DC Reflections

Robbing Father Time in the Idaho mountains

Boise, Idaho -- My heart is pounding and my leg muscles are burning, but I'm on a mission. I alternate between pedaling and walking up a monstrously steep trail in the Camel's Back/Hull's Gulch Reserve in the mountains rising above this little town. Experience tells me something good is waiting for me if I don't give up.

A vivacious young woman and an old white dog come up from behind me. "Just keep going," she says, sweeping her hand to the left. "I think you'll find what you're looking for when you get to that ridge over there."

I propel myself forward, foot by foot, then lean left. I finally lift my head, my eyes going from the dirt ahead, to my handlebars, to ...

Wow.

I see snow-capped mountains off to the right and blue sky stretching out for a million miles. A bush and grass-filled valley unfolds to my left. One bird darts in front of me, while a flock I can't locate puts on a choral performance. The first sun rays of spring kiss me smack on the mouth. I grin like a schoolboy.

The sensory overload is so powerful I don't even feel guilty about picking Father Time's pocket. I think he sensed my crime but chose not to object. He knew how badly I needed those frozen moments -- the first great moments in a three-hour ride that I snuck in after a taxing work-related conference. I hopped in a taxi as soon as it ended, raced out to the Bikes 2 Boards rental shop, and hit the trail head knowing I had but a few precious hours to take in some vistas and find my way back before the shop closed. That would leave me just enough time to make it back to the hotel, pack, crash, and get ready for pre-dawn dash to the airport.

I try to push the clock crunch out of my mind and shove off again. The trail twists and turns, a new National Geographic video awaiting me at every corner. It's just me and a bike and all of God's majesty and I feel like I'm 19 again. Something inside me bursts and I start laughing out loud.

A gurgling sound pulls me around the next bend, a crystal clear creek there waiting for me. I ditch the bike and scoop what moments before was snow on to my face and arms. My skin tingles. I scoop up a few rocks and put them in my backpack, snapping a picture with the Nikon I store between my ears.

A pair of rude interruptions break my trance: I fall flat on my ass while stepping away from the stream; it's an inexplicably hard fall that cakes me in mud. "You dork," I chide myself.

The ego bruising that comes next, though, is worse. I choose to start walking down the trail as the route back is more of a descent than I've tackled in years ... only to be nearly run over by a couple of co-eds that swerve around the old man. It could have been worse -- they could have called me "sir."

I quickly realize I'm not willing to take the mountain biking risks I once used to enjoy. Not on a trail in the middle of nowhere the day before a long pair of flights home. Not when I have to be at work on Monday. I go back and forth between calling myself a coward and a man who has lost his edge and a man with memories of some mountain bike trips gone awry -- a wiser guy whose life now includes the once alien concept of calculated risks.

I think I meet the entire populace of Boise the rest of the way down. Everyone -- from 20-somethings to retirees, asks me if I'm OK. Do I have a flat? Is something wrong? They don't say the words but I know what they're thinking ... why is someone walking down the trail?

"I'm just an Idaho rookie," I decide to start telling people. Got the inquiries over faster.

Almost done, the state of Idaho gives me one more gift: The 15th Street trail clears another ridge and I take in the Boise city sky line. The brownish capitol building looks like it's made of the mountain I'm riding on. I disembark one last time, let the view linger just a little longer, and thank the heavens for letting me rob 'ol Father Time.

Franklin's print shop and the dingy hands of democracy

PHILADELPHIA -- I stand on the cobblestone street in Franklin Court and imagine Ben Franklin walking into his print shop in 1729, the year he and a partner purchased The Pennsylvania Gazette. The one-time apprentice who learned the printing business through the sweat of his brow smiles as he glances at the young men following in his footsteps.

One hovers over a table typesetting the next edition -- reading a hand-written document and then placing tiny metal blocks with letters on them in what looks like a tray with wooden strips forming the borders of what will become printed pages. The physical dexterity required is just part of the man's challenge. He also has to lay in the tiny blocks upside down and backward so that the documents read left to right and right side up when stamped on to a page.

Another man is covered in the black, sticky ink he's applying to a block of type with padded leather  balls. Once properly coated, he inserts into the press a damp piece of cloth that's wet enough to absorb the ink, slides the block in position, and uses his labor-born pectorals and arms to force the block onto the page. He releases the lever, grabs what looks like a brick oven pizza remover, pulls the paper off the press and hangs it on an overhead wrack to dry. Then he steps back to the press to start all over again.

It is grueling, repetitive, and dingy work. It's made worse by the overpowering odor that clings to their hands and attacks their nostril hair ... chamberlye. That's the polite term for the urine-based cleaning solution that had to be applied to the equipment.

Yes, trace the roots of our democracy and you find they pass through chamber pots and come out like Andy Dufresne clean on the other side. You find the un-sung workday heroes who cranked out the newspapers, pamphlets and books that enlightened the colonists and made possible the American Revolution.

Franklin had tremendous admiration and respect for the power the printing press. He also advanced the profession. He was the first to insert cartoons and maps in a newspaper. The May 9, 1754 edition of the Pennsylvania Gazette contained America's first political cartoon -- the serpentine "Join, or Die" illustration that called for colonial unity.

I too am awed by what the pressmen of the 18th century achieved.

"Reading's the means by which the lowest man can lift himself up from a state of ignorance," a press owner told a newly arrived colonist in volume one of John Jakes' epic historical fiction series about the Revolution, The Kent Family Chronicles.

My emotional connection to the printing press runs deep. I joined my school newspaper in eighth grade and stayed with it through junior high and high school.

A bright-eyed University of Georgia student back in the long-time-agos, I had the fortune to be the founding managing editor of The Campus Times. The upstart paper sought to compete with the long-standing student paper. I remember the day our first issue thundered through the two-story press bringing our ideas to life: "That's a powerful tool you got there," the old man running the facility said. He implored us to use it wisely.

I have treated the mass-produced word with sacrosanct respect ever since. The reverence has followed me through my careers in journalism and public relations and is in my heart every time I turn on my computer to write on this new-fangled treasure we call the Internet.

I have also had the divine pleasure to hold in my hands numerous, original Revolutionary publications that paved the way for independence and democracy. I've read books owned and inscribed by Thomas Jefferson, other books Franklin himself wrote in, and a first edition of Common Sense.

Through the fortune of knowing the right person, I have also held in my hands a copy of the Declaration of Independence that was among the first to roll off John Dunlap's Philadelphia press on the very afternoon the fellas in the Pennsylvania State House stuck it to 'ol King George. Tears filled my eyes the moment the document was placed in my hands because I recognized immediately that I had reached the zenith of what a patriot and a student of history can experience.

My head was spinning from the thrill.

I poured over the words so familiar to me now and graciously returned the document to its proprietor.

I sat there, stunned, for what seemed like a long time. Then I gave thanks not just to the famous 56 men but to the countless unheralded souls who fought black, sticky ink and pots full of piss to educate our people and give us a nation.