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Welcome to COMPUTING ACROSS AMERICA!
These are the voyages of the Winnebiko, the bizarre recumbent bicycle bedecked
with solar panels, five computers, ham radio, data communications equipment,
and enough assorted gizmology to start a museum of high-tech. I have pedaled
this 8-foot, 220-pound, 36-speed monster some 12,000 miles so far, and the
resulting adventure stories are now here on GEnie for your reading pleasure.
============================================================================
THE ANATOMY OF A HIGH-TECH BICYCLE
by Steven K. Roberts (WORDY)
last revised: March 16, 1987
I received a number of questions about the various systems that make the
Winnebiko what it is, and this menu choice is designed to provide a brief
technical overview of this complex machine. For background on the trip itself,
select the library of stories.
Here, in no particular order, are the components of my electronic cottage on
wheels:
My main computer is the Hewlett-Packard Portable PLUS, an exquisite system with
896K of memory partitioned between system RAM and electronic disk. The
high-contrast amber LCD displays 25 lines of 80 characters, and a built-in 1200
baud modem makes the daily GEnie check-ins easy. But what really sells the
machine are the applications software packages baked into ROM: Microsoft WORD,
Lotus 1-2-3, dbase II, a "card-manager" filing system, communications software,
time manager, and a whole library of utilities. The net effect is a robust
bicycle business system that runs on rechargeable batteries and weighs 8 pounds
-- a system that has become so much a part of my daily reality that I'm
incapable of imagining nomadic life without it. It rides behind me, nestled in
foam along with a 3.5-inch disk drive, sometimes accepting charge current from
the bike's solar panels.
Computer number two, built into the control console, was once a Radio Shack
Model 100 -- upgraded to 256K and made truly useful through the addition of
Traveling Software's Ultimate ROM. But the machine is now hardly recognizable:
its keyboard and case are gone, and the display appears on the bike's front
panel behind a lexan window. What happened to the keyboard? It has been
replaced by custom logic that passes converted handlebar keycodes or
software-generated commands. This system is intended for on- the-road text
capture (not final editing), and thus connects with the HP via a front-panel
RS-232 connector.
The third system is the "bicycle control processor" (BCP), based on a 32K
Motorola 68HC11 board. This low-power machine embodies all of the bike's
real-time control and monitoring functions, including handlebar keyboard code
conversion, local network control (linking the other systems with each other),
electronic compass processing, control of solar battery charging, security
system supervision, diagnostics, status display, and so on. Assisted by about
50 IC's, this processor essentially runs the bicycle.
Computer number 4 is a speech synthesizer that speaks any text file transferred
to it. The value of this on the bike is threefold: I can have the system read
back my own text or incoming messages, and it is a handy way to reduce the
volume of identical questions from curious bystanders. ("I am the Winnebiko,"
it says, either at predefined intervals or under radio control, going on to
explain the basics of this strange contraption). The speech board can also
respond to a security alert by saying "Please do not touch me!" in a
robotically threatening voice.
The fifth system is known as a "terminal node controller" -- a Pac- comm
product that handles packet data communication via radio. An unusual breed of
computer network has quietly appeared in the last 2-3 years, a sort of digital
anarchy of the airwaves, a computer network without corporate substrate.
Anybody with a ham radio license and a bit of equipment can participate --
sending mail cross-country, transferring files, conferencing, and so on. The
network is young, but already offers coast-to-coast trunk connections,
automatic message forwarding, dozens of linked bulletin board systems, and its
own orbiting satellite mailbox. With packet operation possible from the
bicycle via the handlebar keyboard and LCD display, I can communicate data from
a campground or while pedaling. Ain't technology wonderful?
The handlebar keyboard itself is simple: four pushbutton switches are buried
in each foam grip, spaced about .75" apart. I type in a binary code, sort of
an ASCII with decoded zone bits: my five strongest fingers, three on the right
and two on the left, produce the lower-case alphabet; the right little finger
capitalizes. The left little finger is the control key, its neighbor selects
numeric and special keys, and those two together cause the others to take on
system level meanings such as file operations and major edit functions. In
practice, it's easy -- a lot like playing the flute -- with each combination
accepted by the system when all buttons are released.
So much for bicycle data processing. Now let's look at the other facilities...
The mobile ham radio station (KA8OVA here) is a multimode 2-meter rig from
Yaesu. In addition to handling data communication, it allows me to stay in
regular voice contact with Maggie (my recumbent-borne traveling companion).
Bicycle touring without some form of communication is frustrating, as anyone
who as ever squinted into the mirror for minutes at a time well knows. "What
happened to him? Is he OK back there?" With a boom microphone built into my
helmet and a push-to-talk switch on the handlebars, Maggie is never far away
(effective bike-to-bike simplex SSB radio range is over 2 miles). Of course,
having 2-meter FM capability on the bike also connects me to a huge network of
ham radio operators: I store the local repeater frequencies into the radio's
memory as I approach an area, and periodically identify myself as an incoming
bicycle mobile. This has led to a number of interesting encounters and places
to stay. And -- through the repeaters -- I can make telephone calls directly
from the bike.
A CB radio is also on board, culturally useless by comparison, but still handy
enough to justify its weight. I can talk to truckers, hail a passing motorhome
for water (this saved my life in Utah), and chuckle at the residual good buddy
subculture that still hangs on long after the death of the great CB boom.
System security is an issue when living on a machine that looks like something
from NASA. It's not that people try to steal it -- most are intimidated by the
technology -- it's just that some let their curiosity extend to flipping
switches and tinkering. To alert me to such behavior, I built in a security
system (based on the UNGO box) with vibration and motion sensors; when armed by
a front-panel keyswitch, any disturbance causes transmission of a tone-encoded
signal that sets off my pocket beeper up to 2-3 miles away. Maggie's bike has
a motion sensor also, and plugs into a front-panel jack when the two machines
are parked side-by- side.
Other radio-related devices include a digital shortwave receiver, a Sony
Watchman micro-TV, a VHF weather radio, and an FM stereo. Naturally, there is
also an audio cassette deck, for sometimes it takes more than a granny gear to
climb a mountain...
Speaking of gearing, the bike is equipped with some unusual mechanical
hardware. A custom 36-speed crossover system of 3 derailleurs provides a
16.9-inch granny gear, a 23-inch "high granny," and half-step from 33 to 144.
With the Zzipper fairing and the recumbent's aerodynamic advantage, I can
cruise comfortably at 15-17 mph (assuming a good breakfast and no unfriendly
winds). Peak speed so far, flying down a mountain, was 50.1.
Stopping power is critical with my 400-pound gross weight, of course. Moving
that much stuff downhill at 50 miles an hour is profoundly exhilirating... but
stopping is another matter. The Winnebiko II has three brakes: a Phil Wood
disc actuated by my left hand and a pair of Mathauser hydraulics controlled by
the right. The disc is nice for speed regulation without rim heating effects;
the hydraulics will stop anything, dramatically outperforming the various
mechanical models I have tried and discarded over the years. To control them
with a single lever, I machined a header for the master cylinders, with a
sliding cable stop and proportional transfer bar to permit a variable
front-back braking force ratio.
The frame itself was custom made by Franklin Frames of Columbus, Ohio -- after
I did enough brazing in my basement to convince myself that framebuilding is an
art form. The geometry is entirely custom, suited to my giraffe body and the
special requirements of all this on-board hardware.
Power for the electronic systems is derived from a pair of Solarex photovoltaic
panels, producing 20 watts in full sun (roughly 1.3 amps total into the pair of
4 amp-hour batteries). These new SX- LITE units lack the traditional glass and
aluminum frame, and are each 12.5 X 17 inches. Since they can pump enough
current into the Ni-Cads to overcharge them, I have built in extensive power
monitoring and control circuitry: A digital panel meter with a thumbwheel
switch can show instantaneous current into or out of each battery (as well as
any system voltage), and the BCP can throttle back the charging process if its
calculations indicate that the batteries are full (% charge values are
displayed on the console).
Other voltages besides the two 12-volt battery buses are needed throughout the
system, and this is one of those areas that can cause significant overhead if
attention isn't paid to losses. There is a small aluminum box containing
LT1070-based switching supplies that coolly provide 3, 5, 6, 9, and -12 volts
(all available on the front panel for external accessories). Considering the
special requirements of a bicycle system, the extra design effort here has paid
off well: when the two processors required for bike monitoring and text
editing are active, total system current drain is only 130 milliamps. A sixth
power supply, unrelated to the others, is mounted up front with a coiled cord
to allow battery charging if I have gone too long without sunshine.
Instrumentation on the front panel is largely geared to the major electronic
systems already described, but there is also the obligatory Cat-Eye Solar to
display speed, distance, cadence, and so on. This elicits interesting comments
from fellow bikies, who stare at the machine in awe then suddenly recognize
something familiar. In addition, there is an altimeter (useful on mountains,
and also helpful in predicting weather conditions), an Etak electronic compass,
time/temperature display, and assorted system status indicators.
Mechanically, the electronics package is designed to separate from the bike
with a minimum of effort. I open 3 toggle clamps, unplug 6 waterproof
connectors, and take it into the tent at night, yielding a "tent control
system" just as useful as the mobile variety. The 40-pound unit handles heavy
downpours with no problem -- with the fairing and velcro-on waterproof covers,
it has withstood all-day rides that quite saturated my Gore-tex. So far, the
system has suffered shock and vibration without incident, unfolding easily for
service but surviving heavy abuse on the road.
Safety factors are always a major concern when you habitually press your luck
by living fulltime alongside logging trucks, drunks, motorhomes, and the
routine madness of the highway. I have become a firm believer in helmets,
reflectors, orange flags, and GOOD lights. Bicycle Lighting Systems offers a
line of industrial-grade products that quite outshine the typical bike lights;
I went with a 7-inch yellow barricade flasher that makes me look like a roving
hole in the road, a 2-inch red taillight, and a 4-inch sealed-beam headlight.
In addition, I have recently added a Cycle-Ops halogen helmet light, which has
the delightful characteristic of putting light where I'm LOOKING, not just
where the bike happens to be pointing. (Admit it. You too have zigzagged
drunkenly through neighborhoods at night, trying to highlight street and house
number signs...)
Finally, the machine is equipped with all the usual bicycle touring gear:
stove, food, clothing, tools, candles, medical supplies, microfiche
documentation library, flute, binoculars, camera, maps, digital test equipment,
spare inner tubes, frisbee, coffeemaker, office supplies, butane soldering
iron, and so on. My tent is a vast "Peak Pod 4" from Peak 1, very much in the
porta-condo class at 108 square feet under cover. Other outdoor gear -- North
Face down bags, Gore-tex rainsuit, Patagonia bunting, polypro underwear, and so
on -- is undergoing constant revision as fabric technologies continue to
improve. There... a marathon overview of the Winnebiko. If any of this seems
insane, think about gravity and how long I would continue to drag around
something that isn't practical (and, preferably, multifunctional). This whole
adventure is a wild blend of serious business and fun -- a case of personal
computers and technology carried to an exquisitely mad extreme.
Thanks to all who helped make it possible!
-- Steve
============================================================================
BICYCLE ODYSSEY OF A HIGH-TECH NOMAD
(Computing Across America, Chapter 1)
by
Steven K. Roberts, HtN. (WORDY)
Columbus, Ohio
May 28, 1986
Computing Across America -- what's this? A collection of articles about
eccentrics with micros? Tales of satellite socializing? Computer industry
forecasts written in academic third-person boring?
Heh. Anything but. Did you ever want to break the chains that bind you to
your desk and just take off, wandering the planet while making a living doing
whatever it is you love the most? Seems reasonable enough... and three years
ago I did just that. Since then, I have been living in an electronic cottage
on human-powered wheels, and through this column I'm going to share my
adventures with you. Yes, we'll be covering the burning issues of the day:
Adventure, love, danger, weird people, radical extremes of network living,
fulltime travel, high-speed flights down mountain roads mottled with
Aspen-shade, mycological tone poems, unexpected ice caves, bizarre
contraptions, ham radio, satellites, a 200-pound bicycle worth $100 a pound,
real-life wizards, regional humor, outlandish microprocessor applications,
ridiculous comments, random controversy, moments of pure anguish, and so much
fun that something about it *must* be illegal. For starters. I am an agent of
future shock -- a high-tech nomad, a pedal- pushing freelance writer head over
heels in love with that sweet piece of asphalt known as The Road. My home, if
I can be said to have one, is Dataspace; my vehicle, the Wondrous Winnebiko.
My computer is a Hewlett-Packard Portable PLUS. Yes, I work for a living: my
business is to have a wildly exciting life and then tell people about it.
