He looked so sharp that day in his Army uniform, his hair, almost platinum-blonde, cut so close to his scalp.  No medals on his chest , but he hadn’t yet seen combat.   Didn’t matter to me.  I thought he looked proud and strong and regal, a man ready to take on the world.  I didn’t realize that he was barely out of boyhood, age nineteen at the time.

No, he was my big brother.  Nine years older, bigger, tougher.  He seemed every bit a grownup to me.  Deep voice, hair on his chest, all the markings of a man.  I stared out the window on that crisp Colorado morning, awe mixed with envy, as my oldest brother marched smartly down the driveway with my parents, climbed in the family station wagon and headed off to Vietnam.

I remember wondering if he would come home.  Even then I was attuned to the news; it was 1968, the war was growing exponentially and along with it, the body count.  Something told me he would be fine.  Big brother was tough as nails.  God would look after him, right?  He would do his duty, he would be fine, he would come home in a couple of years.

Looking back on it now, I smile at my own innocence, my own naïveté.  One of the earliest Christmas gifts I remember requesting was the “5-Star General’s Uniform” in the Sears catalog.  I enjoyed pretending to be a soldier, a leader, a man of valor.  Capture the Flag was fun when you played it in the backyard with some of the other kids on the block.  And here was my big brother, going to fight in a real war in a real Army uniform, looking so impressive and unfazed.

He must have been terrified.

I was right about most of it.  He did his duty, served honorably, fought hard.  Deployed near the DMZ as a frontline artillery observer, he followed orders, saw some terrible things, lost his closest buddies.

And then he came home.  Alive.  Uninjured, save for the wounds a soldier hides in his head.

We had the discussion once after he made it home.  He told me my turn was coming.  I remember answering that I thought the war would be over by the time I turned 18.  His four-word answer:

“Don’t bet on it.”

But I was right, he was wrong.  American involvement in the war ended while I was in high school.  Even the draft was gone by the time I turned 18.  It seemed at the time that our nation politely folded up its military forces like a battle flag and put them high on a closet shelf to be brought out again at some future time as needed.  So no, I never served.  It wasn’t that I was anti-military or even anti-war.  It just seemed that, by the mid-70’s, my brother and his buddies had done all the heavy lifting and there wasn’t much left for the kids like me who followed.

He doesn’t talk about it much.  I know some of what he experienced.  Most of it he keeps to himself.  I tell people that Vietnam didn’t do him any favors.   I think that’s the best way to put it.  He’s recently begun receiving disability payments through the V-A based on his exposure to Agent Orange.  It was a tough war.  Aren’t they all?

His country called.  He answered.  He served.  He’s proud of his Army record, proud to be one of those men who battled the enemies of freedom for this great nation, proud to have put in his time fighting a war that ultimately turned unpopular.

And his little brother is very, very proud of him.

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The sun is harsh and hot in Afghanistan’s Musahy Valley and it’s barely nine in the morning. Up here at about 7,000 feet, the thinner atmosphere doesn’t scatter the solar energy like it does at sea level; the natural coolness of this higher altitude is counterbalanced by rays more direct and searing. Underneath my Kevlar vest and ill-fitting helmet I have already sweated through my shirt which sticks to me now, front and back.

The Musahy looks and feels a lot like some of the mountain valleys in Colorado where I grew up. Back home, places like South Park feature a wide and lush valley floor walled in by incredibly rugged peaks. So it is here in Afghanistan, except that Colorado’s mountains shoulder a fine garment of greenery right up to timberline– spruce, fir and pine. These Afghan ranges seem devoid of anything but rock.

I’m tramping a dirt road with a small unit of Italian Alpine troops sent here under NATO auspices as part of ISAF, the International Security Assistance Force. The Italians’ Forward Operating Base is relatively new to this valley. They arrived in December, a handful of men to keep an eye on 62 villages scattered across 125 square miles. Estimated population: about 60,000. Among that population: an unknown number of Taliban or at least Taliban sympathizers. That’s part of the reason we are out this day on foot patrol. You might say we’re looking for trouble… and hoping we don’t find any.

