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Is Michigan Bicycle Retail Dying?  

November 26, 2018
Bike Reviews, Commentary., Gear Reviews., News, Outdoor Gear Reviews
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By Tom Demerly for tomdemerly.com

Two bicycle specialty stores closed in Metro Detroit this year. Three more suddenly changed “ownership” in November on their way to eventual closure.

On the national scale, Advanced Sport Enterprises, parent company to Performance Bicycle and Bike Nashbar, filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy last month.

After decades of failure to adapt, Southeastern Michigan bicycle retail is in a brutal phase of enforced transition. Despite an overall economic boom many bike shops are a bust. Southeastern Michigan bike store closures and hasty ownership spin-offs that precede further closings confirm that.

The questions are; how did this happen; how can it be avoided and what will the industry look like once the rules of business exact their toll?

Like most significant shifts in business there is no singular cause.  A conspiracy of factors combines to weigh heavily on traditional bicycle retail. The reality that the industry has ignored these factors for so long manifests itself in this crisis.

Not every bicycle retailer is in crisis though, and some old-skool bike shops not only survive but are capitalizing on the increasing failures of retailers who thought they knew it all but had neither solid financials or enough vision to adapt in the changing retail landscape.

Southeastern Michigan bike shops like Jack’s Bicycle and Fitness, Roll Models in Allen Park, Michigan, Brick Wheels in Traverse City and Wheels in Motion in Ann Arbor are still there, still doing business and quietly surviving and growing as the others collapse around them.

In the renaissance of downtown Detroit, a new generation of bike family businesses has emerged on the shoulders of men like Jon Hughes of Downtown Ferndale and Downtown Detroit bike shops. Hughes also leads the family effort to grow the Lexus Velodrome and launch a new demi-empire in media and cycling in post-recession Detroit. He comes from a dynasty of bicycle business that stretches back three generations to Mike Walden and the formation of the country’s second oldest cycling club, the Wolverines. Even Bob Akers, who runs the decades-old, dingy, crumbling International Bike Shop in Garden City has survived as the shiny newcomers who thought they knew it all have tumbled.

Why do some shops survive while others fail? One factor common in the surviving Michigan bike retailers is they own their own real estate. But the ingredients for success, not just survival, are more complex than just owning your building.

Harvard MBAs don’t start bike shops. Bike shop owners don’t have business degrees. They start bike shops because they love bikes or have no other opportunity. They’re hobbyists. Not businessmen. The barriers to entry are low. Got $100K? You can open a bike shop. You’ll never tell a bike shop owner he doesn’t know business. As far as bicycle retail store owners are concerned, they are experts at retail. The crash of Michigan high-end specialty retailers proves otherwise.

I was this guy.  I lost my own store after 17 successful years during the recession. Then, like a scene from a movie where the plot repeats again and again, I went to work for two other retailers around the U.S. who, like me, thought they knew everything and couldn’t be told anything. They’re gone now too. More will follow.

Failure is only failure if you fail to learn. But in bicycle retail, no one listens. The first bike shop I worked for when I was 15 years old went out of business because the owners failed to adapt. The last bike shop I worked for four decades later did exactly the same thing. The owners refused to adapt. In a repetitive pantomime, I tried to convince the owners of the last shop I worked at to move the cash register to facilitate better customer traffic flow. It was a minor change that may have resulted in a minor improvement. I tried for a year. They never moved it. They went out of business months after I finally quit in frustration and left to work in another industry.

I take some small satisfaction in knowing the store that lasted the longest was mine. But business is pass/fail. You can run a successful business for 6,205 days like I did, but if you fail on the 6,206th day, you are a failure.

The first lesson I learned in losing my own store is you have to own your failure. Mine was my fault. While there were factors including a global recession that contributed to my 17-year-old store failing, I could have moderated them. Others did. I wasn’t smart enough or humble enough at the time. Some people pay college tuition for an education. I paid in bankruptcies and a modern day “Grapes of Wrath” by losing everything. While the second way may be a more durable education, it’s also more painful.

I went on to work for two more bike retail owners who made exactly the same mistakes I did while ignoring the changes that could have saved them. But bike shop owners don’t listen.

The specifics on what is killing some of Michigan’s bicycle retailers is a fascinating case study in the evolution of business that could fill a book. Bike shop owners and bike shops are, in many ways, indicative of the American economic condition. They are the epitome of small business America. As the small, independent bike goes, so goes all of small retail- good and bad. Small restaurants, pet stores, book retail, independent jewelers and all small retail can learn something from the enforced evolution and bizarre non-evolution of bicycle retail.

Small bicycle retail has been quick to scapegoat the big, ugly mega-retailer and the .com as the reason for their bust. That is a lie. In the broad sense, bicycle retailers are killing themselves by failing to adapt and innovate. They do it in hundreds of small ways every day they continue to do the same tired things over and over and over. Even the bicycle retailers who have survived could do better. For most of the survivors a major reason they still exist is they own their own real estate and remain impervious to swings in the volatile southeastern Michigan economy. But even their future is increasingly in doubt as forward-thinking innovators understand new opportunities in the age of Amazon One-Click.

What will happen to Michigan small bicycle retail? One thing is certain: it will continue to change at a rate that outpaces the ability of most shop owners to adapt. That means we’ll see more southeastern Michigan bike shops closing. Unless they learn from someone’s mistakes the cycle of failure in Michigan cycling retail will continue.

 

 

Tom Demerly is a 42-year bicycle industry veteran who owned his own business for 17 years. Today he is a defense and aviation analyst for several international publications including TheAviationist.com published in Rome, Italy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Six Differences Between Civilians and Veterans.

November 12, 2018
Commentary., Uncategorized
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By Tom Demerly for tomdemerly.com

 

 

  1. Civilians Don’t Know How to Answer a Question.

It’s one of the most conspicuous differences between civilians and military; civilians cannot answer a simple question. Try it. Ask a question that requires a simple, expedient, one-word “yes” or “no” answer. Usually civilians answer a question with a question. One of the first things you learn in the military is how to effectively answer a question to communicate necessary information concisely and quickly. For every veteran and military person who has to wade through the mire of civilian semantics trying to get an answer to a simple question, this phenomenon is boggling.

