Racer X: 100 Best First Lines From Novels (22-24)

Wherein Anonymous Racer X takes the 100 Best First Lines From Novels and turns each one into the opening of a really lame tri-blog post by an infuriatingly self-obsessed triathlete.

Today's installment: Opening Lines 22-24.
Previous installment (19-21).

22. It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.
Still, with Ironman Amazon Rainforest just four months out, Coach Roch had me scheduled for a 45-mile tempo ride for that night. What could I do but cut down on wind resistance by jettisoning my HED 900 Disc wheels and just jam through the wind, rain, crazy London cabs, and darkness? In circumstances like that I always rely on my WWFASD (What Would Faris Al-Sultan Do?) credo. Faris definitely would have ridden—all the way to Kona, dude.
—Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)

23. One summer afternoon Mrs. Oedipa Maas came home from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed executrix, of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul who had once lost two million dollars in his spare time but still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make the job of sorting it all out more than honorary.
I wonder if Oedipa will see any of that jack from poor old Pierce's fortunes and whether she will share it with her buff new boyfriend, thought Racer X, thankful that the unfortunately-named Oedipa had not found about his regrettable incident with Aimee in the whirlpool after Masters swimming and already picturing the purchase of a new Endless Pool and hyperbaric chamber. Rock on, Oedipa. Like the great Billy Squier sang, you are my kinda lover: "Rock me, sock me, baby you got me ridin' to the end. Rake me, shake me, baby you make me--turn me on again."
—Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (1966)

24. It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not.
As Racer X struggled to recover from the annoyance of being awakened at 3:00 AM just two nights before his 18-mile Sunday run, he wondered if he was descending into madness or if that that bastard on the other end of that wrong number had just mocked his Oly distance PR. One look inside my trophy room and that guy would have no choice but to respect me, pondered X. But damn, man, since I don't know him how can I ever make that happen?
—Paul Auster, City of Glass (1985)