Final Sunset at the 24-Hours of Moab?  

In 2008, when I discovered the event, pro teams abounded at 24HOM. Talking to old-timers, I discovered that Honda Motors previewed their snazzy Element vehicle at the race in 2002. In 2008, the race was dubbed the “Suzuki 24 Hours of Moab”, in honor of their sponsorship and participation in the success of the event. In 2009, Rebecca Tomaszewski and Dax Massey teamed up to win the Mixed Duo Championship, completing seventeen laps and placing 30^th overall in the race. In 2010, Shimano, Specialized, Mavic and Baja Designs all had big booths at the venue. In 2011, Dale’s Pale Ale had their beer-bus parked in a prime location, but rumor has it that they paid no sponsorship fee for that honor.

Laird recently said, "My take on the team drop is simply the shift in demographics that is taking place in the sport. Many former Moab racers are getting older, having families and not riding as much, let alone racing. The economy might be 10% or 15% but I think the demographic shift accounts for the vast majority of the no-shows."  While that may be true, the number of needed participants in the race is not all that large . An increase of 100-200 new riders in 2012 might tip the scales in favor of staging the event. If I am interested enough to attend the 24-HOM each October, how many others might be likewise interested? Whether they write about it, post a YouTube video or sponsor a race team (real or phantom), it would help. Sponsoring a youth team would create new energy now and boost future-year attendance.

On October 8-9, 2011, where were most of the stars of U.S. mountain bike racing? Finishing twenty-one grueling laps between them, Colin Osborn, John & Pete Gaston and Len Zanni of the Honey Stingers Bee Team were the only Men’s Pro Team in attendance. In 2010, there were nine Men’s Pro teams and three in the race. Honey Stinger Bee Team, Rebecca, Dax and all you other hot pros; we need you now to express your interest in racing at the 2012 24_HOM.

Also visible in the five sun-slides is a bubble of new energy light, emanating from the sun’s corona. Behind the Rocks, new energy flowed to the racers on the course, the scorekeepers, fans and the sponsors in attendance. For a moment, all who were present at the race were of one family, and bathed in new energy. Through the lens of a failing webcam, we can see that new energy showering from the sun. Although rarely documented, plasma-flow events are “real”, meaning that charged particles may strike the Earth in any given location. Present that day, but undetected in the bright light was the 2011 Draconid Meteor Outburst. Less than two hours after the race start, our unknown neighbors in the western sky were lobbing as many as 680 meteorites per hour into the Earth’s atmosphere. If I am not mistaken, stardust fell widely Behind the Rocks near Moab that day and night.

Naysayers will tell you that the 24_HOM is an unmitigated disaster, carving up and destroying a fragile desert environment. Before racing started there in the 1990s, the history of the place included the overgrazing of cattle for almost a century. In addition, four-wheel drive or social roads carved up the high plateau. By connecting several existing desert tracks, Granny Gear Productions created a racecourse that has stood the test of time. Yes, someracers ignore or misinterpret the course markers. Few racers, however, wish to exchange the singletrack for an uncertain fate in the sagebrush. Those who go off course, do so mainly at night, when fatigue or poor lighting take their toll.

It is time for me to publish these thoughts and let this story go. The outcome notwithstanding, I will be there, Behind the Rocks at sundown on Saturday, October 6, 2012 beaming a live webcast of the sunset to the world. I only hope that the madcap mayhem of a 24-hour bike race will be going on all around me. Until then, I will see you at Moab24Live.com. Happy trails.

Email James McGillis

UCLA Student Rampage of 1966 Shuts Down the San Diego Freeway (I-405 Northbound)

News Items for November 22, 1966

•      As luminescent debris from Comet Tempel-Tuttle rains down on Earth, the Leonids Meteor Shower ends its first intense display in sixty-six years.   
•       The Rose Bowl snub in favor of USC. Twice, students marched onto the freeway and briefly stopped northbound traffic. On that Tuesday, only days after backup quarterback Norman Dow (in his first and only start) led the Bruins to an upset of USC at the Coliseum, The Times reported, obscenity-shouting protesters “left a trail of shocked and bewildered spectators.”
  