(It's a lousy job, but someone's gotta do it.) I'd like to introduce myself
here on GEnie, for I intend to hang around a while. This is the first of a
series -- a collection of tales too strange to predict and too diverse to
summarize -- an ongoing travelogue of a romantic high-tech bicycle odyssey. As
I move into the second 10,000 miles of this open-ended journey, I have switched
networks and suddenly find myself in a whole new community. (Why should I
restrict my nomadics to *physical* space? Howdy, neighbor.) So lemme settle in
here and take an angle-bracketed <sip> of compu-booze, then tell you a story...
In September of 1983, I sold my 3-bedroom ranch home in Midwestern Suburbia and
moved to an 8-foot-long computerized recumbent bicycle bedecked with solar
panels and enough gizmology to start a science museum. I quickly discovered
that this was not to be just another bike tour. Using CompuServe as my link
with the universe, I maintained a full-time freelance writing business while
pedaling a 9,760-mile journey around the United States. I lived for the moment
-- and it had many. During the 18-month adventure, I fell in love both on- and
off-line, encountered a band of convicts in the Maryland woods, sailed through
the Gulf of Mexico, tempted fate more than once, and learned more than I could
have ever imagined. I overheated in West Texas, froze my ass in Utah,
discovered Key West hedonism, and explored the California mystique. In Santa
Fe, I saw firsthand the symbiosis between hawker and gawker; in Crested Butte,
I witnessed a community so close that everybody's biological cycles are
synchronized. I ate crawfish, oysters, and GORP -- I prowled the country
seeking the exotic, sexy, and bizarre. The stories flowed like hot breath, and
soon the media turned its unblinking eye on me as a high-tech curiosity, a
peripatetic eccentric, a symbol of freedom. "Charles Kurault on a bicycle,"
gushed one local TV station as I pedaled into a perfect cliche of sunset. And
I came to realize, looking back into the eyes of all those people looking
wistfully at me, that the greatest risk of all is taking no risk. I noticed
(once I stopped trying to score new states) that if you think too much about
where you're going you lose respect for where you are. And I dedicated myself
to resolving the classic trade-off of freedom versus security -- a task I think
I've finally accomplished. Ah, and the people. When you look like something
out of a nonviolent version of "The Road Warriors," you tend to open a lot of
doors. Even if most of them turn out to be closets, the numbers are there: I
spent months probing the asymptotes of America and finding brilliance in the
- oddest* of places. I found communities ranging from the vaporous to the
ancient, and was tempted time and again by their seductive tug. And I glimpsed
the potential of life online, a life outside the strictures of physics, beyond
the limits imposed by image and prejudice. In the electronic pub, brain meets
brain and conversation ranges from the baudy to the sublime. Life aboard the
Winnebiko is a life of extremes. I am at once a being of cloud and soil,
satellite and bicycle -- living two simultaneous lives. One is visceral,
sweaty, attuned to every hill and headwind -- the other is ethereal,
intellectual, an electronic interlocking of imagination and communication.
Something about the contrast casts both aspects into sharp relief, and I
suppose I've become something of an online proselytizer. 9,760 miles. The
journey wound down a year ago in the frenzy of approaching book deadline --
along with the exhaustion of some 2.5 million pedal cranks and over 200
different beds. (Time for the commercial: the book is called *Computing
Across America: The Bicycle Odyssey of a High-tech Nomad*. It's being
published this fall by Learned Information.) Anyway, the bicycle sat dormant
for a few months in a Silicon Valley attic, then found its way back to the land
of its origins for six months on the operating table. And that brings us (far
too quickly) to today.
- The Next 10,000 Miles -- A Sort of Prospectus*
It's happening again; I can feel it. Every daydream involves the Road; any new
purchase has to be something "bikeable." The journey is obsession, addiction,
religion, and lifestyle of choice -- by August I'll be rolling. Ahh. But
there are differences a-plenty. The Winnebiko is again the substrate, but it's
now layered with more exotic systems than ever. Not including dedicated
controllers and "smart logic," there are four on-board computers -- along with
a satellite data link, ham radio station, and navigation equipment. The
biggest problem on the first trip involved time management, something that
affects nomads as much as it does executives. I spent roughly half a business
year pedaling -- 1,000 hours sitting alone on the bike. I would cruise all day
across American vastness, composing tales in my head and itching to get my
hands on the H-P Portable riding behind me. ("Ah, such a chapter shall this
be!") But by evening I would be tired and hungry and surrounded by people
clamoring for stories... and the day's ideas would drift away like the smells
of camp cooking, gone without so much as a memory of the insights that spawned
them. Wasted. And so the bike has become a rolling word processor. There are
two liquid crystal displays on the console in front of me, and a keyboard built
into the under-seat handlebars (eight buttons for text along with various other
controls). A dedicated 68HC11 microprocessor performs key code conversion
while attending to bicycle management tasks, decoding finger combinations based
upon an arcane letter- frequency-based coding scheme. Whenever a valid
character comes along, the 68HC11 passes it off to a handful of CMOS logic that
is interfaced to the guts of a Model 100 -- making everything described so far
look exactly like the original Radio Shack keyboard. The net effect is a full
screen editor that I can control while pedaling. But it doesn't stop there.
An RS-232 line allows text in the tiny 32K buffer to be transferred to the 896K
Hewlett-Packard system -- and from there to disk via the 3.5-inch floppy drive.
Two modems cover all combinations of pay phones and modular jacks, and a fourth
processor (CMOS Z80) handles AX.25 protocol control for packet data
communications through the 2-meter ham transceiver... which will soon include
an orbiting electronic mailbox known as Packsat. Of course, all this takes
power, and the original 5 Watt solar panel has been replaced with a pair of 10
Watt Solarex units -- along with 8 amp-hours of Nickel-Cadmium battery to hold
it all. Other electrical loads on the Winnebiko II include twin air horns,
lights, flashers, Etak electronic compass, paging-type security system with
distributed sensors, CB radio, stereo system, cassette deck for dictation and
music, digital shortwave receiver, and the usual speed- distance-time-cadence
instrumentation. "Are yew with NASA?" asked the Ohio farmer, slowly chawin'
tobacco while peering at the strange apparition gleaming beside the small-town
pay phone. "Sure," I answered, looking up from my online session on the
burning pavement. "This here's one o' them Loony Excursion Modules."
It will be August before everything (inluding the business structure, subject
of my next article) is working well enough for me to abandon this tacky
apartment complex to experience, once again, the pure exuberance of full-time
travel. Once on the road, I'll publish weekly updates on GEnie; in the
meantime, I'll post an occasional message to let you know how the preparations
are coming. I welcome your responses, suggestions, and invitations for the
hospitality database (another of the H-P's jobs) -- I can be reached via GEmail
as WORDY. And maybe somewhere, out there, we'll meet. I'll spend my life
prowling neighborhoods electronic and physical, pausing for months at a time to
explore and touch the magic. I guess that's the point of all this... I
finally figured how to get paid for being a generalist. And I couldn't
possibly do it without computers and networks. Ain't technology wonderful?
....Steven K. Roberts
==============================================================================
FREEDOM VERSUS SECURITY -- HOW TO BEAT THE TRADE-OFF
(#2 in the second online CAA series)
by
Steven K. Roberts, HtN (WORDY)
Columbus, Ohio
July 4, 1986
A nation takes a day off from its countless private prisons -- its careers, its
roles, its lives of quiet desperation -- and celebrates liberty. Liberty!
Red, white, and boom! Company picnics, family gatherings, bratwurst in the
park. Fireworks. Tall ships, the Lady, and 40,000 shells bursting over New
York Harbor.
One year ago in San Carlos, California, my bike parked in a friend's
livingroom, I stood on her condo balcony and fired my flare gun skyward in a
small-scale celebration of freedom. The report echoed from dark buildings, and
we uttered the obligatory "aaahhs" as the sizzling fireball arced 45 degrees
over the parking lot and began its descent. Oh no... it crossed the street
and, so perfectly that it could have been planned, splashed sparks onto the
pristine white roof of somebody's Cadillac. Oops.
The year before that, I pedaled sweaty into Abilene, Texas after an 85-mile day
-- straight to the heart of wholesome Americana, a Fourth-of-July community
picnic. The dunking booth, the backward softball throw, the rousing speeches,
the egg toss... they were all there. Liberty. Freedom. A 3-day weekend.
Now, as I prepare once again to hit the Road, I find myself thinking about
freedom a lot -- especially as distant fireworks touch the sky outside my
apartment window with intermittent pastels and punctuate Mendelssohn with
muffled booms. In 43 days I'll turn my back on this otherwise colorless
suburbia, trading my temporary home in physical space for a life of endless
adventure in Dataspace.
I'll trade what I can't keep for something I can't lose.
Freedom Versus Security
In my first article here on GEnie, I told you the second one would be about the
business structure that keeps all this afloat. Well, I don't feel much like
talking about that right now -- it seems a bit dry next to the larger questions
of freedom, adventure, growth, learning, and life's true bottom line (FUN).
We'll get to it eventually -- soon you'll know all about the data
communications links between the Winnebiko and my base offices, methods of
handling mail and money, and how all this bicycle-borne gizmology (5 computers
now) adds up to a smooth and efficient office-on-wheels.
But before I tell you *how*, I think I should tell you *why*.
What, short of insanity, could compel a reasonably successful freelance
writer/consultant to give up the sporadic bliss of midwestern Yuppiedom and
wander endlessly on a bicycle?
A fancy getaway? That's the most obvious one -- *escape*, on every level. Is
the road the Other Woman, a sweet piece of asphalt to whom I can always run
when I need to sidestep the myriad horrors of commitment? Maybe. I always
have been fascinated by the energy associated with beginnings, and the nomadic
life assures a steady supply.
Or is the whole thing a PR gambit -- a clever marketing ploy designed to
bolster my chances in the brutally ephemeral publishing business? Possibly.
This is a scary way to make a living, you know: pushing a bunch of buttons in
what you hope is the right order in the fervent belief that some editor will be
impressed enough to send a check. A news angle helps.
Or... is the Winnebiko my non-threatening door-opener, my ego-boost, my
drawing card -- an eccentric alternative to having a hot face from the silver
screen and a pocket lined with cold cash? Hmm. It does tend to elicit the
groupie effect...
Or could it be that I'm just pedaling the planet looking for home, never quite
sure whether it's out there or inside me but convinced that I'll know it when I
see it?
Ah, how about this one: the journey is a way to get paid for playing -- a plot
to cheat the reaper and live countless lifetimes of love and delight while
everyone else plods along toward the distant golden promise of retirement.
That one doesn't sound bad at all. Why the hell should I grow up? It never
did my friends any good.
I've been accused of all of those at one time or another by cynics, parents, or
envious observers -- more often than not with some justification. But when you
look a little deeper, two unifying motives emerge:
1. I want to spend my life learning.
2. I want both freedom and security.
The first one is obvious enough. The bicycle is a learning machine; travel
opens doors. In my high-tech regalia I attract people of all descriptions,
then filter through them to find the witty, bizarre, brilliant, and aware.
Movement versus stasis, insight versus oversight, energy versus ennui,
adrenalin versus booze. Yes, learning is very much the essence of this, and I
change a little with every mile.
But the second one is a little more subtle. Freedom and security... the
contrapuntal components of the human dance. A brutal trade-off, it is: if you
want more of one, you pay dearly with the other. Wanna run around? Fine, risk
your marriage. Want a steady paycheck? Forget the flexibility of freelancing.
It's like gain-vs-bandwidth to an engineer or comfort-vs-weight to a backpacker
-- having both requires inventing new rules, new technologies. Freedom and
security. Hit control-S and think about it. What do you do when your main
objective in life is to have your cake and eat it too? For a while, as I
pedaled the first 10,000 miles, I had myself pretty well convinced that beating
the trade-off consisted of doing business on the road -- writing with a
portable computer while having enough adventures to fuel the process. Neat
stuff, my little electronic cottage on wheels... I fine-tuned it endlessly and
wrote rhapsodic articles about how things would never be the same. Then I
concocted a theory that the real key to beating the trade-off was online
society -- made possible by the fact that "place" is no longer a purely
physical notion. This is a major change in the life of Man, for suddenly one's
address is no more an issue than one's birthday or alma mater: interesting,
surely, but not in the critical path to a relationship. As the months on the
road wore on, my home became Dataspace, never more than a phone call away. I
lived online and wrote more rhapsodic articles about how things would never be
the same. But it takes more than technology to solve the problem, as sweetly
alluring as she may be. Adding new tools to our armamentarium of
information-handling devices does not in itself erase the habitual lifelong
traps that limit our options and make us drop anchor, intellectually speaking,
long before we learn to sail. It takes something else to change the rules of
the game and create new freedoms. It takes a genuine passion -- for life,
change, growth, and experience. It takes pulse-quickening excitement at
everything from a new switched-capacitor filter chip to seeing what's over the
next hill, from understanding the life cycle of that little flagellated
protozoan bastard named Giardia Lamblia to questing after the transcendance of
the well-turned phrase. Passion. A rebirth of wonder. And from this,
surprisingly enough, comes the ability to avoid the trade-off entirely: if
you're not enslaved to a single specialty, you can move freely and conjure a
home anywhere at all. You don't need to be a writer or information
professional -- just curious and ALIVE. That sounds like a pretty good
definition of having both freedom and security at once.
