SOYBEAN SORROWS AND LOBSTER LOSSES

How’s Trump’s trade war going for you? 

Trade is the mother of money. ~ Thomas Draxe (1613)

News about the US-China trade war has been eclipsed by the midterm elections. The elections are now (almost) over; the trade war continues.  

     Thousands of products’ prices have been increased by the US and subsequent Chinese tariffs. The US tariffs, started in May by the president, are imposed on $200 billion (B) of Chinese imported goods, 40% of 2017 Chinese imports to the US. You can see the full list of tariffed items from the US Trade Representative here. This document is 194 pages long; starting with “Frozen retail cuts of meat of swine, nesoi” all the way to “Furniture (o/than seats/than of 9402) of plastics (o/than reinforced or laminated).” In retaliation and predictably, China has imposed tariffs on roughly $60B US exports to China, which represents 46% of 2017 US exports to China. Although China has certainly stretched WTO protocols to its advantage and broken others, it’s highly doubtful that hardball tactics like 194 pages of tariffs is worth the pain and cost that’s harming soybean farmers, lobstermen and thousands of other business-people and citizens.  

The US imports more goods from China than any other nation in the world. This fact is reflected in the sizeable trade deficit the US has with China, $375.6B in 2017. China’s dramatic economic growth over the past decade has been export driven. It is the leading exporter of goods in the world, ahead of the US. China’s exports of goods represent a large 18.6% of its GDP. In contrast, US exports of goods represent just 6.9% of our GDP. As a consequence of the trade war, the monthly US trade deficit increased in September from $53.3B in August to $54.0B in September; extra costly imports increased more than curtailed exports.

In examining the current trade conflict with China, I here focus specifically on US farmers, who are enduring heavy and direct economic cross-fire from the president’s trade war. Currently, more than 20% of US agricultural exports face reciprocal tariffs from China and other countries.

I examine an incongruous pair of harvested products, soybeans and lobsters, which are now subject to Chinese tariffs. Last year, before the president initiated his tariffs, the US exported to China $21.6B of soybeans and $128.5 million of live lobsters. Before we dive into marine crustaceans, let’s first consider soybeans.

Soybeans.  The soybean (Glycine max) is a legume species native to East Asia, widely grown for its edible bean. US  farmland is awash with soybean plants, shown below. For the first time in 35 years, soybeans are now planted on more acreage than any other crop– 89 million acres. In other words, soybeans are big, very big agriculture. Soybeans are the nation’s single largest agricultural export, more than double that of corn. In part this is why China imposed a retaliatory 25% tariff on US soybean exports. The other part is based on where soybeans are grown – in true red Trump country. The top 6 soybean-producing states are rural parts of Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota and Indiana. In addition to being the source of all things in the tofu universe, unfermented soybeans are used in animal (especially pig) feedstocks, and as an ingredient for biodiesel fuel and crayons. Fermented soy foods include soy sauce.

Over the past 6 years American soybean production has increased 44% in part to meet ever-growing export demand. In 2016 US exports represented 47% of total US production. The Chinese market dominates US soybean exports; it’s 6.5 times as large as the EU, the second largest foreign market for US soybeans.

The Chinese tariffs likely have changed all that. US soybean sales to China plunged by 98% since the beginning of this year. Prices have fallen 22% since April. “It’s a big concern,” understates David Williams, a Michigan soybean farmer. In addition, the USDA expects farm incomes to drop by 13% this year. The ratio of farm debt to assets is forecast to rise to its highest level since 2009. The trade conflict, which the president initiated with steel and aluminum tariffs, has spread far afield.

Some optimistic soybean farmers hope that because they help feed the growing Chinese middle class, where soybean-fed pork has become a mainstay of their diet, China’s need for US soybeans will become more acute later this year when Brazilian soybeans – the world’s second major producer that China has recently turned to – grow scarce as their growing season ends. Hope springs eternal.

In any case, US soybean farmers have taken it in the beans with respect to their livelihood. Those of us outside the soybean belt may remember that the Trump administration has offered $3.6B to soybean farmers to offset price drops. This new subsidy will end up being about 82.5₵ per bushel, covering less than half of the farmers’ losses. Half a soybean is better than none at all, but as a non-farmer, I cringed when I learned of this announcement. Why? Because industrial ag commodity growers, like soybean farmers, already receive sizeable government subsidies – about $25B per year for “farm income stabilization,” Now they’re receiving billions more because the president initiated a trade war that’s hurting some of his political flock.

