Sabbath Peregrination
Now Playing: Dukes of Stratosphear--"Bike Ride To The Moon"
This morning, I fulfilled a mildly longstanding ambition and walked the Huron River trails all the way from Dixboro Road to Argo Park, which took me about eight miles. I was, to put it bluntly, chafing by the time I got to Argo, and so decided to forgo finishing through Bandemer Park, on the other side of the river. I lucked out enormously on the weather--it ranged from the 50s to the 60s and the breezes were intense. The plan had been to begin around 6:30 or so, but I had a little too much wine last night, and had to weather a hangover. The sun's been coming later and later, of course, and had barely cleared the trees by the time I got to the trail's easternmost point (which alone took me about three miles). Along the way I saw a couple of dead raccoons, a woodpecker, and enough geese to rob a bank (think about it--it would probably take a fair number). I expect we'll probably have about two weeks to a month of autumn, and I intend to wring as much as I can out of it. The leaves have either just started turning or have been turning for a while without me noticing. The Huron varies considerably in size and shape as it passes through Ann Arbor, ranging from a near stream as it passes Mitchell Field and meets the railway, in the midst of my journey, and turning practically into lakes at the two ends, Argo Park in the west and Gallup Park in the east (where it smushes against a few tiny islands, all part of the park complex).

Last night, as I said, I had a "little" to drink (a Portuguese red wine--I've forgotten the name), and fixed pork chops in rosemary. I've fallen in love with rosemary. It smells great, even if it's a little much to actually eat along with your food (I simply scrape it off). I've also decided not to cook with oil anymore--marinades taste much better and there's hardly any smoke. Along with the pork chops, I had a rudimentary salad--spinach and chopped tomatoes, done up with some olive oil, oregano and pepper, since I'd forgotten to get salad dressing before. To top everything off, I had some Stilton cheese, which I've decided isn't as good as Gorgonzola (although Ashley's in Ann Arbor makes great "Stilton fries"). I ate while watching some of the first "Black Adder" series.

"Well, I suppose we'd better get 'Bernard the Bear-Baiter.' And Percy? Tell him to bring a bear this time. The improvising last year was pathetic."

This morning, I actually woke up earlier than I do on weekday mornings for work. I had no dreams to mention, not like the night before. Then, I was staying in a house that was threatened by rising coastal waters (it looked like my Aunt Sue's house in Metairie, so I wondered if it was a Katrina psychic aftershock--living in Michigan, I was obviously unaffected, but as I mentioned before, there are a lot of good memories, and a lot of my dad's family still lived down there). It turned out that I had to pee, which was hardly surprising. What I took from that night, though, was the shocking beauty of the scenery. In the dream, it was about three in the morning, but the moon shone so fiercely upon the rippling water that it seemed like daylight, bringing into view a pair of rocky, mountainous offshore islands on the horizon that put me in mind of Hong Kong or Rio de Janeiro. I've been in a similar city before in my dreams, and I wonder if I'm seeing pieces of a whole, some kind of patchwork Mediterranean or subtropical Latinate port that lives only in my mind. The beginning quote in Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces is from A.J. Liebling's Earl Long biography The Earl of Louisiana, positing the existence of an invisible sea that runs across the Atlantic from the Med to the Spanish Main, linking New Orleans with some kind of "Hellenistic" universe. That's where you'd find that place, I'm sure of it. I hope I end up there again. After I woke, I had a glass of ice water and found on early morning UPN that Stuart Pankin* is now a spokesperson for something called "WalkFit."

Dale has a good post on a problem that's vexed me a number of times in the past, and it's good to know that I'm not alone.

* Likable character actor, former newscaster for the 1980s HBO comedy series "Not Necessarily the News," and a particular favorite of my high school friend Jason Michel. I remember both of us watching one of those wretched early 1970s "Learning Corporation of America" flicks in our American literature class and yelling in unison "Stuart Pankin!" when someone looking very like him showed up in the "Salem Witch Trials" movie. I have no idea where Jason is now and I had no idea where Stuart was until this happened, although I could have sworn I'd seen him doing this stuff while Eric (the former bartender at Piatto in Akron) was flipping the TV channels around one day. It gives one hope.