by the time we were some six or seven blocks down 32nd Street, the first (bus stop sign) was clanging its way past our location, being dragged behind a pickup truck on a length of steel chain

So I became Safety Director of Louisiana Transit Co., Inc. in late 1975. Our Operations Manager, Byron Kohoutek (like the comet, if you’re old enough) believed in training incoming office employees as regular bus operators. No heads-up to the lead operators who did the training. You were just another bus driver-hire thrown into the mix. I learned a lot. The Operators filled my ears with tips and tricks. One such Operator, Sam Ford, impressed me with his conscientiousness. He wanted me to learn all the bus stops out on the highway before I was on my own in regular revenue service. He told me that he did it by requesting a written copy of the bus stop list from the office, in this case for Airline Hwy. Taking his own time, after hours, in his POV, to ride up and down the highway and memorize where each stop was located. He said the office did a pretty poor job of putting up bus stop signs, so you were pretty much on your own. I learned about running “hot” (early). How to signal across the street to other operators how hot you were. Sam didn’t run hot but he explained why other operators were holding up fingers across the way. I got yelled at, cursed, and threatened for not stopping my bus in the middle of the road to let people on by belligerent passengers. Drunks dribbled pieces of transfers into the fare box instead of cash. We had to roust other drunks to get off at the end of the line. I could never drive fast enough to keep the schedule much less run hot but Sam said it would come in time.

I learned that Sam was conscientious.

I also learned the office needed to procure more bus stop signs and go out on the highway and put them up.

For that, we used a pickup truck, a 6 foot aluminum step ladder, nine foot long, dark green painted steel posts with mounting holes up and down, nuts, bolts, lock washers and a very heavy, cast steel, cylindrical post driver that had handles on each side, weighted at the closed end. Oh, and a collection of narrow yellow fiberglas bus stop signs with BUS STOP screen printed in paint running longitudinally with holes drilled strategically to match the holes in the steel posts. It was a two man job. One office weenie, me and one shop worker, in this case our utilityman,TJ Howard. TJ was analogous to a blocking tight end. Big, strong, powerful, tough. He was gentle, taciturn, confident and reliable as rain in the afternoon in New Orleans. His hands were toughened from years of changing tires. I wore gloves.

The bus line with the sorriest set of signs was the Kenner Loop, a kind of bastard bus line we ran under contract with the City of Kenner. Most of the lines we operated traditionally made enough income from fare payment to cover their operating costs. The company ran charters for profit while the core transit lines covered basic expenses. The Loop was a dog. Kenner paid us $35 an hour (in 1975 dollars) to cover the meandering loop of the city with two buses in service. It was a 90 minute loop with a 45 minute headway. What little fares we collected also went to cover expenses.

I picked the Loop for the initial sign blitz because bus stop signs were few and far between in Kenner. Bus stops were spaced every other block. Sometimes we nailed them onto telephone poles and when no pole was near an intersection we drove a post and mounted a sign. One guy opened the step ladder and center positioned contiguous to the designated stop location. He then went all the way to the top of the ladder and sat facing perpendicular. The other guy placed the bottom of the post directly on the ground at the mounting point (to be the bottom), laid it down all the way, slid the post driver over the other end (to be the top) and then walked it upright to 90 degrees. At that point, the guy sitting on top the ladder took the handles of the post driver and began wanging away, up and down and up and down, using the weighted end of the post driver to drive the post down some 2 feet (1/2 inch at a time) until it was properly set. You had to leverage your feet on the steps to generate torque. Then opposing signs were mounted on the post and the screw ends of the bolts damaged to prevent removal.

Anyway, by the time we were some six or seven blocks down 32nd Street in Kenner, having driven three or four posts with signs, the first one was clanging its way past our location, being dragged behind a pickup truck on a length of steel chain. Somebody didn’t want the stop near their home and was giving us the finger as he drove by us pulling the sign behind his truck. At this point TJ began to jump up and down and scream. He ran into the street and began to de-pants himself, slapping his thighs and sitting down in the street to remove his boots so he could get his pants all the way off. His legs were crawling with red fire ants. We had driven a post into an area with resident fire ants and they had crawled into his pants while he held the post steady. The bite of one fire ant brings tears to the eyes. Did we quit? Did TJ say “enough?” Was it hot? You bet. Was TJ hurt and embarrassed? Yes. Did it slow TJ down? No. We proceeded to cover every bus stop sign on the Eastbank of Jefferson Parish over the next few weeks. I had to purchase dozens more signs. Signs disappeared at a rate of one or two per month from each bus line (souvenirs?) so we had to stay the battle but soon we added a column to the bus stop printed list. It was headed: “Posted” with brackets for a check mark. 

For one brief shining moment in 1976, all the brackets bore check marks:

Check mark = TJ

TJ =The Man  

What happens when you can't run as fast as an old, fat, diabetic.

 What reduces stress?

Running

What about walking, biking, swimming, playing a musical instrument, petting an animal, hugging a cow, etc?

Fine. There are other ways.

We can beg the question but today we’re here to praise running, not bury it.

Running (jogging?) reduces stress, weight and blood pressure and it is a mood elevator.

My story:

In my early 20's, D.I.s at Lackland got me into shape. It was mandatory, eh?