 

  1. Veterans Will Never Let You Forget They’re Veterans.

Guilty as charged. The military experience changes you. It instills deep-seated fears, some reasonable, some not. It teaches skills and competencies that can’t be learned anywhere else. It also provides a sense of belonging and self-esteem that membership in any revered group does. It may be subtle, many people may not notice it, but whether it is how he stands, how tight her hair bun is, the way he looks around a room when he enters it, the hat, the belt or the boots, it is usually easy to spot a veteran. That’s not an accident.

 

  1. Civilians Cannot Make Decisions. 

The military teaches how to make decisions, the importance of having a method of decision making and how to make decisions quickly and efficiently. It also teaches what to do when you make bad decisions, which you inevitably will. Civilians cannot make decisions efficiently. Too many variables, too much second guessing, too much time wasted. One of the most maddening things about being military or veteran in a civilian world is the bizarre theatre that is watching a civilian trying to make a decision as they are influenced by factors they themselves don’t even realize. For veterans, this is agonizing to see.

 

  1. Veterans Treasure Quiet Space, Hot Water and Good Food.

Hurry-up and wait, long days that start before sun-up and end way after dark. Cold, wet clothing and numb feet. Dirty hair and cramped spaces with smelly bodies. Welcome to the military. Once you are out of the military you usually just want to sit down for a moment and quietly stare at the horizon. Quiet, open spaces, warm meals and a hot shower are opulent luxuries to a veteran. These things are wealth. Never take them for granted.

 

  1. Veterans Know How to Work as a Team.

In the first two weeks of being in the military you begin to coalesce into a collective organism known as a team. The mental barrier between self and team disappears, and you discover the strength and synergy of teamwork. It’s a humbling and empowering experience at the same time, and once you’ve experienced it you never forget it. Civilians have a rough time with working as a team because they are forever trying to preserve some semblance of “self”. Self must evaporate in a team environment for the greater good, and that is frightening to many people until they learn how to be an effective part of a team and the remarkable benefits.

 

  1. Civilians Are Delightfully Naive. 

Few things are more entertaining to a veteran than talking to civilians, especially most young civilians, about world politics, U.S. military involvement around the world and human nature. Civilians live in a beautiful bubble of tranquility and peace that makes their everyday foibles feel massive and their choices seem difficult. Frankly, it is at once cute and annoying. Americans, especially, live a frail bubble of security that facilitates a bizarrely privileged life usually free from difficult decisions involving life and death. Unfortunately, this has begun to change as increasing polarity between economic privilege inflict difficult choices on more and more poor people ill-equipped and untrained to make good decisions. That is tragic to watch in our country.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Praise of Service: The Veterans I Have Known.

November 12, 2018
Commentary., Uncategorized
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By Tom Demerly for tomdemerly.com

He earned a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering, did triathlons in his spare time and flew the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter along with nearly every other fighter aircraft in U.S. inventory. And he died in an accident in September 2017 so secret its circumstances remain classified to this day. His name is Lt. Col. Eric “Doc” Schultz.

Capt Eric “DOC” Schultz, F-35 ITF Edwards AFB; Ca.; 15 September 2011

She leads an entire Air Force Wing of advanced F-35A Lightning II squadrons. She holds a Master’s degree and has flown the most secretive special operations combat aircraft in U.S. inventory. Her name is Col. Regina Sabric.

He got so bored on shipboard deployment he first started playing PlayStation, then lifting weights, then training for a triathlon onboard a Navy assault ship and finally earning a college degree online during his off time. He is a young Marine Corporal I met in San Diego, California.

She was terrifying. Ultimate lord of everything within her domain, she was a Sergeant who oversaw supply at a U.S. Army basic training facility at Ft. Benning, Georgia. I don’t remember her name, but I was terrified of her when I went through basic training and advanced individual training.

He shared a foxhole with me in the rain at Ft. Benning Georgia while we tried to figure out how to tune a tactical radio into a news station during the middle of the night at Advanced Individual Training (AIT). He went on to participate in the invasion of Panama, Operation Just Cause, and many other active duty operations with the Army’s elite 82nd Airborne Division. His name is Mo Fregia.

Mo Fregia and I practice clearing landmines at Ft. Benning, Georgia.

She does yoga in her off hours, has traveled the world in the U.S. Air Force and on the day I met her she was in charge of getting me and my equipment on board an Air Force tanker so we could rendezvous with F-15C Eagles and F-35A Lightning IIs over the Atlantic for midair refueling. Her name is Lt. Col. Kim Lalley.

He is a member of an elite Naval Special Warfare team who took time out from his day to sit on a log in the obstacle course in Coronado, California for an interview about how to overcome any obstacle and never give up. He should know. After three tries he graduated top of his class, “Honor Man”, of his Basic Underwater Demolition School (BUDS). His name is SEAL Operator First Class David Goggins.

He is a retired Commanding Officer who took the time out to meet with me in person years after he was my commander in an Army National Guard Long Range Surveillance Unit. When he was my C.O. he was a Captain. He later retired as Colonel. I may have learned more from his leadership than almost any other man in my life. His name is Robert “Bob” Wangen.

Standing on the right, with the bona-fide special-operations mustache, is one of the finest soldiers I have ever known, SSgt. Chris Surmacz. He was my team leader.

He is a combat veteran F-16 pilot, instructor and now commander of a Remotely Piloted Aircraft unit. In his spare time, whatever that is when you are an Air Force Colonel, he coaches triathlons and runs a triathlon retail store in Tucson, Arizona. His name is Col. Brian Grasky.

Every year the list of remarkable people I meet working with the U.S. military grows longer. Every year I am more impressed with their competence, devotion, tireless work ethic and patriotism. In the civilian sector people go weeks and months without ever thinking about the small percentage of our population who serves in the U.S. military. Only about 1.3% of our country’s population is serving or has served in the military. Current active duty military accounts for only 0.4% of the U.S. population. Think about that. Less than half a percent of our population shoulders the burden for the safety and security of the remaining 99.5%. That is a lot of weight to rest on very few shoulders. But I can assure you those are strong and capable shoulders. We remain free and secure in the precious bubble of liberty maintained by that 0.4%. Today we celebrate their selfless devotion and the often-grinding drudgery of their difficult jobs done 365 days a year, around the clock all over the globe almost entirely without thanks.