Are soybean farmers upset at the president? Some are, most aren’t. Grant Gebeke, a large soybean grower in North Dakota, isn’t happy. “I’m trying to follow and figure out who the winners are in this tariff war,” Gebeke said. “I know who one of the losers is and that’s us. And that’s painful.” In addition, he laments that “They [the US and Chinese trade negotiators] could get together tomorrow and iron this thing all out and I don’t think we’ll ever get all of our market back.” Just like happened in 1979-81, when President Carter embargoed wheat exports to the Soviet Union. Soybean farmers have been thrown under the tractor as the president’s tariff war bumbles along.

Lobsters.  Lobsters are large marine crustaceans. North Atlantic lobsters, Homarus ameicanus, are found off the ocean coasts of New England and Canada. Lobsters are sold and shipped as living animals. They can live up to 50 years in the wild. The largest lobster ever caught weighed 44.4 lb. in Nova Scotia. The preferred commercially harvested lobster is much smaller, weighing 1.25 lbs., aka “a quarter.” The largest producer and exporter of American lobsters is the state of Maine, which I’ve written about before.

The famed author David Foster Wallace wrote his “Consider the Lobster” article that was published in Gourmet magazine about the State Crustacean of Maine. Being Wallace-written, the treatise contains a fair amount of food for thought, but not about lobsters per se. He likened these creatures to giant sea insects. Wallace tells about his attending the 2003 Maine Lobster Festival, an “enormous, pungent, and extremely well-marketed” affair. Perhaps in finite jest, Wallace called these benthic denizens of the depths “garbagemen of the sea, eaters of dead stuff.” He also reminds us that our fondness for lobster meat is recent. During US Colonial times until into the 1800s lobster was considered low-class food, only given to poor and institutionalized folks and prison inmates. The inmates only ate lobster once a week because more often would have been considered cruel and unusual punishment. My how times change. 

For the majority of the essay Wallace travels way beyond the festival and discusses the “inconvenient” moral issue directly connected with eating lobster: because each lobster is supposed to be alive (as shown in the above picture) when you, or the cook, kills it in a kettle of scalding water. Basically, the lobster’s pain issue boils down to whether it feels pain when this happens, and how a lobster-eater deals with this likelihood. The vast majority of lobster eaters attempt to disregard the issue completely, much to PETA’s chagrin.

But enough lobster philosophizing. For New England, and especially Maine, lobsters have been a large and growing business. In 2016, the US “landed” 161.1 million (M) pounds of live lobster. Maine’s 5,400 independent lobster fishermen alone provided 132.5M lb., worth $540.3M. Both numbers are records. The lobster industry has experienced significant growth; in the last dozen years the lobster catch has sustainably increased 76.3%. As mentioned above, the US exported $128.5M worth of live lobsters to China in 2017. But in 2018 lobster exports to China have shrunk by 17% so far, due to China’s retaliatory 25% lobster tariff imposed in July. Similar to soybean growers, some lobstermen are upset, most apparently are not.

Kristan Porter, the president of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, has said the issue of China’s tariffs and Trump’s trade wars “is a long way down the list for most guys” of things they worry about. From Porter’s perspective other concerns are more important; including revised regulations that will increase the cost of lobster bait (herring), the rising temperature of ocean waters that reduces lobster catches, and stronger protections for migrating North Atlantic whales that swim in the same waters as lobsters. The reality is that recent times have been wonderful for the Maine lobster industry, which provides some pluck – others would say complacency – for the nonchalance regarding tariffs.

 “We’ve been kind of spoiled the last few years,” Porter says. Other lobstermen are concerned because exports to China during the past 5 years have increased 322%, accounting for much of the industry’s expansion and added profit. The Chinese tariffs may change this complacency.

Mark Barlow, owner of Island Seafood, a large business that ships live Maine lobsters around the world, has a view very different from Kristan Porter’s. Barlow mentions that as soon as China slapped its 25% tariff on US lobster exports, I said to my sales team, “China’s dead.” His Chinese customers confirmed his expectation. “I don’t think there is [a] way to import US lobster,” one Chinese buyer stated. Barlow believes the Chinese tariff is a significant blow for Maine. As Barlow put it, “The orangutan in Washington woke up from a nap and decided to put tariffs on China, and the Chinese stopped buying [Maine lobster] immediately. We’re getting absolutely slaughtered.” Trumpian tariffs have thrown lobstermen overboard.