We pass a school where some 500 boys are enrolled just in grades 8-through-12. The place is bursting at the seams; there’s no room for that many children in the meager classrooms now standing. Colonel Michele (pronounced mi-KAY-lay) Risi, commander of this Italian force, tells me that to handle the overcrowding the school is constantly running a kind of double-shift; half the boys are in classes while the other half are outdoors enjoying what you can only call ‘recess.’

I see a teacher dressed all in white carrying a switch of willow half an inch thick and close to five feet long. He’s shouting. Whatever is going on among the kids outside the school, he doesn’t like it. He chases the boys, wildly swinging the switch and yelling commands. They seem to have seen this drill before and manage to stay just beyond his reach. I’m glad I don’t see him connect—the weapon he’s using would raise a serious welt, maybe even break the skin. “The teachers,” Col. Risi tells me, “are judged not by how well they teach, but by how well they handle the switch.”

This school is just one of the myriad of projects on which the Italian troops are working. They’ve set up large temporary tents so more classes can meet, protected from the blazing sun. They’ve hired local men to build new permanent classrooms, and a wall around what passes for the ‘playground’ where children are now engaged in a mad scramble for a soccer ball. They’ve built two other schools, including a school for girls elsewhere in the valley.

In this culture, educating girls has long been condemned. But NATO has learned that some men are willing to break with tradition. Generally, the men who support educating women are the men who’ve been educated themselves. Because Afghans marry when young and tend to have children almost immediately, the hope is that—if enough boys can receive significant schooling here—the taboo against educating girls might be largely wiped out within a generation, and a quick one at that.

The soldiers’ list of public works goes on: they’ve drilled literally hundreds of water wells—including one in front of the school—so that valley residents can have reasonably pure water to drink. (Even though small streams course across the valley floor, Col. Risi tells me they’re polluted and not drinkable). Three medical clinics are up and running. Local police are now working with the NATO force, learning how to establish checkpoints to keep interlopers out of the valley.

You might have heard the concept of “winning the peace.” That’s what’s happening here. Col. Risi says until now this valley has been virtually ungoverned. There’s been no influence—and no help–from the provincial or national governments, ever. It’s been a kind of no-man’s land where the local clans ruled. The Taliban didn’t take over the government here; it simply inserted itself into the longtime political machine already up and running in the valley. Important to note, the colonel tells me, that the Taliban were and are not outsiders. They are the friends, cousins, uncles of the people trying to scratch out a living in this desolate place. His troops cannot defeat them simply with bullets and bombs.

The NATO forces must first bring stability and safety to the Musahy valley; in the days since the U.S.-led invasion, that has been largely accomplished. With the security component in place local people have to learn that they can trust these outsiders to improve their lives, which is after all a primary function of any government. Hence, the building of schools, the wells, the medical care for residents and veterinary care for their treasured livestock. NATO must prove that it can do more for them than the Taliban can.

It seems like a peaceful enough place and I feel odd at times, walking around surrounded by men with a small arsenal. It seems especially incongruous to pass the local children in their native dress as I’m decked out in body armor. But I have to remind myself that if the bullets should start to fly, the locals are not going to be the targets.

The bucolic scene—kids, babbling creeks, grazing livestock—is also a bit of a mirage. I ask Col. Risi if we can climb a perhaps twenty feet up a mountainside to get a high-angle shot looking down on our patrol. “I cannot recommend it,” he says. “We have found some of the land mines, but certainly not all of them.”

Worse—he tells me that just six days earlier in a pass a couple of miles from here, an insurgent used remote control to trigger a roadside bomb just as one of the Italians’ mounted patrols drove by. The vehicle was shredded; one of the colonel’s men, badly injured. He’s already lost one foot and is fighting now to keep the other. The war against the Taliban, the insurgents, chaos—it is just a few miles and a handful of days removed from where I’m standing.