We don’t need you to thank us for our service, although that’s nice of you, or buy a special T-shirt or put a bumper sticker on your car saying you support the troops. That’s kind of you, but we don’t need all that. We do like it when you fly our flag, bright and backlit by a brilliant sun shining down on the land we love. We want you to take that flag down at night when it gets dark or shine a light on it around the clock. And we’d prefer if you never let it touch the ground because one day, the day after our last day, we’ll lie under the flag when you commit us to memory and hopefully another veteran takes our place.

 

 

 

 

Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 11/9 And the New Polarity of Media.

September 13, 2018
Commentary., Film Reviews
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By Tom Demerly for tomdemerly.com

“It’s like we’re in the French resistance and the tanks are 20 miles outside the city!”

Activist filmmaker Michael Moore debuted his new editorial shock-documentary “Fahrenheit 11/9” this past Tuesday in his hometown of Flint, Michigan.

Moore, the skilled documentary maker and Academy Award winner, has wielded the new medium of small budget, current affairs film to emerge as a significant voice in American and international media.

To understand Michael Moore, and his latest release, “Fahrenheit 11/9”, it’s important to understand the evolution of news and editorial media in the last four decades. Since CNN went live and around the clock with news and commentary nearly 40 years ago, and the internet gave every person a voice of equal dimensions on your screen, media has been hurtled into a warp speed evolution. Media- and we- were never prepared for that.

The technology that gave every person a voice of equal physical dimensions has created a global shouting match that changes the way we (try to) form opinions and collect information. It is like trying to hear a rational conversation in an ever-increasing dissonance of rising screams. Today, in order to deliver any message effectively in modern media, you have shout. Really loud.

Michael Moore shouts in Fahrenheit 11/9, and he does so with the same, if not more, volume and punch than his previous films. But in the rising din of activist hyperbole, everyone else has gotten louder while Moore’s volume has stayed about the same. It isn’t that Moore’s “Fahrenheit 11/9” is worse or better than his previous documentaries. It is actually about the same. But everyone is used to hearing this type of message now, so it loses its punch. In so many ways, that is a tragedy.

Moore is a polarized ranter attempting to balance the left side of American perspective on an ever-shrinking center fulcrum as his political reciprocal on the right has the podium in the White House. Michael Moore is the left-wing Donald Trump; extreme, unaccountable, ranting, not always factually accurate but great at whipping up an audience at the extreme left end of the political spectrum using the modern tools of new media.

You may not like Michael Moore, but we need him as long as we have Donald Trump. One polarized, old-aged, overweight white guy with lots of money, media access and a big mouth cancels out the other. Hopefully.

“Fahrenheit 11/9” is not one documentary, it is several story lines combined, each deserving of its own documentary series if we all had more than a Twitter post attention span. Moore knows this, so he hurls as much at us as he can in 120 minutes and hopes some of it sticks to the wall of American conscience. He does a fairly sloppy job of trying to stitch them all together. It doesn’t really work, but each storyline is interesting enough by itself that you stick with the film even through a few well-earned eye rolls.

Michael Moore’s attempts to defame former President Barack Obama and implicate him in the Flint water crisis and convince us that the U.S. Army invaded Flint, Michigan in a preemptive attempt to quell unrest from the water crisis are particular low points in “Fahrenheit 11/9”. He even sloppily conjures the time-honored superweapon of the Internet troll, the Hitler comparison. But don’t walk out. There are high points in “Fahrenheit 11/9”.

Moore showcases a rising tide of citizen activism through the political system and features several grass roots candidates and their ascendency into the almost-mainstream. He focuses on the plight of teachers and nearly manages to point out that if there is one thing responsible for the mounting problems in our country, it is our reprehensible devaluation of education. In these scenes, “Fahrenheit 11/9” captures the best of America at its worst.

Moore carries the topics of new political candidacy and our jaundiced school system well in “Fahrenheit 11/9”. But these valid storylines are weighed down by his constant adolescent pecking at the President. We already know the President likes young women, is poorly spoken and loose-lipped and largely unapologetic for reinforcing every ugly white male stereotype and even adding a few. That isn’t news. Americans are apparently pleased enough with the stock market, job numbers, real estate values and finally calming down the little guy in North Korea that they are willing to forgive the President his indiscretions while we shave off a few human rights, set gender equality back five decades and trash the environment at dizzying speed.

It was interesting to see the U.S. premiere of “Fahrenheit 11/9” in Flint, Michigan. This is the frontline of the rising environmental comeuppance that America is facing as we pollute ourselves to new, imagined “prosperity”. Michael Moore is a messiah in Flint, and his minions were out, not quite in force, but a couple hundred showed up hoping for an audience with him and a shoulder to cry on about their ordeal with the jagged edge of “Capitalism Gone Wild!”. Moore didn’t really provide that. He’s no Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela or Malala Yousafzai. He can show us the problems, but he offers few solutions. As a result, this film feels like wallowing. Instead of leaving with a feeling of inspiration or empowerment, you simply slump in your seat when the credits roll and realize, “we’re in deep trouble”.

One woman directly affected by the poisoned Flint water stood up in the Q&A with Moore and listed her litany of symptoms to him. Moore slumped in his seat on the stage, in apparent fatigue from the entire affair. The scene emphasized that while Moore has been effective at identifying the problems, he has proposed few viable solutions. And in the rising din of social media complainers, Moore’s relevance sags among the rising din of complainers, no matter how relevant and valid the complaints are.

The final punchline in “Fahrenheit 11/9” is that, while audiences will expect, and get, a healthy dose of blaming “The Man” for keeping the little person down, Moore also reinforces that this is, ultimately, our own fault America. We either voted, or didn’t vote. We didn’t go to the school board meetings, we didn’t show up to vote for governor. We didn’t register new voters or run for local office. We let ourselves get gerrymandered and marginalized into subservience in a bizarre “chicken and egg” descent into apathy from working too much to survive and acting too late to prevent it from happening. Now the mess is even bigger.  If one good thing comes out of Michael Moore’s films, and particularly his new “Fahrenheit 11/9”, hopefully it is that we show up to the polls, go to a parent/teacher meeting and re-shoulder the burden of citizenship in America.

