Riding 400 Miles to a Picnic

In the second week in July, I took a bike trip to Boston.  Actually, it was a trip with a bike more than a bicycle trip, sort of like the trip I took last year across Eastern Europe. I rode the bike, rode trains, took a ferry from Orient Point, Long Island, to New London, Connecticut, and in between met friends and rode in some of my favorite places. 

The reason for the trip was to attend one of the pre-event Ig Nobel Prize picnics for volunteers.  I have been a volunteer for the Igs since I returned form Iraq in 2010. As it turns out, I was not the only person to ride to the picnic, but the other guy rode from across town. I will say more on the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony and the picnic in the next post.

When I got back from the trip to Europe last year, I continued to ride long distances. I rode to Philadelphia and New York, but I did not meet people the way I did in Europe. I wondered why.

The reason became clear when I looked at how I rode: in America I ride with a goal. When I stop to eat I eat fast then get back on the bike and ride.

So this trip, I stopped to see friends and I talked to people when I stopped. On the first day, rode as far as Paoli and got on a regional train to Philadelphia.  I met a Marine and his grandson and had a real conversation, written here.

On the first day, I left the bike in Philadelphia, went home for the night and started from Philadelphia the next day.  Late in the day, I got on New Jersey Transit so I could meet up with my racer buddy Jim and ride from Times Square to Fort Lee, NJ.  We rode part of the way on the west side bike path which has new barriers every place that a vehicle could get on the path. Pairs or parallel concrete barriers make sure the path is closed to cars since the terrorist attack in the Spring. 

The next day I rode with Jim in the morning from NJ to Times Square, then met a political activist friend for lunch in Manhattan. After lunch, I went to the Holocaust Museum in BatteryPark, then rode through Brooklyn and started the ride across Long Island.  I was almost halfway up the island when I stopped. 

The next day, I rode to Orient Point.  When I stopped to eat, I talked to a couple who wondered what it was like to ride across Long Island.  I could tell them that the east and west sides were completely different.  The east end in Brooklyn up to 30 miles from NYC is traffic and busy, though not narrow, roads. Then just about half way, the island becomes rural. Farms, trees, and fields are the landscape from mid-island to the east extreme at Orient Point. 

When I rolled up to the ferry terminal I saw lines of cars waiting to board. From my experience with customs in Eastern Europe, I rode past all the cars right up to the boarding ramp.  The guy at the dock told me where to get a ticket.  I rolled onto the boat and went straight to the other end with the first cars off.  When I stopped, a guy with a Battenkill t-shirt walked up and introduced himself. He had done last year’s Battenkill race, a classic race in upstate New York. I raced in 2016. We shared stories about 68 miles of pavement, dirt and steep hills up and down. 

After the ferry, I rode northeast out of New London. It was almost 5 p.m. when I rolled off the big ferry. I planned to ride till dark and see if I could get close enough to Providence, Rhode Island to take a train to Boston that night—or ride the next day.

I made it Wickford Junction, the southernmost train station on the MBTA Providence line. It was a long ride in sweaty clothes to Boston.  But taking the train tonight meant I could stay in Cambridge and ride to my home in Stoneham the next day and still get to the picnic. I got up late, rode to Stoneham and visited my parents’ grave.

After the visit, I rode through the cemetery to the upper entrance for pedestrians.  Lindenwood Cemetery is on the side of a hill.  Narrow steep roads curve up and down in serpentine paths from the bottom to the top of the cemetery.  When I was in the 4^th and 5^th grade at Robin Hood Elementary School in Stoneham, one of my friends was Bobby Sweeney. He was fearless on a bicycle.  We would race down those hills skidding, sliding and occasionally crashing into headstones. Bobby almost always won the races and he crashed more than any of us.

After I left the cemetery, I rode to City Cycle on Main Street near the corner of Montvale Avenue. The bike shop is in the same location it was in 1959 when it opened. I talked to the owner, Eric Barras. I bought the last bike I owned as a kid at City Cycle. It was a green Schwinn Varsity ten-speed.  I bought when I was 12 years old in 1965.  I worked full time in the summer since I was 12, but I had Monday off and would take long rides on this bike. On summer day in 1966, I rode to New Hampshire and back. The 112-mile round trip was the longest one-day ride until almost 30 years later, when I got addicted to cycling again.  That Schwinn got stolen not long after my ride to New Hampshire. I gave up cycling for almost 25 years after losing that bike.

Eric is 79 and still fixing and selling bikes at City Cycle. He grew up in Lynnefield, but has worked at City Cycle for nearly six decades. 

