Scot McKnight's "The Blue Parakeet" - a review

Blue Parakeet coverWhen Zondervan offered up free early copies of Dr. Scot McKnight’s The Blue Parakeet for bloggers to review, I knew I wanted to get in on the action. I’ve enjoyed reading Scot’s (he won’t mind if I use his first name here, I think) blog for some time now, and while I knew he typically inhabits a spectrum of belief a little more emergent than I find myself, I looked forward to reading his thoughts on the Bible, or, as the subtitle of the book says, “Rethinking How You Read the Bible”. (Dr. McKnight is a professor of religious studies at North Park College in Chicago. He also wrote a volume on Galatians in the NIV Application Commentary series.)

Scot lays out his question in the first chapter: “how, then, are we to live the Bible today?” Sure, there are those folks who say that we follow all of it, but really, he says, we “pick and choose” what we live out. He knows that phrase will make us uncomfortable, but he does that to a purpose. We are so used to our denomination’s (or our own) interpretations of Scripture, which help us know which parts we follow and which parts we don’t, that we’ve often stopped thinking about how we go about that interpretation in the first place.

McKnight asks us to look at the Bible and first understand the whole sweep of history - from creation to the fall to redemption to the end. Within that sweep, then, we can start to see how the individual pieces fit. Just as we shouldn’t take a single verse out of context in a chapter, we shouldn’t take a single chapter (or a single book!) out of context of the greater whole. He also encourages us to distinguish between God and the Bible. The Bible is one way God has chosen to reveal Himself to us, but the Bible isn’t God. We don’t worship the Bible. We worship God. (This whole distinction is a useful reminder for those of us who have been in churches where precise, “literal” adherence to the Scripture (at least, the passages deemed “important”) has been given overly-high priority.)

I really enjoyed, appreciated, and agreed with the first two-thirds of The Blue Parakeet. Then Dr. McKnight, in a move he fully admits will not sit well with some, uses his principles of Biblical interpretation to argue for the acceptance of women in pastoral (teaching/leadership) roles in the church. And here is where I lose him. I know that this is one of his pet causes, but it just doesn’t work for me, I’m not convinced.

A few weeks ago on his blog, Dr. McKnight talked about his interpretation of 1 Timothy 3 (a passage that doesn’t get touched on in The Blue Parakeet), and argues it this way:

However, it is an inference to claim that only males can be elders or that all elders must be males. Why do I say this? Here’s why: Paul does not say “Elders must be males.” He assumes the elders to whom he writes are males, but he does not explicitly require that elders be males. Again: he assumes they are males, he says things that apply to males, but Paul does not explicitly say that elders must be males. [Emphasis in the original.]

And that just isn’t a convincing argument to me. You have to assume and read just as much into the passage to come up with his interpretation as you do to come up with the traditional interpretation, and, with McKnight’s position, you further have to ignore 2000 years of the church’s historical understanding of the passage. Furthermore, he argues that the list of qualifications in 1 Tim 3 shouldn’t be considered “rules for” or “qualifications of” elders - rather, that it should be considered “symptoms of virtues expected of leaders for Christians in the 1st Century”. And why? Because, first of all, the lists of 1 Tim 3 and Titus are different, and second, because “we know that many pastors/elders/deacons have children who don’t believe and who are rebellious, some are quarrelsome, some are not hospitable, and not all have a good reputation with outsiders”. In other words, because some who have held the role of elder in the church have failed to meet these standards, therefore they must not be “standards”. Begging your pardon, Dr. McKnight, but isn’t that like saying that since people break the speed limit that the speed limit must just be a “symptom of a virtue expected for drivers in the 21st century”? But I digress.

All in all, I’d recommend Dr. McKnight’s book for a good fresh look at how we interpret Scripture. The degree of “groundbreakingness” (surely that’s not a word, is it?) you feel when reading it will, in large measure, depend on what Biblical tradition you have grown up in and/or studied. Be cautious, though, when you reach the portion that’s interpretation; the quest for “rethinking” needs to continue to be guided by wisdom and historical perspective.

The Blue Parakeet will be released on November 1, 2008, and can be pre-ordered at Amazon.

The Coffee Experiment, Day 4

I’m not sure whether to call this Day 4 or Day 6 of The Coffee Experiment. Do I count the weekend where I didn’t drink coffee? I guess I’ll be conservative and call this Day 4.

