The American Spectator

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Road Scholars

3.29.06 @ 12:01AM

FOUR LANES, GOOD LIFE
Re: Peter Hannaford's You'll Get Your Kicks on, er, I-40:

I agree having driven across the great country of ours many times. What we need now is a way to take our cars on the train, or at least, sleeper cars on every train, everywhere in this country. My wife, four kids, and I will be taking the Zephyr with two sleeping cabins from Chicago to Oakland next month. I wish we could do the same from L.A. to Maine.

By the way, Rick Weber and I drove from Daytona, Florida, to Mountain View, California, in 48.5 hours (road time) in 1985. Sixty-seven hours isn't non-stop. If you can't do your business while the car fills then you get to drive the next round.

Also, if it can't be seen from the highway then it doesn't exist. See you on the road...
-- Mark Andreasen

Poor Mr. Hannaford. Route 66 was slow and two-laned; stopped in every little town with Mom-and-Pop motels and seedy bars. Those small towns were where real America lived and to an extent still does. Not the America of Barbra Streisand and ill-educated louts like Mr. Sheen who sees conspiracies around every Republican, but people who loved their families, their country, and their visitors. In the early 1960s I rode my motorcycle to Chi-town for the purpose of riding Route 66 all the way to L.A. It was scenic and filled with interesting people. There was time to stop and talk to strangers. Learn from them and they from you. I remember Middle American men with thick, knurled fingers and massive hands, hardened from work sipping ice cold beer in small smoky taverns. I can still see families dressed in their best leaving churches, children running and laughing on church lawns. I was invited to share meals at people's homes -- no cost, just neighborly and nice. My Harley drew small lumps of the curious wherever I stopped, and I stopped frequently, to savor small town America. Incidentally I didn't make it all the way to L.A. due to an unfortunate coming together of my motorcycle and a deer, in which neither of the livening creatures was much injured, but my steed was much worse for the wear.

Interstates: a car 18 inches from you in each of the four directions on the compass, traveling at 80 or 90 miles an hour; people cocooned in a sterile $35,000, climate-controlled, soundproofed steel box which saves the riders from "outside." No Mr. Hannaford, interstates have no soul, nor do I suspect do the people who extol their virtues.
-- Jay W. Molyneaux
Wellington, Florida

I enjoyed Peter's article about traveling the interstates. My wife and I take one or two trips every year and drive every time. We're flying this year (first time since 1974) to accommodate our two-year-old granddaughter's first trip to Disney World but it will be back to driving after that.

We know our favorite places to stop and even have favorite "rest areas" that we pull off on when we need a break. However, I cringe at his mention of the large chain fast food joints. For our trip there is one major rule -- no eating at fast food chains that we have back at home. Yes, it's unfamiliar territory, but how else would we have found Clyde's in St. Ignace, Michigan? Or General Pickett's Buffet and the small diner in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania? Or the Battlefield Diner at Fredericksburg, Virginia? And on and on. Or discovered that no matter where you hail from, the pizza on vacation is never as good as your home town's?

It was a beautifully written essay and I hope it encourages Americans to get out and enjoy their country.
-- Larry Eischen
Joliet, Illinois

In the summer of 2000 I decided to see some of America from the saddle of a motorcycle. The latter part of that year's journey took me along Route 66 from Barstow to New Mexico. From Baghdad Cafe in Newberry Springs (the building was used in the movie) through Oatman, Arizona (and its wandering mules), and Winslow's "Standin' on the Corner" intersection to Gallup's El Rancho motel, that stretch of road is as fine an example of historical Americana as you'll find anywhere. Those interested in how it looked to this heat-crazed biker can peruse his ramblings here.
-- John Trudo
Harker Heights, Texas

WET SCIENCE
Re: David Holman's Schweitzer's Folly:

Thanks for your continuing effort to tell the truth about glaciers and global warming. The polar ice cap once covered Canada and extended into the U.S. It has been melting for a very long time.

A few years ago, I read a book by a Canadian climatologist who specializes in glaciers. He wrote that the weather conditions necessary for glaciers to form and maintain their size are extremely rare: The ocean during the winter must be unusually warm in order to generate the necessary precipitation; the winter air must not be too cold or it can't hold the moisture; the summers must be unusually cool to prevent the snow from melting; these conditions must exists for decades. Those conditions could occur only if something blocked the sun for decades. He speculated that such blockage might occur in an era of frequent, large volcanic eruptions that spewed dust and ash into the atmosphere.
-- Roger D. McKinney
Broken Arrow, Oklahoma

Great post. Earth's ecosystem has existed and protected itself from all comers, including some sizable meteorites, for about 80,000,000 years that we know of. The notion that a temperature trend can be discerned from 125 years of weather data is preposterous to the 10th power. Even if this is a trend, what proof is there that 1) humans were (are) powerful enough beings to have caused it and did cause it, and 2) humans are powerful enough beings to reverse it. It takes a big head (or hidden agenda) to believe either.
-- Ty Knoy
Ann Arbor, Michigan

I am always interested in anything that comes down the pike concerning global warming regardless of position. Full disclosure, I like being warm, I like to sweat and look better with a tan. God never intended Man to wear anything more than shorts and a polo shirt.

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