Intellectual Goldmines
So that's it. Roll all those motives together and you'll see why I'm doing
this. I get asked that a lot, as you can imagine -- the question is almost as
common as "what are the solar panels for?" They stand there, Americans of all
descriptions, they stand there beside the road studying my bicycle as if
somewhere in the tangle of eccentric machinery lies the answer. Their
curiosity is obsessive, for they see something of themselves -- something they
feel deep inside and struggle to recognize. Freedom, growth, learning,
adventure, hope, *joie de vivre*... But many miss the point, and ask: What
are you selling? Do you have a sponsor? Is this that bicycle race across
America? Are you trying to set a record? You testing this here new kinda rig?
Is this something medical? What are you trying to prove? Where are you going?
Are you crazy? It's hard to explain on the street, this need to wander
endlessly with body, mind, and heart. Sometimes I fumble with the real
explanation; sometimes I just smile and say, "Well, I got tired of the
3-bedroom ranch in suburbia and this is the next logical step." That's true,
but a bit abstract. No, this is really about *mines* -- intellectual
goldmines. Every professional specialty, every sophisticated technology, every
instance of superhuman dedication represents yet another mineshaft dug deep
into a great mountain of potential human knowledge, a mountain riddled with
glittering mineral veins and awesome riches. Into the mines go the
specialists, and from their pick-clinking wizardry emerges goodies of all
descriptions: microprocessors, designer genes, carbon-fiber-reinforced
polymers, geosynchronous communication satellites, flute sonatas, macro zoom
lenses, predicate calculus, sheer-when-wet bikini fabric, Tae Kwan Do,
aerodynamic derailleurs, bold new life insurance plans, supermarket psychology,
science fiction, and Post-it notes. There's a lot of magic in that mountain,
probably an infinite amount, and it is the skill and persistence of the
knowledge miners that makes it available to the rest of us. I know, for I used
to be one. I spent years conjuring custom microprocessor-based control systems
and writing the software to make them dance. It was... rewarding. But
something was always missing. One by one, I watched my passions die: every
hobby became a business, every plaything a professional tool. Computers,
lasers, precision measurement equipment, logic design, photography,
communications gear -- each one lost the glitter of "new toy" and took on that
worn, dusty look of "business equipment." Jaded, dulled, I turned to freelance
writing... a license to be a generalist, the perfect profession for one versed
in the art of BS. But it wasn't enough. I still worked in a mine -- I was
just free to visit others occasionally, sometimes taking the miners out to
lunch and quizzing them about their work. It was much more interesting than
staying in the same mine all the time, but still I was chained to a desk. I
just happened to own it. So on a hunch, I dumped the desk and moved to a
bicycle. The theory was simple enough: since this mine of mine yields words,
and words have no mass, I should be able to carry it wherever I go, right? And
if I travel far enough, slowly enough, I'll not only provide myself with an
endless source of literary stimulation, but also have a helluva good time in
the process. Right? Right. I could visit every damn mine in the country, if
I wanted to -- never again trapped in a single one, growing endlessly without
having to drop anchor and specialize. And my timing was perfect. A few years
ago, this crazy idea would have required far more discipline and dedication
than I could have mustered. Maintaining a mobile writing business before the
era of portable computers and data communication networks would have involved
heavy machines, tape transcription, mail drops, a hundred pounds of paper, huge
phone bills, and no small measure of frustration. But now... well, this
adventure IS called *Computing Across America*. Computers aren't the point of
the trip by any means, but they are at least as important as my bicycle wheels.
Yes, without this magic electronic window into the lives of friends, readers,
publishers, and business associates, my high-tech adventure never would have
made it past the trauma of departure. My office is electronic; my neighborhood
exists in Dataspace... and if I work in any mine it all it is my private one
of sweat and ecstasy, adventure and fantasy, new friends and discoveries
galore. There's the freedom and security. Is there a better way to spend a
life? And so it all fits. I'm not a bum; I'm a nomadic entrepreneur. And now
that you know where I'm coming from, neighbor, the stories to follow will make
a lot more sense.
... Steven K. Roberts
==============================================================================
WESTBOUND AT LAST
(#3 in the second online CAA series)
by
Steven K. Roberts HtN (WORDY)
Granby, Colorado
August 22, 1986
Granby, Colorado
And so it begins. I am writing from a motel room in Colorado, Columbus far
behind, the road suddenly a reality. Before I start telling stories, two bits
of additional background are necessary.
First, the general plan. We're driving a van to Vancouver (then a car to
Carson City, of course, followed by a brisk walk to Waukegan and... oh, never
mind). The Winnebiko will be on display at Expo '86 for a week, then we'll
spend a month, more or less, in Seattle -- with the intent of finishing the
wiring and software design. Then the road, at last, with the van sold or
driven back to Ohio.
Second, the reason for the word "we" in the last paragraph. During my first
Great Escape, a major theme was love -- to put it gently. "I have both freedom
and security," I was fond of saying, going on to rhapsodize about networks,
travel, friends and the surprising new twists in romance that come from living
in Dataspace.
But people have often suggested that the first word of "Computing Across
America" should be replaced with something else, and it has occasionally even
occurred to me that the variety of on-the-road encounters might have had more
to do with late-blooming adolescence than True Love. On one level, of course,
it was Everyman's dream- come-true; on another, it was a dangerous flirtation
with a dizzying variety of pathogens with transient delight as the only reward.
My only true love was the Other Woman... that sweet piece of asphalt known as
"The Road."
It's time for a new approach. Maggie and I met six months ago, eyes sparkling
across a smoky jazz bar, the awareness of Something Significant as tangible as
the articulate guitar riffs filling the air between us. Flowing black hair,
high cheekbones -- pretty, poised, and smiling as if waiting for my arrival.
We met with exuberance, celebrated the event with passion, and shared the kind
of bliss generally associated with falling in love. Even the cat couldn't
stand being in the same room with the two of us, and yes, we even quoted
Gibran.
Six months later, we're still at it, falling in love over and over. Nice
change, doing that with the same person. And yes, my sweet cyclamate is going
with me on this adventure: she glides along on her own solar-equipped
recumbent, long hair wafting in the breeze, tan legs pumping, a smile as wide
as the highway lighting her face. Yes, she's going with me, and as I tap the
keys here in the ham- operated Fronteir Motel she's out there gatherin'
provisions for the road ahead.
OK. Now the background is complete. The stories begin at last.
Phew. This was a day, a major day, a day of mountains and impressions and
exquisite desolation -- a welcome change after yesterday's 925-mile marathon
drive from Columbia Missouri to Boulder.
Boulder Canyon: echoes of that time 16 years ago when I pedaled unprepared and
silly into the beginning of alpine winter only to turn back within a week.
Different now, a new eye, a new purpose. We clambered the rocks, gazed at
nascent vastness, played hide and seek among the boulders. Boulder itself (the
town) is now expensive, gentrified and trendy, still echoing its recent hippie
heritage but too smooth somehow... we ate in the "last American Diner" under
the sounds of 50's music (Duke of Earl, Little Town Flirt) and pressed on,
forgetting our resolve to park and explore.
Nederland (a shop called "Gopher Baroque"). Ward ("Thank you for stopping
in-Ward," I joked). Sweet silence and that unforgettable Colorado character
that's so easily forgotten in suburbia. Vastness, smiles with Maggie, and the
refreshing brisk cold that chases torpor and clears the psychic pipes -- the
road a thousand miles of mental floss. Colorado, at last.
At Estes Park, preparing to head west into Rocky Mountain National Park, we saw
the crowds -- the bicycles, cleats, and Yakima racks. Cold, wearing
inappropriate shorts, we pressed through the masses and found ourselves in the
middle of the Coors Classic -- a world-class bicycle race with the likes of
Greg Lemond, sponsor logos and support teams everywhere. Sounds of French,
Italian, Aussie, German. Crowds concentrated at the starting line -- and at
every curve, breathless for action. We found a place to stand above crowd-
heads and watched the start of the 55 mile circuit; minutes later a tight line
of powerful human-machines blasted by at nearly 30 mph, raising goosebumps with
their intensity, honking wildly up the home- stretch grade in what, to them,
must seem a continuous roar of claps and cheers. But then the rain began,
slicking the track, breaking one head, and slowing the pace. We stocked up on
exotic chocolates and pressed further into the mountains, climbing, climbing,
until even the trees gave up the effort and all around us was only cloud and
rock.
Rocky Mountain National Park is a spectacle of unimaginable magnificence, Trail
Ridge Road rising into the clouds to 12,183 feet -- above treeline, into the
tundra. We stopped frequently. On one giant slope, far enough from the road
for quiet to rule at last, I stood alone on a rock outcropping and savored the
sensation of massive wind-driven fluidity. Maggie watched me a moment, and
then bubbled into a sudden exultation of irrepressible childlike exuberance,
closing the space between us in an open-armed dash and appearing warm in my
arms. Light rain ticking ripstop. Hair beaded with droplets. Warm, warm
human holding me in a place primordial, vast, humbling. A kiss.
The love of that moment pervaded the day, each stop another discovery, another
step further from the habit of mediocrity. Visibility a van-length; occasional
lines of headlights appearing bright on white and passing into our past,
sometimes a sign, sometimes a solar-powered bathroom that flushes with oil. We
stopped at that one, confirmed the relative specific gravities of oil and
water, and walked into the tundra -- trail-bound, hushed in blowing cloud,
somewhere in the skies of America. Tiny flowers, tiny beasts; an ecosystem
fragile, a place bizarre. Closer we grew.
Down the mountain, over the divide, west at last. The sky show of evening kept
our faces to the windshield, gaping out and up at a confluence of mountains,
lake, and sky that evolved from moment to moment like a concerto -- bound by a
theme, constrained by style and key, yet free to roam through variations
infinite until all scores are settled and the tonic nigh. Sunset itself was
anticlimactic: we turned the volume down and devoted ourselves to finding a
home for the night. And thus we come to be in Granby.
"KA8OVA," I told the man behind the counter, "and that's KA8ZYW out there in
the van."
"Well, hello!" came the grin. "I'm KA0SWQ, and P's in the other room."
Thus began the stay at the Frontier Motel, presided over with humor and delight
by Pat and Rich Agnew. They promised to let us take a late Jacuzzi and sent us
off to eat at the Longbranch -- an unlikely place in this frontier town. Food
exquisite, the Smothered Mexican Combination alive from item to item unlike the
homogenous sameness of most such dishes; Maggie's trout perfect. Ya never know
in a place like this -- the chef is European, sick of big cities. Maggie's
thinking of writing a compantion book, a book by my companion, a compendium of
eateries and recipes discovered through the endless wanderings of two sensory
mendicants. Maggie might not put it quite like that, but that's the way it
feels.
Tired bad, but last gasp: Hot tub room. Frolic in the bubbles. Massage,
moans lost in the wet roar, door open to the night pouring steam and admitting
more of that delicious Colorado air. When we left, I locked the room key in --
and had to play cat burglar to enter the room without waking our friendly
hosts. Brought to mind a moment about 24 hours earlier, somewhere in the
eastern Colorado plains, when I locked the keys in the van. Not like me,
really, any of this. I climbed in through the sunroof, attracting more than
one startled glance.
Just a jaunty way to hop into my van, ma'am -- I used to drive a convertible.
And now, west again. Three days to make the drive to Vancouver, a lifetime of
sights in between. I plan to appear here weekly from now on, sharing snippets
of experience and tales of adventure. Cheers!
---Steve Roberts
=============================================================================
NORTHWEST PASSAGE
#4 in the second online CAA series
by
Steven K. Roberts, HtN (WORDY)
Bainbridge Island, WA
September 11, 1986
Hello from Puget Sound! For a place so close to Metropolis, this wooded island
is about as calm as can be imagined: the ferry to Seattle may just as well be
transoceanic. People around here amble; they move slowly and stop to watch the
sunset. A New Age coffeeshop called Pegasus offers classical music and
interesting reading materials to go with its fresh Costa Rican. The
Streamliner Diner conjures robust spicy omelettes of fresh veggies, and days in
the fern-carpeted forest become nights, and then days again. Manana outside
the Caribbean? Haven't been this relaxed since Key West.
The setting is appropriate. This is the month of final preparations (always
more final preparations, eh?), a time of wiring and debugging, programming and
tweaking. We came to the island in our well-travelled van, ready to move once
and for all to the bikes and head south properly -- under our own power.
Much has happened in the weeks since my Granby, Colorado update. We glided
west, too smoothly, joining the throng of lumbering campers fouling the beauty
of Yellowstone and motoring on -- over mountains, deserts, farmlands,
wastelands. The scenery passed as video, stripped by our metal cocoon of its
smells and textures. By the time we rolled into Vancouver, I was so sick of
the van I was ready to dump it in the ocean.
