💾 Archived View for gemini.spam.works › mirrors › textfiles › fun › CAA › gecaa-15 captured on 2020-10-31 at 23:21:35.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
From slcpi!govt.shearson.com!mjohnsto@uunet.UU.NET Mon Jan 7 17:19:47 1991
To: wordy@Corp
Subject: chapter-15
HUMBOLDT COUNTY PLAY
#15 in the second online CAA series
by
Steven K. Roberts, HtN (WORDY)
Trinidad, CA; 1,076 miles.
December 6, 1986
I have often called this journey a lifestyle sampler. If that's true,
then when does the wild experimention of the gourmet become the wretched excess
of the glutton? Can there be too much? With a mighty intellectual belch I
lean beck in this old dog-scented recliner, fight off the torpor with a sip of
Jolt Cola ("All the sugar and twice the caffeine"), and think it over.
There is a lot of energy in this adventure. For ten thousand miles I
wandered alone, driven by obsession, the darkness of my solitude illuminated at
odd intervals by flashes of romance. There were moments of magnificence,
moments of discovery, moments of pure terror... but it wasn't enough. I wanted
all that and home too. Exhausted, I began to yearn for my own bed; I wanted to
know a place well enough to find the bathroom in the dark and recognize the
nighttime creaks. The journey sputtered to a halt near San Francisco -- and I
somehow ended up back in Ohio.
But the torporate life, the midwestern dullness, the restlessness of my
own spirit -- they were all there, forming an even stronger conspiracy than
before. I had gotten a taste of the road, and could never forget it. I
dreamed of it; I ached for it; I rebuilt the bike in a frenzy and set out once
again with vastly improved systems.
There are differences this time, even ignoring all the extra technology.
I have a companion to provide stability and security, a friend who eliminates
the old urgency that once had me ignoring grand opportunities when there was
even a hint of female nearby. Maggie has dramatically changed the character of
the trip, making it warmer and somehow more domestic. But there's another
difference that has little to do with her: I have been here before.
No, not in Humboldt County, which I'll tell you more about in a moment.
HERE -- on the road. The sense of adventure that accompanied my first million
pedal strokes so long ago is now muted; I spend more time worrying about
unfinished projects than thinking hot-damn-I-
can't-believe-I'm-really-in-California-WOW-I-wonder-what-happens- NEXT??? The
trappings of adventure are all there, but the essence is something that only
surfaces when I get OFF the bike and do something I've never done before.
That's why the miles pass so slowly. I've done 33 of 'em since the last
chapter, and they were northbound -- a backtrack to Trinidad. This is not the
old spirit of Computing Across America, it's something else... something I
better identify soon. It's subtle: I didn't get a hint of it until I kept
noticing that the exuberant overview article I've been grappling with all week
wasn't quite ringing true.
William Least Heat Moon observed in BLUE HIGHWAYS that "the wanderer's
danger is to find comfort." This is true, though I've always interpreted that
in a local sense -- the difficulty of leaving is always proportional to the
time I've stayed in one place. But perhaps comfort can be interpreted on other
levels...
--> There is less urgency: my travels are no longer a succession of desperate
romantic quests which, though of dubious philandering intent, once imbued my
nomadic lifestyle with frenetic energy.
--> There is less sense of unknown: wandering around America no longer has
the character of cultural exploration. There are still surprises everywhere,
but they happen more with individuals than regions.
--> There is less thrill in being bizarre: even though my bike still
mystifies bystanders, I'm tired of explaining it to everyone I meet. More and
more I prefer to spend time -- comfortable time -- with people who already know
all that, have locked the bike in their garage, and are now more interested in
what's inside me, inside themselves.
This is starting to sound like I'm complaining about comfort. Hardly. But
there's a change happening in this journey, and failing to acknowledge it would
be more damaging to the adventure than all the logging trucks in the Great
Northwest rolled onto a single mountain road with me in the middle.
I'm slowing down.
Of course, this never was the Race Across America. Those guys go further
in a day than I do in a week. I've never been in much of a hurry, for pedaling
to a schedule reduces the road to a mere obstacle lying in the way. I have
seen skin-suited cyclists, loaded for touring but dressed for racing, blasting
down mountain roads while hunched over drop handlebars... too obsessed with
speed and mileage to be conscious of the beauty unfolding like new love around
them. That kind of travel has the flavor of a corporate acquisition:
aggressive, carefully mapped, no move possible without committee analysis of
the bottom line.
