First Flat Fixed: Pinched in a Panama Pothole

Today I had my first flat in Panama.  The pothole was not quite as bad as the one above, but for those who kvetch about potholes in Pennsylvania, Panama has a lot more.  

Today I was rolling back toward the canal from the Gamboa road junction. I stayed away from the edge of the state highway running along the canal to avoid the gaps in the pavement, but saw a pothole too late to swerve.  The front tire flatted immediately, the back was fine.  

I was near a bus stop at the village of Paraiso a five miles from where I live.

Buses in Panama do not allow bicycles on board.  I waved at  a couple of taxis, then ordered and Uber.  It was $5.83 to take me home.  The driver didn't have a bungee cord to put the bike in the trunk, so I took the wheels of and held it in the back seat.  

I fixed the flat at home and rode to a local bike  shop to buy another tube. When I got there I saw a small bulge in the sidewall.  The tube was coming out. I had cut through the sidewall. The shop owner wasn't busy so I bought a new tire and he put it on for me.  $50 with an extra tube. All the tires he sold were Goodyear Eagles--which is what was on the bike already.

With all the potholes here, I will bring back more tubes and cartridges and a pair of Continental Gatorskin tires.        

Ukraine Defies the U.S. to Launch Offensive Into Russia

 

Ukraine Defies the U.S. to

Launch a Showy Offensive

Into Russia

Observing Israel’s moves in the Middle East, Kyiv gambles on an American power vacuum

BY VLADISLAV DAVIDZON

AUGUST 18, 2024

On Aug. 6, Ukrainian mechanized forces, likely a division strong, invaded Russia’s Kursk Oblast. In the process, Kyiv had recaptured the battleeld initiative, undermined the narrative that it was doomed to surrender, and caused the Kremlin obvious political embarrassment. The Ukrainian high command claims that the incursion has resulted in the capture of 74 settlements and the occupation of 390 square miles of Russian territory— more than double what the Russians concede. Moscow was forced to evacuate nearly 200,000 civilians from the Kursk and Belgorod

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/ukraine-offensive-kursk-russia 1/11

8/19/24, 5:05 PM Ukraine Defies the U.S. to Launch a Showy Offensive Into Russia - Tablet Magazine

regions, as it brought in reserves and heavy weaponry, while the Russian air force began striking the Ukrainian forces in Kursk and across the border in the Sumy Oblast. While the Ukrainian military claimed on Tuesday that it has gained an additional 15 square miles, the Russians said they have blocked any further advance.

Whatever its strategic signicance turns out to be, the Ukrainians maintain they were sending a signal to the Kremlin as well as to the White House that Kyiv was nished operating under self- defeating constraints and that it would now probe red lines that had been set out by both powers. Kyiv has long been frustrated at being provided with just enough support from Washington in order to not lose—but not enough to overcome the numerically superior and better nanced Russian army. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has expressed that frustration publicly, stating that “our partners are afraid of Russia losing the war.”

Unlike last summer’s failed counteroensive in Kharkiv, Ukraine launched the Kursk operation without rst informing Washington of its plans. In fact, Zelenskyy waited a week to break the remarkable operational secrecy that had enveloped the operation.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/ukraine-offensive-kursk-russia 2/11

8/19/24, 5:05 PM Ukraine Defies the U.S. to Launch a Showy Offensive Into Russia - Tablet Magazine

“Ukraine’s decision to proceed came exactly a week after Israel had carried out a pair of high-profile assassinations deep in enemy territory.”