We ran every day in basic training (at least we were supposed to) and at the end of six weeks we ran 1.5miles in under 15 minutes. 1970 style baseline fitness. Our D.I. didn't run us for a few days and then upped the time and mileage so we'd suffer at the beginning. What can I say? In any case we eventually adapted and got it done.

Thereafter we were (supposedly) running each year to re-qualify that time.

I say (supposedly) because we cheated.

After four years, I mustered out and didn’t need to cheat any more.

In my late 20s, early 30s my weight gradually climbed and my overall health declined while my BP rose.

I was working a stressful job and spent a large part of my day at a desk.

Post military, I had slacked off and gradually became unhealthy.

Once I realized my health was declining, I tried getting up earlier and going out and jogging. Kinda like going back to Basic.

For me, getting up earlier than I had to was unsustainable. I could do it a for a couple days but long term, I just rolled over and reset the clock.

The other alternative, post-work exercise wasn’t much better. By the end of the day, I was exhausted and exercise was not going to happen.

That left the only other free time I had in a nine hour day, that was the noon hour.

I visited the local gym and played pickup basketball. I read about the New Orleans Corporate Cup, a 5K race downtown. I decided to jog. I could run around the gym a few times and then get out of breath. To improve my fitness I quit the basketball, which was half court and began jogging. The Canadian Air Force fitness standards and the understanding of aerobics and target pulse rates were all now basically standards for fitness. I read the books and applied the science and logic. We worked near the Mississippi River levee and I started trying to run the half mile to the levee and then out and back on the levee. In time, after weeks and weeks, my lungs gradually expanded and I could run without stopping for a mile. My initial goal was to unofficially re-qualify for the AF yearly fitness test. It then became a kind of “my time.” Changing out to running shoes and shorts at noon and hitting the road was something I looked forward to. Not just running to relieve stress but running away from it, eh? The Times Picayune began running articles in the sports section about getting in shape, having goals and running in local average joe/jill races. Lots of 5Ks and 10Ks with tee shirts. My kid’s schools had fun runs. It was faddish. I began to lose weight and get a lot more healthy. It took time and effort but like I said, I started looking forward to it. I increased my distance and reduced my time.

Then my goal was to compete in the Corporate Cup with a team of four from our organization. In time, sometimes with friends like Terry and Jerry I ran a half mile to the Mississippi River levee, two miles out and two miles back and then the half mile back to work. We worked up to that over a couple of years so that we could maintain the Air Force standard 10 minute mile and run the five miles in under an hour and then go back to work. The 5K was 3.1 miles so the daily 5 mile run was overkill but we liked doing it anyway. I ran in all kinds of weather. I have a malignant melanoma (excised) to show for my years of running the direct sun without a tee shirt, which I would strip off after leaving work. Over thirty years I ran over 22,000 miles. Never more than 7 miles at a time. When I got a noticeable limp, I bought new shoes.

So that intro leads me a valuable learning experience that I wanted to share.

While all this was progressing I read another book on health and fitness. It was by Dr. Nathan Pritikin. It was in the news in GNO because our local Sheriff Harry Lee was overweight and wanted to improve his health. He enrolled in the Pritikin system fat camp and went away for a few weeks. We all read about Harry’s visit in the local papers. I read the book because reading about aerobics and fitness had really benefited me.

I’ll condense Dr. Pritikin’s book for you. Eat mostly unleavened pita bread and seaweed, avoid potato peelings, drink lots of water and run your ass off and you can lose a ton of weight and throw away your high blood pressure medicine. It was a miracle cure for obesity and type 2 diabetes. Anyway, coterminously, I’m running on the levee everyday. For a while I fluctuated with 12, then 11 minute miles and finally could do consistent 10 minute miles. Early on I couldn’t maintain it for the whole five miles but I was encouraged. 10 minute miles, while not exactly fast was well, respectable, at least for a slub like me. Or so I thought.

Dr. Pritikin relayed the story of a 60-ish fat guy who was on death’s door who visited his camp and ate pita bread and seaweed and drank water and began to jog every day. In a few weeks he was able to run a mile in just under 6 minutes. This obese diabetic: was running 6 minute miles. He’s 60 something. I’m 32. I read it again. I began to realize I wasn’t trying hard enough. I needed to pick up my game or be shamed by fat, old, newly healthy, guys.

I resolved to stop doing distance and concentrate on intervals and to improve my time. My shame was real.

Now for the fun.

On the levee there are 1/5 mile markers but I also got a speedo for my bicycle and over a few days marked off pretty accurate mile markers. I marked a start and finish line for my mile quest which coincided with the levee markers. This was around 1980+, so no gps time and mileage aids, unless you were military and had very expensive equipment.

The weather was decent and I pre-hydrated. I warmed up by jogging the half mile to the levee and spotted myself at the start mark. I got a Timex Ironman (or something like for the time). I took off and went for it. No more aerobics for me. Anaerobics would be the new order of the day. I took a minute off my 10 minute mile. I did 9 minutes. I stared at my time for a long time. Something wasn't computing. I was pushing and running but I was slow. Real slow. The next day I ran harder and so on and so on. Eventually, my time dipped down into the medium 8’s. But hey, I was way, way away from a 6 minute mile. Something was off here. I lived in a different universe from the 60 year old, fat diabetic who casually ran off a 6. I needed more motivation, it seemed. Eat more pita. Something. Did I question Nathan Prinkin’s writing? Well, yes, I did. But looking at what other's achieved, a 6 minute mile wasn’t particularly fast. I could doubt Pritikin but I needed to pick up my game.

