Thursday, September 8 (57 hours to go)

After we dropped the “kid’s college fund” on shopping, we returned to our hotel.

I had to write a grad paper and my laptop still didn’t have internet connectivity.

For reasons that I still do not understand, my laptop would not connect to the hotel Wi-Fi, so I just used my phone.

(What do you mean by “used” your phone?)

I had to write a paper for a class that the course catalog described as a “doctoral analysis and pedagogy of using primary sources, historical scholarship and digital resources in classroom.”

(What exactly did you have to write?)

I had to write 750 words on my “Personal Philosophy of Education.” I combined Plato’s “Republic,” the prophet Isiah, and the book, “The Catcher in the Rye.”

(You wrote all that on your phone???)

I’m retelling that adventure right now, on my phone … but I didn’t come all the way to Nice, France to sit in a hotel room. I sat by the Riviera and wrote. I took a break halfway through to walk across the street and stand in the Mediterranean Sea. No sand, just stones littered the beach … and they hurt. After a minute of standing in what the Romans referred to as “Mare Magnum,” the pain on the soles of my feet was enough to make me return to my paper. Two hours later I loaded the work into Gmail…

(For spell check?)

…for grammar and spell check. After I uploaded the paper, it was time to put the bike together.

Traveling with my bike is always a nerve-racking experience for me.

(Has your bike ever been damaged?)

Yes, the month before on our trip to Half Ironman Mont Tremblant, Canada.

(Has it ever been lost?)

Yes, on our trip to Ironman Cozumel, Mexico in 2010.

(Maybe you should just stay home.)

I’ve had that thought on more than one occasion. More often than not, the bike arrives in the condition I packed it.

(So, it just pops out of the case like a moon rover on an Apollo moon mission?)

No, the bike does not fold out of the case, like a 1971 moon rover, ready to roll. Moon rovers opened like a kids stroller, but with just a tug of a rope.

(Some strollers require a physics degree to open.)

The rover was packed into the Apollo Lunar Lander so the astronauts could explore the moon.

America was thrust into a space race with the Soviet Union in 1957 when the Soviets launched Sputnik as the first manmade object to orbit the Earth. It finished its orbit 18 months later, but the American public’s fear that we were falling behind to the Soviets led President Eisenhower to create NASA—and the U.S. launched its own satellites. But in 1961, Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space and soon the space race became a competition to land a man on the moon. For the last three moon missions, a lunar dune buggy was added. Between August 1971 and December 1972, America took a battery powered, wire mesh wheeled vehicle along for the 244,000-mile journey to the lunar surface.

(You got this from the book you were reading on the plane?)

The book you are thinking of is called, “Across the Airless Wilds: The Lunar Rover and the Triumph of the Final Moon Landings.” I read it two years ago and I highly recommend it. No, the book I was holding when we boarded our flight to Nice was called “One Giant Leap” … and I left that book on the plane.

(So, you’ve read two books on the moon landings?)

I have 37 books on the Apollo program.

(You have 37 books on the moon landings???)

When I start to learn about a subject, I want to know everything there is to know about that subject.

(Did you leave anything important in that book?)

No, I’ve seen enough movies where the American loses his passport and is stranded in Europe. I keep all of our passports deep in the front pocket of my shorts like the homework assignment your child left buried at the bottom of their backpack.

(Like the candy wrappers we find in our cars on the day of Passover?)

Yup, you understand.

(So, why do we care about the Apollo moon landings in 2024?)

The portability of things, like strollers, pack-n-plays, bicycles and the miniaturization of technology begin here, in the effort to put a man on the moon.

(So, your ability to research and write a 750-word paper is connected to the moon landing?)

That and the bicycle I started to assemble in the hallway.

(Small hotel rooms?)

Yes, European hotel rooms are much smaller than the ones I have stayed in in America.

(Any problems with the bike assembly?)

David Roher is a USAT certified triathlon and marathon coach. He is a multi-Ironman finisher and veteran special education teacher. He is on Instagram @David Roher140.6. He can be reached at [email protected].