Books for Iraq

My leave is rapidly coming to an end and my bookshelf is trying to jump into my duffel bag along with bike stuff I am bringing back to the land of dirt and gravel. Among the books going is an old copy of the The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan. I was up late one night and read the first act of "Pirates of Penzance." It's like reading Shakespeare (as opposed to seeing the performance of the play)--I don't have to strain my ears to catch the jokes delivered at auctioneer speed in a British accent. I can read at my own pace and not miss the jokes. "Hamlet" is also going back with me.

Ivan Amato's delightful book Stuff is going in my backpack for the long flight along with a volume of Orwell's essays. Malcolm Gladwell's Blink and CS Lewis' The Allegory of Love are in the duffel bag along with copy of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species. I am bringing Darwin in part because my wife just read me a few pages from How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie--the first great American self-help book in the 20th century and clearly an influence on every one of the tens of thousands of self-help volumes that followed.

Anyway, hearing Carnegie reminded me of CS Lewis' maxim that we should only read the commentators on a book after we have read the book itself. I recently read essays criticizing Carnegie, but had not read the book. After hearing just a few pages, he seems brimming with good sense and based much of the book on a long study of the life of Abraham Lincoln. So I will read his book before I listen to anymore criticism. Imagine if AM talk radio hosts had to actually deal with the reality of politics before they spoke on an issue. The silence would be deafening.

Back to Darwin. I have no quarrel with Origin since nearly every working scientist acknowledges his great insights, and blaming Darwin for misuse of his theory is as stupid as blaming Einstein for moral relativism. But I never read Darwin's great book, so I plan to amend that. I am also bringing The Road to Reality by Roger Penrose more as a reference book than something to read.

Day After the Race

The training ride in a double pace line


Jan took this on the shorter route home. It's still hard to believe how green Lancaster is compared to Iraq.

Unlike running, there is no day off for recovery with bicycling. The day after a race everybody rides. The ride on Monday is somewhat easier than the mid-week rides which is the only reason I thought I could keep up for at least part of the way on the 35-mile daily training ride. I stayed with the pack until the base of the big climb in the middle. Jan Felice was kind enough to ride up the hill that is a little shorter than the main route, but still a climb more than a mile long. We rode to the descent on Turkey Hill which was aborted by tree-cutting that closed one side of the road--no coasting race today. I hope to do that once more on Friday.

Jan and I took a shorter route home. After riding with Lisa before the ride, I still rode a total of 40 miles. I'll ride 15 miles with Lisa this evening then go to the Wednesday night training race (known here as "Worlds") before riding over to Westminster Presbyterian Church to hear my wife talk about faith, math and infinity.

I am going to enter both races this weekend in Lancaster County. I might as well be tired when I go back to Iraq.

In other bike news, I mailed the GT Peace 9R bike to myself yesterday. Hopefully it will be in Iraq soon after I get back.


The peleton riding up a short, steep hill on the way to the descent at Turkey Hill

Photos by Jan "I've Got a Camera in my Race Jersey" Felice

Improbable Post

This morning I am past the halfway point of my two-week leave--152 hours to go. Returning to Iraq means I will be sleeping alone for the next 7 months. But then I remembered Video #103 in the Improbable TV collection. I won't be sleeping alone. Every bed has tiny bugs to keep me company on those long Iraqi nights--yours too!

If you decide to look around the Improbable.com site you will find the strangest scientific papers on the Web--they have a magazine called The Annals of Improbable Research in case you, like me, still enjoy reading words on paper. One of the reasons I am returning to Iraq is to help make the world safe for people who study the use of Coke as a contraceptive:

Father's Day

Father's Day has been my favorite holiday (or whatever it is) for more than a decade now. It's early in the summer so school is out but summer camps haven't started yet. I spend most of the day with my kids. This Father's Day I was with my family from the time I woke up until just a few minutes ago when they all went to bed.

Just before 8am, my daughter Lisa and I rode to the Greenfield Criterium, a race that has been one of the Pennsylvania State Bicycling Championship races for more than a decade and has always been held on Father's Day. From 2001 - 2004 Lisa raced at Greenfield in individual races and with me on the tandem. Today we both used the ride to the race as a 7-mile warm up: me for the bike race, she for a five-mile run that is part of her summer training for cross country in the fall.