 

Tom Demerly is a writer from Dearborn, Michigan who has traveled around the world, sometimes by his own choice. His analysis, features and editorials have been featured in Business Insider, Outside, Daily Mail and many others.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Don’t Tread On Me!” An Iconic American Photo Gone Viral.

August 21, 2018
Commentary., Uncategorized
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Photo by Dustin Davis, story by Tom Demerly of tomdemerly.com.

It is an image of fierce defiance frozen in a terrifying moment. A powerful vision of what many people see as the American condition. As I type this, over 15,000 people have shared it from my Facebook page across social media that I can track. As of Monday night, another person shares it every 15 seconds. While I despise the colloquialism “going viral”, there is no doubt something about this image has resonated again and again with the current collective American consciousness.

It is the Taylor Creek Fire “Don’t Tread On Me” photo.

Dustin Davis, 32, of College Place, Washington, shot the photo of a rattlesnake frozen in its fiery death throes on Wednesday, August 8th, 2018 at 12:55 PM local time during the early stages of the Taylor Creek fire in Oregon. Davis was fighting the fire as a member of the 3rd Battalion, 116th Cavalry Regiment of the Oregon National Guard.

Davis told me Monday night in an interview on Facebook Messenger that, “On a mop-up mission my buddy Miles and I stumbled upon that little guy. I knelt down and took the picture with my iPhone. I was very intrigued by the way it had died and was really moved by it.”

 

 “On a mop-up mission my buddy Miles and I stumbled upon that little guy. I knelt down and took the picture with my iPhone. I was very intrigued by the way it had died and really moved by it.”

 

I saw the photo on Dustin’s Instagram page at dndavis0ne and copied it to my Facebook page. I added the observation that Dustin Davis’ remarkable photo of the charred snake looked like the snake depicted on the famous Gadsden Flag with the moniker, “Don’t Tread On Me”. For that reason, the image seemed iconic and metaphoric of our country that feels increasingly divided, increasingly fractured, and trapped in some kind of modern “trial by fire”. Judging by how the image has resonated across social media, I wasn’t the only one who recognized the symbolism of Dustin Davis’ now famous photo and the Gadsden Flag.

Firefighter and photographer Dustin Davis.

Almost as soon as I shared it to my Facebook page, initially without Dustin Davis’ permission, the image started to go viral. When it started to trend, I tried to find the original source I copied it from when Dustin Davis contacted me on Facebook. Given that I had initially taken his photo from Instagram with a screen capture and without asking, Davis was incredibly gracious about letting me continue to use it after I replied to him. He even agreed to this interview late Monday.

The massive Taylor Creek fire, burning now since early August, was started by lightning according to the official information from the U.S. Forest Service in the region. It has burned over 52,000 acres and, as of Monday, August 20, is nearly “79 percent contained” according to the Forest Service. A nearby fire, also started by lightning, the Klondike Fire, covers a staggering 72,074 acres (113 square miles of area) and is now only 28 percent contained. The wildfires burning in the American west now are reported to be the worst in history, a reality that has raised an increasingly divisive debate about everything from forestry and water management to global climate change as the fires continue to burn out west.

Healing: Two Men, a Bicycle, and The First Nuclear Attack.

August 7, 2018
Commentary., News
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By Tom Demerly for tomdemerly.com

Here’s an incredible story for you. Even better, it’s true.

Right after WWII started, well before I was born, my parents moved to Seattle, Washington. Because my dad, Tom Demerly (senior) had an essential skill as a draftsman he was hired in at Boeing Aircraft Company. He worked at Boeing Plant 2 near the Duwamish River.

My dad’s first project was drawing an update to the B-17 Flying Fortress bomber: a “chin turret” for the front of the aircraft with two forward facing .50 caliber guns. The first versions of the B-17 lacked adequate guns to defend themselves from a frontal attack. German pilots learned this and attacked the B-17 from high and head-on, or “Twelve O’clock High”. The results were catastrophic.

Early B-17 crews attacking Germany had better odds of dying than surviving before completing their required 25 missions. In fact, more aircrews from the Allied 8th Air Force died over Europe than all of the Marines killed in the Pacific in WWII.

Because my dad showed promise at Boeing he was moved to their most secret program. He passed a rigorous background investigation and was prohibited from telling my mother what he was working on.

Half way around the world another young man who had also not yet had a son tended a small garden outside his house. Because of the war, food in Japan was in short supply so nearly everyone living on the outskirts of the Hiroshima grew what they could. He was a young lad, in his teens. His small house in the shadow of Mt. Gosasau provided a decent view down to the southeast where the city of Hiroshima was and, just beyond that, the opening to Hiroshima Bay where you could see Ninoshima Island. Except for the constant concern about the war, it was a beautiful place.

Back in Seattle my dad made top secret drawings. First, of the pressurized crew compartment. Then, of the new, remotely controlled gun turrets that held not two, but now four .50 caliber machine guns. He drafted the plans for the pressurized tunnel that passed from the front of the aircraft to the rear. The top-secret project was to be the biggest, longest range, heaviest bomber ever built by man: The Boeing B-29 Superfortress.

Gleaming silver, massively tall, improbably gigantic propellers with four huge blades at the front of the engines, four of them, each the size of a fighter plane themselves. The engines weren’t good. They had a tendency to catch fire. And the wings- sprawling, straight and thin. Impossibly wide. The B-29 was a colossus. Much larger than the previous B-17 Flying Fortress my dad worked on. They said the long lines of shining B-29s beginning to roll off the line at the Renton plant would “end the war”.

And then the changes came. The most secret changes. Draw a version with no gun turrets to make it lighter, more aerodynamic, faster. Modifications to the bomb bay and the bomb racks. Special attention to the problematic engines on these beyond-top secret, specially modified B-29s.

It would carry only one bomb. My dad did not know why. He drew the changes.

Things were getting tougher in Japan and the garden became more important. It needed tending in the morning, in the evening. Anything ready to harvest was picked immediately. Trips into town were avoided except when necessary. There wasn’t much news about how the war was really going, there were bombs falling on Japanese cities with horrific results. Tokyo had been decimated in terrifying incendiary bombing raids. But Hiroshima, so far, had been largely spared. So, the view from the young man’s garden still passed for peaceful when the air raid siren wasn’t going off.

