* * Keeping up with the Joneses, for three generations

Blasting through the woods at top speed on two wheels isn’t for everybody, but for Bob Jones, his two sons, and his grandson, it’s been part of the family for decades. It turns out that I had a part in their passion.

I met Bob, now 65, at a local car dealership in the 1970s. He’d moved from Newport News and gotten a job as a car mechanic. I was 20 and had been a motorcycle enthusiast since around age 14. We hit it off and he bought a bike to ride with me. Eventually, I drifted away from dirt riding, but it stayed an obsession with him that has never worn off. Now my enthusiasm has returned as well, as I’ve recently bought another dirt bike.

Bob, sons Travis and Nathan, and grandson Trevor met me at Travis’ house on the edge of Blacksburg to talk about it.

Bob said, “I met you and became fascinated by dirt bikes in general. I’d been riding (road bikes) but was fascinated by your Penton, which was state of the art. I bought a 1970 Bultaco. I started motocrossing and trail riding. By 1977 I did woods racing. I’ve always been mechanically inclined and I worked my career as an automotive technician and in tool sales. Now I work for Travis at his store, Go Race (in Christiansburg), again as a mechanic.”

Son Travis, now 47, grew up in his dad’s tire tracks, so to speak. “I was growing up as dad was really getting into it, and it was natural for me to do the same. I was probably 4 when I rode for the first time and got my first bike when I was 6. I was involved in the environment and was stimulated by the machines and the people around them, working to understand how to make them go faster and how to ride faster. Dad taught me a lot and then I learned more on my own.

“We were racing constantly, hare scrambles, motocross and enduro.”

Terminology: motocross is done on a short dirt track with multiple obstacles, jumps, curves and the like. A lap takes a minute or two and a race is comprised of many laps. Hare scrambles are races through the woods on single-track trails that may take 20 to 30 minutes per lap. Enduro is a timed race with checkpoints for the riders.

 Bob said that even beyond the almost weekly racing and the constant mechanic work on the bikes after the races, there was training. “You have to be in good physical condition to race. Hare scrambles races are over 2 hours long and are grueling. To be competitive you have to be in good shape. We were racing together, wrenching together, learning together. I always thought it was a good family thing. We were close knit, enjoying the same activity.

Second son Nathan, 29, has also been a rider and racer for most of his life, and he’s now working on a Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering at Virginia Tech. “I grew up going to the races with Dad and Trav. I worked my way up through the various age classes, which eventually led to a state championship in 2007. Many of the weekends we weren’t racing we were riding around here. I’m appreciative of the upbringing I got and think that racing builds confidence in other areas of life as well. We’ve always been close as a family in large part because of this shared passion.”

Bob and Travis have also won several state championships between them.

Racing was expensive, and to pay for it they bought a trailer and equipped it to be a mobile shop to take to races, offering mechanic services. On a typical weekend, they’d drive to the track on Friday, sell parts and services all day Saturday, often well into the evening, and race on Sunday. They did this for over ten years, learning the skills that eventually would lead Travis to establish Go Race Inc., which is located beside the Sheetz in Christiansburg. “One time,” Bob said, “Travis was doing suspension work until 4:00 a.m., got a couple hours of sleep, and then won the race at the Pro-Am level.”

Travis’ son Trevor is a high school junior, and he’s a rider as well, known for his near-endless wheelies and technical riding ability. Trevor said, “I don’t ever remember not riding motorcycles. I want to continue the Jones legacy of winning championships and eventually I want to be a world champion.”

“They’re all faster than me now,” Bob admitted. “I’m just trying not to hurt myself!”

I said, “I remember my first ride, how exciting it was. It either grabs you or it doesn’t. But it’s still thrilling for me today.”

Go Race, Inc. now employs several people and takes in suspension work from across the country and indeed worldwide. “Around 70% of my work is from beyond Virginia,” Travis claimed. He’s got all the work he can handle, including upgrading my new Beta. 

