Friday reading and riding report

It was a beautiful day for riding. I just got back from a 35-mile ride, which is medium-long for me at this point in the season, and it felt great. Low 60's, sunny, the leaves just beginning to appear, lots of pretty back roads to ride on around here. On Wednesday's ride, however, I experienced one of the problems cyclists occasionally have: swallowing a bug. You are riding along, working hard, breathing heavily, and all the sudden one flies into your mouth and before you know it, it's down your throat. Actually, it would have been better for me if I had swallowed this particular bug. It flew straight toward the back of my throat where it stayed lodged for a while. I tried to swallow it, it being small and hard to get out. I drank some water to wash it down. But then I kept coughing and coughing until finally I coughed it up. Grossed out? I'm dreading the day I have a confrontation with a squirrel who heads straight for my spokes. That would be gross.

On the reading front -- I've been playing around with reading a bunch of books at once, and I've decided I like it. It's probably best, though, when I'm not too terribly busy; if I had limited time to read, I think I'd want to focus on just one thing. But my life right now is such that I have a decent amount of time to read, and reading a bunch of books allows me some variety and makes it easier to read things like poetry, that require more concentration. I spend a little time concentrating on the more challenging reading, and then move on to something easier, and that way I get more variety. I've been extremely happy reading A History of Reading, but I'm guessing at some point this weekend, I'm going to pick up a novel. On deck: Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty.