For some reason, I'm endlessly fascinated by the cars we choose to drive, and the ways we choose to drive them, and how patriotism plays into the mix.

My thoughts are stimulated by seeing yet another one of those American flags stuck onto the back of a car with a Japanese nameplate! My first thought was what it usually is: "If you're so patriotic, why are you driving a foreign car?" (Full disclosure: my daily car is Japanese! But I don't have an American flag stuck on it.)

I'm revealing my age, I guess, by even noticing something like this. When I was growing up and driving my first car, Japanese cars were made in Japan, and American cars were made in the United States! Now, I guess, it's hard to know what a foreign car is. Most Hondas and Toyotas sold in the US are manufactured in the US (although with many parts manufactured in other countries). And the Ford Mustang -- that iconic American car -- contains 60% foreign parts!

I'm happy to see that there are fewer SUVs on the road, because bad gas mileage is unpatriotic. The more gas we burn, especially as oil prices rise, the more money is put into the pockets of world rulers who hate us. I guess we just disassociate our addiction to oil (President Bush's words) from our knowledge of who produces the oil. Otherwise, it would be a conscious national suicide pact.

The deepest irony were those "Support the Troops" magnets plastered on all those SUVs -- because, of course, the less energy we consume, the less need there is to send troops to die in defense of oil. I've gained an entirely counter-cultural habit: of driving the speed limit. And so, for years, driving to Richmond, say, I've pegged the cruise control at the speed limit and poked along in the right hand lane. I've lamented the fact that SUVs, which get abysmal gas mileage to start with, speed past me at 75 or 80 miles per hour (some displaying "Support Our Troops" magnets!), a rate of speed which causes those vehicles' abysmal gas mileage to drop even further. (Have you seen the startling statistics of how a vehicle's gas mileage drops when it's driven faster than 65 miles per hour?) I think speeding is unpatriotic. I think energy conservation is patriotic, and so, patriotism is a factor when making decsions on a new car lot.

And driving the speed limit has become a contemplative experience. Have you ever done that -- driven 65 mph on I-64? There's no feeling of artificial urgency because the driver in front of you is only going 70, and you're trying to figure out a way to pass him because he's slowing you down ... I guess those who pass me on the way to Richmond get there 10 minutes before me. (Maybe that much.) Does that extra 10 mintues matter, when the drive has been fraught with anxiety about passing each driver who might holding you up for a few seconds? I arrive relaxed, having enjoyed a Mozart sonata or a Scott Hamilton ballads CD on the iPod. I have a 17 year old Ford Taurus that I bought from Patty's father two years ago, simply because it only had 44,000 miles on it. (The new Ford Focus he bought at that time only has 5,000 miles on it!!) I sure didn't need the Taurus! But it's become my "highway specialty car" -- because it's big and comfortable on the highway and, when driven the speed limit, gets 30 mpg. (Around town, it gets abysmal mileage, so I avoid that!)

I can't fathom why, in the name of patriotism, Congress doesn't mandate dramaticaly increased mileage standards for manufacturers of vehicles to be sold in the US. In fact, the mileage ratings on the window stickers of new cars has actually dropped this year. One reason is because consumers were so often disappointed that their mileage was lower than the new car sticker had promised them. So, the federal rating institute that determines mileage lowered the numbers because this reflects the way we actually drive: above the speed limit, continuing to accelerate, even when seeing a red light ahead, etc.

So now, if you buy a new car, and drive the speed limit on the highway, and coast to a red light and start up gradually on a green light, your mileage will be better than what was advertised on the sticker!

Neither of us remembered to get the mail, so I go back out.
It's already dark.
I smell the leaves, the smell of fall.
There's an owl in the woods.

A year ago right now I had just gotten home from the hospital, and was sitting in an easy chair with my feet up because of lingering edema in my ankles, a nasal cannula shooting oxygen into my nostrils. What joy!

I got out of the hospital as soon as I did because of two doctors who were very aggressive. A week earlier, on the day before Thanksgiving the pulmonologist, Dr. Cosio, had swooped into my room in the Progressive Ventilator Care Unit and announced he was going to remove my tracheotomy. The respiratory therapist was aghast. She said, "You mean you're going to downsize it, right?" He looked at her like she was from Mars. He said, "Why would I do that?" She said, "Because it's the protocol." (She was right, of course. Standard operating procedure is to spend a week or two downsizing the size of the trach, and watching how the patient responds, before taking it out entirely.) Dr. Cosio said, "I decided to put the trach in, and now I've decided to take it out!" (By this time several of the unit's staff members were in my room to watch this novelty.) Dr. Cosio laid out some instruments on my open New Yorker magazine on the bedside table, snipped out the trach, bandaged up the wound, and started out the door! On the way out, he said, "Oh. Say something." I said, "What do you want me to say?" He said, "Sounds fine," and left. I was actually unsure what had taken place. My nurse stood there with a big grin on her face, and I asked, "Um, what is there in my throat now?" She said, "Nothing! He took it all out!"

After that I certainly did not need to be in the PVCU, but there were no staffed rooms available on one of the regular hospital floors. (It's not that they didn't have rooms available; with the nursing shortage, they had no staffed rooms.) As it turned out, I only spent two nights in a regular room. At the time I had been very frustrated to have to stay in the PVCU. But, as it turned out, I got the best care available during my hospitalization because the ICU and PVCU were staffed by RNs. On the regular floor, RNs were scarce. I was cared for by LPNs. Frequently over the loudspeaker system would come the announcement, "A nurse is needed in room ___." There were a couple of RNs on each shift, and they would move from room to room when they were needed to perform procedures that only RNs are authorized to do. That's a little bit scary, huh?

