* * Teaching my baby to drive

I wrote this article seven years ago when my only child was 15, but it is a favorite and I hope you enjoy reading it.

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Sitting next to my teen daughter, she in the driver’s seat and me in the passenger’s seat for our third driving lesson in a nearby parking lot, I had a flashback. My mind drifted to the day after her birth, 15 years earlier. I was lying on my back and she was napping, her tiny stocking-capped head resting against my ribcage, each of us feeling the other’s warmth and heartbeats. I remembered thinking about the wondrousness of birth, the immaculate beauty of a newborn, and the performance capabilities of the modern diaper.

Screech! I was jolted from my reverie by a dumped clutch as our family car lurched forward. “Sorry dad,” she said, wondering aloud how her parents could be so thoughtless as to inflict upon her a manual transmission while all her friends were learning on automatics.

It goes without saying my daughter is a competent young lady—intelligent, attentive, and dexterous. In my fumbling paternal way, I have tried over the years to teach her a thing or two, but typically she already knows those and more. It’s nice to have a fleeting upper hand, experiencing a skill I can do robotically and so far, she can’t do at all.

Earlier in the week, I sat through an excruciating evening presentation for young drivers and their parents at Christiansburg High School where a parade of pedantic teachers, administrators, and law enforcement people downloaded a weighty cargo of horrifying statistics about teens behind the wheel. For instance, your child, or shall I say my child, is roughly 126,000 times more likely to have an accident before her next birthday than the members of the Hell’s Angels motorcycle club. Sixteen year olds have the attention span of cocker spaniels (with all due respect to cocker spaniels) and don’t develop into functional human beings, attention wise, until at least their mid-twenties. Furthermore, these teens are physically incapable of just doing one thing at a time, like driving, and will preternaturally gravitate towards adjusting the radio, putting on make-up, or downing a 16-oz Mellow Yellow, or some combination, every twelve microseconds.

We were told that cellular phones are a real driving hazard. Some states have restricted their use when driving, but not Virginia. My daughter’s fingertips haven’t been more than a millimeter away from her phone since day one and I’m sure she’d be happier if it could be surgically implanted. She types cryptic messages at 48,000 words per minute and there is no thought too inconsequential to exchange at any hour of the night or day with her boyfriend. She, “I dnt fel wel & i jus snezd.” He, “Im bord w/ my jb & i wnt 2 go hm.” It was suggested to us that we convince our child through reasoned parental persuasion, that the cell phone should camp in the trunk and not be accessed whilst our child is driving. I proposed it moments ago to a cryogenic look of outrage and indignation.

Also it was suggested, perhaps as a twisted joke, that we see the whole driver training experience as a wonderful, familial bonding opportunity. Right.

The meeting featured several gratuitous angst-breeding documentaries, some more relevant having been filmed right here in the homes and valleys of Virginia, where real parents of real deceased children choked through torrents of tears talking about the senseless losses of little Suzy and Tommy to avoidable traffic crashes. The irony here is that my daughter didn’t accompany me to this meeting, as she had something infinitely more important to do, like riding her horse or somesuch. The presentation was completely wasted on me, as I’m already more vexed about her safety in cars than anything.

Screech! “Sorry, dad,” she repeats.

Lastly, we got our sermon from the local State Farm Insurance agent. He didn’t venture any actual numbers regarding the projected increase in premiums associated with adding a teen driver, lest mass resuscitation efforts be necessary. But I envisioned that if our current insurance costs $500 annually to cover my wife and me, it would rise to approximately $675,000. That is, of course, assuming we can actually find an insurance company naive enough to cover such an obvious risk as my daughter.

The bottom line is that the chance of your child having a tragic crash the first time he or she shifts into “reverse” is 344%. Any parent would have to have a bucket of walnut shells inside his or her cranial cavity where the grey matter belongs to allow his or her baby to drive an actual car on an actual road before that baby reaches the age of, say, 43.

* * Yes, the government should take your gun away

A couple of months ago, my family took a dream vacation to New Zealand, for my money the most appealing nation on earth. The air is pristine, the water is clean, the vistas are amazing and the people are generous and friendly.

We arrived in New Zealand shortly after the Newtown, CT, shooting tragedy, and many people we met wanted to talk about it, even more so when they learned of our close ties to Virginia Tech. I spoke at length with two policemen and one hunter.

New Zealand gun laws are amazingly sane:

Private citizens can own pistols, but they must be a member of a licensed pistol club. The pistols cannot leave the club’s premises.

Private citizens can own rifles for hunting, but the owner must pass a qualification test, undergo a background check, and have their characters vouched for. Rifles must be registered and stored unloaded at all times when not in use in approved, locked safes. Ownership licenses are expensive.