  The year 1966 was my first at UCLA and watching our underdog Bruins vanquish Troy was epic. To Bruin fans, the L.A. Coliseum felt like its counterpart in ancient Rome. After the victory, we left the Coliseum chanting “Rose Bowl, Rose Bowl”.
  Despite the UCLA win and otherwise equal records that season, a technicality bequeathed the Pac-8 title and a coveted berth in the Rose Bowl that year. Later the Pac-8 became the more familiar Pac-10. More recently, the conference morphed into an ambiguous NCAA entity known as the Pac-12. If the original Pac-8, then known as the Pacific Coast Conference had at least something to do with geography, the Pac-12 can make no such claim. Since many saw Arizona as another politically conservative suburb of Los Angeles, it was easy enough to rationalize stretching the Pacific Ocean into the Desert Southwest. However, even the most brazen sports fan would have a hard time making the case for the Pacific Ocean being anywhere near Utah or Colorado, where the 2011 conference additions dwell.
  Major Leonids Meteor Showers occur in thirty-three year cycles. Major closings of the I-405 are rarer still, with this one happening forty-six years later. Since 1998, the Rose Bowl has vaporized like a comet into the mind-numbing Bowl Championship Series (BCS). In January 2011, the TCU Horned Frogs played the Wisconsin Badgers at the Rose Bowl. Only the teams, their diehard fans and inveterate sports bettors know who won that game. Rather than being about geography, history and proud tradition, the Rose Bowl somehow morphed into a financial institution. Whether it is in support of sports betting or cold cash for the Tournament of Roses, it is all about the money now. Still, motorists on the I-405 can rest easy about a recurrence of the “UCLA Rampage” of 1966. Thanks to the BCS, it is unlikely that a victory in any future UCLA vs. USC game will affect commuters as they trundle up Sepulveda Pass toward The Valley. Will anyone in that line of cars chant, "Go Horned Frogs, go".
  On the afternoon of November 22, 1966, word got out on campus that UCLA “had been robbed” of their Rose Bowl berth. Almost immediately, spontaneous demonstrations started on campus.  Using tiredness as my excuse, I declined my friend Leonard’s fervent invitation to join the demonstrations.  Instead, I studied for a while and then fell asleep on an unmade bed in my dorm room.
  In that time of increasing political tension and sporadic campus violence, UCLA students were restive.  Still, our campus had not yet experienced any organized protests, as had happened up north at Berkeley.  From the drumbeat of Sgt. Barry Sadler’s Number one hit of 1966, “Ballad of the Green Berets”, we knew that an American war raged on in Vietnam. Still contested among LA riot aficionados is whether the 1996 UCLA Rampage was larger than the summer of 1966 Sunset Strip Curfew Riots. Those riots, associated with the closing of the nefarious Pandora's Box nightclub became world famous in 1967 when Steven Stills and the rock group Buffalo Springfield released their song, “For What it’s Worth”.  In the late fall of 1966, group consciousness on campus was looking for any excuse to get out of hand.  An unfair ruling by a commission of unnamed sports officials became the flash point for mob action.  
  In the early afternoon, a call to action swept through campus, with students yelling, “To the freeway.  Shut it down”. After the I-405 freeway closure, bonfires had flared into the night at campus demonstrations against the oh-so-important Rose Bowl berth.  Near midnight on November 22, 1966, Leonard came crashing into my room, still red-cheeked and sweaty from a long run uphill to the dorm.  Today, Leonard is a distinguished college math instructor and a published author.  That night, as I listened to his story, I wondered whether he had been one of the provocateurs.
  Interstate 405 is located over a mile from the UCLA campus, but undeterred by that distance; the demonstrators began their unruly march.  Down Westwood Blvd. they surged, and then west along Wilshire Blvd. to the freeway.  Once there, the mob scrambled straight up steep banks, or marched up the on-ramps and off-ramps to the San Diego Freeway.
  In the glare of afternoon sun, startled northbound motorists saw hundreds of young people chanting along the side of the freeway. Soon after their arrival, demonstrators began flagging down anyone who would stop. In the interest of safety, traffic slowed, and then one driver came to a halt in the slow lane. Lane, by lane, the budding anarchists proceeded, until all four northbound lanes of the I-405 freeway came to a complete stop.  Soon, highway patrol and LA Police arrived, threatening to arrest anyone who did not disperse. Like a school of fish, the crowds dispersed, and then reformed and retook the freeway. As more LAPD reinforcements arrived, officers with bull horns herded the crowd back to Wilshire Blvd. and then followed them on their long walk home.
  In my dorm room that night, Leonard was exultant.  Mobs could rule.  People had power.  He had been part of something bigger than himself, even if it was an anarchistic mob.  In an act of benevolent avoidance, my higher self had gently put me to sleep for the duration of events.  In that early version of what we now call a “flash mob”, there were no arrests or criminal charges filed. With impending wide scale protests against the Vietnam War, future demonstrations across the country were often less peaceful.
  With the benefit of forty-seven years of reflection, I believe that something important happened at both the UCLA Rampage and the more recent I-405 Carmageddon closures. Despite the divergent reasons for the closures, in each a bridge captured the public imagination. In 2011, California spent millions to topple half of a bridge, simply to add a carpool lane to the northbound side. In 1966, students discovered an energy bridge to their own future. Did stardust energy from Comet Tempel-Tuttle assist them in their peaceful, if raucous closing of the I-405?
  