Col. Risi is an optimist. He believes the battle to stabilize Afghanistan can be won, but he warns it will not be quick. A poorly-educated population, a lack of industrialization and a shortage of capital do not allow for a quick leap forward. The colonel estimates it will take years to get this nation on its feet, to effect enough positive changes that the insurgents are defeated once and for all and a sustained pace of progress and self-government takes hold. He hopes the Italians, the Americans and all the other NATO countries have the patience to see it through.

Otherwise, the Taliban is still here… waiting and watching and willing to drag the impoverished people of Afghanistan back into the eighth century.

–Jon Scott

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The morning sky in Kabul is never exactly a normal color.  It’s a hazy, wan, milky mess, more gray than blue, nature’s true palette obscured by the smoke of a million morning cook fires and the exhaust of this broken-down city’s assemblage of rattletrap rolling stock.  And then there’s the dust.

We’re on the outskirts of Afghanistan’s capital awaiting a chopper that will carry us into Taliban country; the coffee I’m downing might be the best I’ve ever had.  Leave it to the Italians to concoct a delicious espresso even in a war zone.

The sudden, guttural thumping of helicopter blades overhead says it’s time to go to work.  We depart the comfort of the base mess hall, strap on our body armor and head for the airfield.

I’m with two other guys who will make this assignment possible: U-S Army Lt. Col. Web Wright is my guardian angel and answer-man; Akbar Shinbari, my indefatigable cameraman, fixer and source of local knowledge.   Col. Wright is one of those walking contradictions our armed forces seem so good at producing; intelligent, soft spoken, polite-and really scary-looking when he dons his battle gear, slips on a pair of Oakleys and straps a holstered automatic to his chest.   With hands clasped in his lap as if meditating, jaw squared and eyes obscured, he just oozes an air of serene danger.

Wright clamps on his helmet and Kevlar vest and looks like a man not to be messed with.  I bundle myself in my NATO-issue Kevlar and headgear and look like a dork.   Akbar’s video confirms this.  But Akbar-perhaps the most genial photographer I’ve ever worked with-is much too kind to say so.  I’ve heard that the Afghan culture is very welcoming of strangers, and right now there’s nobody stranger in Kabul than me.

We leave the mess hall and notice a forest fire has broken out in this high desert.  As our Land Cruiser rolls toward the airfield, a towering cloud of smoke is boiling skyward, a brown pillar now supporting the milky sky.  But there is no fire and the tower is not smoke.  It’s dust kicked up in the rotor wash of the giant Chinook waiting impatiently for us to climb aboard.

The blades are as wide as desktops and thumping over our heads.  Unconsciously, I duck down.  Maybe I’ve watched too many episodes of M*A*S*H; this craft is so big those rotors wouldn’t touch me if I did my best basketball leap.  Its jet engines are screaming and hurling powerful streams of exhaust directly at us as we approach from the rear.   The blades pound; the combination of exhaust blast and rotor wash from above has the kerosene-tainted air convulsing wildly in waves that push and swirl.  I walk unsteadily, like a drunk, until I’ve climbed past the machine gunner in position on the boarding ramp and find myself safely inside this flying bus.

We’re off the ground within seconds.  I’ve noticed that virtually no piece of military hardware stays put for long in Afghanistan.  Such targets are too easy to hit if they’re standing still.

We head south from Kabul, flying low, maybe three-hundred feet off the ground.  We climb only to clear  the spiked teeth of a mountain range, and even then, the big ship hugs close to the forbidding landscape, all escarpments of rock from base to peak.  No trees, no grass-just jagged, angry stone.

The chopper drops down the other side and into the Musahy Valley, an unbelievably flat, wide expanse.  We fly across it very fast, and yet despite all the ground we cover, I see exactly one paved road.  The scenes dashing by below look almost Biblical.  Goats scatter as the thunderous machine roars overhead.  Flat-roofed houses with walls of mud and straw punctuate fields in which children are working.  An occasional cow bucks and flees in terror.