Share
→

What changed in July is that the Ukrainians, like other embattled U.S. allies, were faced with a new opportunity in Washington: The cognitively impaired president had been forced out of his reelection bid in favor of his vice president, who was now out on the campaign trail, three months before the election. With this emergent power vacuum at the White House, the Ukrainians decided to bypass both the deposed occupant of the White House as well as the sta of his hypercautious National Security Council, instead of slowly bleeding to death under rules guaranteed to produce slow-motion defeat.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/ukraine-offensive-kursk-russia

3/11

8/19/24, 5:05 PM Ukraine Defies the U.S. to Launch a Showy Offensive Into Russia - Tablet Magazine

“The United States government currently has no strategy for Ukraine. Zero. None at all,” a former high-ranking Ukrainian intelligence and national security ocial told Tablet. “That fact is apparent to the current Ukrainian government. The political decision and the timing chosen to go into Kursk were made at the political level by the Zelenskyy administration at the request of the army command. Which wanted to take the initiative.” The former intelligence ocial added, “This is war, and I cannot recall an example, any time in history, of a war being won while commanders were unable to make their own decisions and to take on their own responsibilities.”

The Ukrainians had planned this type of operation for a long time—reports of Kyiv’s plots to launch incursions into Russia go back to early 2023. Tellingly, however, the decision to proceed came exactly a week after Israel had carried out a pair of high- prole assassinations deep in enemy territory. On July 31, the Israelis took out Hamas’ former chief Ismail Haniyeh in a Tehran guesthouse during the inauguration ceremony of the new Iranian president. The day before, they had eliminated the top Hezbollah military commander, Fuad Shukr, in the heart of the group’s stronghold in Beirut.

Kyiv observed carefully how Israel conducted its strikes immediately after Prime Minister Netanyahu returned from a triumphant speech before the U.S. Congress. In fact, earlier this

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/ukraine-offensive-kursk-russia 4/11

8/19/24, 5:05 PM Ukraine Defies the U.S. to Launch a Showy Offensive Into Russia - Tablet Magazine

week the chair of the Ukrainian Parliamentary Committee on National Security and Defense, Roman Kostenko, explicitly referenced the Israeli example in a televised interview. “So Israel announced that they would take the advice of their partners very seriously but would afterward make their own decisions in the best interest of their own national security. I think that we can simply mirror that approach in our own case.”

There are limits to the analogy with Israel, which is ghting a much weaker terror group in an innitely smaller territory the borders of which Jerusalem controls entirely. Nevertheless, Ukraine seeks to leverage the optics of turning the tables on the Russians to force the Americans to back a fait accompli on the battleeld. While the motivation behind the Ukrainian decision is clear, less so is its ultimate objective. It is far too early to draw serious assessments of Ukraine’s battleeld successes. Caught o guard, the Russians are currently on their back foot. But they may very well regroup, counterattack and drive out the Ukrainian forces. Should the Russians succeed in recapturing the entirety of the occupied Russian territory, before the Ukrainians are able to leverage their gains, the Ukrainian gamble could prove to have been a costly waste of scarce resources and manpower. It is also

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/ukraine-offensive-kursk-russia 5/11

8/19/24, 5:05 PM Ukraine Defies the U.S. to Launch a Showy Offensive Into Russia - Tablet Magazine

possible that this assault is merely a preamble or diversion for another forthcoming strike in a dierent theater of operations. That said, there is no denying that the current incursion into Kursk is substantively and qualitatively dierent from Ukraine’s earlier, limited raids into Russia’s Belgorod region. Last year’s lightning raids and temporary raising of Ukrainian ags over a few Russian border villages were conducted using units of exiled Russian defectors to oer a modicum of deniability. The current oensive has seen detachments of elite, battle-hardened Ukrainian battalions deployed, backed by air power, and with the mechanized Ukrainian force seemingly attempting a blitz to take as much territory and as many targets of opportunity as possible: railroad hubs, energy infrastructure such as the Sudzha gas hub currently in the Ukrainian forces’ hands, and possibly the local nuclear power plant. Signaling their intention to dig in, the commander of the Ukrainian Ground Forces, Oleksandr Syrskyi, announced last Thursday that Kyiv had set up a military commandant’s oce in the parts of the Kursk region under its control.

