* * Listening to Whitney

And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and the man on the moon
When you comin' home dad?
I don't know when, but we'll get together then
You know we'll have a good time then

        Harry Chapin

Our only daughter, Whitney, is 19.  She has just completed her freshman year at Virginia Tech.  Although she lives across town from us, I see her way too infrequently.  Yesterday morning, we had a date. 

Whitney and I have always gotten along great.  She’s delightful, polite, well-mannered, and respectful.  When I tell people her mom and I have never disciplined her, they think I’m kidding, but it’s the truth.  She’s never misbehaved.  On those rare occurrences when we’ve been snippy towards one another, we’ve always made it a point to smooth things over before bedtime.  “I hate going to bed being mad at you.”  We have never had an issue too difficult to talk through.  Just having her around and hearing her voice calms and centers me.

But she has a busy life, these days busier than mine.  There’s schoolwork, the sorority, boyfriends, horseback riding and work.  Over the past several weeks, she’s not had time for me and I’d been on her case about it.  Even yesterday, after arriving at 9am she said, “I can only be together until around noon.”

I put her on the back of our Honda Pacific Coast motorcycle and we headed northbound towards Mountain Lake.  I had recently purchased a pair of electronic wireless communicators that allow my passenger and me to talk to each other.  She had never used these before.  We were able to converse all the way up the mountain.  It was a beautiful, hot day with puffy clouds hanging around the mountains rimming the lake.  We parked near the grand sandstone hotel, the scene of the cult movie from 20 years ago, Dirty Dancing, and proceeded uphill.  We carried only a pair of binoculars and a bottle of water.

The trail emerges near the summit of Salt Pond Mountain where a huge power line rips across the landscape.  The downside of this is the huge superimposition of the industrial world upon an otherwise unspoiled natural setting.  The upside is that the clear-cut provides wonderful views, particularly to the west.  There was a steady westerly wind and we basked in the breeze as we sat on a rock outcropping, watching hawks and conversing. I did a little lecture I've done before about determining compass directions from the angle of the sun.  The view was grand and inspiring, what makes our area of SW VA so special.

She told me about her school work, boyfriends, and roommate situations.  It was wonderful to be in her company again.  She is a beautiful girl with long blonde hair, bright blue eyes, and teeth as straight and white as a string of pearls.

I told her how unhappy I had been at how infrequently we had been together in recent weeks.  I told her about the Harry Chapin song, Cat in the Cradle.  “It’s about a man who raises a boy and when the boy was young the man had too little time for him but as the boy grew older the boy had increasingly less time for the father.”  We laughed about how this was happening to us.

She mentioned that she intended to spend much of that afternoon at the graduation for the senior class at Blacksburg high school.  Her own graduation had been one year earlier.  She explained that she had many friends who were a year behind her and she wanted to share in their happy day.  She expressed some concerns about how some former friends and their families would react to her.  I said, “Here is some fatherly advice.  Put all that out of your mind and treat everyone you see as a long-lost friend and be as cordial and cheerful to everyone as you can possibly be.”

She asked me about my books and I mentioned that I had a novel in mind that involved a character traveling to Ireland.  Jane, Whitney and I have been to Ireland before but I was surprised when Whitney told me how much she loved Ireland and Irish culture.  I told her that if our financial situation allowed it, perhaps next summer we could go back to Ireland again for a longer trip so I could research the book.

We walked back to the motorcycle and dressed for the descent of the mountain.  With each passing mile, the air temperature grew increasingly warmer.  Whitney chattered in my earphones almost continually all the way home.  As I write this, I cannot remember what it was she had to say, but it was it was wonderful to have her voice again in my ear.

* * Saving the turtle

How would you react if you were bicycling and found a huge snapping turtle in the middle of the road?

John Gregg and I ride bicycles together every Thursday morning for fun and fitness.  Last Thursday, we were riding on Long Shop Road east of Blacksburg.  We were chatting as we often do, with John carrying most of the conversational load while I struggled vainfully to keep up.  John plays trumpet with several bands and had recently played at a Memorial Day observance at a local retirement home. The keynote speaker was a military man.  His message was that too often our nation is unprepared for wars as they arrive and Liberals are to blame.  John chose to avoid a confrontation and remained silent, although he told me his feeling was that our nation had embroiled itself in too many preventable wars.  “I recognize the sacrifices of our military men and women, but too many of them have died unnecessarily.”

I noted that seventy years ago, our fiercest enemies were the Germans and the Japanese and twenty years later it was the Russians.  Now, all are friends.  “Perhaps if we could learn to respect other nations’ needs as well as our own, we could wage peace instead of war.”