I warmed up with my teammate Kevin then we lined up at 9am for the 55+ State Championship race. The field was small, just over 20 riders, but included several masters state and national champions. Worse than that for me, each one-mile lap of the 20-lap race ends with a 1/4-mile 5% climb. On the positive side, my wife and kids were on the side of the road near the start-finish line cheering every lap. They only cheered for me for five laps. I was hanging in for most of five laps, but at the end of the fourth lap they rang the bell for a premium prize or "preem" as they are called. For the first four laps there were a few half-hearted attacks that got sucked right back into the pack so I could hang on. After that bell rang, one of the stronger riders took off on the long, shallow downhill. By the flat stretch at the bottom of the hill we were strung out in a line going 32mph. I was 8th at the beginning of the lap and last as we turned up the hill to the start-finish line. By the time they crossed the start-finish line I was gasping, wishing I had skipped breakfast, and watching the rest of the riders disappear.

But I only expected to last three laps, so I felt pretty good. We cheered for my teammate and for Scott Haverstick for a few more laps then Lisa and I rode home to change for a day trip to NYC. It was fun to be in a pack again and riding fast, even if it was not for very long. I am going to need a lot of hill training when I get back from Iraq.

Just after 11 am we were on the road to NYC. We drive to Newark, park the car and take the train to Penn Station when we go to NYC. When we first got to NYC my kids walked south on Broadway from 32nd to get some lunch and I went up to 6th and 47th to the NY Post office. I visited a friend there for a few minutes, but like every major daily they do maximum work with minimum staff, so after we chatted for a while I went across the street to Pret a Manger (Ready to Eat) for a sandwich and a drink since the kids had already finished eating.

While I was eating, a tall man in his early 60s strode in. He was dressed casually in expensive clothes. He had a theatrical air enhanced by his well-dyed, well-coiffed red hair (NO ONE his age has red hair). He was waving a $20 bill over his head and saying "I need change." He passed three other people in line and shoved the bill toward a young woman behind the counter who took it then continued to wait on the customer in front of her. Mr. Drama paced left, turned and looked at me (I was in uniform) and said "Gussman, what MOS are you?" in a very Broadway voice. I kept eating. He said, "I was a 95B20 in Quan Tri in 1967. I used to drive lifers like you crazy." Then he grabbed his money and strode out.

This dramatic draftee was in when soldiers wore their rank on their sleeve or collar. He had no idea what rank I was and assumed I had served for the last three decades or more. You just don't get guys like him in the Army without a draft.

Then I met my kids at 23rd and we went to Chinatown to shop at the street vendors. Lisa's senior project was a study of street vendors. She took me to a shop that had a basement storage area where a street vendor had taken her to show her the best stock she had. We walked back to the north on Broadway. Nigel and I got coffee and watched people go by while Lauren and Lisa shopped. We then took the Subway to Penn Station and cuaght a train to New Jersey. I have been trying to eat food I can't get in Iraq. Almost every day I buy bread from a bakery. Today it was NY Challah from Zaros. We at Chinese food in New Jersey (Chinese food at the DFAC is not very good.) then drove the 150 miles back to Lancaster singing along with a playlist of songs from Lauren's iPod:

Boom Boom Boom -- the outhere brothers
Spice up your life -- spice girls
Because you loved me -- Celene Dion (Very funny when sung by a 9-yr-old boy)
Back at one -- brian mcknight
Could you be loved -- bob marley
Baby baby -- Amy Grant
I know you want me (calle ocho) -- pitbull
Number one -- john legend (featuring Kanye west)
She hates me -- puddle of mud
The lion sleeps tonight -- lion king soundtrack
Let it rock -- kevin rudolph and lil wayne
Paper planes -- M.I.A.
Wake me up before you go go -- Wham!
Beautiful Girls (remix) -- sean kingston
Hello, I love you -- the doors
Get off of my cloud -- the rollingstones
Boom Boom Pow -- Black Eyed peas
Single ladies -- Beyonce
Welcome to the world -- kevin rudolph
Let's call it off -- drake
Get silly -- V.I.C.
Girl talk songs
New Soul -- yael nai m
1234 -- feist
Hot Revolver -- lil wayne and kevin rudolph

Father's Day doesn't get any better than this.

