* * The social contract

This essay of mine was published recently in the Roanoke Times.  It has gotten much positive feedback and an invitation from Professor Sam Riley to speak to a class at VT in writing.

The social contract

This essay is about Pedro and Elizabeth.

Pedro is Pedro Loza, who lives in La Paz, Bolivia. Bolivia is the poorest and least developed country in South America. Like me, Pedro is a member of Rotary International. Earlier this year, Pedro was a team leader for a Rotary program called Group Study Exchange, as was I. Pedro brought a team of four young professionals from Bolivia to visit our district in the United States for five weeks starting in February. During the first week, he was a guest at my home. At the conclusion of their stay here, I led a similar team to his country.

Elizabeth is Elizabeth Warren, a candidate for the United States Senate from Massachusetts. Warren was one of the primary whistleblowers in the financial debacle of 2008 which led to our current, protracted recession. She has long advocated for consumer financial protection laws.

When Pedro had been in our country a few days, I asked what surprised him. He replied, “None of your houses have perimeter walls.” He went on to explain that everyone in his country who has any wealth protects their homes from thieves by surrounding them with walls. I was able to see this firsthand when I arrived. True to his description, every host home in six cities was either within a guarded, walled, gated community or had its own perimeter wall. These walls were typically 8 to 10 feet high and were often topped with barbed wire, razor wire, or embedded shards of broken glass. I found them oppressive.

In recent weeks, Elizabeth has become additionally famous for a viral video on the Internet in which she describes her views on what she calls our social contract. In it, she acknowledges the ingenuity and efforts of entrepreneurs and business leaders and the imperative of allowing them to keep much of their hard-earned income. However, she also admonishes that their success and freedom to do business is largely the result of the expenditures of everyone else. “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own.” Entrepreneurs move their goods on the roads, are protected by police and firefighters, and hire workers educated from monies provided “by the rest of us.” We have many social systems that work in this nation for all of us; somebody has to pay for them.

Her articulation of the frustration of what we are now calling the 99% of us who do not pull the purse strings on our nation's economy is anathema to conservatives who consider every tax a bad tax and are actively striving to starve to elimination most publicly funded functions. What I found in Bolivia is the embodiment of an economy that fulfils that goal. Down there, it is every man for himself.

In Bolivia, public schools are dreadful, dreary, poorly equipped places where students are accepted on a lottery system and not everyone gets to go, especially any children with special needs. Children who come from households of means universally attend private schools.

In Bolivia, each person must provide their own theft protection because police departments are not funded well enough to protect the populace. Thus, the perimeter walls. We visited a factory that had an elaborate, electronic surveillance system to protect the owners from theft, both from outside and from within, but didn’t protect their workers from dangerous equipment, excessive noise, or particulate-laden air.

In Bolivia, packs of dogs roam the streets of every community, large and small. They do what unrestrained dogs do: fornicate, procreate, defecate, and create messes of every pile of garbage left outside. There is apparently no animal control.

Speaking of garbage, in Bolivia there appeared to be no landfills, as every roadside is filled with trash. Omnipresent are uncountable quantities of large Coca-Cola plastic bottle empties. I saw a car pull to the side of the road where the driver opened his trunk and threw plastic bags filled with garbage into the ditch.

In Bolivia, as far as I know, there are no public libraries.

Bolivia has nothing resembling our interstate highway system and only a few miles of four-lane highways.

Don't get me wrong, my experience in Bolivia was largely positive and I met many wonderful people. But what I found in terms of social systems is illustrative of the type of society conservatives seem to hope we will one day achieve.

Someone might argue that a society in which each person is responsible for taking care of his or her own needs, paying individually for roads, police protection, schools, trash pickup, and everything else, is more just and therefore more equitable. For me, though, it is simply not the type of place that I would want to live.

* * Hiking with new and old gear

Last week, I went backpacking in West Virginia with my friend Jim Kline. We were blessed with terrific weather and beautiful fall colors during the trip. Monday was cool and overcast and there was a sprinkling of rain on our tent overnight. However, each of the following days brought us clearer skies and warmer temperatures. By the time we finished, it was 70° and the sun was shining brightly.