The Ukrainians hoped the Kursk operation would challenge the consensus that they could not break out of a stalemate. While Kyiv intended to get the Russians to transfer some units out of front-line positions in order to make them defend their own territory and reduce pressure along the front, the number of Russian battalions likely to have been rotated out from the front

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/ukraine-offensive-kursk-russia 6/11

8/19/24, 5:05 PM Ukraine Defies the U.S. to Launch a Showy Offensive Into Russia - Tablet Magazine

lines appears to be less than what the Ukrainian general sta would have hoped for. Much of the defense of Kursk Oblast seems to be conducted by ad hoc Russian forces cobbled together from a combination of conscripts, interior ministry troops, border guards, Chechen units, national guard, and units already stationed inside the country. Furthermore, the Ukrainians also had to shift their own resources for the Kursk operation, which led to Russian gains around, and the likely fall of, the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk Oblast.

One eect that the operation has denitely had is lifting the stoic but somewhat depressed public mood, which is now at its highest point since the start of the successful Kherson counteroensive two years ago. The Ukrainians have long desired to bring the consequences of the war home to the Russian citizens who are perfectly willing to countenance the war so long as it does not inconvenience them directly. Moreover, Kyiv hopes to showcase its capacity to deploy Western arms (including the newly arrived American F-16 ghter jets) in order to create the impression that it is more than just a romantic lost cause. Introducing a new equation that ostensibly exposes the limits of the Russian military and forces a stalemate of sorts would be the best outcome Kyiv could hope for with this operation, as both sides wait to see the results of the November election in the United States.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/ukraine-offensive-kursk-russia 7/11

8/19/24, 5:05 PM Ukraine Defies the U.S. to Launch a Showy Offensive Into Russia - Tablet Magazine

Putin seems to understand the Ukrainian oensive as a negotiating ploy. On Monday, he said that Kyiv, “with the help of its Western masters,” was trying to improve its negotiating position”—though the Russian oer remains a set of nonnegotiable demands (which include Ukraine giving up ve provinces to Russia) and a Ukrainian surrender.

All the Russian rhetoric about Kyiv’s “Western masters” notwithstanding, the White House and the Pentagon were also caught o guard. White House spokesman John Kirby admitted that the U.S. was still trying to gain a better understanding of what Ukraine is doing with its Kursk incursion, quickly adding that “There’s been no changes in our policy approaches,” with respect to U.S. weapons and how they’re used, stating that the Ukrainians were still using the weapons “in an area where we had said before that they could use U.S. weapons for cross-border strikes.”

Kyiv’s gambit, therefore, rests on its ability to show Washington that it not only can mount meaningful military maneuvers, but that it can do so inside Russia, while also maintaining U.S. buy-in and support. A meme circulating over Ukrainian social media captured this tightrope walk: “If the United States will only let you use ATACMS at a certain distance from the border, you should simply move the border!”

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/ukraine-offensive-kursk-russia 8/11

8/19/24, 5:05 PM Ukraine Defies the U.S. to Launch a Showy Offensive Into Russia - Tablet Magazine

For now, the Pentagon has signaled its approval by releasing a previously planned $125 million tranche of new munitions and air defense materials several days after Kyiv initiated the Kursk operation.

The Ukrainians demonstrated remarkable operational discipline in preparing this oensive—ordinary soldiers were reportedly only informed of the battle plans the day before they were sent over the Russian border. Keeping the Americans in the dark was also key to keeping the Russian intelligence services and army from being able to prepare. “We have learned some very hard lessons from the events of the previous counteroensive,” a highly placed member of Zelenskyy’s team informed Tablet. “Last summer we told everyone what we were going to do and we all know how that turned out. Everyone knew what we were going to do and in which location we intended to strike. There is denitely something to be learned from the Israeli example of acting rst and only later explaining what you are doing.”

A senior member of the British government who is involved at the highest levels of shaping British policy toward Kyiv has informed Tablet that he was pleased with the start of the operation, since the more careful American approach had not been working for Kyiv. “The Ukrainians had to change the dynamics of the war quickly or to suer the consequences and they are now done ghting with one hand tied behind their back.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/ukraine-offensive-kursk-russia 9/11

8/19/24, 5:05 PM Ukraine Defies the U.S. to Launch a Showy Offensive Into Russia - Tablet Magazine

So we now have the spectacle of the Russian air force bombing their own cities,” he told Tablet with bemusement. “The British have a very dierent approach to military strategy in which attack is the best form of defense.”

