Celebrating the 51st Anniversary of My Driver's with a 1,400-Mile, 44-Hour Trip

On Thursday morning, December 17, my daughter Lisa sent me a text saying that should would be in Chicago on Saturday, December 19.  I had said months before if she was going to be in Chicago, I would love to see her. She lives in Minneapolis, but her now-remote job is in Chicago.  

Saturday, December 19, would be the 51st anniversary of my driver's license.  What better way to celebrate than to drive to Chicago for dinner and drive back.  

At 8 pm on Friday, the 18th, Nigel and I drove west across Pennsylvania to Cleveland where we stopped for the night just before 2am.  I like driving at night. So much less traffic.  

The next morning we drove to my daughter's apartment on the north side of Chicago.  She was pretty much packed for the move. We walked along the lake shore then ordered dinner from Mr. Dumpling.

After dinner at about 7pm Nigel and I started the 700-mile journey east. We stopped outside of Cleveland again.  By 4pm we were back in Lancaster: 44 hours, 1,422 miles. The car switched to metric units with one click so the journey was also 2,288km getting using 8.5 liters per 100 kilometers traveled. 

Just a nerdy aside, but we use a measure of how far we get per gallon of gas, the metric world, which means the rest of the world except the U.S., Liberia and Myanmar, use a measure of how much fuel they use to go 100 kilometers.  Fuel costs two to three times as much in most of the world as it does in America, so the emphasis makes sense.  

I like doing two-day circle drives. Each of my last three trips in Europe and Israel has included a two-day car trip of either side of a thousand miles.  In 2017, I drove from Paris to Nice and Monaco, then Turin, Zurich and back to Paris: 47 hours, 1,203 miles.  In the fall of 2019, I drove a circle of Israel from Tel Aviv, to Eilat, to Mount Bental on the Golan Heights, back to the coast, then to Jerusalem: 750 miles, 32 hours. I also did a five country loop visiting battlefields and the Spa Francorchamps racetrack that went from Paris to Luxembourg to Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and back to Paris: 45 hours, 900 miles.

I really am a motorhead.

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American Exceptionalism Died on Trump's Lying Lips

 

In an essay on Socrates, Hannah Arendt says Socrates wanted all of us to be at peace within ourselves: as much as possible our inner self should be in line with who we present to the world.

To Socrates, one of the problems with being a murderer is that, even if you are never caught, for the rest of your life, you are a murderer. Your inner self can never line up with your public self in a civilized place. You will never be a virtuous person.

In the same way, American exceptionalism died in the five weeks between the election and Mitch McConnell saying "It's over." We were the first successful revolution followed by an enduring democracy. Even if Joe Biden is sworn in as President and the orange liar leaves office, America is now a place in which the sitting President of the United States lied, is lying and will continue to lie about the result of the election. We did not have a peaceful transfer of power and 2018 may still be the last free and fair election in American history.

America is now no better than any broken country fighting against a would-be dictator.

And when the rest of the world laughs at us, as they should, they can point to more than 70 million voters who looked at four years of hate and lies and said, "I want more of that."

America will never again have standing to lecture another country about peaceful transfer of power and democratic norms.

Foreign policy magazine has a good summary of American Exceptionalism.

The Best Bicycle Racer I Know is the Most Humble

 

Barry Free and I when I extended my Army enlistment for the last time.

Today I went to the doctor for a routine visit. It was an hour before the snow started. I rode to the office, wearing clothes for a ride at a temperature around freezing.  Just after I arrived, about my age woman sat opposite me. She asked me how far I rode. Then she said before she retired she worked in East Petersburg and had a co-worker who rode to work every day from Lebanon, 20 miles north of their office.  

"He rode rain, shine, cold, heat, whatever," she said. "Once his wife came and picked him up because it snowed during the day. Once. In more than 20 years. I can't remember his name. I...."

"Barry," I said. "Barry Free."

"Right, that's him."  

I told her I had ridden with Barry many times over the past three decades.  And that Barry was the best racer I knew personally--he was twice the Masters National Road Racing Champion.  

"Really?" she said. "I knew he rode far. I never knew he rode fast. I never knew he raced."  

I told her some of his career highlights and that even though Barry is a full decade older than me, I was never happier than five years ago when I beat him by a few seconds in a time trial.  We were not actually racing each other, different age groups, but my time was a few seconds better. That never happened before. I was happier with knowing I could be faster than Barry than I was my place in the race.  Barry was 72 years old then.

Bicycle racers as a group are as humble as senators at a fund-raising event.  Barry is different, and now I knew how different.  A co-worker in the same office not only did not know he was a champion, she did not even know he raced.  

Barry no longer races, but at 77 years old, he is still riding.  In a world where humility is more rare than Dairy Queen stores in the Sahara Desert, Barry is the real deal. I hope we can ride again when the snow melts and old guys like us get the vaccine.