Conventional Wisdom is not Always Wise

 

Are there phrases that cause you pain whenever you hear them?  All my life I have heard phrases taken as conventional wisdom that are blunt instruments used to beat people, to push conformity on people who actually want to think.  

In her new and very thoughtful podcast "Kelly Corrigan Wonders," Corrigan begins with four episodes that show the dark side of supposed truisms many people take for granted.  I find each of the phrases wrong as generalities and hurtful when thoughtlessly pushed on others.

The first episode is the best and the most painful.  Corrigan, a cancer survivor, interviews a woman currently dealing with cancer. Both have been told "Everything happens for a reason" by people who are healthy, thoughtless and willing to cause pain simply to have something to say or to spread their own shallow beliefs.  

Both women are believers in God, which means they have people in their lives who are more apt to say "Everything happens for a reason" or "It's all God's plan for your life" or another variant of an uncomfortable phrase that comforts only the speaker.  

The relationship of Chance, Fate, Luck, and Free Will is complex in any but the worst lives, where poverty and disease and war have so limited free will and chance that bad luck and ill fate are all one has. I have thought about fate and free will a lot in the context of war. 

After listening to this episode, I don't think anyone could say "Everything happens for a reason" without embarrassment.

The next phrase, "Never Give Up" is more sympathetic for me than the other three, but only for myself. I have pushed myself not to give up knowing how much I will suffer for my obsession.  I don't often recommend others do the same.

Over the three decades I have raced bicycles, people have told me they want to race but don't want to crash. I tell them not to race.  I have enlisted four different times over more than four decades, but I have not encouraged more than a few people to enlist. As with bicycle racing, when helmets are mandatory, the activity is dangerous. I only encourage people to race or enlist, who clearly want to do something dangerous.  

Giving up is always an option. And a good option. Someone who says "Never give up" has not lain in a ditch on the side of a road seeing inside their knees or hear the crunch and felt the agony of their own splintered bones.

In "What you don't know won't hurt you" Dani Shapiro finds out in her 50s, after her parents have passed away, that she is not her father's biological daughter. It was something she sensed all of her life, but only found out with a DNA test. She was devastated. She wanted to know from her parents.  The phrase is crazy in so many other contexts. More than a century ago, my grandfather did not listen to the news and almost died by being drafted into the Russian Army--not a good place for Jews. What he did not know--that World War I had begun--almost killed him 

In the fourth episode, Google Executive Annie Jean Baptiste talks about the pitfalls and problems of trusting your gut.  She makes an excellent case of how trusting your gut means trusting that what you already know is enough for any situation--that our own limited experience is sufficient for any whatever we might confront. The wider our world the more likely our gut will be deceived. 

The public figures famous for trusting their guts are among the more arrogant Americans who every lived:  the former President, Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh, to name a deplorable few.  

Of course, anyone with expertise can trust their gut within the area in which they are expert: pilots in aircraft, sailors in ships, chemists in labs, etc.  But put the sailor in a plane, the chemist in a ship, or a failed reality star in the White House, and the problems happen as fast as storm lightning.  

All four episodes were fascinating for me. I am going to listen to them again.  And go further in the series.  

Confident Military Walk: Apparently My Default Setting

 

So much of who we are is what we do. When I went to the hospital to visit my son Nigel the day after he was admitted, I smiled to myself when I walked into the Intensive Care Unit. I smiled about the way I walked into the ICU.

When I am in a setting that is bureaucratic, like a hospital or a corporate office or a military headquarters, my habit is to square my shoulders, look straight ahead and walk with the even pace I learned in Basic Training. I did this from the moment I stepped through the ICU doors.

In the military, I learned that everything goes more smoothly for those look and act as if they know what they are doing. I did not need to act this way. But long habit led me to walk and act in a way that said "I know what I am doing."

I was also glad to notice that despite my all of my various injuries, I can still walk straight and confident. Nigel was in the hospital for more than a week. I walked the same way every day.

Field Guide to Flying Death, Armor-Piercing Ammo

A Soviet-built tank destroyed by an armor piercing round.

The tank in the picture above was destroyed by a cannon round that had no explosive charge.  A solid shot hit the turret of this Soviet T-72 main battle tank and destroyed it, turning the approximately ten-ton-turret on its side.  

The round that destroyed the 41-ton tank was a 25mm tungsten-carbide dart fired from a 120mm smooth-bore cannon in an American M1A1 main battle tank. The 25mm round is wrapped in 120mm casing that breaks away just past the end of the gun.  Because the 25mm round is propelled with the force of a 120mm charge, the tungsten-carbide dart flies at more than a mile per second to its target.  

The round makes a small hole when it it hits, but the mile-per-second impact can punch a hole in armor more than a foot thick at a mile or more of distance.  The impact turns the armor on the inside of the tank into hot shrapnel that kills the crew and destroys the tank.  At close ranges in can flip the turret over as in the photo above or even take the turret off a tank altogether.  

When compared to firing explosive ammo at a tank, the solid-shot APDS (Armor-Piercing Discarding Sabot) round is also more accurate.  The trajectory of an APDS round is so flat that point blank for a tank firing the round is one kilometer. 

If cannon ammo was a football, the path of an APDS round is like a screen pass thrown by a strong quarterback--it flies flat and straight to the receiver. A high-explosive round flies like a 70-yard touchdown pass that rises steadily up for sixty yards before dropping into the receiver's arms.   