We spent a week in that town -- doing Expo to the point of exhaustion. The
motive, of course, was not to gawk; this is not one of those dutiful
pilgrimages of what Edward Abbey calls industrial tourisim. It was a chance to
display the Winnebiko in the energetic company of over 150 other bizarre
vehicles... and, more importantly, their creators.
There are a lot of strange ways to put together wheels, pedals, and a seat.
High-speed humans zipped around town all week, grinning back at the gaggle of
confused touroids stopped in their tracks by the weirdness. Dave on his
sprightly Vacuum; the Swiss team in their flawless Trivia; the tatooed punk
smoking cigars inside a full fairing; the Humboldt County blondes laughing in
their kinetic sculpture dubbed the Bionic Taco. All shared the delight of
invention and speed -- the week was a celebration of creativity. *This* is the
essence of competition: not muscle against muscle inside the conceptual
straitjacket of traditional bicycle racing, but brain against brain, concept
against concept, human against human. Cortex and quadriceps alike were
involved here, and the atmosphere was electric.
Of course, Expo went on in the background, a mass of roiling humanity, bright
color, street music, pavilions ranging from the deeply philosophical to the
blatantly commercial, and overpriced food. Curious behavior emerges in a place
like this: in our "scoring" culture, numbers are more in demand than
experience. Tourists gripped their "passports," queing impatiently to have
them stamped at every attraction, seemingly more interested in the trophy than
the game itself. Public address systems directed the masses, food smells
tickled the nose, groups of Japanese tourists stopped randomly to photograph
each other, and the scream-punctuated whooshes of rides were ever-present in
this state-fair-turned-city. But here and there were pockets of brilliance --
the roller-skating khaen-player who travels the world to learn native
instruments, the Spirit Lodge of GM, the videography behind Discover BC, the
nonverbal message in the movie "Rainbow War," the occasional spark in an eye in
the crowd. Always from the mundane emerges magic, if you're willing to wait
long enough.
We left with relief, fleeing to the unselfconsciously picturesque town of
Victoria for a few days, wondering soon if the journey would become a
succession of painful goodbyes. New friends already, and we don't even live on
the bikes yet... but it won't be long.
A strange phenomenon is the border: any border, from county to country. If
you view the world from an incoming starship, the imaginary lines separating
kingdoms are of no interest -- there's one species down there, citizens of one
planet. It was with this attitude that I drove casually though US Customs,
mildly annoyed at the delay but thinking it no more meaningful than waiting for
a driver's license renewal. But the scowling agent squinted past me into the
van's cluttered cargo bay.
"What the hell's *that*?" "Oh, just a bicycle." "What's all that junk on it?"
"The usual. Computers and so on." "Where'd you get it?" "I built it in Ohio --
had it in Canada for Expo." "I need to see some registration." "You don't
register bicycles." "Around *here* you do." "Look, I just took it to Exp--"
"How would you like to have that thing impounded until you can come up with
some proof that it came from the US? Would you like that?"
The agent, in his grim way, was obviously enjoying this. Before I could
answer, he told me to pull around to the office. Within minutes, the chief
came out, nodding seriously at the explanation given by my tormentor.
"I built this in Ohio," I told the guy. "Yeah, yeah. Let's see the papers."
"It's a *bicycle*," I told him, feeling that quaver in my gut that comes from
total powerlessness in the face of ignorance. I handed him a flyer for the
- Computing Across America* book.
"Look," he said, jabbing a tobacco-stained finger into my electronics package.
"Half that stuff in there comes from Korea. You can't import electronic
equipment without paying duty -- with no documentation, we lock it up. Just
like that. If you really took it to Canada, you would have declared it at the
border."
This was news to me. The Canadian agent had simply smiled, asked how long I'd
be in Canada and if I was carrying fresh produce, then waved me on.
Finally, of course, we managed to convince him -- with armloads of photos and
media coverage -- that we weren't smuggling high-tech contraband over the
border. But my already negative opinion of governments dropped another notch,
and the sudden tackiness of Port Angeles did little to dispel the shadows. Why
didn't we just stay in Victoria, a garden city of bakeries, bicycles and
beaches?
But things always improve. Through that succession of chance encounters that
inevitably results from wandering around in public on computerized, solarized,
gizmologized recumbents, we ended up living in the Bainbridge Island woods atop
a fully equipped machine shop. Ya just never know. The company is called
Octo, and manufactures the Browning automatic bicycle transmission that allows
riders to shift under full power. Heh. We're engaged already in a bit of
impromptu technology transfer, a barter of intellect, an arrangement that makes
everybody happy. And, just like back in Ohio, I'm surrounded by a sea of parts
and tools and cables and papers and databooks and...
Somewhere, very close now, is the road. The "day rides" around the island
tease me -- quick winks from the Other Woman, temptations of the spirit. I'm
slipping into her arms, this time in a menage a trois: Maggie has recovered
fully from surgery and yearns, as I do, for a life of total uncertainty -- a
life whose constancy lies in change. Let's get on with it.
Mutual tire itch, it seems, is even less curable than my old solo variety. Why
stop when every new road is a beginning and home is right there by your side?
==============================================================================
MUSIC, MOSFETS, AND SUNSETS
#5 in the second online CAA series
by
Steven K. Roberts, HtN (WORDY)
Bainbridge Island, WA
September 25, 1986
I suppose this machine really does look strange to people. I've been living
with it for so long that I usually only see a list of uncompleted projects
ranging from waterproofing to CMOS logic design. But when I ride down the
street, people gape, and the local media are having a field day. Front page
color in the Seattle Times; PM Magazine this week. Ah, this life of high-tech
nomadics...
Of course, I deliberately frolic in that strange region where the distinctions
between technology and magic blur -- where anything you say will be believed
because your looks alone overwhelm the senses. The other day I was at the
Streamliner Diner, immersed happily in a flawless omelette and watching the
crowd around the bike. A mother walked by with her 4-year-old boy.
"Hi there, sonny," I said into the handheld transceiver. Through low-power
2-meter simplex, my voice was conveyed to the Winnebiko -- where it crackled
from the console speaker. The kid froze, uncertain. He stared at the machine,
ready to cry if necessary. "So what do YOU want for Christmas?" it asked him.
His eyes widened as his mother scanned the area to find the hidden camera. "I
want a train, and a bicycle, and..."
"A bicycle like me?"
The boy's face lit up in pure wonder. "Yes."
"Well, we'll see what we can do about that." His mother began tugging him along
the sidewalk. But he resisted long enough to gaze at the machine and wave
solemnly.
"Bye-bye, Mr. Bicycle."
Of course, such play is only the beginning. Since the bottom line of this
venture is FUN, much of my development work centers upon system capabilities
that are not entirely aligned with that steely- eyed business world that
swallows up most otherwise well-intentioned computers. Today saw the 68HC11
and its custom interface logic spring to life -- not all debugged yet, of
course, but getting there. The bike can now make comments in its synthesized
voice, from "please do not touch me" when it detects vibration, to "oh no...
here he comes again," when a radioed touch-tone command lets it know that I've
finished lunch and am about to add my body to its 225-pound static load.
Hey, why not? Computers *should* be fun, shouldn't they?
Speaking of fun, life on Bainbridge Island continues to be a mingling of
obsessive design work and pure pleasure. A few days ago Maggie and I hopped on
a couple of Octo Company's resident mountain bikes -- agile machines with
automatic transmissions, quite unlike the lumbering megacycles we are about to
call home. Off into the woods we went, into deep green antiquity, whispering
through silence so deep that our clicking freewheels seemed as grating as
chainsaws. All around us were the projections of past and future: long-dead
trees sinking into the forest floor below new growth sprouting green and perky
into patches of flickering sunlight. Yeah, thanks for the reminder... we're
just passing through...
As a hint of approaching sunset pinked the sky, we emerged from the woods onto
Manzanita Bay and found a spot by the clear water. A sky show was beginning,
humbling us further, drawing us into a sweet melancholy touched with awe.
Dancing gold on the watertop, clouds gilt-edged platinum, textures from the
crystalline to the vaporous, moment-to-moment changes too subtle to notice and
too powerful to ignore. This, folks, was a world-class light show, and I
remember chuckling at the memory of those dancing lights that held me
enraptured night after night, back in the strange 70's. In this electric sky
there was beauty profound enough to tickle our lachrymal ducts and elicit soft
moans of sensual appreciation.
And there was more. We ferried to the City, upstream at rush hour, smiling our
way through a flood of grim commuter faces racing the clock as always. We
strolled to the Opera House and were suddenly surrounded by the expert musical
caress of Andreas Vollenweider and friends -- jazz harp, flutes, synthesizers
and percussion. Perfect. The group explored acoustical textures as grand and
delicate as that sunset, raising goosebumps, raising the roof, raising
awareness. At the last standing ovation, Andreas quietly spoke, "thank you."
"No, thank *you*!" someone cried out, and the applause swelled again like
another onslaught of Olympic rain. This was not ordinary music, this extended
orgasm of sound; this was exquisite proof of Beethoven's insightful observation
that "everything in music must be at once surprising and expected."
Ah, rhapsody, rhapsody. As the Road gets closer, I renew my resolve to spend
my life meeting remarkable people, seeking the pleasures of growth and
discovery, and smiling as much as possible. What an odd land this is, where a
bicycle loaded with computer systems can be a ticket to exactly that. (As a
British lady at Expo observed, while looking at my bike: "Only in America!")
See you next week. We'll be on the island a while longer, and will then pedal
frantically south as winter begins its warning chill. I suppose everything in
my life is surprising and expected, as well...
-- Steve
==============================================================================
THE DEBUGGING MARATHON
#6 in the second online CAA series
by
Steven K. Roberts, HtN (WORDY)
Bainbridge Island, WA
October 3, 1986
I'm into it now. Around me people are planning send-offs, media events,
pot-luck parties. New friends, both the sorrow and delight of travel, drop by
to play music or swap stories. And this place in the woods, the last for a
long time to be so familiar that I know the light switches and shower knobs, is
taking on that patina of clutter that turns a place to crash into a home.
But I seem not to notice. Somewhere on the fringes of my awareness, life goes
on. Phone calls, GEmail, endless coffee, the daily business of my hosts.
Meals appear, then vanish; Maggie gazes at me across the table with love and
concern and asks, "how's it going?
"Well, I think the inrush to the speech board is trashing the HC11 logic when
the MOSFET turns on... I don't know, there must be too much inductance in that
wire and maybe I need to run the damn thing in its linear region. Confuses the
hell out of me -- why can't the world just be digital? I'm nested 3 or 4
levels deep again -- last thing I knew, I was trying to get that serial
crossbar network fired up and got sidetracked. But at least the 100 interface
is finally OK: I got it running on autostart and it's passing a new column of
SIMUL keys from the handlebars." Pushing back my chair and gulping coffee, I
run to the next room to dig for the tattered blue software folder, buried
within hours under piles of databooks and hardware clutter. I run back in and
lay the annotated listing on top of her spaghetti squash.
"See, it spends most of its time up here in the executive..." I begin, but her
eyes are soft and her fingers are on my arm and she's not thinking about logic
at all. I pause. "Did I show you how the lookup table works?" I begin again,
feebly, but she shakes her head and kisses me. I've been at this too long.
Some people do this for a living, you know, and never recover.
But I surface occasionally, long enough to play the flute or frolic in the
woods -- long enough to catch brief glimpses of the life of adventure that is
only days away. Days away? It seems abstract as I stare into the depths of
the system... isn't making all these computers hum smoothly (just to each
other, not to the radios) in the critical path to bicycle touring? Just ten
more days, just ten more days of going mad with frustration and muttering
arcane snippets of logic lingo to a remarkably patient Maggie.
She's obsessed too, of course. Maggie's never done this before; I have. She
sews waterproof fabric into bizarre shapes, packages foods into zip-locs,
grapples with wiring till the tears flow, and worries over the road-worthiness
of her untried machine. In a way this is still an experiment for us -- I
plucked her from stable small- town environs, helped her spend all her savings,
whisked her 3,000 miles away to a machine shop in the Washington woods, and
told her to pack everything that matters to her onto a bicycle. Tentatively,
she tries her hand at changing a tire, and I realize that we BOTH need
patience.
Ah, we'll find out soon enough. In the meantime, it's getting colder here,
snow down to 4,000 feet in the Cascades, trees in full autumn glory only 150
miles north of the border. People are telling me more and more frequently that
it's time to head south, and they're all wearing down vests. Hmm. But I still
need to calibrate the packet board, make the compass software work, fix a
charging problem, reinforce the console support, build a mixer amp, cable the
helmet, get 1200 pages of documentation microfiched, design the touch-tone
encoder, install the rear solar panel, mount the flute, improve the brakes,
etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Worse than a damn house, worse than a damn car,
worse than a damn job. But it's more fun than any of 'em.