We walked on the Allegheny Trail. Our local Appalachian Trail is over 2100 miles long and it stretches from Maine to Georgia. The Allegheny Trail is about 300 miles long and it starts on the border of West Virginia and Pennsylvania and goes south to the border with Virginia. Most of the former is a well marked trail with a beaten path. The Allegheny Trail, however, is often poorly marked and an unbeaten path through the woods. It is marked by a painted yellow patch on the trees but we had to keep a steady eye for each successive painted patch.

Because our food, clothing, and shelter are all contained in our backpacks, these became a topic of much conversation and debate. My things are a bit more modern than what Jim carries. I have an internal frame backpack which was only designed a few years ago. Jim’s is an old-style external frame backpack whose design dates back perhaps 50 years. I consider my pack to be one of the better modern designs, but at the end of the day, you have still had to carry it.

Several other pieces of gear deserve special mention because of their advancement over designs from decades ago when I first started backpacking.

First, my shoes are of a new, lightweight design that is vastly more comfortable and lighter in weight than the heavy, leather hiking boots of years ago. Weight carried on a walker’s feet rather than on his or her back makes each ounce much more pronounced.

Something as simple as wool socks have been radically upgraded. In the old days, I wore a thin, typically linen or silk liner stock underneath a thick wool sock. The wool sock had a course feel that was often uncomfortable under all the pounding. New socks are made with a much finer material that does not create hot spots.

My tent is a dome design with a separate entrance on both sides, convenient for two people in that neither person can enter or exit without disturbing the other. It has a lightweight mesh inner skin that is covered by a waterproof outer layer. It is simple to pitch and weighs only a few pounds.

My cook kit uses a self-contained fuel canister which cannot tip over or spill. It has an integral igniter, so no matches are necessary. It will boil 2 cups of water in only two or three minutes. Its cooking container has a nonstick inner surface making cleaning easy and fast, and a neoprene stocking around it meaning that no clamp or potholder is necessary to pick it up.

My flashlight straps to my forehead to provide light anywhere I look. It is powered by three small batteries and it has tiny LED bulbs which are powerful and efficient.

Underneath my sleeping bag, I use an inflatable mattress that is about one and a half inches thick. It is light weight and it compresses to a small and manageable size.

In spite of all these advancements, backpacking is still an intensely strenuous activity. Climbing hundreds or even thousands of vertical feet with weight on my back is very taxing on the body. Even moderately level walking is jarring.

Still, Jim is good company and we both enjoy the solitude of the wilderness. Other than at the road crossings, we only saw one other person on the trail, a thin, 14-year old kid wandering around with a bow and two arrows, looking for something to shoot.

* * Attending the Twin Valley Riders Rally in the Valley

Over the years, I have gone to several motorcycle rallies in Virginia and in neighboring states. I have also been a member of several motorcycle clubs. Last year for the first time, my local club, Twin Valley Riders, sponsored its own rally held at the Willville Motorcycle Campground in Meadows of Dan, Virginia. I have just returned from the second annual event.

Last year, approximately 70 riders attended. This year, preregistration was around 125 riders. The success of this event is already emerging.

I left my office in Christiansburg on Friday afternoon and arrived at the campground an hour later. I am one of the original members of Twin Valley Riders and I attended the very first meeting back in 1998. Even though I was not part of the organizing committee for this rally, I felt a certain pride in being an original member.

I rode my vintage 1981 Honda CBX motorcycle to the rally. As has already been documented on these pages, this particular specimen is my second. I bought my first CBX in 1997 and put 50,000 miles on it. I named it Mae, after Mae West, the vaudeville character. It is featured prominently in my third book, Harmonic Highways, as it provided by transport during the research phase of the book. A likeness of it is depicted on the cover.

My new and as yet unnamed CBX was quite a hit at the rally. A crowd gathered around it almost from the time I parked it.