As we prepared to stop where Long Shop Road approaches the intersection with McCoy road, two cars had already stopped.  One driver looked to have middle-eastern origin.  I guessed him to be a graduate student at Virginia Tech.  He stepped out of his car and we pondered the primordial behemoth before us.  This turtle’s shell was as big around as a dinner platter. It had long, pointy toenails at the end of rugged, stubby legs, a long alligator-like tail, and beak-like snout.  Nobody wanted to approach it.

We decided our best bet would be to nudge him towards the tall grasses beside the road.  We’d heard that if we could find a stick and goad him into snapping onto it, we could use it to drag him.  But no stick was available.

Meanwhile, another car stopped, this one on busier McCoy Road.  A nicely dressed 60-something black woman in a late-model American car took one look and said, “Let me call my husband. He’ll come over and kill it and we’ll make turtle soup out of it.”  She began to dial on her cell phone, but a car approaching from the rear caused her to move forward and circle the block.  The middle-eastern man drove away.  The black lady came by again and said, “Keep an eye on it.  My husband is on the way.”  She drove off to circle the block again.

The next car to stop was driven by a small, attractive young lady in a Volvo station wagon.  She looked all the part of a proverbial suburban soccer mom.  She walked over to the turtle and said, “He’s a beauty!  I’ll bet he’s 30 years old.”  Without hesitation, she grabbed him by the tail and hoisted him to chest level.  “My husband teaches biology at Virginia Tech.  We’re real familiar with these guys.”  She deposited him gently into the tall grass beside the road. 

John and I rode off, beginning the hard climb back toward Prices Fork, talking about what an unusually diverse community we live in.  The black lady pulled up beside us and asked us where the turtle went.  We mumbled something about it running back into the grass where we lost track.  She was unhappy that it had gotten away, but we were glad about giving it another day to live. 

John commented before he left me in his wake that this incident, with its multiple characters and possible outcomes, had been seemingly defused amicably.  What if the world could resolve its differences so peacefully?, he wondered aloud.  Then he sprinted on up the hill.



* * Jane's last bicycle ride

Yesterday, my wife Jane took her last bicycle ride.

Bicycling has always been a huge part of our lives.  In fact, we met on a bicycle ride in 1983.  The event was Seattle-to-Portland, a 200-mile marathon, sponsored by the Cascade Bicycle Club.  We met at the train station in Portland where she and I were waiting to ride Amtrak back to Seattle the day after the ride.  We flirted on the train on the trip north.  In the intervening years, many of our best friends came to be known through bicycling.

Jane has never been athletic, but she’s always been game to ride, even at a slow pace.  She toured Australia and New Zealand on her own later that year and we did a 2-week bicycle tour in France when our daughter was six.  Jane has ridden the nearby Huckleberry Trail uncountable times on her road bicycles and the New River Trail on her dirt bike.  She and I have ridden our tandem together many times.

Over the years, her pace has slowed even more.  She’s now in her early 60s, and has developed what she calls “essential tremors,” which is uncontrollable shaking of her hands.  Her balance has deteriorated.

Last summer, we accompanied friends to Bath County for a 2-day vacation.  We took our bicycles and did a ride.  Jane rode about 20 miles and separately I rode about 45.  She rode her mountain bike because she felt increasingly less comfortable with the lighter-weight bikes.  Nevertheless, I learned that she lost her balance and crashed at low speed into a ditch.

Yesterday, I asked her if she wanted to join me on a ride at the New River Trail from Pulaski.  We agreed that she would take a shorter ride than me, and I would assist with shuttling the car.  After parking the car, I got her bike ready first and sent her on her way. 

I had ridden only 200 yards or so from the parking lot when I saw her standing near her bicycle, which was laying in the trail.  As I approached, I could see she was bleeding from a cut across the bridge of her nose.  Her leg was scraped and bruised.  It was clear she had fallen. She told me she had glanced at her gearing and drifted off the trail and crashed. 

We walked back to the car together and put her bike away.  She offered to allow me to ride and made plans for her to pick me up.  As I rode on my own, I realized an epochal period in our lives had ended.  The New River Trail is perhaps the safest place in the region to ride; if she can’t ride on it, she can’t ride anywhere.  And baring a miracle, her balance will never appreciably improve. 

She told me later, “I came to realize that I cannot ride a bike any more.  My balance is not good.  The thought of not being able to ride makes me feel old and cut off from others.  I know I don't ride much any more, but I want to think if I wanted to I could.”  Other than riding with me on our tandem, yesterday was her last bicycle ride ever.  We will soon put her bikes up for sale.  Today, she's wincing from a broken rib and has multiple bruises.

Aging is inevitable.  At some point, unless we die suddenly, we will all confront the cessation of physical activities of our youth and mid-adult ages.  But as she says, “It's depressing when aging causes you to give up activities that used to be a major part of your life.”

