Two 3.8-mile city rides. In the morning I met another dog named Howie, this one adorable mostly because it was a five-month-old puppy, but fated by its all-too-common breed to be merely an ordinary dog in adulthood, whereas my coworker's Howie will always be cute, because a basset hound-dalmatian cross is just not something you see every day. Poor ordinary golden retrievers.
This one was cute while it lasted, of course. Passing its human and it as they walked, the puppy holding a stick in its mouth and prancing with delight, I called, "What a good stick! There's nothing like a good stick!" The human grinned and waved, and then they joined me as we waited for a light to change, where I learned his name and age and had my knee and paniers thoroughly investigated and got to pet some puppy ears.
On a recent commute I saw my friend and her Howie as they walked. She was on the phone with her mother so my cries of "Hi Mom!" and "Bye Mom!" bookended my fondling Howie's ears and kissing his goofy snout. The next day at work I apologized for invading her phone call and hoped her mother could understand how necessary it is to snuffle Howie whenever possible. Of course she could.
And that's why bike commuting is good: no one driving a car greets or smiles at strangers in other cars or waves at the old man walking his Highland terrier or the two elderly women on their morning constitutional or the young woman waiting at the bus stop or the fellow walking home from the coffee shop; but these are all my regular acquaintance now.
I regret reading the first 60 pages in dribs and interrupted drabs earlier this year. When I gave it better attention, it turned out to be as good as any thing else José Saramago has written. Of course. As with the others of his books that I've read, this concerns ordinary people to whom extraordinary things happen, things they don't understand but through which they try to get along and survive. In this, the Iberian peninsula splits from Europe down the Pyrenees--minus the Rock of Gibralta, which belonging to the U.K. remains in place--and floats, a stone raft, through the ocean.
There is also a dog, which marks his best books--the Dog of Tears in Blindness and Found in The Cave and here, Constant--if there was a dog in Balthazar and Blimunda or The Gospel According to Jesus Christ I don't remember it, and All the Names was good even without a dog.