Amazing Races

It's July, and that means only one thing for cycling fans: Tour de France time! Thank god for live Internet feeds, so that I don't have to shell out good money for another tier of cable stations simply to get a month of the most exciting sporting event in the world (tight Spandex edition).

This year's TdF has been well worth the early wake-ups, thanks to Lance Armstrong's un-retirement and a variety of related and unrelated storylines:

• Lance vs. his aging body
• Lance vs. his heir apparent and Astana teammate, Alberto Contador
• Lance vs. his good friend and former teammate, George Hincapie
• Lance vs. the skeptical French media
• sprint demon Mark Cavendish
• stage wins for French cyclists (and long-suffering French fans) on daring breakaways
• plus, the best broadcast tandem in sports, Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen.

The Tour hasn't been the only race worth watching, though. On the last Saturday in June, in the heat of an Iowa summer, Victoria triathlete and Olympic gold and silver medallist Simon Whitfield pulled out another amazing come-from-behind and close-as-it-comes sprint finish to win the $200,000 grand prize at the richest race on the triathlon circuit. You can check out highlights here and get a signed edition of the says-it-all finish-line photo here. Yet another memorable performance from one of Canada's most inspiring athletes.

Review: The Lost City of Z

Even in a semi-distracted state, I blew through David Grann's creative nonfiction bestseller The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, a fascinating biography of British amateur explorer Percy Fawcett melded with Grann's own personal journey into the Amazon in search of answers for what happened to Fawcett, who disappeared with one of his sons and his son's friend in 1925, on his final quest for an ancient El Dorado in the rainforest.

Grann expanded a feature article in the New Yorker (which I somehow missed; must be somewhere in my backlog of still-to-be-read issues going back several years now) into a book built out of the historical record, Fawcett's detailed letters and journals, and Grann's own often comical travelogue. It's a great story, well told, and if the writing never ascends to the lyricism of the best travel and adventure narratives (like John Vaillant's The Golden Spruce or Jon Krakauer's Into the WIld), neither does it get lost in jungle-like verbiage or macho hyperbole. Grann writes in the lean (not "luminous"!), detail-thick, meticulously documented, and wry style of the magazine in which the story first appeared, and Fawcett—a single-minded explorer I knew next to nothing about—springs to life in this study of his flawed and fascinating character.

One of my favourite books of the year, for its propulsive narrative, compelling central character and a twist at the end that justifies the author's presence throughout the book.

Back from Summer Break!

Okay, it hasn't been a "break" that has kept me from blogging—more a combination of busy-ness and laziness. More on the former, less on the latter in future posts. The summer began with some good news: my investigative feature for explore magazine ("A Deadly Crossing"), about the deaths of two sea kayakers in Howe Sound, on Thanksgiving 2007, won a Gold medal in the Sports & Recreation category at this year's National Magazine Awards. I'd hoped to attend the ceremony, but life (and a $2,000 plumber's bill) had other plans. Still, I was ecstatic to learn the good news, especially after having played the bridesmaid with nominated stories previous years.

More recently, I did a phone interview with a Ryerson student about my research for the story, which he then edited into am intriguing podcast he produces with other Toronto journalism students. They sit around, drink beer, trade tales, talk shop, and critique one long work of literary journalism every week, and then post their discussions on a website called Ms. Jamerson's Literary Saloon. It's a fun, loose and baggy production that I might encourage my UVic students to experiment with.

While I was disappointed to miss the Magazine Awards and the ASLE conference here in town the same weekend (which featured a wealth of sessions with eco-minded writers and academics), I did fill my notebooks and digital recorder with research for future articles (and maybe a book?) during a long weekend trip to hang out with archaeologists on the Broken Islands (where I got my hands dirty and indulged my Indiana Jones fantasies) and on a two-week return visit to Israel (after living there 20 years ago) to explore the many changes to the kibbutz movement over the past two decades.

Add to these trips a wonderful sun-filled six days up-Island with the family, for beachcombing on Miracle Beach, hikes in the subalpine of Strathcona Park and the rainforest of Quadra Island, and a chance to try out my new/old mountain bike on some sweet island singletrack.

Now, to find the free time and focused frame of mind to knock off a draft or two of this summer's stories before the tsunami of students overwhelms me in the first week of September. It's only July 12, and I can already feel the season ticking away...

