In Terror of Ducatis on Sestriere: My First Climb in the Italian Alps

In 2000, I made the first several climbs up to the Sestriere ski resort.  It was a beautiful September day as I toiled the seven-mile climb. At several point on the way up, I was riding through avalanche tunnels--they are a roof over the road, open on the cliff side. 

 It's dark inside the tunnels, not totally but dark compared to ride in bright sun.  As I rode through first tunnel I could hear the roar of Ducati race-replica motorcycles climbing between the turns, then the odd silence as they coast through the hairpins and roar to life again out of the turns. 

I have this experience before on Mount Palomar in San Diego county.  But there are no tunnels on Mount Palomar.  As the bikes got closer I pedaled faster, not that it would make any difference, but I wanted to get out of the tunnel. I had a sudden vision of the bike at the back of the group moving right to pass one of his mates then slamming into me.  

The roar went from deep rumble to deafening howl as the pack swung out of a hairpin and accelerated into the tunnel. The tunnel had about a six percent grade so the roar swelled as they approached, throttles wide open.  I put my head down and kept pedaling.   I could see the end of the tunnel. I hoped the roaring bikes could see me.  

Then it was over. The bikes flew past me in a line. Clearly they had passed many bicyclists on this mountain.  They shot from the tunnel into the light and disappeared. I continued to pedal, a little more slowly.  

Mount Palomar has many more motorcycles than any alpine climb I have ridden, but they are almost always single or in pairs.  They also are mostly four-cylinder high-revving Hondas, Kawasakis and Suzikis.  When they were near me in a turn, I could hear the best riders dragging the hockey-puck pad on their knee as they leaned into the turn at 45 degrees or more.  

Only on Sestriere did I have packs of motorcycles fly past. In 2005, three different packs flew past me on my way up. 

Usually, the excitement on these rides is descending and feeling the rush of speeding around the hairpin turns. On this ride, the biggest rush was the pack of Ducati race-replica motorcycles that shot past me on the way to the summit.

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On Tuesday, July 2, 2004, the Tour de France will climb to Sestriere then to Col de Montgenevre, through Briancon, up to Col du Lauteret on the way to Col du Galibier then downhill to the finish in Valloire.  

A Russian Journalist Defies Putin on War in Ukraine

Zhanna Agalakova Жа́нна Леони́довна Агала́кова

Journalist working at Russian Channel One until the War in Ukraine

Zhanna Agalakova has an Instagram page with stunning photos of Paris.  She lives and works in the city near Clichy. I followed her for several years, admiring her photos.  But one day the image on March 17, 2022, Zhanna posted a video of her cutting off her Первеу Канал (Russian Channel One) ID bracelet.  

She ended a three-decade long career as a journalist in defiance of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  Her husband and daughter were with her in Paris where they now make their home.  Zhanna's career is outlined on a Wikipedia page.

I met Zhanna in 2013 at the Ig Nobel Ceremony at Sanders Theater at Harvard University.  Marc Abrahams, emcee of the ceremony and impresario of all things Ig Nobel, asked me to escort Russian and Japanese camera crews when they filmed. Sanders theater had very clear guidelines about the amount of time the crews could film. The Russian and Japanese crews were notorious for not understanding the restrictions, year after year.  

From 2013 to 2018, I escorted Zhanna and Boris her cameraman into and out of the theater.   In 2019, Zhanna returned to Paris where she had worked previously for Channel 1 Russia.  Then in 2022, she quit very publicly and began a new life and career. 

In 2023, Zhanna and I had coffee near Clichy. She told me about her break with Channel 1 and with Russia and President Vladimir Putin over the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  I had hoped to talk to Zhanna again this trip, but maybe next time.  

 

Fascists Fail in France! One Bookstore at Least

 

A very funny pair of neighboring bookstores is no more.  The fascist bookstore La Librairie Nouvelle went out of business in its posh location opposite Luxembourg Gardens at 10 rue de Medicis.  Until last month the fascists were located between the two shops of The Red Wheelbarrow English-language bookstore on either side of them: a children's bookstore to the left at 9 rue de Medicis and a general bookstore to the right at 11.  

In May, the fascists folded and Penelope, the quiet, determined owner of The Red Wheelbarrow leased the former fascist store and is renovating it as her new children's bookstore.  Penelope said they may lease the current children's shop to another bookstore. From my first visit in 2019 until my most recent visit, I noticed Penelope always had a selection of anti-Facist books in her window display.

If they keep all three shops, The Red Wheelbarrow currently has many books more than three meters above the floor, accessible only by ladder. They could certainly fill the space.  

While I was at Red Wheelbarrow, I saw a new book by Kazuo Ishiguro, a book of lyrics, which I will be reading on the flight to America. 

