From "The Thirteenth Warrior":
"Praise be to Allah, the Merciful and Compassionate. May his blessing be upon pagan men beloved of the god who share their food and shed their blood so that His servant Ahmed ibn Fadlan might become a man..."
"Lo, there I see my father.
Lo, there I see my mother and my sisters and my brothers.
Lo, I see the line of my ancestors back to the beginning.
Lo, they call to me, and bid me take my place among them,
In the halls of Valhalla, where the brave may live forever...""I have only these hands. I will die a pauper." "You will be buried as a king." "A man might be thought wealthy if someone were to draw the story of his deeds that they may be remembered." "Such a man might be thought wealthy indeed..."
Watching the last forty minutes of "The Thirteenth Warrior" while reading the exercise bicycle has two major benefits:
- The odds that I will poop out and quit riding before the forty minutes are up are infinitesimal...
- The pace at which I ride is one that I had thought had ebbed with the tide more than a decade ago...