Good News about a Sad Story

The annual National Magazine Awards were announced yesterday afternoon, and I was thrilled to pick up a nomination (in the Sports & Recreation category) for my story "A Deadly Crossing", which appeared last May in explore magazine. It's good news but for a story that was based on a sad and tragic event—the death of two kayakers in Howe Sound during a training day gone horribly wrong—that should have never happened. The incident formed the Epilogue to Fatal Tide; it occurred just as I was sending the final draft of the manuscript to my publisher. Over the following months, I interviewed close to 40 people involved in the incident to reconstruct the chain of bad decisions and worse luck that led to two men dying from hypothermia—and two of their friends nearly perishing as well. It was a tough story to work on, and hopefully the honour of being nominated for an NMA will continue to raise awareness about the perils of cold water. An online version of the article can be read here. 

Watch your shoulder

Here's a funny picture that my father-in-law passed along to me, taken in Florida, that perfectly encapsulates how too many drivers and road engineers think about walkers and pedal-pushers sharing "their" pavement.

Cockpit readers

I was down at Gyro Beach this weekend, taking our kids to the (rainy) Easter festivities there, when I bumped into my colleague, the prolific novelist / short-story writer / hockey memoirist Bill Gaston. We got to talking, and I remembered that Gyro Beach was the setting for an early scene in his novel Sointula. The main character—a suburban mayor's wife who goes off her meds and heads to the West Coast in search of her damaged son—slept on the beach (Bill pointed out the spot where he imagined it happening), hijacked a kayak and then headed up the east coast of Vancouver Island on her quest.

Bill retold a funny story related to the book. He recently sold a pair of kayaks, and the young guy who bought them—a local outfitter—asked who he should make the cheque out to.

"Bill Gaston," Bill said.

"Like the author?" the outfitter asked.

Bill's voice, needless to say, swelled with pride, as he said, "Well, in fact..."

It turns out the young guy had read at least two of Bill's novels, including Sointula. I suggested to Bill that he should have signed the kayak—how often does a writer get to do that?—as its connection to his novel made it an important artifact of Can Lit history.

Last week, I also acquired a funny little kayaking-related anecdote about my own book. My cousin Bernie and his wife had been visiting Victoria from Calgary. He mentioned that his mother—my aunt Karen—had been reading Fatal Tide at her home in Manitoba. When she got to the climactic storm scene on the Bay of Fundy (spoiler alert: the book doesn't end well), she actually climbed into the cockpit of the lake kayak she owns and finished reading the chapter there.

How cool is that? Every author dreams of writing a story that transports a reader so completely. Maybe if Penguin ever prints another edition of Fatal Tide (spoiler alert: highly unlikely!), it can be sold along with a small inflatable kayak, so other readers can share the same "immersive" reading experience.

Witness

It was one of the moments that you can't believe what you just saw. 

Near Oak Bay High School, I was waiting for the bus with my daughter, who was swilling a bottle of milk in her perambulator (yes, it's a stroller but definitely of retro rather than nouveau variety). Suddenly, across Cadboro Bay Road, I saw an SUV lurch through the crosswalk, suddenly stop, and then a woman's handbag land in the middle of the road. 

The driver had just struck a pedestrian.

Fortunately, the woman who had been hit was all right: scratched and bruised, with a twisted ankle and in a great deal of shock. Other witnesses—as well as the driver of the SUV—quickly came to her aid. I called 911 and the police swept in. 

But it all could have been much worse. And from my experience as a cyclist and especially as a pedestrian, it's getting all too common.

The problem seems to be the rising restlessness of drivers caught in traffic—as was that case that morning along Cadboro Bay Road, as a line of cars bottlenecked in both directions while students crossed to get to school—and their willingness to take chances with other people's lives. The Hippocratic Drivers Oath—first, do no harm—gets tossed out the window with the urge to make up minutes and even just seconds on an ever-longer commute. The perceived "right" to get where you're going as promptly as possible overrides the very real responsibility to not put other drivers, and especially cyclists or pedestrians, at risk. Sitting inside the airbagged box of a vehicle makes too many drivers (and I've been one of them) think, and behave, like they're president of the Republic of Me.

Case in point: Even after the injured pedestrian had been helped to the sidewalk. Even after two police cars parked with their flashing lights on. Even as other walkers gathered around what was obviously an accident scene. Even then, two cars approached Cadboro Bay Road from the nearest side street, and then the rear driver laid on the horn because the driver in front of her wasn't making the right turn (through the crosswalk / accident site) as fast as she would have liked. Once that car was goaded into motion, the rear driver then swerved into traffic with the same impatience that had bowled over the pedestrian just five minutes before.

It was one of those moments you can't believe what you just saw.