This picture was on a birthday card I received last week.

It is a real photo of Rolland “Rollie” Free setting the motorcycle land speed record on the Bonneville Salt Flats September 13, 1948 eleven months after I was born. Rollie Free raced Indian motorcycles before World War II. He set a record at 111 miles per hour. He served in the Air Force and was stationed in Utah near Bonneville during the war.

Rollie had a bone to pick with Harley-Davidson, which had apparently reneged on an offer to support his racing career. He “acquired” and retuned the Vincent Black Shadow from its owner John Edgar for the specific purpose of breaking the Harley record.

During the first runs in Rollie’s signature prone style, the wind ripped his leathers and he was still below his goal of over 150 mph. He stripped down to a borrowed bathing suit, cap, and swim shoes and set the record, (150.313 miles per hour) apparently mindless of the equivalent of coarse sand paper under his bike wheels.

The record stood till 1950 when he broke it again (152mph) and again in 1960 (160.78 mph), but he fell off the bike and quit racing motorcycles. He still raced cars. He died in 1984 and was inducted into the American Motorcyclist hall of fame posthumously in 1998.

There is something admirable in the passion, single-mindedness and zeal to “do whatever it takes.” If I’m honest, possessing that attitude has been quite beneficial in my life. However, there is a line between passion and prudence, between purposeful and perilous, between enthusiastic and foolhardy. That’s a line you often don’t see until you’ve crossed it.

People called Rollie “borderline insane,” “hyper-competitive to a fault, and a “regular nut job.”

I have never done anything like Rollie Free, but in my life, I have been called “gung ho ,”all-in,” and a “work-machine.” I have sometimes taken extraordinary risks to make something work.

 In 1967 I was in a summer stock production of Peter Pan. At nineteen, I was assigned to head the flying crew. We were on a budget so the director ordered flying harnesses without pullies or hydraulic assists. He wanted Rena, playing Peter, to fly in from offstage and up to the top of a scenery cave that stood about twelve feet above the stage. I determined the only way to make that happen was for the flying tech (me) to jump off the catwalk by the third pin rail offstage in the fly gallery to the one by the second pin rail a distance of fifteen feet. If I missed I would fall about twenty feet to the hardwood stage floor.

This maneuver worked in rehearsal. In performance one of the two flying harness guy wires broke and I sent Rena up and into the back of the proscenium. Fortunately, Rena wasn’t physically injured, and finished the performance, but may suffer from PTSD to this day. (Rena, I am deeply sorry.)

Still it took me a while to realize that “whatever it takes,” isn’t always the safe strategy. I worked full-time for a consulting firm in my second year of business school, which meant that I often worked into the night. I came home once at 1:00 am, and had just fallen asleep, when my pregnant wife, nudged me and said “it’s time.”

I said, “Try to go back to sleep.” That did not go over well.

I was slow to learn.

I worked hundred-hour weeks, which the people I worked for loved, but which ultimately made me sick. I was the only independent consultant I ever met who went to work for himself and worked less than I did as an employee.

I trained for a marathon and learned first-hand about the dehydration headaches and nausea of over-training. Several pricey speeding tickets and one thirty-day license suspension taught me “don’t drive faster; leave earlier.” I learned to manage my workload through the not-so-simple task of saying, ”No” to more work.

Years of working for chemical and oil and gas clients increased by awareness of personal and process safety. I still have the urge to stand on the top step of a ladder, but I have learned to get a bigger ladder, or to hire someone else to do work at heights.

I still describe myself, by saying “whatever I do I really do.” Now, however, that describes my ability to intensely focus. I’m still learning that I must intersperse, my “whatever it takes” with some mindless distraction and family and friends time.

So I’m rarely found doing Rollie Free stuff anymore, not even scaled down to my level. Everybody grows up sometime.

But, I guess, my reputation lingers:

To tell you the truth, I’m exhausted.

I mean, I did manage to hold my pee till first light, and that seemed to make my man happy, but it wasn’t easy. I mean, I am so thirsty all the time and I drank a whole bowl since bedtime.

But wait, I’m forgetting my manners.