Travis said, “Motorcycles have been a successful and fulfilling way of life. I know we all thank Dad for sharing his passion with us; it’s been very rewarding, exciting and a whole lot of fun!”

* * A tale of two surgeries

My wife Jane and I both went under the knife in 2017. She had her right knee replaced and I had my gallbladder extracted. We’re fine now, thanks. But my bewilderment is off the charts. The way our national health care system works, as illustrated by these two surgeries, is maddeningly, astonishingly incoherent.

She’s a few year older than me and is on the uphill side of 65, thus qualifying for Medicare. I’m still streaking towards that magical number. Being self-employed and not covered by a company insurance plan, I have an individual plan on the Affordable Care Act “marketplace.”

My background: one night last summer, I went to bed on an otherwise uneventful evening. By midnight, I was in the emergency room, suffering from devilishly acute, floor-crawlingly intense pain. A failing gallbladder was diagnosed and I scheduled to have it removed. The surgery was a breeze, performed by a local surgeon at my neighborhood hospital, using a da Vinci surgical system, basically a surgeon-controlled robot. I was home within four hours and two days later walked three miles, over nine miles by the weekend.

Jane’s background: Through most of last year and especially on our vacation where she was standing and walking much of the day, she experienced considerable pain in her right knee. Her evaluation revealed diminishing cartilage that would cushion the knee. She was operated on at the same hospital by another local surgeon. She spent over a month in a rehabilitation facility before returning home where she continues to get routine therapy.

It goes without saying that everyone involved, from the doctors to the nurses to the therapist were absolutely top-notch, compassionate, professional, empathic, and attentive. The facilities were fantastic and both of us are having excellent outcomes. For that we are thankful.

However….! Costs are an entirely different beast. It appears that what the care providers charge can only be described as astoundingly arbitrary and capricious.

Breakdown:

On Medicare, Jane pays $108/month, taken from her Social Security. She also pays $163 for a Medicare Supplement. Her complete invoice “Charge” for the hospital, doctor, anesthesiologist and related services was $116,658 (which, by the way, is over half the median home value around here), but the “Allowed” amount was a mere $13,944.

My insurance cost, with the Affordable Care Act subsidy, was $420 per month. But it also carried a $3500 deductible. So I paid over $8500 for insurance last year. My surgery cost $33,782, negotiated to $6845 (a 5-fold difference).

As bizarre as that all is, here’s another story to throw into the mix. A friend of mine is a self-employed handyman. He had his gallbladder extracted a few years ago. When he explained to the hospital that he couldn’t afford to have it done, they did it anyway. For free. Yup, $0.00. He paid nothing.

Sorry to burden you with all that data, but I’m trying to illustrate this point: Healthcare is great when you can afford it, but the system we employ to fund its operation is an absolute, arbitrary mess. Healthcare is a for-profit industry, where a few people make millions off of sick people. They want to keep it that way, and as far as I can tell, they own Congress.

(Note that the Explanation of Benefits has three columns: “Charge”, “Allowed”, and “Difference.” As I understand it, “Allowed” is what the insurer is willing to pay, regardless of what the provider wants. So “Charge” is meaningless. There should be a disclaimer that says, “Warning to stupid people: do not pay this amount. Nobody does. Doing so will financially annihilate you.” How can a hospital ethically justify charging $116,658 for a service when they can stay in business while accepting $13,944 for the exact same thing? And then to beat all, they can offer that same service free to someone who cannot afford it.)

The ACA has become one of the most controversial laws in my lifetime. Personally, I think it’s a terrible system, yet still better than what it replaced. The problem with the “repeal and replace” efforts is they’re not providing a comprehensive solution, befitting our great nation. It is a moral imperative that good healthcare is provided to everybody funded by our national community, and in some ways we already do, as hospitals are legally required not to turn anybody in need away. But what we’ve got is inefficient, unfair, and expensive, relative to other industrialized nations, and we have worse health outcomes than most. We need a system that makes health care available to everybody, yet with incentives to spur talented people to enter the field and perform research to solve our vexing diseases.

