Long Walk to the Gate

This very long day of beginning my return to Iraq started really well. I got up at 0500 listening to NPR news on WITF radio. I know I can listen to NPR in Iraq, but it has to be on the internet, which is not quite the same as a clock radio. At 0550 my friend Matt Clark picked me up in his van and we went to Starbucks on Columbia Avenue in Lancaster for one last latte at my favorite coffee place and a New York Times, another habit I can't indulge at Tallil Ali Air Base. Matt and I talked and joked on the 35-mile drive to the airport. Then I checked my bags and walked toward the gate.

that was the worst moment of the whole trip. My family was between 400 and 4000 miles away, Matt was on his way back home and the only person I knew was a young sergeant getting on the same plane I was boarding. He was with his wife and mother. He was sad. They were crying and I almost lost it at that point. But when I got to security, the folks who check the bags smiled at me and wished me a good trip and said to come back soon. They know the soldiers on the morning flights in uniform looking glum are the ones going back to Iraq.

When I got to Atlanta, the USO volunteers were waiting to direct us at the arrival area. A big guy in his 60s shook my hand and said, "From the look on your face, you must be going back." By noon we had boarding passes and eight hours to wait. Most everyone grabbed the free USO food and then split into two groups: one group filled the chairs in front of the big screen TV, the other went out into the walkway around the atrium and started looking for electrical outlets for their computers or started taking naps. One of the good things about these incredibly slow (by commercial standards) boring trips is that the rest and sleeping leave us with less jet lag than high-speed travelers. Of course, it's not a great nap when every 15 minutes you hear about liquid and gel restrictions for passengers on the PA system.

I just finished a six-hour wait and am now going to the gate now to begin the next two-hour wait. I am glad these uniforms don't wrinkle easily.

Hollywood

Jon Rutter wrote a follow up article about me in the "Lancaster" section of today's Lancaster Sunday News. Here's the link.

Today's Race

Nigel at the Brownstown Race

At 0845 this morning, I had rode in the first of two road races I will do this weekend before heading back to Iraq. Today's race, the Brownstown Road Race, was flat and offered no state championship points to participants, so there were not be many participants in the 55+ category--and none of the state/national championship riders that filled the field in last week's race. The race was also close to home so my daughter Lisa and I could ride the 12 miles to and from the race as a warm-up for me and cross training for her. When we arrived, she ran around the five-mile course while I finished warming up.

The eight 55+ riders started with about 30 racers in the 45+ category. With mixed categories, the older guys who stay with the younger group are the top finishers. As we made the sharp left turn toward the finish line on the 2nd of five laps, I felt like I might be able to hang on to the pack for most, if not all of the race, then in the middle of the turn I heard a rider yelling "Flat!!" and bikes started to swerve wide in the corner. I ended up in the dirt off the edge of the road. When racers hear another rider is in trouble, especially if the hear the thud and yells of a crash behind them, they ride as hard as they to drop all those trapped behind the crash. I tried to catch back on, but couldn't.

I rode the next two laps with another 55+ rider who was dropped. We passed the guy I thought would win 55+. He crashed--just scrapes and bruises--and was on the side of the road. Two more of the 55+ riders dropped out and I was 4th!!! My best result in my trip home because in today's race, there is no age-group. I will be racing with 20 and 30-year-olds on a hilly course. It should be a very short race for me.

As Lisa and I started the ride home, Lisa said that I definitely had the loudest cheering section. She and my wife and son Nigel cheered every lap as they did last week and were the only people cheering for 55+ category racers. "It's worse than when we were little," Lisa said. "Back then one or two other riders had a cheering section, now it's just you." There were other people watching the race. On the oppostie side of the road from my family, several large Amish families were gathered at the fence near the start-finish. The girls in dresses and boys in pants and with suspenders, all in bare feet, watched the race intently and, as my wife said after the race, stole more than a few glances at my African-American son Nigel standing between his blond-haired, blue-eyed mother and sister.