I was a tank commander, before electronic computers became part of armored warfare. When my gunner fired at a tank or tank-sized target less than a kilometer away, he simply had to put his crosshairs on the target and fire. 

We Like the Hospital

Nigel and I had Thanksgiving dinner together in his room.  

Mine is in the paper plate in the foreground.  

My son Nigel has been in the hospital for the past week. He should be out in a couple of days, but he came in very sick. He has diabetes. We don't know which type yet, but the symptoms he had and all of the tests point to this diagnosis. 

Despite his diagnosis Nigel is happy in the hospital.  He likes structure and he likes to be around people, even the people who woke him every hour for four days in the Intensive Care Unit.  

In the world COVID has made, Nigel can have only one visitor for his entire hospital stay. That's me. Now that he is mostly free of IVs, we can walk together. Tomorrow we will watch the Grand Prix of Bahrain. We both cheer for Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton and he is on pole. 

Like Nigel, I never minded being in the hospital.  The several times I have stayed in the hospital for two days to two weeks, I needed to be there. Every time I have been in the hospital, I have had something (or many things) wrong that would most likely get better. And I very much wanted to get better.  

Most people who get into medicine want to get people well. I am a a good patient in that way. I come in really messed up and I leave happy and on the way to healing.  

Many well wishers hoped Nigel could get out of the hospital as soon as possible.  They were, of course, projecting. Nigel, like his Dad, is okay with being in the hospital if he needs to be.  

While Nigel's diagnosis is not clear, he came to the hospital through the emergency room, was very sick and is now very much better. 

The Movies in Paris

 

A year ago on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, I drove southwest of Paris on a cold, cloudy day to visit the Circuit de Sarthe, the site of the annual 24 Hour Race at Lemans, France.  

In a delightful coincidence I had just seen the movie "Ford v Ferrari" ("Lemans 66" was the title outside America) in a Paris theater. It is a great movie that was nominated for Best Picture.

When I arrived at the track, I hoped to walk the 8-mile circuit, but found in another delightful surprise, that there was a 24-hour race nearing it's end and I could watch an amateur competition at Lemans. I visited the museum and saw many laps of the race.   

In another coincidence of timing the movie "Midway" debuted in theaters while I was on the trip.  I saw both movies in their original format with French subtitles.  With "Ford vs Ferrari" this gave me a chance for some French practice and some extra laughs with the translations of Carroll Shelby's Texan English.  

In the movie "Midway" the Japanese sailors spoke in their own language, sometimes in complex speeches. The subtitles were, of course, in French.  My French definitely got a workout trying to follow translated Japanese dialogue.    

It is strange to think how much the world has changed in the past 12 months.  No more movie theaters, the annual race at Lemans was delayed for months and who knows when I will travel across the ocean again.  

But with all that, the memories are wonderful. 

Returning from Ukraine with Canadian Cyclists Going to Auschwitz

Ride for the Living, Auschwitz 

In June of 2017, I rode from Belgrade, Serbia, to Lviv, Ukraine. Along the way, I rode in Bosnia, Croatia, Hungary, Slovakia, The Czech Republic and Poland. I rode through beautiful country, up and down long hills and through the home country of my favorite pro cyclist Peter Sagan.

Peter Sagan, World Champion

After crossing into Poland, I rode to Auschwitz and spent a day there wandering through a place of terror I cannot fathom. I wrote about the visit here. 

After leaving Auschwitz, I was glad to be riding alone to think and to process what I saw. I had no problems until the border crossing into Ukraine from Poland. Usually at the borders, I rode past the long lines of cars and trucks waiting to cross and up to a checkpoint with a guard outside the booth. Once there, I point at the bike and ask where I should go. At most border crossings the guard sends me through the next open lane. They don’t get a lot of bikes.

Ukraine-Poland border crossing The Polish guards stopped me and sent me to the pedestrian line. It took more than three hours to get through the long line of people walking from Poland back home with all kinds of consumer electronics and other goods. When I left Lviv, I decided to take a train to the other side of the border rather than struggle with customs on foot pushing a bike. 

In the station I met a group of Canadian cyclists who were in Ukraine for the same reason I was: to visit Holocaust sites. They were on the way to the annual Ride for the Living at Auschwitz. They had done the 100 km ride before, but this was the first time they had visited Ukraine. I had ridden from Auschwitz a few days before. 

We talked about how the Lviv and Auschwitz were among the worst site of the Holocaust, but very different. About half the Jews murdered by the Nazis were already dead when Auschwitz went into full operation in 1942. Most had been murdered by shooting over pits as in Lviv and Kiev. German police were sent to conquered lands to murder Jews with rifles and pistols. In Auschwitz Jews were gassed and the burnt in ovens. 

Then we talked about bicycles, riding in Europe and even about motorcycles. One of the Canadian riders had ridden sport bikes in the 1980s. We both had ridden Honda 500 Interceptors and talked for half the train ride about our former bikes. The rest of the group left us alone.

Honda 500 Interceptor 

At the border station, the Canadians stayed on the train and continued to Krakow. I left the train and started riding. The customs check on the train took an hour, but it was a comfortable hour in a train seat instead of in a pedestrian line. I was happy.

Book Report 2020, Book Groups In this year of Pandemic and Social Distancing

In this year of Pandemic and Social Distancing, I am part of more book groups than ever in my life. Most of the discussions are on Zoom, but also on the phone. Zoom is not as much fun as talking in person, but distance does not matter, so I can connect with people in Germany as easily as here in Lancaster. 