Introducing US tariffs on thousands of imported goods may ultimately benefit US exporters and citizens, but right now everyone from Maine lobstermen to Minnesota soybean farmers are seriously suffering, along with millions of consumers who are paying more for all kinds of imported goods.

As Thomas Draxe perceptively stated over 400 years ago, trade is the mother of money. Soybean and lobster exporters – and virtually every US consumer – now have less money than they expected due to the president’s myopic, contemptuous, hardball trade tactics. Too bad we can’t trade him in before 2020.

A Coda Regarding Nancy.  The upcoming election of a new House Majority Speaker will surely anoint Nancy Pelosi. But the media’s recent swirl of stories makes it seem that someone else will also be in contention to challenge her. No other Dem has yet announced his/her candidacy and most likely won’t. No matter. Sixteen Dems are now on record opposing Ms. Pelosi, without anyone else to vote for. The vexation of the Dem progressives, who seem to think their political power transcends their numbers, is based principally on ageism. The Congressional Progressive Caucus represents about one-third of the Democratic Caucus. [At last count 4 years ago, there were 697 caucuses in the House.]

I believe there isn’t anyone else who should be Speaker. No other Democrat is as qualified, capable or proven as Ms. Pelosi. Her legendary ability to achieve success was reaffirmed on Nov. 20, when Ms. Pelosi offered Rep. Marcia Fudge, the only other Dem to say she was "interested in considering" a run for Speaker, a subcommittee chairpersonship. This was an offer Rep. Fudge could not say no to; she accepted. Rep. Fudge is now firmly in Ms. Pelosi's camp.
Other than eagerly seeking influence, there are no direct benefits to the circular firing squad approach the Progs now have been using. Their media-centric tactics magnify the chants of a small number of newly-elected Prog Dems, who have negligible substantive power, but do have the media’s focus. Their momentary dramas in hallways, letters or press statements have produced no alternative candidate for the speakership. It’s completely appropriate for multiple Dems to vie for this important job, but the Progs’ candidate-less approach wounds their cause in many voters’ minds. The media’s attempts to make it seem viable simply compound the miscalculation.

I offer two suggestions. First to the Progs; realistically look at the midterm elections results. The Prog candidates won in House districts that are already blue. The soon-to-be Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a media-darling, is a sterling example. She deserves her victory. But guess what; if the Dems really aim to take control of the Senate and the White House 2 years from now, there simply aren’t enough cobalt blue districts to do it with strongly progressive placards. As a reference, consider the state-wide defeats of dynamic Prog candidates in Florida, Georgia, and Texas. Going lefty left isn’t yet a viable election strategy beyond geographically-limited House seats. And in 2019 they will surely need proven leadership. 

Second and as I mentioned on Nov. 11, after winning the Speakership this January Ms. Pelosi should nobly announce a year from now she’s resigning. The concerns of younger House Dems about the hoary nature of their current leadership have merit. Even before January 3, and certainly afterwards, she should work with Dems who represent all the flavors of Democratic progress (perhaps as many as 233 flavors?), to facilitate younger Dems’ entry into the hallowed halls of Democratic House leadership.  

BLUE WAVE OR RIPPLE?

The waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators. ~ Edward Gibbon 

Praise be. The Democrats have managed to overcome their usual cacophonous campaigning and gained control of the House of Representatives, come January 3. They fielded enough interesting, empathetic, authoritative candidates to win 225 seats, with 13 still to be called. Alas, the same result couldn’t be duplicated in the Senate, where the Dems won only 46 seats, the Republicans 51, with 3 yet to be called. In these troubling times, the House’s half-a-loaf of legislative authority for the Dems is far, far better than the Dems living in the WOPPed (wholly out of political power) 115th Congress.

The media’s obsession about this election centered on how big the Blue Wave would be. Would our fractious population somehow collectively come together in voting booths? Nope, but a lot more folks voted than expected. Would millennials and people of color finally start voting? Probably yes and we won’t really know for several months. For the Dems, it’s been the year of non-traditional candidates, meaning folks who aren’t older, white men. Dem candidates included historic numbers of women, African Americans, LBGTQ, and even socialists. Some won, more lost as always.