Saying Goodbye

Because of the schedules my family is on and because my friends are spread across a fairly large area, I have been saying goodbye since Thursday and will be saying it till I go. Thursday I went to Philadelphia and said goodbye to my friends in the city of brotherly love. With most of them, we will be in touch by phone and on email, so it was not too sad. Friday was the last time I will ride the daily training ride till next year. I really miss riding the very green hills and valleys in Lancaster County. Today my daughters were off on a nine-day trip to Europe, part of celebrating Lisa's graduation from high school. That was a lot tougher. I have seen the girls every day, especially Lisa. Lauren has a full-time job as Sports of All Sorts Camp as a counselor, but Lisa is mostly training for Cross Country in the fall. We rode together on 11 of the last 14 days. I will miss them very much until next February. Tomorrow morning my wife and son leave for Ithaca after we go to the early service at Church, so I will be saying goodbye to them and to my friends at Church tomorrow morning. Tomorrow afternoon I am racing then riding with some of my friends, so I will be saying goodbye for a lot of tomorrow.
At 6am Monday I will be on the way to the airport and starting the long trip back to Iraq. The temp here only reached the high 70s. It's supposed to be 118 when I return to Kuwait on Tuesday--at least I won't freeze!

There was an Old Woman. . .

. . .who does NOT live in the shoe, but she and her husband own the shoe house in York County PA. My wife and I took the tour today and it began with the owner, a woman in her mid 40s saying, "Sometimes I feel like and old woman but I do not live in this shoe." The Haines Shoe House is a real livable home built 60 years ago by an eccentric millionaire who made his fortune selling shoes. The house has five levels and Mr. Haines used it as a guest house for his mansion several miles down the road. At the time it was built it was a mile off the old Lincoln Highway on a lonely ridge with a beautiful view. Today US Route 30 is less than 50 yards away. I have passed the Shoe House hundreds of times, but until today never went inside. The strange structure has a master bedroom in the toe, a kitchen in the heel, kids room and maids quarters in the upper part of the boot and a basement down in the sole.

Speaking of my wife, which I did not do on Wedensday's post, she spoke on Wednesday at Westminster Presbyterian Church, a one hour talk on God, Math and Infinity for about 150 people. The talk condensed the seven-week series she did at Wheatland Presbyterian Church during the last two months. She is an engaging speaker and had the audience laughing when they seemed to be getting lost in the details of countable infinities. She got a lot of questions after the talk about her family and how they feel about her faith since they don't believe. Her final comment was about her middle sister who she said, "Now attends Church sometimes and sings in the choir when she likes the pastor. . .but not in THAT way!" So she ended with a big laugh.

One More Trip to Philadelphia

Today I took the train to Philadelphia after riding with Lisa in the morning. It was a lot of fun making jokes with my co-workers and talking about the kinds of things we will b doing when I get back. I also had a chance to talk with David Black, a teacher of both computer technology and chemistry who is in Philadelphia at Chemical Heritage Foundation for the summer as a visiting scholar. David teaches in rural Utah. He had to teach both chemistry and technology to students in a small school with little lab equipment, but the school had vans so he took the kids to sites where they could see chemistry in action. The students took video cameras and made podcasts about their visits to a glassblowing shop, a cement plant, and a berylium mine. You can learn more and see the videos at his Web site. Part of his time at CHF will be devoted to applying for grants to continue and expand his project for other school districts in neighboring states and eventually across the country. David and I will be keeping in touch over the next seven months while I am back in the Sandbox.

In addition to hanging out with my friends, I spent most of an hour wandering through one of my favorite bookstores, The Philly Book Trader at 7 North 2nd Street. For $30 I got an adapation of The Count of Monte Cristo in simple French. Aristotle's Rhetoric in French. The Rising Tide by Jeff Shaara, Solzhenitsyn's Harvard Address and his book First Circle, and a paperback copy of CS Lewis' Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature. My duffel bag is almost full.

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.