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From slcpi!govt.shearson.com!mjohnsto@uunet.UU.NET Tue Jan 8 09:47:22 1991
To: wordy@Corp
Subject: Part 7 of CAA #2
A BLEARY 3 AM MONOLOGUE
#7 in the second online CAA series
by
Steven K. Roberts, HtN (WORDY)
Bainbridge Island, WA
October 10, 1986
Seventy-eight hours and counting fast. It's Friday morning, 3 A.M., and I
think I've become asynchronous with respect to the rest of the world -- working
all night and sleeping until the phone rings (as it always does, too early).
I'm tired, puzzled over a couple of design problems, and in no mood to write.
If there's any art at all to this installment, it's the art of spontaneous
invention, not that of a concentrated quest for the exquisite transcendence of
a well- turned phrase.
Yes, the exhaustion is gripping. But I'm savoring these last few hours of
stability -- of knowing where I'm going to sleep every night and having a
pretty good idea of who my local friends are. It's not like that on the road,
you know; on the road, stability is something you find in your packs. The
coffee's always right there in the outer pocket of the kitchen pannier next to
the spare candles... the logic probe and digital multimeter live just inside
the forward access panel... the micro-TV is tucked in with the HP system... and
I commute to work through the wonderfully familiar electronic window that opens
wide whenever I type HHH and a string of arcane digits. Kind of bizarre, isn't
it? I feel like a Gary Larsen cartoon, living so many contrasts and reversals
that even trimming my moustache is sometimes absurd and thought-provoking.
Life is as it should be: there are no boundaries between sweat and
wizardry, work and play, computers and bicycle transmissions. I'm living in
no-mode land.
Actually, an interesting effect of this wandering life is the profusion of
homes that develop, metaphorical electronic ones aside. There's one here on
Bainbridge Island, this place isolated enough from the Big City to be both
efficient and relaxed. Maybe someday (like I told myself in Austin, Key West,
Santa Fe, Crested Butte, Telluride, Santa Barbara and a few other surprise
places) I'll come back to live for awhile. Yeah, I'll come back, park the
bike, find a house, start a consulting business, and dovetail socially with all
these delightful folks I've come to care about over the last month...
But home doesn't work like that when you're a nomad: I'd go crazy in less
than a year. For once you taste the energy of beginnings, middles are never
quite the same.
I went for a test ride today after finishing the new console mount (the
old one, after only 400 miles, was beginning to fracture). Sleek, waterproof,
and free of rattles I whisked along, making my first attempt at on-the-road
typing (sloppy but rather thrilling... technically speaking). I smiled at
joggers, waved at drivers, and stopped to chat with the kids. And it started
to happen -- that sweet, slow metamorphosis from deadline-driven madman to
wanderer, nomad of the spirit. I rode along, slowly keying ASCII in time with
my cadence, sweating in my Patagonia under a clear cold sky, almost managing to
be more aware of my surroundings than the subtle interplay of microprocessors
spinning in synchronous wait loops and dancing at my touch.
(The software's synthesized voice message on startup has been: "I am the
Winnebiko control system, version 7. Are you ever going to ride me, Steve?")
You bet, my little Bikeasaurus -- in 77 hours. Ticks of the clock are
taking on heavy meaning, and the bike stands over there poised, a thing of
promise laden with significance, the result of all my time and resources for
over a year. "How much did that cost?" the kids always ask. "All I had," I
answer, trying to imagine a number, seeing the insights and specialties of
friends reflected from end to end. But the task now is to lift my eyes from
the machine and see what I've set out to see -- to switch this bizarre
contraption from foreground to background, from obsession to tool. Only then
will the journey have meaning.
Ah, off to bed -- I can't even focus my eyes, much less my mind (had I
ever given this much of myself to a job, I'd have my own teak desk by now).
The next time you hear from me, it will be from somewhere... out there...
-- Steve
The First 100 Miles