Thus began “the quest.” Days of 8:40s, then 8:20s, etc. This was not fun. I lost weight. I worked on exercises. I ran under 8 minutes, into the 7's. Weeks went by. Now reducing my time by 5-10 seconds per mile required pain. That's right, pushing and pushing rewarded me with 5 seconds. I cursed Nathan Pritikin and the old, fat guy. It was really hard in the dead of summer. When it got hot, pushing yourself to limits was well, dangerously stupid. Luckily, I was an all season runner and once summer was over, I could begin to push again.

What worked? The only thing that got me over the hump to push myself beyond the threshold of oxygen debt was fiction. I began to motivate myself that random thieves and murderers were closing in on my wife and kids and their very existence was predicated on me reaching down to rush to their aid. There were many days I rode a bicycle against the wind in the mud and rain on the levee (before it was paved) that I just forced myself to do it. Physically it was very, very hard. Mentally it was harder. The same was true of getting my time down to 6 minutes. I got closer and closer in decent weather and one day, after months and months of trying my times did drop into the 6’s and my best was 5:53. There were weeks when I was in the 7’s. It needed to be a good conditions day. Of course my 5K times dropped based on the interval training. My best 5K was 26 flat. Not great, eh? Runners are special people. I am a jogger. I can run but my times and attitude is that of a jogger. Nowhere in high school did I realize that people who ran track had to build up their lung power over weeks and months of training. I just didn’t know. I know now.

Is there a moral? For me the “exercise” of challenging myself to find a time, place and distance to run changed my life. I wish I could convey to others what I felt like before I started to exercise and what I felt like after a few years of daily running. It requires decent shoes and running on grass or other soft surfaces saves on joint ache. But overall running helps you mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and of course, physically.

Can’t run? Walk. Bicycle. Swim. Skate. Your body is a dynamic system. Made to move. Make it move. It will improve your health and your attitude. You will sleep better (assuming you cut back on caffeine after noon). The chore is to set aside a time to do it and then prioritize it. If you find it isn’t getting done, then adjust what you are doing and when. Keep trying until something sticks. If you need friends to help you get motivated, fine. Ultimately it is up to you. What you do is less important than scheduling it daily and doing it. It is as important as breathing, sleeping, drinking and eating. Exercise, daily exercise, will change and improve you. Count on it. Do it at lunch. Tell the boss your doctor recommended it for your health. Write it down somewhere and keep writing it until it’s done. Then tell others. Advocate for health and wellness.

Be your own hero.

Fail if you must, but fail at trying. Fail at trying...

Every day

TJ and the Shovel

Our 2003 Yukon XL drips oil. The rear engine seal in the 5.3 litre V-8 is notorious for leaking. Expensive to fix. So it drips oil. Not much but over time it can accumulate. We always park it in the same place. Back part of the driveway. Yesterday Ruth took it on an errand. Walking by it’s greasy parking spot, I noticed there was a build up of thickly congealed oil on the driveway. The neighbour’s wheat straw-like, genetically-engineered grass clippings was trapped in black ooze. Yuck.

There is was: Time to act. "Scrape it up, you should," whispered Yoda. I nodded. It was wise. I knew what I needed but could I place my grubby hands on it? I flipped on the light and fished in the utility closet. Dangerous duty. All sorts of shovels, tools and large implements hanging around the wall edges waiting to fall on your head. But there it was. The tool of choice. The flat blade shovel. Terrible for digging. But for scraping? Nothing better. I struggled to reach back and release it from it’s two pronged hanger, just dodging a metal, one armed, dandelion plucker that released itself from its perch at my shoulder. Barely injured, I wrestled the would-be concrete grader down and admired it’s hefty utility. This would do it. I found a piece of cardboard to use for a reverse trowel and a bag to seal it all up. I set the cardboard contiguous to the muck and began a forward scraping of the concrete. Each scrape captured a layer of ooze. I had to bear down to get it scraped close to the concrete. I had to use a smaller shovel to scrape the muck from the surface of the flat blade onto the make shift trowel. I worked at it for a few minutes, scraping and scraping then stopped staring at the straight edge of the shovel blade. My shovel, though several years old, was 100% intact. 

At this point I was dumb struck. I could see back 40 years. Standing next to me was Louisiana Transit’s Utility Man, TJ Howard. He showed me the end of his flat blade shovel with a smile. The blade was shiny and no longer flat. It was also thinner inches from the edge toward the handle. The size of his blade had been reduced to less than 50% of original. He was asking me to pick up a new flat blade shovel from Harahan Hardware. He had gotten his so worn down, shinier, thinner, smoother and more rounded, that he couldn’t get much grime up from the floor any more.

It took me a second or two to register what I was seeing and re-seeing 40 years hence. TJ… had… worn… the steel blade of his shovel to less than 50% of it’s original size by a daily scraping of the concrete floor of our shop to remove built up oil which had dripped and been spilled from our bus fleet. There was a daily build up of dripped oil which TJ scraped up every morning before performing tire change duties. You could hear the sound every morning as he scraped and scraped the floor to remove the built up oil muck.

