KIDS

Mille Miglia 2007 in Assisi

I have missed it four years in a row. A perfect record. The Mille Miglia starts in Brescia up north and goes through Italy for a mille (thousand) miglia (miles). We first heard about it on some Discovery Channel or Travel Channel program back in 2002. Brandon told us that his Ferrari mechanic comes out each year for it. This year 375 cars participated.

Now the first year we missed it because we didn't know it came through Assisi and we didn't find out about it until the week after it happened.

The second year we planned to see it, but Helen's brother Henry took ill and we made a dash back to the states on the day the Mille Miglia came through Assisi. My friend Rafael, who drove us down to the airport in Rome was able to take our Cabriolet to see it though-

The third year we decided to go back to the US to attend a shareholder meeting and to say hello or goodbye to some friends and family who we correctly though might not be with us much longer.

So this year was gonna be the year. We timed. We planned. We committed. We researched..... We got sick. About three weeks ago Jax got this fever out of nowhere... 105F... broke in about two days. To top it off, it was a four day weekend (Italian Liberation Day) and while Jax was in school that Friday, we had all gone to Lake Trasimeno to check out camping resorts to spent the weekend in our new delux Coleman tent the Chins had brought over for us.

Then last week I could see Matteo with a runny nose and one eye with conjunctivitus... hummm. Then the other eye. Then Helen had the aches. Then I got it. Then I got the chills. Then I'm out. So right at its peak. Mille Miglia comes through Assisi at 4:50 PM. Helen takes Jax and Matteo. I stay behind with Suby. Oh well. Try again next year.

Helen says we have to join in when we get older. There was a Corvette in the procession this year. Humm. Perfect excuse to bring over the Vette? Or maybe....

The Hanoi Hilton and John McCain

There really is a Hanoi Hilton and it is very nice, but it isn't the Hanoi Hilton that housed the prison built by during the French occupation for the Vietnamese who didn't like being occupied and later used to house American pilots shot down and captured.












My old friend Jim Schultz and I went to the Hanoi Hilton or what was left of it last March. It was just a few blocks from the very nice small hotel in the old quarter I was staying at and I had passed by it a dozen times not knowing it was there.










The Vietnamese displayed the flight suit of their celebrity POW John McCain. Jim asked "Can you imagine what he was thinking when his jet was going down" and I said "As soon as he got into the jet, he knew he could be toast."

John McCain has balls. I told Jim that McCain had a different variety of balls than we had. Now I can't speak for Jim, but I got the sense from him that perhaps his liberal views on the Vietnam War AFTER visiting Vietnam for the second time had changed. I have some opinions but I would rather keep them to myself.