WobblyReport

Riding a motorcycle in Northern Michigan during the month of November is neither for the ill-prepared nor the faint of heart. A body must be prepared both for an initial shock and, depending on circumstances, an endurance challenge. A blast of 60-mile-an-hour cold wind, its chilly tendrils reaching into any part of a rider’s outfit that isn’t airtight, testing the layers underneath, tends to cause one’s face, neck and shoulders to tense up. Full-face helmets are the best remedy but I haven’t yet replaced one I left in the Pacific Northwest in 2008. On a solo mission in early October this year, the cold crept up and took me by surprise. Attending a meeting in the southeast of our coverage area led to a return ride to home base after dark on one of the first nights the temperature sank below 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius). Consistent, unseasonably warm temperatures in the days and nights just prior had lulled me into overconfidence and I was without gloves. Between pockets...

My new year’s resolution this year is to do better regardless of conditions. This is not as straightforward as dropping a few pounds. It will be tricky to track and the math will be fuzzy. In terms of comparisons, I’m targeting the margins for improvement. Rather than meal-planning and hawk-eying bathroom scales, I’m casually self-reflective. How’s my hydration? 2025 is already more than 10% in the past. The pace of the days seemed to slow after the succession of late fall and winter holidays. But here is February, traffic cop of time travel, with a friendly warning that we are still cruising at something closer to freeway speed after having exited onto country highway. So I’m taking my foot off the gas. Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast. Driving automobiles surely presents some of the most literal and straightforward opportunities for many of us to do better in variable conditions. Accidents are bound to happen, given not everyone on the roads is possessed of snow tires and saintly p...

"Mayor Duff L--- commented that W---- and his staff had taken the prospect of running the airport at a profit from a pie-in-the-sky fantasy to a distinctly feasible horizon," said the reporter's final line at the local newspaper. Leave them wanting more, he thought. Who can possibly get enough quippy wordplay in mundane municipal board meeting stories? He took his child to say goodbye to her friends at the preschool. She played like it was any other day. The now former reporter suppressed his emotions as best he could.  A sad man casts a long shadow. When the farewells were said and the blame mislaid for a bathtub that was most certainly that same color when he had moved in, all that was left was to pack all the possessions that had accrued in the 900 square foot apartment into 360 cubic feet of rented box truck cargo space and stoically haul them down from the mountains and across the vast plains of U.S. flyover country. Boop boop be doop. During the drive his old cowork...