The office coffee, to this point, has been palatable. While being Folgers, which Allie assured me Saturday night isn’t really coffee, it has been drinkable with a bit of powdered creamer added for good measure. This morning, though, is a different story. This morning the coffee is bitter and nasty. Glad I got some sleep last night because I’m not gonna be getting any caffeine assistance this morning.

Daniel noted that for this reason he takes his own coffee to work. While at the grocery store yesterday I was contemplating picking up some coffee to brew at home, but thought I might wait a few more days to see how The Experiment pans out. After this morning, I’m thinking I might accelerate that purchase schedule a bit.

The Coffee Experiment, Day 2

For 31 years I have professed to very much dislike coffee. If in need of caffeine to keep me going, I will resort to a diet pop of some sort, or, in extreme cases, Red Bull. However, my Diet Pepsi consumption levels have been high for the past month, and given the cost of Diet Pepsi and the knowledge that even diet pop has been shown to be not-so-good for you in studies, I figured it was time to give the coffee a shot. We’ve got a communal coffee pot here in the office where Folgers is brewed for donations.

Yesterday was day one. I took my coffee black and it was not too bad. The caffeine did its job just fine, and I didn’t find myself craving the Diet Pepsi for the buzz… only for the sweetness. I had brought a Diet Pepsi along and went ahead and drank it for lunch.

Today is day two. I started the morning with two cups of coffee, this time using some non-dairy creamer, which I found helped things out quite a bit. And today I haven’t craved Diet Pepsi at all. Coffee also seems to fill me up less than the pop did; it feels more like I’ve just drank lots of water.

Anyway, I don’t know that I’d consider myself a total convert yet, but two days in I’m appreciating the concept of drinking coffee. Next stop: brewing it for myself at home in the mornings. I’ll wait a bit for that one and see if the habit takes.

Why I dislike salespeople - or at least their tactics

Update: I received a response from Rainsoft of NE Iowa that very much helped to resolve the situation. Click here to read about it.

Last week while shopping at Home Depot, a nice lady struck up a conversation with us, and proceeded to ask if we’d ever had our water tested before. Would we be interested? It’d take about an hour, and Home Depot would give us a $20 gift card for our trouble.

Oh sure, we figured, we’d not had our home water tested before. And yeah, we expected a sales pitch about some water treatment system, but whatever. And we can always use a $20 Home Depot card.

The night before our scheduled appointment we got a phone call from a call center confirming our appointment, making sure multiple times over that yes, both Becky and I were going to be home at that time, and then asking a series of questions that really didn’t have anything to do with our home water solution. Becky answered as few as she could and then hung up the phone. We ended up having to call back to reschedule, and we ended up on the calendar then for 4 pm Monday.

At five minutes until 4 the lady we had met at Home Depot knocked on our door with her three briefcases of equipment. Guess we tried to cut it too close by giving the girls a bath, but hey, who ever shows up early for an appointment? So, we rushed the girls out of the tub and set them up with an hour-long TV show.

We sat down at the kitchen table and she told us briefly about her company, RainSoft. Then came the water testing. The kitchen sink didn’t quite work to hook up her little mini-water-treater, so we all huddled in the bathroom as she ran a battery of tests. I knew she was getting verbose, but next thing I knew we were still running tests and it was 5:30. That’s right, 90 minutes, and we weren’t even close to getting the sales pitch. She did let us taste a bottle of their tasty drinking-water-treated water, though.

Finally the tests were nearing completion, so she set us down and worked us through her little notebook-driven pitch, warning of bad things like acid rain (didn’t that get debunked at least a decade ago?), chlorine (“many water systems have more than is safe for a swimming pool!” oh, guess what, we don’t have any in our water), and other nasty chemicals that can cause bad things. (Guess what: we don’t have those, either.) Her sources were as reliable as Women’s World magazine articles from the late 1980’s can be. Eventually we found out that our water is very hard (which we already knew), but otherwise safe.

So then it was time for the sales pitch. It was as bad as a TV infomercial. Guess what? They normally charge $300 for installation. But they’ll waive that today. Then the price of the unit is $4000. And, oh, by the way, you don’t really need the drinking water filter, so how about a home air filtration system instead? Normally it’s $2000, but how about today’s special deal: it’s only $1000! What a great deal! (I would’ve really liked the air filtration system about the time she walked in the door - she must’ve been smoking in her car all the way here. The dining room smelled of smoke for 30 minutes after she left!)

