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"How I lost and regained Tristram Shandy, by Lawrence Sterne", by Jeremy OsnerWell today (10/2/99), Ellen and I decided to ride to beautiful Prospect Park, in Brooklyn. We thought we would do a little shopping at the farmer's market there, so we rigged up our saddle-bags on our bicycles.Now see, my saddle-bags are such that they require the bike to have these little hook pieces of metal attached at the bottom of the rack, where it attaches to the frame. I have such pieces of metal on my road bike; however I wanted to ride my clunker bike, which has none, because it adapts more easily to the poorly paved roads of southern Queens and northern Brooklyn. So I jury-rigged the bags to my rack with bungee cords. I guess you can see where this is going... I didn't do it properly, and along the way one of the bags fell off, and I didn't notice it in time. And it was the one in which I had stowed The Book! I was pretty upset and contemplated abandoning TS for the time being, changing horses in midstream and reading something else. But it did not take much for Ellen to persuade me ("persuade" is probably too strong a term) to stop by The Community Bookstore in Park Slope, and get a new copy. So everything's fine now. (Except I gotta get a new saddle-bag...) The newer edition of TS is actually a lot better than the one I lost! |