Last week The Red Wheelbarrow had an author event and book signing. When I first visited the store in 2019, I met Nita Wiggins, and American professor living in Paris who just published a memoir. She had an author event at The Red Wheelbarrow.  

Among its many fascist tomes, La Librairie Nouvelle displayed Le Grand Remplacement  by Renaud Camus.  The Great Replacement Theory that is at the center of the beliefs of Tucker Carlson and other American fascists was written by Camus in 1946. It has been a favorite of international Jew haters ever since.   

It seems strange that with fascism growing in popularity in France and across Europe that the fascist bookstore would fail now.  But Penelope told me 2017 that the clientele of La Librairie Nouvelle thought Trump and his acolytes were idiots. So maybe it is just intellectual fascism that is in decline. Pandering populist fascism is the preferred style.  

May fascists everywhere fall as easily as La Librairie Nouvelle.

Cool Hand Luke: "What we have here is a failure to communicate"

A few nights ago, I saw the 1967 movie "Cool Hand Luke" starring Paul Newman.  Several minutes into watching the movie, I was realized I had never seen it before.  I saw clips of the movie--I could remember Newman eating the last of 50 hard-boiled eggs. He ate the eggs in an hour in prison. The character Luke Jackson claimed he could eat fifty eggs in one hour.  All of the other inmates bet on whether he could or couldn't.

He could.  

For those who know the movie, that may be the most famous scene.  The most famous and still-quoted line form the movie is said twice by "The Captain" who runs the prison in rural Florida.

He says, "What we have here is a failure to communicate."  The Captain first says this when he puts the beaten Luke in "the box" after he was caught trying to escape for  the first time.  The next time the Captain says the same phrase, Luke is in the window of a Church waiting to be re-captured after this third attempt to escape.  After the Captain says, "What we have here is a failure to communicate" Luke is fatally shot in the neck by the prison sharpshooter.  

The movie has many funny moments. Paul Newman is funny even in the sadistic world of a southern road-gang prison. The movie is brutal and violent when it is not funny.  Newman's character Luke is a decorated World War II veteran with a silver star and a bronze star for gallantry under fire. But he has PTSD.

The movie opens with Luke drunk and drinking straight from the bottle. He is on a walkway between parking spaces in a southern town.  Parking meters mounted on 3-inch pipes lines the edges of the walkway.  Luke has a large pipe cutter. He staggers from meter to meter cutting the pipe and watching the meters drop to the ground. He doesn't rob the meters, just cuts them off.  After several sliced meters, he is arrested.  

In the military, in corporate offices and just kidding around at lunch, I have heard the phrase, "What we have here is a failure to communicate" and did not know its origin, until now.  

Swedish Emigres; Immigrants to Sweden

On Sunday I flew to Sweden, a direct flight from JFK airport NYC to Arlanda airport near Stockholm. I don't sleep on planes so near the end of the flight I was in the galley in the back of the plane talking to a couple who were flying to visit home.  

Johan and Alma are emigres from Sweden. They came to the United States in 2002 and setup a towing business in Vail, Colorado. Johan made a thriving business rescuing the cars of stranded skiers traveling to the Colorado mountains. They liked America and in 2010 applied for citizenship. That became a thirteen-year ordeal interrupted by COVID.  

Their daughter Emilia was flying with them. She was three when they arrived in America.  She went to a local preschool the following year and told her mother she would never go back to that school. "Everyone speaks Finnish at that school. Nobody speaks Swedish," she said. Alma assured her they were speaking English and she would soon learn.  The family spoke Swedish at home, but Emilia and her brother were fluent in English quickly.

The family moved to Jupiter, Florida, just before the COVID epidemic. Both Alma and Johan had bad cases of COVID but recovered and last year finally became American citizens.  This is their first trip to Sweden since becoming Americans.  Johan said he will be happy if he never sees snow again. Alma still likes seasons.  

The family has dual citizenship and breezed past those of us who are not EU citizens in the customs line. I waited ninety minutes for the first stamp in my new passport.  When I got impatient, I remembered the customs lines I walk past when returning to America.  

After I arrived, I ran into immigrants to Sweden from around the world.  At the airport train station, I got coffee from a women in a lavender hijab.  The next evening I got a pizza made by a Kenyan.  The following morning I got coffee from a woman from India.  

In the parts of the world that are free, immigration and emigration runs in every direction. People pursue the life they want to the ends of the earth.  On the other hand, no one is trying to immigrate to Russia, North Korea or almost any country ruled by religious dictators.  Freedom is its own reward.    

 

Lancaster to JFK Airport by Five Trains

 

Often, the cheapest direct flights to Europe fly from JFK Airport in Queens on the very eastern edge of NYC.  But that cheap fare and direct flight come with all the hassle and expense of getting to JFK.

