Leg 8
Massachusetts to Indiana
Or
Fall Colors on Steroids
Part 2
New Hampshire to Indiana
October 7-12, 1012
Sunday, October 7
New Hampshire to
Vermont
“Do not go where the path may lead.
Go instead where there is no path,
And leave a trail.”
Ralph Waldo
Emerson
There is an old biker saying, “If you don’t ride in the
rain, you don’t ride.” Well, yesterday I rode, but today I am not hoping for a
repeat. Something drier would be wonderful!
It appeared that God might be on my side today. The sun
broke early and the day promised to be much warmer than yesterday. Today being
an “extra day” in my itinerary, I planned to spend it just exploring local Vermont attractions. First, though, I thought I would give one
more shot at seeing the Epic of American History mural, aka Cowboys and Indians.
I skipped the expensive breakfast at the Hanover Inn in favor of a free cup of
coffee and an apple from a dish in the lobby, and walked across the the village
green to the college library. No luck. It was still locked up and would not
open for at least another hour. It struck me as odd that the library was not
open even if it was Sunday morning. At Michigan, the library was open late and
early. I guess not at Dartmouth. My art education would have to remain bereft
of Orozco’s masterpiece. It was a pretty walk, anyway, and on my way back to
the inn I did finally see a black male. He looked very athletic and was on
crutches. Draw your own conclusions.
I retrieved my bike from the underground garage and once
again crossed the White River where Dartmouth students rowed crew, and took my
time exploring twisty back roads to Quechee, “the Grand Canyon of Vermont, carved
over 12,000 years by the swift waters of the Ottauquechee” - but more
importantly, the home of the Quechee Diner recommended for breakfast by my
friends at Greater Boston Motorsports in Arlington. I hereby validate their
breakfast recommendation! Excellent. And
in the same little touristy shopping center I discovered a model railroad museum
that was worth an hour of child-like wonder, and a thriving new adults-only
venture, a distillery making vodka from maple syrup and milks sugars – very
Vermont! They told me they had been in business 14 years, and last year had
sold 15,000 cases. Assuming 12 fifths to a case, and allowing for wholesale
sales at less than $40, that’s between $5 and $6 million dollars of vodka in a
year. A small operation like that can support a few friends and family quite
well! Huzza for them, but at $40 a bottle, I decided I would stick with the
traditional potato variety.
A short side trip off the highway and down into the valley
revealed the quaint village of Quechee, with a glass blowing shop and
restaurant housed in the old mill, a covered bridge, a classic New England
farmhouse now a hotel of some kind, and a polo grounds (!) where they hold an
annual Scottish festival – in August. Charming, but nothing open on this Sunday
morning.
Just down highway 4 was the “Grand Canyon.” The Quechee
Gorge would get lost in one of the nameless side canyons of the real Grand in
Arizona, but even though it was overrun with tourists this Sunday, it was
nonetheless very pretty and a nice hike down to the bottom and back.
And then down US4 to Woodstock, “the birthplace of Vermont’s
first ski tow” (??? Yippee) and the Billings Farm Museum. Woodstock was picturesque, chic and crowded. However,
the Billings Farm Museum was surprisingly fascinating and delightful. The farm
was founded in 1871. They had pictures of the farm after logging of the area, the
hills completely denuded of timber. In 1934 the farm came into the Rockefeller
family through the marriage of the original farmer’s granddaughter to venture
capitalist Laurence Spelman Rockefeller.
“Hmm, Rockefeller. Probably a lot of those trees were cut
down to make railroad ties for the New York Central,” I thought to myself.
“Nice “farmhouse.”
As I learned more about how Rockefeller turned the farm into
both a park and an agricultural research center, I chastised myself for my knee-jerk
image of the railroad Rockefeller as an industrialist despoiler of the
environment. In the case of Laurence Rockefeller, the truth is quite the
opposite. Yes, he was brother of Republican Governors Winthrop and Nelson, and
a venture capitalist who helped start Apple and Eastern Airlines. That’s how he
got his money. He spent his fortune as a lifelong environmentalist who received
the Medal of Freedom from Lyndon Johnson in 1969 for his leadership in
conservation; was appointed Honorary Commander of the Most Excellent Order of
the British Empire for his conservation of parklands on Virgin Gorda and
Tortola; received similar awards from Presidents Bush (the first) and Clinton;
founded the American Conservation Association which was instrumental in
protecting large swaths of the Grand Tetons (including 1,100 acres of his own
ranch), the island of St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands; and he essentially
paid for Yellowstone Park with Northern Pacific Railroad money. Laurence
Rockefeller was a conservationist in a personal, aggressive and positive way. He
also served as President of the New York Zoological Society, and “along the
way” dedicated time and millions to cancer care and research.
I was a little ashamed of myself for my first reaction that
being rich and Republican (and by stereotype a I am being redundant)
disqualified him from being an environmentalists. In truth, environmentalists
are not all Sierra Clubbers and Isaak Walton Leaguers in Birkenstocks, but that
is part of prevailing political mythology. That mythology has a lot to do with the
conjoined development of Vietnam and
television news. Vietnam broke the faith of America’s youth in the country’s
institutions, starting at campuses which were hotbeds of leftist causes, the
journalism schools being headquarters of the Socialist Workers Party. Left
leaning journalism schools produced left leaning journalists. Politically
biased journalism filters the truth like polarized sunglasses filter sunlight;
only the predetermined rays make it through the lens. Television journalism
relies on stereotypes in sound bites and five minute “in depth” news stories to
quickly communicate thoughts to express complicated issues as simple matters of
black and white. By their very nature, these reinforce prejudices. Black and
white, coincidental choice of phrase. Nowhere is the dichotomy created between reported
truth and perception more pervasive than race relations. Is there any argument
that today black Americans are overwhelmingly Democrats because they perceive
the Democratic Party as being on “their side” in race relations? What did Biden
recently say about Republicans wanting to put blacks back in chains? Patent
nonsense, and offensive, but he gets away with it because people have come to accept
the implication as true about Republicans. Today Republicans are freely branded
as racists, without consequence. In fact, Republicans have a history of
leadership in race relations, starting with the “Great Emancipator” Abraham
Lincoln, who as the first Republican President oversaw the dismantling of
slavery in the U.S. Republicans then passed the 13th, 14th
and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, all opposed by the
Democrats. Just 60 years ago, in both the 1952 and 1956 Presidential elections,
a majority of Blacks supported Republicans over Democrats. Republican President
Eisenhower desegregated Washington DC schools and called out the National Guard
to enforce the integration of Little Rock High School in 1957. Nobody today seems
to remember that Republicans passed Civil Rights acts in 1959 to enforce Black voting rights in the South, with Vice
President Richard Nixon casting the tie-breaking vote in favor, and Senator
John F. Kennedy voting against in solidarity with his Southern Democrats! Ironically,
a year later in the 1960 Presidential contest between Nixon and Kennedy, the
newly enfranchised Blacks voted 70 to 30 in favor of Kennedy, and won him that
election! In spite of that, it was Republican votes that resulted in passage of
the next Civil Rights Acts in the
1960’s, in support of Democrat President Lyndon Johnson over largely Democrat
opposition in Congress. George Wallace was a Democrat. And, in the 1960’s a
Republican in Mississippi risked his own life to prosecute the Imperial Wizard
of the Ku Klux Klan. Colin Powell became the first “black” Secretary of State
under a Republican administration, as Condoleezza Rice became the first (black)
woman secretary of state. Etc. You get the idea. And yet today, people tend to
regard Republicans as more racist than Democrats. Crazy. Is there anybody more
racist than Al Sharpton? Well, yeah, Louis Farrakhan.
The perception probably has a lot to do with the political
trade made during the turmoil of the 60’s, coinciding with the coming of age of
today’s journalists and the culmination of the civil rights movement, the
Republicans getting the “South” and the Democrats getting the “Black vote,”
with the perception of race relations rewritten accordingly.
I escaped the Woodstock throngs in their flip flops and
motored back down US4 toward White River Junction, stopping at a small country
store in the tiny burg of Taftsville, where I borrowed a bench out front to
rest and enjoy some sharp raw milk Vermont cheddar cheese washed down by vino
verde imported from Portugal, finished with moose plop. Don’t knock it til’
you’ve tried it.