ESL Book Group 

Four years ago, I volunteered with a local ESL (English as a Second Language) group run by Andrea Bailey. While volunteering I met Sarah Gingrich and Emily Burgett. We talked about books sometimes and asked each other about books we read or wanted to read. We ended up reading the same books, then getting together to talk about them. We became with a book about a Russian Holy Fool. The book is a novel titled Lazarus. 

From there we have read books about faith, the plague, and many other topics. Other people have joined depending on the book. In the past two years, Andrea moved to Wisconsin and Emily moved to Massachusetts then joined the Army, but with Zoom we can still meet. This summer, in the midst of the pandemic, we discussed Decameron.  For that discussion, we were joined by Chelsea Pomponio, a professor whose research is in Medieval Italian Literature focusing on Boccaccio. After Decameron our book was Love in the Time of Cholera.  As part of that discussion, Sarah Reisert gave us an impassioned critique of that book as beautifully written sexism, racism, child molesting and promotion of patriarchy.  It was delightful. I love a negative review. In October we talked about Free Will by Mark Balaguer.  The next book is Breaking Bread with the Dead by Alan Jacobs. It is not a book about sharing Avacado Toast with Zombies. 

The World Conquest Book Club 

This summer I talked with a former co-worker who returned to the library and museum where we both worked as a director. We were talking about leadership and decided to start a monthly book group to prepare Michelle to go from director of the library to ruling the entire world. We settled on six books that would be the basis of world domination. Naturally, the first was The Prince by Machiavelli. Next was The Art of War by Sun Tzu, followed by Plato’s Republic and a critique of Republic by Karl Popper called The Open Society and its Enemies. In November we will read Lioness a biography of Golda Meir. I have been promised a cabinet position in the Michelle World Government. 

Writers in Residences 

This is a monthly book group organized by the Jewish Community Alliance in Lancaster in cooperation between local Synagogues. This month we are reading Witness: Lessons from Elie Wiesel’s Classroom by Ariel Burger. It will be the first time I am participating in this new format. We will discuss each book with the author. So Ariel Burger will be on the Zoom call. In February I will be introducing the author Raffi Berg as we discuss his book Red Sea Spies: The True Story of the Mossad's Fake Diving Resort. 

Pre-COVID, the Hillel group on the campus of Franklin and Marshall College had book discussion group during the normal academic year that I would attend when I could. 

The Evolution Roundtable 

This group has met Monday’s at Noon on the campus of Franklin and Marshall College since the early 1990s. Most regular attendees are retired professors, along with some current professors, and members of the community like me. I joined about a decade ago. Each semester the group reads a book about some aspect of evolution. The current book is The Deep History of Ourselves: The Four-Billion-Year Story of How We Got Consciousness. In past years we have read books on many aspects of evolution including The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, and, of course, The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. In the late 90s Stephen Jay Gould joined the group for one of its meetings. 

Virtual Reading Group: The Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College 

Like the Evolution Roundtable, this group meets weekly to discuss books by the philosopher Hannah Arendt. We are currently finishing Essay in Understanding: Formation, Exile and Totalitarianism 1930-1954. The 90-minute discussions have a lot of context and background and different interpretations. The group will start again in January looking at The Promise of Politics followed by the book I most admire of all Arendt’s works The Human Condition. I have written on every page of the copy I read in 2012. 

Torah Study 

Each Saturday morning my Synagogue has Torah Study. The book each week is The Torah. We go through in a cycle determined by the Hebrew calendar. This group is very different on Zoom than in person. In the Synagogue, Rabbi Jack Paskoff clarifies points in the Torah using his white board and explaining often ambiguous Hebrew. On Zoom the Rabbi has to manage the discussion much more than in person. 

The New York CS Lewis Society 

I joined the NYCSL Society in 1979. Since 1980 I have been able to go to monthly meetings once or twice a year to the meetings in NYC. Last year I went to the 50th anniversary celebration on Long Island. I have not been to a meeting this year but hope to join the Zoom meeting this month. It will be a discussion of books by Lewis and G.K.Chesterton written in wartime.

 

Books with Friends

I am also reading books with friends on topics we agree and disagree about. A very sincere friend from Greece who is living in Germany asked me to read a book with him about Trump: Evangelicals at the Crossroads: Will We Pass the Trump Test?

I like Dmitri, so I read the book. I hated the book but discussed why with Dmitri and with our mutual friend Cliff. Following that book, Cliff and I are reading a book on abortion titled Beyond the Binaries by Thomas Horrocks. We will be discussing it next week.     

Another friend, Christina Hu, and I are talking about creating a podcast. This summer we discussed basing the podcast on books about America, its place in the world, and its effect on the world.  We read Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War and Band of Brothers.  We are now talking about something different than a book-centered podcast.  But the books led to some really good discussions.

                   

Captain George Gussman on Motivating Americans

1st Lieutenant George Gussman, US Army, 1943

My Dad, George Gussman, grew up in Boston. He was the fourth of six sons of a Russian Jewish couple who fled to America in 1900 to escape murder and oppression.  My grandparents quickly assimilated in their new country.  They named the first two boys Abraham and Immanuel. The next four were Ralph, George, Lewis and Harold.  