Then the backward vision expanded. He was first in before the crack of dawn to bump all the bus tires to look for flats. He single handed broke down about 200 bus tires with a tire tool and hammer and remounted tires on rims with HAND TOOLS. After over a decade and after receiving federal funding, we got TJ a hydraulic tire mounting aid but prior to that he did it with hand tools. By himself. Bus tires. When he took vacation, we had to have 3 guys working together to do the job of one TJ. I worked with him to mount bus stop signs throughout the parish. His hands were large, powerful and rugged. He had never used gloves because they fell into nothingness in a couple of days. His hands were tougher than leather. He came in, on time, day after day, year after year and decade after decade. He was as automatic as a human being can be. He was the ultimate grinder. Tough job. Fine. Complain? Never. Cold? So what? Go on the road to change out a flat tire on the highway, in traffic? No problem. Rain? Sure, why not. I’d like to compare him to a machine but machines break. Shovels wear down to a nub. TJ was made of sterner stuff.

I blinked my eyes and was returned to the present, shovel still in hand. I scraped up some more oil muck and looked at the edge of my shovel and tried to imagine how many scrapes it would take to wear down the blade to less than 50% of the original and I couldn’t imagine it. Just trying to imagine making it shiny and thinner, much less worn down that far. I couldn’t do it. It's not just that I couldn't actually wear it down that far, I just couldn't even imagine what it would take to do it. I’ve known grinders before. But I’ve never known anybody like TJ. Not before. Not since.

Thomas Howard, I raise a toast to you, wherever you are. You always were and always will be: The Man.

Why results matter

People hate Trump because he’s not an idealist, he’s a realist. The thing that matters most to the Donald is results. He’s also not a statesman, a healer, a bring-us-together guy, or much of a nice guy. He’s a sonavabitch. He probably secretly wants to be liked but he seems to be oblivious to constant, withering criticism levelled at him not just from true conservatives, all liberals, most mainstream media and a lot of the rest of the world. From the moment he announced he was running for President he was the target of attacks from just about every corner of the establishment. The attacks continued unabated up to and through the election process. The week before November 8th, 2016, the New York Times gave him about a 10% chance of winning. He was a clown. A pretender.  A homophobe. A racist. A xenophobe. It would be a disaster. A catastrophe. This was true by rule. It was an a’ priori truth. Nothing else mattered. He was wrong. He was opposed. He couldn’t win. In fact, even though he won, it’s still likely the Times would have not changed their prediction. In their opinion, he couldn’t win because he shouldn’t win. Hell, I believed it. I’ve shared before and I’ll share again, I voted for Hillary Clinton for lots of reasons. Part of it was reading columns written by people I trusted who considered him dangerous and well, he was. Then, I was amused beyond-what’s-proper when the clown won. Why? Part of the reason is it’s always fun to watch a pin jabbed into the big, over-inflated, self-righteous balloon called bi-coastal liberalism. The idea that a candidate can label “fly overs” as “deplorable” for their beliefs in God and guns is part of that bi-coastal prejudice. A prejudice for which they are proud. Seeing mainstream media look sick was kinda fun. They also can’t be wrong, (by rule of course) so watching them rationalise the whole thing was a scream. Because the left believes in “whatever means necessary.” I get it. They’re righteous. The far right is no less crazy, believe me. But something came out the day of the election. The New York Times printing that Trump had no better than a 10% chance of winning on the eve of the election he won, showed they were oblivious to results and reality. They knew, or should have known, it was a lot closer than 90/10. It just didn’t matter. They would oppose him on principle. The 4th estate was driven to distraction by a reality distortion field. It may not be fake news but it is distorted news. It is distorted by that reality distortion field which says "it doesn't matter what results may come, we believe in our principles and that's more important than any reality." Don't be surprised if fly over deplorables take notice but then the Times isn't aimed there, is it?

The main reason I get nervous over a’ priori (true by definition) “truths” is large bureaucracies are run by process. Government is a large bureaucracy. Process is it’s most important product. Results aren’t the issue. If the rule says lunatics will be released into society to reek havoc, it will be done. Right wing politicians believe in less government. Laissez faire capitalism rules. Standard Oil drives everybody else out of business. That’s not important. Less government is better. If African Americans are denied the vote in the south, or access to schools, well that’s okay because less government says, stand back and let it be. If welfare (ADC) over decades leads to generations of illegitimate children and absentee fathers and rampant crime, so be it. It’s the right thing to do. If the war in Vietnam costs millions of lives and is virtually unwinnable, so what? It’s what we do. Let’s keep it up. Process based decisions made by rule alone aren’t dangerous to the deciders. But they are still right by rule and wrong by result. Those who die or denied their rights by the result do kinda' notice however.

So?

Trump’s not interested in right or left rules? He wants to the know the bottom line? Yeah, I get that feeling. Pisses off the establishment? Yeah. Refuses to apologise for seeking economic independence? I got a kick out of Clinton when he was President because he knew what poverty was all about. A knowledge the Kennedys could never really assimilate because they were theoretical liberals. Bill knew what beanie-weenie tasted like. The results of policies of welfare, like ADC, just didn’t matter to theoretical liberals. It would be done forever because it was a’ priori truth. Bill knew what the RESULTS of long term welfare relief were. Bill was also a results oriented politician when it came to the economy and he made necessary changes not based on theory but on results. Obama was a a social idealist. Militarily he was results oriented. He served two terms.

