Mission Statement
Windy City Road Warrior Mission Statement: To wage noble campaigns upon the autoways, railways, waterways, and airways connecting to and from the Windy City, and to give a Chicagoan’s perspective upon transportation issues everywhere.
Most people know that “Windy City” is a nickname for Chicago, which has been my home town since 1980. Except for the four and one-half years that I spent at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, the rest of my life has been lived in the Chicago area. I was born in Hammond, Indiana, lived most of my grade school years in Gary, then back to Hammond. For three of my high school years we lived in Lowell, Indiana, and after leaving college (without a degree) I lived for a short time with a college acquaintance in Wheaton, Illinois. Since July, 1980, all of my home addresses have been within the city limits of Chicago. And, for 46 of my fifty years on the planet, I have lived within 50 miles of my current home in Chicago’s Greektown. Since the area within one hour’s drive of Chicago’s Loop is the main subject of my work, and since my identity as a Chicagoan informs everything I do, I felt “Windy City” would be an appropriate apellation for my business name.
The second part of my enterprise name is “Road Warrior.” The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines this as “a person who travels frequently especially for business.” It is a term of irony in modern usage, seemingly coming into slang use after release of the 1981 movie Mad Max: The Road Warrior. Certainly today’s business traveler may be subject to travails and tribulations while on the road, but it is a rare business trip indeed that would present the danger and violence encountered by Mad Max.
According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word “road” comes from the Old English rad meaning “riding, hostile incursion” and also related to the Middle English raid, “a riding, a journey.” The sense of the word as meaning an “open way for traveling between two places” is first recorded in 1596, and the current spelling dates to the 18th century. “Warrior” comes from the 13th century Old North French werreieor meaning, quite obviously, “one who wages war.”
So, “Windy City Road Warrior” could be “one who wages war” on the “open ways for traveling” to or from the “Windy City” and another place; it could also be “one who wages war” who comes from the “Windy City” and who happens to be on an “open way for traveling between” any two places on the planet. In my usage, it is both. While most of my writing and projects speak towards transportation modes that originate or terminate in Chicago, on this website and in my blog I will be happy to give a Chicagoan’s perspective to travel anywhere between any two places.
However, how do we wage this war? And who are we warring with? We are not endorsing road trips of the nature of Bonnie and Clyde or Natural Born Killers, or of Mad Max. Our War is more in the term of heroic campaigns, marches of triumph. What we are conquering are fears of travel, what we are battling is the desire to leave our history behind without learning from it. We are at war against people who believe, due to the rise of the interstates, that automobile travel in the U.S. is boring. We battle against the concept that only automobile highways are “roads” anymore–in the original context of “open ways of traveling,” trains and boats used roads of iron and water, rather than of concrete and asphalt. Waterways, railways, and autoways should all be part of our battle plan as we wage our ground war.
There is also an air war, and here I believe Windy City Road Warrior may be at times controversial. Due to the events since 9/11, I believe the true war in the airways is NOT the battle to increase security and eliminate any possibility of a repeat of that terrorist act. I believe the true war should be AGAINST security and FOR personal rights. At some point we must understand the pragmatic fact that although 3000 people perished due to the acts perpetrated on September 11, 2001, from 2002-2006, 193,252 people died on our roads and highways in motor vehicle crashes (Statistical Source: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration). This shows we are much better at killing ourselves than any terrorists are.
Perhaps the war really is on the autoways–a war of ourselves against our human nature, and against the natural laws of physical movement and gravity. This seems to be a more crippling and casualty-ridden war than the “war against terror.” The money spent on Interstate infrastructure was supposed to supply the benefit of greater speed and safety; perhaps we have given up our ability to travel blue highways and gained only a little time at the expense of nearly 200,000 lives in a five year period. “Bloody 66″ and the other early highways were perhaps more prone to punish poor driving, speeding, and impaired driving than modern superslabs, yet the superslabs have not proven to be the solution to human error of judgement and reaction.
Back in the air, what is the sense of having nearly everyone take off their shoes at airport security, when only one person has ever tried to bomb a plane with his shoes? We would be better served installing breathalizer interlocks in all cars because SOME people drive drunk. What is the sense of having all people carry no more than 3 ounces of a liquid on board a commercial passenger aircraft (in a one-quart plastic bag–no bigger, no smaller), when NO ONE has ever attempted to mix a liquid explosive onboard ANY aircraft? We would be better served requiring checkpoints on all expressways where all cars would be searched for open liquor and hazardous materials. (Please understand this is hyperbole–I am NOT actually advocating universal breathalizer interlocks and mandatory security checkpoints).
What does it say about us as a country that we allow ridiculous rules for safety on aircraft that we would never condone upon our highways? To me, it seems that we have allowed ourselves to be conditioned by an atmosphere of unwarranted fear. We feel in control when we are at the wheel of our car (even though a feeling of total confidence is contrary to the actual safety statistics), but we fear flying since it requires us to surrender control to the pilot and crew. Thus the added level of fear of terrorist acts compounds an underlying fear that rises from the inherent loss of personal control. We have locked ourselves in the airplane toilet of fearful neuroses, in the end fearing nothing but fear itself.
When I say in my mission statement that Windy City Road Warrior will “wage noble campaigns upon autoways, railways, waterways, and airways,” I expect that in most cases the battle will be to eradicate my own ignorance by exploring in ever greater detail the transportation history of Chicago, and then reporting on the findings. This is basically what all of my articles and books have been about, and my intention is to continue and expand as the future unfolds. Please join with me in our noble campaigns and investigatory battles at Windy City Road Warrior!