Our failure to solve this has made people sick, miserable, poorer, and angry. Every other industrialized nation on earth has figured it out. Why can’t ours?

* * The lost art of the town hall meeting

Who of us in the bifocal set doesn’t love the artwork of Norman Rockwell? During his long and prolific career throughout most of the early 20^th Century, Rockwell was among America’s most famous and successful artists and illustrators.

Hold that thought for a moment.

One of the foundational ideas of our American system is that all of us have the right and responsibility to participate. Our Founding Fathers decreed that our nation would not be a monarchy. There would be no kings or queens. Those who rule us would come from us, with their powers granted by our consent. For legislators to know what we want and need, they must hear from us. Thus, town hall meetings emerged in the 19^th Century, modeled after New England town meetings of the 17^th Century, to allow interaction between political leaders and citizens. In these meetings, participants don’t actually vote or making legally binding decisions. Instead, they provide an equal exchange of ideas. One by one, a citizen express his or her concerns, opinions, and wishes, and the legislator reacts and comments on it.

Local governance, for example our town council and county board of supervisor meetings, are generally open to the public and habitually offer citizen input. Thus, town hall meetings are more useful for state and national level politicians whose work, in our case, is done in Richmond or Washington, and are more appropriate for state senators and delegates to the former and U.S. Senators and congressmen to the latter.

President Franklin Roosevelt was well into his four-term tenure as President of the United States when on January 6, 1941, he delivered one of the most powerful and memorable State of the Union addresses in history. Adolph Hitler’s Nazis had already established concentration camps and his armies were already marching through Europe when Roosevelt proposed four fundamental freedoms that in his view should be enjoyed by people not just in his own country but across the world. Everyone, Roosevelt declared, should have the freedom of speech and of worship, and freedom from want or fear.

To honor and promote these ideals, in 1943, Norman Rockwell released a series of four oil paintings, each illustrating one of Roosevelt’s visions. Rockwell chose a scene from a fictitious town hall meeting to illustrate the Freedom of Speech. It has become one of the truly iconic portraits in American history, especially considering it includes no recognizable subject.

It remains strongly symbolic and timeless. Its main character is a handsome but otherwise undistinguished dark haired commoner. He is of the working class; he wears no tie or jewelry, merely a flannel shirt and worn, frayed jacket. His hands, resting on a wooden railing, are darker and rougher than the bystander to his right, who is bestowing upon him a look of respect, anticipation and earnestness. The speaker is clearly no elitist; he’s merely a devoted citizen speaking his mind to an unseen legislator.

What has made the town hall format so effective and enduring? For one thing, there is an unspoken relationship between the citizen and the legislator, that they are of the same stature. For another, citizens feel empowered because they’re being heard. When a complex issue is raised, speakers not only educate the legislators to their concerns but also educate fellow citizens as to how these issues may affect them. Even though no specific rules or guidelines govern town hall meetings – organizers are free to establish their own – it is implied that give-and-take is an essential part of the process. It is a way for legislators to hear from citizens on upcoming issues, legislation, or regulation.

Recently, several local politicians have purposefully withdrawn from invitations to these events. Why? There may be several reasons; I can only guess. One may be that they can be a locus for protest, often turning heatedly vitriolic. Some have even turned violent. Maybe it’s too much trouble to attend. Sorry to be cynical, but maybe they don’t care what constituents think.

Local congressmen Morgan Griffith and Bob Goodlatte have sworn off these events. Goodlatte is retiring after this term, but Griffith is up for re-election. He hasn’t participated in a town hall meeting since 2011, arguing that carefully orchestrated telephone “meetings” serve the same purpose. You decide whether that’s a compelling point or whether Griffith refuses to directly encounter his constituents.

The local activist group, NRV Indivisible, is hosting a town hall meeting in Blacksburg on February 22, 2018. Griffith and three Democratic potential challengers have been invited. Organizers and many local citizens including myself implore the congressman to attend. I’ll be in the audience, seeing in my mind’s eye the ghost of Norman Rockwell’s fictitious speaker, expressing his fundamental freedom of speech. 