For a time the valley is verdant and green; then we fly over a long stretch that shows dry and gray as the moon.  The one advantage of such a bleak landscape, or so it would seem to me, is that it offers no hiding place to insurgents.  There are no houses, no trees, no boulders below us.  The three men stationed at this ship’s very large machine guns-one on each side behind the pilots and the one mentioned earlier on the Chinook’s tail boarding ramp-have a moment to relax their minds, if not their weapons.

We land.  Quickly we’re out of the chopper and it takes off on another mission.  As its thunder fades down valley and we head toward the small NATO outpost the Italians have established here, Col. Wright speaks but five telling words:  “Welcome to the eighth century.”

I look around and it’s easy to see what he means.  Absent the Italians’ base, its vehicles, sandbags and razor wire, there isn’t anything in sight that appears to have been made by machine.  A large herd of sheep is grazing unfenced in a pasture, tended by what looks to be a teen.  Children are running in our general direction, apparently believing the chopper must have disgorged something interesting.

We set out on a foot patrol with a small contingent of Italian Alpine troops who’ve made the valley their home.  Akbar and I are warned to keep to the middle of this walking convoy of less than a dozen men.  Gunners in the front will act as scouts, along with an explosives-sniffing dog that bears some resemblance to a German Shepherd.   More heavily-armed soldiers will trail behind us.  A small aerial drone–wingspan maybe three feet–is launched to fly ahead and beam back pictures that are monitored in a situation room at the base.  If there’s trouble, we’re told to get down, stay flat and look for cover if any can be found.  In this peaceful valley of gurgling creeks and bleating sheep, surrounded by peaks under a cloudless sky, it doesn’t seem like violence should intervene.  But in this part of Afghanistan, I will learn, trouble is never far away.

To be continued…

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It’s a bit disconcerting dropping in here for a visit. And I do mean ‘dropping’. The gigantic Air Force C-17 that dropped us here offers no windows, so it’s difficult to know exactly what’s going on. But I could tell we were at a substantial altitude—I’m guessing 20,000 feet or so—when the pilot dropped the gear.

Suddenly the roar of an already-loud aircraft notched up another dozen decibels as the outside air screamed past the landing gear now hanging out in the airstream. A pilot will ‘fly dirty’ (meaning the airframe isn’t smooth and clean) if he wants to get down in a hurry. The exposed gear creates a huge amount of drag that helps the jet fall out of the sky.

I could feel the giant craft tip nose down for our steep approach to the runway. The C-17 is a huge target, and with a 4-star general onboard, the Air Force was taking no chances. There would be no low flybys of the jagged peaks surrounding Kabul, just in case some lucky-shot insurgent might be waiting with a shoulder-launched missile.

Once on the ground it was a mad scramble to get off the plane, but executed with military precision. I can honestly say that the worst part of this entire trip—repeated over and over again—is donning the mandated body armor for any trips outside secure NATO installations. The “bulletproof” vest is heavy and of course, doesn’t allow air movement, so almost as soon as I’ve put this thing on in the 90-plus degree heat, I’m drenched with sweat. That’s not so bad; I can deal. What’s absolutely awful is the heavy protective “one size fits none” helmet. The thing weighs about five pounds with virtually no padding, only a taut spiderweb of nylon webbing that grinds into my scalp. More journalists should be required to wear this stuff when dispatching stories about battlefield conditions; I have new respect for our troops, fighting in conditions like these wearing much heavier gear than the cumbersome load now burdening me. I’m told mine is the “old style” helmet; the new ones are more comfortable. Yeah. Right.

We piled in the back of a convoy of British military vehicles, sitting sideways on bench seats, knees interlocked with whoever’s sitting on the opposite bench. We’re given a briefing about the drive ahead, how to react if we should come under fire. Somehow it seems a bit less ominous delivered in a crisp British accent. I notice mine is the last vehicle of the convoy. Great. When insurgents do attack—not that I’m expecting such a thing—they like to go for the either the head or tail of the procession. How comforting.

