina Spektor, a name new to me. Her music, her perspective, her voice, her looks, her poetry (and it isn’t clear where one ends and the others start) are refreshing and truly wonderful. Just listening to her as I wound up the twilit mountains through the clouds, I just knew she’d be beautiful too. The later research didn’t disappoint. She left Moscow with her family during Perestroika to move to the Bronx, and everything that comes out of her, comes out of that. Most people would hate her, which I suspect is why I don’t.
I wonder if her friends call her Reg? We could share my badge.