The project with the B-29 modifications wrapped up and my dad went on to other projects. The big bombers were in the Pacific attacking Japan in what many people on both sides hoped was an approaching final act in this long, terrifying global ordeal. There was a collective desperation though, a deep breath still held by humanity on both sides of the world.

Boeing B-29s being built in Renton, Washington, where my dad worked.

No one knew how it would end yet. Only that it would.

Pressure and desperation seemed to build on both sides. Build toward some titanic climax. In Europe, the allies had stormed the beaches at Normandy. Patton was advancing across Belgium and France and into Germany. Hitler was in retreat. Russia had begun to crush him in a massive geographic vise from the east.

There was talk that the Allies may invade Japan in early 1946. No one knew.

But on August 6, 1945, the Allies launched “Special Mission 13”.

Around the world from my dad, the other man was in his garden outside Hiroshima. It was 8:10 AM in the morning.

His back to the city, he pulled the few small weeds that had sprouted between the neat rows of vegetables, tamping the soft earth back down between the garden furrows.

Then, as he would later tell his son, who had not yet been born, “The sun fell out of the sky.”

A wristwatch in the Hiroshima museum frozen at exactly the time of the bomb’s detonation.

The plane my dad had helped design had just delivered the first nuclear strike on Hiroshima, Japan. The man watched from his garden as the sun, a new, manmade sun, engulfed the city. It boiled and sizzled and burned, then rose slowly up into the sky as a terrible shockwave cracked through the earth for miles. And a huge, dark mushroom cloud towered above the earth, the silence of death falling back to the ground.

62 years passed.

A product of U.S. public schools, I, unfortunately, don’t speak Japanese. My niece does, fluently. She lives in Japan. Married a Japanese guy named Yukimi.

Luckily, Katsumi Shiji, my new customer, speaks very good English. He wanted to buy a triathlon bike. He had completed a remarkable number of Ironman triathlons and was trim and fit. Light hearted and courteous, Katsumi was always a pleasure to wait on. He was an automotive engineer and his command of both English and Japanese along with his expertise in automotive engineering meant his skills were in demand here in the Motor City and back in Japan, where he was from.

So, I was pleased to sell Katsumi a triathlon bike.

Because Katsumi was such an interesting man, I asked him where he lived when he was back in Japan.

“Hiroshima”, he told me.

I mentioned I would love to visit Hiroshima, and that it was sad that the city’s legacy was inexorably tied to the world’s first use of nuclear weapons.

And then Katsumi told me, “My dad saw the blast. He was there, in his garden, when the bomb landed.”

So here, in a bike shop in Dearborn, stood a man whose dad had survived the nuclear strike made by the plane my dad helped design. Some massive, cosmic circle had just been closed by utter happenstance.

I told Katsumi my dad’s story, and for just a brief moment, there was an awkward silence. Then I told him, “I am so happy to know that your dad survived.”

“Thank you, thank you!” He told me, “I am happy too…” He bowed slightly while we pumped each other’s’ hands up and down in a handshake.

The calculus of what happened when I met Katsumi Shiji still boggles my mind. I consider that some massive circle has been closed. Some full circle through the worst of human experience down to a friendly meeting of two men about a bicycle.

And it occurred to me, that the world had healed.

 

How to Ride a Bike.

June 30, 2018
Commentary., Travel and Adventure., Triathlon Tips, Uncategorized
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By Tom Demerly for tomdemerly.com.

 

I was coming back up Hines Drive this morning. Headed east. About 15 miles done, another 5 to go. It’s hot. 88° and climbing, feels like 98°. Humid. Wind is still, maybe a puff of tailwind going east.

Hines Drive is closed to cars on Saturday morning. A Dr. Seuss procession of every imaginable pedal-thing fills the parkway. There are riders with kiddie trailers, on recumbents, riding unicycles, pedaling tandems and pace-lining on inline skates. If it rolls, glides, skates, tows or walks on a leash it’s on Hines Drive on Saturday morning.

It’s like surfing a crowded beach. You go out there, paddle hard hoping to catch the perfect ride in. About twice a year you hit the turnaround point at Ann Arbor Trail and you catch it coming back toward Dearborn. The perfect ride.

It’s an ugly reality that most Americans can’t ride a bicycle well. It’s never more apparent than Saturday Morning on Hines Drive. Tonight, there will be a new litany of social media posts with emergency room visits and X-rays of broken collar bones. Americans know everything. As result, you can’t teach us anything. It is more apparent in U.S. cycling than almost anywhere in American culture. Do a group ride in Belgium, France, Italy- there is a hierarchy, organization, unwritten and unspoken rules for how to ride.

In the U.S. it’s mayhem. People ride four abreast. Because the entire road is open to cyclists (and every other means of ambulation), cyclists feel compelled to use as much of the road as possible. Riders push knee-busting cadences below 50 RPMs. Orthopedic surgeons should park a van at either end handing out business cards. People on $10,000 aerodynamic bikes in the wrong frame size sit bolt-upright over their unused aerobars wondering what saddle they should try next in pursuit of that elusive “best bike seat”. Triathletes do long training rides in tri shorts to “get used to them”.  In short, it’s a mess.

But once or twice a year you catch that perfect ride. That perfect wheel.

Not sure who he is. Rides a Trek triathlon bike. Wearing a jersey from the Ford Athletic Swim and Triathlon (F.A.S.T.) club. His bike was clean and well assembled. Cable housings long enough, derailleur cables short enough. Rear wheel true. Tire relatively new. Saddle height and fore/aft looked good, aerobars fit him too, hand on the shifters and elbows on the elbow pads. He sat on the bike well. Pedaled well. No rocking. Knees straight up and down. Snappy Cadence, about 86 RPM. Good for a time trialist or triathlete.

I don’t know who he is, but he can ride. Really ride. Straight. Smooth. Good cadence. Pre-acts to other riders up the road before he passes, doesn’t shout “ON YOUR LEFT!” when he goes around them. Like I said, not sure who he is, but he can ride.

