What started as a conversation to visit my daughter before she headed to her next duty station at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii, ended up being a nostalgic homeschooling-like project: A desire to craft a learning journey. Out came the lined-paper and a pen.
STEP 1: A draft of a concept was born: An American journey to highlight the positive side of Americans and our accomplishments.
STEP 2: A catchy name. Mike (me, Desiree Michael) and doggie-dude, Spike.
STEP 3: How do you make a piece of paper with an idea come to life before taking off–a website: mikeandspike.com was available. For photo buffs, Instagram would be ideal.
While I created a mental scaffold of our journey, DC101’s playlist song by Lana Del Rey, Doin’ Time, caught my attention. It had a catchy beat and I wondered who was she and what was the LBC? Hmmm. I looked it up and BAM! we had our end destination. That easy.
STEP 4 – 5 (interchangeable): What would be our starting point and what would be the destination? Well, in order to choose a starting point, I had to figure out what our focus was. What would our focus be?
Photo: Koenigsegg Jesko – 300+ mph by Matti Blume 
Christian Von Koenigsegg: Concept Car/Idea to reality
My love of engineering and innovation along with fast cars and our initial location, Ft. Myer, Virginia, framed the focus of our journey. As for speed, I had already written to Koenigsegg in Sweden (which I will highlight in another blog segment) to let them know that “mikeandspike” will eventually pay them a visit!
Military Understory: Ft. Myer hosts the adjacent home of Arlington Cemetary where fallen soldiers, statesmen and women (Ginsburg), and astronauts (John Glenn) are honored with horse-drawn casket-carrying caissons every day.
Horses to Horse Power: A TED Talk drew my attention. It was about how New York City would need 60 million horses by 1960. Hence, our focus on horses to horsepower was born.
Of course, innovation and industry led us to develop an expansive automobile industry. So, what happened to all the horses?
Answer: There are wild horses that remain throughout our nation (finding them at arrival time would prove challenging).
There are horses that were streamlined into sports–Quarter horses.
There are, of course, the show horses that were once used for their speed and strength: The Arabian horses and Clydesdales.
Parental Review suggested: A comprehensive, but grim, short piece on the history of horses to horsepower can be read by following the highlighted link. The article confirms that it was, indeed, the speed of transport that the automobile offered that won over consumers.
Oh, and the five phones, that will have to be a “to be continued…”
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