These last couple of weeks have been a journey through history.  The period began with biking through North Carolina's Albemarle Sound region where every small town lauds its history in placards in front of old houses, monuments in town squares, museums and stories everywhere.  Some of these towns, like Bath, built in 1610, have few sidewalks or curbs but, with historic homes and ancient churches, still maintain the atmosphere of tiny remote outposts in the new world. One placard in front of a small cabin in Bath claims that this was the home of Black Beard, the pirate. 

Thanks to scientific diggings in its phosphate mine, the town of Aurora offers a fossil museum that takes you back eons further into Paleolithic times, telling stories of the Great White Shark and the giant whales it could slaughter in fierce attacks with its mighty jaws.  Sitting off shore at Plymouth is a replica of the ironclad Confederate ship that proved a stalwart foe against the Union Navy ships during the Civil War.  It looks like a tin can of a thing, but in a way like a tiny precursor of the huge Trident Submarines that ply their way through Hood Canal in front of our vacation cabin back home.  Of course, the ironclad's predecessor was the first spear that one human picked up to attack another.   Our hope is that the human species will, by way of a global parliamentary assembly, reverse this self-destructive trend and not soon join the ranks of extinction with the Great White.

Once out of the Carolinas and into Virginia, we were steeped even more heavily in history.  Coordinating our schedule of events in Newport News was a wonderful woman named Judy Remsberg who was a native of neighboring Yorktown, which was the scene of the colonies' final victory over the British in the Revolutionary War. The battlefield is a peaceful green meadow now along side an equally beautiful field where Cornwallis sent his aide to surrender. 

Later we visited a pretty impressive mock- up/ replica of Jamestown on the site of the 1607 settlement by the British Virginia Company, a corporation chartered, though not funded by James I.   Apparently there was a lot of unemployment, poverty, misery, and inequality in Elizabethan England.  So the Company tempted a few hundred unfortunates with promises of riches and abundant opportunity for better life.  They crowded them all into a few small ships and sent them over to bring back gold and wealth from the new world.   They dropped them off in the mouth of this river with no skills and very few supplies.  They didn't even have the where-with-all to plant crops, fish, or hunt to get through a winter.  The local Powhatan people helped for a while (Pocahantas to the rescue),  but one winter most colonists starved to death. Later many were killed off by the Indians, who weren't too keen on having their land grabbed up by foreigners.  

All this sounded painfully familiar to the behavior of today's corporations, looking for poor miserable folks to exploit for their profits.  In fact, the gold the settlers finally did bring back was a golden plant called tobacco, which they stole from the natives, who, of course, had no patent on it.  The colonists actually did end up planting a great deal of this stuff, thereby depleting the soil, and crowding out/ killing off the Powhatans.  Meanwhile this created a serious health hazard for us all in future generations.  Thanks to thousands of slaves imported from Africa to do the work, a few of the newcomers did get rich from tobacco, as for example the Lee family (Robert E's grandpa) whose estate (Stratford Hall) we visited a little farther on up the road.  We also visited the real, well almost real, surviving colonial town of Williamsburg and still a little farther up Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington, another rich guy with lots of slaves.   George, however, came along after the soil was completely depleted by tobacco and had to diversify, fertilize, and rotate crops.  Though he grew lots of things, George's main cash crop was something a little healthier, namely wheat.  Just thought you might be relieved to hear about something these folks engaged in besides war and slavery.  We were.       

The best part of our trip, however, is never the history we encounter, nor even the increasingly beautiful farm country we ride through, but rather the wonderful live humans we meet along the way.  Dick's old friend Vilay came with his wife and two children from Greenville to visit us in Plymouth.   Vilay had been part of Wilmington's only Lao family and had fond memories of Dick.   Dick had lost touch with him but managed to find him on through an internet search, knowing only his middle name and that he had some association with the Biology Department at East Carolina University. Turns out that he is as hardworking, thoughtful, and resourceful as every,  working three repair businesses in addition to his university lab work and teaching.  He has also independently developed some deep insights on the world situation, enthusiastically supporting our peace work.

Just before crossing the Albemarle Sound Bridge, we met our first fellow bicycle traveler.  He was Claude Bedard, a French Canadian biking from Miami to Montreal, all dressed up in colorful  bicycling clothes much like ours.  He was also within our age range, around 60.  Claude, who is a journalist and video producer, stopped to take our picture at the top of the Albemarle Sound Bridge.  We looked him up in Edenton, the next town and had dinner with him that night.