Given the Dems’ victory in the House, they will elect a new Speaker. It’s not yet completely certain, but it’s also very hard to believe the new Speaker of the House won’t be San Francisco’s own Nancy Pelosi, and thus second in the line of presidential succession. Assuming she becomes Speaker in 2 months, it will be the second time she’s held this formidable job. She became the 60th Speaker of the House and the first female Speaker in American history in 2007 and held it until 2011.

I have a suggestion for Ms. Pelosi. She rightly deserves to be the 63rd Speaker of the House of Representatives. And in order to advance the Dems’ chances in the 2020 elections, I suggest she resign her speakership when the Congress convenes in January 2020. Like it or not, the Repubs have painted Nancy Pelosi as the “face” of Democrats. The Repubs, especially the president, always use her as their foil. In their eyes, she has more than enough baggage, simply by being female let alone from true blue San Francisco, to merit false overage charges that are displayed in multitudes of their campaign ads.

She’s ably served in Congress for 31 years. If she is Speaker during the 2020 campaign season, her alleged notoriety will be a hurdle that many Dem candidates will have to jump over, go around and through continuously. By nobly resigning her speakership, but not her House seat, she can cast aside that hurdle and further heighten her aura and Dems’ prospects.

After her one-year term as Speaker, her resignation will serve two purposes. She will no longer be as prime a foil for the Repubs and perhaps more importantly, it will force the current, elderly Dem Congressional leaders to find a younger leader, hopefully even several (like for the Majority Caucus Leader and Majority Whip). These new leaders can vigorously carry the Dems’ banner and state a clear, unwavering and convincing message as to why people should vote for Dems in 2020.

Unfortunately and not for the first time, the Dems’ messaging in this mid-term election was muddled and disjointed. What was the Dems’ message, beyond being anti-Trump? It wasn’t evident. What were the Dems actually for? It wasn’t clear. Enough of the Dems’ stronger, mostly moderate House candidates developed their own messages and succeeded. But senatorial candidates appeared more challenged and less effective. The Dems lost 3 seats, including 2 incumbent women. There was no elevating Blue Wave in the Senate, only a downward red-tinged swirl.

Even if the 2018 election wasn’t the “most important” ever – after all, every election is that, despite the media’s fixations – it was a much-needed, decent blue ripple. It assuredly was the most important election since 1920 by and for women. Women voters and women candidates created historic waves. The New York Times stated there were 257 women candidates for Congressional office, including 19 who identify as LGBTQ and 84 women of color. Election results so far (as of 11/10/18) indicate that a record 35 newly-elected women won House seats and 2 new women candidates won Senate seats. CNN projects that the new 116th Congress with have at least 102 newly-elected women in the House and 12 newly-elected in the Senate. Thus 44.4% of the female Congressional candidates won their elections. Batting 444 will get one into any Hall of Fame.

After 4 years meandering in the Congressional political desert, the Dems finally can exercise some political and legislative power in Washington, D.C. Their control of the House will provide some obligatory checks and balances on the Repubs’ and especially the president’s misguided, dangerous, misanthropic actions.

I believe the House Dems should now focus on 3 legislative priorities; first, provide DACA-recipients with a proscribed, legal path to citizenship. Second, increase public investment spending for our nation’s infrastructure (including rural areas), to be paid in no small part by revoking the Repubs’ “give the 1% more money, forget the rest” tax package. Third, and probably most importantly, improve health care.

As I’ve stated before, I’m not in favor of the progressive’s Medicare-for-all (M4A) mantra. Besides being a divisive strategy that appeals chiefly to left-leaning liberals, it’s fiscally budget-busting (not that that seems to matter anymore) and will require raising taxes. M4A has many important, powerful stakeholders strongly opposed to it, including doctors and hospitals. Instead, the Dems should strengthen and enhance the existing federal health care law, the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Like anything politically meaningful, this will be a challenging but worthy effort. Progressives won’t like it, but the mid-term election results didn’t reveal enough broad voter support either for Prog candidates (see Beto O’Rourke, Stacey Adams, or Andrew Gillum) or their talismanic programs like M4A. A majority of surveyed Dems stated that they prefer Congress to improve the ACA rather than create a new single-payer (e.g., M4A) national health care plan. 