The trip is cheaper for me and everyone else over 65 years old, than those not eligible for senior discounts.  

The five trains senior fares:

Amtrak Lancaster to Philadelphia:  $10.40

SEPTA Philadelphia to Trenton:  Free

NJ Transit Trenton to NYC:  $7.50

LIRR NYC to Jamaica Station: $5

JFK AirTrain to terminals: $8.50

Total:  $31.40 

The same five trains adult fares:

Amtrak Lancaster to Philadelphia:  $20

SEPTA Philadelphia to Trenton:  $9.25

NJ Transit Trenton to NYC:  $15

LIRR NYC to Jamaica Station: $5

JFK AirTrain to terminals: $8.50

Total: $57.75

Amtrak direct from Lancaster (or Philadelphia) to NYC is at least $45 often more than $70, today was $120.  Not the cheap way to go.  

How many direct flights go from JFK? Here is the FlightsFrom map.

Wherever you are going, have a great trip.

Apocalypse Now? Or Later...

Why are so many people obsessed with the End Times, the Apocalypse, with Biblical Prophecy, with the End of the World? It seems crazy. In some cases it definitely is crazy. Is it more crazy than those who believe a secular apocalypse is coming? Those who see a future destroyed by an environmental disaster, a nuclear holocaust, or a global pandemic are just as sincere in their belief of impending doom.  

And yet....

In a very real sense, each of us will have a small apocalypse happen to us. We all die.  

At the point of our own death, we are at Apocalypse Now. Whatever the afterlife is, we are in it the moment we are dead.  Whatever end awaits the world we inhabit now is irrelevant to those who are dead. So those worried about either a secular or a prophetic apocalypse will stop worrying once this life ends. 

There is a grandeur to apocalyptic belief.  The Greek root of the word is revelation in the sense of revealed knowledge known only to the special ones able to understand. Knowledge of the future delights us, makes us  feel special, even though no one really knows the future--read predictions from any era of human history for a catalogue of complete ignorance.  

But living through a real disaster, a foretaste of apocalypse, is never grand.  Accounts of survivors of disasters and war talk about the narrow focus that allowed them to survive. I have read several accounts of survivors of the firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945.  People survived who stayed low, made sure they could breathe and kept some sort of barrier between themselves and the conflagration. 

The near-death experiences I had are funny in remembering how very narrow my mental focus was. After a 75mph motorcycle crash in 1980, I looked at my knees torn open so I could see the ligaments and told the guy who ran to help me, "I have to get up and walk around or I'll be stiff tomorrow." He convinced me to wait for the ambulance. But I was right, I was very stiff, the next day, and for months.

The religious people obsessing about the Apocalypse are not going to like it when it comes to their planet. 

Stopping pandemic, climate disaster and nuclear war require good people who care about the world to take power and influence from the worst people.  Power shapes policy. Fighting for good government everywhere will slow secular disasters. Preserving and strengthening democratic governments allows people to fight for good causes.  For tyrants, a good cause is what they want. 

Taking power is a messy business. Those in power in democracies have to work with others, make compromises, and choose the lesser of two evils over and over again.  But good government is much better than any kind of Apocalypse.

Meditating in a Train

On a sunny morning, I sat near the end of a train to Philadelphia and meditated.  I was sitting on the north side of the train looking across the aisle through the south window.  Eastern Lancaster County farm country spread out in my field of vision framed by the horizontal window and the tall seat backs on the opposite side of the train car.  

In the guided meditation we were told to see life as a river flowing past.  From my framed perspective a very green world flowed past. Sometimes that world was nearly still, as when a field of young corn spread far out from the window with a red barn and white farmhouse a half-mile away at the far end of the field. 

A moment later the train passed between two embankments.  The trees and shrubs near the track were a multi-hued blur of many greens and browns and yellows.  Then the train passed over a bridge and the view was of the tops of trees in the creek valley below.

The view I saw, like a river, was in one way almost eternal.  The passengers on the first trains to Philadelphia from Lancaster more than a century ago saw trees and farm fields and barns and horses and fences spreading on either side of the train. 

And yet, those farmers and horses passed away generations ago. The trees along the tracks and at the edge of the farm fields are different trees than those lining the tracks in the 19th Century.  As with a river, things that appear the same are very different just under the surface.  Since 1994, I have made the trip to and from Philadelphia thousands of times.  Most of that time I would have thought nothing changed along those tracks.  But both the landscape and I have changed over those 30 years. 

As I write, 25,970 days of my life are behind me. The river of life keeps flowing in my life and in the world outside the window. The world changes, I change. My senses only connect with the world and my own physical life in the current moment. All the rest is memory and anticipation.  

I know life can change radically in a moment, and yet as long as I am alive, there will be a continuity, like a river, flowing.