Got on his wheel. When you get on someone’s rear wheel to draft your front tire is only about 4-6 inches at most from their rear tire at over 20 MPH. Ride off to one side for “safety” and the first time they decelerate imperceptively and alter their line just a trifle- you go down. Your X-ray is on Facebook on Monday morning.

So, I lined up on his rear tire and used the back of his saddle as a reference. Focus. Hold. Relax.

He shifts when you are supposed to, and I can’t even see him do it. His body does not move when he shifts, only his right thumb and index finger. Smooth. When the resistance starts to increase with the gentle roll of the flat road he touches his shifter for one easier cog. Me too.

This is a luxury. The perfect wave. The perfect draft. The perfect wheel. The perfect rider.

He rides straight, smooth, predictably and holds a steady effort just a few percent above my fitness level. Given the smooth, comfortable draft swirling off his body just four inches in front of me I can go 2-3 MPH faster than I normally would be able to at the same effort.

So he tows me along. In utter perfection. I’ve caught the perfect wave.

It’s rare to see a U.S cyclist ride this well. Smooth, calm, confident, skilled. Even his clothes fit him correctly and he is wearing bib cycling shorts, not triathlon shorts, even though he is out on his tri bike.

This was likely my best wave of the year. My best free ride. I don’t know who he was, but he could ride.

 

 

Tom Demerly is old, fat and slow, but occasionally still rides.

 

 

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Icons of the Invasion: The Robert Capa D-Day Photos.

June 6, 2018
Commentary., News, Photo Stories., Uncategorized
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By Tom Demerly for tomdemerly.com

They are among the most famous images in human history. The Robert Capa Life Magazine D-Day photos.

Blurry, poorly exposed and framed in terror, the images transcend photography and achieve a higher level of journalism: they are visual experience.

Robert Capa, whose real name was Endre Friedmann, was a Hungarian willing to go where no other war photographer would. He was the only news photographer on Omaha Beach with the early waves of the allied invasion force, hitting the beach with the second wave. Capa went on to shoot photos in five wars. His friends included Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck.

Photojournalist Robert Capa, the only photographer on the beach during the second wave of the Normandy invasion on June 6, 1944.

Robert Capa cut a dashing figure with handsome features and a jaunty smirk on his face. He did, in fact of matter, laugh at danger. He seemed to revel in it. Capa was 30 years old when he landed at Omaha Beach and shot his photos. His mannerisms and exploits defined modern journalists like Dan Rather, Wolf Blitzer, Christiana Amanpour, Geraldo Rivera, Peter Arnett, Robert Pelton Young, Evan Wright, and John Simpson.

The enormity and perfection of Capa’s D-Day photos cannot be overstated. They are, in every way, perfect photographs. Robert Capa’s D-Day photos not only depict what it looked like to be in the first wave of the Normandy landings, they demonstrate how it felt to be there. Horrifying, Chaotic, disorganized, polarized, distinctly black and white and desperate. Had Capa’s photos turned out to be well composed, in focus and correctly exposed with the negatives arriving to the darkroom undamaged our perception of D-Day and, in fact, warfare overall, would be different today.

The black and white medium speaks to the absolute polarization of the conflict. The battle of Normandy was not just the allies against the axis, it was a clash of good against evil. No battle since has been so clearly delineated in the public conscience.

The blurriness of the photos accurately chronicles the chaos of D-Day. Troops landed in the wrong place. Landing craft were swamped. Soldiers drowned before firing a shot. Those who survived the landings were shredded by machine gun fire from fortified concrete bunkers. Artillery from naval ships rained onto the beach indiscriminately killing both friendly forces and the enemy. More so than even Dante’s Inferno, the Capa photos are the visual depiction of hell.

In point of fact, Robert Capa’s D-Day photos changed the world to a similar degree the invasion itself did.

Along with photos of the Apollo Moon Landings and the funeral of John F. Kennedy, the Capa D-Day photos are the most famous photos in history. As media evolved into the video and then internet age the relevance and impact of still photos waned. People were hard to shock with a single image. Our brains became trained to interpret visual information differently, cameras became more common and higher quality, the transmission of images became instantaneous and every person with a smartphone became a reporter. But even with this evolution and proliferation of media Capa’s D-Day photos still stab with a sense of horror and violence.

Capa shot the D-Day images using two Contax II cameras both fitted with 50mm lenses. He carried redundant equipment in case one camera malfunctioned or was destroyed in battle. Capa shot 35mm film negatives. He carried additional rolls of film with him, but changing the film without accidentally exposing it and keeping it dry was nearly impossible on D-Day.

Although Capa shot a total of 106 frames before, during and after the landing of the second invasion wave he accompanied, most were destroyed by a fifteen-year-old lab assistant named Dennis Banks working for Life magazine in London. Banks accidentally set a film negative dryer too high and melted three complete rolls of film. In a bizarre allegory, it is as though those lost images symbolize the soldiers lost on Omaha Beach that day. Even Capa’s ruined images remain significant.

Page layout from the original Life Magazine D-Day issue on June 19, 1944.

Only 11 total photos by Robert Capa of the D-Day invasion survived the darkroom error. Capa never mentioned the loss of the images. He took the matter completely in stride, the horrors and loss of battle having hardened him.

Life magazine published ten of the eleven photos on June 19, 1944. The feature was a splash-photo spread with short captions that were partly inaccurate. The captions didn’t matter. Capa’s photos told the story of the horror of D-Day most effectively without words. The images live on, almost more impactful now in retrospect than in the month following the D-Day landings.

On May 25, 1954 Robert Capa was killed when he stepped on a landmine while reporting on the French involvement in what went on to become the Vietnam War. Two journalists accompanying him, Jim Lucas and John Mecklin also from Life magazine, reported that Capa held his camera even as he was evacuated to a forward area field hospital, where he died from his wounds at the age of 41.

 

Author Tom Demerly is a U.S. correspondent for TheAviationist.com, the foremost military aviation blog in the world. He is a former U.S. Army Long Range Surveillance Team member and has visited all seven continents. He has written for TACAIRNET, Outside, Business Insider, Velo-News, Bicycle Guide, Bicycling, Inside Triathlon, Triathlete, Triathlon Today!, USA Triathlon Magazine and many other publications around the world.