Short chapter this week -- aside from filming with Evening\PM Magazine and CNN,
I've done little other than work on the machine. I really wouldn't mind
telling you about it in excruciating detail, but I'd have readers whacking
BREAK keys all across the land. That wouldn't do at all.
So I'll see you next week.
-- Steve
==============================================================================
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
#8 in the second online CAA series
by
Steven K. Roberts, HtN (WORDY)
Port Townsend, WA
October 15, 1986
It has begun at last.
The bike sits quietly blinking beside the half-finished wing of a homebuilt
aircraft. Batman the Manx sits blinking in the doorway, I'm swilling Millstone
coffee from my stainless steel traveling mug, and Maggie's out there in our
hosts' kitchen, conjuring a sorbet to go with dinner. Those are the headlines.
We are on the road.
It began as it always does: poignant farewells, final tweakings, long
discussions over maps. The ferry to Seattle seemed different this time; we
hugged on the stern as Bainbridge Island faded into the fog -- Bainbridge, our
home for the last month, our home perhaps someday again. A quiet kiss, breath
clouds white in the gray mist, bikes the focus of commuter curiosity. Yes, I
can feel it... we're finally on the road.
First stop: Bothell. Seattle passed smoothly, the Burke Gilman Trail
simplifying what would otherwise have been a 33-mile ordeal of city riding.
Whispering past joggers, catching glimpses of urgent racers, swerving to miss
the occasional stray toddler, we made our way through the colors of early fall
to Traveling Software. This was to be our official send-off, an event that
would draw not only five TV crews but GEnie's own Steve Haracznak -- director
of Public Relations. When you become a living caricature of technology's
potential, apparently, the industry takes notice.
Dinner. Exuberant tale-swapping. Big plans. Debugging till 2. Fitful sleep
on the floor; awakening bleary to the humming of corporate America. "There's
somebody sleeping in there," came whispers from the hall; then we emerged,
blinking in the fluorescents, stumbling to the coffeepot and greeting the first
reporter and hour and a half early. "I am the amazing Winnebiko," said the
bike, "do you have any questions before we head south?"
Four hours of media. CNN's Roger Gadley arrived and joined the local crews
standing about with cameras perched like electronic parrots on their shoulders.
Visitors included GEnie user B.CALDWELL, who has been following these columns
and had to see if this bike was for real. Traveling Software's Mark Eppley
stood with Steve and looked on with a sort of subdued glee -- for the message
that would go out over the airwaves was that of radical new freedoms that could
be gained through portable computers and telecommunications. I rode through
the Computing Across America banner to scattered cheers, did the show and tell
countless times, and then was off -- this time for real -- northbound with
Maggie astern and the unknown ahead.
Northbound. In October. In Washington. Logical, eh? Actually, this is a
sort of shakedown, a minor loop around the Puget Sound area that will give us
one last brief chance to fix things in the Bainbridge Island shop before
scurrying south with winter's blast at our backs. But we're moving, and that's
what matters; cold wet weather can only deepen our appreciation of what lies
ahead.
We slept in Everett that night, wrestling the bikes past leg- climbing
squirrels and up right-angle steps into the apartment of a friend from
Traveling Software. Already the differences: the human kaleidoscope twisting
with our wheels and revealing lifestyles unimaginable with every layover. I
remember now, and Maggie's seeing it too: the journey's stability lies in
variety, and change is the very essence of what at first seems chaotic.
Activate all receptors; set information bandwidth to maximum. LIFE has
resumed.
Cold fog, long hill, down past the gravel pit, flashers ablaze, hands burning
numb, teeth clenched in that violent grinning grimace of exuberant pain.
Living! Mukilteo ferry purring into the soup, the twice-crashed Cathlamet
bearing its cargo of us and coffee holding gloved hands on the voyage to
Whidbey Island. The day crisp and beautiful, parking panting bodies in spicy
autumn leaves to crunch Washington apples, Maggie learning to scream her way up
the rougher grades to mask the pain. Voices tiny in each other's ears through
2- meter radio, the Osprey nest, the encounters -- everywhere the encounters.
Normal foods made robust through hunger, the finest seasoning of all. Hazy
scenery passing like wide-bandwidth video, the pumping of polypro-clad legs
driving the sweet whisper of chain and tire. And through it all the inaudible
hum of processors, snagging thoughts like passing butterflies in their delicate
electronic web as my fingers tickle the handlebars. Ah. It's really
happening.
It was on yet another ferry that we met Bob: enroute to Port Townsend,
preparing to seek the hostel at Fort Worden. "I just dropped my son off at the
airport in Vancouver," he said, "he's off to go trekking in Nepal." A moment's
hesitation, then a friendly grin. "His room's empty, if you'd like a place to
spend the night... say, that console looks like it belongs in an airplane..."
Over a day later we're still here, comfortable with our new friends as we
engage in the basic barter of this lifestyle: snippets of our lives for a
taste of theirs. We all emerge richer, each feeling that he or she has gained
the most. This is human commerce at its finest, and everybody profits except
the IRS.
By morning, we'll be southbound (after a flight over the Olympic Mountains in
Bob's Grumman). No further north this year, no more senseless flirtation with
the grim misery of those coastal rains everybody warns us about. Somewhere out
there is a warm winter sun, only a couple hundred thousand pedal cranks away...
The familiar is fading. The nomadic life -- seeming as much my essence as the
sweat that sustains it -- has begun. I smell it.
-- Steve
==============================================================================
WINDOWS ON WASHINGTON
#9 in the second online CAA series
by
Steven K. Roberts, HtN (WORDY)
Centralia, WA (Mile 295)
October 24, 1986
It was dark, late: after midnight. The town -- Montesano, Washington; the
brain -- mildly giddy on local beer and the fuzzy exhaustion of a 54 mile day.
I lurked in the wet grass behind the Osterberg Motel, Maggie standing beside me
and looking more than a little worried.
I tried the bathroom window and found no handhold. My now- useless Sawmill
Athletic Club membership card was tattered from the attempt to jimmy the front
door latch, and no lockpicking tools were handy. I dug quietly into the wood
around the window with a key, trying not to make a sound, but only managed a
small pile of sawdust. This was getting us nowhere.
I dropped to my knees, shivering slightly, and groped in the clutter that lay
about the old building like the archaeological echoes of a dying culture, my
fingers finding and quickly rejecting crumbled wires, rusty bolts, bottlecaps,
and things unnamable lying there in the dank shadows. Somewhere a door slammed
and I stiffened, frozen in the haze of a distant streetlight, waiting for the
shout. But it was only a guy walking his dog, and he passed quickly out of
sight.
My hand closed around an ancient bracket -- something vaguely automotive.
"Ah," I whispered. Prying carefully, wincing at the amplified crunch of old
wood, I eased the window open. Giggling sotto voce, I stepped on an old bucket
and squirmed through the opening, finding sink and toilet more or less where
expected, both creaking under my weight as I lowered myself headfirst to the
floor. Ah, travel. I completed the entry, found my way around the bicycles
jammed into the stuffy room, and let Maggie in the front door -- number 5 --
the one with the broken lock that had resisted every attempt to use the key
given us on check-in.
It had been a day of northwest autumn images... of woodsmoke curling
white-on-white through thick morning fog. Of ducks, startled by our passage,
scrambling across the Hood canal watertop making tracks on the surface with
frantic wingtips and flapping feet. Of herons and gulls, Christmas tree farms,
dogs breathing micropuffs, giant mushrooms like pumpkin pies, tiny ones
scattered across logs like storybook colonies -- and the unnatural quiet of
off-season tourist culture. A brisk morning.
Later, on route 108, I pedaled in sadness -- bracing myself against the blasts
of logging trucks hauling the carcasses of once- beautiful trees and leaving an
ugly ravaged landscape like a botanical war zone invented in Hollywood. Now I
understood the tree-spikers, as my surroundings alternated between disaster and
grandeur, each underscoring the other. I passed from lifeless mountainsides of
blackened stumps to great rustling valleys touched with the muted ochers and
somber umbers of autumn... from harsh wreckage to quiet perfection with man
alone the mediator. Anger. But through every mini-hurricane of a 60 mph
logging truck -- at once fragrant with fresh-felled fir and rank with diesel
fumes -- I tried to remember that the man at the wheel was just doing his job.
Those aren't the villians at all... they only LOOK the part.
They're only villians when they blow me off the road.
We're southbound for real now; I'm writing from the 295-mile mark, two days
from Portland. Puget Sound is way back there somewhere -- the people who made
it feel as home now fond memories and database records. No more Paulsbo bread,
ferry horns in morning fog, midnight milling machine madness, or sunsets over
Manzanita Bay. Home is the road. I'm re-experiencing the major adjustment
that has to be made when you switch from stasis to nomadics: a redefinition of
"home" that lets a modular phone jack, bicycle, and the cluttered livingroom of
an overnight host touch all the places in your heart that were once owned by
your old hometown. Yeah, this is a qualitatively different lifestyle, and when
I look into the eyes of people here in Centralia I try to remember that I'm
even more alien than I look -- for reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do
with speech synthesizers and blinking consoles.
Anyway. The weather is holding, a record for rainlessness they tell me, and
we're slipping away from winter on back roads, so far unnoticed. Oregon
tomorrow, I think -- or at least the Columbia River -- then on down through the
land of contrasts, the state of being, the place where most trends start and
most wanderers stop. California will be like glue on our wheels, but there is
so much more beyond... wherever that may be.
-- Steve
==============================================================================
Rain Country Hospitality
#10 in the second online CAA series
by
Steven K. Roberts, HtN (WORDY)
Lake Oswego, OR; 435 miles.
October 29, 1986
The warnings were true. It DOES rain in the Northwest.
The trip from Castle Rock to St. Helens was a 42-mile marathon of spray and
puddle, drizzle and bubble. Trucks blew by in a rage of wild grayness, my
microphone tube filled up with water, and I settled into a grim rhythm of
pumping water under my wheels with Gore-tex legs. Such are the rides that
DON'T fit the freewheeling fantasy -- the days when waittresses look you over
with obvious concern for your health as well as the messy cleanup job that will
follow your visit.
It has been an eventful week, with too much to cram into a column: camping in
the rain, riding lively Klein mountain bikes down the Punji Stake Trail,
passing the Trojan nuclear power plant (PREVENT TROJANOBYL says the bumper
sticker), getting tips on winter street survival from a homeless woman in
Portland, and meeting politicians who see us as potential campaigners. The
life of constant change I have written about is upon us now, and we'll just
have to settle for a few vignettes.
"This is bicycle mobile KA8OVA, listening," I said into the foam- tipped tube
at the corner of my mouth while touching a handlebar button with my left thumb.
The reset beep of a distant repeater told me that I was hitting the 147.26
machine in Longview, Washington -- on the Oregon border about 25 miles away.
"KA8OVA, this is KA7JBW. Handle here is Toby, that's tango oscar bravo yankee,
mobile in Kelso. You say you're bicycle mobile?"
I told him yes I was -- and where I was, and why. After a basic exchange
concerning radios and roads, I popped the question: "Hey, Toby, I'm about ten
miles north of Castle Rock at the moment, and don't think I can make it all the
way down to your end of the world before dark. You have any club members up
this way?"
Well, one thing led to another, as it always does, and soon there was a new
voice in my ear -- KA7QOX, otherwise known as Al. Did I need a place to stay?
Hey, no problem...
Within the hour, we were unpacking our bikes in a micro-hangar -- surrounded by
dozens of radio-controlled aircraft. A quarter-scale Cessna took up one end of
the room, its detached wing against the wall over 8 feet long. Five or six
helicopters, exquisite machines accurate in every detail, lay poised in various
attitudes -- some suspended from the ceiling, others on the floor. Walls were
hung with aircraft photos, unfinished projects were layered on cluttered
benches, and all around were the hallmarks of a passionate interest in this
intricate hobby. I felt right at home.
"Ah, play," I said to our host. "I see you have no plans to grow up either."
Al, balding and nearly old enough to be my father, grinned knowingly and
agreed. His career is industrial control system repair, but his life's work is
radio control -- and as the evening progressed we sensed the kinship that comes
from high-tech obsession: showing each other our creations, swapping tips, and
enjoying that warm glow of mutual respect. There really are a lot of
interesting people in the world...
After a morning helicopter flight and hearty breakfast we were off, my head
filled with fantasies of adding a mini-chopper to the bike and letting it roam
ahead to transmit live video of the mysteries around the next bend. Why not?
"Viva Madness!" writes RAY-ROLLS, one of my correspondents here on GEnie...
and indeed, why not? What else, besides learning and fun, should be our bottom
line?
Onward. Chats on the radio, new friends gradually fading into the static.