We tear off, weaving through the dusty streets of Kabul. Even on straight stretches of road, our driver constantly makes “S” turns using all available lanes—if these so-called roads actually had lanes. Not because traffic is a problem–which it is. The constant change of course is a protective maneuver designed to make us harder to hit in case our convoy should come under attack.

The vehicle commander in the right seat is talking into a radio headset, keeping up a constant chatter with the rest of the convoy. Eyes peeled on nearby traffic, looking for anything out of the ordinary, hoping to spot any potential car bombers that should happen upon us. It’s all very professional and executed with cool caution; but a smooth ride, it is not. Accelerate sharply, hit the brakes, clutch, gas, swerve, bounce—the helmet feels like it’s shaving my scalp at the follicles as we lurch along these potholed paths.

The Brits’ delivery mission is successful, and after what seems like a very long fifteen minutes we are pulling up to the ominous concrete barricades and blast walls marking the entrance to the ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) compound in Kabul. Once inside, I-D’s are checked, more gates are lifted, the armed soldiers traveling with us climb out to clear their weapons of live ammunition.

We drive past a mustard-yellow building, a fairly grandiose structure for this impoverished and war-ravaged country. I’m told it now serves as the headquarters of the ISAF forces. In a delicious (and deliberate) bit of irony, it was the headquarters of the Taliban when that repressive regime ran this nation a scant few years ago.

We’re given another briefing and dispatched to our rooms. We’re safe.

Welcome to Kabul.

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You want to see a bit of delightful chaos?

Descend on an impoverished country that holds an exceedingly young population. Bring almost 60 nice, new bicycles. Set up a dignified ceremony involving representatives of the Afghan Cycling Federation and the “Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, Martyrs and Disabled.” Then try to turn over the bikes to those who are intended to receive them — a group of kids from a Kabul orphanage, and members of the Afghan National Cycling Team.

Pandemonium.

As I mentioned in my earlier dispatch, it’s one of the events that brought me to Kabul. Bicycling Magazine teamed up with Specialized (the bike company) and NATO to deliver these bikes to Afghanistan. The U.S. Air Force did the heavy lifting—literally. Two tons worth’ of bikes and assorted repair equipment. Now that they’re assembled and ready to roll, the great handover is underway.

I remember getting a new bike for Christmas as a kid. It’s a great feeling, but in a nation as rich as ours, such a thing can hardly be described as out-of-the ordinary. In the destitute place that is Kabul, handing out new bikes, no strings attached, is almost beyond comprehension– like walking up to a guy in a parking lot in our country and tossing him the keys to a Rolls-Royce.

It begins slowly enough as though no one can believe this good fortune. Suddenly it’s a free-for-all; little fingers clamping on handlebars and desperately trying not to let go. The kids are from one of the many orphanages in this country; their deceased parents, in most cases, victims of the Taliban’s vengeful rule. It’s hard to know how old the children are. Because of the harsh living conditions and poor nutrition, a 14-year-old here might appear to be ten.

I see a boy straddling one of these two-wheeled wonders and ask what he’ll do with it. “Go to school,” he declares with a grin. There simply aren’t enough schools anywhere in Afghanistan, so most kids have to walk miles to attend. A bike will make it possible for him to actually go to classes now. He’ll ride this gift from America into his future.

Is this a drop in the bucket? Yes. Five million people just in Kabul, according to the best estimates, a huge percentage of them children. Is it worth doing? The smiles of amazement on these faces tell me yes.

The cycling team is overwhelmed. They are adults, or closer to it than the orphans, but their unbridled joy is obvious. I ask why it is that the women of the team are decked out in full tracksuits on this 95-degree day. Stupid question. This is an Islamic country, after all, and they’re expected to keep their arms and legs covered at the very least. In some quarters of this city, for them to be seen riding a bicycle at all is viewed as heretical and hence, very dangerous. For them to show up, track suit or not, shows their tremendous courage. They would not be here—none of us would be here—were the Taliban still in power.