Hello, my name is Pip. I’m a twelve year old Black English Labrador Retriever (see my perfect bicycle seat head). And yes, I said black. You can politely ignore all that gray. I am twelve and I live with two humans whose age totals over 150, so I earned every ounce of silver I wear.

My man, who calls himself, Alan, and my lady, who calls herself, Billie (I know it’s a man’s name, but her father was William and you get used to it), anyway they named me Pip, because my mom’s human said I was “a pip.” They thought it was soooo cute, they made it my name. It’s OK I guess. I mean, I answer to it, but I have to be puppy-stubborn to live up to it and that gets old.

We live on Eagle Ridge. There’s a field one street over. Humans get excited about the buildings you can see from it. “New York City! I love the field too, but for more important reasons, the swirl of smells and my all-time favorite snack- Deer Poop! Mmm-mmm.

Things have been crazy on the Ridge of late

Some guys came and moved all the furniture on the second floor to the garage.

Then some other guys tore up my soft rug and pounded like crazy so now there is wood where the rug was.

My humans got a smaller rug, and they put another rug where I used to sleep, but it has a busy pattern so I don’t sleep there. I don’t sleep in my bed anymore either; it smells like soap now. To tell you the truth I never liked it; I just l slept in it when I was freaked because it reminded me of the one I had when I first came to live with them. So I sleep on the wood, which makes it hard to get up because my back legs don’t work like they used to – I mean, they work when I’m standing and walking, but it’s hard to get a grip on those slippy floors and stairs.

Stairs! The second floor is up fifteen stairs. All right – it’s seven and seven with a rest area, but the new stairs rug is only in the middle so I can’t brace myself against the wall anymore.

After they wooded the floors and stairs, my humans went away. That’s usually nice for me because I get to stay with David and Bhakti who once took me on hikes before I got too slow. Who wants to keep up with pups who don’t take time to smell anything. I stayed with a new human family. They had a pool and were surprised when I didn’t swim. The humans were nice and the other dogs were cool, but my humans came home sick.

“Covid,” They said into the black boxes they’re always staring at. So they didn’t go away again, but I did. This time to David and Bhakti.

My humans got better. I guess they weren’t that sick.

Then there was the week-long dogfight between the furnace guy who swore there wasn’t enough gas to run the furnace and the utility guy who said there was plenty of gas. In the end the driveway and the yard were dug up and the big gray pipes-‘n’-stuff is outside of garage, which the gas guy said the state required, but they don’t. The only thing all humans, (mine, the neighbors, the home owners association) agree on is that it is “ugly” and anything done to mask it or move it, my humans have to pay for.

The pipes-‘n’-stuff doesn’t smell much now, but it’s a big tall thing that’ll attract male dog pee-mail- Bonus!

Then my humans sad-talked about Billie’s sister, who fell and is having a hard time. Billie’s brother came down. His wife’s had the can-sick  (more human sad-face talk).  She’s getting better, but he’s still worried.

Anyway, they were going to leave me alone again to visit their sister, but I was drinking all this water and had to pee every two hours, so my man stayed home with me. He counted the times he filled my bowl. “128 ounces!” He exclaimed when they returned.

So we went to the vet lady, with some of my pee in a bottle and they stuck me with a needle again. I hate that.

That night I had more trouble on the stairs and got up four times to pee.

Such an ordeal! – bark-to-wake-humans–put-on-my-harness-go-downstairs-drink-a-lot-of water-go-outside-to-pee-come-in-drink-a-lot-of-water and go back upstairs – four times. I heard my man say into the black thing “We get up at night to pee too, but she isn’t choosing the same times.”

We all went to the vet lady again. All the humans had frowny-faces, except when they talked to me and put on that voice that they think dogs and babies want to hear. I don’t mean to seem ungrateful, but I know I’m a “pretty girl” and I don’t need to be told so in a squeaky voice.

“Die-Beet-Ez” I don’t know what it is, but my humans learned how to use needles, not the big kind – I barely feel them.

The stair trips are scary for them so they are taking turns sleeping downstairs. It was my man’s turn last night and he slept on the floor. “Couch is too soft for my back and I don’t really fit in it.”

