Solitude of the Garage
I walked outside into the cool April morning. The air around me was a slightly stinging cold; nevertheless, I took a big deep breath of the refreshing mountain air. I walked over to my dads red and white 1979 Ford F150 pickup and started it for him. I brought it around to the front of the house, put the transmission in neutral, and set the parking brake. After hopping out of the cab, I met my dad coming out of the house, and went around the front of the truck. I hopped into the passenger seat while my dad got into the drivers seat. We fastened our seat belts and we headed off to Paonia.
I was looking for a new dirt bike, and I was going to Paonia to look at a 1990 Honda CR 125. I had owned three dirt bikes before, but I had sold each one in order to buy another one with more power, and here I was again ready to buy my fourth.
When we arrived at Jared Morton's house, the owner of the bike, he already had the bike out. He was making sure that the bike was in perfect shape for me to see. My dad parked the truck, and we both hopped out to greet Jared. We walked over to his garage, where the bike was located. I examined the bike and asked him questions about it, like how long he had had the bike and how often he had ridden it.
The bike had a seat height of 34 inches. The body of the bike was a dull orange color, with the frame being white. It had inverted racing forks that had fenders on them to protect them from dust and debris. The stock handle bars were replaced with Renthal bars for more precise steering. The front tire was good, but the rear tire was a little worn down as if he had drove it on the pavement too much. The bikes exhaust had also been replaced with a FMH racing pipe. Jared did all these modifications to the bike because he had competed in races, and he needed the bike to be in excellent mechanical shape.
After I was done looking at the bike, Jared got on it, gave it a couple of kick-starts, and it started right up. He got off and let me test-drive the bike.
It was April 14th, 2013. The first race of the Nebraska motocross series. I love the pure adrenaline rush and the competitiveness of racing motocross. I had been riding every chance that I could. My new bike felt amazing in-between my legs. Being way faster than I was on my old bike, I felt like I was going to have a great season. To my friends and I dirt bikes gave us the happiness and freedom that we desired. I was the lucky one that found out that they can also give you sadness and suppression.
In “The Colossus” Plath expresses her personal and emotions struggles she faced resulting from her father’s death. Plath’s father, Otto Plath was nonexistent. “Plath’s relationship with her father has proven to be one of the more troublesome of her recurrent themes in this respect. By all accounts, including her own, Otto Plath was a kind, loving father, if formal and somewhat remote, and there was little outward evidence that their relationship was troubled” (John Rietz 417). Plath yearned for the everlasting love that she never received from her father growing up. It’s almost as if she was constantly trying to force building a relationship that she never had with her father. “Otto Plath was her muse” (417). This notion is best represented in Plath’s poem, “The Colossus” by the speaker’s constant efforts to reconstruct the fallen Colossus of Rhodes representing her relationship with her...
“No kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas” (Advertising, Demonstrations, Propaganda* 98). This rule shows just what the Germans were hoping for, a peaceful, passive, war-free environment in which countries can get together and compete. Although we all know that quite the antithesis was upon the 1972 Olympics in Munich between September the fifth and September the sixth. The Munich Massacre, one of the worst massacres of all time, was driven by the vengefulness of the Palestinian group known as Black September, towards the people of Israel, or more relevantly, towards their Olympic team (Rosenberg). Since this confrontation between Palestine and Israel has been going on for such a long time, the conflict was ultimately inevitable. Or was it? The tragedy at the 1972 Munich Olympics stunned the world by the murders of the Israeli Olympic team, but the fact that it could have been prevented is completely unacceptable.
"9 Israelis on Olympic Team Killed With 4 Arab Captors As Police Fight Band That Disrupted Munich Games," screamed the headline of the front page of The New York Times. The attack occurred during the wee hours of September 5, 1972, but news of the crisis, although widespread on television sets across the world, would not reach The New York Times until September 6. When it did reach the papers, it was clear that something had gone wrong. Very wrong. The New York Times first reported this event as a mind-boggling screw-up, and in the days that followed, reported on the manner in which the international community retaliated. In other words, news coverage shifted from the pointing of fingers to an eventual call for arms.
In retaliation, a wave of assassinations began across Europe. Zvi Zamir, the Mossad chief, described the missions as "a prevention of future threats in Europe” (Geraghty, 2001, P.196). General Aharon Yariv felt that Israel had to pursue justice. “It’s not something we’re proud of. We did it out of sheer necessity. An eye for an eye” (Johnson,...
A gust of air audibly exited my lungs as I opened the creaky door of my mother’s beat up four door car. Charley didn’t have the same spring in his step that was present in his youth, but he did his best to run over and hop in. I wish he didn’t try so hard. My heart sank as he made vain attempts at pulling himself into the vehicle. I bent down and gave him a little assistance. He was quick to turn around and look at me anxiously. He never felt comfortable if I wasn’t sitting with him. I took my place in the back seat and slowly closed the door.