  
  Dec. 4, 2012 - Reader Tom Conerly's comment:
  
  Thanks for posting the I-405 freeway photo from 1966. I searched for it to show my son in law. However, you might want to expand your blog...it was not just student unrest. After the announcement picking USC for the Rose Bowl, a bunch of us from Trojan Hall decided to do a victory lap, along UCLA's fraternity row.
  
  I was in the back seat of my roommate's Chevy Malibu SS 396 holding a speaker out the window, blasting the USC fight song. Behind us were at least 20 cars full of USC red and gold. As we made our second lap, hundreds of guys flooded out of the fraternities and chased us down Wilshire Boulevard. I remember running at least two red lights and barely escaping.
  
  Later after being radicalized, I did my best to "burn down USC", and married a UCLA girl, but that day in Westwood still stands out. All I mean from “burn down” was that I quickly lost any rah rah feelings for USC. I spent a lot of time at UCLA (Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee on the Janss Steps at noon for free) and always liked it there.
  
  See if you can find a pic of another of my seared memories-the 500 cop cars parked on the hill by the dorms in 1970.
  
  Dec. 4, 2012 - Jim McGillis' Response:

  Perhaps you are referring to the afternoon that fire alarms sounded almost simultaneously at Dykstra, Sproul, Rieber and Hedrick residence halls. Every police cruiser and fire truck in West Los Angeles headed for the dorms. There was so much apparatus on the streets that they created their own traffic jam. When first responders arrived, nothing was amiss, except for the sabotaged fire alarms.
  
  If we both recall the same episode, I wrote about that in my eBook. To keep the riff-raff out, I charge $.99 for the book. If you are not completely satisfied, the book has a 101% money-back guarantee. Ha!
  
  Although I will not disclose my sources, I knew both of the fire-alarm commandos. Although no one asked me to participate, I did little to discourage those who did. When four alarms sounded, the dispatchers at police and fire headquarters gave us everything that they had. Their heroic, yet futile response left me with an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach.
  
  Today, we might refer to such an act as domestic terrorism. Had the plot unraveled, there would have been several expulsions from UCLA that year, perhaps including me. How long is the statute of limitations on a crime like that?
  
  During the Radical 1960’s, many of us perpetrated antisocial acts against the institutions around us, sometimes even our schools. Looking back on it, there is no excuse for such antisocial activities.

  
  Email James McGillis

The I-405 Mulholland Drive Bridge Comes Down in Pieces

The new freeway featured four lanes in each direction, so traffic flowed with ease. A chain-link safety fence separated the northbound and southbound lanes. My father’s car was a 1962 Impala SS, with a 327 V-8 engine and a four-barrel carburetor. Gasoline was less than fifty cents per gallon and the speed limit was sixty-five miles per hour, which we easily reached.

By 1964, my friends and I used “the i405” as our quick conduit to the beach in Santa Monica. On a good day, we could travel the thirty miles in less than an hour. Even though the freeway was less than three years old, parts of the concrete roadbed had started to shift and sag. This made the downhill run from the top of Sepulveda Pass to Sunset Blvd. a white-knuckle ride in my friend Bill’s 1957 Chevy Belair. As the road heaved and turned, we passengers held our breath at the approach to each turn. Although the classic Chevy looked cool, handling on a rough and curvy road was not its forte. As Bill clutched the wheel, The Rolling Stones', “Satisfaction” blared out of the car radio.

 

In order to squeeze a carpool lane into the northbound direction, the elegant and timeless Mulholland Drive Bridge will come down in halves, beginning mid-July 2011. If all goes as planned, our former “bridge to the future” will disappear by half over a three-day weekend. During the planned 53-hour closure, the southern half will come down in a cloud of construction dust and debris. Despite adequate warning to stay away from the planned freeway closure, you can bet that many in Los Angeles will not get the message. Oblivious or curious, they will head for the beach or the Valley that weekend. After all, freeway traffic jams, called sig-alerts in LA, are a time-honored tradition.