I probably shouldn’t have been ridden the rest of the way to
White River Junction after imbibing, but I had little choice if I was to return
to my hotel. I didn’t kill anybody or even have a near mishaps but I was happy
to get back without incident. Taking off my helmet, A fellow walked over to gaze
lustfully at my bike as I was talking off my helmet in the parking lot. He had
a friend who rode a Harley to San Diego and back in 12 days yah de yah de yah
de. After an obligatory comment about Harley ass buzz, I made appropriate
comments as to how incredible that ride must have been. But honestly, I no
longer have any desire to be a member of the iron butt club. I was taking about
as long to go about 1/6th as far!
Monday, October 8
Vermont to New York
The warm weather didn’t last long. It clouded over again and
was below 40 when I got up Monday.
At check out, an older couple was taking their time checking
out ahead of me at the front desk.
“Is Harry feeling better today?” his fat wife asked in that insulting
and demeaning silly baby talk voice so often used by younger people to older
people. Worse when it comes from older people to older people! By the look on
his face, Harry agreed.
“Better than what?” he grumped. His bowels growled
ominously.
Before he could fart something, I tossed my keys on the
counter, gave the clerk my room number, and thanked her for a nice night. By
the time I mounted up, the temperature had risen all the way to 42.
At this early morning hour on a Monday there was very little
traffic on the road to Woodstock, and few people on the streets in the town
when I arrived. The town was even prettier this way, so I took a loop around
the park just to admire the old houses. When I reached the top of Killington 20
miles later, the temperature had fallen back to 40. I pushed on into Rutland,
stopping for some donuts, more hot coffee to warm my fingers, and a pit stop.
For a few minutes, the sun came out and pushed the temperature up to 50, but it
was just teasing. Before I left the city limits the clouds rushed back and the
thermometer abruptly dropped back down.
It stayed between 42 and 46 the rest of the day. I pulled over and put on what
I call my full-face terrorist mask under my helmet. I was still cold. I wonder
what the wind chill is at 60 miles per hour at 42 degrees? Cold, for sure. I
kept thanking myself for being a coward and not pushing up into Nova Scotia
from Maine. I would have frozen my kotukus off.
I crossed into New York at Fair Haven, skirted the south
shore of Lake George, booked up Interstate 87 to Chesterton and turned west to
link up with state highway 28. I took it the rest of the way through Adirondack
Park. It was a lovely ride, but I didn’t tarry. I was chilly and just wanted to
reach Blue Mountain Lake. I had lunch and then spent the afternoon exploring a
great logging museum there, where I learned the park was established in 1892.
It is the largest park in the lower 48 states, comprising over 6,000,000 acres
and larger than Yellowstone, Yosemite, Glacier, Grand Canyon, and the Great
Smoky Mountains National Parks combined. In
the early 18th century, it was all the land of the Mohawk Nation,
but the Mohawks sided with the British in the American Revolution. Bad
decision. After that war, the remaining Mohawks mostly fled into Canada. By
1792, over 3,600,000 acres were sold to settlers and investors. Next came the
private “fishing clubs” of the ultra-rich started in the 1840’s, and the area
was almost fished out by 1852. In 1876, over 1,000,000 of acres were purchased
by a “farmer” (right!) from Connecticut named Mersin, who didn’t even visit his
property until 3 years later. Once he came and saw it, it didn’t take long for
the woodlands to be “harvested.” Lumberjacks worked 14 hour days 7 days a week.
It was supremely dangerous work. Most of the work was done in the winter
because they could skid the logs on the ice and snow, and float them out in the
spring. There were gigantic piles of huge logs, the rivers and lakes were
choked with logs. There were logjams, and black flies and accidents. There were
hardly any women. If you have ever visited a lumber camp museum, you quickly
realize that we are all candy asses compared to the lumberjacks. And they were not environmentalists. Within 20 years,
the forests were completely gone. The hills were stripped. The park was started
not because of overwhelming concern about the environment, but because the mud
runoff from the barren mountainside was so massive that it threatened to choke
the Erie and other canals, and break the back of the New York State economy. Then
it became a playground. It’s easy to see why.
Railroads that had brought in lumberjacks and hauled out
timber began bringing in the “swells” to towns where the wealthy vacationers
transferred to steamboats that plied the lakes to take them to new hotels. The
ultra-rich industry barons built their own “Great Camps”, and that’s where I headed,
to stay at one of these old “great camps” on Blue Mountain Lake, The Hedges,
built in 1880 by Civil War Brigadier General Hiram Duryea – who also happened
to own the National Starch Company. It end well for Hiram, though. His son shot
him to death at their New York mansion, seven bullets to the head, telling
people “the angels told me to do it.”
“General Duryea not only had a
reputation as a clever businessman but was well known as being stern and
demanding of his subordinates. During the
winters while he was in New York City, he wrote monthly letters to his foreman
complaining of the slowness and apparent laziness of the local workers. These workers were not lazy when Duryea was
in Blue Mountain Lake because he drove them hard. Not one stone or log could be put in place
without his approval. A worker, who grew
weary of Duryea’s meticulous demands, cut a stone on his own and put it in
place without first receiving approval.
The Colonel discovered the errant stone and made the mason remove it and
replace it with one of his specifications.
The mason cut the new stone then promptly threw it into the lake. Needless to say, Duryea fired the man on the
spot.”
Stern and demanding? Sounds like a tyrant. No wonder his son
shot him! However, Hiram created a classic mountain lodge at the Hedges. Set on
the shores of a pristine lake, built of massive logs and granite stones placed
in the shapes of bears and eagles, a whimsy in stone, it is truly a magical
place even today. The sunset was nothing short of spectacular.
Tuesday, October 9
New York State
When I arose in the morning there was once again a thick
mist hanging over the lake, and a heavy white frost covered the grass.
By now you recognize I am something of a connoisseur of
breakfasts! I was not disappointed. Grits with melted butter, maple syrup,
rolls stuffed with strawberry jam, eggs with hash and thick sliced bacon,
strong black coffee – superb!
My only regret at The Hedges was that I could not stay
longer.
Thinking I must be getting a little low, I glanced at the
fuel gauge and was surprised that it showed I still had nearly half a tank. I
was getting some pretty awesome mileage!
It was colder than the day before. When I pulled out at
9:15, the temperature was still only 38 degrees. By 9:40, it had dropped to 34!
Isn’t the morning sun supposed to warm things up? I had the BMW’s heated
handgrips and heated seat on high and was wearing my terrorist mask trying to
stay warm. It didn’t get back to 38 until 10:30, and stayed stuck below 41
until nearly midday. Still, the fall colors were crisp and gorgeous in the cold
sunlight. I toyed with stopping to see the Vanderbilt Great Camp, Sagamore, but
it turned out it was 4 miles off the highway down a dirt road – not appealing
on a road bike – and there were no tours
until 1:30 in the afternoon. Maybe another time. Even knowing that at my age
the “another times” become less and less likely, I decided to move on. I looked
again my gas gauge as I passed a filling station in Old Forge, but it still
showed over a quarter tank and it was still very cold, so I elected to postpone
a fill up and push on.
Mistake.
Several miles past Old Forge, the engine began to quit. The
fuel gauge still showed a quarter tank, but the engine just wound down and
wouldn’t kick over no matter how I worked the throttle. I coasted to a stop at
the side of the road in the middle of – a forest. “Oh, crap,” I cursed to
myself. Well, maybe not to myself, but there wasn’t anybody visible in either
direction to hear. “I just spent thousands of dollars to get this thing fixed.
Now what do I do? F--- f--- f---!!”
The outburst of profanity didn’t solve anything but it made me feel better. I said to myself,
a little more rationally, “It sure acts like it ran out of gas, though.”
