(5:09 PM) | Adam R:

Sports IV

• "The game and its extensions. The woman cooking cabbage. The man who wishes he could be done with drink. They are the game's remoter soul. Connectedby the pulsing voice on the radio, joined to the word-of-mouth that passes the score along the street and to the fans who call the special phone number and the crowd at the ballpark that becomes the picture on television, people the size of minute rice, and the game as rumor and conjecture and inner history. There's a sixteen year old in the Bronx who takes his radio up to the roof of his building so he can listen alone, a Dodger fan slouched in the gloaming, and he hears the account of the misplaced bunt and the fly ball that scores the tying run and he looks out over the rooftops, the tar beaches with their clotheslines and pigeon coops and splatted condoms, and he gets the cold creeps. The game doesn't change the way you sleep or wash your face or chew your food. It changes nothing but your life."

That's Don DeLillo in Underworld. I mean, I don't know about how he wraps up that nugget -- a little melodramatic for me -- but I like the line, "They are the game's remoter soul."

• Had a ski trip last weekend, boy howdy. I picked up some real sweet equipment -- Elan cap skis with Marker bindings, Salomon boots, Scott poles (with straps) -- for a total of $7.92 at the Value Village. The bindings were a touch loose, hardly worth mentioning except the left ski popped off a few times and sent me spiraling like a jet airplane with an engine afire. One time the thing popped off in mid-air. I landed on my boot and then my head. Did Kierkegaard have a Knight of Nothing?
• The cool thing about the trip was the drive home, when Benji found our travel log from our ridiculous Cleveland trip of 1999. Benji -- the Captain; Bill -- the Pilot; Bethany -- the Bombardier, and me -- Lord Robinson who exists parallel to them -- decided on the spur of the moment to drive from Kankakee, IL to Cleveland, OH's Blossom Theater to see Counting Crows play the next night. The Pilot drove my car and took back roads the whole way, our Captain navigating by the stars. The 350 mile drive took over 30 hours. Here is the unabridged log, transcribed from the Captain and Bombardier's and my own scrawls:

LORD ROBINSON writes:
Oh Benji will you ever come down to the car?

THE CAPTAIN:
7:12pm Adam lusted.

LORD:
What's the fastes mph that human has run that we know of?

8:02 arrive at Kniman. Waved at by locals.

8:03 left Kniman.

8:04 saw industry. Civilization!

8:08 Fear of Deliverance sequel. Writing shaky due to uneven gravel road. Don't be mistaken: there are unfriendlies.

8:08 cont. But our Pilot is strong and wise. Fear subsides.

CAPTAIN:
8:17 Bill, rather than hear directions [at a rest stop] turns his back to the lady and plugs his ears.

LORD:
Van Morrison's Moondance is THE dusk tuneage.

8:22 Elected to head south at the T, toward Kasmir Pulaski fish emporium (?).

Linguistic query: What are the ramifications of using T, emboldened as one usually finds it in phonetic cartography, not as a letter but to signify a shape instead? And I will carry it further. The symbol "T" is used because the road is shaped in a T, not the phoneme "tuh." Thus the Heideggerian argument concerning priority: vocal speech or the more ambiguous written word? And here again I will go further. Which is most fundamental: 1) the symbol as ontological device, or 2) as a signpost? In other words, is a T an instrument wit which to delve into dialogical quandries or a marker along the way?

THE BOMBARDIER:
After eating at the Indianhead restaurant the Pilot asked the waitress if there were any roads around here that went east. She replied, "Yes, there are tons of them."

"The have bridge builders that don't want to build bridges. They have ditch diggers that don't want to ditch diggers." -- Pilot

Message from God to stay at the Hampton Inn. Also passed the Geneva Convention center.

We are nickle 'n' dimin' our way to Cleveland.

Ran out of road trying to get to a huge light in the air.

CAPTAIN:
[page missing] . . . got 'em. 96.3 The Edge that's the one worth comin' home for. Nothing but fond memories of Albion free coffee and toys those fuckin assholes always end up in jail.

From Hicksville to Farmer. Now a left to Bryan.

We are now receiving signs from God on a regular basis. [Pilot] Brower the Eye, a prophet, interprets them and quite correctly I think.

LORD:
Well, I guess there's some catching up to be done.

By 4:45am we found our room at Wauseau's Holiday Inn Express. Bill and I finished watching Deep Blue Sea then got some breakfast.

We slept for an hr. after checkout, showered, then hit the road.

At first our strong and wise Pilot motored us through %0 cents worth of thruway but the fuzz buzzed so we headed off for off the beaten track.

2 minutes later when whoa it's the Munchkin Book Shop, which I found disappointing from a book shopping perspective but as a cultural phenomenon, as a monument to waste preservation, and as a firetrap, I think we all found it top-notch.

Through Toledo is not easy but we've made it.

Resources Used: book light, duct tape.

Heading east (?) on 183 we've intersected 80/90.

The slingshot was a good buy. Our Captain is a crackshot.

So many signs from God, how can we not stop?

BOMBARDIER:
11:37am "We're getting to Cleveland via hell or high water." -- Captain

11:38 leave Witley County

325S bridge 57-2000

Note send letter to county about a sign notifying the driver of the hard left on Gilbert W.

100 N

The smell of death in the air.

• This comment thread is great. It gives me pause. I'm the luckiest guy in the world.

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