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Second thoughts

Monday, March 17, 2003

So now I’m not so sure about this Canada thing. I realised that while I was interested in the topic, I wasn’t that excited about it. And it doesn’t have the obvious hook of the first book. Without huge enthusiasm and a simple elevator pitch (in terms of route or history), I’m not convinced.

Plan B is forming in my mind: down the west coast of north America. From Vancouver to Tijuana, or some such. The angle would be ‘travels in your future’. The folks there are ahead of the rest of us in many things (good and bad), from environmental awareness to plastic surgery, from leisure pursuits to cultural imperialistic movies. Questions to ask would include:

– why does this place think it’s the future?

– what does that feel like on the ground?

– why do people move there, and do they get what they expected?

– if everyone’s so bent on self-improvement (physical, economic or spiritual), are they really any happier or better than the rest of us?

It’s a start, perhaps. I feel better about that ride, about the book of the ride (more Pico Iyer than Pete McCarthy), and about selling the idea.

Other news has seen me celebrating a birthday, being good at bowling, feeling ill and playing a part in the creation of a great engagement ring.

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Bibliophilia

Tuesday, March 04, 2003

It’s pretty obvious, but sometimes you forget the obvious, so it stands repeating. Libraries over the years have been my offices – from the UL in Cambridge, the ugly overcrowding of the Lecky in Trinity, the elegant vaulting of the National Library in Kildare St and sundry other places from High Wycombe to Manhattan, Kansas – and I feel comfortable there.

So it shouldn’t come as a great surprise that when I walked into the Santa Fe public library this afternoon, it felt like I was coming home. Into the reading room, and out with the books. Great stuff. So now I have a place to work.

In other news, I’ve had an offer on my first book. Fantastic. So that means rewrites and fussing over contracts and the like, but it also means input from the publishers on how the next trip should work out. More news as and when.

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Skis and coyness

Thursday, February 27, 2003

Cross country skiing kicked my ass – I can go up, but not come down (except in a very undignified fashion). But I’ll be back, and it’s another load of kit for me to lust after.

Work this week has been largely non-Canada related, as I keep my hand in with Posted by David in
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Map wheels

Thursday, February 20, 2003

Got a funky digital map wheel that counts the kms for me. And there look to be many. The route is making itself clear to me, which is very satisfying if not a little scary. Still can’t quite believe that I’ll be arriving in Newfoundland in June, with so much other stuff going on.

Away at the weekend – Roswell, White Sands, Cloudcroft, snow, desert, military towns and astrochimps.

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Famine and Feasts

Friday, February 14, 2003

Despite nine years in Dublin, I’d never sat down and read a long account of the Famine. Good thing too, in many ways. After a couple of days trawling through the horror stories, I came to the conclusion that any book on emigration would only be about death, poverty and pain. That visiting Saint John in New Brunswick or Grosse Isle near Quebec City would feel like a trip to the morgue.

Fortunately, things looked better in the morning – those who arrived in Canada in the late 1840s might have had few options, and many died trying, but it behoves the survivors (and their descendants, myself included) to live on as large as we can. And write about the good stuff and the bad stuff side by side.

Spent the afternoon wearing my hack’s hat, researching a newsletter on web content. A feast of interesting websites, information architecture blogs and some mad vocab. After work on the book, it feels like another world, but it’s one I’m pretty familiar with, too. A weird collision.

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Routes you, sir

Tuesday, February 11, 2003

Finally feel I’m getting somewhere with the route. The latest book, Flight from Famine by Donald Mackay details the successive waves of emigration from Ireland to Canada, and from it there’s a pattern emerging that matches what looks like a good bike journey with a historical reason for being there.

There’s an incredible amount of info on the Peter Robinson-led and government-backed emigrations of 1823 and 1825. Although these were atypical, being funded by the British govt, the specificity of people, place and story mean it’ll be great to follow them from Co. Cork to what became Peterborough, a little north of Lake Ontario.

In non-work news, still shaking my head of Michael Jackson’s weirdly naive and frightening performance in Martin Bashir’s adroit documentary last week. Give some people enough rope. . .

And after a particularly intense spinning session yesterday, I’m wondering if getting your heart rate to 208 bpm can be good for you.