Coffee stops, curious stares. Heavy weather, wringing out gloves, wiggling
numb toes. The terror of the Lewis & Clark bridge, which managed to combine
all the most unpleasant cycling conditions into a single 10 minute ordeal:
rain, gusty sidewinds, slippery expansion joints, heavy two-way traffic,
logging trucks, steep grades, and no escape route. I caught up with Maggie at
the summit, touching her shoulder en passant and offering a word of
encouragement. Her whimper was lost in the roar, then I was flying downward at
37 mph, rain stinging my face, bike jolted sideways by surprise grooves and
passing 18-wheelers. Passing? At this speed? What the hell's the hurry,
guys? The little blinking green LED on my console kept saying OK, OK, OK --
but what does it know outside its artificial little world of nicely decoupled
5-volt logic?
But hey. The miles go by, experience becomes memory. The next afternoon we
were in Portland, Oregon.
Normally, finding contacts is easy. On my first trip around the country I
would roll into town, scan the faces in the crowd for that familiar spark, and
gently hint at my need for a place to stay. Rarely did I wander around a city
after dark and try to rationalize a night of credit-card camping. But two
things conspired to make Portland difficult: a pair of 8-foot high-tech
recumbents gives the misleading impression of complete self-sufficiency, and
Portland is a city with a huge street population -- hundreds of homeless people
living on the handouts and waste heat of a large but friendly town.
Conversation was easy and pleasant, but finding a place to crash nigh
impossible. After giving up, we fought our way across the city after dark to
the AYH hostel -- which, like every other hostel, was absolutely unlike every
other hostel.
Hostels have character.
This is one of a network of places that helps shape the traveling culture --
not the TOURIST culture (which provides the shallow thrills of "attractions"
while insulating people from wherever they are), but the TRAVELING culture,
which is exactly the opposite (a lifestyle instead of a diversion). At hostels
you meet people on journeys, people who throw their entire selves into the
experience of movement, change, and meeting other people. Long bicycle
odysseys are commonplace in the hosteling world, as are solo wanderers from
Australia, Swedish girls on holiday, and people of all ages seeking a bit of
work to fuel the next stage of travel. Someday I'll tell you more about the
hosteling life, but suffice it to say that we found ourselves in a sort of
haven from the confusion of the city, grateful for the chance to sit around the
big table and swap stories with new friends. A pretty 18-year old Canadian
girl named Bettina cut my hair for the next day's TV interviews, and my winsome
Lifestyle Maintenance Manager put the kitchen to good use. Ah, pasta.
Everybody we meet thinks we're intriguing, but some kinda crazy to be this far
north this late in the year. TV weather reports talk about storm systems and
Alaskan fronts, and the single word "south" is my stock answer to that constant
question: "where ya headed?" As we fled the continuous roar of Portland on the
delightful Terwilliger Trail, we could feel it: trees denuded, leaves on the
ground soft from rain, joggers puffing breath from faces locked into grimaces
of self-imposed agony. Tomorrow we'll dive back into the soup after a lakeside
day of writing and relaxation -- down to Corvallis, home of Hewlett-Packard
portable computers... a mecca of sorts. And closer to the sun.
"Back on the freeway, which is already in progress!"
-- Steve
==============================================================================
Strangeness and Halloween
#11 in the second online CAA series
by
Steven K. Roberts, HtN (WORDY)
Eugene, OR; 612 miles.
November 6, 1986
It's odd sometimes, living this lifestyle sampler. In Salem -- after a brutal
55-mile day of headwinds, rain, and shoulderless darkness -- we settled in with
a delightful couple who had sent an electronic invitation via CompuServe over
two years ago. Huddling in a phone booth, I queried my database for contacts;
within the hour we were warm and dry, blinking in the light, legs quivering
from one of our hardest rides yet and bodies numb from exhaustion. (Welcome
new GEnie user D.MACMILLAN.)
Before long I was alone in the house -- as Maggie, David and Lois went out to
shop for Halloween dinner. I wrote quietly by the woodstove, jumping up every
sentence or two to hand carob-coated fruit crunchies to the costumed children
of a town I'd never seen. Unlike the mischievous rampages of my own childhood,
this night was tame, almost depressing: every group was shepherded by a bored
but watchful adult, waiting on the sidewalk with a flashlight. Some people, it
seems, have found it amusing to give poison to children. The holiday
continues, emasculated.
This is strange. EVERYTHING is strange. As I step outside of society (yet
move intimately within it), American behavior seems progressively more bizarre
until I find other humans at least as fascinating as they find me. Lift
yourself out of your normal context and think about a few things for a minute
-- as if you ware studying an alien culture...
Consider the "business crowd." They swarm the restaurants at noon -- the women
painted and garbed in restrictive clothing, the men identical in uniforms
characterized by strips of colored fabric tied about the neck. Most (even the
brilliant ones) work hard for decades to support a lifestyle whose primary
functions are stability and the consumption of expensive goods -- a lifestyle
that takes on a life of its own to the extent that many are unable to change
their course even when they finally WANT to... as many eventually do.
Giant billboards promote addiction to tobacco smoke, with sexy people ("Alive
with Pleasure!") smiling over a notice that reads: "SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING:
Smoking Causes Lung Cancer, Heart Disease, Emphysema, And May Complicate
Pregnancy." In many parts of America, cigarette smoking is actually considered
attractive -- despite the fact that it stains teeth, releases dangerous fumes,
and threatens health.
Humans put a lot of other strange things into their bodies (even ignoring
drugs). Food, for example, is routinely laced with chemicals, antibiotics,
coloring agents, sweeteners and random impurities -- spawning a whole
subculture of people who prefer to eat products "close to the source" instead.
But these natural foods typically cost half again as much as those that have
been subjected to extensive processing. When you're a human engine consuming
5,000 calories a day, such matters take on paramount importance.
The males of this species gather across the land and earnestly discuss
"football," a ritualized proccess in which regionally- identifiable teams of
powerful men rumble hairily across large fields, slapping each other's bottoms
whenever they manage to relocate an oblong leather ball in a fashion contrary
to the intentions of their opponents. This national obsession (at least as
pervasive as religion, and in many ways comparable) provides a safe yet
controversial topic of conversation -- a sort of macho safety valve.
Across the earth's surface are invisible random boundaries that define the
geopolitical limits of human cultures. People crossing these lines are subject
to search, personal scrutiny -- sometimes even arrest or death. Some of the
larger regions have declared themselves "superpowers" and devote a major
percentage of their resources to the creation and maintenance of weaponry
capable of killing everybody else on the planet (as well as themselves) some 40
times over. Though it has been pointed out that such activity may quickly
destroy human civilization, there has been no serious attempt to reverse this
behavior.
Few humans think in terms of a planet, in fact. This is a very odd species:
nuclear waste has to be stored for a time longer than all of recorded history
before it ceases to be deadly. Pets eat better than many children -- who have
been behaviorally conditioned to crave such delicacies as Apple Jacks (a
breakfast cereal that is 54% sugar). Skin color is the basis of a caste
system, offically or otherwise. Leaders are chosen on the basis of charisma
and marketing ability, not intelligence. Success is measured by dollars, not
happiness. Some fatal diseases are too profitable to eradicate, while others
are considered blessings by a few who see them as God's way of eradicating
people who are different. The list goes on and on.
When viewed from the perspective of an incoming starship, in fact, much of
human behavior seems absurd -- even though there is no serious shortage of
intelligence, creativity, awareness, and love.
Somehow, living on a bicycle intensifies all this. My little starship -- my
Loony Excursion Module -- is connected yet unconnected, a rolling platform from
which to view the world at close range. And the closer I get, the more remote
I feel. Do you see why I keep calling this strange, even though it has become
my normal life?
In other news: The ride from Salem to Corvallis was flawless -- 42 miles of a
cool, sunny tailwind; good conversation on the radio; energetic music (Level
42) on the cassette deck; perfect. We arrived under a peach-colored sky show,
the afternoon sun setting autumn foliage ablaze over a campus still sleepy from
the aftereffects of Halloween night (college style). We meandered about until
dark, then headed for the home of our first hostess.
Waiting to cross a street, I fell over. Now, this is not my usual style, nor
it it considered healthy behavior on a machine that weighs about as much as the
average medium-sized Honda. As I struggled to wrestle it back up, the
handlebars fell off.
Red alert!
My life was suddenly immobilized -- with no repair part available anywhere in
the world. I sat by the road in the dark and stared numbly at the fractured
bearing mount, machined long ago from an inappropriate chunk of cast aluminum.
This would take a machine shop, a hunk of 6061 or 7075, and someone deft with a
mill. Lacking all three in this unfamiliar town, we parked the bikes and
strolled to dinner at Nearly Normal's -- a place that conjured 60's images
while tickling the palate and pleasing the ear with classical guitar. I needed
a break.
Oregon is an interesting place. People seem alive, involved, interested in
others. Perhaps that has something to do with the demographic filtering that
results from my bizarre appearance, but the net effect is easy connection --
and before long we were standing in Griffo Brothers Ironmonger Works, a garage
shop par excellence, watching Mark the metal wizard at the helm of his Mazak
numerically controlled milling machine. Color graphic definition of my
steering part in, finely-honed aluminum out. Ain't technology wonderful?
Rolling again, we spent two days with Hewlett-Packard, the reason Corvallis had
come to seem a sort of mecca. Media, brown-bag lunch with 200 employees, still
more new friends. And when the Portable was taken away for upgrades, the lobby
suddenly felt like a hospital waiting room: we sat in our little sea of
clutter, clad in T-shirts ans sweats, catching up on correspondence and looking
up expectantly every time someone in a tie walked through the room. "How is
she?"
We're in Eugene, now -- getting ready for the 96-mile mountainous ride (with no
services) that will land us on the coast. In the meantime... still more new
friends, still more bike tweaking, still more adventure and food and rain and
coffee and conversation. Always the same, always completely different. This
is the texture of our life, the internal decor of a Winnebiko.
And the next time you hear from me, it will be from the Pacific.
==============================================================================
Flying on the Coast
#12 in the second online CAA series
by
Steven K. Roberts, HtN (WORDY)
Lakeside, OR; 747 miles.
November 12, 1986
It had to happen eventually. Things have been easy too long; riding south in
the Willamette Valley, even when wet, was flat and easy. But from Eugene,
every road led skyward -- east into the Cascades, south into the Siskiyous, or
west into the Coast Range.
Naturally we opted for the Pacific coast, that 2,000-mile cycling bonanza that
attracts travelers from the world over. Good shoulders to fly on, cheap
camping, friendly hostels, bicycle-aware drivers, a mobile community of
cyclists, classic scenery -- all this and more defined the Pacific coast route
as THE way to continue south. But first... we had to get there.
"You'll be needing these," said Laura, handing us two dozen homemade chocolate
chip cookies, still warm. Outside, the drizzle was starting -- though we
managed to convince ourselves that the occasional patch of less-gray sky meant
sunshine ahead. Eugene had been a delight, yet another of those potential
homes characterized by intelligent people, surprising resources, and quick new
friendships that seemed already timeless. Laura and Jim were kindred spirits:
veterans of long-distance cycle touring, bright and playful, happily living
freelance lives asynchronous with the business world. Staring out at the rain
amidst the laughter of my new friends, I was in no mood to hurry.
But southbound we must be, for it is November and this is Oregon. We took a
last gulp of coffee and hit the road.
It took but a moment to sense the difference. This was not to be a lazy ride,
like most of the ones since Seattle. My altimeter advanced slowly as I sweated
in the polypropylene cocoon, rain pattering Gore-tex, wind whipping flags --
occasional misty vistas on the switchbacks recalling other mountain moments,
other rides, other epochs. 1200 feet: not much, really, but there would be
four such climbs in the 96 miles to the coast -- 96 miles with no services, no
water, and only primitive camping. I rationed myself a small sip and pressed
on, sharing radio reassurances with Maggie, pointing out the sights, topping
the first hill easily enough and coasting into the Coast Range -- further from
people and food and network nodes... and everything else that comforts the
wanderer.
Onward. Into the folds of hills, a labarynth of valleys, a wonderland of
woodland. We would round bends and find the devastation of a fresh clear-cut,
suffer through it for a mile or so, then cross a BLM boundary and find
ourselves once again among 5-century-old firs. Clear-cutting makes sense, they
say: the theory is to harvest a forest, replant with efficient new hybrids,
then tear it all down again in 30 years or so. "NEW FOREST PLANTED SPRING
1986," said an International Paper Company sign... neglecting to note that the
old forest, grand and humbling, was destroyed in the fall of 1985. Only the
remnants of a slash-burn, punctuated by black stumps and orange ribbons, remain
as a cynical monument to what once was a place of beauty.