Then she “ran the numbers”. Here’s what a typical family spends on cleaning supplies. You won’t need to spend that much at all because of your soft water. Oh, and we’ll give you a long supply of soap so you won’t need to buy any at all. Here, Chris, you run the calculator. Are you with me on these numbers? They make sense, right? Here, so see? You can get our deal for only $99/month. You’ll actually be saving money! Don’t believe us? We have this free coupon program we’ll toss in free for 5 years, too! Just as a special gift!

It was nearly 7 pm when we had finally convinced her it didn’t matter how rosy her numbers were, we weren’t about to open up a $5000 line of credit to buy the thing tonight. She sullenly packed her bags and audaciously asked for the names and phone numbers of 5 homeowning friends who she might be able to contact. “As a favor to” her, she said. She’d get a gas voucher if we gave her names. We declined.

So, if you’re our salesman reading this, here are some helpful tips for how to make a sale to this cynical engineer next time:

  • Be on time and don’t go past the time you said you’d take. I have three hours between the time I get home from work and when my kids go to bed. Don’t take all of them. Did you ever wonder when we were going to eat supper?
  • Don’t make us feel like we’re doing you a favor by listening to your pitch. We don’t owe you anything.
  • Don’t use the old bait-and-switch. Sure, the nifty specially-filtered bottled water tastes good. But then you didn’t recommend it for us. And you didn’t let us taste the normally-filtered water. Tsk tsk.
  • Be up-front about the costs, including the financing. I’m a pretty sharp guy, I know how the numbers work. You preach $99/month up front, but when I ask “for how many months?”, you finally admit that it’s just a $99/month minimum payment on a line of credit that charges 17.99% interest. That’s 8 years at $99/month. Ouch.
  • Don’t try to rush me into a sale. Seriously, you’re asking me to make a snap decision, without doing any other research, on a $5000 system? In 10 minutes while you’re here staring at me? If it’s a good value today, it’ll be just as good a value tomorrow. If not, you’re trying to pull one over on me. For shame.
  • Don’t try to talk circles around my wife. Yeah, she was struggling trying to verbalize her objections to the deal. But making her feel stupid because she doesn’t see it your way? Bad form. A little hint: if I have to choose between my wife and you, she’s gonna win every time and twice on Sundays. Be glad it wasn’t a Sunday.
  • If you’re really trying to sell a product, leave some literature behind in case I change my mind. You didn’t even leave as much as a business card tonight. That gave me the idea that you were only in it for the quick sale tonight, and not interested in the long-term cultivation of a customer.

Now, what have I learned? Maybe I should’ve just turned down the test in the first place. But really, is there some unspoken social contract that obliges me to purchase the product because I invited the salesperson into my home to make their pitch? I didn’t think so. In the future I’ll stick to doing my research on the internet and proactively contacting vendors when I want to make a purchase, thank you very much.

Changes Coming

Tonight after the service at Imago Christi, I read this brief letter to the congregation:

It has been a blessing to be at Imago Christi this year, to serve as an elder and as worship leader, and to help plan and organize a church in its very first days of existence. It is therefore with sadness tonight that I come to tell you that my family and I will be leaving Imago Christi Church as of the end of this month.

Why are we leaving? Like any decision, there are a multitude of reasons each having a small part in the big decision. Primarily, though, it comes down to personal and family needs, and the conviction that I need to reprioritize my life with family in mind first. Some have already asked “well, can’t you stay at Imago and just reduce your responsibilities?” and believe me, we have wrestled long and hard with that question. I have had something of a pattern of this my past several years in ministry - needing to recalibrate, trying to reduce, finding it impossible to effect permanent change. It is that history, as much as anything, that has convinced me (and Becky, too) that bigger change is necessary.

In case I haven’t been clear about it already, this isn’t a case of anyone being forced to leave or asked to leave or pushed out - quite the opposite, I have been pleaded with at length to stay. We are still very much behind the mission of Imago Christi, and our prayers go with you. I know that some of you do not or will not understand quite why we made this decision. And that’s OK. If you have questions feel free to talk to me afterwards. But please know that we have prayed much about this, and really feel like we are following God’s leading here. So we go. And so we trust, and pray that you will, too, that God is at work in this, both for our family, and for Imago Christi as a church body.