I only spent two nights in that room because of the aggressiveness of the internist who was coordinating my care by that point. He was always trailed by four or five adoting residents (which he seemed to enjoy very much). When he first met me in the PVCU, he paid me a tremendous compliment. I was still on the ventilator. I had been confined to bed for the weeks of my hospitalization. But he said to his students: "Ladies and gentlemen, this is a century bicyclist." Present tense! He was a triathlete himself, and he didn't think I needed to be babied. I'd have been in the hospital for days longer if he had not been calling the shots at that point. A year ago yesterday he came in and said, "Some of your numbers aren't where we want them to be yet. But this room is depressing for you. We need to get you out of here. You'll get better much faster at home." He assumed that I would do all I could to rebuild my strength. Of course, that's what happened.

When I go to bed tonight, I'll think of how dark and how quiet the bedroom was to me! In fact, in that darkness and quiet, it took me a while to relax for sleep: there was no call button nearby! What if I would have difficulty breathing? And I had been sleeping on my back for more than a month. It was hard to get used to the idea that I could sleep on my side!

The sun's coming up and the temperature is in the 30s! What a change from last night when, out for a prospective member visit, I was comfortable in a sweater.

Temperatures in the 30s call for full winter battle gear when going out for a bike ride: not only tights and full-finger cycling gloves, but also shoe covers, two layers and then the fleece vest under the bright yellow nylon shell, a head covering under the helmet. The wind that blew in the cold front last night is still blowing -- right into my face for the first eight miles of the ride. What fun, though, when I got to Queen's Lake and turned around for home: that wind was like an unseen hand behind me, pushing me all the way home!

The most significant thing about the above paragraphs: I had an evening free to make a home visit!! It's the first such evening since the summer! I celebrate the end of the Director of Music search process!

I keep track of my annual bicycle mileage. It was fun to notice this odometer reading on my road bike at the end of this morning's ride: 2111.1

My 2006 total mileage was another fun number: 2121. That includes comuting mileage, so I'm way past that total for 2007. Of course, last year, I couldn't ride the final three months of the year. This year, I only lost January.

What is a chore for you is a celebration for me. For the first time in two years, I'm able to rake leaves! Yesterday, after our kids left following their Thanksgiving visit, Patty and I got out there with the blower and the rake and cleaned off the front yard.

A year ago, of course, it was much different. Patty still talks about how she'd come home at night after spending the day with me in the hospital, only to discover that the yard was raked and the leaves carted away! What a gift from various members of the congregation!

A wonderful Thanksgiving -- with all three of our children here: Emily, Nathan and Renee. Later today Emily's fiance, Sheldon, will arrive for an overnight with his mother, who Patty and I have never met. We're enjoying the opportunity to simply "chillax" with each other. ("Chillaxin'" is a new word I learned from the youth at last week's "Lost and Found" Synod youth event.)

This morning, before any of the kids were awake, I got out on my road bike for my Queen's Lake 16-mile loop. No traffic! I'm glad I'm not riding a Century today. My body was quite sluggish this morning, which is no wonder after yesterday's nuts and dried bananas and apricots and glass of wine and glass of beer and turkey and dressing and ham and sweet potatos and green beans and glass of wine and glass of wine and pecan pie and coffee and pumpkin cheese cake and pecan pie and glass of wine.

I saw several others out this morning, bicycling or jogging, doing penance for what we had done to our bodies yesterday.

A year ago yesterday my tracheostomy was removed!

A year ago today I weaned myself from the ventilator!

I didn't know at the time that I was done with that machine. The weaning had been going on for several days, going without the vent for an increasing number of hours at a time (hooked up with a plastic tube shooting oxygen towards the trach hole for those hours). Each night, the respiratory therapist had hooked me back up to the vent to sleep. But on this day a year ago, I went without the vent all day and, when it was time to enter into my nightly drug-induced "sleep," the respiratory therapist said, "Are you ready to go without it tonight?" What an exciting prospect -- and also what a fearful request! Would it be dangerous? The therapist said, "Don't worry. I'll watch you closely. If we need to, we can put you back on it quickly." (Thank God for those who watch and wait and serve overnight.)

As it happened that I did ok overnight, and then I continued without the vent into the next day, and eventually we realized that I was weaned! A couple of days later there were smiles all around when the respiratory therapist came into my room in the Progressive Ventilator Care Unit and said, "Well, you don't need this machine anymore. Let me roll it out of here. It's just taking up room."

I'm home for an hour or two, in-between today's activities and going back to the church for a meeting. Much of today was spent in the car. I drove to Waynesboro to make a presentation to the Virginia Synod deans who were meeting together. Waynesboro is about a half hour past Charlottesville, and so on the way back I stopped at the UVA hospital to make a call on one of our members hospitalized there.

I thoroughly enjoyed the drive! All the way out and most of the way back, I listened to Murray Perahia playing Bach on my iPod: the Goldberg Variations and the English Suites. What contemplative hours!

And the colors of the leaves! The leaves were a few days past their peak, but what beauty out in the mountains west of Charlottesville! (Remember: it's been two years since I last saw the changing leaves of fall.)

The piano is newly-tuned, and Patty's in there playing it. There's nothing like a newly-tuned piano -- unless it's a new set of tires, or a new blade in the razor ...