One image will remain with me for life: A man, probably 60, formally dressed in a suit and tie, could not bear to stand idly by as the children received their gifts. He hopped aboard one of the bikes and pedaled around the square, a huge smile creasing the weathered corners of his face. No doubt he has seen the worst life in Afghanistan has had to offer; forty years of war, Kabul leveled by invading armies time and time again. But on this day he is looking to his nation’s future. And on this bike, his nation’s future looks just a bit more fun.

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Rebuilding a nation. It sounds like such a grand, impossible feat. But as the Chinese proverb goes, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.” The rebuilding of Afghanistan is underway. This is a story about one of those little steps.

A bicycle might not seem a likely instrument of international aid. Fifty seven bikes, maybe a bit closer. That’s how many bikes were loaded on board the gigantic C-17 jet that brought us here. Two tons of bicycles, donated by the cycle company Specialized in a giveaway — It would seem a simple thing to send a few bikes overseas. It isn’t.

Coordinating their arrival was a logistical feat; thank goodness for the military efficiencies of NATO and the US Air Force. Once the bikes were safe in Kabul at the ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) base here, another masssive task loomed: getting those bikes assembled.

The crew of four from Bicycling did most of the work, with help from various military personnel who stopped by to help. I pumped a few tires and installed a few pedals and seat posts; I’m good with a wrench, but the Bicycling folks are the artists. Hours and hours and hours of assembly later, the bikes were ready to roll.

It took a lot of planning just to figure out who should receive this gift.

Kabul is still in some respects a city of survival of the fittest. Power rules. Award these bikes to some deserving private citizens and, it was feared, they’d instantly become the target of thieves. Various plans were considered and scrapped. Finally it was decided to award the bikes to two national entities; the fifty new Specialized bikes went to a government ministry that runs orphanages throughout Afghanistan. Another seven bikes of various types were assembled for Afghanistan’s national cycling team–the riders who hope one day to compete in the Olympics.

Here’s a telling indicator of just how severe life remains in this country:

The Afghan team was asked whether they might like to have a few mountain bikes to ride; road riders often mix up their training regimen with some off-road work. The simple answer was no, thank you. We don’t ride the trails in this country. Too dangerous. They’re often pocked with land mines.

More on the award of the bikes–and my Afghanistan adventure– coming up….

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We are six miles above Prague, more or less, about an hour into our flight to Kabul, Afghanistan.

Seven hours to go. This cavernous US Air Force C-17 Globemaster roars along at 33,000 feet—and I do mean roars. We’ve all been issued foam earplugs for the flight and I’ve topped mine with a pair of those noise-cancelling headphones. (Great packer and trip-planner than I am, I neglected to bring an Ipod to pump any music through them — but I do have some nifty headphones keeping my eardrums happy.)

Liftoff from Brussels, Belgium came around 7:30 this morning. Brussels, of course, is heaquarters of NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. I’m onboard a NATO flight and find myself in very esteemed company. Four-star General John Craddock—the Supreme Commander of NATO forces in Europe–is onboard. Gen. Craddock is responsible for roughly 50,000 NATO troops on the ground in Afghanistan, and of those, about 21,000 are U-S forces. He’s headed back to Afghanistan to check on his people and the progress they’re making in stabilizing a country wracked by years of war and hardship.

Also onboard are 18 members of the Council on Foreign Relations. They’ll shadow General Craddock as he crisscrosses Afghanistan to see for themselves this nation at the nexus of so many foreign policy debates raging around the world today. There’ll be briefings from NATO personnel and U.N. and Afghan officials.

And me? I’m onboard to report those stories, yes, but also something a little more concrete and perhaps even more meaningful for a dozens of deserving people—especially children– in Afghanistan. More on that in a moment.