The afternoon was chilly and overcast. I spent most of the afternoon visiting with club members and old friends. The members of my club that had organized the rally brought a large smoker in which they cooked our dinner of chicken breasts, baked potatoes, and green beans. By the time dinner was winding down, everyone was wearing multiple layers of clothing or shivering or both.

The next morning, I began my day with an equal amount of laziness to the day before. By 9:00 AM, it began to rain. I was in no mood to ride my motorcycle. Several of my friends left the campground for various excursions, both on-road and off-road. By mid afternoon I decided I needed some exercise so I walked into the village of Meadows of Dan and then along the Blue Ridge Parkway to Mabry’s Mill. One rider who I knew personally rode past me and then came back, evidently wondering why anybody would be wandering aimlessly along the Blue Ridge Parkway.

My wife Jane arrived in the car along with my friend Mike Gunther's wife Angie only a few minutes before I completed my walk. That evening, our cooking crew served pulled pork barbecue, baked beans, and homemade coleslaw. The evening seemed equally as cold as the night before but most people seemed better prepared to withstand the chilly temperatures. One of the best things about Willville is the endless supply of hot water for the showers. I must have stayed under the shower head for a half-hour to get warm. That evening, I sat near the bonfire and finally warmed up before bedtime.

Yesterday was the final day of the rally. After packing up our camp, I hopped on the CBX and rode it northbound on the parkway on the Blue Ridge Parkway to Tuggle’s Gap. I rode behind two new friends from Massachusetts, a couple named Mike and Joanne. On 10 miles or so of the ride, we were engulfed by fog so thick it was difficult to see the road. My speed slowed from 50 mph to 25 mph and I had to leave my face shield because it became covered in the mist. Six of us, Mike and Angie Gunther, Mike and Joanne from Massachusetts, and Jane and me had breakfast at the restaurant at Tuggle’s Gap. Mike Gunther and I rode home together through Floyd, Pilot, and Christiansburg.

My CBX passed 2500 miles on the way home and it ran perfectly. What a wonderful machine! What a wonderful weekend!

* * Going to court(s)

A few weeks ago, in an entry here on this blog called, “Bumping another car,” I spoke about receiving a traffic violation. The stories got much more complicated before it got simpler again.

I did not yet have the chance to document here the fact that I got a second moving validation only three weeks later. I was driving through the town of Independence, Virginia, there to do research for my next book. I was evidently paying less attention to my driving than I should've been, because as I approached the town center, the speed limit dropped but my speed didn't. I was pulled over and given a ticket for going 60 mph in a 45 mph zone.

Interestingly, my two scheduled court dates were only one day apart, with the speeding ticket being first on Monday afternoon in Independence and the second being on Tuesday morning in Pulaski.

This sudden placement in outlaw status messed with my mind in several ways. First, I began to doubt whether I was even capable of driving anymore without doing something wrong (Have you noticed that some speed limits are REALLY slow?). Second, I wondered about the punishment, particularly in light of the possibility of having one infringement weighing on the other. Was it possible for one plus one to equal more than two? Would the jurisdictions even communicate to each other? I decided to appear in court and take my chances.

The courtroom session opened at 1:30 PM in Independence for my speeding ticket. After going through the metal detector and entering the courtroom, I found that there were perhaps only eight other people charged with traffic violations. Likely given my typical place at the beginning of most lists alphabetical order, I was called first. The judge swore me in and asked me for a plea. I pled guilty. Then, he asked the policeman to indicate what I had done wrong. I was given the opportunity to accept a fine of $30 plus $61 in court costs and three points against my driving record or to pay $61 in court costs and have the fine and the points against my driving record expunged after completion of a daylong driver education course.

I left the courtroom wondering what might happen the following day and whether two infractions could be wiped away with a single driver education course completion certificate.

The next morning, I was in a Pulaski at 8:30 AM, my scheduled court date. the Pulaski County Court was much more crowded, with perhaps 50 people waiting their turn for judgment. The judge worked with the lawyers first, both those who were representing clients alone and those who were representing clients who were in attendance. The judge was thorough and fair-minded. He punished severely the people who deserved to be punished and he was lenient towards the people who had made simple mistakes.