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The Danger Tree

Thursday, February 06, 2003

Just finished one of the best books I’ve read in a long time. The Danger Tree by David Macfarlane mixes family history, memory and research into a deeply moving portrait of Newfoundland and the effects of war.

Three of his great-uncles died in the First World War, and with great skill and wisdom, he tells their stories and the stories of those left behind. And the island of Newfoundland itself becomes a character, with all its barren beauty, heartache and missed chances. A beautiful and at times very funny book, and riveting.

In more prosaic news, Powells has become my new US-based online bookshop of choice, with all the stuff I wanted that Amazon didn’t have, or said they had and then couldn’t send me. And it feels good to be supporting an independent bookseller. What I wanted was a pile of maps, and a book about the Irish in Canada.

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Haircuts and LA

Tuesday, February 04, 2003

Back after a weekend in LA – hence no blogging (must investigate some mobile solutions). Prior to my departure I went for a haircut here in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It was in a jewellery shop – past the cabinets and into the back room with the chair. Robert did a nice job on my hair, and told me about the Middle Eastern guys who were attacking the US where it hurts – in its jewellery market. He’d called the Feds and the CIA about it, and either he was completely mad, or there’s a lot to be said for his observations. Or both.

Which is why you should always get your haircut when you’re visiting somewhere – like taxi drivers, barbers always know what’s going on.

And thence to LA. Yes to Venice Beach (and Amelia’s great coffee and panini). Yes to air hockey on Santa Monica Pier. Yes to Philippe’s french dip sandwiches, and a big yes to Union Station. Birds singing, moist thick air, temps in the high 80s in early Feb, palm trees and the madness of Beverly Hills.

And The Grove, a frightening example of the privatisation of public space, corporate co-option of small-town American symbols, and commodification of community – a whole fake streetscape with an Abercrombie and Fitch where the town hall should be, musical fountains and a neighbourhood Italian restaurant seen through the eyes of money men.

Back to Canada work today.

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Careful what you wish for

Saturday, January 25, 2003

Big news in Mooro Towers. The first book is currently technically not quite a book. It’s an 80,000 word Word and .pdf document (although I’m proud to say it was written in BBEdit), and it’s been shopped around agents and publishers in London and Dublin for some months now. Some were interested, some took over a year to reply, and some kept their opinions to themselves.

But that might all be about to change – it’s all still up in the air, which makes me nervous, but it’s looking like I’ve found a publisher. And not a bad one either.  I’ll not say more till I have a contract in my hand, but it does mean the Canada trip is now subject to change if I’m working on rewrites and edits. A good problem to have, but it’s making it hard to get down to work on anything until I know for sure.

On the bike front, I’m been comparing the putative Carpe Diem with a Cannondale T2000. I’d say both are great bikes, but the wheelset options on the CD don’t include any 36-spokers, which seem to be a good idea for real touring. And the Cannondale gets great reviews and is not a cyclocross/touring hybrid, but a pure-bred tourer (albeit with an alu frame). Maybe I get the CD with the spec I want, and get some chunky touring wheels elsewhere.

British military endeavours in 1812? You’re thinking Napoleon, right? So was I until I discovered the young republic of the USA invaded British North America from Detroit in that year, eventually burning York (later named Toronto). The struggle went back and forth, with a British fleet eventually arriving in Chesapeake Bay and torching Washington. The Treaty of Ghent returned the borders to the way they’d been before, and everyone went home. But the strange set of differences and similarities between North Americans on both sides of the border is perhaps encapsulated in this war – there was nobody more like a proto-Canadian than his cousin across the border, but they still went to war (with the native Americans on the British side, the US receiving French support, and most British subjects in the area being Francophone). How what was to become Canada went from a sparsely-populated set of provinces with little clout to the most powerful of all the dominions by mid-late C19 is a story I’m interested in hearing. If only I could be bothered to do any work.

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Commerce and sponsorship

Thursday, January 23, 2003

Got to love the ease with which you can buy things online in the US. Just received a mouse to make my laptop computing more straightforward. Who knew right-mouse clicks worked in Apple OS 10.2?

Yet to hear back from the other bike manufacturers I contacted about sponsorship for the Canada trip, but a big hand for Airborne (http://www.airborne.net) for their speedy offer of a big discount on a Carpe Diem. There don’t look to be many roads in Newfoundland – maybe I need something chunkier?

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