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It was amid such lively exclamation that the hydrogen ship Inconvenience, its gondola draped with patriotic bunting, carrying a five-lad crew belonging to that celebrated aeronautics club known as the Chums of Chance, ascended briskly into the morning, and soon caught the southerly wind.

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The Chums of Chance! I haven't been this excited about reading the adventures of a bunch of kids since I read Alan Moore's Jerusalem starring that celebrated club of dead children, the Dead Dead Gang! I'm not familiar with any specific children's adventure book series that feature a bunch of kids running about the world finding mummies and fomenting revolutions against tyrant kings. But that's probably because I grew up in the 70s and 80s and was too busy watching Scooby Doo and the Outerscope series from Vegetable Soup. I mention children's adventure book series because both Moore's Dead Dead Gang and Pynchon's Chums of Chance are well-known in their worlds for the books detailing their adventures. (This is kind of cheating since I'm discussing something that isn't in this sentence. I hope that you, and God, will forgive me.)

We'll learn more about the Chums of Chance and how they're literary heroes in a series of semi-fictional books in a semi-fictional book later. Or are they literary heroes in a series of non-fiction books in a fiction book set in a semi-historical setting? What am I in all this?! Probably the only real person in a simulated setting created for my own entertainment.

The name of the ship has probably launched a thousand essays but it doesn't do a lot for me. Reading anything is an inconvenience, especially when you know there are new episodes of Animaniacs to watch on Hulu. I suppose to people who aren't super intelligent and literate like I know I am (and not like how stupid dumb dumbs all think they're smart! I would know if I were a dumby who thinks he's smart! I'm sure of it!), reading a Pynchon novel would be the biggest inconvenience of their lives because they'd keep looking up from the pages with a look that is the only way they can express how inscrutable the text is seeing as how they don't know the word "inscrutable."

Oh yeah! I know I just sort of casually put that out there but yes I did indeed read Alan Moore's Jerusalem. Talk about an inconvenience!

If I could feel shame, I'd feel shame for using that whole "talk about an X" bit. Especially since it barely makes sense. The most inconvenient part of reading Jerusalem was that I desperately needed reading glasses while doing so and instead of purchasing some, I just held the book further and further away from my face as I continued to read it. I finally got reading glasses so I could draw detailed colored pencil maps of the Apple IIe game Deathlord.

The patriotic bunting indicates the Chums of Chance are super into the American dream. What side of the labor movement will they be on? Union busting or shorter work weeks with safer working conditions?! Is that a question I should be asking after reading this statement? Probably not, according to my Children's Literature teacher. She'd be all, "Stick to only information you can glean from the words in this sentence, you dumb bastard!" Then she'd force me to do a deep dive into the word "bunting" to figure out why, exactly, Pynchon chose that specific word. I'd respond by resenting the entire assignment and deciding I'd rather get a C- than do what she wanted me to do.

The last bit of information that I've gleaned from this sentence is that the Chums of Chance are heading up to Chicago from the South where they probably just finished a thrilling adventure that modern audiences wouldn't feel comfortable reading about due to all of the casual racism. Not from the Chums of Chance, I'm sure! Most of them are probably as woke as a character could be in 1893!

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 "Hurrah! Up we go!"

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In the previous section about Line 4, I forgot to mention that an astute reader with a glancing knowledge of geography might have been confused by the number of nanoseconds it took them to read the next few lines before getting to the phrase "hydrogen skyship." They might have put the book down, looked up quizzically from the uncomfortable chair at the mall turned slightly askew from the table to face Cajun Grill (for reasons they don't need to explain to their wife), and muttered, "Wait a second! Who takes a ship to Chicago?!" Then a stranger sitting next to them with a better than glancing knowledge of geography (is "glancing" even a word that works here? It's meant to convey somebody who really doesn't know that much but knows enough to always be confused by it) might respond, "Probably somebody living on the other side of Lake Michigan, I reckon." Then the first person might have felt a bit humiliated and slammed the heavy book down on the table, startling the attractive clerk at the Cajun Grill, and refused to read any more.

Or maybe I didn't forget to mention all that and was just a little bit embarrassed about it until I thought of a way to tell it as if it happened to a hypothetical person. What that story was meant to get at is that this sentence, "Hurrah! Up we go!" helped that hypothetical person to realize that this wasn't a story about a boat at all (the only story I know about a boat ends with the phrase "out bored Motor" and it was the first Shaggy Dog story I ever knew and one I told to all of my friends to the point that at least one of my friends continued to tell it while making it even longer and more shaggy). If they were a particularly astute reader, they may have thought, "Oh! This is a story about a balloon!" Also if one of their friends once described Against the Day  as "Mason & Dixon in a balloon," they might have remembered that as well.

"Up we go!" also doesn't need to connote a direction; it could be referencing a state of mind. We're going up now into our imagination! Leave the old rules and status quo ways of those Earth-bound jerks behind! We're going elsewheres!

Also the "Hurrah!" is more of that general excitement of the traveler before a long, 1000 page journey! So exciting!

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 "Windy City, here we come!"

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"How much can you possibly write about every stupid line like this, Anonymous Blog Writer?" asks the perplexed reader with a better than average perception skill.
    "Well," I reply magnanimously (because, really, I don't even need to respond. Easy access to writers and entertainers doesn't come with the obligation of return engagement!), "I suppose it depends on how much you think I want to write? The shorter the entry, the better, really! Maybe I'll finally find some time to play Torment: Tides of Numenera which I purchased on Kickstarter years ago and then when it finally arrived, I wasn't too keen on playing it, and now it just sits here on my office desk leering at me like some albatross in an Edgar Allen Poe poem."

I should clarify that the albatross was supposed to be a metaphor for "The Tell-Tale Heart" and not for "The Raven" even though I did say poem and it works better substituting one bird for another bird. And also, you know what, I said it was leering so I almost certainly never actually meant "The Tell-Tale Heart" at all. Never mind.

What was I getting at? Oh yeah! Obviously Chicago is meant by the term "Windy City" because it's windy, I guess. I've never been. But windy can also mean verbose or chatty or gossipy or apt to go on and on and on, like a Thomas Pynchon novel or a blog entry by Grunion Guy. I mean by an Anonymous Blog Writer. So this is probably Pynchon poking fun at the idea he's just presented the reader with a thousand page novel. But he (and it seems he assumes the reader should feel the same as well) seems really excited about starting out!

Here we come! I'm excited! How about you?!