All the Ukrainian ocials that Tablet spoke with expressed cautious optimism over the outcome of the incursion, despite the inherent risks of such an operation turning out badly and large numbers of elite Ukrainian troops dying for no discernible strategic battleeld purpose. The highly placed member of the Zelenskyy team was philosophical about the possibility of bad outcomes: “We will see how it will all turn out in the long run. But for now we really needed this victory. We really, really needed a bit of peremoha, or victory. People were really starting to lose their nerve.”

More importantly, the ocial was also condent that the Americans would not pull back support in the aftermath of the Ukrainian incursion. “We have just received the latest aid package from Washington, which represents a de facto legitimization,” he underlined. “The lesson here is that you should just behave in the way that the Americans do themselves. You should do what the Americans themselves do. Not what they tell you to do.”

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/ukraine-offensive-kursk-russia

10/11

8/19/24, 5:05 PM Ukraine Defies the U.S. to Launch a Showy Offensive Into Russia - Tablet Magazine

Vladislav Davidzon is Tablet’s European culture correspondent and a Ukrainian American writer, translator, and critic. He is the Chief Editor of The Odessa Review and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Atlantic Council. He was born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and lives in Paris.

#UKRAINE #RUSSIA #VLADIMIR PUTIN #VOLODYMYR ZELENSKY #ISRAEL

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/ukraine-offensive-kursk-russia

11/11

I Love Panama; It's Like Florida without Rednecks!

 

The Panama Canal near Panama City

So far, I have traveled to 59 countries on all six inhabited continents. In some countries, I feel very much at home. In some, I feel like I am on another planet.  

Panama is among the most familiar and easiest to be in.  The plugs are just as in the US.  No adapters. There is local currency, but US dollars work everywhere. The countryside is tropical. It seems very much like the Everglades and other tropical parts of Florida, but without rednecks and their ridiculous Trump and Rebel flags.

Also, there is a Mormon Temple near the canal:

And a cemetery that has many US military graves:

On my second day here in Panama, I bought a bike and rode up to the first lock of the Panama Canal. 

Traffic laws seem much like the US. And the cars are left drive like the US. Of course, the official language of Panama is Spanish, but I can speak a little Spanish and understand a lot from so much Spanish culture in the US.  

The Contrast

When I first went to China in the 1990s, I really knew I was in a foreign country and culture.  I took a train from Hong Kong to Guangzhou. It had a uniformed Chinese Communist crew.  Two hours later I was in the smoggiest place I had ever seen. Brown haze everywhere.  

A van took us from the train station to the hotel.  The driver hit a bicyclist and kept going. The bicyclist was supposed to get out of the way of the van. There is no tradition of chivalry I would later learn riding in Beijing, Shanghai and near the Great Wall.  

So Panama is just like home--if it rained every day.

 

Buy or Rent? I Bought a Bike in Panama

 

My second day in Panama, I bought a Giant SCR 16-speed aluminum road bike.  I bought the bike for $500 at a used bike shop in a residential neighborhood near the canal called ReCyclingPTY. They had road and mountain bikes of many vintages.  They also rent bikes for $50 per day  or $200 per week so $500 to buy for 6 to 9 months is a much better deal for me.

Andre, the owner, will also sell the bike on consignment when I leave. 

Right after I bought the bike I rode to the first lock on the Panama Canal.  Soon I hope to ride the length of the canal continuing on the same road.   

What Do Trump Voters Look Like?

 

This week I talked to a guy I have known for three decades--a lifelong conservative Christian. He is a retired professor of literature.

We like some of the same books and authors, but never agreed on politics.  From things he said, it seemed he did not vote for Trump in the last two elections. He certainly did not vote for the Democrat. But this election he is voting for Trump. Enthusiastically.  

When we spoke he was parroting Trump's lies about President Biden, about VP Harris, and despite his comfortable suburban life is willing to say the country is a disaster with 10 million illegal aliens killing Americans.   

