Foxwoods Resort, submerged as it is in the misty, ancient, and somewhat decrepit woods of northern Connecticut is a weird juxtaposition of H.P. Lovecraft and Las Vegas. One expects to see “Yog Sothoth Got Divorced Here, So Can You!” on bumper stickers. 

No man-eaters imperil me. No, there isn’t much chance I’ll one day find I have to fight for my life versus a roaring, flesh-eating monster unless there’s an escape at the Bronx Zoo, or I go looking for trouble on the Great Barrier Reef, the African veldt, or in the Kodiak range. The peril lurks in men—insurance clerks, Ponzi men, bad doctors, feral lawyers.

You’re not a coward,” says David “Awesome” Lawrence, the former Wall Street executive turned fight trainer, poet, and rapper. Awesome says I’m not a coward, even though I know he’s wrong.

I biked up to New Rochelle. “Biked” meaning bicycled. I went from my house near Prospect Park, over the Brooklyn Bridge, up the West Side Highway bike path, over the Broadway bridge, then east on the roads bordering Van Cortlandt Park, to Lincoln Avenue, to North Blvd. etc., all the way to Main Street into New Rochelle, which becomes Boston Post Road, beside the Long Island Sound.