* * Assembling my Bolivia team

Yesterday was a beautiful sunny fall day but sadly I spent most of it indoors. Several weeks ago, I was tapped by the by my Rotary International District 7570 to lead an international Group Study Exchange team to the landlocked South American country of Bolivia.  Bill Ricks, a retired Air Force veteran from Lexington was tapped to lead another trip to Tasmania. Yesterday many of the same people met at the same meeting room to piece together our team.

Only a few weeks ago, the number of applications we received could be counted on the fingers of one hand.  Bill and I each needed four team members plus an alternate.  Seemingly at the last minute, a flood of applications came in and we had 17 applicants for 10 positions.

I was very pleased with the quality of the applicants and would have been very happy to have the privilege of sharing our five-week trip with just about any of them.  But I really felt that the group selected for my team was the cream of the crop.  My team has two men and two women with a third woman as the alternate.  One man is from Lexington but all the rest are from the lower Shenandoah Valley, in the Winchester area.  Scheduling and travel arrangements are the next order of business for the group.

At least three people in our team are fluent in Spanish and one is a high school Spanish teacher.  I will rely on these people heavily because my Spanish language skills are so limited.  Simply learning a few phrases is all my feeble mind and can manage.  Jane and I are studying Spanish together with a tutor but Jane, who had already taken Spanish in school, is progressing much faster than I am.  Regardless of the skill level I am able to attain by the time we depart in March, I am confident that we will have a wonderful experience and will be treated to the sights, sounds, smells, and friendly people of central South America.

From what I have learned, Bolivia is the poorest nation in South America.  Roughly 50% of the population is native rather than having European origins.  Imagine the United States being 50% Indian!  It will be interesting in every way to see how a significant indigenous population coexists with those of European descent.

There are a million details that need to be taken care of before we get on our airplane and head south.  The sheer prospect of all these tasks boggles my mind.  But they will all be completed in time, I'm sure, and hopefully everything will fall into place.



* * Visiting Gate City, Virginia

For the prior two days, I have been motorcycling the Crooked Road with my friend, Mike Gunther.  In doing research for my upcoming book, I have already traveled every mile of The Crooked Road on various exploratory trips, but never in one fell swoop.  To attempt to achieve some honesty with my upcoming readers, I decided that a complete trip from one end to the other was in order.

MG and I left on Monday morning and rode the eastern portion starting in Rocky Mount and spent the night in a motel in Abingdon.  We rode the western section from Abingdon to Breaks Interstate Park yesterday and then completed the trip back home.

The weather was absolutely delightful for the entire trip.  Monday was on the warm side and there was nary a cloud in the sky to be seen.  Tuesday morning started off cooler and partly cloudy but it quickly warmed up and was equally pleasant.  This is probably the peak week for the leaf change season and many trees were brilliant in color.

One of the best aspects of traveling the Crooked Road is exploring some of the smaller, largely forgotten communities throughout Southwest Virginia.  I have always bypassed one town because it does not have an official Crooked Road venue, even though the Road goes right by it.  But Mike and I decided that we owed it to ourselves to stop and get a brief tour of Gate City in Scott County.

Gate City is only about 4 miles from the Tennessee border.  It is the county seat of Scott County.  The population is about 2100 people in a county of about 23,000 people.  It is named for the gap in Clinch Mountain, called Moccasin Gap, which forms a natural gateway through which highways US 23, US 58, and US 421 all pass.  Clinch Mountain forms an impressive backdrop to the southern border of the town.

The town was established in 1815.  Its main street is Jackson Street, named after Andrew Jackson who had just established himself as a hero in the war of 1812.  The city was originally called Winfield for General Winfield Scott, another hero of the war.  Its second incarnation was Estillville, named after Benjamin Estill, a judge who established Scott County.  In its current incarnation, it was named Gate City and was incorporated in 1892.

Two things caught my attention in Gate City.  First, the downtown is about three blocks long which is approximately the same as my current city of Blacksburg which has around 40,000 people.  The second thing is that the downtown is festooned with antique lamp posts having five spherical globes each.  While not seemingly destitute but not bustling, either, Gate City's founding fathers apparently once dreamed of much greater things for their city than are evident today.

