Laos: Remnants of the War Live On

This canoe is made from fuel tanks dropped from the air 

The Sierra Club magazine had an excellent article in its January-February issue on the long term impact of ordinance dropped on Laos during the Vietnam War.  

From the article:

Laos is the most heavily bombed country on Earth per capita. Between 1964 and 1973, in a sideshow to the Vietnam War, the U.S. military dropped more than 2 million tons of explosives on this landlocked Southeast Asian country...Up to 30 percent of the bombs that were dropped did not detonate on impact, and they remain volatile in the soil today. More than 50,000 people have been killed or maimed since the bombings began, with more than 20,000 of the casualties resulting from accidents after the war ended, according to a recent survey by Laos's National Regulatory Authority for Unexploded Ordnance.

It's No Laos in New England

It has snowed and snowed - so high that until today's 40 degree break, we've had 7 foot snowbanks. When we walk through the woods, we're hitting our faces on branches that usually wouldn't bother NBA forwards!

Here's a bike embedded in a snowbank in Belmont Center

Another newspaper writer falls off her bike

My wife and I both signed up for the Pan Mass Challenge a week ago. We'll be riding 192 miles from central Massachusetts to Provincetown on Cape Cod the first weekend in August. This will be the fourteenth year of riding for me -and the PMC is one of the highlights of my summer.  Training rides are one of the highlights of my spring.

Bella English, a Boston Globe columnist , has a frightening article in today's Globe magazine.  In September, she fractured her skull (despite her helmet) and had a pretty serious head injury which has left her on medical disability and with some residual cognitive deficits.

Scary stuff.

The snow is piled high now.  I hope her article will recede from my mind when the snow melts and the spandex calls.