It is now officially summer

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Every year in early June for something like the past twenty years, there's a major bicycle race here in Philadelphia. Its name changes with its sponsors, and I've given up tracking what it's called this year. But the highlight of the race is when the bicyclists ascend a street in Manayunk so steep and challenging that it's been dubbed "the Wall."

Manyayunk and Roxborough (where I live) are working class neighborhoods. So there was a certain amount of skepticism about young people in bicycle shorts and plastic helmets passing through the first time the race occurred. But then they hit the Wall.

Difficult, painful, and essentially pointless labor repeated time after time after time is something that working folks can understand. So the race has been adopted by the neighborhoods, and on Bike Race Sunday there are parties, barbecues, and keggers throughout the region.

We've been having ours longer than can be remembered. Up above are some of the guests who showed up yesterday.

It is now officially summer. The party season can commence.

And in today's mail . . .

. . . came my contributor's copies of The Mammorth Book of Mindblowing SF. My contribution was a reprint of "Mother Grasshopper." But among the reprints are original works by Stephen Baxter, Eric Brown, Paul di Filippo, Robert Reed, and Adam Roberts. I'm looking forward to reading them.

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