I put my ear to the tank and shook it. No sloshing noise. I
opened the cap and stuck in my finger. I could find no gas. I began actually
hoping that I had run out of gas, although the last time that had happened on
this bike, again the fuel gauge showing I had plenty, I had to have it towed to
a shop, where it took several weeks to replace some kind of thin walled aluminum
tube that had collapsed inside the tank. That was ten miles from home. Here, I
was several miles out of Old Forge, population 1,450, and several hundred miles
from any BMW shop. That would be one expensive tow, if I could even find
somebody to do it.
And no bars – no cell service. Great. So I had to walk,
hitch, or crawl back to Old Forge just to get some gas to see if that truly was
the problem. A few cars buzzed by but didn’t even slow down.
I was not a happy camper.
All of a sudden, a pick-up truck with Texas plates pulled up
behind me. The driver leaned out and drawled “Y’all need any help?”
“Boy howdy and hallelujah, do I!”
He was biker, used to drive an Indian Chief. He and his wife
were on their way back to Texas after a life’s dream vacation in the
Adirondacks. They volunteered to drive me back to Old Forge. On the way, we
swapped stories about Indian motorcycles; I used to have an Indian Scout in that
I drove with straight pipes through the canyons and toll booths of New York
City in years gone by. They waited while I went inside, bought a red plastic
gas can for a stupid amount of money, filled it up and went back inside to pay
for the gas, and then we drove back to the BMW. It was still parked by the side
of the highway. I emptied the gas into the tank, and after a few turns as the
gas pump filled, she coughed and then roared back to life.
I had just run out of gas! I was elated that it was only a
malfunctioning fuel gauge. I thanked the couple from Texas profusely, and gave
them the new red plastic gas tank as a thank you. They were really nice people.
I would have liked to send them something more, but they would have none of it,
and I don’t even know what town they were from. So the best I can do is say thank
you again, whoever you are!
I backtracked to Old Forge and filled up, and after having
lost about an hour or two of time I was on my way west again. For the rest of
this ride, I kept a close eye on my gas level and ignored my lying fuel gauge!
Hey, at least it wasn’t raining. I thought of how miserable
it would have been if this had happened in the back roads of New Hampshire two
days before!
I rode clear of the mountains and arrived in Rome at noon.
The sun was out, it was over 50 and life was good again! Time to visit the Fort
Stanwix National Monument. (Worth the time.)
Fort Stanwix was built in 1758 at the “Oneida Carrying
Place”, an important canoe portage area on the route between Lake Oneida and
the Mohawk River. It was built to counter attacks by the French and their
Indian Allies during the French and Indian Wars, as it was known in America, or
the Seven Years War, as it was known in Europe. The fighting on the American
frontier was particularly brutal. The French brought in Indian allies from as
far away as Michigan, such as the Ottawa, who had a reputation for extreme
savagery. In fact, it is well documented that following the successful siege of
Ft. William Henry in 1757 (dramatized in the movie, Last of the Mohicans
starring Daniel Day Lewis), the noble red men killed, skinned, roasted and ate
American prisoners. Several instances are recorded of cannibalism by Indians
“in a frenzied state” as opposed to a religious ceremony. Francis Parkman’s
report went into graphic detail:
“A large number of them (Ottawa
Indians) squatted about a fire, before which meat was roasting stuck in the
ground; and approaching he saw that it was the flesh of an Englishmen, other
parts of which were boiling in a kettle, while nearby sat 8 or 10 of the
prisoners, forced to see their comrade devoured. “You have French taste, I have
Indian. This meat good for me.”
Gruesome incidents like these had to have had a major impact
on attitudes toward and treatment of Indians by the early American pioneers,
especially as this was not an isolated event. There are also reports of women
captured by Canadian tribes who were forced to eat the flesh of their children.
According to French Jesuit fathers, among the Iroquois the eating of captives
was considered a religious duty, and it is well documented that cannibalism also
formed a part of ceremonies among other Indian tribes. However, among a few
tribes, such as the Iroquois, man-eating, was practiced on a larger scale, and
with the acquired taste for human flesh as one, if not the chief, incentive though
still with captives as the victims. Among the tribes which were well known to
eat people in one or another of these forms were the Montagnais, and some of
the tribes of Maine; the Algonkin, Armouchiquois, Micmac, and Iroquois; farther
West, the Assiniboin, Cree, Foxes, Miami,
Ottawa, Chippewa, Illinois, Kickapoo, Sioux, and Winnebago; in the South, the
mound builders of Florida, and the Tonkawa, Attacapa, Karankawa, Kiowa, Caddo,
and Comanche ; in the Northwest and far West, the Thlingchadinneh and other
Athapascan tribes, the Tlingit, Heiltsuk, Tsimshian, Kwakiutl, Nootka, Siksika,
some of the Californian tribes, and the Utes. There is also evidence of the
practice among the Hopi, and allusions to the custom among other tribes of
Arizona and New Mexico. The Mohawk, and the Attacapa, Tonkawa, and other Texas
tribes were all known to their neighbors as "man-eaters." Of course, the
politically correct revisionist history of the Iroquois portrayed the National
Monument fails to mention any of this.
After the defeat of the French in 1763, British officials at
Fort Stanwix gained considerable
influence among the Iroquois, particularly with the Mohawks. In 1768, they
negotiated the Boundary Line Treaty that ceded all Indian lands east and south
of the Allegheny and Ohio Rivers to the British –which naturally pissed off the
Indians who actually lived there. However, following Pontiac’s Rebellion, the
British issued the Royal Proclamation of 1763 barring English settlement west
of the Appalachians – which pissed off the colonists who wanted to settle the
western lands. So when the Revolutionary War began in 1775, it is not especially
surprising that the Mohawks and most other Iroquois allied with the British.
The American War of Independence ultimately shattered the Iroquois
6 Nations Confederacy, which had lasted for centuries. Several tribes fought
with the Americans against the British and their fellow Iroquois. Loyalties
among area settlers were divided, too. Some of the local Dutch-German
population, who had spent 60 years settling the area and had good relations
with the Iroquois, didn’t see anything to gain and had everything to lose from
this dispute between the English colonists and their king, which the
Dutch-Germans did not see as their fight. Many of them fought with the British.
The Americans rebuilt and garrisoned Fort Stanwix, renamed
Fort Schuyler. There was intense fighting and several key battles in the area
from the summer of 1777 into 1784, extending a year after the Revolutionary War
had already ended. In the end, the Iroquois confederacy and the Mohawk Nation were
destroyed. Three tribes, the Oneida, Onondaga and Cayuga, negotiated deals with
State of New York, later transformed into a treaty with the new United States
in 1794, that once again ceded western lands that these Indians did not occupy,
this time to the Americans. They sold much of it to pay off war debts or
granted tracts to soldiers in lieu of back pay, setting the stage for
subsequent Indian wars in Ohio.
Nothing much important happened at Fort Stanwix.
From Rome, the weather held as I followed the North shore of
Oneida Lake, and then dropped down I-81 into Syracuse. Occasional lake vistas
were pretty, but the area is not especially prosperous or picturesque. Lots of
horses, but these were the working stables of regular folks, not the patrician
horse farm estates like I saw in Western Maryland. There were nice lake shore
houses, but not exuding extreme wealth, very few huge mansions. The only one I
saw surrounded by a walled compound looked stupidly out of place.
Syracuse is a fairly large old industrial city. I saw the
university from afar on a hill, but it was getting late by the time I arrived,
and I was bone chilled, so I just headed to my hotel on the far east side of
town. There was a nice young girl at the desk. I had to wait while she wrestled
on the telephone with somebody who refused to be satisfied. Something about a
lost cell phone. Across the desk, I could hear the complaining voice of an
older woman coming from the phone speaker. “Old bitch” came to mind. The young
girl got increasingly frustrated but tried to remain polite as she kept trying
to explain, over and over again. Finally she hung up, smiled weakly and said,
“I’m sorry about that, can I help you?” She looked haggard. I asked her if she
was ok? She said was worrying about her father, who was scheduled for throat
surgery the next day, and this woman had already called three or four times.
The girl still had homework and the hotel laundry to attend to yet tonight
because they were short staffed, and I forget what all else. I felt sorry for
her and did what I could to cheer her up and help her feel positive about the
surgery.