As I said, I really worked to hold my pee until first light. I’m going to sleep around today.                                                                                

I wish they wouldn’t worry so much. Sure they’ve cut back my treats, changed my dinner time, and he joined me on the floor, but that’s why I trained them. They’ll adapt.

That’s what humans do – worry. They watch the picture box in the den every night, look sad and worry. I can’t watch that stuff – I bark to go out on the deck till they watch something that makes them laugh.

This morning though, they just looked at each other, shrugged their shoulders, shook their heads and laughed. Then my man started to sing and my lady joined in.

“We ain’t got a barrel of money. We may look ragged and funny, but we’re travelin’ along, singing a song. Side by side.”

I love it when they do that.

The roots of a love affair

When I was a pre-teen, I read a book about Doug, an American teenager immersed in hot rod culture. The story was about Doug finding himself, but was full of descriptions of bored-out V8s and chopped and channeled old Fords, accompanied in my memory by Chuck Berry songs,

“. . . Cadillac a-rollin’ on the open road; Nothin’ outrun my V8 Ford . . . Maybeline why can’t you be true? You done started back doin’ the things you used to do.”

In a barn, Doug discovered a pristine 1948 MG TC, a British Racing Green roadster with wire wheels and saddle brown leather seats. The TC had a four cylinder engine, one third the horsepower of his friends cars and couldn’t compete on a straight away, but would lose any car on curvy roads.

Doug soon tired of drag racing preferring to go “motoring” with his new girl Deb, top down to sunshine and wind in their hair.

This began my unrequited love affair with old British sports cars. I’ve lusted after Jaguar XK-120s, MG As and Bs, Triumphs for much of my life. I drove my cousin’s Austin Healey 3000 on farm roads when I was thirteen and a friend’s Healey Sprite Midget when I was sixteen.

I have never owned any of these cars, but I’ve imagined the motoring joy of them. When I went to business school in England, I discovered the Morgan Car Company, which has been building cars like these continuously since the 1930s. The car in the bottom right of the picture above is a 1957 model, but they build a car that looks exactly like that today.

Reportedly the stiff suspension and ash wood body frame makes a Morgan an uncomfortable ride, but the light-weight aluminum body makes even the four cylinder quite quick.

People want fast cars and so Morgan obliged. They introduced the Plus 8 in 1968 with 4.5 liter Rover V8, and neck-snapping acceleration. Mick Jagger owned one. In 2000 Morgan produced the Aero 8 pictured in the upper left. The Aero even looks fast, but it leaves me cold. I think it might create the g-force face bending of astronaut centrifuge training, not exactly a “happy motoring” experience.

Most guys want the “fast” driving experience. I fantasize about the “slow” experience.

Let’s be clear. I drive ten miles-per-hour over the speed limit on interstates and use Ez-Pass for tolls like everyone else.  I don’t want to return to before President Dwight D. Eisenhower built GM president Will Durant’s plan for a “network of highways stretching from sea to sea.” I do fondly remember country road drives reading Burma Shave signs.

Is faster better?

What prompted this fast-slow rumination?

My LinkedIn and BizCatalyst 360 connection Charlotte Wittenkamp shared an essay by Rory Sutherland, entitled “Are We Too Impatient to Be Intelligent?” Mr. Sutherland is the former creative director of U.K. Ogilvy & Mather, an advertising agency part of the WPP marketing conglomerate.

Mr. Sutherland now runs Ogilvy Consulting, which applies human behavioral science to business problems. His essay humorously makes the point that the default criterion for innovation has become speed, even though that might not be what the customer wants.

Fast train schedules, bullet trains, even faster non-stop flights, instant email, Amazon same day delivery, quicken our lives unnecessarily – Don’t order a Guiness, it takes forever to pour. “Some things are worth waiting for,” he quotes the Ogilvy Guiness ad to drive home his point,.

This got me thinking. Is this a conspiracy? Or is this the way humans are wired?

In his book Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow, Daniel Kahneman posits that human brains have two systems of processing thoughts.

• System 1 is autopilot, subconscious thought used 90% of the time. It makes decisions and takes actions we have done before. It recognizes patterns and gambles on the frequency those patterns have been seen before. It is incredibly fast, like an algorithm.
• System 2 is focused, conscious thought. It is very powerful, but slow. It can only do one thing at a time.