Rainy Day in America

Today I washed clothes, ran errands and also did nothing for an hour or so. It was raining. I did not want to ride the bike because I wanted it to be clean for the race tomorrow. I walked in the rain a little just to enjoy the feeling of rain. I heard it rains in the Fall in Iraq and the whole country turns into grimy mud. I am quite sure that is true and rain in Iraq is as miserable as sun in Iraq can be. But here every kind of weather is wonderful.

The kids and I ate pizza for dinner because even with the tons of food we get, you can't get real USA pizza in the DFAC.

Drive Toward the Sun

For the almost 200 people attending the memorial service for Carol Jo Crannell today, the directions to get from the service to the reception afterward included the line "drive toward the sun." The service was held in the auditorium of the Physics department at Catholic University in Washington DC. The service afterward was at the home Carol had lived in with her family for more than three decades in Silver Spring, Maryland. Silver Spring is northwest of Catholic U. so the directions took us through a short maze of DC streets before we turned north. It was 6pm when the service ended so driving west meant driving toward the sun (actually, as Carol would known well, the sun was not exactly west, but 15 degrees south of west at 6pm since it is Daylight Savings Time).

The service was a celebration of a life well lived by family, friends, teachers who worked with Carol on a NASA outreach program to schools, and colleagues from NASA Goddard. After the funeral for an infant child I attended earlier this week, it was good to be at a service for woman who lived her life well and fully. It is no small irony for me that the grief I have experienced during my first weeks of deployment is in America, not in Iraq.

Here's the short bio on the program for the service:

Carol Jo Argus grew up in Columbus, Ohio, the oldest of four children.  The nuns at her Catholic schools successfully encouraged her parents to support her academic endeavors.  She earned her B.A. from Miami University and a PhD from Stanford University, both in physics.  While a graduate student, she married Hall Crannell and had the first of her three daughters.

After graduate school, the family moved to Maryland where her house was always open to friends and filled with an abundance of pets. Carol worked for Goddard Space Flight Center as a solar astrophysicist, studying solar gamma rays and playing an instrumental role in the success of SUNBEAMS, a NASA teacher internship program.  She loved going to the balloon launches and seeing her payloads rise safely into the air.  

Carol was active in Girl Scouting her entire life, leading large camping trips and teaching other leaders outdoors skills.  She was a strong advocate of her local civic association, a clerk of course in her daughters’ summer swim league, and a regular blood donor.  Once her daughters grew up, she began square dancing with Hall, and the two of them managed to get at least one of her granddaughters hooked.

Carol is fondly remembered by her husband, her three siblings (Pam, Scott, and Connie), by her three daughters (Annalisa, Francesca, and Tasha), by her eight grandchildren (Rebecca, Lauren, Argus, Iolanthe, Lisa, Nigel, Anika, and Janelle), and by her many friends and colleagues.

Tour de Tallil Ali Air Base, Iraq

Rich Ruoff, bicycle race promoter extraordinaire has agreed to serve as promoter for the Tour de Tallil Ali Air Base, Iraq, on Saturday, September 5 at 0500. He already has the race up on his web site and will be putting the event on www.bikereg.com the place where bicycle racers around the country find and register for races. Rich wants to actually be on site for the race which is not going to happen, but it is fun to see a race in Iraq on his calendar of events.

I will be riding in one of Rich's road races on June 28, the day before I go back to Iraq. It is a very hilly race on country roads near Lancaster so my big goal will be to avoid being lapped by the winner. I have been riding at Tallil, but riding on flat roads does not get me in shape for hills.

Yesterday I rode a mile or so in the rain, another very strange experience for someone who has been living in Oklahoma, Kuwait and Iraq. I saw a couple of storms in Oklahoma, but they were over in hours. The rain here in Lancaster was off and on for two days. It is SO green here.