Dad enlisted just before World War II, almost too old to enlist at age 34. When the war broke out, he was sent to Officer Candidate School and commissioned.  His fist command was a Black company in the then-segregated Army.  He later commanded a Prisoner of War Camp for German Afrika Korps prisoners.

Whether running a warehouse, or an Army unit, Dad said the best way to motivate Americans was to tell them they could not do something.  "Tell 'em they can't and they will show you they can," Dad would say. "Tell a driver there's too much snow to get to a load New Hampshire and he'll be there ten minutes early and calling to bitch they haven't plowed the unloading dock."  

If Dad were alive today he would be 114 years old. But he is still right about Americans. Tell us we can't and we will.  

America kept the world from falling into tyranny by defeating Naziism and then defending the world against Soviet Communism.  I have been terribly worried about tomorrow's election, but right now I am thinking about the poll workers in 3,000 counties who are being told by Trump forces that they can't do a fair vote count and they can't protect their polls.

They've been told they can't. 

They will. 

They are Americans. 

r   

My Top Ten Favorite Trump Memes and Cartoons, Plus One

 

Reliable Randomness Makes Air Apparent

Every yard or meter that a bicyclist or pilot or runner or driver or anyone else travels through the air means passing through trillions and trillions of molecules that together make up what we call air. The faster the rider, runner, pilot or driver travels the more molecules per second bang into their body, bicycle, car or plane and spin off in another direction. The first philosophers called air a single substance.  Reality is quite different. 

Each molecule of oxygen, nitrogen and water, as well as fart smell, scent of lilac or Corona Virus moves with through three dimensions in any possible direction depending upon all the physical forces acting on it. Each molecule of what we call air moves freely. Heat speeds them up, collisions with other molecules and with bicyclists send it off in another direction, gravity keeps individual molecules from favoring the up direction but with a mass of a few or a few thousand atoms, gravity is not a huge influence. 

In describing the motion of these molecules and the forces affecting them, I did not include wind resistance. Together the molecules of air are wind resistance, but they are so small that the forces on them are heat, gravity, and collisions. They move in what is effectively a vacuum. The effect of trillions of molecules per second smacking into a rider from random directions at varying speeds is completely predictable in its total effect--a surprising and wonderful reality.

If a rider maintains 20 miles per hour in still air, that same rider will reach the same speed at the same effort an hour or a month or a year later. And assuming the same air density, the same effort will achieve the same speed in Belarus, Borneo, Botswana, Bosnia or Belgium. The random motion of molecules in air has the effect of totally predictable wind resistance. 

When the air moves collectively, when there is wind, the effect is exactly, predictably the same. Uncountable trillions of molecules of varying sizes and shapes moving in unpredictable directions with different speeds will cause exactly the same amount of friction on a car, bicycle, runner or airplane everywhere there is air. 

Wind resistance is both invisible and unavoidable. When I feel strong, I leave my house and ride with the wind knowing that the exhilaration of riding 25mph in a 20mph tail wind will turn into a 12mph slog on the return leg. When I don’t feel so great, I ride into the wind first and give myself the tailwind at the end of the ride. 

So much of the history of science is discovering that reality is not what anyone guessed or expected. Few of the ancient scientists could wrap their minds around the idea of atoms in a vacuum. Even some of the alchemists who provided the first experimental evidence for atoms could believe what they demonstrated. 

Before atoms, air was considered a single substance. The discovery of atoms showed air is a complex mixture of molecules. Physicists then showed that the individual molecules of air, moving randomly, together became, in effect, that single substance the ancient scientists believed in. All that randomness taken together is as predictable as the motion of the moon. And at the same time any single molecule can and does move as randomly as a toddler in a room full of shiny toys. 

Lancaster, a Blue city, Inside a Red County, Inside a Red State

The polls in Pennsylvania say the Keystone state will vote for Joe Biden by a narrow margin in the election in November.  But since 2016, Pennsylvania has been a red state. Republicans control the state legislature. Both the house and the senate delegations are split between Republicans and Democrats. 

I live in Lancaster City, a 7.5 square-mile blue dot in the middle of Lancaster County. The country is a 984 square-mile red triangle in south eastern Pennsylvania. About 59,000 people live in the city and vote nearly 70% for the Democratic Party. Including the city, Lancaster County votes 80% Republican. Nearly of the Democrats among the 545,000 people in Lancaster live in or near the city. 

On my street in the northwest corner of the city, Biden signs outnumber the Trump signs and flags by a lot. But when I ride out of the city several days a week I pass almost nothing but Trump signs. 

 One of my favorite roads to ride is Snyder Hollow, nine miles south of Lancaster city. All of the signs on that three-mile hill are Republican.  Two weeks ago, after the debate, one of the signs was missing. Two-thirds of the way up the hill there was a big Trump 2020 sign all summer.  Then the sign was gone and a little American flag was in its place on the tree stump at the edge of the road. I passed that stump three more times and the little American flag is still there. Alone. No sign. 

I am hopeful, but not crazy.  If Lancaster County elected the President, America would be fucked.  Every sort of crazy lives here, including Klan rallies and the occasional cross burning in southern Lancaster County.  

I will be up all night on November third watching the returns and hoping 80 percent of my fellow Lancastrians are big losers.

I am officially in love with Strava.

I am back to riding and in the absence of racing I am going up and down hills and and comparing myself to other riders on Strava--socially distanced competition. 

Some places have way more riders than others. Strava compiles riders and ranks them by their best times on a hill, stretch or road, etc. Anything from 100 meters to several miles. 