When people say they’re good at multitasking, their skill is switch-tasking, moving rapidly between System 1 & 2, and, yes, some people are better at that, but most of us just think we are good at it.

Automobile, air traffic control accidents, chemical or oil spills and explosions are frequently caused by someone whose brain was in System 1 when it should have been in System 2. Someone was thinking fast when they should have been thinking slow.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) will save us time

Sutherland says that we don’t always actually want efficiency. He suggests that AI, which is being built on the speed and efficiency model might be trained to slow down, give us a series of suggestions for a trip to Greece over a two month period allowing for contemplation, discussion.

Google, Amazon Ads, LinkedIn, and my writing software is constantly popping up a dialogue box, “Would you like to use AI to write this?” Mentally I answer. “NO DAMMIT! I’M TRYING TO BECOME A WRITER.” (This is sometimes my out loud voice, according to my wife.)

Speed and efficiency rarely help learn a skill. It’s why when I’m woodcarving, I don’t use power tools. I want to keep the digits I have.

In my late thirties I decided to run a marathon. I had been running twenty-five seven-minute miles a week for about ten years, but never more than five miles at one time. I just started doubling my long runs at the same pace. I hurt myself.

A fellow runner said “Alan, remember LSD!”

“I  don’t do that anymore and I am NOT going to start again.”

“No man. Long Slow Distance. Reduce your speed to run longer. A nine minute mile pace for your first marathon is quite respectable.”

Since the Industrial Revolution humans have focused on the relationship between speed and cost. Faster is better, because the more quantity you can produce for the same overheads, the cheaper each unit is.

New technology performs one function more rapidly. GPS gets you from point A to point B faster than maps, but it doesn’t show you what else you might see along the way. Remember AAA Triptiks, that told you attractions at every exit you pass? AAA still makes Triptiks, but very few members order them.

There is an inverse relationship between quality and speed. A designer once told me, “Good, fast and cheap. Pick any two. If it’s fast and cheap, it won’t be good. If it’s good and cheap it won’t be fast. If it’s good and fast, it won’t be cheap.”

Some activities benefit from going slow: eating, customer service, international diplomacy, research, sex, weight loss, learning, and any art or craft. With thinking and editing time, this little post took longer than I’d like, but I am still learning to write.

Gustav Stickley, the Arts & Crafts designer, embossed on the copper fireplace hood at his home in Morris Plains, NJ:

“The Lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.”

Slow down. Feel the sun on your face and the wind in your hair. Happy motoring.

First Love

My first girlfriend was named Coke, not what you’re thinking. We weren’t fifteen year-old white powder fiends. Her real name was Carolyn. The nickname came from her first attempts at saying her name, but it stuck and she introduced herself, “Hi my name is Carolyn, but I’m called Coke.”

We hung out after school, and drank Lime Rickey’s at Brigham’s Ice Cream. Pre-driver’s license, I rode her high school bus and took a public bus home.

The Car

In the fall of 1962 my father was replacing the family wing-finned ’59 Chevrolet. He engaged me in the selection process. I was ecstatic. I subscribed to Road & Track and Car and Driver and owned a ’53 Dodge tinker-car.  We went to dealers together and brought home brochures. I had read about the new engine; Pontiac had sawed a 389 V8 in half, a big-bore slanted four cylinder motor. My Day ordered a ’63 Pontiac Tempest, one of the first US front-wheel drive cars, black with a red bucket seats, Quad 4 engine, four speed manual transmission with floor mounted shifter (four-on-the-floor). I convinced my dad to buy the four-barrel carburetor, so much for the miles-per-gallon advantage of four cylinders. I also convinced him to buy seat belts, “for safety,” secretly thinking “like a race car”.

License

In October I got my license on my sixteenth birthday. That took planning only a motivated sixteen year old boy could pull off. I took the written test three months earlier to get a learner’s permit. The high school driver’s ed course wouldn’t be done in time, so I paid for a private course with money from my job at Howard Johnson’s. I rode two buses to class and doubled up on classroom and behind the wheel instruction to be done on time. Then I called the only Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), with a test on the day.