This has been a very difficult decision for us over the past couple of months. In the end, though, we feel like this is where God is leading us - to make a break and try and re-form things in a way that works better for our family. We don’t know where we’ll end up for church, but we’ll be looking around. That’ll feel weird after nearly 10 years with mostly the same folks at Noelridge and Imago.

One day at a time.

Watching our tone

Over the past two weeks’ political conventions I have watched most of the major speeches and then headed to my computer to check Twitter, the blogs, news sites, and online forum that I frequent. What has astonished me these past two weeks is the amount of bitter, vitriolic tone that has come not from the politicians (where I expect it) but from supporters of both sides.

Now, I’m not talking about people complaining bitterly about the other side misrepresenting their candidate’s positions (which both sides do). I’m not talking about people finding creative ways to describe their opponents’ apparent inexperience or lack of qualifications. (Both sides do it, and both have their share of inexperience.)

I’m not talking about people you’d expect the worst from, people like Hannity and Limbaugh on the right and The Huffington Post and The Daily Kos on the left. I’ve done my best to tune all of them out for a while now.

I’m talking about Christians. People who I know are good, kind people. The kind of people you’d want to sit down and have a beer with and discuss life. The kind of people who you’d want serving in your church, ministering to you or your friend in need, teaching your kids in Sunday School. And these last two weeks the things I’ve heard and read from these folks have surprised me. Name-calling. Making fun of candidates for their “creepy laugh” or their funny accent or the way they dress. Things that they wouldn’t ever in a million years think of saying about a friend… or a visitor to their church… or someone they met on the street. But because that person is the current representative of a political view that they disagree with or fear, there seems to be no limit to the insults that can be hurled.

Professor and author Gene Veith today on his blog asks “Why the vitriol?” He asks, in part:

We’ve discussed controversial theological points and complex moral issues on this blog and stayed friendly. Why do we lose it when it comes to politics? There may be good reasons, but I’d like us to think about what they are.

With due respect, Professor, I’m not so sure about good reasons. In fact, I want to go a little further and say this:

It’s wrong.

If it would be wrong to make fun of your co-worker’s funny-sounding name, it’s wrong to make similar fun of Barack Obama.

If it would be wrong to derisively mock your neighbor’s creepy laugh, it’s wrong to mock John McCain’s.

If it would be sinfully unloving to deride the parent of an unwed teenage mother who visited your church last week, it’s just as sinful and unloving to deride Sarah Palin’s current circumstance.

Why do we think that because there’s a presidential election on that we’re suddenly exempt from 1 Peter 3?

Finally, all of you, live in harmony with one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing. For,

“Whoever would love life and see good days must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from deceitful speech. He must turn from evil and do good; he must seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”

I’m not calling for the end of all political debate. I’m not saying that Christians shouldn’t have strong political views, or endorse candidates, or argue the issues.

But we should keep it to the issues. There are plenty to discuss and argue. If we listen instead of bluster, we might just learn something from the other guy, too.

So, friends, we shouldn’t be mocking John McCain because he has a weird smile and laugh. We shouldn’t be making fun of Barack Obama because he has (compared to recent political candidates) a strange-sounding name. We shouldn’t be deriding Sarah Palin because she sounds like an extra from Fargo. And all that jesting about Joe Biden’s hair plants? At least do it in good cheer.

How much experience have presidential and VP candidates had?

A warning to my casual readers: this post is going to get more than a wee bit nerdy, and probably a bit political, too.

OK, with that out of the way, let me note that one of the things that’s been bugging me ever since John McCain’s announcement of Sarah Palin as his VP choice last week is that while there’s been a veritable chorus describing her as “inexperienced” and “unqualified”, no one has really bothered to set down what they thought a VP’s experience should be. I had this discussion with a guy who is a big Obama supporter over on a forum I frequent, and even he was unwilling to suggest a criteria other than that it should be “the same as if they were running for president”.

I decided it was time to give myself a history lesson. How much experience, exactly, did our various candidates for president and vice president have? Geof suggested plotting that data against their presidential ratings to see how it panned out. So I did that, too. To bound the problem a little bit, I decided to limit my study to the more modern presidential era (starting with 1960). Then I headed off to Wikipedia to do some data collection.

The Setup

A person’s experience is, in some ways, difficult to quantify, but I settled on the following categories of experience:

  • Years of college education (I also tracked whether it was Ivy League and whether they got a law degree)
  • Years of military service
  • Years in a state legislature
  • Years as a state governor
  • Years in other federal government service (i.e. cabinet or civil service positions)
  • Years in Congress
  • Years as Vice President
  • Years as President

The tricky part, then, is how you choose to sum these up; let’s just agree that, for instance, years served as Vice President or as a governor are more valuable, year-for-year, than those served in the military or in a state legislature. I settled on some multipliers to try to help even things out. Feel free to argue over these if you want to.

