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Cat and Opossum are Friends: Game Camera Captures Interesting Friendship.

February 19, 2020
News, The Feral Cat Series.
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By Tom Demerly for tomdemerly.com

One of our remote, night vision game cameras in our yard captured an interesting level of détente that has been going on for some time between a cat who visits our yard regularly and one of the opossums who lives in our yard.

Opossums are docile, benevolent animals especially in a suburban setting. They are well known for eating disease carrying ticks and their low body temperature means it is almost impossible for them to contract diseases like rabies or other animal-borne pathogens. Opossums help keep communities clean and disease free by eating ticks that can carry lyme disease. Having opossums in your yard means your local ecosystem is safe, clean and disease-free.

We were very excited when we found a small family of three opossums living in our yard, and have done everything we can to support them. We were also concerned that the local domestic and feral cat population, who we also support with four outdoor cat houses, might not interact well with our opossums.

Any concern about the two not getting along has been put to rest by what we’ve seen over the past few months. This video shows one of our opossums and a cat who frequents our houses eating side-by-side and getting along just fine.

The cat in this video is likely a local feral who appeared about eight weeks ago. He visits us several times a day and uses our yard as a hub for his daily patrols. As our regular feral cat, he has struck up a good friendship with our opossums.

Author Tom Demerly writes for publications around the world and really likes animals.

The Single, Deadliest Thing About Coronavirus No One is Telling You About.

February 12, 2020
Commentary., Uncategorized
1 Comment

By Tom Demerly for tomdemerly.com

At a neighborhood meeting with our Mayor last week there were questions about finding lost pets, zoning ordinances and people having too many lights on the outside of their houses.

And then there was the question of the night, one that has since turned out to be oddly prescient. The president of a large neighborhood association asked the Mayor of Dearborn, “What is the City of Dearborn doing about the coronavirus?”

The room went silent.

Sixty days ago Dearborn’s mayor could not have known the threat that coronavirus has since become. So, back then, for just a moment, the mayor flashed a quarter of a smile across the right side of his face. He glanced down at the table top in front of him, recalibrating his response I suspect, in the way that politicians at every level must offer a substantive response to all inquiries. Then he began, “Our emergency services have been drilling on response practices in preparation for any unlikely… ”

As it turns out, the question about coronavirus from back on February 12, 2020 was a very good one. Coronavirus has since emerged to become a very real public health threat.

However, if you do a Google search on, “Things most likely to kill a person living in America”, you find that heart disease is our most prevalent lethal threat. This is followed by cancers. Not far down the list, the number 8 killer of Americans, is a broad category called “accidents”. Drill down into “accidents” and you learn that using a smartphone while driving is creating a great national cull of our highly mobile, highly connected population. While the most prolific killer of Americans is still not a highly contagious and deadly disease like COVID-19, It has now emerged that the question to our mayor about the disease was remarkably insightful. COVID-19 has grown into a serious threat that is killing Americans at an alarming rate and spreading at an even more alarming rate. This being true, it still isn’t as lethal as cancers, diabetes, obesity and accidents.

But the fact remains that almost seventy days after the meeting where a neighborhood association leader asked what was being done about an obscure Asian disease, that disease is now a very real threat not only from a medical perspective but from an economic and security perspective as well. And both mainstream and contributory media has latched onto that, almost entirely to the exclusion of the other things that are killing us at an even faster rate.

While the COVID-19 crisis has become very real, there are still 1.5 million people hospitalized every year from accidents related to smartphone use. Last year the common flu killed 10,000 Americans. So far, this year the Centers for Disease Control say that, “At least 19 million people in the U.S. have experienced flu illnesses this season”.

But still, coronavirus remains our most conspicuous, if not most prolific and lethal, threat. Why is that?

On June 1, 1980, Ted Turner launched the Cable News Network, or CNN, the first 24-hour news network. In the four decades since then, the way Americans consume news, and what is actually called “news”, has changed more than at any time in history.

Prior to 1980, the U.S. relied on predominantly 3 news networks that broadcast six hours of content each per day. Today there are at least 25 major network news media outlets in the U.S., all broadcasting across multiple outlets 24-hours, around the clock. That is a staggering 2300% increase in the amount of network news media we’re served every 24 hours in only four decades.