The Dems should focus on 3 improvements to the ACA. First, allow the federal government to negotiate drug prices for Medicare Part D beneficiaries and other public programs. This common sense approach to lowering America’s sky-high drug costs has been argued about for way too long. Amazingly, just before the election, the president said he wanted to lower prescription drug prices. Ta da, the Dems should take him up on his new-found interest. Second, increase funding of community health centers and provide incentives for more people to enter the primary care workforce. More community health centers should be established, including those in rural areas, as a focus for locally-provided, lower-cost, basic health care services. Third, the Dems should stabilize the health care marketplace that’s been sabotaged by the Repubs. As part of this needed effort, the Dems should indemnify folks with pre-existing medical conditions so their insurance costs will be non-discriminatory, just like they were when the ACA first became law.

If the Dems can effectively navigate the upcoming political waves created by the Repubs and use them advantageously, their political beachhead in the House can be expanded in 2 years. Here’s hoping.

TRIPPING ACROSS AMERICA, BOTH WAYS. A Double Cross-Country Tour.

There is no certainty; there is only adventure. ~ Roberto Assagoli 

For 7 days, from September 18 through September 24, my good friend Chuck and I drove westward from his home in Maryland to Monterey, CA across the United States (US) in his Porsche Macan S. We then drove back to MD in 6 days; from September 29 through October 4. Because of the looong-distance nature of this trip, we wisely (although initially reluctantly) decided to venture in his Macan rather than his 911. After beginning our expedition we realized the wisdom of taking his Macan in terms of our comfort and contentment. Like its 911 cousin, the Macan is one fine automobile. Its 340-hp twin-turbo V-6 engine can reach 62mph in a mere 5.4 seconds, not bad for an SUV. The Macan performed flawlessly, no unexpected mechanical pit stops were required, with one minor exception in New Mexico.

Summary.  Our adventure covered 6,200 miles. We drove a total of 95 hours over 13 calendar days, with an average speed of 66 mph at 24.0 mpg. For those who like to count, that’s a little more than 250 gallons of premium fuel. We traversed 19 states, generally following Interstate 70 on the way west to California, occasionally driving on other interesting, scenic roads, as described below. The ultimate destination was near Monterey, CA where the 6th Porsche Rennsport event occurred at Laguna Seca Raceway to celebrate Porsche’s cars, especially its racing cars. After Rennsport, we headed a bit south and then east, taking Interstate 40 from California back to Maryland, with a few variants, like the famous US Route 66.

Westward.  We drove west on Interstate 68 to Morgantown, WV and afterwards connected with I-70W. After we got into the wider open spaces (beyond Dayton, OH going west, and beyond Barstow, CA heading east) we easily cruised at 100+ mph along the route for a while each day. Insurance against roadside stops by the polizia was faithfully provided by our radar detector and by Waze. The farther west we went the more 100+mph opportunities presented themselves (described below) and we took advantage of them. We and the Macan thoroughly enjoyed touring the US in style and speed.

Our first westward stop was outside Dayton, OH at the impressive National Museum of the US Air Force. Setting aside any issues connected with the rationale for or sizeable public expenditures connected with these airplanes, they are quite impressive. My favorites included the WWII F-82 Twin Mustang, which had a range of over 5000 miles! Here’s a picture of the F-82, which was the last American piston-engine fighter plane ordered by the Air Force.

From Dayton, we continued on I-70W through Indiana and Illinois to the gateway of the west, St. Louis, MO. We stayed at a hotel within 2 blocks of the Arch, which we visited when the moon was rising, as this picture shows. Pretty impressive, yes?

The next morning we continued our westward progress through most of Missouri and Kansas. We passed miles of Kansas wheat, corn and sorghum fields, and stayed in far western Kansas for the night. We also encountered Kansas’ dramatic weather – an impressive dust storm immediately followed by a wind-driven nearly horizontal-rain thunderstorm. Oh, yeah. The next morning was clear and we proceeded into Colorado. After going around Denver we departed I-70 for far more scenic US-40 that winds its way through the Rocky Mountains through gorgeous turning-yellow Aspens. We took a slight side venture to visit the C-Lazy U ranch near Granby where as a youth I enjoyed extended summertime horseback rides exploring Colorado’s mountains.  