I was very glad that I had brought along a library book to read, because by the time we adjourned for a break for a recess at 12:15 PM, I was still sitting on the hard pew; the backlog of people waiting in the audience had barely been touched. Across the street from the courthouse is a public library. Fearing that I would finish my book before my case came up, I went inside and bought some old magazines and a paperback book.

To my pleasure, however, my case came up quickly thereafter.

The state trooper who investigated this accident and I went through the same swearing in procedure as the day before. The judge asked the trooper what happened. Because the trooper did not see this accident, he got his information from me and the other driver. Therefore, I had no objection to what he said. The judge turned to me and asked me to tell my version. I told him that I had a moment of inattention and it caused me to bump another car. I pleaded that this was the first time in over 40 years of driving that I had ever damaged someone else's car. He chuckled and said, “I'm guessing you have probably not had similar model of attention deficit since then.” I thought about the speeding ticket that happened only three months only three weeks later but didn’t mention it. I said, “I have tried to be more attentive.” He said, “I suppose everyone makes mistakes. I think I am going to let you go on this one. I don't think that someone who has been driving for 40 years without an accident is going to learn much from driver education. I am not even going to ask you to pay court costs.”

I left that courtroom borderline ecstatic!

Because I am facing only one violation rather than two and because the speeding ticket only carries three points, now I am considering whether to simply accept those points and paid a fine rather than going to school.

This story has a much happier ending than I feared a few weeks ago. Now the challenge is to start the next no-ticket streak and avoid the piercing eyes of the law for several more years to come.

* * Running the "Hotel Abraham"

Our daughter moved out of the house two years ago to an apartment in town as she started college at Virginia Tech. This has left us with a spare bedroom. We have begun to make good use of it.

As I have mentioned earlier, I spent five weeks in Bolivia as part of a Rotary International group study exchange program. There was also an inbound team from Bolivia. We hosted the team leader, Pedro Loza for several days back in February.

Shortly after my return from Bolivia, a friend that we met while motorcycling in West Virginia, Nic Tremblay, from Canada, came to stay with us along with two of his friends. I guided them on a ride the following day into southern West Virginia before they split from me and continued south.

I belong to two Internet-based services, one called Warm Showers, http://warmshowers.com/ and the other called Couch Surfing, http://www.couchsurfing.org/ that connect vagabond travelers with willing hosts. We live 3 miles from the original transcontinental bicycle route (Note: atop a very strenuous climb) that was established during the nation's bicentennial in 1976. It is now called the Transamerica Bicycle Route. We have had three groups of riders stay with us this summer who have connected with us through these sites.

We are approximately 7 days ride from the eastern terminus in Yorktown. This seems about the right distance for transcontinental riders to be ready for their first rest day. Each group of riders planned to spend the night and then continue on but all of them decided after their first night with us to stick around and spend another.

The first group was four young men. Two of them were from England, one was from Utah, and one was from California. One of the fellows from England, Graham, kept a blog of his trip which makes for very interesting reading. See, http://www.gonnaridemybike.com/

A month or so later a young man and a young woman stayed with us. On their day with us, it was a weekend and we were able to travel and play with them. We took them to Floyd County and we hiked to the summit of Buffalo Mountain. We then had a great Mexican dinner in Floyd and attended a concert of live music.

A few weeks later, another young man and young woman stayed with us. The woman was memorable because she had little more hair on her head than Michael Jordan. They were carrying huge amounts of photographic equipment and were doing a documentary of their experience.

Yesterday, we had still another new arrival. Phoebe, a girl from England, is staying with us this week. She is participating in an educational challenge sponsored by an organization affiliated with Virginia Tech. She is studying wildlife conservation at the University of Kent in Canterbury, just southeast of London.

It has been great fun having all of these visitors from around the world. Each has brought his or her own special charm and new ideas and experiences. Generally, the cost to us has been negligible and the only care we have needed to provide is just a clean set of sheets and towels. Additionally, they have provided for potential travel opportunities for us, to visit with them in their own in their home areas.

If you have a spare bedroom, consider opening your home. It has been entirely worthwhile.