Stranger Things Happen – Traveling at the Speed of Bike

Who stays? Who goes? Who tells the story?

There is a line in the musical Hamilton that says, “Who lives? Who dies? Who tells the story?” In the past five weeks or so, I’ve been Traveling at the Speed of Bike in the cities of Atlanta, Los Angeles, Boston, and New York (where I even visited Alexander and Eliza Hamilton’s graves), and the…

Snow falling on Couchy

This was five years ago today, too. I call this one Snow Falling on Couchy, which is also the name of one of the 76 flash-fiction stories in the book I wrote that year.

Pennies on the tracks

One of my fave books is The Grapes of Wrath (which I read for the first time just a couple of years ago), for many reasons. I especially love that John Steinbeck mixes fiction and nonfiction so much that the book actually shifts from storytelling to straight journalism between chapters. As someone who straddles that…

In a city known as Terminus

Since we’re talking Stranger Things Happen, I thought you might enjoy the intro to it. In a city originally known as Terminus, there is a new path forward. And when people who would never have met otherwise cross paths, stranger things happen. There is a girl with a glockenspiel. She comes at night. She hangs…

Earning my “see” legs

This photo is from Day 1 of a school-year-long project I did titled Around Atlanta in 180 Days (take a peek!). That’s when I first threw my bike, laptop, and camera in the car and started riding my bike around the cities of Decatur and Atlanta, Georgia every day because my younger daughter was going to a…

Shoes

I came upon this scene while Traveling at the Speed of Bike, and had to take a photo. Had to write. I write a lot, plus I’m an avid street photographer, and I often combine those two arts. There is actually the possibility that I’m the only person in the world producing work at the…

Gandhi

There’s a whole Gandhi storyline in my book, Stranger Things Happen, by the way. It was originally ignited by this little piece of street art, which I passed again yesterday.

“Skinny Santa”

I pass a man often (including last week, pictured) while traveling at the speed of bike whom I nicknamed Skinny Santa years ago. He served as the model for a repeating character in my overlapping collection of flash fiction stories inspired by original street photography, Stranger Things Happen. I pass people and scenes from my…