Recently, I rode Bear Mountain NY, a place I had always wanted to ride and never did. It has lots of other riders. I did three repeats of Perkin Memorial Drive, the main climb. My best effort put me in 14,609th place of 17,836 riders. Younger, skinny riders are much faster. But going down the hill, my gravitationally enhanced self is in 1,238th place. 

There is a hill 3-mile climb 9 miles south of my home in Lancaster PA called Snyder Hollow. I have ridden that hill more than sixty times since I returned from Europe and dropped into the Corona Virus crisis. Strava has been my riding companion for the last six months.

The Physics of Descending on a Bicycle

When a solo rider or a group of riders descend any hill, particularly a steep hill, why are some of the riders so much faster than others? 

The fastest descenders, whether by experience or instinct or learning, are the ones that sense or know the laws of physics and do everything they can to use them. 

When a rider descends, the motion of the bike is governed by a series of variables: 

--The grade of the hill 

--The total frontal area of the bicycle and rider 

--The air speed of the bike 

--The total mass of the bike and rider 

--Momentum: the combination of ground speed and mass 

--Spoke count of the wheels 

--Rolling resistance 

The grade of the hill is the most important variable. I have descended eight percent grades in the Alps and in the eastern US and never hit 50 mph, even after two or three miles. But I have gone 55 to 59 mph on half-mile hills with 15-20 percent grades. 

 

The frontal area of the bike and rider determines the top speed on any given grade. Wind resistance increases by the square of the speed. Double the speed, quadruple the wind resistance. At 11mph a rider is mostly pedaling to move the mass of bike and rider. To maintain 22mph, the same rider is putting 80% effort into moving air. The riders who descend the fastest, especially above 40mph put their crotch on the top tube and their sternum on the handlebars and pull their elbows and knees in. 

Related to wind resistance is air speed. I worked seventy miles east of my home for many years. I would ride to work once a month between April and September. I would wait for a day with a 20mph west wind and ride that 70 miles in under four hours, under 3.5 hours on the best days. When the wind was exactly behind me there were times it was quiet. I was going 22mph in a 20mph tail wind. My air speed was 2 mph. I was flying. 

I am the wrong size to be a bicycle racer. At nearly six feet and 185 pounds, I am 20 pounds heavier and several inches taller than many top racers. But descending, every pound is to the good, because… 

Mass plus ground speed makes momentum. The higher the speed and the greater the mass, the more force pushes the bike down the hill. When I pull out of the draft and sail past a 160-pound rider, momentum is my friend. 

One variable every rider can control is spoke count. Every revolution of the wheel, from the perspective of the wind, whips the spoke from no speed to twice the speed of the bike and back to zero. Low-spoke-count wheels with thin or bladed spokes reduce the wind resistance and the turbulence of spokes. The faster we ride, the more wind we whip through the spokes in our wheels. 

On a road bike with fully inflated 23 or 25mm tires, rolling resistance is negligible, but not zero. 

In summary, to go really fast downhill, find a steep grade, make yourself as small and narrow as you can, ride low-spoke-count wheels with fully inflated tires and hope the wind is behind you. I love going fast. My Strava KOMs are downhill, not up.

Rural Drivers Hating Bicyclists is Nothing New

In 2004, a bicycle hater with the unlikely name John F. Kennedy threw tacks on the road when he knew bicyclists would run over them and get flats and possibly crash. 

He did it twice. The second time, I saw him do it. I got his license number and harassed the local police until they arrested and charged him. Here’s the story: 

From the mid-1990s until March of this year, I rode two or three times a week with a daily training ride group led by a former National Champion named Scott. Monday through Thursday at 4pm and Friday at 1pm, riders join the group from the west side Lancaster, Pa., and follow an unvarying route of 35 miles by the time the riders return to the city two hours later. 

The ride is so predictable, that I and other riders would join the ride at several different points knowing within two minutes when the riders would pass a given intersection or landmark. The ride goes southwest of Lancaster to Safe Harbor Park near the Susquehanna River, then turns north toward Columbia, and back to Lancaster through Millersville. 

Just before Safe Harbor Park is Conestoga Boulevard, the place where pickup trucks are most likely to pass too close, blow their horns or occasionally yell their displeasure at sharing the road—a nearly empty road. One day in 2004 passing over the crest of a half-mile hill, several riders got flats. 

There were tacks on the road. Recently a man in an old red pickup truck had yelled at us several times as he passed. The ride crests the hill at 4:40pm and that was when he was headed home to the apartment where he lived south of Safe Harbor Park. Apparently, he got ahead of us, threw tacks on the road and drove away. I thought it was him. 

Two weeks later he passed us yelling as we neared the top of the hill. I sprinted as hard as I could down the hill wanting to see where he went at the next intersection. As I neared the bottom of the hill, I saw him on the side of the road throwing tacks. He saw me, got in his truck and took off. I got his license number. It was a level road and he was speeding so he was gone in moments, but I did see that he went south. 

Two other riders had followed me and seen what happened. Now we had witnesses and actual tacks. I called the Conestoga Police Department and got little cooperation, but I insisted, and they relented. John F. Kennedy was charged two misdemeanors. I told the officers that I had witnesses and we would all be happy to testify. 

On the day of the trial, Kennedy arrived in the pickup truck I had identified. We learned later he had another vehicle. It turns out he did not have an attorney. Criminals, when you get to know them, are stupid. Those of us who were witnesses showed up at trial in suits and ties. 