I asked her about local restaurants, and on her
recommendation I went to the Tokyo and Seoul just down the road. Whisky and
really good bulgogi was a great combination to wash away the chill of the day.
The waiter was a young Thai guy, very friendly and a flaming girly man. He came
from Bangkok to Syracuse, New York as a student, via Dubai, his “dream city.”
Some dream, in Dubai his life would be in jeopardy because of his obvious
sexual preferences. What a crazy, wonderful mixed-up place America is.
Later, worried about rain forecast for that night and the
next day, I went out to retrieve a bag and tend to my bike. A fellow parking
his car nearby walked over. “Little cold to be riding, isn’t it?” he asked. We
talked about the weather, and of course, bikes. He had a Honda Goldwing, but
decided he wanted the Harley experience, so he traded it in for one.
“How is it?” I asked.
“It’s not smooth like the Goldwing, and at 90mph its
screaming for mercy, and of course, it shakes me to pieces at stoplights, but
it’s beautiful. I love it.”
There’s just no explaining the romance of a Harley!
“My buddy has a BMW,” he continued. “Put 120,000 miles on
it!”
The mythology of the reliable BMW,” I thought to myself.
“What year is yours?” he asked.
“2003.”
“Wow, I can’t believe it’s almost 10 years old. Its looks so
good.”
“Thanks.” I accepted the compliment, I wasn’t about to tell
him I didn’t have anywhere near even 100,000 miles on it!
I wonder, is it just friendliness among fellow bikers, or is
it curiosity about the BMW K bike that inspires these parking lot conversations?
Wednesday, October 10
New York to Pennsylvania
I had a long way to go today, and was packing the bike up by
6:45. It had rained overnight, and the seat was wet. I used some hotel towels
to dry it off and clean the windshield. It was still cloudy, but the day looked
like it might be good. The clouds were breaking up and just a little further
South the TV weather map had shown it was already a much warmer 55 degrees. The
map also showed clouds coming off Lake Ontario farther to the west, so I
decided to change my planned route through the Finger Lakes in favor of
dropping underneath the weather by heading straight south, then trying to duck behind
the Pennsylvania mountains.
The warmer temperatures didn’t last. By the time I was on
the south side of Syracuse, it had already dropped back to 51 and clouds were rolling
back in. Somehow 51 today felt colder than 51 yesterday. 51 and cloudy feels
colder than 51 and sunny. I stayed on the interstate to make time to Cortland, passing
the Onandaga Indian Reservation. Here the geography changed rapidly. It didn’t
appear to be much more heavily populated than the Adirondacks, but the narrow
forested mountain valleys were replaced by broad glacial valleys edged by
distant high ridges, steep sided hills covered in bursting fall foliage. Big
dairy farms and hardwood lumber companies dotted the valley floors. Picturesque
colonial style houses were set in very, very green grass. Quaint. Pretty.
I exited the Interstate at Cortland and took Highway 13
through Ithaca, passing by Cornell University “high above Cayuga’s waters.”
Still trying to outrun the weather, I didn’t stop to visit and kept on going south.
Highway 13 abruptly ended at Horseheads. Where it ended, there were no signs.
One minute there was a clearly marked highway, the next there was a tee, a stop
sign and no directions. No Garmin. Old school. I elected to keep following the
east bank of the river. Quite different from just a few miles to the north, the
trees in the surrounding river valley had not yet turned color, and there were
very few pine trees. It turned out to be an ok choice, as pretty soon I could
see Elmira on the opposite bank. I took the first bridge across and wandered
into downtown. Elmira looked pretty vibrant, clean, and busy with restaurants
and an arena of some kind. I found route 14 and headed south again.
Then I crossed into Pennsylvania. Immediately I was in
poverty stricken hillbilly country. No more broad valleys, stately colonial
homes and rich farmland. Valleys abruptly became narrow, choked with vegetation
or wetlands, tilled fields rarer and smaller, more of them fallow. Houses clinging to hillsides were in
disrepair, ratty, with rusty old pick-up trucks parked in unkempt front yards,
sometimes 6 or more cars and a couple of snowmobiles parked in the same yard.
Ubiquitous lumber mills with high stacks of logs. Several places selling coal
as fuel to heat your house. Snedekerville. Columbia Cross Roads. Vince and Ed’s
Car Repair. Otis’s Autobody. Why do these places always carry only first names?
The sun was breaking through the clouds again. It seemed I
had successfully ridden south of that front. Maybe it would bounce off the
Pennsylvania mountains and stay north of me. It was now 10 o’clock. I had been
on the road almost 3 straight hours, and I was cold, so when I arrived at the
foot of Mount Pisgah, I took a break at Moose’s Munchies in the town of Troy.
Troy is a pretty little mountain burg. Moose’s is a friendly place on the
corner where you can get coffee and a bite to eat with a funky sense of humor.
A sign in the toilet read, “Gentlemen. Stand closer and aim: it’s shorter than
you think.” Nice people. Try it when you’re next in Troy. J
As I pulled up the hill on US 6 leading westward out of
town, I noticed two big windmills standing on the ridgeline. One had the blades
moving.
Incongruous, as clearly this was coal country and just as
clearly the locals needed jobs. And yet somebody invested in windmills out here
in the semi-nowhere. I wonder how the out-of-work coal miners feel about that?
It doesn’t make any sense to me. It seems there is more religious fervor than
rational science behind the wind power movement. Here’s some facts on
wind power:
1.
Wind power makes up about 3% of the electrical
power used in the United States, and about
30% in Denmark; wind and solar together produce roughly 12% of Germany’s
power needs; all three countries have policies to radically increase these
percentages by 2020.
2.
On a national scale, wind power is expensive and
comparatively inefficient. It has to be subsidized in the United States through
a combination of investment tax credits, accelerated depreciation schedules and
direct subsidies because other sources of power are so much less expensive.
According to studies in the UK, wind power is the most expensive of ALL
available power generation technologies, both when you add “carbon costs” and when you ignore
them. A recent study conducted at the University of Maine concludes that wind
power could be competitive by 2020 if you include carbon costs. I don’t
pretend to understand what variables in assumptions as to carbon costs, capital
costs, discount rates, costs of alternative fuels and other factors such as
political agenda influence the conclusions of any of these studies. What I do
know is that Germans pay the highest power costs in Europe – except for the
Danes. On average the cost of electricity for Germans and Danes is 3 times what
Americans pay, and that’s before the
impact today’s f lower US natural gas prices. The costs of natural gas today
are radically lower than anybody expected 10 years ago, yet we continue to
build windmills.
3.
Wind energy is notoriously unreliable. Technology does not allow for large amounts
of energy to be easily or inexpensively stored, so instead the energy grid must
continuously generate and deliver to meet constantly changing demands for
power. My own unscientific observations from random encounters with various
wind energy “farms” from California to Indiana to New York to Puerto Rico (and
now Pennsylvania) when I have counted the number of windmills and the number of
windmills with the blades turning, i.e. working, is that at any given time in
any given place roughly 40% of the windmills are inoperable. I have no idea
whether that is due to mechanical failure or lack of wind, but the simple fact
is if the blades aren’t turning the windmill is not producing electricity. Even
if mechanically operable, nature determines when and how much power can be
generated from a windmill. Average wind speeds at a wind farm location are
useless on a day when the wind is not blowing. When intermittent wind power is
a small contributor to the grid, these variances can be easily managed, and
wind power can be used as supplemental power. Not so when wind power is a major
percentage of the power source. Brownouts and blackouts are not only possible,
they are likely as the reliance on “renewable” wind energy increases.
4.
If we insist on shifting more generating
capacity to windmills, our power costs will increase because the only viable
solutions to the unreliability of wind (and solar) energy sources are vast and
extremely expensive improvements in the transmission infrastructure to get
power from where the wind is blowing and the sun is shining to where it is not.
5.
Wind farms are an environmental disaster which
could rise to the level of an environmental catastrophe. In the United States,
at 3% of the energy grid, wind power kills 1,400,000 birds and bats every year.
