Lance didn't have a lot to say about the super hot trip out on to Presque Isle, the only remaining room for the night at the Clarion (DO NOT take a "smoking" room EVER again even if it is the last one in town. The acrid sting in the air and stench upon his clothes was worse than he remembered when he was a smoker in college.) The next morning he lit out of town on his trusty steed Prius and sailed north up the Lake Erie Coast on Coastal Rte. 5.

Bracketed by miles of fields of ripening grapes, with occasional blue flashes of Lake Erie on the left, his mind returned to the pleasant musings of vacations long past. Suddenly, his reverie was shattered by the ringing of the Bluetooth car phone (actually his iPhone's calls automatically come out of the car radio speakers when it rings.) Lance was instantly sharing the cozy interior of his car with a reporter from his hometown magazine on the line. She said she had been assigned to interview him for a short piece to appear in the September issue. Sure enough, his mind flashed precisely on the weak moment in which he agreed to do it in the midst of frantically cleaning off his desk on that final Friday at work.

There was something surreal about this situation for Lance, who had spent the better part of a week getting as far away as he could, now to be yanked back to reality by a mere speaker phone attached to someone's ear at home in Maryland. The interview went on for about half an hour (not including the time she stepped away to pay the repairman for fixing her failed A/C unit in the midst of a record heatwave in Maryland...fully justifiable!) Strangely, what had seemed so publicly comfortable for his blog, now felt almost intimate between him and this earnest and inquiring stranger, almost as if she was sitting in the shotgun seat of his car.

Her queries: Did he miss companionship? Did he think a woman could do this kind of solo journey safely, like a guy could? What exactly was he learning from his 3 questions and who was he asking? Why would someone like him, with career, family and friends, do something so spontaneous as this? Lance though he heard, underneath her voice, a gentle wistfulness, almost a longing, of "I'd like to do that someday." Lance thought, but didn't say out loud, "Ah, but you need to wait until it calls to you and you have no choice but to go" That siren song of the heart is the key. And like the grapes, you may just have to ripen enough to make good wine from the process.

Lance arrived about noon at Chautauqua ("Home to about 7,800 people a day and 170,000 a season") and quickly checked into the venerable (this time GOOD venerable) Athenaeum Hotel on Lake Chautauqua ("One of the first hotels in the nation to install electric lights.") Within minutes, he was walking the narrow streets of a small city on the lake shore (think Washington Grove on steroids.) When Lance leaned their slogan was "Be, Think, Feel, Play" he realized he had stumbled upon all the quintessential small town attributes he had set out to discover and all in one place. Furthermore, this was clearly the "Mother Lode" of advice about retirement. Here, a 60 year old is a mere pup, wandering though a blizzard of white hair and wise minds.

After lunch in the very Grand Dining room, Lance went to a 2:00 lecture by a Progressive Reformed Evangelical Apologist in the open-air forum of the Hall of Philosophy, then a 4:00 recital by erstwhile young opera students in the lobby of the Hotel, a 6:00 dinner, and an 8:15 classic summer evening concert by mostly venerable Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra in the Amphitheater.

(BTW the Chautauqua Institute was founded in 1874 as a training camp for Sunday School teachers. If you just go to www.ciuweb.org, Lance promises to stop with the factoids, already!)

By breakfast, Lance was head over heels in love with this place. Maybe it was the 8 AM 15 minute bell concert from the Miller bell Tower or the10:45 daily themed lecture by the 9 term Mayor of Charleston S.C., the Honorable Joseph Riley (D) on "Ethical Leadership" where he flat out announced that the greatest ethical lapse in leadership is to get elected and then NOT lead. Lance was madly scribbling notes now, capturing gems like "Leaders must be in a constant, selfless, humble search for truth. Leaders must be able to say "No" to friends seeking favors. All your public projects must pass the 50 year test...will it still be standing and still be the right investment in your city? Leaders must always" paint a picture of the future" and then tirelessly sell it. Leaders must work harder, longer, listen better, thank more and take blame when things go bad. Leaders must never be lazy."

Lance was glowing white hot with ideas for a new leadership program piece. "Leaders should create Imaginary Constituents to test their ideas out on like an Eighth Grade civics class full of wide-eyed kids or the Senior Center Bridge Club. Ask what is in their heart and will this program make their life better? Leaders must have personal ethics beyond reproach (unlike so many these days) and their words and actions must be in harmony. All local (municipal) politics should be NONPARTISAN, the Mayor argued, so people can focus on progress, not process."

And just when Lance's hand was beginning to cramp, the Mayor, w(ho almost single-handidly saved the now famous Spoleto Festival in 1985, answered the question "why do you support the arts in community?" He simply said, "The Arts affect a city like a sprinkler turns a parched lawn to green. It makes everything grow." Lance had died and gone to heaven. He went straight back to the Hotel desk and registered for another day in heaven.

Or, as he said to himself later, "You just don't leave heaven when its working for you like this."

Lance knew there was more to come, including Tim Conway in the Amphitheater tonight. Besides, he had a lot more people to interview for question #3. And miles to go...