Spectrum Again!!!

This time I joined them for real! I even waited for a good twenty minutes at Edith, with two guys that couldn’t have been frostier. It was officially the first fall ride. In the sense that I had to don the longjohns, which made me quite unhappy. But I rode with them all the way to Alpine and Arastradero. I had decided not to push it and ride behind, which was quite a stupid idea, because all the catastrophes ended up having only two witnesses: me and my brakes. Continue reading

Kona

Ok, I waited a week, but now I need to tell you about Kona. So I went and stayed at the King Kam. Do the same thing if you want to watch the triathletes – it was quite the spectacle. From my cheap hotel room I had neither window nor mountain view, but I had an unobstructed view of the assembly space where the triathletes gathered. And there were quite a few of those – in all shapes, ages, genders and groupings. Continue reading

Aztec Autums (G. Jennings)

Oh, what high praise was lavished on this book! It seemed the entire elite of the Nation threw itself on these few hundred pages, naming Mr. Jennings the greatest writer of history in the land. Well, not much to deserve. The story is that of a warrior in a far-off city in Northern Mexico who decides he wants revenge and decides to defeat the Spaniards who killed his father, burning him on the stake under the eyes of his (unknowing at that time) son. Continue reading

Baudolino (U. Eco)

Yet another Umberto Eco novel that plays in the Middle Ages. This one has the advantage of touching one of my dearest subjects in history, the fall of Byzantium, but otherwise, well… This is the story of Baudolino, a character that makes it from the humbles upbringing to becoming adoptive son to the greatest of all German emperors, Frederick Barbarossa (“red-beard’). Frederick needs to go on a crusade, so Baudolino does. Continue reading

The Man Who Loved Only Numbers (P. Hoffman)

Admittedly, the life of a mathematician doesn’t quite make a likely beach reading. I was surprised by myself as I packed it in my backpack on the way to Kona, but surely do not regret it. Mathematicians, as the book quotes, are all a bit out of their mind. Their make wonderfully eccentric characters that charm you even where the subject matter of their work bores you. That was the case with Alan Turing (Enigma), John Nash (A Beautiful Mind), and a lot of other mathematicians. Continue reading

Baudolino (U. Eco)

There is something that always fascinated me about Umberto Eco: he manages to remain faithful to his main theme, to focus more and more on it, to become a better writer, to accomplish more and better things; and yet he is tied to trail his own success with his first novel. “The Name of the Rose” was an admirable exercise in medieval crime novel, and was so successful that it spawned an enormous following of second and third (and fourth) tier colleagues. Continue reading

19 Friday - Landing And Two Beaches

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2003-09-19 Big Island

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21 Sunday - Kilauea

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22 Monday - Hunting For Dl Extension

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