Kennedy wore work clothes and had his sunglasses on top of his head. If he had a lawyer, the lawyer would have known that the judge had a son who was a Lancaster City police officer, a member of the bicycle patrol. The lawyer also would have known that one of the witnesses was a bicycle patrol officer and a veteran. But Kennedy was too arrogant to think he needed a lawyer. 

The judge presented the evidence. The witnesses said what they saw. Kennedy spoke in his own defense saying he did not throw the tacks on the road, but bicyclists should not be blocking the roads and we deserved what happened. After the testimony, the judge gave a summary of the evidence and the defense. He was so calm and impassive, I thought Kennedy would get the case dismissed. The police officer who rides with us and was a witness knew better but said nothing. 

When the summary was complete, the judge told Kennedy to stand to receive the verdict. He stood and smirked, also thinking he would get off. The judge exploded. Kennedy stood straight. All of us sat up straight. The judge lectured Kennedy for ten minutes, gave him the maximum fine of $880 dollars and said he would be in jail if every penny was not paid on time. 

Four of my kids were at the trial. They all rode bicycles and they knew all of the riders who were endangered by Kennedy. Like us riders, they sat very straight and still when the judge charged Kennedy. I was glad they could see justice served. 

Kennedy never bothered us again. I never saw him again.

Saved from a Blizzard by a Roach Clip

Stewie's roach clip had a smaller white feather

One of my favorite people on Hill Air Force Base, Utah, was Airman Stewart “Stewie” Caldwell. We both went through Basic Training at Lackland Air Force Base, went to tech school at Lowry AFB and were assigned to Hill. Stewie was a year older and had been at Hill for more than a year when I showed in October 1972. 

Stewie was in the Air Force because he had a low draft number and did not want to get drafted into the Army. He was from California and from his as-long-as-regulations-allowed hair to his tan to the sandals he wore when he was out of uniform, he was a laid-back Californian. 

He smoked weed when he could and became even more laid back than usual when he was high. Stewie had a yellow Volkswagen Beetle, the bright yellow color available that year. He kept a roach clip with a feather on in the glove box when he was on base. When he was away from the base, he would hang it from the mirror. 

On sunny day in March of 1973, Stewie decided he wanted to go to Salt Lake City. We went in his car. I don’t remember where we went in the city, but I remember seeing the clouds in the west shortly after we arrived and saying we better get back to the base. Western storms can go from clouds to sideways blizzard in minutes. 

We left Salt Lake City in falling snow. Ten miles north on I-15 we were in a sideways blizzard. The temperature had dropped below freezing. Stewie was driving looking through the triangular vision slit which was as much as VW windshield wipers would clear. We were rolling in the accumulating snow. I was wiping the windshield every couple of minutes because Beetle defrosters never worked. The skinny VW tires and rear engine kept us rolling when bigger cars were already getting stuck. 

Then Stewie yelled, “Fuck. It fell apart. Fuck!” The gas pedal and its mounting bracket were under Stewie’s heel. The pedal had come off its mounting and also from the cable that connected the pedal to the carburetors. I had owned a half dozen cars by this time and had fixed them with odd parts when needed. I slid under my side of the dash, reached for the cable and pulled. I revved the engine, then lost grip. 

There was a fitting on the end of the cable. I said, “Stewie, give me the roach clip.” It worked! I pulled the cable and got the roach clip behind the crimp fitting on the end of the cable. I could pull the cable and hold it. And I had the flexibility of a 19-year-old, so I could be under the right-side dashboard and work the gas with my left hand. Stewie had to wipe the windshield himself.

Stewie put the car in second gear and while I held the gas, he slowly released the clutch and got us going. When he stepped on the clutch, I released the cable and pulled it up again. The snow was really deep by the time we got to the gate at the base. Stewie opened his window and held out his ID. Luckily, we got waved through. The guard did not want to come out of the gatehouse, and we didn’t want to stop. We made it back to the snow-covered parking lot and stopped in a snow drift that seemed to be close to a parking space. 

Not our fate, thanks to the roach clip

Stewie told the story of the roach clip that saved our lives for months afterward. He was particularly dramatic when he said, "The feather got crushed. Dude, I loved that feather." 

A Book Justifying Support for Trump by White Evangelicals

 

I am reading a book by a white Evangelical Christian justifying his support of the "chaos candidate." I am reading it with two friends who are Christians who live in German and are trying to understand the trumpian Church in America.

The author quotes Christian leaders who celebrate him as a "Chaos Candidate." These trumpians see the white Evangelical Church as embattled by dark forces of secularism who want to take away their freedom.

Imagine those who say they worship the Creator of the Universe celebrating chaos! Chapter 6 has extensive quotes of those celebrating the chaos candidate.

It reads like a librarian celebrating book burning.

The book is a strong confirmation in Church language that the trumpians in the Church, like all trumpians, love their orange idol because he hates who they hate.

Another chilling bit of clarity in the book is that in his reptilian instinct for power, trump has found a huge loyal group who really, deeply celebrates his authoritarian goals. The religious people who support him want rights reversed for everyone who is not them.

MAGA re-elected will reverse gay rights, abortion rights, women's rights, voting rights, the rights of the disabled, worker's rights and when the steamroller gets some momentum going, Bill Barr will reverse civil rights.

Evangelicals at the Crossroads: Will We Pass the Trump Test?