But it gets even more interesting. And dangerous.

In less than half the time it took for network news media to completely reinvent itself, only 16 short years ago, Mark Zuckerberg invented “participatory media”. Most people call it social media. When Zuckerberg started what was then called “The Face Book”, he did what most innovators do; he put something out there that would change the world before he invented the rules about how to use it. From edged tools to fire to printed words to nuclear weapons and instant communications, humans invent culture-changing technologies before they figure out the rules for how to best use them. We throw the new, culture-changing technologies out there and worry about figuring out how to best use them later. In the process, there is always calamity.

In the 16 years since Facebook began, the number of outlets with access to your 600 X 800 news screen went from 25 news outlets to… 1.69 billion individual users, each one vying for attention and relevance. Even more than the four-decade, 2300% proliferation of available news every 24 hours, the explosion of 1.69 billion individual broadcasters on Facebook (not to mention other social media outlets, like Twitter’s 330 million) has influenced the way we consume information, and confuse it with what is credible news.

While coronavirus is absolutely a serious health threat, the single deadliest thing about the coronavirus for those fortunate enough to not be infected with it is the media frenzy that surrounds it. Coronavirus is a serious health threat that has grown more serious as the pandemic has spread. But in the five years since it was first identified, and before this most recent outbreak, its impact on public health does still remain smaller than other health risks like cancer and distracted driving. Cancer and distracted driving just haven’t dominated social media and news media for the last seven days.

This revolution in how we consume media, and confuse it with news, is at least a part of the reason why a neighborhood association president in Dearborn, Michigan, 7,273 miles and 13 time zones away from Wuhan, China was asking about coronavirus when the things that will likely kill her go basically ignored- even 60 days into the COVID-19 crisis. And this statistically skewed perception of risk is at least as large a threat to us as the very real COVID-19 pandemic is.

Tom Demerly in the Kremlin, Moscow, Russia with delegates from North Korea.

Tom Demerly reports on Defense and Technology stories from around the world to TheAviationist.com, BusinessInsider.com and numerous other international news outlets. 

The True, Terrifying Tale of the 1973 Harb’s Hobby Shop Expedition.

February 6, 2020
Travel and Adventure.
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By Tom Demerly for tomdemerly.com

An expedition not unlike our own, Robert Falcon Scott’s failed ordeal in Antarctica in 1912.

 

When I was a kid I had a friend named Raymond Schuckle. He lived at the end of the block, closest to the park, from me.

Winter had come and it was harsh. We were not much older than 11 or 12. Raymond and I shared an interest in model airplanes. Boredom from the long winter had set in, and there was little to do. So, we decided to launch an expedition on foot across four miles of suburban territory to Harb’s Hobby Shop on Monroe Street in Downtown Dearborn.

I had read Maurice Herzog’s book, “Annapurna”, that I bought from Mary Fera’s Dad’s shop, Little Professor Book Store, near Harb’s. The book recounted the first ascent of an 8,000-meter peak in the Himalayas by a group of bold adventurers. To my 11-year-old mind, our expedition across Dearborn to Harb’s Hobby Shop would be exactly like Maurice Herzog’s brutally difficult expedition to climb Annapurna in the Himalayas.

We prepared. I had a crude, blue, nylon anorak and a pair of mittens made of some kind of cheap shearling that came from a flea market. I also had a gray wool balaclava, that I got from K-Mart specifically after reading about them in “Annapurna”. It was $3.97. I had inexpensive vinyl “moon boots” insulated with foam. We wore blue jeans, T-shirts and sweaters as our technical base layers. I was careful to wear two pairs of sweat socks. Raymond Shuckle, my lieutenant, was better equipped. He wore an impressive snorkel jacket and snowmobile boots with special felt liners. He also had covertly reapportioned a pair of genuine skiing gloves from his older brother. He wore a bright red knit stocking cap, useful for signaling in the event we would need rescue.

