Missing Nuts

 

Top: Skewers with and without nuts

Above: Vladimir 

I am starting small in the story of my bike trip. Smallest! A missing nut. When I arrived in Belgrade I took the bike out of the box to ride it to my hotel in the city. 

Except I couldn't. Somewhere on the trip the nut on the Skewer fell off and out of the box. The skewer holds the front wheel on. So I put the bike mostly together then got a cab. 

I walked to the nearest bike shop, but it was actually a bike tour company. No parts. But the owner, Vladimir, walked me over to a shop that sold me a new skewer. As we walked we talked about touring.  He has ridden from St. Petersburg to Barcelona!  And he is hoping to join a group riding from Cairo to Cape Town! Wow!

Thanks to Vladimir my front wheel is attached to my bike!

Riding in Fog: Every Sound Grabs My Ears

On the eve of my bicycle trip across Easter Europe, I was thinking about riding in fog. Of all the places I have ridden in the world, the thickest fog I ever rode through was on Mount Tamalpais, just across the bay from San Francisco in Marin County.

I was at a conference in San Francisco. Every morning for four days, I got up at 0530 and rode to the top of Mt. Tam and back. The 50-mile, 3-hour round trip from downtown to the peak began on city streets, then bayshore, then across the Golden Gate, through Sausalito and Marin, then the 11-mile climb up the mountain.

The third morning the legendary San Francisco fog was everywhere. It was thickest on the slopes of Mt. Tam. By five miles up I was starting to think I could grab the fog. Wisps of clouds clung to me. I was soaked. The air felt weirdly thick. I saw ghosts rush past as the white wisps took shape in the air. But the strangest sensation was sound. Since I could barely see two bike lengths in front of me, I heard everything. A chipmunk ran across the road. I would swear I heard his claws grip the pavement. Was that a pine cone dropping on the road? The climb is not steep so I was not breathing hard enough to wipe out other sounds. I felt water drip down my neck as the fog condensed on me. Did I hear it drip off me?

Then the sun blazed everywhere. One moment I could barely see. The next I was on an arid mountain in hot sun drying as I climbed the long grade.  After the next switchback I was facing south, looking where the city should be. San Francisco disappeared under a thick, white quilt of clouds. The piers of the Golden Gate raised their red arms through the fog, as did the radio tower on Mount Bruno. Nothing else was visible.

By the time I got to the top of Mt. Tam, turned around and rode down, the fog was thinner and lower. By the time I was back in the ground-level cloud I could see 100 meters ahead, important at downhill speeds.

Tanks are Symphony of Roars and Rattles

The M60A1 Patton tank that was my home and weapon in West Germany was a symphony of sound I could never quite describe in prose, so I tried poetry:

M60A1, On the Border in Fulda, October 1976

Growling, howling, eighteen hundred cubic inches

Of diesel engine roars, belches smoke and launches

Fifty-seven tons steel and rubber and flesh across a

German field.

While the engine roars, end connectors grind in the

Sprockets, center guides screech as they scrape

Aluminum road wheels lined with steel. Ammo racks

Rattle, White Phosphorus rounds in the Ready Rack shake.

Torsion bars creak, flexing over rocks and ruts. 

Ratchets, wrenches, track tools, clasps,

Hinges, and locks jangle and ring on the fenders.

Jerry cans clang in their tie downs on side of the turret

Hydraulic motor screams as the commander swings the

Turret over the driver. A cacophony of track blocks,

Bolts, rack handles, the coax ammo box,  

Cupola ammo doors, the tanker bar and Little Joe,

Assails the ears of the crew as they scan the horizon.

Across the fence, squat Soviet T-70s track the

Trundling Pattons as they parade north, roaring,

Rattling and ready to rain ruin in a moment.

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Memorial Day for an Old Soldier

World War I veteran. I'm not THAT old!

This year I am completely out of the Army after all the ambiguous years in which I was over the usual age limit. Now I have been out for a full year and my uniform is just for ceremonies, like honoring the dead.

Since my 18 years of service occurred over a 44-year period, I know a lot of soldiers who have died. I grew up in a neighborhood in which most of the men were World War II veterans, including my father.  I enlisted during the Vietnam War so I served with Korean War veterans who senior sergeants and officers in the 1970s Army.

Many of the senior sergeants and officers I served with after the Vietnam War and during the Cold War in the 70s and 80s have passed away. Most died after retirement. The 70s Army was not as obsessed with safety as the current Army, but that means I can recall a three soldiers I knew who died in training exercises in Europe.

From my Iraq War service, the soldiers I know personally who have died have taken their own lives.  Partly this is because I enlisted late in the war when combat deaths were infrequent compared to the early days of the war, and partly it is demographics: I am older than almost everyone I served with between 2007 and 2016, including the Generals and the Sergeant Majors.

So this weekend, I am thinking of the soldiers I know who served their country and have passed away: the World War II veterans who were the Dads of my childhood friends, the Vietnam and Korean War veterans who were my leaders during my first enlistment, and the Iraq veterans, especially those who suffered invisible wounds that led to them taking their own lives.

It was my honor and privilege to serve with every one of them.

Riding in China: Sprinting Away from a Snake

In July 1999 I made my first trip to China. It was a direct trip to Beijing and back. Between April 1998 and July 2001 I went overseas every month for a job I had as communications manager for a global maker of white pigment named Millennium Chemicals, Inc.

I had a day to myself at the end of the week, so I got a cab ride to a place 30 miles from the Great Wall and rode the rest of the way through the hills north of Beijing on Trek steel road bike.  As I approached the Great Wall, I was on a shaded road that had leaves lying on it--a road not used very often.  Even though there was no traffic, I rode on the right side of the road about a foot from the undergrowth along the tree-lined pavement.

Suddenly, I heard a metallic BANG! and my front wheel jerked left--not enough to flip me, but scary.  I looked down and saw a snake struck my wheel. I saw its body was whipping in the moment I glanced down. Then I looked up and sprinted to the middle of the road. I hammered the pedals for another 100 yards before I looked back. The snake was gone. I kept riding in the middle of that empty road all the way to the Great Wall.

In my travels on five continents, I have seen dead snakes in and along the road, but China is the only place I was hit by a snake.

I got to the Great Wall without further incident. I was riding in mountain bike shoes so I could climb the Wall and see what the soldiers on duty saw as they looked from this huge stone edifice.

Lucky for me, snakes have less mass than cats.  Five years before, I took a ride in an ambulance after a cat jumped from a ditch in southern Lancaster County, hit my front wheel and kept running.  I went over my handlebars and dislocated my right shoulder among other injuries.  

Compared to the cat, the snake was a piece of cake....