After City Cycle, I rode through Stoneham Square and back to Cambridge, then to the Ig Nobel picnic in Brookline.  This picnic was my reason for the 400-mile bike, train, boat ride to Boston.  I was one of two people who ride to the picnic, but the other guy did not ride quite as far. 

Continued in the next post

Who Fights Our Wars: Marine Veteran on a Local Train

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Recently I rode to Philadelphia from Lancaster. After 50 miles, I knew I was going to be late, so I rode to a station and caught a local train.  I had to walk to the end of the first car with my bike. After ten minutes, I stood and turned around to adjust the bike.  A guy two seats away traveling with his grandson. When I sat back down he said, “When did you serve?” He saw the tattoo on my right leg.  I told him when I served.

He told me he was a Marine in Vietnam, 1969-70. He pulled his t-shirt to the right at his neck to show me two scars on his shoulder where he was shot. He told me briefly about the fire fight, about getting hit twice and the medics carrying him away from where he fell. His grandson, who was about 20 smiled as his grandfather told the story.  Clearly, he had heard before how his grandfather was wounded, but he liked that Grandpa had someone to talk to who was also a veteran.

In telling me the story of his getting wounded and going back into combat, he said several times, “Best year of my life, worst year of my life.” That got a smirk out of his grandson who clearly heard that phrase a lot. Then the Marine said, “Wait, you re-enlisted and went to Iraq? You must have been……”

“…..56,” I said. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.” 

He laughed. The grandson laughed with us. Then the conductor called the stop and they got up to leave.  Both waved as the walked up the aisle.  He was proud of those scars and clearly had vivid memories of getting wounded. But he served in an unpopular war.  I hope there are people thanking him for his service and listening to his stories now. I’m glad I got to hear his story and see his grandson’s face as we talked.

The Philosopher of War and Terror and Politics: Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt 1906-1975

Today a friend asked and I were talking about politics and how refugee problems have led to wars in the past. Then we talked about how much current trouble stems from the way countries handle refugees at their borders. 

Which led me to recommend the books of Hannah Arendt. I am an obsessive reader. Arendt is one of about a dozen authors of whom I read most or all of their work.  So I thought I would make an annotated list of Arendt’s works. 

Hannah Arendt is a philosopher. She studied under Martin Heidegger, completing a PhD in 1928 at age 22 at the University of Heidelberg.  She escaped Germany in 1933 moving to France then to America where she became a citizen and is identified as an American Philosopher. 

I comment briefly on the books I have read. I also include at the end the books I have not yet read.

Eichmann in Jerusalem: Arendt’s most well-known book and most controversial is not philosophy, but reporting for the New Yorker magazine about the trial of Adolph Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1961.  In this book Arendt uses the phrase “the banality of evil” to describe Eichmann. Because Eichmann was responsible for deporting three million Jews to Death Camps, many wanted to see him as evil incarnate. But he was a failed salesman with a talent for logistics, a failure twisted into evil, not an evil mastermind.

Origins of Totalitarianism is a long and brilliant work on how modernity and the crisis of refugees and stateless people led to both world wars and to the creation of totalitarian states in Russia, Germany and later in China.  The book also clearly defines totalitarianism as a new form of government based on isolation and terror that did not exist before the 20^th Century.

The Human Condition: This brilliant book is not about Human Nature, but the circumstances of our collective life.  The book begins with the launching of Sputnik and the effect that event has had on all of humanity. 

On Revolution: The book I am reading now about the relatively modern phenomenon of revolution. She describes how the American Revolution succeeded and why nearly every other revolution has failed. 

Love and Saint Augustine: This book was her PhD thesis. I have never read anyone who better understands Christianity and what happened to the faith when it went from the margins to the center of political power.

Between Past and Future is a book of essays. All the essays are good, but the essays on education and tradition are stunning in their insight and how much they speak to problems right now.

The Promise of Politics follows up on the Origins of Totalitarianism with more analysis of Marxism and how the world of Ancient Greece, particularly Athens, still sets our expectations in the world of politics.

I have not read her collection Jewish Writings or Men in Dark Times because they essays are about the lives of people who I am unfamiliar with and Arendt takes for granted that the reader will know the work and significance of the subjects. I also have not read The Life of the Mind nor have I read On Violence. That will be next. If Democracy fails in America as it has in every other nation on earth. I want to have Arendt’s advice on violence fresh in my mind. 

If I could only read one book by Arendt, it would be The Human Condition. I wrote something on EVERY page of my copy. Next would be the Origins of Totalitarianism. Then Love and Saint Augustine.