We had plotted our navigation and ranging based on car trips we had made over previous months and years in the region. We knew the route, up Cherry Hill, then to Outer Drive, and eventually a long slog along Michigan Avenue to Monroe over piles of frozen, plowed snow. These massive ice and snow formations were our version of Herzog’s crevasses and sastrugi on Annapurna. There was a secondary route we could take through Ford Field, but that meant a dangerous descent of the icy sled hill and grueling climb up the steep gradient of Monroe Street toward Michigan Ave. This, however, was the most direct route, although it was significantly more rigorous and involved greater risk.

After sunset, we set out.

Our first obstacle was crossing the open, wind-blown snow field of Levagood Park. This could have become an immediate disaster, as blowing snow limited our visibility. Luckily, being only a block from our houses, we were familiar with the terrain and able to effectively navigate to our first landmark, Sea Shore Pool. It was bitingly cold and the snow was deep, perhaps six inches, with a hard-frozen crust on top. After our successful trial-by-fire crossing of the Levagood ice fields, we pressed on.

Crossing Telegraph Road was a risk. Passing cars threw torrents of salty slush on us as we waited for our chance to dart across the lethal passage. It was our analogy of crossing deadly crevasses. We continued undaunted by the risks and managed to cross as a pair, making it to the other side. This is where we entered untraveled territory. In no uncertain terms, Telegraph Road marked the outer boundary of our neighborhood, and the entrance to the hinterlands.

We charted a course through side streets, abandoning the sidewalks as they were largely impassable and, instead, took to the streets themselves. This meant increased risk, but we were willing to accept it in exchange for greater speed. At one point, we came across a group of kids we had never seen before, dressed similarly to us in moon boots and snorkel jackets, but older. They were a rough looking bunch, standing at the edges of the street. Their plot was to wait until a car slip-slid down the street, then run behind it with the hope of grabbing the bumper. This would give them a wild, careening ride, sliding on the soles of their boots, until the speed became too great or the distance too far, at which point they would let go and tumble to a stop. We stopped to watch them for a while but judged that this unknown group of older indigenous kids could become dangerous at any moment and engage us with tightly packed ice-balls. We pressed on.

47 years later, I return to the scene of the Levagood ice field crossing from the original 1973 expedition.

Schuckle, for his part, was an excellent lieutenant. He seemed largely non-plussed by the ordeal, pressing on with neither complaint nor rancor. That is, until I looked at his face, drawn in discomfort and the agony from the biting wind. Although he said nothing, he was clearly near his limit.

We had made it to the open expanse next to the Dearborn High School athletic field. This was the gateway to the Rouge River basin. There were rescue facilities there in the form of a fire station where we could, presumably, surrender to the elements, declare our mission a failure, and turn ourselves in to the firemen at the station for what would be a humiliating defeat at the hands of mother nature and human endurance. They would offer rescue but at the cost of humiliating repatriation to our parents. Whatever sanctions accompanied that were too horrible to imagine.

So, we pressed on.

Despite our condition, we were resolved to our fate under our own destiny. Ice spicules blew from east to west, assailing our bare skin around our eyes like frozen wind-borne razors. Our endurance was waning. We had both spent the day at school and would have to return tomorrow, so it was necessary to manage our physical resources. Exhaustion from our adventure, no matter how bold and heroic, would not grant clemency from a day of school.

It was at this point, in the open ice fields just north of the fire station along Outer Drive, that I took matters into my own hands and regretfully signaled retreat. I remember, to this day, the exact moment I admitted defeat. This capitulation was at least better than surrendering to the firemen for rescue, as we could return home- if we survived- covertly manage our maladies from the ordeal, and equip ourselves for another attempt as conditions improved.

I don’t remember much from the trip back. Humiliation, the harsh elements and fatigue must have blocked my recollection as with any trauma.

I do remember getting home. My boots and socks were heavy and soaked. My rag-wool balaclava had likely meant the difference between survival and oblivion, as it was encrusted with ice around the breathing hole and covered in snow. My mittens were sodden, and my hands bright blue from cold, the skin wrinkled from immersion in the damp mitts. I stripped from my jeans and T-shirt in the bathroom, and ran a steaming bath. I remember that bath. I remember it well. Plucked from the arctic hell-storm and immersed in opulent, hot water in the safe haven of my house was such a bizarrely polarized juxtaposition of fate that I could hardly wrap my young mind around it. We had survived, our dramatic failure remained undiscovered, and we had gathered valuable information to try again. Despite our failure, there was a meager inventory of success from the ordeal. It was on this I chose to focus as I made plans to check the weather forecast and begin preparations for another attempt.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Dangerous Gamble of Climate Change Denial.