But there's beauty around here too, lots of it, whole valleys shrouded in mist
and echoing with the muted calls of birds. Trees peek through clouds in
disembodied mystery, roads twist like rogue capillaries among disorienting
hills, deer flash through clearings, thick moss coats riverside trees like
green day-glo flocking, leaves drift across the rainy road and land among their
fellows in heavy silence. Fishermen stand knee-deep in rapids, hunting salmon;
odd botanical curiosities never seen in the east draw the eye with their lush
eccentricity. Delighting in all this, we failed to notice the early dusk.
Camp, primitive style. There was evidence of a previous fire, only that -- no
showers or picnic tables or campground stores. No other campers, either, nor
any nearby settlements. There was, however, plenty of waterlogged mossy
firewood... as well as rain, cold, sore throat and fever. Not good timing.
Maggie set to work on dinner, one of those "camp glopolas" that would be ho-hum
in suburbia but seems magnificent in the wilderness. I shoveled it in, seeking
warmth as well as nutrition, feeding my face with one hand and the tentative
fire with the other. Soggy sticks hissed and smoked; lexan spoons clinked
stainless pots; wet clothing steamed; the swollen river rushed in the
background. I shivered, snuffled, huddled to flames, sipped hot cider, and
tried to ignore the fever symptoms... for we were in that vague region lying
between recreational camping and survival. When I dove into the tent and clung
to my lady for warmth, I had a whole new reason to appreciate NOT traveling
alone.
And it was a long night -- 14 hours of darkness and rain, confused dreams and
pain; then came a gray dawn of biting cold and heavy condensation. This is the
true test of gear, and the deficiencies quickly became obvious. The Kelty
tent, chosen for its size and not its quality, soaked through and dripped. The
waterlogged $110 Gore-tex rainsuit never dried out (On the second day, I found
a plastic laundry bag with holes for head and arms to be more comforting). My
new $25 neoprene gloves "for all wet-weather cycling" needed to be wrung out
every few minutes, and a pair of special gaiters made for cycling not only
didn't fit, but fell apart and soaked my shoes as I rode. How is it that gear
designed for heavy weather fails under stress, while "delicate equipment" like
the HP computer and Yaesu radio press on unaffected, even when it's so humid
that they have to be wiped dry every few minutes?
Day 2. One big climb, sweating away the last of our water with 56 miles to go.
The mud puddle tasted pretty good, and the runoff down that mossy cliff was so
delicious that we filled all our bottles and pretended we'd never heard of
Giardia. We ate the last cookies while gazing out over miles of misty
wilderness, then flew, freezing, down a thousand feet and pedaled until dark
along the sinuous Smith River valley, back and forth, our view slowly
broadening until the bright sky and blazing sunset bespoke Big Water -- the
ocean -- the Pacific at last. Weak and wheezing, I managed the last few miles
into Reedsport and settled into the Western Hills Motel... surrounded by soggy
high-tech fabrics and the roar of Highway 101.
And so begins a new phase. Now, two days later, I write in the guest room of
our new hosts, new friends again. The cycle repeats with all variables
changed; the lifestyle sampler has turned up yet another treat. This time:
atypical retirees (neither snowbirds nor sedentary) building a sleek amphibious
airplane and living for the joy of flying. Howard is recovering from the brief
setback of triple bypass surgery last month (you can't tell); Barbara does the
epoxy and fiberglass work on the plane and is a lively, thoughtful hostess.
Their friend Eric whisked us around Tenmile Lake at sunset this evening,
speeding across the rippled reflections of mother-of-pearl sky colors and
autumn shoreline, the wind in our hair, broad grins frozen on faces recently
locked in groaning granny gear grimaces. I'm fantasizing about my THIRD
journey already -- in a computerized seaplane. And we're living yet another in
an infinite succession of glimpses into lifestyles ranging from the bizarre to
the sublime.
There are so many ways to live...
...and I want them all. Why commit yourself to the cherries jubilee when you
can wander freely in the kitchen?
-- Steve
==============================================================================
Arrival in the Promised Land
#13 in the second online CAA series
by
Steven K. Roberts, HtN (WORDY)
Klamath, CA; 961 miles.
November 19, 1986
The anticipation began building as it always does before a state line -- but
more so, given the fact that we were approaching California. California! This
is it! Arbitrary and political or not, the state line took on grand
proportions in my imagination: I squinted into the distance for the portals of
exotica, the gateway to erotica, the entrance to the promised land. Of course,
I had learned the lesson on my first bicycle trip: approaching the land of
bikinis and hot tubs via the Mojave Desert was a sobering lesson in shattered
expectations. But this was the COAST, by golly, and the last hundred miles of
rugged Oregon seashore bespoke pure magic ahead.
The first change, however, involved not so much culture as lack of same:
California has no bottle bill. I have been spoiled by Oregon roads -- smooth,
glass-free, hardly littered at all. Highway 101 is somewhat less perfect than
the rest of the state, but still, Oregon is a clean place: not only do glass
and aluminum containers have significant cash value, but twice a year the
citizens organize a statewide clean-up. Impressive.
But after the state line, things changed abruptly. The land was still
exquisite, of course -- waves crashing against rugged sea stacks, scattered
bleached driftwood edging windswept beaches, the neck-cricking beginnings of
redwood country -- but the roadside distractions appeared with a vengeance.
Broken glass, beer cans, dirty diapers, food wrappers, cigarette butts, milk
cartons, baby shoes, tangled audio cassettes, suitcase parts, magazines,
mufflers, even a plastic-wrapped dead dog... all this and more attests to the
amazing number of people who have no respect at all for some of the most
beautiful land in the world. How can someone toss a Blitz Beer can into a
redwood grove? Is Earth their private dumpster?
Steering carefully through the glass and inventing creative punishments for
clods caught littering, we headed south -- our memories of Oregon cast into
even warmer perspective. It had been a good ride, Oregon. We had good luck
with the weather after the Smith River fever escapade, prompting many a local
to comment on unseasonal warmth. In Port Orford we stayed with a fly-fishing,
wood-carving family -- swapping tales till midnight and leaving with warm hugs
and promises. In Bandon we stayed in the eccentric hostel for two days,
pedaling off amid a chorus of Australian-accented best wishes. In Brookings we
found a flawlessly maintained state park, met another southbound cycling
couple, and drank a toast to Samuel Boardman -- the man who protected so much
of Oregon's coast from commercial exploitation. But now we were in
California...
Crescent City, to be exact. No contacts there, dusk descending, rain likely,
the local state park closed for winter. With our new pedaling friends (John
and Karen), we cruised the RV parks and settled at last on the NACO WEST
Shoreline Campground.
"Hi!" I brightly told the booth lady. "We're traveling the country by bicycle
and writing about it. How much for a tent site?"
She eyed the four of us and smiled, guarded but friendly. "How many tents?"
"Two."
"That's seven dollars apiece, or fourteen total."
"What if we all sleep in one tent and use the other for supplies?" I asked,
only half-joking.
This was not a standard question, and she had to call the manager. A long
discussion ensued, with many a furtive glance our way. "Well, he says you can
do it for seven dollars, but if anyone sleeps in the other tent it will be
another seven."
We said that would be fine with us, paid her, accepted the long list of rules
and regulations (no moving the picnic tables, no fish cleaning, no fires at the
campsite, no booze or pets in the bathroom, no nuisances of any sort, no, No,
NO!!), and entered the mostly- deserted campground -- cruising until dark in
search of the perfect site and making bed-check jokes about management's
closing threat: "We have a guard who makes regular rounds... he'll be keeping
an eye on you all night, and he BETTER not find anyone in that other tent."
It wasn't a bad evening, all things considered. Perfect driftwood fire on the
beach, Maggie's linguini with garlic clam sauce, a good bottle of wine. The
four of us poked the fire and ate smores until drowsy, then crawled giggling
into our porta-condo and got cozy -- drifting away to the incessant hooting of
an offshore foghorn with its asynchronous counterpoint of clanging and moaning
bouys. The rain didn't get serious till dawn.
Soggy gray, 50-knot wind, small craft warnings, cold salt spray. I donned
three layers and staggered off to the showers, noting the large nightgown-clad
woman in an upstairs window staring at our site through binoculars. Camp
Gestapo. There was no TV camera in the bathroom, but a crudely painted
Yosemite Sam was captioned: "Now hold on there, varmit! Didja flush it?"
Back at the tent, in heavy winds and coastal rain, Maggie and Karen told the
story. Seems the manager had driven to our site (after us menfolk went to the
showers) and accosted the women: "You slept in both those tents. You owe us
seven dollars!"
"No, that one just has gear in it--" Maggie told him, pointing.
"You owe us seven dollars!"
We packed our wet gear quickly, conscious of the binoculars, acutely aware of
being unwelcome. It was an unfamiliar feeling -- and time for the power of raw
ink. "Never piss off a writer if you have an image to protect," I always say,
so enroute to breakfast I called the Triplicate -- Crescent City's local paper.
By the time we spent a rainy day in the newspaper office catching up on work,
did an interview, and slept in the home of the managing editor, they had their
story... and they were even moved to call the Chamber of Commerce and tell
them about it. Heh.
Now, the other end of the campground spectrum. Parting company with John and
Karen, we climbed over the first 1200-foot obstacle in Redwood country and
found ourselves in Klamath -- a strangely spread- out town, at once dependent
upon passers-by and forbidding. Jack's Motel was closed for the season: "If
you gave me a thousand dollars, I couldn't give you one of those rooms." Again,
no contacts; and little chance of cruise mode yielding an invitation. We gave
up and crunched onto the gravel of the Chinook RV Resort.
Twelve bucks a night, but what the hell -- they take plastic. We added a
dollop of Kahlua and a few other essentials to the bill and eyed the darkening
sky... all the while chatting with friendly Nanette who had left her Oklahoma
travel agency to buy this campground. Could we find a place to work indoors?
Oh, there's a clubhouse? With a woodstove? Gee... could we bring the bikes
inside? Well hey, if we're doing all that, can we sleep in there too? No
problem. She smiled. We spent the evening on the Klamath River shoreline,
playing with a dog named RV and watching a sunset symphony of subtle pastels,
then moved in -- comfortable and welcome. And here I am, tapping away on the
HP by an old potbellied stove while Maggie whips up Kahlua treats and our
camping gear slowly dries. Not bad. Not bad at all.
Sometimes, life on the road is a quiet succession of unspectacular events like
this -- hardly newsworthy in themselves, but deeply revealing in concert. In
the last week we have played with 1 and 2.5-year olds, learned about the
zenlike attitudes of fly fishing, talked with a myrtlewood gatherer, fended off
the advances of a cloying airhead, overheard the urgent intrigue of small-town
newspaper operation, learned how to slice bananas with bicycle spokes, eaten
cranberry candy, gawked back at tourists, gamboled nude in the sand, played the
shining flute in C while gazing at the shining sea, and eaten dinner out of a
frisbee. Those are the headlines.
And I'll see you next week, from somewhere in Humboldt County.
NEWS FLASH: The PM MAGAZINE story about our high-tech loony adventure goes
national on November 24 -- which doesn't guarantee that it will air in your
area on that date, but it might. If you're interested in seeing the machine
through some medium other than words, call your local PM or EVENING MAGAZINE
station and ask about the air date of the computerized bicycle story.
ANOTHER NEWS FLASH: The high-tech nomads are getting hungry. Now that the
"Computing Across America" book has gone into typesetting at Learned
Information, we feel secure in accepting advance orders for autographed copies.
When the book is released (in February, they say), I will stop wherever I am,
receive a shipment, sign them, and ship copies to everyone who ordered in
advance. After that, the logistics of nomadics will prevent all but the
occasional autographing. If you'd like to order one, send $10 to:
Kelly Monroe COMPUTING ACROSS AMERICA 5448 Kenneylane Boulevard Columbus, OH
43220
This book is the tale of my first 10,000-mile journey around the US, and deals
with everything from hot online romance to ice caves. Hope to hear from you!
-- Steve
==============================================================================
ADVENTURES IN SOUTH ECOTOPIA
#14 in the second online CAA series
by
Steven K. Roberts, HtN (WORDY)
Eureka, CA; 1,043 miles.
November 28, 1986
Do you ever read my stories and wonder what it REALLY feels like to be out
here, exposed to the world, unsure from one day to the next where I'll sleep,
who I'll meet, what pleasures and pains will strike with the whim of chance?
Do you ever try to see past the rhapsody, the humor and philosophy -- looking
for clues in the rhythm of my words, sensing exhaustion in torpid prose or the
giddiness of new friendship in silly sentences of puns and alliteration?
Narrow-bandwidth communication like this is frustrating. I'm living an
adventure of intense visceral sensation, and the only way I can share it with
you is through words -- and maybe a stack of photos if I ever camp in your
livingroom and swap tales over pizza. Not enough. Last Thursday I wanted to
share more: I wanted you to BE there.