It struck me that the towns and cities that were established prior to the 1970s and have seen stagnant development since are much more interesting and unique than those that suffered through the Wal-Martization era since then.  My hometown of Christiansburg was overwhelmed by the car-based development culture and the downtown.  While becoming the recent recipient of beautification efforts, it is a mere shadow of the newer, bustling, mid-county mall world.  We will live to regret the way we have given our communities over to the automobile rather than to the pedestrians and bicyclists. 

Gate City is in a largely unvisited part of the state but it has a beautiful setting and an authenticity that makes it a worthwhile destination.



* * Riding to a North Carolina B&B

Every year since Jane and I met, we have gone on a Bed-and-Breakfast romantic weekend retreat in October.  We typically travel 2-3 hours, which feels like far enough away to be “gone” but not so far as to be spending the entire weekend in the car (or in some cases, on the motorcycle).  Last weekend, we went to Roaring Gap, North Carolina.  We rode the Honda Pacific Coast.

Friday afternoon was clear and cool – perfect motorcycling weather.  We made a bee-line on the Interstates to the Blue Ridge Parkway at Fancy Gap.  From there it was a short 40-or-so miles south.  Visibility was difficult with the distinct shadows hiding the roadway imperfections, but otherwise it was a great day to be motorcycling.  The leaves were only beginning to change color and most of the world was still deep green.

We made an intermediate stop at the Blue Ridge Music Center near the VA/NC state line and listened to some folks jamming on banjo, fiddle, guitar, and mandolin. 

Our B&B is a 5000 sq-ft log home near a community called Cherry Lane.

On Saturday, we took a hike at Stone Mountain State Park on the loop trail that goes up and over Stone Mountain.  As the name implies, the mountain is a huge monolithic rock, what the Carolina Environmental Diversity website calls a granite intrusion monadnock, which is an isolated mountain of resistant rock rising above lowlands.  From Google Earth, it looks like a series of tan splotches on a sea of green, with the splotches streaked as if raked by a giant comb.

It is a considerable chore stowing motorcycling gear and donning hiking gear.  The large parking lot was filling rapidly as we prepared.

Jane wears bifocals and doesn’t see the trail well.  Poor dear stumbled and fell, only 200 yards from the parking lot, scraping both her palms and knees.  Did this portend greater mishaps to come?

The ascent of the Mountain is quite steep, but because it gets so many visitors, the park has provided countless wooden stairways on the steeper sections.  The day was cool and crystal clear, but we were still sweating by the time we reached the summit, all the while trying to stay ahead of a noisy troop of Boy Scouts.  The top had multiple places to rest and take in the expansive view.  We sat in the sunshine for an hour, resting and tanning.  It turned out that the streaks were little water-courses where rivulets drained from the top following heavy rain or snow.

The descent was seemingly longer and steeper than the ascent. We eventually found ourselves in a visitors’ attraction, a restored homestead, with a log cabin and various outbuildings.  The backdrop was the steep slope of the monadnock, as dramatic as many of the Rocky Mountain scenes of cowboy westerns. 

The final attraction was the “falls” of the creek that drains the area.  It was not a true falls because there was no free-falling water, but instead a long sluice over exposed rock.  There were scores of people scampering up and down the long wooden stairways, all huffing and puffing. 

We reached the motorcycle and drove into nearby Sparta for a Mexican lunch where the wait-staff helped us learn more Spanish.

Home again on Sunday was overcast and cooler.  We took the Parkway to Tuggles Gap and drove through Floyd back home.  A lovely weekend.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that on Sunday afternoon, we attended a reception for the New River Land Trust at Mountain Lake hotel where I set up a table to sell my books.  I had my best sales day ever, selling 14 books!  Thanks to all my new customers and I hope you enjoy reading my books.

* * Sticking with the old stuff

I am really not that much into stuff.  And I seldom shop.  However, I own and ride four old motorcycles.  Coincidentally, all of them were made by Honda.  Here is my list:

1998 VFR Interceptor sport bike

1989 Hawk GT

1989 Pacific Coast

1981 CBX

Recently, one of the sales guys at the local Honda dealership asked me to come over and test ride a new model VFR Interceptor.  I said, “No thank you.  I am not really in the market.”  The new bike is a 1200cc wonder machine with an incredible amount of power and features.  My equivalent bike is 12 years old and while it is certainly not as fast as the new model, it is completely adequate.  No, it is way more than adequate for the type of riding I like to do.  It will navigate a curving mountain road as fast or faster than I would ever want to go.

