American Industry

The ride today was actually fairly easy.  53 miles from Caldwell, Kansas to Enid, Oklahoma.  Another state gets to eat our dust, although I'm somewhat sad about that because the little Country Inn that we stayed at last night was perhaps my favorite motel so far.  The owners' family was extremely nice, had lots of cats (I love cats!), and the room was surprisingly very nice for such a small town.  And the town center looked like an old, stereotypical Western town that you might expect to see in a Western film.  I absolutely loved it.  Yet, we had to move on, and within a few miles we had passed into Oklahoma.  Thankfully Oklahoma is indeed flat, so we had a nice easy day.  What made it nicer is that we were able to take one road all the way: US Highway 81/60.  No dirt roads or turns to worry us and slow us down today.

While watching some Wimbledon, reading some lead-up for the Tour de France, I'm writing this blog.  What I really want to do is sleep and rest, so I'm going to cut it short today (have you noticed that these posts have, in general, been getting shorter and shorter?).  But yesterday I thought a lot about all the industry of this country that we've been able to see at work.  Near the beginning of the trip I had the opportunity to have a plane spraying pesticide over a farm fly right over me.  It was fun only because the spray stopped as the plane crossed the street and passed over me.  We have certainly seen a lot of big-time agriculture across this vast country.  We've also seen dozens of trains pulling big loads (trucks, too, but they are less environmentally friendly, so I don't want to mention them), power plants and wind turbines and dams providing energy.  We have seen a lot, and a lot of what we have seen is of America hard at work.

Like our economy, my Cato is starting to show some serious signs of falling apart.  My kevlar tires are cracking; some gears aren't working properly; and I'm hearing noises that I've never heard before.  Many in this country are feeling the same way right now and with good reason.  But up until now the stories about American industry that made our country famous and powerful were only stories to me.  The industry that pulled us through World War II and the years beyond seemed mythical.  I've now seen that the country is still populated by hard-workers who know what it means to put their head down and get the job done. 

Yes, our country may be down on its luck right now.  Trust me, though, we are still the industrious people that our ancestors were.  Perhaps we have lost a bit of the spirit and fortitude of working hard, but I know that we all have it in us.  Take it from me, a person who has had life-long difficulty committing to anything for any significant period of time: we all have it in us to get on the road and just keep going no matter how long or painful the path.  The only thing we need to do is make the decision, and we will find that the rest will come to us because it's already in us.