The conservative establishment is rules based. The liberal establishment is rules based. The majority of the citizens of the United States are more interested in results than rules. You want to know who people are going to vote for in the next election? Some will lock step to the polls and vote for liberals or conservatives, no thought needed. By any means necessary. But most will wait and see and vote what they think is going to work for them. Not everything Trump will author will be the advantage of liberals or conservatives but if he authors enough policies that are to the advantage of most of the voters in the United States don’t be surprised if principles are less important than results. That shouldn’t surprise the New York Times but believe me it scares them to death.

Welome to Paris

Flew in on Aer Lingus through Dublin. Big hit was being 20 yards from a couple of cows who were checking me out sitting on the runway, looking out my plane window at them, awaiting take-off to Paris. They were standing in mud behind a old wooden fence. I got us window seats on the right hand side so we could see the Eiffel Tower as we approached the city and we did.

Wanted to ride their version of the Airport Downtown Express (hello Johnny Wilson, Norman Naquin and Leonard “Shadow” Parfait) to town. The people at the airport thought we were crazy (we are) because it takes forever but we had time to kill before we could check in. The RER B train gets to town in half the time but is no fun.

Actually found the 350 bus after some conversation. Was told it wouldn’t stop at terminal one (international terminal) by the info desk. (Of course after we went to terminal 3 it went back by terminal 1 and stopped) Bought a Carte De Dix (ten ticket T+ paper electronic tickets which is good for two zones - you need three tickets to get to central Paris on the bus) with Euros we purchased/dollar exchanged from our bank back home. The gal at the tourist desk spoke very good English and had a good sense of humor. The ongoing joke is I say something like (written in my Franglish) Es ca vous  comprene l’anglais and the funny answer is no and then watch your reaction as you realize you’re screwed. We both laughed though, it’s a good one. Took the tickets and boarded the shuttle train (CDGVAL)to go to terminal 3 and Roissypole. Asking a few people who work the concessions we figured out how to walk outside and we found the 350 taking a stand at the bus terminal. The driver was pre-occupied and a passenger helped us run the six tickets through the firebox reader. We walked to the back stored our bags under the seats and waited. During the ride to town we got to see the melting pot that greater Paris is. Lots of people from all over the world got on and off. I had to sit with my feet on my bag to make room for all the standees. The disability accessible low floor bus means most of the seats face the aisle or backwards. Better getting on and off but not so good to see the sights. The open wheelchair access areas were taken up with kids in strollers most of the way. Some went up front and paid, some didn’t. The operator was more concerned with traffic, which was considerable. The firebox is behind the driver behind a panel. I’m not sure he can even see it.

We walked along Canal St. Martin (beautiful canal, beautiful day) from Gare d’est (which is a fairly short distance from Gare d’Nord - nobody seems to know why the north and east terminals are so close together) to our hotel (about 3/4 mile) and voila’ our room was ready for us - scare bleu!

I went for a walk over to Republique Square and Ruth laid down to recover from the marathon plane ride and massive jet lag.

Then the fun began.

Several times the door opened (while I was there and while I was walking) with people checking into their room, which we already occupied. This went on for hours Ruth was lagged so bad she was only half awake. I finally went down to the desk and the night clerk said we weren’t in 305, even though I had the electronic keys and a folder with 305 on it. Then he said somebody must have made a mistake. It was he that was making the mistakes, nes pa? Eventually he blamed the computer and finally left us alone to sleep. He couldn’t understand why we were sleeping so much. There was quite a lot he didn’t understand.

Anyway, next day I asked the weekend clerk for some help in booking a double decker bus tour. I asked for a two day ride voucher. He (un-be-knownest to both of us, apparently) sold me a one day with a bateau ride, which the driver at BigBus pointed out to me in writing (French of course) and I just argued for a few minutes and went with the flow. We rode the red route, got off to board the blue route and it started to rain. Then the Blue bus (which is Red, of course) refused to show up. Then the police showed up, Somebody claimed to have planted a bomb down the street and everything was halted. In Republique, the day before we watched a dozen police vehicles with swat show up to respond to a bomb threat. The people at BigBus walked us down three blocks in the driving rain and when we got down there he walked us back three blocks to wait for Godot. Ruth decided to shop. Later the bus showed  up and Ruth showed up and we rode around in the rain.

We had ridden the #9 to the #7 Metro from Oberkampf to l’Opera and was going to reverse the process to go back. We took a close by elevator down to the Metro, found the entrance to the 7. We had purchased another carte de dix the day before and had ridden down to the Seine and walked around and went from Gare de Austerlitz to Champ du Mars. Funny thing is, the best way to go was the RER C. We went to the boarding area for the C and a bunch of people in red suits explained to us the there was no RER C. Of course there are signs everywhere. It’s on the map. It has a station but we were told no, there is no RER C. I later learned that the people who operate the RER C were having a picnic in a park. They were on strike that day. Nobody seemed to want to acknowledge it. We went around on the Metro and took a few Metro lines and walked a quarter mile as an alternative.