We stayed that night in Winter Park. We continued on charming US-40 until we got Dinosaur, CO, where we stopped briefly to see the nearby Dinosaur National Monument. No, we didn’t actually spy any stray Stegosauruses. After that we headed through stunning countryside for Park City, UT to stay with my fine friends Steve and Kara. They provided great overnight hospitality. Thanks.

The next day we took I-80W to I-15 South driving down the eastern edge of the Great Basin. We left I-15 at Holden, UT and commenced our 460+ mile journey on “the loneliest highway in the US,” US Rt-50. As its name implies, there were very few vehicles travelling with us on Rt-50. The stunning high-desert landscape flew by as we passed through valleys and low mountains often at well over 1.5 mi per minute.

We reached our stopping point in the early evening – Cold Springs Station Resort – near Fallon, NV. It was the most interesting place we stopped at on our cross-country adventure. Cold Springs Station began in 1860 as a Pony Express stop. It’s now a motel and RV park, along with a restaurant. Here’s a picture inside the resort’s down-home restaurant. Make note of the several mounted trophies displayed above the rifles used to kill the beasts. The TV is showing professional cowboys riding bucking bulls in a rodeo; what could be more appropriate? The proprietors and staff were utterly welcoming. Our motel room was pre-fabricated. The following morning we discovered the sizeable photovoltaic panel array behind the RVs that provides most of the power for Cold Springs Station. The second picture is looking across Rt-50, and shows how truly wide open this part of western Nevada is.

The next day we drove over the Sierra at Donner Pass, stopped in Auburn where Chuck enjoyed his very first In N Out burger (yum), and arrived in Berkeley. After relaxing for a day at our home, Chuck and I completed the first half of our cross-country tour with the short trip south to Monterey.

Rennsport.  Our Porsche pleasure began as Rennsport VI started on September 27. Because 2018 is the 70th anniversary of Porsche’s building sports cars, this Rennsport was special. Porsche flew over from Stuttgart its very first sports car, the 1948 Gmund coupe, among other classics from its museum. Rennsport is a triennial festival of all things Porsche held at Laguna Seca Raceway, this year it featured over 350 vintage Porsche race cars. The picture below shows several. Other racers included everything from 356s, 550s, 904s, 911s and 935s to the awesome Porsche 919 Evo. The Evo is a 900hp electric-gas hybrid supercar that won the 2017 24-hour Le Mans race. It broke the lap record at the famed Nurburgring track in June, where it exceeded 229mph going down the track’s longest straightaway. For good measure, the Evo broke Leguna Seca’s lap record as well.

Our fun continued when we successfully adopted a Wedding Crashers strategy for attending the festival’s VIP dinner on Thursday night. After crashing the party (not our car) and enjoying pre-dinner drinks and discussions with fellow attendees we sat down. I ended up next to Neel Jani, the lead driver of the 919 Evo. As the picture above shows, my new friend Neel and I had a wonderful time talking about his Olympic-level car racing, his life as a pro racer and my much, much more limited but enjoyable experiences as a Porsche owner and Berkeley resident. The second picture is from CEO Magazine, which wrote a story about Rennsport and took pictures of important people who attended festival dinner, including Chuck and I, on the right. We’re no doubt discussing various Porsche racing strategies with others at the table including the head of Porsche’s North America racing. Chuck is on my right; on my left is my buddy Neel. It was quite a meal.

Eastward.  After enjoying more than our fill of Porsches at Rennsport, we began our trip back east to Chuck’s home. On the way back we took the southern route, mostly driving on Interstate 40. We arrived in Maryland after 6 days going through Southern California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee and Virginia. We made several side trips. One to Winslow, AZ on Rt-66, made famous by Jackson Brown’s celebrated “Take it easy” song, sung by the Eagles. Here we are standin’ on that celebrated corner looking for a flatbed Ford, which didn’t show up.

We next made a brief stop at the Petrified Forest National Park near Adamana, AZ where we saw some very old, colorful and perfectly preserved trees from way long ago. Continuing our drive on I-40E we arrived in Gallup, NM where we stayed for the night at a motel that also had a Zuni jewelry shop. The next morning Chuck noticed that the pressure of one of the Macan’s tires was 7 lb. below normal. We had a going-flat tire. The tire fates were smiling on us and we found a tire shop within several blocks of our motel and they quickly patched the tire. You get bonus points for successfully guessing how much it cost us to have that tire fixed in downtown Gallup.[1] We arrived next in Albuquerque, where public officials and the citizenry have worked to produce impressively designed bridges that are as much public art as thoroughfares. See my Awards section below for more details.

