What are you reading this week of November 13, 2016?

[TexasProgresive]

I finally got back on DU. As bad as I was feeling about the election, I think losing DU was most troubling. I know that sounds selfish but I was feeling cut off from my community. All the people near me except my immediate family are like the cat who ate the canary.

Back to the subject of reading. I finished Bad Boy by Peter Robinson and was about to start his Cold is the Grave. Before I could my friend emailed be about a couple of non-fiction books by bicycle racers and I couldn't resist buying them as kindle downloads. I read the forwards and 1st chapters of both and continued to read A Dog in a Hat: An American Bike Racer's story of Mud, Drugs, Blood, Betrayal, and Beauty in Belgium by Joe Parkin. I'm not quite sure I understand what the Belgic idiom a dog in a hat means. I I do have an inkling


This cover image has a lot of artistic license. Joe like most road racers' lower body was extremely developed but his arms rather not.

From the Back Cover

"The most authentic book ever written on making a living as a pro cyclist in Europe." -- Bob Roll, Versus TV cycling commentator

"I saw my first pro kermis race during my first week in Belgium, and it felt like trying to escape a hall of mirrors but not being able to read the exit signs. Everything was larger than life and more grotesque than I had imagined. But kermis racing was not all about the drugs. If the grand tours are like classical music, kermis racing is punk rock, Belgian-style.

At some point during the season, our team was invited to a stage race in France, but our team director had made an agreement for us to race a big kermis in Brugge. My buddy Cocquyt decided that we should go as hard as we possibly could from the gun in the kermis, team time trial style, and then peel off at the end of the 11-kilometer lap, laughing at all the guys we had tortured as we took off for the other race. Of course, we all coughed up blood for the entire trip to France, but it was strangely worth it, as if we had smashed our guitars, poured beer on the audience, and walked offstage before the end of the first song." 

Joe Parkin's life changed when he left America to become a professional bike racer in Belgium. In this brutally frank memoir, Parkin celebrates the glory of racing but doesn't flinch from the cold reality of that life--the drugs, the payoffs, the betrayals by teammates, the battles with team owners for contracts and money, the endless promises, and the sheer physical pain of racing day after day.

Set in the hardest place in the world to be a bike racer, A Dog in a Hat is one rider's story of his love affair with professional cycling.
https://www.amazon.com/Dog-Hat-American-Betrayal-Belgium/dp/1934030260