Private citizens cannot own semi-automatic or automatic rifles.

Regular “beat” cops do not carry guns. Only members of the national SWAT team carry guns.

Gun violence per capita in New Zealand is about 5% of ours.

As the debate goes on and our nation struggles with how to curb the epidemic of violence, many of those in favor of modest proposals like universal background checks and limited capacity magazines are quick to say, “I support the Second Amendment and I don’t want to take anybody’s gun away.”

Our government really should take your gun away.

Owning a gun to hunt should be a privilege, granted to our citizens in ways similar to how it is for New Zealanders.

Owning a gun to protect the citizenry from a tyrannical government is nonsensical, obsolete fantasy. Our military can put a missile into the window of any house on earth within an hour. So forget any delusions of protecting ourselves from a totalitarian government.

Owning a gun for personal security is statistically unrealistic. Owners are more likely to be hurt by their own gun than someone else’s, as a gun is used in suicides 11 times as often and in unintentional shooting deaths 4 times as often as in self-defense.

Virginia recently eliminated its a one-handgun-a-month law, on the books for 19 years. If you’ve got the money, you can buy as many Glocks, Smith & Wessons, or Sig Sauers as you want. And America has among the highest rates of gun violence in the First World, 46 times higher than England, 17 times higher than Germany, and 160 times higher than Singapore.

Yes, we have the Constitutional right to keep and bear arms. We do not have the right to unlimited firepower and unlicensed use. Every right has limits. Our problem is that we’ve spent the last three decades making it affordable and easy to obtain weapons of unprecedented lethality. We need to begin marching in the other direction, making guns difficult to obtain and expensive to own and use.

To own and drive a car, citizens must pass a competency test, register the car and have it licensed and routinely inspected, and obtain insurance. Why? Because cars are a potential public safety risk. How can we morally justify making it easier to buy and operate a Bushmaster .223 than a Dodge Dart?

Yes, we need other solutions, too, including better enforcement of current laws and better mental health screening and treatment, and we need to commit to paying for these things. But not talking about guns to reduce this carnage is like not talking about cigarettes if we’re trying to reduce cancer deaths.

A few weeks ago, a man walked into a Charlottesville grocery story carrying a loaded semi-automatic weapon. According to the article about it, “Police restrained the man to ask him questions. They released him after they confirmed he is not a convicted felon, owned the gun legally and it was not concealed. Police say he was cooperative and did not break any laws.”

Seriously!

I can’t drive to the end of my block without proper licensing – and a seat belt! – because of the public safety risk, and yet it is perfectly legal for anyone to parade publicly with a loaded AK-47. This is cruel inexplicable insanity.

Substantial reductions in the millions of guns in America would make us safer and more secure, even if the government needs to buy them back and destroy them.

It’s high time to show the world – and ourselves – we can get sane again.

* * Frank Voelm is seeing the whole world

Frank Voelm was at the university near his home near Stuttgart, Germany, almost thirty, when he began a worldwide journey that continues today.

“I was studying to become what in America you call a CPA, when I decided to take a break from my studies. I never went back.” Since then, he’s traveled around the world multiple times.

Followers of my columns may remember that my wife and I often take in strays, wandering travelers who come through our area. Frank is riding a BMW motorcycle and was referred to us by a friend in our local club. Frank stayed with us for a few days on his journey that began in South America and went through Mexico and into the States. But he’s essentially been on the road for 17 years.

“I began backpacking. To world travelers, that means something different than for Americans. You think of it as hiking through the bush, carrying your food, tent, and camping out. For world travelers, it means traveling by whatever appropriate means carrying only what’s on your back, often through poorer, third-world countries.”

When he began, there were guest houses throughout the world where he could stay for $2 per day. “I went to Asia to get away from it all, because I realized I needed a break. It was an early mid-life crisis. I left Germany just shy of my 30^th birthday.”

He ended up in Thailand and Laos, overlooking the beaches and the Mekong River. That trip took five years before he went home. Frank is a big, loquacious, boisterous guy, filled with opinions and stories. He rides a huge BMW GS motorcycle, way too big for little guys like me to ride. He drinks as many beers in a sitting as I drink in a week.

“Before I left, I was depressed. I didn’t see a purpose in my life. I was brought up to think of my career and car and family and house first. I was destined to have a regular, corporate life.”

On the road, he took various odd jobs on the way, including sheep sheering in New Zealand, tour guiding in Canada, and marijuana cultivation in California. But he said, “I learned to live on lots less money. I learned that I didn’t need air conditioning or fresh sheets every day. I moved from a European to an Asian sensibility. I began to live at about $800 per month and stay comfortable.” He has visited 80 countries or so on what has become his endless journey.

Frank taught himself Spanish and English. Between those languages and his native German, he can communicate in much of the world.