Last winter I shot a few pictures of the Mulholland Drive Bridge, while traveling northbound in the afternoon rain. This week, I traveled in each direction over Sepulveda Pass and shot a few more images for posterity. After mid-July 2011, one half of this iconic bridge will be missing from the Los Angeles skyline. Until its two-phase bridge replacement reappears in several years, the I-405 through Sepulveda Pass will remain a work in progress, much as it has for the past fifty years.

Email James McGillis

The Story of Atlantis - Myth or Fact?

Chapter One

Soon to be retired from service, the Space Shuttle Atlantis completed its penultimate mission to the International Space Station (ISS) in May 2010. During that mission, Atlantis delivered a nine-ton Russian habitation module. That new section added cooling capacity and expanded living space within the existing Russian module.  

In July 2010, an ammonia-coolant pump attached to the outside of the ISS failed. The loss of that pump cut cooling capacity inside the U.S. module by half. If necessary, the improved Russian module could have provided life-sustaining shelter for the crew. In order to escape that fate, the crew powered-down all nonessential services. During three spacewalks, conducted over several weeks, two crew members attempted to replace the critical assembly. Not including preparation and recovery time, the third and final spacewalk lasted over seven hours. 

While conducting an earlier spacewalk, ISS astronauts had encountered leaky coolant connections. Upon reentering the vehicle, frozen ammonia crystals adhering to their spacesuits vaporized, creating a poison gas. During the 2010 pump replacement, astronauts observed ammonia crystals emanating like snowflakes from coolant quick-disconnects. In the vacuum of space, the astronauts became gravitational bodies massive enough to attract those tiny crystals. After the earlier contamination event, NASA put new procedures in place. Spacewalkers must now remain outside until sunshine evaporates any adhered ammonia crystals. At the rate of 15.7 orbits of Earth each day, the crew never waits long for another sunrise at the ISS. 

After 2006, a limited number of shuttle missions remained before retirement of the fleet. Using prudent planning, that year mission planners positioned four replacement coolant pumps on board the ISS. After shuttle missions conclude in late 2011, only Russian, or contracted rockets will visit the ISS for at least the following four years. Adequate spares on-board were an appropriate hedge against the need for a resupply via disposable rocket.  

On the third spacewalk of August 2010, the crew successfully replaced the failed pump. If the other functional pump had failed in the interim, heat damage to the ISS was a significant risk. Now we realize that NASA was a single failed-pump away from ordering evacuation of the U.S. Module. Later, calm-voiced NASA’s spokespeople belied the seriousness of the situation, discussing the pump replacement as if it were routine.

With electrical power and cooling capacity reduced for over two weeks, the ISS environment became warmer and darker. Not ironically, that is also happening here on Earth. With a steady increase in human-created carbon emissions floating in our atmosphere, particulate haze further darkens Earth's now warmer sky.

With crew safety uppermost in their minds, NASA and its international partners endeavor to keep the ISS functioning. Unlike the level of public interest during the Space Race, few of us today follow ISS news with regularity. As astounding as spacewalks may be, activities on the ISS appear to happen in slow motion. If we look past the disarming calm of weightlessness, human activity in space provides excellent parallels for our lives on Earth.

The Space Shuttle Atlantis shares its name with the lost or mythical City of Atlantis. Those who believe that Atlantis once existed, call it “lost”. Those who believe that Atlantis was only a story, call it a “myth”. After studying the subject for myself, I believe that the Atlantean culture existed on Earth, ending about 12,000 years ago. During their prominence, the Atlantean elite developed an advanced understanding of crystals as power sources. Lost in the Atlantean deluge, some ancient scientific principles we only now rediscover, as aspects of new energy.

As it happened, hubris and greed were the seeds of Atlantean destruction. In ancient Atlantis, energy often behaved differently than it does on Earth today. After many generations of transcending the effects of friction and heat, the Atlantean elite did not believe that mechanical or thermal failure were possible. Therefore, they expected their mechanical and electrical devices to operate indefinitely. 

Ignored by the elite, rapid-onset global warming had changed the underlying energy principles here on Earth. Like wax melting down the inside of a candle jar, large areas of Atlantis slowly slipped beneath the ocean waves. As the oceans rose around them, the Atlantean elite paid little attention. Possessing both arrogance and supreme self-confidence, they believed that they controlled Nature, not the other way around.