It was the day of April 13, 2000. I woke up at exactly 12 o’clock because my boyfriend was to pick me up at 1 like we planned the night before. The day looked quite nice, but I was in a fowl mood. I got into a car accident the night before and had a huge argument with my parents about the car. I finally dragged myself into the shower and got ready in half an hour. Then I went downstairs, sat on my couch, and repeatedly told myself the day would hopefully turn out better than last night. At around 1:15, my boyfriend came to pick me up. We took the 5 freeway to the 57 since it was the only way I knew how to get there. As we approached the 134 freeway, my girlfriend veered to the right, taking the 210 which was wrong way and got us lost. So, we exited the freeway and got back on the right track. Then finally, before long, we reached Norton Simon.
pistol. He got it from watching the wheel and that the spokes came back in line with the wheel.
Muscle cars are just another of my passions and with widened eyes I inspected Gary’s sweet ride before he drove off. My thoughts wandered back to when I was 15 years old and was running an errand for my Mom. I happened to pass Montague’s Auto Body Shop on Pleasantville Road on my way to Daitch Shopwell in the Chilmark Shopping Center. In the lot of the body shop sat a 1967 gray Mustang hard top with a for sale sign in its windshield. The leather material on the seats were original and dyed red. The rest of the interior, including the dashboard, door panels and carpeting was jet black in color. There was only one problem. Larry, the shop owner, wanted $1,500 for the car and I only had $800 in my savings account and that was to go towards my college education.
Israel had become incredibly disconsolate after the elation of their victory in this war in 1967, due to the increasing rate of terrorism along with portentous threats from Egypt. Eleven Israeli athletes were murdered by Palestinian terrorists during the Munich Olympics in the summer of 1972 (American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, n.d.). Prayers were often recited by members of parliament, thousands of graves were dug, and even gas masks were distributed, all in fear of an Arab invasion (The Israeli Network, n.d.). Israel’s surrounding Arab states decided that rather than tolerating their loss, they would concoct a strategy to equalise the degradation of their defeat. In 1970, Anwar el-Sadat was elected president of Egypt where he found himself front-runner of a nation in the midst of an economically distressed period (History.com, 2009). Sadat initiated the opportunity to sign a peace agreement with Israel in 1971, on condition that that all of Israel’s newly-claimed territories were recovered. After declining the offer, Israel was thought to have “missed an opportunity to avoid war,” when in actual fact Sadat anticipated the ignored compromise and was prepared to “capitulate to Egyptian demands without any guarantee of peace” (American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, n.d.). No progress towards peace meant that Sadat would initiate a brutal war with narrow objectives, with the support from Syria, in order to “gain legitimacy” (Trautman,
Sylvia Plath's poems are so intervened with her life that it is difficult to separate them. Her poems, she said in an interview she gave to Peter Orr in October 1962, a few months before her suicide that they come out immediately out of the sensuous and emotional experience she had. Therefore, she decried the cries of heart informed by nothing “except a needle or a knife” (Orr 169). This applies to her last volume Ariel as well. In the same interview she said that one should be able to control and manipulate those experiences, even the most terrified with intelligent mind. This is an exact process of her poetry, i.e. the manipulation of the terrifying experiences of her life. This betrays her emphasis
The Murry All Terrain Explorer 10 Speed was its name. Going to new undiscovered places was its game. This bike was the ultimate bike, the bike of all bikes. It had the super deluxe water bottle carrier. The extra "cushy" seat that made you never want to sit anywhere else, and the "easy" change speed controls were the best. This bike was mine, and I loved it. It was shiny, and it had that "new bike" smell to it. The handlebars and the seat were electrifying hot pink. You had to wear sunglasses to look at them! To a ten-year-old, this was the most beautiful piece of metal in the world.
Sylvia Plath’s confessional poem is a free formed twenty line poem consisting of ten couplet stanzas which illustrate death as a state in which our imperfections are ignored. The subject of the poem is a woman who has been ‘perfected’ in death, having been released from her own personal suffering. For Plath death seems to be an achievement and just like the woman in the poem, Plath feels she will ultimately become ‘perfected’ when she too is dead. By not using the first person, Plath causes ‘the woman to become depersonalised’ and as a result the woman is distanced from the reader. This could possibly foreshadow how Plath herself, was withdrawing from life and people as she became more engulfed by depression and anxiety.
The ruckus from the bottom of the truck is unbearable, because of the noise and excessive shaking. As we slowly climbed the mountain road to reach our lovely cabin, it seemed almost impossible to reach the top, but every time we reached it safely. The rocks and deep potholes shook the truck and the people in it, like a paint mixer. Every window in the truck was rolled down so we could have some leverage to hold on and not loose our grip we needed so greatly. The fresh clean mountain air entered the truck; it smelt as if we were lost: nowhere close to home. It was a feeling of relief to get away from all the problems at home. The road was deeply covered with huge pines and baby aspen trees. Closely examining the surrounding, it looks as if it did the last time we were up here.
“Daddy!” I yell excitedly, “This bike is so pretty!” The bike is all mine and my Daddy’s secret.