January 16, 2020
Commentary., News
1 Comment

By Tom Demerly for tomdemerly.com

Another report, another finding that NASA, NOAA and the UK Met Office have confirmed that global temperatures have been rising, continue to rise, and have resulted in a host of all-time meteorological records. The reports were published this week, and they tell us what we already know. We’re in deep trouble.

But we still deny the human impact and ability to control climate change. Why is that?

Perhaps the biggest problem with climate change is its “marketing”. It’s an idea that people are inherently resistant to. A second problem is culturally rigid thinking. And a third problem is a societal and individual resistance to new thinking.

Firstly, the crisis, which is absolutely real, absolutely man-made and absolutely controllable (but not reversible) has been poorly “marketed” or talked about.

In the social media age, image is everything, and climate change has fallen victim to some rotten media marketing. Its advocates tend to be labelled as weirdoes or academics who are prone to jargonish science-speak. Climate change also smacks of left-leaning politics. That’s a shame, because if ever there was a great cause for right-leaning robber-barons to embrace, it’s manmade climate change. There is the opportunity to recalibrate our global economy and earn trillions in profits from climate change, and that’s good. I think Elon Musk, as eccentric as he is, sees some of this. Bill Gates sees it too. I think Warren Buffett is watching it and waiting for a way to earn big profits from the marketing of climate change and its solutions.

But climate change suffers from bad marketing. Climate change started out as “global warming”, was re-branded “climate change” since that term is more literal. But this phenomenon should really be called, “Man-made, accelerated climate change”. But that doesn’t fit well in twenty-word social media posts, and people are too busy to learn anything that challenges what they already know and is longer than a Tweet or a Facebook post.

We already know that the climate is always changing. That’s normal. Even the magnetic poles migrate and change. Also, normal. What is not normal, or sustainable, is the rate of current climate change acceleration that is a direct result of mankind’s influence on the earth through overpopulation, overconsumption and pollution. Some climate change is normal, natural and unchangeable- desirable even. Our global ecosystem is built to adapt to it. Species become extinct partially from failure to adapt and partially from environmental change, and species also evolve over time to adapt to gradual change. The key word is “gradual”. What we’re seeing now is not gradual. It’s catastrophic.

The climate change I’ve seen myself, around the world in my lifetime, isn’t gradual. It is unbelievably accelerated. Glaciers I climbed on in 1999, that took thousands, or millions, of years to create, have now disappeared. In my lifetime. Animal populations I visited have been cut by 90%. Species I saw in person in my 30’s are now extinct.

Today, when I see sharks within ten miles of a populated coastline, the sharks are smaller, usually have scars from boat propellers indicating they have been feeding off scraps and trash from boats and ships, and their behavior is different. They are listless and docile. Go a few hundred miles off a coastline, drop down, wait for some sharks to come along and you see completely different animals. Larger, no scars or hooks in them, perfect fins and different behavior. They behave like alpha predators. The coastal sharks, even of the same species, behave like stray dogs waiting for the garbage to be thrown out. That is what a species looks like as it tries to adapt to a single generation of accelerated climate change, and when it enters serious decline.

When I was in Antarctica in 1999, I saw thousands of whales. This summer in the Azores, in the middle of the Atlantic in 5,000 feet of water, I saw about fifteen whales over three days, and those whales we had to look for most of the day. Whales migrate past the Azores toward Antarctica. What I saw was worrisome.

There is a strange calculus to climate change denial. Let’s say the chances that every climate change scientist is 80% wrong in their findings. That’s unlikely, but let’s assume that for the sake of discussion. That means they are also 20% right. A 20% chance that catastrophic climate change could manifest itself in our lifetimes. You pick the numbers you like; 90% chance climate change is false? 99% chance? There remains that lingering chance that it is right, and no human can afford that chance at any percentage.

