There was a part of the conversation at dinner last night when we talked about that fall Lance had in the Tour de France where a spectator apparently waved a little bag with a handle and it caught his handlebars. It's one of those interactions between objects and people that could be tragic and was, in this case, just another part of Lance's triumph. According to my friends (and the ebay seller who unknowingly provides the picture) these bags were distributed by vans from a sponsor (Credit Lyonnais) that proceeded the cyclists, throwing swag into the audience like Mardi Gras. So some spectator caught one and it caught Lance. Little chance things. Perhaps big changes.

Bigger, more horrible things hinge on chance. One of the pieces in the A.J. Leibling collection I finished on the bike this morning was about a village in France that had a bunch of citizens murdered and homes and businesses burned out during the occupation. No one could really, really be sure but it appeared that a German truck convoy was on a road and a German troop train stopped to wait nearby for another train on the tracks and Germans garrisoned above the village let off some shots at shadows while patrolling. All the Germans started shooting in the dark at each other. Once they converged and realized there weren't any apparent enemies, they just murdered, burned and pillaged because, well, surely there were "terroristen" who had started it all. But, probably if the trucks and train hadn't accidentally converged with a few fearful shots from their comrades to set them off, then none of it would have happened. The Germans are no less culpable in the case of their murders of obvious innocents.

Things converge and things happen. Often little things change. Sometimes there is just the most subtle emotional switch to a different plane. Sometimes there is death and mayhem. You have a car wreck. It changes your plans but you aren't hurt. In another place someone has a wreck that ends and/or transforms lives. You happened to leave the roadway and spin, hitting nothing. Someone else is propelled across a median head on into a large truck. Or their car burns and they end up without a face and threatened vision. They end up a poster child for not driving drunk because the other driver was drunk. When my 1992 Civic was struck and sent off the road, the consequences could have been grim. We were going seventy and we spun out of control on the roadside a good distance. The other driver? Speeding a little, pulling into our lane with a hiked-up truck with a rising sun in his eyes. He overlooked our car. He was stone cold sober. (It was seven-thirty or so in the morning, I think, and he was going to an EMT class.) What if we had been burned beyond recognition? I found myself glad for him that we were unscathed. I had held my hands in the air and let the car spin. It hit nothing else (a little roadside geograhphy miracle) and didn't turn over (probably a tribute to not trying to drive an out of control vehicle but my reaction was just one of helplessness not asute driving). A bottle of wine in the back floor board that we were taking to Dallas didn't break. It didn't make it to Dallas but we drank it at some point I guess.

Our weekend plans changed. I drove a rent car for six weeks. A wheel bearing went out a year or so later, probably cracked in the accident (which smashed the car in all along one side).

It could have been different. It wasn't.

We are constantly worrying about safety and protection. We try to keep people from driving impaired. Keep the too old, too drunk and too young off the road. Build safer vehicles. (The driver's 'cage' in that 1992 Civic saved me twice in two directions.) We worry that oversize SUVs kill people in accidents. But some things are lightning strike events, little things coming together that can't be forseen. Where a wide place on the roadside saves you. And, if you look, there aren't many of them.

People try to interest me in the risks of breast cancer, cervical cancer, osteoporosis, heart disease. These are common ailments. I try to tell them that my sister had a cranial aneurysm, that my mother may have had one and surely had multiple myeloma. I get mammograms and pap smears. And I don't really see myself with these other ailments, although there is some familial tracking. But I do see the incredible randomness of it all.

Everybody, everything ends up somewhere. We can try to plan and strive and protect. But it won't be easy.

 

 

 

 

 

122/75 76

Physcially felt strong...emotionally in a good mood, too.