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Red Hawk Down: The Story of The Dearborn High School Hawk.

June 1, 2018
Commentary., Photo Stories., Travel and Adventure., Uncategorized
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By Tom Demerly for tomdemerly.com

Lofting along on rising waves of turbulent early summer heat boiling up from the fresh blacktop his variable geometry swept wings make minor trim adjustments to change his flight attitude.

At 130-feet of altitude and a leisurely 10 knots of airspeed he spots a target just east of the fire station south of the old tennis courts along Outer Drive at Dearborn High School. The Rouge River has flooded here driving targets north into the open fields and making for, what seems like, an easy kill. Easy that is, if it weren’t for these flying conditions in the strangely hot spring afternoon.

He banks hard right, pulling 3.5 G’s in a turn a fighter pilot would be envious of, especially this close to the ground.

His target is acquired, a scurrying field mouse driven up from the Rouge River basin by the heavy rains and rushing floodwaters from the past week.

He locks-on his target with eyesight that is nearly eight times better than yours and mine. He has eyes like a hawk, because he is a two-year old red-tailed hawk (Buteo jamaicensis).

The aerodynamics of a hawk compared to a U.S. Air Force B-2 Spirit stealth bomber.

He commits to the attack, wings quickly swept back, angle of attack tipping downward to nearly a 70-degree dive exactly like a fighter plane in a diving attack. In an instant his weight and efficient, aerodynamic body shape allow him to accelerate to over 60 MPH, almost straight down. Even though he is only two years old, his targets seldom escape. The local environment depends on him even if few people notice his daily aerial patrols.

Nearly every hunt over this suburban wilderness area near the intersection of Michigan Ave. and Outer Drive in Dearborn, Michigan is successful.

But not today.

He made a rare error, however slight, in his attack trajectory. His angle of attack relative to the scurrying target was just a bit too steep. His vision is optimized for locking on and tracking a distant target camouflaged against the colors of the ground. It’s not optimized to detect fence tops and power lines when in a terminal attack dive.

Speed, normally part of his arsenal, now becomes his enemy. As his target grows in his telephoto eyesight he suddenly detects a minor miscalculation in dive angle. But at over 70 MPH of airspeed, it is too late. Just as he drops the feathers at the trailing edge of his 3&1/2-foot wingspan to generate more lift and deploys his razor-sharp talons as airbrakes he hits the top of the 8-ft fence. Hard.

The impact is crushing. His right knee is torn, leg broken in three places. The collision with the high fence at the edge of the tennis courts causes him to flip tail over beak in uncontrolled, tumbling ballistic flight. The impact with the fence top stunned him, and he has momentarily lost situational awareness. Any pilot will tell you, losing lift and situational awareness this close to the ground with no room for recovery is usually fatal, especially at high speed.

Hitting the pavement stuns him. He’s not used to this. He is always the alpha, the hunter, firmly on top of this suburban food chain occupying the only rung above the silently stalking feral cats that hunt on the ground mostly at dawn and dusk. Even the cats know they are vulnerable to the hawk. There was the occasional fox in this area, but they haven’t been seen for five years now.

For a moment he is motionless, wings akimbo and sprawling, upside down on the hot, black asphalt. Hard wired instinct sends the alert that when he is on the ground he is vulnerable. Vulnerable to a cat or a fox or a dog or to the greatest threat in his environment, a human being.

He rights himself, but cannot fly. Shakes his head to clear it. Cannot get purchase on the air for more than a few meters at a time. He tries to fly, but his landing is uncontrolled on his shattered right leg. In only a split-second the buffeting ground turbulence, target fixation and collision with the fence top moved him from the top of the food chain to the bottom, now vulnerable to predation from anything on the ground.

Spectators at the soccer game at Dearborn High School on Tuesday night spotted the wounded juvenile red tail hawk alternately lying in the field and trying to fly and posted a photo on the Dearborn in The Raw community group on Facebook.

Mark Trzeciak, a local community baron, educated man and teacher, alerts me with a tag in the Facebook post. I grab my car keys. There is already a backpack in my beat-up old Ford Escape loaded with what I need to rescue a cat or an owl or a snapping turtle. But this is my first red-tailed hawk rescue.

I do a quick Google search: “How to rescue an injured hawk”. Then I am on my way.

I can’t find him. Searching the upper tennis courts, the entire lower field close to the Rouge River where Dearborn High School’s track is, I divide the area into a grid and carefully walk each section looking for him. I ask where he is on the Dearborn in The Raw page, but the replies in the thread are disorganized. One of the custodians at Dearborn High School notices that I am walking around with a backpack looking for something.

“Are you looking for the hawk?” asks Will Denton of Dearborn High School. Will has been keeping an eye on the hawk since he had his accident a few hours earlier. “He’s up here by the top tennis courts, just flew over there and landed. Doesn’t look like he can fly well.”

Mr. Denton directs me to an open gate behind the school and points out the juvenile red tail hawk sitting calmly in the grass, alert, looking around, but not moving.

I resolve to spend the night there with him but a friend messages me about Dr. Kevin Smyth of the Morrison Animal Hospital. Dr. Smyth is a veterinarian and specialist in birds and raptors including hawks and owls. I text him at about 9:30 PM. He replies quickly, “Call me”.

 

After I pick up the wounded hawk and drive him home my girlfriend and I make a nice temporary house for him on our back porch, safely sequestered from our three cats who are now very curious about our large, feathered overnight guest.

The hawk is majestic, even in his wounded condition. His body is massive and his wings huge and muscular. His talons are nearly the size of my hands, with inch and a half long hooks optimized for his high-speed diving attacks. But he is weak, seriously broken leg bleeding on his new, soft white sheet.

The next day we’re at Dr. Smyth’s office first thing. Transporting a large, wounded raptor is a bit tricky but we manage to keep the Mr. Hawk calm and comfortable.

At the veterinarian office Dr. Smyth handles the large hawk with confidence and the raptor responds with calmness, allowing the doctor to hold him and test his vision.

The news is not good.

It would appear the hawk’s vision is compromised in one eye, possibly from his crash. His right leg is broken severely in three places, including directly through the knee joint. The hawk is dehydrated and weak. Dr. Smyth gives him a mild anesthetic and administers I.V. fluids for the hawk’s dehydration. He is comfortable, but very weak.