But slow touring is one thing, meandering from home to home is quite
another. I suspect THAT'S the change in the air -- a realization that movement
is not necessarily the essence of travel. Some adventures seem to happen with
no sweat at all.
* * *
I spoke last week of Humboldt County, a place that fits right into this
discussion. We've been here for a couple of weeks now, involved enough with a
new circle of friends to find ourselves with multiple social options every
night and difficult decisions concerning leaving. There could be worse
problems. (I remember grim epochs when I felt I had NO friends, no place to
go. You'll never catch me complaining about having more than I can keep track
of.)
There's an interesting group here. They consider constructive PLAY to be
inextricably entwined with constructive work -- to the point that I am unable
to discern the boundaries. Their participation in the annual Arcata to
Ferndale Kinetic Sculpture Race is serious enough to classify as a career
(requiring no small measure of dedication, since machines must be designed and
built as well as pedaled over 38 miles of land, sea, sand and mud). And our
zany friends Duane, Ken, and Stock are the architects of a promising new sport
called Trollo.
These are hard-core bikies, but not in the racing tradition. They're more
likely to spend a cycling get-together hunched over an oxy-acetylene torch than
strutting about in skinsuits comparing derailleurs -- their machines look
battered and functional, not sleek and aerodynamic.
The obsession began with kinetic sculpture, which seems as much a part of
Humboldt County as the residual 60's population and a thriving specialized
agriculture to match. This isn't just a race, it's the annual climax of a
lifestyle. Everyone involved works year-round on machines to take on Slimy
Slope, Dead-man's Drop, and an assortment of other obstacles including 12 miles
of sand, 3 miles of water, emotionally involved spectators, and an almost
exhausting sense of profound silliness. Consider the machine names: The
Bionic Taco. Fourplay. Artburn. The Green Marine Bovine Machine. And the
infamous Quagmire Queen, the 4,000-pound creation of Hobart Brown himself.
These are not the products of coldly rational minds bent on victory.
Such dedication has spinoffs. It's impossible to put hundreds of hours
into such work and not be profoundly affected. Our friends found themselves
building vehicles year round: unibikes, three- wheelers, strange unridable
experiments. But the ones that quite invaded their lives are the recumbent
Trollo trikes.
Wednesday afternoon. The artists are transformed, not the people I knew
moments before. As they growl aboard their ragged machines, I soon forget
their paintings, their sculptures, their murals, the polished works of their
Old Town studios. This is the sport of human- powered road warriors -- a sort
of wheeled rugby for three. In the parking lot under Eureka's Samoa Bridge
they go at it: nearly half a ton of roiling manflesh and steel in hot pursuit
of a crushed, taped Budweiser can -- urging it this way and that with flailing
implements of rubber and wood. Bikes tip, spokes bend, derailleurs break,
blood flows. Still the game continues, into the dark, the players obsessed,
crazed men of steel. There's no surrogate Monday night football for this
crowd... adrenalin is part of their staple diet.
The game has a future, I think -- I helped them write up some rules the
other night and they're discussing marketing. But the beauty of this is not
the business but the play, the play, the thing I keep harping on. Play. Why
is it so rare?
There seems to be a belief that true, absorbed play is the exclusive
province of children. But here and there are adults who'll never "grow up,"
adults who recognize the essential nature of FUN and build a daily dose of it
into their lives. They're always different from their peers, whether a retired
airplane builder, a mill foreman who makes radio-controlled helicopters, a
loony writer who lives on a bicycle, or people who took a 50% pay cut and moved
to Crested Butte just for the mountain bike trails. This all brings back a
theme from my first trip -- the definition of "success" as the inverse ratio of
all you put out (sweat, pain, work, and stress) to all you get back (pleasure,
fun, sex, humor, happiness, insight, friendship, health, and -- oh yes --
money).
The happiest people are those who know this, and include in their "life
portfolio" some heavy investment in pure unadulterated play.
Well. This chapter certainly ran the gamut, didn't it? From anguished
introspection about the future of my travels to a rhapsodic essay on the
playfulness of new friends... that's the difference a sunset walk on the beach
can make. Underfoot sand frozen in textbook illustrations of wave motion, surf
thundering white plumes against black cliffs, everything touched with sunset
gold, Maggie's hand in mine... how could I return to the keyboard and continue
on a theme of depression?
It happens. It goes away. The beat goes on, and I'm smiling again.
-- Steve