Earplugs in, headphones on, nothing to watch out the window because essentially there are no passenger windows in this flying freighter. Not much talking because we have to shout to be heard; we’ve been warned we’ll be hoarse by the end of the flight if we keep that up. So I sit, and think, and type.

I think of what it must feel like to be in Gen. Craddock’s shoes, to know that 50,000 men and women are depending on the decisions he makes each day. I’m a guy who often finds it overwhelming to maintain a handle on our four children. Once I (temporarily) left behind our 8-year-old daughter at a park after her brother’s baseball game because I can be a scatterbrained doofus (who also forgets his iPod). To be charged with the care of 50,000 others? I’m in awe of the responsibilities of this general and the men and women like him who lead our forces throughout the world.

That gets me thinking about our oldest son, now almost finished with his “plebe” year at West Point. I’ve blogged about his experience before and I owe you some retro-blogging about how his year has progressed. Assuming he makes it through graduation, he could be leading troops somewhere in the world a scant three years from now. A couple of blinks ago I was battling with him to turn off the video game, clean up his room and finish his homework; a few more blinks in the future and he might have some young private’s life depending on his leadership. Pride, patriotism, excitement, fear — a father’s emotions are wrestling one another for dominance at 33,000 feet.

Smack over the middle of the Black Sea now. I’m also in awe of this flying machine. You might know that I’m a private pilot, licensed to fly a single-engine plane that weighs around 2500 pounds fully-loaded. You could stack 75 of them in this behemoth and still get off the ground; the C-17 can carry almost 90 tons.

Tanks, cargo, emergency supplies—this jet can haul it all with an interior that crews configure to meet the need of the mission. On this flight, we passengers are seated airline-style in 15 rows of five seats across bolted to the floor; next trip, pull out the seats and strap down a couple of Bradley Fighting Vehicles.

The interior of the C-17 is all business, with the utilitarian look of a factory. Hoses, ducts, wiring and hydraulic lines course along the ceiling; ports, straps, switches and placards line the walls; the floor is no-nonsense aluminum with abundant abrasive non-skid strips and beefy recessed tie-downs that will lock the next load.

I’m invited to the flight deck where a couple of impossibly young Air Force aviators are hurtling this monstrous machine through the sky at .8 mach, somewhere around 500 miles per hour. As a fellow member of the aviation fraternity, I proudly alert them that I have my single engine license. We are flying into a war zone after all and the Walter Mitty in me imagines that they just might need my help. They tell me that if three of ours flame out and we’re down to just a single engine, they’ll call.

At the rear of the plane, in several towers stacked on pallets looming high above my head, is the primary reason I’m making this trip. Bicycles. Fifty-seven of them, boxed and awaiting assembly. Rugged and lightweight—yet a couple of tons in the aggregate, along with repair equipment we’re taking along—they’re on their way to orphans in Kabul.

Bicycling Magazine teamed up with the bicycle maker Specialized to bring these bikes to some kids who’ve seen nothing but deprivation so far. Bicycling has been doing these “Bike Town” giveaways for quite awhile; this year, our “Happening Now” team at Fox News Channel is joining them. Our parent company, Newscorp, is rapidly working to make its worldwide operations carbon-neutral. Encouraging people to get out of their cars and onto their bikes is one component of that program.

Of course, for the orphans awaiting us in Afghanistan, these bikes aren’t about cutting carbon emissions, reducing oil dependency or saving on gas. They simply offer the keys to an entirely new life. It’s impossible for me to imagine the hardships these youngsters have seen, but the Bicycling staffers who’ve been running this program for years tell me the simple gift of a bicycle can effect tremendous, positive changes; that past recipients—in America and in poverty-stricken third world nations—have seen their lives transformed. I can’t wait to see what happens to these kids in Kabul when we take the wraps off their brand-new Specialized bikes.

Somewhere over ___ now. Afghanistan awaits. I’ll keep you posted.

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