  • Years of college education (I also tracked whether it was Ivy League and whether they got a law degree) - 0.25
  • Years of military service - 0.25
  • Years in a state legislature - 0.25
  • Years as a state governor - 1.0
  • Years in other federal government service (i.e. cabinet or civil service positions) - 0.5
  • Years in Congress - 0.75
  • Years as Vice President - 1.0
  • Years as President - 2.0

So, for example, George H. W. Bush, in 1984, had 4 years of college, 4 years in the military, 5 years in government service, 4 years in congress, and 4 years as VP. That gives him a score of ((4*0.25)+(4*0.25)+(5*0.5)+(4*0.75)+(4*1.0)) = 11.50.

With those multipliers in place it was easy enough to get Excel to do some sums and give me some totals.

What I found was fairly interesting.

The Data

The average experience score for a presidential candidate: 16.8. The average experience score for a VP candidate: 12.9. Highest score for a presidential candidate: 28.75, shared by Bob Dole in 1996 and Gerald Ford in 1976. Highest score for a VP candidate: also 28.75, Joe Biden this year.

Lowest score for a presidential candidate: 5.25, Barack Obama, this year. (second lowest: George W. Bush’s 7.50 in 2000.) Lowest score for a VP candidate: 3.00, Sarah Palin, this year. (second lowest: Spiro Agnew’s 3.75 in 1968.)

Highest POTUS/VP combined score: Dole/Kemp in 1996 (45.75) Lowest POTUS/VP combined score: Reagan/Bush in 1980 (17.25)

So that’s a lot of data, how about some analysis?

Analysis

I did a plot of the experience ratings against some presidential performance ratings (as found here, which claim to be amalgamated from several different ratings on Wikipedia), but found that to be a mixed bag. There were experienced presidents who ranked poorly (Nixon) and well (LBJ) and inexperienced presidents similarly (Reagan ranked high, Jimmy Carter much lower). Result: Inconclusive.

Next, I noticed an interesting trend. If you throw out the few elections where strong incumbents were running for second terms (LBJ in 1964 after finishing JFK’s term, Nixon in 1972, Reagan in 1984), in each of the other cases, the POTUS/VP pair with the lower experience score won the election. Result: If that trend holds through this election, McCain/Palin will win.

If you want to do a little more hardcore statistical analysis,

POTUS Standard Deviation: 6.59 VP Standard Deviation: 5.82

Just for sake of argument, this means that Obama’s POTUS score (5.25) is 1.75 standard deviations below the mean, and that Palin’s VP score (3.00) is 1.70 standard deviations below the mean… which means that, per these ratings, Obama is slightly more relatively inexperienced as a presidential candidate than Palin is as a VP candidate. (Only slightly, though.)

Conclusions

Well, this is great data for us dataheads who like to ponder such things. What it really shows, I think, is that there are far more factors that play into the election (and the subsequent job performance) than just experience.

I’ll also conclude that I still haven’t answered the question regarding “how much experience is enough?”. Yes, Palin is the least-experienced VP candidate in the past 50 years. But Obama is also the least-experienced POTUS candidate. Hey, the nature of number is that somebody will have to be least-experienced. So until somebody can give me some quantifiable other measures, I think it’s still gonna come down to gut feel and politics… like usual.

Book Review: Wild Goose Chase

Wild Goose Chase, the latest book by pastor Mark Batterson of National Community Church in Washington, DC, sets out its’ premise in the introduction:

The Celtic Christians had a name for the Holy Spirit that has always intrigued me. They called Him An Geadh-Glas, or “the Wild Goose”. I love the imagery and implications. The name hints at the mysterious nature of the Holy Spirit. Much like a gild goose, the Spirit of God cannot be tracked or tamed. An element of danger and an air of unpredictability surround Him. And while the name may sound a little sacrilegious at first earshot, I cannot think of a better description of what it’s like to pursue the Spirit’s leading through life than Wild Goose chase. I think the Celtic Christians were on to something that institutionalized Christianity has missed out on…

With each chapter in the book, Batterson then calls the reader to “come out of the cage” of one encumbrance or another, sharing anecdotes from his own life and those he’s come into contact with in his ministry, and then finishing up each chapter with an example of the principle that he sees in the life of a biblical character.