“It takes a certain level of adaptability, flexibility, and adventurousness to do it. I’m always facing changing situations and accommodations. It’s not for everybody. For instance, I’m staying with you at no cost. I could have stayed in a Motel 6 for $60 per night and not met anybody. I prefer staying with people and getting to know them.”

Eventually, he decided to trade the backpack for a motorcycle. He said, “It has advantages and disadvantages. You can go when you want and where you want. But when you cross oceans and stuff, you need to find ways to take it with you.”

By now, he’s been to China, Russia, Mongolia, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Egypt, Jordan, Israel, India, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Columbia, Nepal, Taiwan, Japan, Canada, etc., etc. “I’ve been once around the world eastward and twice westward. This trip I’m on now by motorcycle is westward.”

On the current trip, 30 months so far, he’s spent most in South America, then Central and North America. He brought his bike to the Americas on a boat from Hamburg to Buenos Aries, a trip that took 35 days.

Here, I took him motorcycling on both Saturday and Sunday. I stretched his sedentary ways by forcing him into walking with me a couple of evenings on my daily walks. And we took him to a two-person play about American politics in rural Meadows of Dan.

I asked what he knows about the world now that he didn’t know when he started. He said, “I see the effects of overpopulation. In Japan, most of Europe, and in some parts of the USA, populations are shrinking. The Third World is growing. Paradise doesn’t exist. Every place has problems or issues. I have photos of beautiful beaches, but you don’t see the mosquitoes. No place is perfect. But if you have a life back home, that won’t be perfect, either.

“The Appalachians are perfect motorcycle country. The roads are scenic and empty. It is colder than I expected, but riding is great. I have been surprised by the intense hospitality and friendliness of Americans. This is not known in Europe.

“I will remember you and my time in Blacksburg!”

* * Cortney Martin is on the run

When I sat down with Cortney Martin the other day to talk about her triathlon and running pursuits and ask her what got her motivated, she said, “I looked into the mirror five years ago and I didn’t like what I saw.”

Here’s what I saw. Cortney is in her mid-forties, yet has the youthful, angular, chiseled look of all competitive athletes. She has a boyish blonde bob of a haircut and almost luminescent pale-blue eyes that sparkle when she smiles, which is often.

She’s been a hot commodity lately among the media, as she’s just returned from a great run at the Boston Marathon and people are clamoring for personal stories. Expressing her willingness to chat with me and let me share her story, she said, “I’m sensitive to keeping the focus on the victims rather than the bystander that I was. I was so numb after the race I hardly made sense of any of it.”

Cortney had qualified to run at the Boston Marathon two other times, but injuries had kept her from running. She’d run the Richmond Marathon three times, qualifying there for Boston.

She’d never been athletic as a youngster, taking to it later in life. “I was set up to define myself not as an athlete.” After having two boys and going to graduate school which led to a largely sedentary life, she committed herself to getting in shape. “It was May 4, 2008, my day of reckoning. Until that time, I had never done any running, cycling, or swimming, other than playing around.”

After a couple of years of training, she found that she was good at it, REALLY good at it. She was winning at regional levels and competitive at national and international levels at short-distance triathlons.

“I’m as surprised as anybody,” she admitted modestly. “People think I’ve been doing this forever, but I haven’t. It still feels so new and fresh, and I have a passion for it.”

I met Cortney through my wife who had known her at Virginia Tech, and began following her passion in a blog she calls, “Cort the Sport,” found at http://www.cortthesport.com/

She continues to get faster, at an age where millions of Americans are becoming more inactive and overweight.

Still, it’s not easy for her. She’s had many injuries including broken fibulas in both legs and had to bounce back. She claims, “(Training and competing is) a pleasure to do. I enjoy the suffering and the focus that goes along with it.”

Around her work and family responsibilities, she wedges in around 12 hours a week of actual training, but preparation takes still more time.

There are four distances in triathloning: sprint, Olympic, half-Ironman, and Ironman. She specializes in the two former, which are shorter and faster. The sprint combines a 750-meter swim, a 13-mile bicycle ride, and a 3.1 mile run. The Olympic event is double that. At the National event in 2011 in Vermont, she qualified for the National team and began attracting sponsors. She represented our country at the Worlds last year in Auckland, New Zealand. “It made me feel like a legitimate athlete. It made me hungry. I still am. We do the swim first and it’s my least strong event. On the bike and on the run, I pass people. That’s lots of fun!

 “For me, it’s about those cold, pre-sunrise mornings running along alone. I feel like I own the world. I love it when the weather isn’t so good, when other people are in bed. That’s what it’s all about. It’s that, and racing to your potential. When you race to your potential and leave it all out there, you’ve got to be happy.”