For our ride into Virginia, we were welcomed by a harrowing experience, the James River Bridge.  For those who have never visited the east coastal lowlands, perhaps I should explain that when I speak of rivers, I am not talking about streams trickling through the plains.  By the time these tributaries are ready to dump themselves into the Atlantic, they are huge, on the order of Puget Sound or the Straight of Juan DeFuca, swelled as they are with tides coming in from the Ocean.  So you're looking at a six-mile bridge over water that stretches to the horizon.  But that wasn't the scary part.  The scary part was the lack of paved shoulder and the cars speeding by at 50 or 60 miles per hour.   When we get to the top of the bridge there is the inevitable grating where it was with great effort and prowess that Dick manages to keep the bike in a somewhat vertical position.  Just at that moment a big yellow truck pulls up beside us with the driver yelling something at us through the open window.  We have no idea what he wants us to do that we are not doing because what we are doing takes all our concentration and is necessary to prevent the loss of our lives.  However, just over the crest of the bridge, I notice that the said big yellow truck is from the Department of Transportation and is following behind us with flashing lights, actually escorting us off the bridge.  After we are safely on the opposite shore the DOT official pulls us over and informs us that it's illegal for bikes to cross this bridge.  We were supposed to wait for him to come by, pick us up, and take us across.  He said he comes by about once every hour.  Fortunately, he did not fine us or put us in jail, just warned us not to do it again.  It was easy to promise that we won't because we are headed north and it will probably be a very long time before we ever need to cross the James River again.

Newport News was a highlight of our trip, rivaling even our beloved Savannah.  There was another excellent article about our cause and adventures in the local newspaper. Besides the coordinating efforts of the above-mentioned Judy Remsberg, we are grateful to a number of others in the area.  We stayed one night with Marge and Harry Gates, a vibrant couple in their early eighties who are great conversationalists and who describe themselves as pacifists. They were warm, loving folks who made us feel most welcome.  We also stayed one night with Rick Scarfe, a very thoughtful peace activist who edits a newsletter to enhance dialogue and communication between several local peace groups. Sunday morning at the UU Fellowship of the Peninsula we gave our sermon and other readings at both services and were very well received by good people, quite open to our message.

Next day we stayed in Williamsburg with bicycle activists, Mary and Allen Turnbull. Allen is executive director of Bike Walk Virginia.  He helped Dick go over maps and come up with some good rural bike routes through the rest of Virginia.  The only problem was the upsides that came with the downsides of some of these roads – we met our first really serious hills. Streams have gouged deep ravines in the bountiful plains.  Dick had to tell Mona that he was going to need a little more muscle power from the back of the bike to get through the rest of this trip.

On Thursday we stayed with a UU family that really lives their beliefs. Ed and Lee Criscuolo live with their teen-age daughters, Kelly and Robin, in a geodesic dome house they built themselves. They have a special Japanese made water-efficient, composting toilet, solar panels for electricity, wood heat, goats for cheese and milk, a large vegetable garden, etc. They home-school their children, who are much better educated than most. Needless to say, we were impressed. 

For our ride into the Nation's capital along the Mount Vernon trail, we were welcomed by a thunderstorm in the morning followed by hard rain. Since it was our first really rainy day in over two months of bicycling north, we thought maybe the storm had been conjured up by evil spirits occupying the White House. However, we were snug in our rain gear, so our enjoyment of views of the Potomac, the Airport and parks was not dampened at all. After crossing the Potomac River, we had our picture taken in front of the Jefferson monument. We felt Jefferson was giving full approval to our efforts to promote global democracy with the following quote inscribed on the walls: "I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions. But laws and constitutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that comes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to still wear the coat which fit him when a boy as civilized society to remain under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."

Mona had a book signing that afternoon at Barnes and Noble. Then we came on the Chesapeake and Ohio towpath bike trail along the canal to the beautiful home of the Clarke family in Georgetown. Suzanne and Jonathan live here with their two grown children, Tiffany and Robin. We arrived at their doorstep almost as badly smeared with mud as were our bike, trailer and all our gear. They welcomed us with generous hospitality and shared their home with us for the weekend. Suzanne took us to a most inspiring service this morning at the River Road Unitarian Church where their minister, the Reverend Lynn Strauss gave a sermon entitled, "Honor Your Daughters and Sons."  Perhaps there was not a dry eye in the house, at least ours weren't.  If our children, Dana, Erik, Sahni, Sandy, and Diana read this, we hope they know how very much we love and honor them.

This evening we have a great dinner and discussion with a small but mighty group at the River Road Church.  Among them were Steve Smith of Earth Charter USA and Katherine Jesch of the UU Seventh Principle Project.   For such small informal gatherings, we now have a favorite joke:

WHAT"S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GEORGE BUSH AND ADOLPH HITLER?

HITLER WAS ELECTED.

Are we still having fun?  You bet!

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Eliminate discrimination in all its forms, such as that based on race, color, sex, sexual orientation, religion, language, and national, ethnic, or social origin.
– Earth Charter principle III.12.a.

We celebrate diversity in cultures, while nurturing their underlying unity.
– Affirmation of the Preamble to the Charter of the Global Peoples Assembly Movement