I was unimpressed when the introduction, and indeed, the whole premise of the book, seemed to be based less on some Scriptural principle than on a single phrase from Christian antiquity. And my concerns were deepened when I looked at the chapter titles and subheadings:

  • Goose Bumps: Coming Out of the Cage of Responsibility
  • Dictatorship Of The Ordinary: Coming Out of the Cage of Routine
  • Eight-Foot Ceilings: Coming Out of the Cage of Assumptions
  • A Rooster’s Crow: Coming Out of the Cage of Guilt
  • Sometimes it Takes A Shipwreck: Coming Out of the Cage of Failure
  • Good Old-Fashioned Guts: Coming Out of the Cage of Fear

While there are some good points to be made in the book from time to time, it really feels to me that Batterson wrote the self-help, motivational principles of Wild Goose Chase and then looked to find bits and pieces of Scripture to support his points… which is a dangerous way to teach the Bible. In addition, Batterson’s style of writing is unimaginative, cliché-ridden, trying too hard to be cool and trendy. Color me unimpressed.

After finishing up Wild Goose Chase, I felt like I had just sat through one of those exercise infomercials where ridiculously-toned models and cheesy announcers hype their transform-your-life product ad nauseam for 30 minutes late at night. What I came away longing for was something more solid, stable, and reliable - something more analogous to a Ken Burns documentary on PBS. So I’m sorry, Multnomah, I just can’t recommend this book. My friends, if you’re going to buy a book on living the Christian life, get something by Eugene Peterson instead. You’ll be glad you did.

As requested, I’ll link to Amazon: you can buy Wild Goose Chase there. But I’d suggest you pick up something else instead.

Denver

OK, so bad travel plans notwithstanding, I made it to Denver on-time on Monday evening. Tuesday was spent in an all-day FAA DER Recurrent General Training class (boring), and today and Thursday I’m attending the National Software and Airborne Electronic Hardware Conference. It’s sponsored by the FAA and NASA Langley Research Center, and there are some really interesting topics if you’re into safety-critical airborne software. Which, I know, none of you reading this are. :-) So enough about the conference.

Haven’t really seen much of Denver yet, though I may atone for that this evening and travel about. I’ve just got too many things on my to-do list for this week. Sermon prep for Saturday, new Conversation Cafe website (now branded Topics On First - check it out! - but it’s still the beta version of the site), planning orders of service for the fall, updating church bylaws and membership covenants… so much to do, so little time.

Denver is a little bit frustrating, location-wise, because you think you’re in Colorado, there should be mountains… but there aren’t really any mountains in Denver. You can see them off in the distance, but they’re still too far away to get to without some more serious time driving than I’ll have. Oh well. Maybe one of these summers we can hit them for a vacation again.

Well, lunch hour is almost over so it’s time to head back to the conference. Good times.

its wisdom, who can measure?

Work necessitates that tomorrow I travel from Cedar Rapids to Denver to attend three days of FAA training. On the face of it, that doesn’t sound too bad, travel-wise. CID -> DEN is only a two-hour flight, and one US airline, when not eternally funding the estate of George Gershwin with its advertising budget, provides three daily non-stop flights from our fair city to the Mile-High.

But wait! This is no ordinary travel planning. This is corporate travel! Per the guidelines of our corporate travel policy (its wisdom, who can measure?) I have been routed on a different airline from Cedar Rapids first to Dallas-Fort Worth, and only then to Denver. For those scoring along at home, that’s 850 miles and two hours south-by-southwest to DFW, a 90-minute layover, then another 800 miles and two hours northwest from DFW to DEN. Which is quite obviously far superior to the 700 miles and two hours directly west from CID to DEN. To ice the proverbial cake, the forecast for both CID and DEN tomorrow calls for nothing but sunshine. DFW? 80% probability of thunderstorms.

Two years ago when I attended this training travel was a mess and I ended up driving through downtown Atlanta at midnight searching for my hotel; last year DFW gave me delays heading to New Orleans and I was trying to avoid the bayou and find my hotel after even The Big Easy had fallen asleep. Even with this year’s circuitous routing I am scheduled to arrive in Denver before 7 pm MDT, so it will take some serious delays if I am to achieve the three-peat. Still, with travel plans like this, anything is possible.