At no growth usage, that’s 14,000,000 bats and birds, indiscriminate of
endangered species, every decade. If that grows to 30% of our power needs (like
Denmark) at existing demand levels, on
a straight line basis that will be 140,000,000
bats and birds every decade. In order to achieve President Obama’s recently
announced goal to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the United states by 80%,
some scientists have extrapolated that a 25-fold expansion of wind power would
be required because of opposition to coal, natural gas and even nuclear power –
which would lead to what they call an aviary holocaust of 350,00,000 dead birds
and bats per decade, a mortality rate that is unsustainable for many species, and would require more pesticides
to grow food because of an increase in insects, insect borne diseases and
resultant reduction in crop production. Fissures are developing in the
environmental movement as wildlife conservationists square off against green
energy advocates over this issue.
6.
Wind farms are ugly. One windmill may look cool,
20 of them are just plain ugly.
So I intensely dislike these wind farms that clutter up the
drive to Palm Springs from Riverside, trash the hillsides on the Puerto Rican
coast at the base of El Junque across from Vieques, and rise like an invasion of massive concrete and metal
creatures waving their arms over the mountains of Pennsylvania and the farm
fields of Indiana. I think the drive for wind power is driven by
save-the-planet types who refuse to be confused by facts. But actually yes, I
also think there is a place for wind (and solar) power. I prefer “backyard”
wind generators and roof top solar panels that service individual houses and
farms and factories right next to where they are placed. This reduces the
transmission infrastructure costs and power leakage loss from central gird
locations, would make both our society and our power sources more disaster
resistant by dispersion of those power sources, and place more control in the
decision making concerning power generation closer to the user and out of the
hands of either a monopolistic power company or a centralized government
bureaucracy. For these advantages, I would even support government subsidies
for wind and solar power! However, I don’t have any inclination as to whether
this would save any birds or bats - or even be worse for them by having so many
more aerial fans in so many different locations?
Oh, well. Despite the windmills, US 6 is marked along almost
its entire length through northern Pennsylvania, from Scranton to Warren, as a
scenic highway, “a tranquil highway providing 400 plus miles of history and
heritage.” I only rode the middle section, but from what I saw, it deserves the
accolade. A pretty, curvy two lane highway, through forests, along river
bottoms and over mountains. In one of these river bottoms, I pass a field of
cabernet franc grapes, which tells me that winters in these Allegheny mountains are actually milder than where I live in Northern, Indiana,
for that varietal cannot survive in my back pasture. I’ve tried! Names like
Onondaga, Oneida, Canandaigua and Seneca testify that this was once the land of
the Iroquois who roamed these ridges. Names like Schuyler, Losey Run,
Horsethief Run, Heise Run, Coudersport and Sweden Valley reflect the roots of later
European settlers. As I ride west, runs became creeks, but hollows persisted
everywhere. Vistas over mountain farms with blood red barns, silos and white
farm houses, green fields and backdrops of intense fall foliage. State parks, the
Pennsylvania Lumber Museum, and busses full of tourists ogling at the leaves.
Signs for lodging and guides for the coming fall hunting season. NO vacancy
everywhere. And then the Grand Canyon! Wait, didn’t I see that two days ago?
Oh, no, that was the Grand Canyon of
Vermont, this is the Grand Canyon of
Pennsylvania.
The weather stayed cold, and then
suddenly got colder as the front blowing in from the northwest finally crossed
the mountain range around 12:30. As I drove through Port Allegheny the temperature
dropped to 45 and stayed there, the rains came and for hours after the wind
buffeted me, ocasionally gusts blowing me sideways 2 feet without warning. The
pavement in this area seemed to have a lot of silica, which made it extra
slippery. The combination of wind, rain and wet pavement forced me to slow way
down, hunched over and not making good time.
At Kane, I was riding slowly and looking
for the turnoff to ride southwest across the Alleghenies on Route 66 (not the
iconic US 66, this is Pennsylvania Route 66), when I noticed an “Obama for
America” sign. No, two of them, there’s another one across the street. And a
third later in town. I realized that these were the first pro-Obama signs I
have seen since leaving Vermont over
two days ago! Truly, the only ones I had noticed in literally hundreds of
miles! Oh, look, there are more on the next block. No, these are “America vs.
Obama” signs! That’s harsh. Then, “Defend Freedom, Defeat Obama.” “Save the
Republic. Vote Republican.” There were Romney for President signs everywhere.
The difference in the political climate here and coastal Maine near Kennebunk
was obvious. The battle of the candidate-signs testifies to how starkly the
country is divided. A house divided against itself cannot stand…
I cross Iron Mine Road, pass lumbering
companies, and what were presumably lumber baron’s mansions with crenellated
towers and pointed turrets, and a sign that reads “The Home of Woody Willy”
with a suggestive caricature. You figure it out.
I still have miles to go before I
sleep, so I try to pick up the pace as I leave Kane and begin climbing into the
Allegheny National Forest. Once the leading edge of the front has passed and I
am sheltered by the trees, I can kick it back up to 60-70mph to make back some
time, cruising along under a grey sky that presses down like a sodden woolen
blanket. My boots are wet through and through from rainwater road spray. My
neck began to hurt from the constant wind gusts. My blue jeans were soaking wet
in the crotch, where the chaps don’t cover. My blue balls were trying to crawl
up and hide inside me. I was pretty much
alone on the road, but I tried to keep my distance from what traffic there was
because there would certainly be no quick stops on this wet highway. No
tailgating! Occasionally I heard the roar of a big semi as it caught me from
behind and then forced me to lean to into its draft keep to my balance after it
passed me, kicking up clouds of water that doused me in another cold shower and
obscured my vision. Lumber trucks. “Well, it’s their road.”
I was cold, wet, cramped and tired.
It was only 1:30 but it felt like it must be 6. But you know what? It was good.
I was feeling free, incredibly free, and the forest was quiet and beautiful. I
turned on some music and found the Eagles, “Take it Easy.”
Good or not, I had to stop for a
break. Marienville, a one horse no traffic light town where 66 intersects with
an unnamed road to Hallton that survives on lumber and hunters. I stopped at
Kelly’s Inn, across from the abandoned railroad depot. I stretched out and dripped
dry over a lunch of hot apple cider and fresh pumpkin pie in the warmth of the
Shamrock Room. Nice lady behind the bar gives me a second cider with my second
piece of pie. I wasn’t so much hungry as I wanted an excuse not to leave the
warmth of the tavern for a little while longer.
When I do leave, it’s still 45, but
at least the rain has stopped. I strike
I-80 near Clarion, and take it all the way to the Ohio border at Sharon,
arriving a little after 4 - 9 hours on the road covering 350 miles – and I get
the very last room at the Hampton Inn! The friendly lady behind the desk
reminisces that she rode Route 6 on the back of a motorcycle many years ago,
“Yes, it was a beautiful ride,” she said. I immediately soaked in a hot tub to
thaw out while sipping some bourbon as anti-freeze. Cleaned up, I ventured out for dinner. She recommended a
local Italian place, Combine Brothers, toward town just a little way up the
hill.
The restaurant is literally on the side of the hill. The
parking lot is on a steep slant and it was full of cars, so I had some trouble
finding a spot for my Beemer where it wouldn’t fall over. Or maybe it was just
the bourbon. Anyway, Combine Brothers was really busy, testament that it must
be good.
Unfortunately, so busy that there are no tables available. There
is room to sit at the bar, where I can order from the same menu. Perfect!
First I order a
martini – gin, very dry, shaken not stirred, with olives, I just have
the urge – and while perusing the menu I eavesdrop on a conversation between
the bartender and a lady customer sitting next to me. At some point, I heard
her say that she worked at the local Obama for President headquarters and was a card carrying member of MENSA. That was
weird (when was the last time you announced your IQ to a bar full of strangers?)
and should have forewarned me away, but after a day of solitary I was wanting
to be sociable. Their conversation tuned to Joe Paterno and the Penn State
child sex abuse scandal, not a surprising topic given that this is
Pennsylvania. Seemed safe enough. Dumb ass, I didn’t stop to think that in
Pennsylvania this subject was close to politics and religion combined.
She was going on about how what happened in the showers at
Penn State was terrible, and that somebody should be punished.