Fortune's Wheel and the Place of Peace

 

In “The Consolation of Philosophy” Boethius pictures fortune as a wheel. The world, like a wheel in motion, is always putting stress on those who are in the world. But the stress is far from equal. There are times of relative calm, when the wheel moves slowly. And there are times of trouble, like war and pandemic and tyranny, when the wheel speeds up. 

Those near the edge of the wheel, even in relatively calm times, have large forces acting on them. They are never at peace. They live inside their circumstances, often they believe that Fate is all they have. In hopeless circumstances such as terminal illness or being a refugee, they may be right. They may also make the perception that Fate is all they have into a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

Boethius says those who pursue philosophy move closer and closer to the hub of the wheel of this world. Those who are at the hub of the wheel, no matter how fast the wheel spins, are at rest. When we rest at the hub of the wheel through philosophy we can be at peace in a world with political strife and wars and storms and fire and flood. Elie Wiesel showed this in Auschwitz. 

We could, of course, be caught in any sort of disaster by chance and circumstance, but through seeking the good and the true and the beautiful, we can stay at the hub of the wheel of this world through anything. Since we live in this world, and cannot totally leave our responsibilities to others, we have to grab one of the spokes of the wheel of this world--family troubles, work problems, the pandemic—and we have to grip tight against the centripetal forces shoving us out of the refuge of philosophy. 

But when the crisis is resolved, we can turn back toward the peace at the hub of the wheel. In my case, daily meditation or riding up a hill I've ridden up 50 times before can bring my mind to the hub of the wheel, at rest even while my life is in motion.

Peaceful Transfer of Power and Change of Command

Most of my recent military service was during the Obama administration. I re-enlisted in August 2007, deployed to Iraq for a year in January 2009 and then left the Army National Guard in May 2016.  

During those 11 years I witnessed dozens and dozens of change of Command ceremonies.  From command of a company to a full division, the passing of the unit colors from the old commander to the new commander is very much the same ceremony. Whether in front of two dozen soldiers or ten thousand soldiers the officer holding power gives that power and privilege and responsibility to the next commander.

At many of these ceremonies, the new commander in the first address to the unit will talk about the peaceful transfer of power. How this peaceful transfer of power is a true American tradition dating back to President George Washington and continuing right up through the moment of the ceremony.  

Nearly all of the commanders I served with, as well as most of the soldiers, were Republicans or conservative independents.  They were proud of upholding this American tradition and looking forward to the peaceful transfer of power to a conservative President.  

But these same soldiers I served with are now will continue their support for the current President even though he will not commit to the peaceful transfer of power.  

In 1993, Vietnam War veterans made a great show saying they would not back President Clinton as a matter of honor, then honor melted like snow in the Sahara when they had their own despicable draft dodger.  In the same way the words about the peaceful transfer of power will melt faster than the polar ice cap when their Dear Leader refuses to leave office.

The military reports to the Commander-in-Chief.  When the C-in-C breaks the law, they will follow. 

Unhappy Guy Pushing His Bike

 

I was standing on my front porch just a moment ago. It's a beautiful day. A man was walking by my house pushing a bicycle.

He stopped and said, "Did you live here when the Sharks were here?"

My mind goes to literal in a millisecond. I looked at the empty parking lot that used to be for an out-of-business lumber yard and looked puzzled, not thinking sea creatures were part of the Lancaster cityscape. I said, "We just moved here."

He said, "The Sharks used have a block party. Closed both of these streets. Beer, hakey sack, girls in bikinis." The Sharks were on MTV, but they never quite made it big."

If he was playing hakey sack, they must have been on MTV in the 80s. The bike pusher is about 75 years old. He was wearing coveralls with a plaid shirt and a big hat with a circular brim. He had a thick white beard. He was wearing a medical mask upside down tight against his face.

"You can't have any fun anymore," he said. "Even before the COVID. Too many rules. I feel sorry for college kids now."

He strode off.

Who Fights Our Wars: Soldiers Swept into War After 9-11

 I met Chris at a protest in Philadelphia. I saw his digital camouflage raincoat in the crowd and introduced myself. I was wearing a shirt of the same camo pattern, so we started talking about where we served in Iraq and when.  

Chris deployed to Iraq shortly after the U.S. invasion in late 2003. He went to Camp Bucca in the far east of Iraq just over the border with Kuwait. 

In 2000, Chris wanted to go to college and didn't have the money, so he enlisted in the Army National Guard as an administrative specialist. He completed training and was settling in to the routine of Guard life when 9-11 happened.  Chris had five years to go on his enlistment.  

The Army National Guard Chris joined was not part of the front line fighting force of the American Army. It had the oldest and worst equipment often cast off from active and reserve units.  Many Guard units had a long history of fighting in America's major wars, but not the Vietnam War.  Nearly all National Guard soldiers stayed home during the Vietnam War, to the point where it was clear that joining the Guard was almost as good as getting a deferment.  

But after 9-11 sweeping changes made the Guard part of the fighting force. In the preparation for the invasion of Iraq, Chris was sent to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and retrained as an artilleryman.  After that he was reassigned to a unit preparing for deployment in late 2003.  

When he got to Iraq, he found, as I did later, that active duty units had not changed their minds about Guardsman no matter what the command said. "The active units took all of our guns and equipment. We became an admin unit. It was great for me. That's what I knew." 