I started reading Hannah Arendt shortly after I returned from Iraq.  I did not know it at the time, but in November 2016 I would become a political activist. Hannah Arendt describes clearly the best of politics and the worst. Because of Arendt, I am keenly aware of what political activism really means.  

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Battle of the Tanks, Kursk, 1943: A Review

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In July of 1943, the German Army’s ability to attack the Soviet Army ended in smoking wrecks and twisted bodies.  The German attack on Kursk was supposed to turn the war around and put the Wehrmacht back on the offensive. A series of delays that gave the Soviets time to prepare massive defenses doomed the attack from the start—before the start.

In his book, Battle of the Tanks, Kursk, 1943, Lloyd Clark tells the story of Kursk beginning with the rise to power of both Hitler and Stalin. Clark makes the case that the strengths and weaknesses of these two men made the biggest tank battle in history inevitable.

Clark mixes eyewitness accounts of tank crews and other soldiers on both sides with the high-level view of Generals and the two Supreme Commanders.  He begins in the 1930s when both leaders consolidated power and traces decisions on both sides that led to what remains the largest tank battle in the history of the world. 

One of the key differences between Hitler and Stalin in the view of Lloyd is that while both retained the title of Supreme Commander, Stalin was willing to name Georgy Zhukov his deputy and ceded much power to him in deciding the conduct of the battle. 

Hitler trusted no one else. In the view of most of Hitler’s generals, the battle should have begun on schedule in April. In Kursk Hitler repeated his error of 1941 in delaying Operation Barbarossa until June 22.  Hitler held back his forces until the arrival of Panther and Tiger tanks.  But in the three months that the Germans delayed, the Russians added layers and depth to their defenses.   By July, the Russians were dug in and outnumbered the Germans nearly two to one.

In the grinding dozen days of battle total casualties far exceeded a million killed and wounded. The Russians lost more men by far than the Germans, but, as the Germans lamented, the Russian reserves seemed inexhaustible and the German reserves were exhausted. 

After Kursk, the German Army fell back for nearly two years until the Soviet Army captured Berlin.

Lloyd does a good job of telling the story of the battle as well as keeping the broader context. 

Animal Farm: George Orwell's Story of the Soviet Union and Revolution

The original title, Animal Farm: A Fairy Story

On July 3, I was talking to a friend who mistrusts politics of every kind. After thinking about what he said, I realized the George Orwell’s book Animal Farm agreed with him. I re-read Orwell’s tale, alternately laughing and cringing at this dark view of human nature. 

The original title was Animal Farm: A Fairy Story. Like many other tales in this genre, before Disney, this fairy tale ends sadly.

Animal Farm can be read as a very good re-telling of the history of the Soviet Union from the death of Lenin until the end of World War II.  For years after the death of Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky fought for control. Trotsky was a revolutionary idealist. Stalin was ruthless. Stalin won.  And over time, Stalin erased the memory of Trotsky and other heroes of the Revolution.

Orwell’s tale also describes the fate of nearly all revolutions except the American Revolution.  I will be writing later about Hannah Arendt’s book On Revolutions. She explains why America did not descend into the fate of France, Russia, and nearly every revolution of the last two centuries. 

In the revolt on the Manor Farm, the animals throw the farmer off his land and run the farm themselves.  The pigs are the cleverest creatures and take over management of the farm.  At first they set up a socialist utopia, but strife begins, especially between the two pigs vying for leadership: Napoleon (Stalin) and Snowball (Trotsky). Eventually Napoleon trains attack dogs and exiles Snowball.  He continues to consolidate pig power, until finally the pigs make friends with their human neighbors and oppress the rest of the animals as badly as the humans. 

After overthrowing the Tsar, the common people of Russia ended up with worse oppression in the form of the Soviet Union. By the end of Animal Farm the animals other than pigs were worse off than they were under the farmer. 

My friend’s view of politics is vindicated in Orwell.  Checks and balances are all that stands between any nation and its own Animal Farm. Orwell said his goal in writing was to promote Democratic Socialism. He wanted to ensure no ruler could consolidate absolute power, left or right. 

So I can read Orwell as a call to go and fight for democracy. My friend can read Orwell as a parable of why political involvement will lead nowhere good. 

We both agreed in our conversation, that the history of the Church taking power was simply bad.  Every government run in God’s ends with people saying they are doing God’s will when they crush others.

In Animal Farm the pigs set up a government based on Seven Commandments of how animals should behave. Over time the pigs violate, rewrite and finally erase all of the commandments and replace it with a new one: 

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

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