“Yes, Sandusky is going to prison for the rest of his life,”
I pointed out agreeably.
“No. Somebody should pay,” she said, a little too stridently.
“He is paying. Prison for life, just for starters.”
“That’s not enough. The kids got screwed.” She did not
intend her own pun. I winced. She misinterpreted my grimace. “Penn State can’t
get off,” she asserted.
“Penn State isn’t getting off. They got hit with a huge
fine, sanctions, serious damage to their reputation, lawsuits – ”
“That’s not enough.
Somebody should to go to jail. Somebody at the top. Otherwise the kids get
screwed again.”
I tried to politely finesse an evident challenge by saying
something agreeable without necedssarily agreeing. “Well, I tend to agree that
anybody who actually knew what was going on, and who was in a position to do
something but did not, should be punished as well.”
She was having none of it. All or nothing. “The President
and the Chairman of the Board of Trustees should both go to jail.”
“Whoa, “ I said. “Really? Those guys are three or four
levels above the guy who did the bad stuff in the shower. Do we know what they
actually knew? You had an assistant coach, Coach Paterno, the Athletic Director
and a university Vice President all between them and what Sandusky did. Only
the assistant coach actually saw it. What did the President or the Chairman
really know?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Why doesn’t it matter? What if they truly didn’t know what
Sandusky was doing? What if they thought the Athletic Director had investigated
and handled whatever it was properly?”
“It doesn’t matter. The companies always get off and the
kids always end up getting screwed,” she said. “They ran the place, so they’ve
got to pay,” she added.
“How does putting
somebody in jail who really didn’t know what was going on keep the kids from
being screwed?”
“They should have known. They ran the place.”
“Wait a minute. Have you ever run a large organization?” I
never should have asked that question. It was all downhill from there.
“No,” she said, chillier than Route 66 that afternoon.
“Well, I ran a company with thousands of employees at locations
in 15 states. There is no possible way that I had any idea what was going on
everywhere in my company at any given hour on any given day. So you’re saying I
should be responsible for what somebody might do on a factory floor seven
states away that I knew nothing about?”
“Then you should have run a tighter ship.”
“Really, a tighter ship? Hmm,” I paused. How do we approach rational agreement? “Think
about this. All organizations want to
hire the best employees, so they will try to do that, right?”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
I wanted to ask her if she knew of any company that
deliberately hired bad employees, but I was at least smart enough not to do
that.
“OK, despite tests, references and interviews, maybe 1 out
of 5 hires is a bad hire. 3 are average, one is great and one is bad. That’s
20% of your workforce. So even if you run a “tighter ship” and could improve
that by 100%, 10% of your workforce is still going to be questionable. You
don’t even have a way of knowing about deviants like Sandusky, but let’s leave
that aside for a moment. You wouldn’t make the President and Chairman of the
Board personally responsible for everything 10% of their workers might do
anywhere at any time, would you?”
“That’s the risk of the job.”
“It is?”
“That’s what they get paid the big bucks for.”
“It is? So, we agree if that somebody in authority knows
what’s going on and does nothing, they should be punished. But you also really
believe that if they truly don’t know what’s going on, they should still go to
jail?”
“Yes. They run the
place. It’s their risk.”
“Wow,” I shook my head. I tried to declare peace and exit
the argument. “I just can’t agree with that.”
“Don’t you judge me.”
I guess that didn’t work. “What?” I asked.
“You can’t judge me.”
“I’m not judging you. I just disagree with you.”
“I don’t like your attitude.”
“What attitude?”
“The one you are showing right now.”
By now I did have an attitude, fortified by my martini. “Lady,
I said, “I don’t know what you mean, but I’ll tell you what I think. I think
you just don’t like people to disagree with you.”
That pretty much ended our conversation on a high note. Thankfully,
right about then my dinner arrived. Vermicelli in oil and garlic with crumbled
Italian sausage and chiles. Washed down with Chianti. Yeah, I know, naughty to
drink so much before driving L
- but the food, magnifico! Superbo! Delicioso! Sontuoso! If you are ever in
Sharon PA, try Combine Brothers – but be careful whom you talk to at the bar!
Thursday, October 11
Ohio
Up early. No hangover! The Hampton
inn sits right off of I-80 near the top of line of hills overlooking the
Shenango River that marks the end of Pennsylvania. I guess technically the border is a straight
North-South surveyor’s line a little further toward Youngstown, but from the
crest of these hills you look west as far as the distant horizon across the
flatlands of Ohio. These hills and the river definitely mark the demarcation
between two ecosystems, the eastern mountains of Pennsylvania and the Midwestern
glacial plains of Ohio stretching south from the Great Lakes. It is a pretty vista.
The rains were gone, the roads
were dry and it was still cold. Colder, actually. 38 degrees at 7:20. I didn’t
have to wipe rain off my seat, it was a thick frost! And it got fucking colder
as I rode, down to 36! Oh, well, 36 and sunny was better than 45 and damp. Especially
with a dry road. And dry pants!
I stuck to the Interstates for a
while, down into Youngstown and then past the Akron riverfront and its old tire
factories and through the intersection of
I-75 and I-71. Light traffic and the monotony of the four lane gave me
plenty of time to think about Obama signs and the conversation at Combine
Brothers the night before. Strange mix, but so wanders the mind on the
interstate.
In theory, intelligent people
should be able to sit down, discuss issues over which they disagree, and make
some progress toward common ground. The key word being “should.” The reality of
human interaction these days is that people tend to “take positions,” witness
the conversation about responsibility for Coach Sandusky. As soon as people
take positions, each person becomes intransigent, defending and advancing his
or her “side” by buttressing their opinions and attacking the others opinions. Inconvenient
logic gets drowned out by increasing volume, “I don’t want to hear that so I
shout you out.”
Case in point: Congress. Example:
health care. It’s very safe to observe that every American agrees that our
healthcare system could use improvement, so one would think intelligent people
could make progress toward a solution. Maybe start by making a list of the
things that we can agree on that need to be improved. Nobody can seriously
quarrel that two items would make the top of any such list: it’s too expensive
and growing more so; and, too many people in need don’t have access to adequate
care. So the next step should be to make another list, things that could be
done to improve these two items. Discuss them until you shape a few actions that
we agree on. Take those actions. That’s called progress, and it comes
incrementally. It does not happen in one fell swoop.
Instead, what we get is “You want
to let grandma die” and a blind leap based on ideology to fundamentally change
our healthcare system - with unintended results. “We have to pass it so we can
read it to find out what’s in it.” Absolutely incredible. So instead of
progress, we have more positions.
Implement Obamacare. Defund Obamacare. How about, amend Obamacare on a rational
bi-partisan non-ideological basis so that it makes sense and is affordable? No,
that’s too many syllables for the average Joe, probably even for a card
carrying member of MENSA.
In the final analysis, the
discussion over health care was not a lot different than last night’s “Somebody
has to pay.” In the end, somebody always gets screwed. In Happy Valley, it was
the kids. With Obamacare, it’s the taxpayers. Yep, somebody always has to pay.
After two hours of freezing, I had
to stop to thaw out my fingers. I pulled into a truck stop somewhere around
Lodi. I put my helmet down on the counter next to a sign that read, “I drive
way too fast to worry about cholesterol. Stephen Wright.” A skinny waitress
named Vickie shoved me a glass of water with a friendly smile. She had to be in
her 60’s, hell, maybe her 70’s. Her gray hair was cut in a page boy style that
went out with Elke Sommer. I hadn’t seen hair cut like that since my lab
partner in geology class with the humongous botchalobies. A true glacial
valley! J
Several truckers at the counter
were discussing woes of the “messed up economy”, i.e., the Great Recession. One
wore his sunglasses backwards over his thick neck, and sported a goatee for a
pussy bumper and a Nike sweatshirt. Next to him another wore a beret and spoke
with heavy Middle Eastern accent, and another had a baseball cap, Harley
Davidson tee shirt and gold chain. One had a winter wool cap, like the Amish,
pulled down tight over his ears. The
fifth wore a black leather cowboy hat and black leather vest over a flannel
plaid shirt. And me. Just about then I glanced up and saw another sign over my
head, “Professional drivers only.” Oh, well nobody seemed to mind.
