Since I last blogged regarding the route at 300 miles…I have now completed 351miles on my 700 mile trip. Below is a description of my actual ride, and of my “virtual” ride.

Actual Ride: My ride about the beautiful streets and bike paths of The Villages continues. Unfortunately I had to take 10 days off from bicycling because of a bad back. I blogged the last time about an accident I had on the bicycle. It turned out that the accident led to low back pain. I awakened with it one morning and wasn’t able to get out of bed without my wife’s assistance. I was able to get an appointment with a physiatrist a few days later. She noted that I had axial pain (with no radiation). My neuro exam was normal. I had mild tenderness of the LS paraspinal muscles. An MRI showed some pre-existing arthritis of the L45 facet joints. She started me on celecoxib  and scheduled some physical therapy. I got better so quickly on this medicine that I didn’t even go to the physical therapy. I continued to improve, and after waiting a full 10 days I felt that it was time to get back in the saddle. I have ridden 50 miles since I resumed riding and my back never felt better. I will not continue the celecoxib indefinitely because I worry about its gastric, renal and cardiac profiles. I sure wish we could invent a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medicine that didn’t have those problems!  If we did I would take it like candy…since the celecoxib makes my old joints feel like a teenager’s. (P.S. I do not own stock in celecoxib or any other medicines).

Virtual Ride: I have now completed 351 miles of my 700 mile trip from the office of the Foundation in Rosemont, IL to the site of this year’s AAPMR convention in Atlanta, GA. When I last blogged about the trip I was in Springfield, TN.  Before my back began hurting (see an explanation of this in the section above), I made it about 20 miles down route 41 to Greenbrier, TN. (As you might remember, Route 41 goes all the way from northern Indiana to Atlanta). After my back pain started I couldn’t really ride for 10 days and during all that time I was stuck in Greenbrier. It’s a pleasant little town of about 5000 people, and the Main Street that runs right down the middle of it is actually Route 41. I found a clean and yet inexpensive motel that had flat screen cable TV. The WIFI internet was free (why is that cheap hotels offer free WIFI, but expensive ones charge for it?)

For the first week of my back pain I only left the room to get food at one of Greenbrier’s dozen or so restaurants. I ate at the Sonic Drive-In (even though I didn’t have a car), at three pizza places, a Subway, and two Mexican food restaurants. But my favorite restaurant was the Highway 41 Café, which was only about two blocks from my motel on the north end of town. It was open from 6 AM to midnight and reminded me of a New Jersey diner. Like the diners in New Jersey it had a multiple page menu of seemingly every conceivable food (how do they serve so many different things). It was a mom and pop place that was now run by the grandchildren of the original owners. It was especially a fun place to eat at breakfast and for a late snack. The food was “down-home” good. I suspect, however, that anyone eating there frequently would need to double up on their dose of Lipitor. I was unable to sleep one night, so about 10:30 PM I got re-dressed and went down to have some decaf coffee and dessert. They were out of all the desserts except apple pie…so I had that a la mode. I sat at the counter struck up a conversation with a well dressed thirtyish man sitting on the stool beside me. He was a young entrepreneur named Frank Durning, who lived in Nashville (Nashville is about 40 miles from Greenbrier and a lot of Greenbrier folks work in Nashville). It turned out that he was in town looking for a business to own and operate. He had an MBA from the business school at the University of Cincinnati. After graduation he worked for a number of companies, usually on a short term basis dealing with business development. It was obvious that he was really hot to own and operate his own business. He’d been talking with the family that owned the now closed gasket factory that was just north of Greenbrier. About five years ago the family closed the factory and laid off all 100+ workers and moved their manufacturing operation to China. They found they could make the gaskets in China for a fraction of what they were paying at the Greenbrier factory.  

The family no longer had any use for the closed factory and wanted to sell it with the land and all the equipment. It had been locked up for five years…and on the inside it was just like the day everyone left. The family found that it was too expensive to move all the gasket making equipment to China…so they bought Chinese machinery for their new plant located south of Shanghai.

Frank really knew a lot about gasket manufacturing and had obviously been studying up on it. He had even interviewed some of the former workers at plant, including the now retired former foreman. Frank felt that could get a small business loan from the Feds and a new development grant from the state of Tennessee. I assumed that he had a venture capitalist or two who was willing to help him. I was surprised that he didn’t try to get me to invest in his new venture.

He planned to buy out the family and reopen the factory, but on a smaller scale. His idea was to make high-end “premium” gaskets for engines of all types from lawn mowers to diesels. He would make them of the highest quality, and market them as being the only gaskets with a lifetime warranty. He would also advertise them as the only gaskets that were made in  America. They would be about three times more expensive than the competition, but gaskets are not really very expensive and many engine owners would spring for the extra money just to get the best gasket…and one they could brag about to their friends about because “made in America.” His new company was going to be called the “American Made Gasket Company.”

I might have been willing to put a few thousand into it, just to see what would happen. Of course, I have no idea whether his idea will work, but he seemed really interested in trying it. I have a good friend who told me that in the late 1960’s his engineer brother came to him with the idea of making transistors. He asked him to invest 10 grand. My friend, who had children and other responsibilities, told his brother that just couldn’t make that kind of investment (but actually he thought his brother was just a little crazy). About a decade later, the factory the brother started had stopped making transistors to make computer chips. Intel bought out the brother and his company…and everyone made $50 for every dollar they had invested. My friend said that if he had invested the $10,000 in his brother’s company…he would have gotten a return of $500,000.

Once I could ride again I decided to detour over to Nashville, TN and take in some country music and give my back a little longer to heal before getting back on Route 41 and heading south to Atlanta.