Anyway this day, going back from l’Opera, I got out two tickets we fed them into the turnstile, the turnstile flipped and we walked forward an opening and closing barrier which immediately closed. The turnstile released and let us through but we were trapped between the turnstile and the barrier. A local gal saw our predicament and used her pass to free us. We walked up two flights of stairs and was met with a cordon or blue jump suited transit police? (They had name tags and little hand held machines but didn’t identify themselves) doing a spot check and and asking for tickets. A guy scanned Ruth’s and said, okay, go ahead, then another gal got my ticket and said it was expired. I showed her the ten tickets we had recently purchased. She looked at the writing and said they were for next week but the one I used was from last week. At that point it just got weird like something out of Clockwork Orange. They told us the machine wrote letters on the tickets (it doesn’t),

 [note: actually it does...I was wrong]

 the tickets were for timed periods (they aren’t). Anyway, long story short they mugged (officially) us for 75 Euros apiece for not having a valid tickets on the platform. Ruth was livid but what are you going to do? We were processed by their bureaucracy and found wanting. It is true  saw numerous people jumping the turnstiles and that is what they were trying to catch. It is also true they didn’t seem to fully understand much about the tickets or the situation, nor did they care. Approach the people coming up the stairs, electronically swipe their ticket and see if it said valid or not. What might have happened or what intent or any human concerns were irrelevant. But hey, this wasn’t Disney Paris, where is you’re a paying customer and show your tickets they try to figure out what happened this was a system run by people who are guaranteed employment for life and who are not really concerned about “customers” only about following orders and collecting fines. Like I said, we were mugged by the system.

Also.

There is a high fence all the way around the Eiffel Tower and security braces everyone who has pre-purchased a ticket and goes through turnstiles and glass walls. You no longer can walk anywhere close to it. The city is almost under siege. The transit workers are staging a protest most days with open fires and smoke, etc. The labor government has promised them everything they want which includes a laundry list of guaranteed everything. Now they recognize they don’t have the funds to fulfill the promises as employees grow older and expect to be paid for life with benefits. I will say the Metro trains pretty much ran like they were supposed to. The 350 bus had electronic signage to show where you were enroute.

Transit buses have side windows that pop out in case of fire or if they lay over. They are a pain in the rump. The M.A.N. bus (German) we rode in had little red sharp pointed hammers mounted between all the windows. Each window has a decal showing a hand breaking the window with the little red hammer. So you save on needing pop out windows but you arm the populace with little red hammers with sharp little steel points. Amazing.

Anyway. Paris is big. Old. Ornate. Gilded. Napoleon still stands as a statue with a wreath of laurel on his head pretending to be a Roman Emperor. Hubris abounds. Many people are nice and accommodating and most wear tight black clothes, frown and act like insufferable a**holes while they power walk over you. Big city people? Maybe. At some point you do what you can to enjoy yourself and try to deal with the incompetence, which I guess is epidemic, not just in France. I came to see and take photographs. I have accomplished that and will be posting photos soon. That has been fun for me. I drag Ruth along but she has enjoyed seeing the city from the top of the double decker

Anyway Bon Jour from Paris. We shall overcome it. The best revenge is forgiveness and generosity. Welcome to Paris.

Post Script
Tried to ride back to Republique from Hotel de Ville on the 11 and none of the turnstiles worked. Tried to find a bus stop to no avail and went back down and went through the turnstiles that weren't functioning with hundreds of others. Normally if the thing quits working it lets people in. I tried to contact them on the intercom and no one answered. Modern problems. We did ride the bus this morning and it was a great ride on an IVECO.

Your car has to learn how to idle

I don’t miss the old days when you pushed on the accelerator (my grandfather called it the exhilarator, you get a rush from jumping on the gas, I guess) and there was a mechanical connection between how hard you pushed the pedal down with your foot and how far the butterfly valve opened and the slide moved down inside your carburetor to let in more air and fuel to match the fuel pump’s faster pumps to provide more gas to be sucked in using the Venturi effect from the float bowl. Then the points advanced (assuming they were gapped right and locked down a certain number of degrees from top dead center, read with a timing light) and the car ran faster. You set the idle speed through a screw setting and adjusted the air flow through another screw. In 1968 they put a plastic shunt over the idle mixture screw but you could overcome that. You pulled a lever under the dash to close the top of the carburetor when it was cold to “choke” (literally) it until it started. Of course in Model T days you advanced the spark as you advanced the throttle on the steering column, unless, like Mr. Magoo, you had a faulty magneto. You stood there with a screwdriver and adjusted the idle.

Basic, it was... Long term reliable... it wasn’t.

Everything wore. The distributor cap points wore down. The points themselves wore down over time and had to be re-adjusted. Carburetors have a mean hours to failure, like a hard drive. I may miss the simplicity but I don’t miss the result. Older cars aren’t near as reliable as today’s cars. The fact is you don’t need to be a shade tree mechanic to keep a car running in 2018. It just runs. Until it doesn’t.

A thing is a thing until it isn’t any more. When asked, a rich man said, “hey, I had all the money I’d ever need right up to the point I was bankrupt.” 