The conversation was all about
local freight and broker problems. And none of them liked California!
“More and more regulations are
costing way too much. And you know what, it’s all coming from California.”
“They think they’re their own damn
little country out there.”
“Those damned California inspection
stations are a pain in the ass. They use any excuse to give you a ticket just
to take your money.”
"Yeah, well the last two times I went out
there the ground fucking moved. I haven't been out there since."
“Load finders are a waste of time. The so called load
specialists are nothing but computer readers and don’t know nothing about truck
driving. First they give you lousy directions. Then you can't get them to
answer the phone. I’m sittin’ there wasting time and minutes on my cell phone
while on hold. Just costing me more money.”
“This is worst year it’s been in 5
years.”
“I spent 13 years as an electrician.
I finally quit because of all the union
bullshit. I was doing 3,000-10,000 feet of conduit on rigs in Texas, but the
union told me to slow down. Steward told me not to go more than 1500 or I’d
work myself out of job! Unions just make people lazy. I said fuck that
bullshit, and became a trucker.”
“Yeah, I know what you say. My dad got me a job at Sundstrand doing a punch press. I wasn’t working hard, you know, but my union steward told me to slow down. I was workin’ 5 times the standard rate!”
“Yeah, I know what you say. My dad got me a job at Sundstrand doing a punch press. I wasn’t working hard, you know, but my union steward told me to slow down. I was workin’ 5 times the standard rate!”
“Yeah, I don’t like being told
what to do or how fast not to do it!”
The discussion turned to driving fast on narrow roads. The trucker in the cowboy hat, his co-driver died in the cab one night in Texas. Indiana’s roads are narrower than compared to Texas. In Texas they’re wider because drive doolies.
“Damn, I can’t see this Samsung notebook without glasses. My granddaughter sends me her art by email. You want to see?” This led to generalized bitching about computer planned obsolescence while the notebook was passed around.
The Harley guy told us about the night his new daughter was born, and he got drunk celebrating. He put it on cruise control at 45 in 55 zone, but damned if he didn’t get pulled over because his taillight was out! “Young man,” the cop asked him, “do you think you should be driving in this condition?” “Yessir,”he answered, “I sure as fuck can't walk.” The cop escorted him home and used his headlights to light up the driveway and door so he could get in safely. Not today! Today its straight to jail, don't pass go, don’t get $200!
The discussion turned to driving fast on narrow roads. The trucker in the cowboy hat, his co-driver died in the cab one night in Texas. Indiana’s roads are narrower than compared to Texas. In Texas they’re wider because drive doolies.
“Damn, I can’t see this Samsung notebook without glasses. My granddaughter sends me her art by email. You want to see?” This led to generalized bitching about computer planned obsolescence while the notebook was passed around.
The Harley guy told us about the night his new daughter was born, and he got drunk celebrating. He put it on cruise control at 45 in 55 zone, but damned if he didn’t get pulled over because his taillight was out! “Young man,” the cop asked him, “do you think you should be driving in this condition?” “Yessir,”he answered, “I sure as fuck can't walk.” The cop escorted him home and used his headlights to light up the driveway and door so he could get in safely. Not today! Today its straight to jail, don't pass go, don’t get $200!
Which led to riding motorcycles,
and inevitably to BMWs vs. Harleys. Can’t do a wheelie on a BMW. I told them
about how I accidentally did a wheelie on my old bike on the way to a Four Tops
concert back in the 60’s. Crashed and burned right in front of a cop. He helped
me pick it up and park it by the sidewalk. I guess he figured my bent
handlebars and bloody leg were enough punishment. He let me limp off to the
concert. Yep, today he would have taken me to jail. “Somebody’s got to pay,”
right?
Another one of the truckers has
daughters, too. He’s looking forward to getting home tonight to see them. He
lives in Indiana. In Worthington.
“Logistically in middle of nowhere,”
he says. “It’s so small the town square is a triangle.”
“Yep, I know it,” says another. “No
stop light. Not even a blinker light. But there’s a red stop go light about 3
miles down the road outside town.”
A third joined in, “They got a Dollar General
store, though!”
“Yep, there ain’t no Worthington Wal-Mart!”
“How the heck do you guys all know where Worthington is?” I ask. “I live in Indiana, and I’ve never heard of it!”
“How the heck do you guys all know where Worthington is?” I ask. “I live in Indiana, and I’ve never heard of it!”
“It’s an hour and a half out of
Indy, and about 45 minutes to Bloomington.”
“There’s lots going on there. Coal
mines. A Pierre DuPont plant.”
Truckers.
And you know, they’re right. In
Pennsylvania, the small towns had Dollar Generals, but not Wal-Mart! Takes a
couple of traffic lights before you get a Wal-Mart!
Breakfast is over and I’m warmed
up, and the day has warmed a little too. I have to take a short detour down US
42 because of construction, then jog back up Ohio 301 before striking west
again on US 224. No twisties here. This is a straight as an arrow prairie
highway for 20 miles or so across farmland. It’s the brown season, after the
harvest when the corn has been cut and the leaves begin to die and drop for the
winter. Brown earth, brown grasses, brown leaves and a big blue sky, punctuated
every now and then by blazing trees and the bright orange of a pile of pumpkins.
All those pumpkins remind me that
Halloween is only a few weeks away, that quintessentially American bastardized holiday mixing an ancient
pagan harvest festival with superstitions about the dead and the Christian
celebration of All Saint’s Day and prayers for those who have not reached
heaven, when three foot high ghosts and goblins prowl neighborhoods masked in
the early evening in search of candy. A bit tamer than souls of the dead
wandering the earth with one last chance that night to wreak vengeance and evil
before moving to the next world, and in disguise so that they can’t be
recognized! A night when one of the wildest, craziest parties of the year
invades State Street in Madison, Wisconsin, sort of a northern Mardi Gras at the
home of the University of Wisconsin – I’m sure similar costume madness also
strikes many other campuses across the country, but not with the reputation of
craziness of Madison. I was recently told that this style of Halloween party
has now even gained a foot hold in the streets of Paris. In Detroit, since the
60’s riots the “celebration” of Devil’s Night as become more sinister, with
roaming gangs practicing what has become
a rite of passage of setting fires and burning cars. And in the white bread suburbs,
city fathers and worried mothers ruin all the fun by passing rules “only on
Sunday afternoon” (even if that’s not Halloween!) between the hours of 4pm and
6pm. Really, that’s not Halloween. That’s candy ass crap. True Halloweeners
would gleefully ignore such ridiculous rules.
I decide to head North on some
back roads a little at Willard for no other reason than Willard was my father’s
first name, and strike west again somewhere between Havana and Attica Junction
on what I discover is Highway 162 which then mysteriously becomes Highway 18 to
Tiffin, home to Tiffin University and Heidelberg College, where I rejoin US
224. Unlike the New Hampshire mountain roads under cloudy skies, it’s easy to
keep my bearings on these roads partly because the sun is out and partly
because they tend to run more East-West and North-South, not completely but not
like the spaghetti trails through mountain dales. Past West Independence and
through Findlay and the University of Findlay to Ottawa. I wonder if the
denizens of Ottawa know their namesakes were well known for cannibalism? How’d
they like to have some of those bloodthirsty devils loose in their neighborhoods on Halloween night? Nope, nope, can’t do
that. Might offend somebody!
I’m getting into river country
where the topography has a little more variation, and work my way along the
Blanchard River and head Northwest to Defiance, site of old Fort Defiance at
the intersection of the Auglaize and the Maumee Rivers, and now the home of
Defiance College. It is amazing how many small colleges and universities are
scattered throughout small towns in the Midwest. No matter what random
direction you choose, it seems there is another bucolic little campus every 30
miles or so.
From there I am on the last leg of
the closing the big loop back home to Indiana. Not going to pass anywhere near
Worthington, though! I smile, thinking about those truckers, who they are and
what they said. All different backgrounds but all fiercely independent, each
one of them trying to scratch out a living on the road, on his own, without
somebody constantly telling them what to do or how to do it. They don’t want
anybody messing in their business.