America maintains a massive arsenal to defend ourselves against nuclear war, mostly from the former Soviet Union, a country that doesn’t exist anymore. Yet we continue to maintain that enormous resource for an enemy that hasn’t existed since the Soviet Union collapsed in December, 1991, almost three decades ago. Today, according to the worst statistical analysis of the probability of nuclear war, there is, on the high side, about a 2% chance of a nuclear war ever starting. The chances of one starting in our lifetime, according to a 2015 expert survey in strategic probability, is 0.24%. That’s less than a quarter of a percent. The chances that climate change will alter our lives in our lifetime is much higher, yet we maintain no strategic deterrent force against climate change, despite the fact that it is a strategic global threat.

We are destroying this planet and accelerating climate change at unsustainable and catastrophic levels. We may survive the changes, but our lives will be less convenient, less healthy and less enjoyable. The lives of our children, even worse. And the lives of their children completely unrecognizable to us. If we continue to deny what science is telling us we may hold on to our lives, but they won’t be worth living.

Author Tom Demerly has traveled the world since 1980 including some of the most remote areas in Antarctica, Vietnam, Africa, the Middle East and South America.

Remembering Cycling Commentator Paul Sherwen.

December 3, 2018
Bike Reviews, Commentary., News, Uncategorized
2 Comments

By Tom Demerly for tomdemerly.com

As a commentator, he was a master. Measured. Well-paced. Gifted with dramatic inflection and a lilting accent that brought credibility to his narration. As a dramatist, he was a rare thespian of the microphone. He paced his voice, volume and inflection to build a crescendo that hammered on the edge of control. And perhaps most importantly, as a person, he humanized and dignified a sport that is rife with indignity and subterfuge.

Paul Sherwen died last week at the age of 62. Far too soon. His untimely passing is gutting to the world of cycling, not just for fans who loved him, but for the complex synergy of broadcasting the Tour de France and all of professional cycling in the English language.

You can read of Sherwen’s impressive professional cycling career in any of the many eulogies published around the world for him over the last 72 hours. But Sherwen rose to greatest prominence as a broadcaster, commentator and even moderator of cycling’s most turbulent era.

Sherwen began broadcasting with Phil Liggett in 1989. That is when he went from great cyclist to mega-star. The combination of Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen was not just good, it was magical synergy. The sum was greater than the total of its parts. By themselves, Sherwen and Liggett were excellent commentators. Together they became the institution of cycling in the English language.

It would not be an embellishment to suggest the team of Sherwen and Liggett saved cycling.

The damage inflicted by the Armstrong era cast a dark cloud over professional bike racing and the Tour de France. Its creditability as a legitimate sport was shattered in the post-Armstrong era and didn’t recover even after the brash Texan doper and extortionist was forced into exile. The doping scandals and accusations continued. For any informed observer, cycling had a titanic image problem. It was dirty.

Enter Paul Sherwen and Phil Liggett. Commentating next to the thousand-pound doping elephant in the room the duo would chat during slow stages as the group rode together at a pedestrian pace. Cycling coverage had changed from a 45-minute recorded and scripted highlight reel to a rolling commentary of the entire stage. It became an endurance event for live announcers. Try describing anything non-stop for six hours. If your voice holds, you quickly find out you run out of things to say. Not Sherwen.

During the Tour de France, Sherwen and Liggett were served snippets about the areas the riders were passing through from race organizers. They were dry historical facts about castles, bridges, rivers and factories. It was the stuff you slept through in school. But Sherwen would grab this stuff off the feed and, as though you were sitting next to him in a touring sedan on a leisurely drive across rural France, weave a lilting tale from the popcorn-dry feed. When Sherwen talked about the milk production of the cows of Provence region, it sounded quaint and charming and… damn near interesting.

When the action started, Sherwen’s voice moved to his gut. He became more baritone. More Serious. More urgent. His pace picked up just a tick. Tension boiled under his narration. It felt as if the other shoe would drop at any moment, and we all slid to the edge of seats. His colloquialisms were Shakespearean. Who had ever heard what it was like to, “Throw a cat among the pigeons” or, “Reach deep into the suitcase of courage” before Paul Sherwen? Sherwin brought rare dramatic eloquence to a sport of blue collar schoolboys.

Paul Sherwen dignified cycling, amplified the drama, downplayed the scandal.

