All Entries in the "Featured" Category
Tiger Woods’ Dumb Advisers
Tiger Woods is getting more stupid advice. Instead of easing the scrutiny he has been enduring, the athletic superstar is about to increase public antipathy for his situation. Sympathy and forgiveness are not likely to be the outcome of his Friday “news conference.”
Tiger’s advisers have him convinced that he is different from other fallen public [...]
A Race Among the ‘Roos
When a road train approaches in the silence of an Australian night, it sounds like a giant, primeval beast growling with vast power across an open plain. Non-sentient living things probably turn their heads in the direction of the noise and instinctively react to a potential new predator cast loose upon the land. I had [...]
Across the Nullarbor
The night before we left for the Nullabor, we ran again into Jeff at Cape Le Grand National Park. He is a landscape photographer from Minnesota, married to an Aussie girl, and travels this continent taking magnificent pictures of the grandeur. I had introduced myself to Jeff at Cape Leeuwin as he was packing up [...]
Roads Unknown
(Author’s note – Internet service is scattered and weak in most parts of Western Australia. I’m posting when I can. I am trying to update the two earlier pieces with some photos. – JM)
In the morning, we rode south to Cape Leeuwin, a long outcropping of rock that separates the Indian from the Southern Ocean. [...]
On the Loose (updated)
There is not language that I know to describe what it feels like to ride a motorcycle through a countryside you have never seen and every sight is new. The world feels specially made and customized for your personal enjoyment. In King’s Park, up above Perth, you look down across the broad Swann [...]
West with the Sun
I dreamed of Australia when I was a boy in Michigan. In one of my elementary classes, we had a book that had color pictures of kangaroos and the sun on the Outback as if it were a light that had no off switch. When we were freezing in the Lower Peninsula, and as the [...]
The Blessings and Burden of America
(Author’s note – the piece below was commissioned by The Sunday Independent of London. The piece was the leading article on the section front of the paper’s front page this Sunday, Jan. 17, 2010.)
“I just want to say this. I want to say it gently but I want to say it firmly: There is a [...]
The Great Australian Rideabout
“In youth we learn, in age we understand.” – Marie Van Ebner Eschenbach
In my teens, my younger brother bought a motorcycle. The bike was nothing remarkable. I recall a Kawasaki 250 with on outsized tank, gray with some red trim. Lord, though, it felt fast after I finally learned to ride. Tim let me take [...]
Baseball is for Boys
“Baseball was a game made for kids, and only grown-ups screw it up.” – Bob Lemon
The news that Mark McGwire has admitted taking steroids has the shock value of the earth continuing to spin on its axis. The fact that he confirmed what everyone already knew is nothing more than an act of expediency so [...]
To An Athlete Screwing Up Young
“In every American there is an air of incorrigible innocence, which seems to hide a diabolical cunning.” – A. E. Housman
There is a terminal velocity for any body falling from a great height. The amount of time spent at that speed does not really matter in terms of damage upon impact. Irreparable harm [...]