I’m riding through Amish country,
a peaceful perspective of life from several centuries spread out in a panorama
before me. Their way of life has not changed greatly since the days of Ft.
Stanwix. Teams of Belgians pull the wagons in the fields, and the farmers in
their flat black hats and suspendered overalls stack sheaves of corn stalks by
hand after the harvest. They deliberately keep using their horses and buggies
while automobiles and motorcycles race past them on the highway. Their children
run barefoot in the summer. No telephone lines run to their homes. They won’t
be told what to do.
I don't like being told what to do,
either, especially in what I consider “my business.” I think that’s part of the
essence of being an American. It’s certainly a big part of the opposition to
Obamacare. The “mandate.” Buy it or pay a huge fine. Says who? By what right?
Justice Roberts said it’s just another tax, not a mandate. His may be good Ivy
League legal analysis, but he got it wrong. It’s a prohibitive tax. A
prohibitive tax is a mandate. Fundamentally,
the federal government is dictating to Americans what they must do on their own
health care, a matters of the most personal of choices that directly affects
their everyday lives that just yesterday and for centuries before was – their
business. It’s taking fundamental
life choices out of private hands and putting those choices in the hands of an
impersonal national government. If that is a tax, any mandate can be dressed up
and called a tax.
Obama said that he wanted to fundamentally transform America. There
is nothing more fundamental than
politics. Politics at its heart is nothing more than who gets what, and he is
changing who gets what, more often than not by mandate. Any change is hard.
Change by consensus takes a long time. Change by fiat is fast, but bitter, and
I wonder if it is lasting? Fiats are reversed much easier than consensus. The
opposition to the mandated changes is not lessening, it is hardening. I am
afraid irreversible wedges may be being driven into America. “Traditional”
Americans feel under attack, and it’s not paranoia. The country is split almost
50-50 by the deepest ideological divide I have seen in my lifetime. We have
difficulty talking with one another about common problems. The most hateful
election I have ever witnessed will culminate in less than a month, we even have
a new term, “Battleground States.” I remember when I lamented with a good
friend of mine, an Italian from a Detroit Democrat family, that during the
Kennedy-Nixon election the candidates were all basically the same, we wanted to
see some real differences between them. Better be careful what you ask for, you
might get it. Back then, before Vietnam and the Civil Rights marches began
disillusioning us about who we are, there was a pretty broad consensus in
America, which is probably why many candidates were pretty similar on a lot of
issues. Of course, there may have been consensus only because a lot of people
were functionally disenfranchised, and differing opinions could not be heard.
I stop at a Marathon station near Goshen to fill my tank one last time, grab a cup of java to warm up my insides, and take a leak - not necessarily in that order. But while enjoying the pause that refreshes, in front of me I see a message scratched into the restroom wall: a WP with the downstroke of the P conjoined with the last upstroke of the W, followed by "WHITE PRIDE BITCH!", a swastika, and "FUCK MEXCANS!" (sic). Next to it, "GM ALIVE OR DEAD" How disturbing, how disappointing. No matter how far we have come as a society, there are always some assholes trying to drag us back. There are a lot of tensions in Goshen because of the massive influx of Mexican immigrants that have taken jobs in local RV factories, and changed the complexion of what was a pretty homogenous small Mennonite college town. To some the changes are exciting, adding interest and spice, to others it is threatening. Undeniably, the changes have affected neighborhoods, composition of schools, competition for employment, athletic leagues, restaurants, even retail stores -and the crime rate has skyrocketed. However, reading between the lines, it looks like this message may have more to do with some dumb horny redneck getting dissed by a Mexican girl? What is equally if not more disappointing and disturbing is that the owner of this station has not seen fit to rub this message out, especially given some of the xenophobic undercurrents in the community. No matter how far we have come, we still have a ways to go.
I stop at a Marathon station near Goshen to fill my tank one last time, grab a cup of java to warm up my insides, and take a leak - not necessarily in that order. But while enjoying the pause that refreshes, in front of me I see a message scratched into the restroom wall: a WP with the downstroke of the P conjoined with the last upstroke of the W, followed by "WHITE PRIDE BITCH!", a swastika, and "FUCK MEXCANS!" (sic). Next to it, "GM ALIVE OR DEAD" How disturbing, how disappointing. No matter how far we have come as a society, there are always some assholes trying to drag us back. There are a lot of tensions in Goshen because of the massive influx of Mexican immigrants that have taken jobs in local RV factories, and changed the complexion of what was a pretty homogenous small Mennonite college town. To some the changes are exciting, adding interest and spice, to others it is threatening. Undeniably, the changes have affected neighborhoods, composition of schools, competition for employment, athletic leagues, restaurants, even retail stores -and the crime rate has skyrocketed. However, reading between the lines, it looks like this message may have more to do with some dumb horny redneck getting dissed by a Mexican girl? What is equally if not more disappointing and disturbing is that the owner of this station has not seen fit to rub this message out, especially given some of the xenophobic undercurrents in the community. No matter how far we have come, we still have a ways to go.
We have been through several
social revolutions in my lifetime. When I was yet young, "Negroes" went to
separate schools everywhere and drank from separate water fountains some
places, Jews were not permitted to join my college fraternity, Roman Catholic
children were taught it was a mortal sin to set foot in a Protestant church, marijuana
was a barely heard of ghetto drug, women were scarce in law schools, buggery
was a crime, marriage was only between a man and a woman, and the only choices for birth control were
abstinence, rhythm or condoms. That has all changed, all of it. Drugs, sex and
rock n’ roll – and race, and religion. Add to that a flood of Spanish speaking immigrants,
many of whom certainly do not think of themselves as Americans first, and most
of whom want only food for their families and a job and don’t know or much care
about the political principles on which this country was founded. Even though
there has been little blood in the streets, each of these were revolutions in
their own right, combined, the overthrow of a social system. We would be fools
in the extreme if we thought this could happen without rips in our social
fabric. That is the essential characteristic of a revolution, isn’t it? And the
more profound the revolution, the bigger the rips.
Yet I can see that the fabric of
America is still intact. I see it everywhere. In its soul, America is still
built on individual opportunity. That is rare in this world. It’s still why the
world comes to America. Still, we must have confidence to take advantage of
opportunity. What we seem to be in danger of losing is a sense of confidence in
our collective abilities.
There is no question but that the common
background, our sense of common purpose and shared values, has been
compromised. With all these changes, that is inevitable. When you let somebody
else live in the house, they have different ideas about how the furniture
should be arranged. Everybody wants “change.” Change is exciting, change is
different and people seem to assume that change is always for the good.
Different ideas aren’t always bad, but neither are they always good. Ideas have
no intrinsic value by virtue of being different. They are just different. Trying
to accommodate all ideas as if they are of equal dignity is not only stupid, it
is impossible. Different ideas conflict. That is the essence of being
different.
Many - Iranian mullahs, the Al
Qaeda leader-of-the-month, Hugo Chavez, China’s oligarchs, Vladimir Putin, even
our own President - will jump to to tell us that America is immoral, arrogant, the
Great Satan, the cause of all evil and in inevitable decline. What they all
have in common (ironically except our President) is that they are not in first
place. Any of them would gladly displace our society and cast it in the dustbin
of history. It is a dangerous world. That is no reason to mimic Chicken Little,
running around crying “The sky is falling, the sky is falling!” The idea that
America is in inevitable decline is
baloney. Dialectic materialism is a theory, it’s not science. There is nothing
inevitable about America’s place in the world, or what comes next, good or bad.
The only certain thing is that the surest way to lose our place of privilege is
to give up.
It is the time in America for the binding up of wounds. We
need dialogue with open minds to sort through the slurry ideas, reject the
foolish ones, select the good ones, and regain some lost consensus. The country
desperately needs it.
“Every kingdom divided against itself
is brought to desolation;
and every city or house divided
against itself shall not stand…”
Matthew 12:25
It’s still fall. The air is crisp and clean. The colors of
the leaves are still bright. The sky is bright blue.
The nights are getting colder. Winter is coming.
Maybe come Spring things will look
better? Naw, how could that be?