Recently after a long cold snap the two older cars we let live in our driveway and garage failed to start. The ’99 Jeep, which has been bone reliable since we bought it new, didn’t want to start. Yeah, its battery died but I charged the battery as soon as it got low. I’d done a tune-up recently and I baby it. It only has about 75K miles on it and looks only a couple years old. It’s the one that lives in the garage. I do have a minor problem because I have an Allstate spy device plugged into the diagnostic port so they can watch us drive. I get a rebate check after I pay my premium if we don’t drive like a maniac. The problem is it sucks juice out of the battery. Not a problem in the summer but as it gets colder, the battery don’t like it much and it plays dead. So, charge the battery back up and let modern technology take over again and bang, she starts right up, eh? Well, here’s where logic begins to fail us. The modern car doesn’t need you to do anything to start. You turn the key. No choke. No pumping the gas and flooding it. No flooring it after you pump the gas and flood it. None of that stuff. In fact, there is no mechanical connection between the “exhilarator” pedal and the throttle body carburetor. When you press on the gas you are changing the voltage resistance in a potentiometer located inline leading to an ECM. There is no direct connection. It is all indirect. I knew that? I guess I just never dealt with it much. The reason is cars are so much more reliable now you aren’t out in the driveway with a screwdriver trying to up the idle in the winter time. A computer takes care of that. Until it doesn’t.

Here’s another weird thing. Since you don’t need to do anything to start your modern car, you don’t need to press on the gas pedal to start it, right? In fact you shouldn’t. So when the Jeep and later the Yukon wouldn’t start and I recharged the batteries, they just wouldn’t start. So while I’m cogitating on what’s wrong, Ruth gets in it and gives it more throttle and it starts, runs badly, chokes but then starts to actually run. Won’t idle, but hey, it started. She don’t know not to press on the gas pedal to start it, right? She’s just used to doing it from 1970. I know not to press on the pedal to start it and I’m right. Most of the time. This is after I remove and clean the IAC valve and she still won’t start or idle. This is after I learned that you need a constant 14 volts routed through the battery from the alternator so the ECM can feed enough power to the electric fuel pump in the gas tank to supply an adequate fuel flow to the injector rail. But we had that 14V, measured, and more, after the battery was fully charged and the car was being cranked. If your battery has a bad cell, you’re in trouble but we didn’t.

So?

The car forgot how to idle. Its brain had to relearn it. And no I didn’t change the pentil length when I cleaned the IAC valve. I left it exactly as it had been. Then the same exact thing happened with the Yukon. Its battery got low, got recharged and then wouldn’t start or idle until we manually advanced the throttle (pushing down on the accelerator pedal) then left it run at 2K rpm for a while until the computer relearned how to idle the car at under 1K rpm. Other stuff was happening. Probably also fuel separation between the alcohol and gasoline from sitting for too long? But hey. Your car has to learn how to idle all over again and you have to teach it by applying an adequate amount of throttle for a few minutes. 

The moral: Let it sit idle and your car will forget how to idle.

Ken Burn's Documentary on the Vietnam War Pleases Almost No One and That's a Good Thing

Headlines Read:

"Ken Burn's Documentary on the Vietnam War Glosses Over Devastating Civilian Toll"

"Ken Burns Never Knew How Wrong He Was About the Vietnam War"

"Veterans Frustrated with Ken Burn's documentary on the Vietnam War"

"Ken Burns and Lynn Novik Don't Understand anti-Vietnam War"

Just beginning to watch Ken Burn’s PBS documentary on the Vietnam War. Pretty much covered two episodes, so far. Stopped after an hour into the second episode. The reason we stopped after an hour is the evening was late but also because the series is exhausting to watch. Interesting. Enlightening. Extremely well done. But yeah, exhausting, emotionally. There’s no comic relief. Of course that’s on purpose. War is hell. Why should watching it be fun? It’s also true that I tend not to watch recordings of games that my team lost because of the sadness effect. Mr. Burns has been quoted as saying that we didn’t lose the war, to wit: "It wasn’t a defeat; nobody took over the United States. It was not surrender. We failed."

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/09/ken-burns-the-vietnam-war-lynn-novick-documentary/

Still, we did lose. We lost a lot. A lot of lives. Nearly 60,000 US military lives lost. Other’s lives shattered. Other countries, like South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Thailand’s armies lost lives. Of course the biggest loser in terms of deaths was Vietnam. The north lost over a million killed in action. Millions more civilians, a quarter of a million South Vietnamese regulars killed, over 3,000,000 in total. Much of the country was laid to waste by the war. So it should be difficult for me to talk about what we lost when the country of Vietnam lost so many and so much. But there it is. All politics is local.
 
The documentary quotes survivors, North Vietnamese regulars: "nobody wins in war." People who weren’t directly involved in the fighting get to declare winners and losers. The scorekeepers have little or no skin in the fight. Those fighting the war don’t have that luxury. They live or die or are maimed in chaos with little or no chance to look for a scoreboard. The people of Vietnam suffered beyond what most people in the United States can even imagine. The Communist collective won, only the people lost. So the deaths of millions achieved a goal. Millions more would subsequently die to purge any thought of dissent. The Colonial French, gone for good. The US taught a lesson. The US may or may not have slowed a communist takeover of the far east. You’d have to have us pull out of Vietnam when Kennedy was President to know for sure. But it’s certain there’s little positive that came out of our experience in Vietnam. The 3,000,000 Vietnamese dead are silent. Burns seems to be saying, maybe we (collectively) should have learned something here. Let’s document it and make sure it is not easily forgotten. Experience is the best teacher only when it's remembered.