* * Making our intersections work

Maybe it’s just me, but I hate traffic lights.

Back when I was a child, when Blacksburg and Christiansburg were separate and distinct towns, there was only one traffic light between them. It was at Peppers Ferry Road, adjacent to the NRV Mall. At last count, there are 25 now. It’s maddening. I hate the wasted gas, the wasted time, and the inefficiency.

I think we can all agree that the worst one is at the intersection of North Franklin Street and Cambria Street by the Recreation Center in Christiansburg. Five roads come together there and it’s a mess. On rare occasions, I’ve breezed right through on a green, but more often than not I’ve needed to wait, sometimes as much as 3 or 4 minutes. Fortunately, I don’t go through it on my regular routine, but those of you who do probably are even more frustrated than me.

Plans are afoot to “upgrade” that area, but I’m totally convinced that the chosen solution not only won’t solve the problem, it may worsen it. That’s yet to be seen, but what’s for sure is that they are adding another traffic light!

There’s no doubt this is an extremely difficult intersection, with the convergence of five roads:

* from the south on Franklin Street from downtown Christiansburg

* from the east on SR-111, Cambria Street, from the Cambria section of Christiansburg

* from the north, exiting the US-460 bypass

* from the north on Franklin Street from the mall area

* from the west on SR-111, Cambria Street, from the Windmill Hills neighborhood

Highway planners initially had both roads from the north merging together just before the intersection, and that proved to be a mess. So they kept them in separate lanes with their own lights at the junction. It’s been confusing to drivers ever since, and many accidents have occurred there. The new plan, presented recently at a public hearing I was unable to attend, has a new signalized interchange just north of the current one to bring those lanes together, and then unleash them on the current one. So those drivers will wait not once but twice!  

There’s a long exit ramp from the US-460 bypass. But at busy times, vehicles back up all the way onto the fast bypass lanes. This new solution will do little if anything to prevent that because the ramp will be even shorter. If traffic is really heavy, it will gridlock from the existing light to the proposed one, and then nobody will be able to get through. Montgomery County is adding roughly 1000 new residents annually, so this problem will only exacerbate.  

So what would work better?

I’ve written on this page before about the benefits of roundabouts. Circular intersections are the default design around most of the world. They offer many advantages over conventional intersections. There are fewer conflict points because movement is consistent rather than being “pulsed” by the changing of lights. They force lower speeds, making the crashes that do happen less serious. They better accommodate pedestrian movement. Absence of signal equipment means lower long-term operational maintenance costs. They are more aesthetically pleasing. Significant for the case in point, by being expandable, they can handle more than four access roads. And they significantly reduce fuel consumption and emissions because there is less idling.

Modern designs are many, including more than just circles. In some cases, they are ovalized to bring add carrying capacity. There are “dogbone” styles with two circles linked by a straight stretch, like at the east end of Virginia Tech’s Drillfield Drive where it meets Stanger Street, Kent Street, and the Alumni Mall. The size and configuration can be altered to adapt to almost any proposed capacity.

It seems that VDOT has somewhat gotten the message, as the new Southgate Drive diverging diamond interchange with the US-460 Bypass just southwest of campus has two new roundabouts. Inexplicably to me, a signalized interchange was added as well when a third roundabout would, in my view, have worked better. As I said, I hate traffic lights.

So why not in Christiansburg?

I brought my concerns up with Mayor Mike Barber, explaining my fear that after months of disruption and millions of dollars spent, the proposed design may not work better than the current design. The impression I got from him was that the town was largely out of the decision process, and he was simply happy money was being spent here rather than in Northern Virginia. I’m as pleased as he is that statewide transportation money will be spent here instead. But that’s no excuse to do it wrong. We have a once in a generational opportunity to get this right.

Imagine if you use it regularly and after the inconvenience of months of construction, the result is no better than before! Grrrr!