Cortney won a race in Smith Mountain Lake and then another in Salem, not just her age group but women’s overall. “It was sweet beating much younger women!”

At Boston, she was elated just to be there, starting. The road was “a sea of people” but she stayed extremely focused in her own space, “in the zone”. She felt good through the race, running 8:10 minute miles. “I barely noticed ‘Heartbreak Hill.” She finished strong, ecstatic.

About the bombing she said, “I am not fearful. I am overwhelmed by the people who have said to me they were thinking about me being there. I didn’t even know they knew I was there! I work at home. I train mostly alone. I live a somewhat insular life. But apparently I have a sphere of people who care about me. Where was the network of caring people for the bombers? Where were the people who could have gotten them off the path of pre-meditated violence?

“Marathons take so much out of me, but I am so motivated to go back to Boston next year. My message to others, what I try to convey in my blog, is that people should squeeze everything they can out of life. For me, athletics and training is a way to do that. It makes me positive, energetic, and hopeful. The rewards of stepping away from comfort, trying different things, taking chances, are incalculable.”

* * I remember April 16

I often wander around the Virginia Tech campus. It has been a second home for much of my life, one of the most beautiful and familiar places I know. My dad got a forestry degree there. I got an engineering degree there. My wife got a doctorate in psychology there. And my only child will graduate next month with an animal science degree there. Our roots run deep and our blood runs maroon.

Like all fair-minded people who love peace and seek harmony among all mankind, the murderous rampage of April 16, 2007 still resonates with sadness and heartache, but especially those of us with ties to Tech. So I make it a point to do an annual pilgrimage those long four miles to campus each year in April.

April is a glorious time in the central Appalachians, and campus is stunning! Spring is bursting forth with a voracious, insatiable zeal, starting from the ground up, as the grass turns green first, then the shrubs blossom, then finally the trees, which give us purples, pinks, and whites before the pervasive green of summer sets in. The temperature can still be fickle, as we remember that fateful day six years ago was blustery, with flurries of snow. April in Appalachia seems hopeful, expansive, and wonderful. Or it did, until that killing rampage.

This year, for the first time since, I toured Norris Hall, the hallowed ground where most of the killing happened. There is a Center for Peace Studies in the classrooms where so many of my fellow Hokies’ lives were destroyed. Still, like I see in my mind’s eye when I toured Gettysburg, Cross Keys or Appomattox, when I walked through Norris I envisioned the carnage, the blood-splattered walls and the bullet-riddled bodies of that unspeakably horrific day.

As I write, our nation has just endured another appalling tragedy, an indiscriminate bombing in Boston, with 176 casualties including three fatalities. I mourn for another community dealing with loss, sadness, and anguish. I know what it’s like.

I’m not alone as I search for answers in the madness. I find comfort in knowing that generally we Americans are good and kind people, willing to lend a hand and a heart. I take comfort knowing that for everyone who would wantonly and randomly do harm, there are thousands who would wantonly and randomly do good.

However, I may be alone, or at least in a smaller crowd, when I recognize that we also have a darker side. As we can be kind and generous individually, we can also be pugnacious, manipulative, aggressive, belligerent, and confrontational. Our nation spends in its military more than the next 10 countries behind us. Just since my childhood, we have invaded Vietnam, Cambodia, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Panama, Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Drone strikes are thought to kill 50 innocent people for every terrorist. The only president during my lifetime who actively promoted peace first was Jimmy Carter, and he was derided, excoriated!, for it.

Former General Dwight Eisenhower knew war intimately. He said leaving the presidential office, “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” We should be paying more attention.

Many corporations are actively assaulting workers, the environment, public education, and public health with proliferation of pernicious chemicals, non-biodegradable plastics, genetically modified seeds and insidious pesticides. Oil companies are destroying enormous swaths of land to obtain tar sands and coal companies are decimating Appalachia and ruining the lives of the people and animals through mountaintop removal mining. Child labor and even slavery still exist and substandard labor conditions persist at factories around the world. Income inequality has been escalating rapidly for the last three decades in America, and a new cadre of hate groups has promulgated not on racial lines as in the past but on economic lines. Less-privileged people at home and abroad are marginalized and dominated, and our natural resources are seen as little more than cash machines. People are angry, both at home and abroad. Tensions are high and violence seems inevitable.

I don’t have any better answers to unspeakable tragedy than anybody else. For me, I react to such tragedies by doing seeking my own best nature, trying to bring creativity and harmony to the world, by telling my wife and daughter that I love them, by picking up somebody else’s trash, by waving at a passing motorist, by smelling the blossoms, by speaking out against violence and intolerance, by helping someone in need, and by refusing to be terrorized.

I encourage you to use a few minutes of your time and energy today to wage peace in your own way.