His brother joined the active Army after 9-11. On the first of his deployments he passed through Camp Bucca on the way to combat service near Baghdad. Chris moved to Philadelphia after he left the Guard and his brother left active duty. He cared for his brother as injuries both in the military and after his service eventually ended his life. 

______

Talking to Chris reminded me of Sarah, the first Global War on Terror veteran I knew personally. In 1999, Sarah was a mother of two who just bought a bakery. She wanted to learn more about accounting and eventually get a degree in management. She decided to enlist in the Army National Guard and train as a payroll specialist.  

What could go wrong?

Shortly after September 11, 2001, Sarah's life was upended. She got orders to report to a training base after which she was headed for Kuwait.  In the time after the invasion of Afghanistan and before the invasion of Iraq, Sarah was part of a team that set up the American bases across the Middle East and prepared to bring in people from all over the world as cooks and maintenance workers. Sarah worked on the payroll section.

Sarah flew all over the Persian Gulf region and beyond as the U.S. and other countries were beginning to plan for the Iraq invasion. She had done little traveling and had never expected to visit a place in so far from her Lancaster, Pennsylvania, home.  

Amtrak Finally Allows Bikes--And Charges More for Them Than for Passengers

 

For 25 years I have ridden the Amtrak's Keystone trains between Lancaster and Philadelphia, as well as regional trains between Washington DC and Boston.  Several times in those 25 years I have written to Amtrak to ask that bicycles be allowed on the trains. 

Amtrak refused.  Sure, they allowed bikes on a few regional trains with baggage cars, but No! was the main answer to "Can I take my bike."

Today, Amtrak began allowing bikes on the train: for a price.

In my case, the price for taking my bike with me on a train to Philadelphia from Lancaster is double the price for me!  My ticket, with the senior discount is $10.40. The bike cost is $20!  

That means I can visit Philadelphia for $20.80 round trip or I can bring my bike at a total cost of $60.80.  A bike with a normal adult fare makes the round trip $82.  

That's crazy.  Why should the bike cost $20 each way? Weight? My bikes weight 17 and 19 pounds each. A five-car passenger train with an electric locomotive weighs 2 million pounds.  Is the addition of 19 pounds a problem?

Space? Keystone trains have seats for 400 passengers and lately have had 20 or 30 passengers per train.  If one or two people per train take a bike, will it cause overcrowding? 

If I take a bike on New Jersey Transit, the Long Island Railroad, SEPTA, the Boston MTA, the Baltimore DC MARC system or any other regional train the cost for a bike is ZERO.  

Why is it $20 per trip on Amtrak?

Defenders of God Want Theocracy and Death

Defenders of God always have a good reason to kill

In eight weeks, millions of American Evangelicals and Catholics will vote to re-elect the most despicable person ever elected to public office in America. They will vote for a draft-dodging, lying criminal because they want to stop abortion in America completely and forever.  

They say they are doing this to defend life, but they really are defending God.  And nothing in the history of the world is more dangerous. 

They believe that life begins at conception and once the Chosen Sperm breaks into the Egg-of-the-Month the resulting zygote is a human life that must be protected. And to disrupt cell division is to end a human life. There can be no discussion, even a morning after pill is murder. 

If the abortion-is-murder militants were actually Pro-Life, they would cherish every child. But Pro-Life religious people who want to impose a theocracy in America to stop abortion hold every possible anti-life in regard to post-partum people. Pro-Life voters are against:

--Medical care for all

--Regulating guns used for mass murder, even of children in schools

--Environmental regulations that keep lead out of water and therefore out of children

--Air and water pollution regulations of all kinds

--Action on the effects of climate change

--Keeping together families of those begging for asylum at the border. Defenders of God take the Bible literally except for troublesome passages like "welcoming the stranger in your midst" and "caring for widows and orphans in their need."  

--Most sadly, they are worshipping a despicable liar who inverts the Beatitudes every day of his disgusting life. The Apostle Paul asked with Jewish sarcasm if we should sin more so we could get more grace.  But the pathetic Trump cultists cheer Trump's lies as long as he is "owning the libs." What a disgusting inversion of every every word of the Beatitudes. 

It is as if Paul wrote a second Book of Romans and urged the citizens of the eternal city to worship Nero--the Trump of the first century. 

MAGA looks back. Always back.  How far back?  Before Civil Rights. Before Voting Rights. Before Women's Rights. Before Gay Rights. In the mouth of Republican child molester Roy Moore and apostate pastor Doug Wilson, all the way back to slavery. The view of MAGA exalts denying rights to more and more and more people.

When the MAGA cult looks back before the Civil Rights Act, they want a time when lynching was acceptable, when people sent postcards from lynchings, when they cheered lynchings in groups of hundreds.  Jim Crow America killed thousands of innocent men by mob hanging and mutilation.  

The Evangelical Church in the American South endorsed Jim Crow and provided the Biblical justification for chattel slavery before that. There is nothing Pro-Life about slavery, Jim Crow and racism.  

A Defender of God can tell you life begins at sperm collision and vote to protect life for the entire nine months in the womb, but at the same time they do "God's will" with the unborn, they will do nothing to prevent the slaughter of first graders in school, nothing to protect poor kids from preventable disease and death, wave the Confederate flag, the flag of the failed state that enslaved millions, and worship a fat coward who lies every time his lips move. 

The only way to have a democratic country is to take power from the Defenders of God. If they have power, they will take away rights and eventually they will take human life without remorse.