We cannot know how a hawk thinks. Since we have begun observing and writing about them we’ve ascribed a nobility and power to hawks. Throughout the night, the hawk rests at the veterinary office. I want to say that he somehow knew we were all trying to help him. That he did feel a little better from the I.V.’s and the pain medication. He sat normally in a large cage on a soft blanket, maintaining his noble appearance throughout the night and into the next day.

But when the sun came up his spirit took flight, and his broken body remained grounded. Despite the best care of the doctor and the efforts of rescuers, he did not survive the morning. He died a peaceful, pain free, dignified death in the company of people who revered, cared for and respected him.

The loss of the Dearborn High School hawk is significant. He controlled the population of mice and other pests every day. He could have started a family of hawks that would have managed pest populations on each side of Michigan Ave. from Telegraph Road all the way east to Military, where the hawks from the Henry Ford Nature Preserve take over. He could have patrolled the two Kroger parking lots and the parking structures near the Village Plaza building.

But instead, he died from a collision with a fence we put there, in his environment. WE seldom give thought to the animals we share the city with. They occasionally show up in a Facebook post, or on a smartphone photo. For the most part people don’t pay attention. But their role is critical in maintaining the delicate and complex balance of nature in our neighborhoods. Losing the Dearborn High hawk is a significant loss in maintaining that balance.

If you want to help protect and care for local hawks, owls and other large birds in Dearborn, Dearborn Heights, Garden City and the surrounding neighborhoods you can make a contribution directly to Dr. Kevin Smyth at 33607 Ford Road in Garden City. His phone number is (734) 425-6140. His website is morrisonvet.net. Dr. Smyth, a 1980 Dearborn High School graduate and Dearborn native, cares for wounded hawks and owls on his own. He did not charge anything for his extensive emergency care of the hawk we brought him. Contributions to his practice are used to pay for the expenses such as food, supplies and drugs used to rehabilitate hawks and owls and return them to their environment once they have recovered. Dr. Smyth’s contribution to our community is significant and worthy of support.

 

 

Author Tom Demerly has petted most things with legs, fins, feathers or scales.

 

 

 

 

 

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Is GORUCK Star Course the New Ironman Triathlon?

May 23, 2018
Commentary., News, Travel and Adventure., Triathlon Tips, Uncategorized
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By Tom Demerly for tomdemerly.com

Is the new GORUCK Star Course non-stop 50-mile, 20-hour military style endurance event the new holy grail of endurance activities? Has the Ironman Triathlon, with its Emmy Award winning, reality show hype and boom growth in the early 2000’s, trended?

Both events were founded in military tradition. Both were started on a dare. One event is trending upward as participation grows, another is waning downward as participation and event integrity declines. The evolution of the two events acknowledges the normal life cycle of a brand and the typical behavior of trends in American fitness and leisure activities. One is growing, one is dying.

The Ironman Triathlon has struggled with course modifications from bad weather, traffic control concerns on the bike courses, an inability to enforce competitive rules resulting in rampant bike course cheating, escalating entry fees and costs associated with doing the three-sport event. It has also been hit by growing concern over bicycle/car accidents in training as dangers like distracted driving become more prevalent.

The GORUCK event brand, that produces over 500 annual endurance events of various distances around the U.S. has benefitted from much lower entry fees, lower financial barriers to entry, safer training and participation, fewer requirements for expensive equipment, simpler preparation and finally, that one litmus test that grants any event true credibility: Toughness.

The start of the first-ever GORUCK Star Challenge earlier this year in Washington D.C.

While Ironman has become a caricature of its original self with nearly every participant finishing, GORUCK Star Course boasts a brutal 40-50% dropout rate. Most people who enter Ironman can finish within the cutoff time. About half the field at GORUCK Star Course don’t make it, hobbled by foot problems, navigation errors, undertraining or an overall lack of the toughness it takes to survive 20 hours on your feet, in the dark, in bad weather with a heavy load on your back.

GORUCK Star Course is also a team event. Teams consist of 2-5 people. For many competitors, the social aspect of having a small team adds additional value to the experience and makes training, travel to events and participation more attractive. While the Ironman triathlon has a reputation for ruining relationships with its solo training and financial demands, GORUCK Star Course actually reinforces core relationship values.

For companies looking for team building, wives and husbands, fathers, mothers, daughters, brothers and sisters looking for a bonding experience, GORUCK Star Course brings small numbers of people onto a cooperative team competing against the rigors of distance and time more than the other teams.

This evolution in event status also signals something else in U.S. popular culture, the ascension and erosion of “street cred” in participant sports and the social status of iconic, discretionary accomplishments. The Ironman “M-Dot” used to carry significant clout and status, but as the number of Ironman finishers exploded in the early 2000’s, the exclusivity and status of Ironman was diluted over increasing numbers of finishers. Ironman was no longer perceived as being quite as “extreme” as it was prior to large numbers of people finishing the event.

One big difference between GORUCK Star Course and the Ironman Triathlon is media. Ironman rose to prominence on the back of network television coverage prior to the explosion in internet and social media. People entered Ironman after seeing it on TV. People will enter GORUCK Star Challenge as word spreads on user-contributed social media. It’s unlikely GORUCK Star Challenge will ever be the subject of a network television broadcast or spin off a version of itself as an Olympic sport. But ultimately, it will be the participants that spread the virus of the GORUCK Star Challenge as more events take place and the participation germ spreads on the winds of social media. How fast the epidemic spreads remains to be seen.

 

Author Tom Demerly training for the upcoming GORUCK Star Challenge 50-Miler in Cincinatti, Ohio. Demerly is a former member of a U.S. Army National Guard Long Range Surveillance Team (LRS) and Company Honor Graduate from the U.S. Army Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia. He has raced endurance events on all seven continents including Antarctica and completed over 200 triathlons including the Ironman Triathlon World Championships in Kona. Hawaii. His articles have been published in Outside, Business Insider,Velo-News, Bicycle Guide, Bicycling, Inside Triathlon, Triathlete, Triathlon Today!, USA Triathlon Magazine and many other publications around the world.

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