I was ready. My father started teaching me to drive when I could reach the pedals. My mother rode in the back seat of the Chevy, (the Tempest hadn’t come in yet). A State Trooper rode shotgun. I drove around making left and right turns, checking mirrors,  using hand signals and the blinker, doing a three point turn in traffic on a hill. Then came parallel parking on a 30 percent grade into a really tight spot.. I aced it. The trooper was impressed.

“You’ve obviously been practicing that, “he smiled. “OK, you passed. Take us back to the office.. . .. WATCH IT!”

In my elation, I had started to pull out into traffic without looking, almost into another car.

“Alan. Would you rather have your license or your life?”

“my life” I drove back to the DMV dejected.

“Alan, you know how to drive safely, but you can’t let up for a second.”

“yes sir”

“I want you to remember that, always! I am going to give you your license today. . .”

I don’t remember a word that came after that. I don’t remember the drive home, or what my mother and my father said or what I ate for my sixteenth birthday dinner or any of my presents.

I remember when the Pontiac Tempest came into the dealership. My father and I picked it up and he let me drive home.. My father and I loved that car; my mother not-so-much.

The Dance

Coke and I went to a dance the previous spring; my Dad driving us in the Chevy. Instead of a corsage, she preferred a single gardenia blossom, which she wore in her hair. The smell of gardenias still brings back memories.

I was in DeMolay, the Mason’s boys youth group; Coke was in Rainbow girls, the Easter Star girls youth group. February 16, 1963 Rainbow girls held a Sweetheart Dance and I asked Coke to go. I would drive the Pontiac.

I don’t remember the dance or what Coke wore. As we left at around 11:00, it started to snow. I drove her home. We probably kissed in her driveway, but not for long as I had to be off the road by midnight, when my license “turned into a pumpkin” a reference to the Disney Cinderella movie.

And then . . .

The drive home, under five miles, was winter magic. The plows hadn’t been out yet and there was about an inch and a half of new snow on all the roads. Everything was white and streetlights twinkled.  

I drove too fast, maybe thirty-five miles per hour, contrary to what I said later. This was New England. My father taught me how to drive in the snow. When you felt the rear end break loose, steer in the direction of the skid till the car righted itself. I may have even been trying for some fishtail action.

The Pontiac Tempest was a front-wheel drive car. Fishtails are a rear-wheel drive phenomenon. Front-wheel drive cars don’t fishtail, they snowplow skid. The front wheels lock in a turned position and you keep going forward.

In the soft fairy-white glitter light sparkling off individual snowflakes, a big oak tree leaped in front of me. I panicked. I stomped both feet on the brakes. The Tempest accelerated. Even now my memory is in slow motion, the tree reaching branches toward me, white lightning streaks in my peripheral vision. The crash, which must have been loud, is soundless.

I don’t remember getting out of the car. A man standing under a porch light yelled “Are you all right?” I was and he yelled that he’d called the police.

“Police?!”

It took every strand of my spinal cord not to run. The police came. I remember the sergeant saying “You were driving this?” I looked at the car for the first time. My bucket seatback had broken off backwards. The steering wheel was where the seatback used to be, there was an engine-shaped bulge between the two front seats and the four-on-the-floor pushed against the back seat.

“I can’t understand why you didn’t go through the windshield,” mused the cop.

“I dunno. Seat belts, I guess.”

“This car has seat belts?”

“Yeah, I talked my father into buying them.”

“Well you can thank your stars for that. Your Dad’s one of those Ward Cleaver types, right?” The  father in TV show Leave it to Beaver, was the most understanding father I’ve ever seen.

“Uh-uh.” I shook my head, but it turned out he was, even when the insurance company refused to call the car a total loss, which cost a lot of money, he just said, “Put your car on the road.”

I have been religious about wearing seat belts ever since. My father, even though they saved his son’s life, never liked them and had to be reminded to wear them even after the tickets.

Coke and I broke up about four months later as I discovered that other girls might be interested in me. But as the cop said that night:

“You’ll always remember the Sweetheart Dance, when you hugged a tree on the way home.”