Like his hero, this Trump voter dodged the draft.  He did it more artfully than Bone Spur Deferments, but he, like so many Trump lovers, is a Never-servative. He and Trump and other rich kids stayed home. Poor kids went in their places.  

Thirty years ago the professor felt a little bad about dodging the draft. Not now. He has been justified by his orange god.   

In 2016, I met a Trump voter with a 12-car garage. Also a draft dodger.  

Thunder Ridge Family Event: Lauren Runs, I Ride

After my rain-soaked descent of Thunder Ridge on the Blue Ridge Parkway, my daughter Lauren, who lives in Richmond, returned with me for Round Two, two days later.

She runs. We drove to base of the hill and started together for what would be a slow climb for both of us.  Lauren ran uphill until her Garmin said six miles, then turned around and ran back.  She climbed 1,400 feet then descended.  

I rode to the top of the ridge and a little past the top.  It was a slow twelve miles. I kept checking my Garmin and keeping my heart rate down so I could make the climb in 90-plus-degree heat. The elevation gain was more than 3,400 feet.  (1,047 meters)

The descent was so long that my neck started to get tired. The road is smooth and most of the turns are wide sweepers with only a few hairpins and even those are not really tight. Most of the way down I was either side of 40 mph.  The grade is averages 5 percent with a few steep places. The fastest I went was 48mph but that was on just a few of the steeper straight stretches. 

In my usual way, I was one of the slowest on the climb.  On the longest uphill segment, 19.93km,  I was an hour slower than the fastest guy in my age group.  Bernie Sanders (no kidding) climbed the hill in 1:17.  I did in 2:19.  Apparently, Bernie went down another way. He has no time on any of the descent segments. On all of the descent segments, I am the fastest by 20-30 seconds. 

What goes up must come down.  Unless it's Bernie. 

Lauren and I talked the whole 2.5-hour drive to the climb. On the way back, we were both exhausted and subdued. But after an hour we got food, felt better, and figured out how to bring peace to the Middle East as we drove back to Richmond. 

Pain Up; Rain Down: Riding the Blue Ridge Parkway

 

The climb to Thunder Ridge on Virginia's Blue Ridge Parkway is a smooth, steady, winding climb of 3,300 feet at five percent for just over twelve miles. I drove to the base of the climb on the James River and began the climb in bright sun; the temperature just over 90 degrees.

The forecast was for more of the same.  

That was true until the tenth mile. The sky to the east was bright and sunny. The sky to the west was suddenly gray.  Sprinkles began, but it was so bright to the east, I thought I could get to the top before it got bad.  

The sprinkles became light rain. The mountain to the east almost disappeared in haze.  Then with one kilometer to go, I heard thunder.  

Shit. I was too late.

I turned around and rode in increasing rain at down the hill for about a mile, then sheets of rain and crosswinds hit me.  I watched water swirl and eddy on the road in front of me.  I took off my sunglasses and tipped my helmet low so I could see.  I let myself roll for a while at 35mph then started squeezing the brakes. After riding slower for a while, I let the brakes go and went back to coasting in the torrents.  

Raindrops stung my face and arms when the wind turned and whipped toward me.  At one point after miles of descending I thought, 'At least there are no bugs!' Bugs buzzed around me all the way up.

I passed the turnoff for the ranger office and knew I was close to the bottom of the hill.  The grade lessened.  Then I was pedaling slightly uphill across the James River to the parking area.  I pulled up to the car, opened the door and emptied my pockets onto the passenger seat. Then I took the wheels off the bike, put it in the car (I have a 2001 Prius; the bike rides in the back seat; it won't fit in the trunk.) and stripped off my soaked clothes. 

I dried off with an old sheet I had in the trunk and sat on an old camouflage shirt.  It was so humid I turned on the AC and the rear window defroster. 

Tomorrow I am going back to Thunder Ridge.  The forecast is good and I want to get all the way to the top!

----

When I arrived in Richmond for a few days, I  searched on line for the toughest climbs in the area. A group called PJAMM listed their top ten climbs in Virginia.  Thunder Ridge was the longest. Here is their site.