It is difficult to imagine a post-Sherwen cycling era. At 75 years old, Phil Liggett may decide to pack up his microphone and move on to a well-earned retirement. Something Paul Sherwen never got. Sherwen played the key role to Liggett’s performance, shoring him up when he made the errors in remembering a cyclist’s name that any 75-year old would make. They did so seamlessly, and it only added to the show. But without Sherwen as his muse and protector, Liggett may not want to continue. If that is the case, it is not too much of a stretch to say that when we lost Paul Sherwen, we lost all of cycling. Or at least any semblance of dignity, drama and decency it had left.

 

Tom Demerly has been a cycling commentator and journalist for over 30 years. He has written for Outside, Velo-News, Inside Triathlon, Triathlon Today, Triathlete, Bicycling, Bicycle Guide, USA Cycling, USA Triathlon and many others.

 

 

The Coffee Cup Story.

November 29, 2018
Commentary., Photo Stories., Travel and Adventure., Uncategorized
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By Tom Demerly for tomdemerly.com.

I was once so poor, I didn’t have a coffee cup.

It didn’t matter much since I had neither coffee or a coffee maker. I had boxes of things I owned when I was rich, before I lost everything. But I wasn’t going to stay in one place long enough to unpack them, so what was left stayed in the boxes. I never unpacked. Nothing was permanent.

No coffee cup though.

My parents told stories of the depression when they were kids. The stories didn’t seem possible to me. When I didn’t have a coffee cup it occurred to me, “Well damn. Here is our depression. Exactly like my mom described.” Now you’re reading my story of not having a coffee cup.

Eventually things began to improve. I was good at what I did, a writer. Got a good job writing at a company in California. Money came in. California is expensive so you need to earn a lot of money to be even reasonably comfortable. You still won’t have any money left over, so you better keep your job or find a new one outside California. If you want to make any money, don’t move to California.

Moved from California to Michigan. Brought my two cats in a cat carrier on the plane. I had written a letter to the airline well in advance telling them my cats were the most valuable thing in the world to me. They met me at the airport and took extra care of me and my two cats on the flight from California back to Michigan. I was thankful for that. Nothing was more important. I figured if I couldn’t even care for two cats, I was pretty worthless. But in this case, with the help of the airlines, I managed fairly well. Thank God, and I’m not even religious. The airline was Southwest airlines. If you can, when you fly, fly on Southwest Airlines. They actually care about people. And cats. That’s rare these days.

Still no coffee cup though.

When I got back to Michigan I took back an old job that I liked but didn’t earn much money. I was going to help open a new business soon. There was, at least, the promise of improvement if not tangible improvement itself. Sometimes you can do pretty good on just the promise of things getting better. It’s better than knowing things are going to get worse. I’ve gotten good at sensing when that is going to happen. It’s a bad feeling and you better trust it.

My friends Paul and Sue, whom I’ve known forever, visited me right away when I moved back. They knew me before the recession, before I lost everything. I was actually well-off then. Owned a house, car, business. Those things can disappear in an instant, so fast you can’t believe it. You think you are secure. Trust me, you aren’t. A million dollars means nothing.

I know that when Paul and Sue and their sons saw how things were for me then they were… well, I don’t know what they were. They never said. Sue drove me to the store. When it became apparent I had no money for food, her and her two sons brought food to my house. I always made sure my cats had food. They came first.

Things kept getting better. Made a little money. Lived in a house with a big yard, grass (we didn’t have that in California) and plenty of windows. The first warm day I went outside and just laid down in the grass. It was the first time I felt safe in a long time. My cats watched me through the window. That was a good feeling. I still remember that moment, lying there in the grass.

Eventually things got much better. That’s America. You can have everything, lose everything, and get everything back again.

On one trip to the store I bought a coffee maker, $22, a huge can of coffee (don’t remember how much) and a coffee cup. It’s still my favorite cup. I worry about breaking it. It would be a bad omen.

So with this new coffee cup, I am pretty careful.

Is Michigan Bicycle Retail Dying?  

November 26, 2018
Bike Reviews, Commentary., Gear Reviews., News, Outdoor Gear Reviews
4 Comments

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.