* * Selling *Union, WV*

My new novel, Union, WV, is now in print.  I received my first shipment of books 2 weeks ago tomorrow and have sold 50 books already.

I have come to learn that writing and selling a book is an audacious thing.  That I could spend several months composing my thoughts, have other people pour over those words carefully for me picking out grammatical errors and making everything more readable and relevant, and then having other people, sometimes friends and sometimes strangers, pay money to read those words, is a notion I am still adjusting to.

The feedback has been wonderful.  One of my new readers wrote on Facebook yesterday, “I am totally amazed at the research and knowledge that has gone into this book! I have always taken history as it was “taught.” I am at the point where I have to digest rather than rapidly turn the pages.”  This is exactly what I hoped to accomplish: to challenge and educate my readers while entertaining them.  I was ecstatic reading this note.  This is the kind of thing that makes all of the hours spent in this project worthwhile.

One of the more interesting aspects of this process is that many other people have told me how much they wished they were writing their book.  I met a man in Rocky Mount, Virginia who told me that he for many years had had a book in mind.  I asked him how it was coming along.  He admitted that he had never actually begun writing.  He asked me if I would consider ghostwriting for him.  In the course of our conversation, it seemed to me that what he was really looking for was a contract disciplinarian.  We agreed on a fee and since then I have been keeping him on schedule with writing his various chapters.  He is delighted to finally be making some progress and I am equally delighted to be assisting him with it.

I called on a woman I know recently and showed her a copy of the book.  A day later, she wrote to me saying how jealous she was that I had my own book in print.  I wrote back and said, “Don't be jealous.  Be inspired.”

On a couple of occasions, I have attended a writer's workshop at Hollins University in Roanoke.  During these events, attendees are bombarded with good and relevant information but it is too much to capture and remember.  One thing I do remember is this gem: do some writing every day.  When progress stops it is very difficult to get it going again.

I have the luxury of working a job that takes little time, allowing me to focus almost exclusively on my writing.  I recognize how difficult it is for many people to work a full-time job and then to come home and work more on writing.  And nobody can argue that writing isn't real work.

With my nonfiction book, The Spine of the Virginias, on the way, I realize what a great accomplishment a published book is.  But I feel that I am only just getting cranked up.  I appreciate the support and encouragement I have received from so many people.  I am eager to encourage others to write as well.



* * Visiting Oak Hill Academy

Sorry for my tardiness with my regular Monday posts.  Yesterday, I had a delightful visit at the Oak Hill Academy in Mouth of Wilson, Virginia.

This small private high school with an enrollment of just over 150 kids has become a legendary basketball powerhouse.  Coach Steve Smith, a mid-50s man with a grizzled face who looks like he has spent lots of time asking a really tall young people to do what he wants them to do, sat in his nice wood-paneled office surrounded by trophies and sports mementos.  We had a leisurely, rambling conversation about life in a very small community and about basketball supremacy.  In the 25 years that he has coached at Oak Hill, his team has been rated either Number 1 or Number 2 in the nation.  He has coached Carmello Anthony, Kevin Durant, Stephen Jackson, Rajon Rondo, Josh Smith and Jerry Stackhouse and many other current NBA stars.

I also spoke with his wife Lisa who works as a secretary to the principal and with the president of the institution.  This is an almost exclusive exclusively on-campus institution with three boys dormitories and one girls dormitory.  Between the players, the trainers and assistants, and the cheerleaders, almost 20% of the entire student body participates in basketball.  But beyond that, they have an amazing international diversity of students, many from Korea, Japan, and Africa.

Steve told me that routinely six or seven of his players on each team will eventually play him for a Division I intercollegiate basketball program.  I was thinking how unusual it would be for any player at my local home high schools to play Division I basketball.  Even Coach Smith's nonstarters play Division I basketball.

I was introduced to three players and I had a chance to talk with each.  One was an inner-city black kid from Los Angeles who was the team's point guard.  A second was the son of Grammy award-winning musician Bruce Hornsby.  The third was almost 7 feet tall, a kid from Senegal, West Africa who was also the student body president.  Each of them expressed a high level of satisfaction with and affection for Oak Hill Academy.

Coach Smith told me that his program was known throughout the country but in many cases was better known in places distant from here.  He told me that if he played a local team in Roanoke or Greensboro, attendance would likely be perhaps 2000 people whereas if he played a team in Los Angeles, it was common for 8000 people to attend.  He said he never did any recruiting.  His phone rings all the time with prospective players wanting to come to school at Oak Hill.  One player he turned down was Kevin Garnet who now is a start with the Boston Celtics.

This hidden gem is one of the many stories I plan to tell in my upcoming book, Harmonic Highways, Motorcycling Virginia's Crooked Road.