But the sales guy insisted and I relented.  I drove the motorcycle in his escort down Christiansburg Mountain eastward toward Shawsville.  We never went more than 55 mph.  This motorcycle is probably capable of going 170 mph.  It has six gears.  At 55 mph I could ride in third, fourth, fifth, or six.  It really didn't seem to matter.

The new bike sells for around $15,000.  My old one is worth about $3000 and one just like it can be bought on eBay most any time.

When we got back to the dealership, the sales guys excitedly asked me what I thought.  I said, “It is too much.  It has too much speed and power.  It has too many features, many of which I would seldom if ever use.  It is way too expensive.  And it would break my heart if I broke it.”

My 29-year-old CBX is such a favorite that a few months ago I bought a spare.  My CBX has 72,000 miles on it and it ain't going to last forever.  The one I bought has only 900 miles and cost $5200.  Obviously, none of its previous owners rode it much.  I’m going to put it into service and sell the “old” on shortly. 

The motorcycles made in the era from 1980 until 2000 seem to have all the reliability, power, and ease of maintenance and operation that I ever need.  What is the use of spending a significant amount of money on new models that don't do anything that I need done better than the old ones?

This line of thinking also applies to the computers I have owned in my life.  My first computer was an IBM clone, bought around 1985.  It ran on an antiquated operating system called MS-DOS., which was clunky and obtuse.  And yet, it would still allow for some incredible functions.  A friend of mine who was a corporate bookkeeper told me how amazed she was when she first saw a computerized spreadsheet which automatically recalculated tallies for rows and columns after the entry of every piece of data.  Computer users everywhere eagerly anticipated new versions.  Over time, however, a funny thing happened.  All the additional functionality that new computers seemed to bring were of little additional value. 

Perhaps 10 years ago I got a computer that ran Microsoft Windows and the corresponding word processing and spreadsheet programs.  Every new release I have seen since then provides virtually no new functionality and merely takes the old functions and puts them in places where I can't find them anymore.

The computer market seems to be flooded now with all sorts of handheld computers and communication devices.  But like with my motorcycles, I cannot perceive the value.  I guess I have reached that age where my curmudgeonly tendencies have taken over.  For me, the era when new technologies actually provide for a better user experience or higher quality of life seems to have closed.



* * Heading to Bolivia!

As you may deduce from the headline above, I had a pretty exciting day yesterday.

I have been a member of Rotary International for four years.  Rotary is one of the oldest and best respected service organizations in the world.  Rotary sponsors any number of international goodwill programs.  One of them is called Group Study Exchange, or GSE.

Our Rotary District stretches from Winchester to Kingsport and from Danville to Norton.  Our district will sponsor two “outbound” groups on trips next spring, one to Tasmania and the other to Bolivia. 

The trips are five to six weeks long.  Team members are young people, ages 25 to 40, non-Rotarians, who are established in career positions.  The group leader is a Rotarian, over the age of 45, who is responsible for keeping the group cohesive and focused on diplomacy, cultural exchange, and goodwill.  The host countries provide food, lodging, and meaningful occupational experiences for each team member. 

I had thrown my name in the hat for consideration for team leader of one of these two trips.  The pool of applicants for the leadership position was exceptionally impressive, including people with vastly more international experience and business success than me.  We met yesterday in Roanoke and were interviewed by a dozen longstanding Rotary members in a “tell us about your life and why you deserve this appointment” setting.

I was shocked to get a call last evening from the committee head telling me that I had been selected for the Bolivia trip!  I wish I could tell you what I said that impressed this committee enough to be selected.  This is an honor of a lifetime.

Needless to say, I am still in a bit of shock.  I know little more about Bolivia than that it is a land-locked nation in South America, that its capitol city La Paz has the highest elevation of any national capitol in the world, that the national language is Spanish, and that Butch and Sundance met their demise there. 

And, I know nothing more of the Spanish language than the ability to order a beer.  My immediate task is to find a Spanish tutor and begin an extensive and intensive program to learn as much of the language as possible before our departure in the spring.

If you live in our Rotary District and are between the ages of 25 and 40 and are interested in applying, please let me know.  Rotary international pays virtually all expenses and this would surely be a trip of a lifetime for anyone.

Despedida!