Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
My wife’s car seems fancy to me, if only because of the satellite radio and the push-button seat-warmers. Perhaps these come standard in modern cars, such as our bright red Toyota Prius, with its Beloit College sticker and its peace sign on the gas cap. Although a hybrid, Kate’s car is zippy and stylish. During the summer, when we have more people and gear to transport, we spend more time in the Honda Odyssey, a car born the same year as our 17-year-old son, Jukie. I remember that its CD player seemed a big deal at the time – now the car is almost the only place we listen to CDs – and it still seems amazingly spacious. Yesterday my wife Kate moved our daughter Geneva into a dorm single that’s only about twice the size of our minivan.
With all these automotive options, and Kate and Geneva gone for the long weekend, one would think that I would have turned up the radio and spent the last few days driving around town with the boys, making wonderous discoveries in Davis and Sacramento. Instead, we’ve left the cars in the driveway and ventured into the world on our bicycles. Although Truman starts his junior-high orientation at a school five miles from our Davis home, he’d still like to bike it from time to time, even if we are not yet sure how he is going to transport his alto saxophone. On Saturday, while biking downtown for book-shopping and pizza, Truman and I discussed approaches to bike-commuting, and on Sunday, we did a dry run, and came up with a per-mile speed that’s about twice that of Roger Bannister, the runner’s hero who died earlier this year: It took us 40 minutes to transverse five miles, and that was without the saxophone.
Of course, there were reasons for our inevitable slowdowns. First, I took the time to teach Truman the route, much of it along Putah Creek greenbelts in South Davis. We discussed that the influx of new UC Davis students makes the beginning of the fall quarter an inadvisable time for an unsure cyclist to bike on campus, or even around town. Second, the circumference of Truman’s bike tires is small compared to that of an adult bike, thus slowing him down when compared to my regular pace. And finally, I was hauling Jukie on the cargo bike. My middle child is not a peddler, and the two of us together weigh about 300 pounds. Let’s just say that while hauling the cargo known as Jukie around, I enjoyed both an anaerobic, as well as aerobic, workout.
Nevertheless, we felt exhilarated at the end of our long bike odysseys this past weekend, and this morning I have already biked to and from work in order to attend important meetings. Passing along my bicycling enthusiasm to my son may mean that, in the future, he may choose a hometown according to its bikeability, as I have done. The bike paths of Davis offer us opportunities to reflect, to meditate (the trees fly by too quickly for one to “grasp” any one of them), and, for me as an Audible addict, to hear stories and treatises. As I make my way around town, I never regret the extra time and effort that my bicycle requires of me.
As Arthur Conan Doyle said in Scientific American in 1896, “When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin down the road, without thought on anything but the ride you are taking.” Meteorologically, August days are almost never dark in Davis; luckily, a bike ride can also dispel our mind-forged cobwebs that might otherwise cloud an August afternoon.
I hope you can join us for tonight’s pub quiz. In addition to topics hinted at, above, expect questions tonight about Beethoven on war and peace, horses, organisms, Latin America, long roads, squares, tasty beers, seats in churches, before and after a birth, glaciers, fashionable shapes, dynasties, talking slow after drinking fast, container ports, panhandles, the flatness of Davis, what’s in your weekend, the San Francisco Bay, introductions to Hamlet, shoelessness, layers, famous computers, superheroes, dark storytellers, slaves to fashion (guilty!), notable cones, hair-raising Scrabble scores, cheese that you would not serve to your Irish mum, current events, big banks, Crimea, and Shakespeare.
What fun we will have this evening, especially if you are there!
Your Quizmaster
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Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:
- Irish Culture. What was the largest Irish city to suffer bombing runs during World War II?
- Countries of the World. The Hebrides is an archipelago comprising hundreds of islands off the northwest coast of what country?
- Celebrity Families. Bruce Willis and Demi Moore reunited to take a picture with their daughter on her birthday last week. How old is Rumer Willis? Is she 15, 20, 25, or 30?
- Science. What S-word is missing from this sentence: Unlike frogs, an adult BLANK is able to regenerate limbs and its tail when these are lost.
- Books and Authors. The word “Dharma” appears in the title of Jack Kerouac’s second-most-famous book. What is the full title?
P.S. Who is to blame for the lack of respect given to John McCain by the White House? Well, John McCain, of course: https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/27/politics/james-inhofe-john-mccain-white-house-flag/index.html