For a while, pumps protected what parts of Atlantean culture remained. However, a relentless period of global warming had overstressed their environment. As Earth energies became hotter and denser, the laws of thermodynamics came fully into play. One by one, water pumps that had worked for millennia began to fail. Similar to the cooling pump failure on Space Shuttle Atlantis in 2010, each Atlantean pump that failed put additional stress on those remaining. Eventually, a cascade of failures brought all Atlantean pumps to a halt. Soon thereafter, the advanced civilization known as Atlantis vanished beneath ocean waves.  

Clinging to both their gold and old energy thinking, most of the Atlantean elite perished in the flood. The few surviving elite embedded knowledge in their DNA regarding their failures. Also embedded was their old addiction to power, with which they had controlled the Atlantean citizenry. In a balancing of fate, an almost equal number of non-elite citizens survived the fall of Atlantis. Although non-elite survivors carried no exploitation gene, they embedded genetic knowledge regarding human-caused disasters. Their progeny held an unspoken desire to avoid catastrophe. Their approach to life on Earth featured forethought and planning.  

Most humans alive today are descendants of Atlantean seed. Therefore, we have a natural predilection towards ‘elite think’, ‘citizen think’ or a combination of both. Both ancient and current elite thinkers exhibit hubris, greed and indifference toward their fellow humans. During World War II, the Nazi elite learned to disguise their message through doublespeak and inflammatory obfuscation, often dressed as entertainment. Through media promotion of their causes, the elite may try to confound, confuse or sedate us. However, each of us retains the ability to detect the ratios of Atlantean elite or Atlantean citizen energies present at any given time and place.  

While reading mass consciousness, we may compare current levels of greed and hubris with those of hope or caring. Where we fall along that scale, ranging from self-serving to selfless indicates how far we have traveled toward enlightenment. When critical systems on the ISS include plans for routine maintenance or replacement, it appears that we have learned our Atlantean lessons. When we observe inadequate planning, testing and operation of critical life-support systems on Earth, we see that Atlantean-elite thinking remains present in our culture. 

Each time we hear, “It can't happen here”, “failsafe” or “unsinkable”, we know that Atlantean elite-thinking is involved. By ignoring safety precautions, one tacitly accepts as truth the magical thinking of the Atlantean elite. By purposefully ignoring salient facts, humans continue to employ Atlantean elite-thinking in a self-serving way.  

On April 15, 2012, the unsinkable steamship Titanic will pass its one hundredth anniversary lying at the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean. In the 1958 Hollywood production of 'A Night to Remember', Eric Ambler’s screenplay alluded to the horror of death by drowning. In James Cameron’s top-grossing 1998 production of ‘Titanic’, an attractive young star freezes to death before our eyes. Fifty years from now, will yet another filmmaker refloat the Titanic and its Atlantean tale of folly?

More recently, greed and hubris caught up with the owners and operators of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. Oil producer BP p.l.c. and its partners came to believe that they were immune to the laws of thermodynamics. In April 2010, while drilling off the coast of Louisiana, uncontrolled venting of hydrocarbon gas from a well resulted in an explosion and fire. Less than two days later, the twisted remains of the rig toppled to the seafloor. In addition to eleven deaths and many injuries that night, an estimated 4.9 million barrels of crude oil poured into gulf waters before operators could seal the well.  

No single person understood how all of the safety systems on the Deepwater Horizon platform worked. Before the explosion, undocumented modifications to on-board safety systems had precipitated numerous false alarms. After extensive undocumented modifications, no one knew if the systems still worked in concert with each other. Even so, top executives in both the owning and the leasing corporations had faith that their machines would not fail. Besides, if a failure occurred, the blowout preventer was there to save the day. Contented that no real emergency might occur, rig operators silenced many of the alarms. Later that night, everyone on-board received a rude awakening. Imagine being the individual who silenced those gas alarms, later to find a nightmare of explosive reality threatening all on-board.  

The Atlantean-elite thinking prevalent on both the Titanic and the Deepwater Horizon resulted in epic sea disasters. Over the energy bridges of time and space, we can almost hear the calls of the few citizens of Atlantis who survived. After triggering as many phantom alarms as they could, our Atlantean citizen ancestors fell silent once again. 

Along with the fall of Atlantis, there was a world population crash. With slow rates of recovery, it was millennia before another advanced civilization arose on Earth. Post Atlantis, only cultures that embraced the “profit motive” could qualify as advanced civilizations. Since that time, Atlantean-elite thinking has combined with the profit motive to create countless scenes of human war, death and destruction. In the tradition of Atlantis, today’s old energy elites hide their real motives, including their lust for both power and profit. 

Read Chapter Two

Read Chapter Three

Read Chapter Four

Email James McGillis