Anyway, besides not being a good way to relax, the show is pretty balanced and therefore enlightening. Politics being what it is, I get sick of a priori attitudes. You already know before you see or read what somebody has to say, what they will say. it’s true by rule, not observation (a posteriori ). Subjectivity outweighs objectivity. There’s also a lot of screaming going on. ALL CAPS. Like you must be deaf, so they have to SAY IT LOUDER. What’s the point? Well, I guess for people who can only bobble their head (Limbaugh’s ditto heads?) they want to be fed the same dog food they’re used to. Comfort food and comfort zones are nice. The Washington Post and New York Times on the one side and Breitbart and Limbaugh on the other. The good news is you don’t have to listen or read either of these because you already know what they’re going to say. They have an opinion and they’re RIGHT (uh, correct for the lefties) and they just want you to know it. The Washington Post stays up at night figuring out ways to attack the President of the United States. It’s just what they do. They hated Nixon. They hated Reagan. They hate Trump. Go figure. The alt-rights hated Obama. They hated Clinton and they hated Carter. Go figure. So anything that happens will be spun accordingly. I make it a point to try to read both, when I can, then try to put them into a mental blender and spin. Once homogenized there's often a grain of truth. Consensus is golden because it's so darned rare.

After watching and reading about Mr. Burns decade-long-to-produce opus, I feel he’s accomplished something he can be proud of. He didn't set out to make a particular point. It’s all about letting the experiences of those who witnessed the events speak for themselves. Mr. Burns is noted for being a bit of a liberal (his background) but he is an historian and he is quite smart. He wanted to achieve a sense of balance. Polemics are seldom educational because they are so divisive. I read a number of reviews before approaching the documentary. Ironically, many from the right and many from the left don’t like it. The left thinks he’s telling the story wrong and vice versa. That’s a really good sign. It made me eager to see it, not only from a current perspective but also a historical one.
 
I was 19 in 1967 and very much draft bait. Enrolled in college for a couple years by then, I had a deferral. After four years of college, that deferral was pretty much up. My draft lottery number in 1970, the year I was exposed, was 123, which made me prime around May. I had my physical in April and had to make a quick decision. Getting drafted meant two years of active obligation and living in Greater New Orleans meant Fort Polk (Fort Puke as my Army Vet friends call it) and Tigertown, as it was called then, likely meant a 13 month unaccompanied tour of Southeast Asia. Believe me, politics aside, by 1970 anybody my age who wanted to be an 11 Bravo walking rice paddies carrying a M16 in Vietnam had room temperature IQ. I knew and we all knew friends, relatives, acquaintances and others who let you know that whatever was going on overseas at that time was a cluster-f*ck. Maybe before 1970 you could have made another case. But not by then. A guy I had PE with in high school died guarding the embassy in Saigon during Tet. Safe MP duty. Never saw it coming. I knew friend’s relatives who had gone missing. Was at a going away party with them and within a few months they were gone forever. I also knew and talked with numerous people who understood our leadership didn’t want to lose a war but had no clue on how to do anything other than expand it. Look at how many enemy were dying. That seemed to be the plan. Keeping score of the dead was the only strategy I could perceive. That worked both ways. Dying for your country can be a meaningful thing. Dying for your country for no achievable purpose other than to not look bad, is a travesty. I didn’t protest because the people I saw protesting were even more clueless than the people who got drafted or joined up. They had no particular plan, they just were against war. To just cut and run was a ridiculous idea. I knew it would get straightened out, eventually. The people in charge were smarter than the protestors. It didn’t take a genius to see that. By the time Nixon won the election he saw the handwriting on the wall and was reducing troop strength and trying to get the South to defend itself and get us home, gradually. In the meantime, I had to survive. So I took a couple tests and joined the Air Force. Investing four years over two, with the promise of further education. I was lucky. My Dad dropped out of high school to sell cigarettes on the street corner during the depression. He later regretting not finishing high school. So he saw to it that I got an education, including a chance to attend college. I owe him that. That education allowed me to test well enough to qualify for the Air Force. It also got me four years of deferment to attend college and grow up a bit before carrying a gun in a rice paddy. Like I said, fortunate, very fortunate. The Air Force was good to me and for me. We fought both the cold and the hot wars at SAC HQ where I worked underground for nearly four years. I met Ruth and got married. Uncle Sam made a man out of me. My parents allowed that to happen.

Today I feel honored and privileged to be able to watch Ken Burn’s documentary on Vietnam. I think it’s well made and is fairly balanced. It won’t please either the right or the left and that’s a good thing. For those who served their country for what they believed in, whether that’s American, Vietnamese, Australian, New Zealander, South Korean, Thailander, or who those who died as an innocent civilian caught in the cross fire, or even those who honestly protested the war as an act of conscience, let’s hope it resonates as a truthful document.

During a meeting a few years ago between Ken Burns and the President:
 
"That (This) will be your most controversial work," Obama told him.

"Yes, but only among those who don't watch it," Burns replied.

I'd better go watch.