We then drove through the Texas panhandle, where it’s always flat and always windy. We travelled by dozens of rotating, big wind turbines. As we headed to Amarillo, we passed mile after mile of turbines that were part of the Wildorado Wind Ranch that has been generating 370 MW of electricity at peak wind speeds for over a decade.

Next up was the state of Oklahoma, 338 miles wide, that we drove through just stopping just for gas, we felt quite OK about that. We stopped for the night in unremarkable Russellville, AR. This city might not have been memorable, but the Arkansan countryside certainly was. The rolling hills countryside was rich with green plants, bushes and trees that merited a listing in my Awards.

Tennessee was our next and ante-penultimate state. In TN I found our most memorable rest stop, see the Awards. Although I’d been to the Volunteer State before, I’d never been to Nashville. The music/bar scene in Nashville is truly impressive. The city’s almost 240-year history is represented in the above picture. On the right right side is a recreation of the town’s original fort, Fort Nashborough, established in 1779 as an American outpost in Native American territory. On the left side of the Cumberland River is Nashville’s modern NFL Titan’s stadium.

Nashville’s downtown music scene was notable, especially if you’re into Country & Western. And no, I didn’t buy any cowboy boots.

We continued our trek eastward on I-70 and made our last travel day the longest and farthest one; we covered 670 miles from Nashville through scenic TN and VA countryside to Chuck’s home in Maryland. Oh, yeah.

After a day of rest, and as an apres-trip dessert, we headed to the premier Cars & Coffee event in the Washington, DC area, Katie’s Cars & Coffee in Great Falls VA. Chuck knows many of the participants. As usual, it offered an amazing display of all things motive, including this beautiful red Triumph TR-3 (that was driven from Kansas!), parked next to Chuck’s 911.

   Would I call our cross-country highway voyage successful? You bet. Do I plan on doing it again? Not likely. But traveling with Chuck and seeing at ground-level the hugely variegated beauty of our nation, an overused but completely a propos descriptor, was exquisite and delightful.

And now, here are the places we drove through that deserved special citation.

Awards.

Best buffalo. We stopped for gas in Moriarty, NM and got more than gallons. Yup, inside this “gas station” was a stuffed Buffalo (as you can see here) and much, much more. There were rooms full of tchotchke gifts. Who’d of guessed?  

Best dust storm.  The dust storm we witnessed near Quinter, KS. Wow.

Best hot-air balloon siting. After leaving the fine Rocky Mountain town of Winter Park, CO, we sited a beautiful balloon rising in the distance. When we left town it was a brisk 35˚F, so I’m betting the balloon riders had at least very hot coffee to fend off the bracing early-morning mountain air.

Best infrastructure architecture. Albuquerque’s bridges over I-40 use designs that make them and the medians stunning public art. Go here to see the bridge art.  

Best interior wall of a motel/hotel: the Amarillo, TX Embassy Suites’ “living wall” with ivy and other planted greenery in the lobby.

Best public floral display. Heber City, UT where there was mile after mile of giant hanging, flowering plants 🌺 on every street light down the town’s extended main drag. I gave up estimating how much water was being used to produce those thousands and thousands of blooms, but they sure were pretty.

Best rest stop. The Loretta Lynn – Hank Williams rest area. I kid you not; it’s on I-40 near Sugar Tree, TN. Their music wasn’t piped into the rest rooms, but it was memorable nonetheless.

Breakfast. Best: Embassy Suites in Amarillo, tastiest and widest choices, 5 stars. Worst: Days Inn in North Nashville, TN. The proprietor was friendly and volunteered helpful info about where to go to see Nashville’s vaunted music scene. But the breakfast consisted only of bread-toast, coffee and juice, strictly 1 star.

Most topologically surprising state. Arkansas’ rolling-hills countryside was impressively lush with trees and greenery. It was utterly different from the “golden” (aka, brown) California landscape I’m used to seeing in late summer. 

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[1] The Gallup tire store charged us the grand sum of $15 to remove the nail from the tire and install a patch. For their fine, prompt pit-stop service, we provided a generous tip.