Dear Blog Reader.
I hope that this finds you doing well. It leaves my hand
doing better all of the time. The exercise of riding across Iowa took it out of
me a little. My rump was sore. It is getting better. My lips were so chapped
that it scared the dentist during my check up a week after RAGBRAI. I don’t
know why he cared. He was wearing glove and a mask. How many of you remember
the good old days when we drank out of garden hoses and the dentist dug around
with bare hands. Any way my lips are healed.
I must say that the other reality that the passage of time
has brought has not been as welcomed. Before RAGBRAI, I was getting a little
bit of time in the sun during my ride. The last half hour had a promising glow
followed by the first shafts of sun light fighting between the trees along my
path. It has been fun to not worry about pot holes, or road kill or the
occasional skunk. Suddenly, the light is fading fast as our half of orb we ride
on is deciding to turn a cold shoulder on the love of its life. I now get just
the faintest of glows in the eastern sky on the last two miles of my ride.
Soon, I will be sharing the dark with those holes, the road
kill, and occasional skunk. Then just this past week, a new nocturnal creature
has been joining me in the dark. I was powering through the last 2 miles of my
ride on Wednesday. As I looked out across the yards up the road a pale, drawn,
shape started to materialize in the gloom. Driveway after driveway was
populated by the brooding shapes. Yes, school had started and the youths of
America had been jettisoned from their warm beds, slipped on some cloths and
made their way out the door to start their hour and 15 minute commute.
Now I used to walk up hill both ways to school in waist deep
snow without shoes. In spite of these obvious hardships, I count myself lucky
that I didn’t have to get on a bus at 6:00 a.m. to be at school by 7:30. What
are people thinking? Did anyone in education read Lord of the Flies? Did they
just assume that William Golding was an old curmudgeon who had it in for the
school kids that walked across his yard and teased his dog in the back yard?
Did they assume that he had no insight into how kids would behave unsupervised?
Let’s face it kids on the bus are unsupervised. Sure Jack Lovell
would give us the evil eye watching us like a hawk while keeping one eye on the
road hoping to stay out of oncoming traffic. Sure, we were threatened with “I’m
going to tell your dad at lodge on Tuesday night if you don’t start behaving.”
Mrs. Browning had a no talking “rule” as her nerves started to fray in the
January ice and snow. But we were 20 feet behind them. They had a 2 feet by 6
inch mirror and 3 tons of long wheel base to keep on the road. Of course, we
were unsupervised.
There were ears to be flipped. Spit wads to propel through
our covertly smuggled straws. There was band candy to eat. Whose paper wrappers
were casually crumpled and thrown on the floor 5 rows up so Missy Chesterton
would be blamed for eating the contraband under the noses of “supervision.” We
did all of that on a half an hour bus ride. Who knows the trouble that I could
have created with 2.5 hours a day to work on it?
I usually have a solution. However, this time the bus has
left the station so to speak. The battle was lost when we consolidated schools
and abrogated parenting to the schools in many cases. I do not feel like
railing against that lost cause tonight. It is what it is.
And what it is; is getting on a
bus at 6:00 a.m. for an hour and fifteen minute bus ride does no one any good.
The only thing that should be on the road at 6:00 a.m. are crazy bicyclists,
pot holes, road kill and the occasional skunk.
Take care.
Roger
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