I suspect at this point, plans have been finalized and construction looms. I hope I’m wrong and things work out better than I anticipate. But I’m not optimistic. What do you think?

* * Touchdown Tommy's terrible toll

“Touchdown Tommy Edwards” was, for several weeks back in the 1990s, one of the most famous college football players in America. Life’s been a struggle since, as I learned as we chatted on a crystalline morning sitting on metal chairs outside his modest home “across the railroad tracks” in Radford, diesel locomotives plying nearby. His home and yard were reflections of the man himself; brilliant, wounded, disheveled, and mercurial.

“I was born and raised in Radford,” he told me. He came from an athletic family where his father Ken starred at Virginia Tech from 1966 until 1970 and then for the Buffalo Bills of the NFL, and his uncle, for whom he is named, played at Ferrum until cancer cut his life short. “From the time of my earliest memories, football was a big part of my life. I was (Ken’s) only son. I was always playing baseball, basketball or football. It was an expectation that I’d be involved in sports.

“I was fast, but not a natural athlete. I didn’t have good hand/eye coordination. I couldn’t shoot a basketball. But I was good at football.” He excelled in both track and football, and was a consensus All American playing linebacker and running back, earning a football scholarship to Virginia Tech. He was a 235-pound sprinter! “When I was a senior at Radford, I won the regional (track meet) myself. I ran 100-, 200-, and 400-meters, the triple jump, long jump, and high jump. I won five of them and placed third in another. I could do back-flips. I was a skateboarder.”

He attended Tech in 1992 and was red-shirted his first year, meaning he was held off the team to build strength and maturity, as is often done. He wanted to major in art, but his coaches said it was too time consuming, so he switched to wildlife biology. He’s always been artistically inclined.

He began playing in 1993, where he had an immediate impact. For six or seven weeks, he led the nation in scoring. “I had more touchdowns than any other player. I scored four touchdowns in one game. Tech went from being a sub-par football school to a big-time program. Tech saw a noticeable increase in season ticket sales the minute I signed on. I was known for being the guy who ran over the other guy, and often the other guy didn’t get back up.”

But already, there were signs of trouble, personally. “Even in high school, I was starting to have depression by each season’s end. I was already brain damaged. I never loved the game at all. I loved the attention it brought me.”

At Tech, his brain injuries worsened and he had a nervous breakdown and became clinically depressed. Now, he is certain he was suffering from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative disease of the brain found mostly in people who receive repetitive brain trauma. It results from the brain being repeatedly slammed against the inside of the skull, and it kills blood flow to various sections of the brain.

Playing big-time football, he said, “is like being in multiple car accidents every day. It’s not just the games, but practice as well. Our coaches told us each year that football is not a contact sport; it’s a collision sport. Your helmet is the hardest piece of equipment you have. Use it! They told us not to hit with the crown of the helmet, as you can paralyze yourself. Hit with the top of the face-mask. I went through seven face-masks my senior year.

“The coaches at Tech told me they didn’t have time for me to be depressed. I routinely contemplated suicide. I stopped my world; I stopped participating. I stopped going to practice or class. I watched the movie Apocalypse Now on a loop for a week, not contemplating the metaphoric significance of that.”

He left Tech and transferred to Boise State in Idaho where he played one more season. A concussion and other physical injuries including a broken hand hampered his play there, and he finally dropped out. 

“The NCAA protects the institutions but not the players.

“I’ve had up and down times since then. I do things and make things. I do music things as a singer-songwriter. I’ve been in my family businesses. But I still struggle every day. I’m scared of life, the future. Depression. Anxiety. Hypomania. Impulsivity. Rage and aggression. The more I learn about my CTE, the more scared I become. You’ve caught me on a good day. I was blessed with a high IQ; I can convince anyone I’m functional.”

I asked about his reaction to football. He said, “It represents a really important anthropological aspect of who we are as humans. We come together to support something. Watching is like a tribal sense of clandom. But there’s a dark side. Football is a violent sport that destroys the brains of people who play.”