Pippa Passes: Toronto, Le Mans & Iceland

I am going to be in Toronto on May 17^th. If you want to join me for lunch in a hip spot (at cost so we’ll all profit together from the conversation alone), I’ll be talking about the world economy/geopolitics and The-Membership. This is a group of smart investors, innovators, and intellectually minded folks who want to swap notes on the state of the world and the investment landscape while hanging out in cool places. We will be at Le Mans Classic this year and in Iceland. If you join me on any of these, I’ll gift you, or a friend, a subscription to my writing + more.

Le Mans Classic

Paul Newman at Le Mans, coming in. 2nd Place age 54, having started racing at 50.

I’ve been a car racing fan since attending Skip Barbour’s Racing School at Lime Rock in Connecticut. I went because that’s where Paul Newman started his highly successful racing career at the age of 50 (and I was nearly 50 when I went). He finished racing in his 80s. At age 54 he finished 2^nd in the 24-hour race at LeMans in a Porsche 935). I highly recommend Lime Rock because it has no walls. When you make a mistake, which you will, you’ll end up in a field, not in a hospital.

I’ve long been an admirer of automotive engineering, but it’s the female racers of the early days who inspired me. Maria Antoinetta Avanzo started racing in 1918 and raced against Enzo Ferrari. The two became fast friends for life. Her son said she drove around Rome in her 70s “as fast as she could go. When she was stopped by the police she would say, “My car is able to reach 180kph so I’m going to drive 180 kph.” The Brooklands Automobile Racing Club (BARC) and LeMans opened to women in the 1930s on equal terms with men.

Maria Antoinetta Avanzo

That’s when the aptly named Hellé Nice entered the scene. She had been a nude model, a famous cabaret dancer, and a keen downhill skier before getting her hands on an Oméga-Six in 1929. She became a top driver for Bugatti and then for Alpha Romeo and seduced a number of the most famous men of her era. She won many speed records, but such success brought disaster. In 1949, a Monegasque competitor, Louis Chiron, (as in Bugatti Chiron), insinuated without any proof that she was a Nazi collaborator. That was the end of her lucrative advertising and racing career. The allegation was never proven or borne out in searches by historians of the Bundesarchiv. One suspects it’s that old story. The annoyed fellow simply trashed her reputation to get her off the racecourse.

Car racing is all about innovative engineering. That’s what the world economy relies on too. We’ll be talking about automotive and transportation innovation with some of the world’s leading experts on the subject.

By the way, Paul Newman's first law might be useful to apply to modern geopolitics: “It is useless to put on your brakes when you’re upside down.”

Iceland:

Iceland under water

My personal bucket list for Iceland includes snorkeling/scuba diving in the crystal-clear water between the tectonic plates there, a bit of fire (natural hot spas) and ice (actual ice water) followed by Birch Bath Salt, a Bjórlíki and a heavy dose of deep conversation. Local friends are giving me the inside skinny on where to go. Iceland is now a geopolitical hot spot since it is at the heart of the GIUK Gap, which is where somebody keeps trying to cut the key internet cables (FARICE-1). That would make it easier for Russian nuclear subs to pass into the Atlantic undetected. The High North is now a NATO priority. We all need to understand the geopolitics of the High North and the Arctic better. If there’s time, I’d like to look around the thundering Dettifoss waterfall; apparently the most powerful in Europe, see the whales from Húsavík and spelunk in the cavernous lava, glacier and ice caves while (hopefully) avoiding volcanic eruptions.

Iceland’s credo is Þetta Reddast! This means, “It will all work out okay.” This can also be applied to geopolitics.

I’m also considering organizing a cruise in the Pacific, around Micronesia, with some heavy-weight experts who can help us understand the military buildup and the chess game being played out between China and the US on tiny Pacific Islands (see Island (S)hopping). I’m also keen to see the ancient site at Pohnpei known as Nan Madol, the old nuclear and hydrogen bomb test sites (safely), and to better understand the ocean economy. If any of the above is of interest, email us here.

We’ll probably have space for about ten people in Toronto. Subscribers get first dibs.

Thanks again for your support!