It wasn't a normal day, this 18-mile explosion of violence and insanity. It
was a day of curses lost in the spray of trucks, of stinging eyes and cold
sweat. It was a test of hardware, a test of nerves, a challenge to muscle and
mind alike. Thursday was one of those days that will live on as a caricature
of the entire journey -- a day that will instantly spring to mind whenever
anyone mentions riding in the rain... or redwood trees... or the sheer
looniness of challenging truck-infested mountain roads on a bicycle in a heavy
storm.
Imagine sweat, lots of sweat, steaming inside layers of polypropylene and
Gore-tex. Its pressure builds, hot and stifling, as you strain in a headwind
up a mountain road. You think to disrobe, but the icy trickles of rain leaking
through zippers and seams warn otherwise -- better to be hot and wet than cold
and wet. Your shoes begin to squish, and you make a fist every few minutes to
squeeze water from expensive "waterproof" neoprene gloves.
Soon you accept the discomfort and pay more attention to the other problems:
packs soaking through, computers and humidity, trucks blasting by in an opaque
spray. Those can be challenging as you waver unsteadily up the grade at 3 mph,
fighting crosswinds. Sometimes they catch you broadside in a soaking explosion
of white water and roar off into the mist, trailing diesel fumes and the smells
of chopped fir, leaving you struggling for control as a motorhome passes too
closely and a knot of vegetation forces a swerve into traffic. Ah,
recreational cycling.
The water is everywhere -- inside you and around you. You need to vent the
morning's coffee, swilled so long ago in a fluorescent-lit 50's cafe, but the
grade is too steep for parking... so you press on into the rain, splashing in
brown runoff like a spawning chinook, pedaling numbly and dumbly and trying not
to think about the place you could have stayed a few miles back. Giant trees
pass slowly, shrouded in mist; the sounds are a muted cacophony of patter and
splash, drip and roar, bicycle chain and your own wheezing breath. Higher you
go.
And then the summit, understated, no sign but a warning to trucks, no place to
pull off and congratulate yourself. Without fanfare you coast the level part,
breathing easily, relaxing slightly -- then your speed picks up and the curves
fly by and the bumps are terrifying... the brakes are wet and your hands grow
numb... raindrops sting your face and you squint into the gray, peer into the
murk, scan the blurred submerged pavement for signs of potholes and glass and
ruts and bumps and -- HEY! GIMME SOME SPACE, JERK! -- anything else that
could drop you in a blink and spread you like a high-tech road kill across two
lanes of uncaring violent glorious redwood highway.
This is the kind of cycling that makes the first motel look like a sort of
paradise. You hand over a dripping Visa card then drag your bike inside,
spreading wet fabrics over every door, chair, and light fixture -- steaming up
the room while lying numb and smiling in a real bed. What a life...
And I wouldn't trade it for all the BMWs in suburbia.
So. What else is happening? We rode on to Arcata, "where the 60's meet the
sea," and immediately began finding friends. Another of those surprises:
there (and here, and here and there) prosper the values and attitudes that made
the 60's what they were -- not in a degenerate way, but in a productive and
creative one. Social consciousness lives! It's a mature and quiet force,
unlike the frenzy of days gone by that became de rigeuer for everyone under 30.
Dig it? I mean... remember how confusing it was when you started meeting
people who acted like hostile rednecks but looked just like gentle hippies?
Most disturbing, wasn't it? That's what happens when style outweighs
substance. But today's hippiedom is a thoughtful lifestyle, not just the way
to be IN style.
The emphasis now is on health, not drugs. On growth, not destruction. On
efficiency, not depravity. The famed hallmarks of the 60's -- strange music,
long hair, and dope -- are but the textural backdrops in what has become a
quiet, unaggressive community. Fashion has long since moved on (mercifully),
leaving people who care about ecology and world peace to do what they can, for
the most part so passively that the effects are but a gentle breeze in the
absurd maelstrom of current events. But it matters, and they care, and it felt
good to be in a place where people still believe in something other than
abstract entities and their personal bottom lines.
We stayed at the Humboldt State Campus Center for Appropriate Technology for a
couple of days, wandering the well-cultivated grounds through the shadows of
windmills and solar collectors. Dinners had the feel of family, and nobody
even asked how much my bike cost (one of the first questions in anyplace even
CLOSE to Yuppiedom). I began writing a Whole Earth Review article, invigorated
by an atmosphere more fitting than a xerox motel room or suburban vinyl
tabletop. Quiet music. Good company. Smells of teas and spices, composting
toilet and vegetable garden.
And then on to Eureka. "Don't go there!" said our Arcata friends. "Come on
down!" said our Eureka friends. The balance tilted, as always, in favor of
change, and we rode 8 lazy miles to the Samoan Cookhouse -- an old logging camp
tradition that serves up an all-you-can eat mega-breakfast, ideal for cyclists.
Pain and pleasure... raw gluttony... new insights into the term "lumbering."
Torpid and heavy we crossed the bridge and stumbled into yet another culture --
another unexpected treat in what has become a lifestyle sampler of infinite
scope.
Humboldt County is the mecca of kinetic sculpture. Every year, Eureka is the
scene of strange madness as 40-50 amphibious human- powered vehicles cover a
38-mile course of highway, water, and mud. Some racers are bent on sleek
efficiency; most are bent on artistic fun -- and it is with those of the latter
category that we find ourselves staying. Through an unplanned sequence of
serendipitous events, we fell immediately into a house-sitting deal... a
chance to stop for a week and attempt to hit about 50,000 keys in the right
order, ideally yielding a couple of magazine articles on the eve of deadline.
Procrastination followed by despair: nothing has changed, even as everything
changes.
So here I am, on Thanksgiving night, fresh from dinner with an exquisitely
eccentric friend in Ferndale (more on THAT intriguing character next week),
pattering away on a lashed-together desk of plywood and C-clamps as a cat
half-dozes beside me. Yes, here I am again: settled into a place I'd have
never imagined a week ago, as much at home as ever. It's not even strange
anymore. We watched ourselves on San Francisco's Evening Magazine last night
-- saw the "world's smartest bicycle" laden with computers and solar panels --
and realized with a start that it was US, that we are still a curiosity even as
we settle into the journey's routine. What's so bizarre about a couple of
high-tech nomads?
It's those around us that we find curious, not ourselves. That's probably why,
in 14 GEnie columns, I still haven't gotten around to explaining how this
machine works. With all the wonders of the planet to explore, how could I
remain obsessed with a bicycle -- even if it DOES happen to talk?
-- Steve
==============================================================================
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
==============================================================================
COMPUTING ACROSS HUMBOLDT COUNTY?
#16 in the second online CAA series
by
Steven K. Roberts, HtN (WORDY)
Eureka, CA; 1,106 miles.
December 15, 1986
We have just spent three weeks in Humboldt County with old friends -- old
friends whom we first met three weeks ago. Such is the time distortion of the
traveling life. We're living as a family of four, and the time before our
arrival seems vague and distant. Oh yeah... I remember... aren't we on some
kinda BICYCLE trip?
But these three weeks have been a therapeutic dose of home, something that we
need now and then to temper our rootless nomadics with the illusion of
stability. Sometimes Dataspace isn't quite enough -- especially when childhood
memories of Christmas begin to season the festivities of others with little
wistful pangs.
Christmas persists in being a strange time to travel. On my first journey
(solo for 500 days or so), I endured two of them. Both were warm, yet somehow
sad -- for even with no religious interest in the holiday I have been deeply
inculturated along with everyone else. The Christmas trees of others all seem
deficient in contrast with that perfect prototype fantasy tree imprinted 30
years ago; the traditional music is somehow evocative, the non-traditional
music grating. The season is a confusion of love and tackiness, beauty and
clutter, generosity and guilt. I try not to participate, but still feel the
pull of behavioral quicksand, the well-intentioned brainwashing of a culture in
transition. Christmas is mostly a habit now, a hysterical celebration of mass
obligation... and how can a present you SHOULD buy convey anything other than
emotional self-defense?
(And besides, I don't have room on my bicycle for new toys.)
But no matter how philosophical I try to be about this yearly commercial
bonanza, I am still drawn in, still affected. I look at my friends' tree and
get wistful for the bubble lights of my childhood; I walk downtown and feel the
credit cards itch. "Oh, wouldn't Duane love this?" "Honey, do you think Ian
would like some dinosaur mugs?" What are we going to do for all of our friends
back in Ohio, out in Dataspace, and in every other place touched by my wheels
or my hands or my words or my heart?
And so we have been torn all week. Stay or go? Stay or go? Lists of pros and
cons, lists of things to do. Aw, let's wait -- they say it's gonna rain; I
have to do the Popular Science proposal and install Maggie's new drum brake...
and Duane and Micki invited us to go caroling on our bicycles. But we've been
here too long, and it really is a pretty day and I'm restless and damn it, if
we don't get our asses south we're going to be stuck up here till April. No...
until May. That's when they have the Kinetic Sculpture Race. Isn't there SOME
way to do it all?
Understanding why I stop reveals even more about why I go, doesn't it?
What's particularly intriguing about all this is that from the perspective of
movement, standing still is high adventure. The little events of daily life --
going to parties, renting movies for the VCR, cooking a fresh seafood dinner
with friends -- are all cast into sharp relief by the exquisite transience of
passing through. Savor this... it won't last long.
One such tableaux of modern Americana occurred last night. We found ourselves
at a Christmas party hosted by an atypically colorful accountant and his
flawless fashion-model bride -- in a home obsessively gardened and passionately
maintained. I kept seeing myself as if in a commercial, one of those
soft-focus testimonials to an ideal lifestyle (dependent upon a certain brand
of wine or coffee). Everything was perfect, from the thematic and
color-coordinated 10- foot tree to the roaring fire to the dizzying spread of
roasts and exotic drinks. Fortified by the latter, we poured into the night
and climbed aboard a chartered trolley car for a caroling excursion.
I hung crazily off the side, playing my flute in occasional synchrony with
Duane's guitar, as we clanged our way along Eurekan streets. 30-odd mouths
vented synchronized steam; we laughed in wholesome self-mockery; familiar
Christmas melodies, slightly raucous, echoed from Victorian buildings. Cheery
waves, jingle bells, shouting kids, heavy-laden shoppers, full-moonlight on
white lazy plumes of distant millsmoke. At a sleazy bar known locally as the
VD, we dismounted and wove our way through the pool tables, playing and singing
Jingle Bells while eyed sullenly by drunken denizens. (The kids waited outside
for this one, and we seemed to step a bit more quickly than we had back in the
Ritz.)
"Lifestyle sampler," I whispered into a fragrant Maggie-ear, and she smiled --
remembering one of the motives behind all this. We clattered on, exhausting
our repertoire of first verses, arriving again at the dream house to overdose
on hot buttered rum and increasingly incoherent conversation as jingle bells
echoed in our heads and the night grew fuzzy...
Three weeks. Like Bainbridge, Humboldt has held us, teased us, mocked our
plans to move on. To the database of potential homes I add this -- for the
friends, the ambience, the undercurrent of looniness that touches daily events
with a sense of play. Though we're broke and living a hand-to-mouth existence
based on advance book sales, life seems rich here, full of those non-financial
components in the success formula: the four F's of fun, food, friendship, and
passion.
But we're moving on; it's time. Maggie's fine-tuning her new 48- spoke wheel;
I'm poring over the maps and lists of contacts with obsessive concentration,
eschewing offers of still more parties in lieu of loose-end tying. Christmas
or not, we're getting back on the road this week -- fully prepared for the
legendary winding grades of Leggett hill and the convoluted Highway 1 to
follow.
Special Bonus Recipe Section:
As we travel, we are exposed at least once a week to something tasty. Maggie's
compiling a collection of recipes for a possible book (Eating Across America?),
complete with food-related anecdotes and quotes ("I never eat anything that
once had a face," said a vegetarian friend here.)
But this is the Christmas season, and I'd like to pass on a hot buttered rum
recipe that will have you swilling helplessly until you run out of ingredients
or consciousness. This stuff is exceptional:
Create the batter by mixing a pound of brown sugar, a half-pound of butter, and
a teaspoon each of cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg. Add a little rum to give it a
mousse-like consistency.
To conjure a mug of hot buttered rum, start with a generous gob of batter,
adding an equally generous dollop of rum and enough boiling water to reach the
top. Drink. Make murmuring sounds of ecstasy. Repeat until discretion
dictates otherwise, and drive nothing but a bicycle till the next day.
Enjoy...
-- Steve
==============================================================================
25 YEARS IN AN AFTERNOON
#17 in the second online CAA series
by
Steven K. Roberts, HtN (WORDY)
Eureka, CA; 1,117 miles.
December 20, 1986
NOTE: This week's column is dedicated to GEnie users T.HOOBYAR and RAY-ROLLS,
who in different ways asked the question that this answers.
"You reeka," I want to shout at the guy beside me -- a greasy specimen of
street life who has elected to spend this sunny Saturday in the library
devouring a book of "The Family Circus" cartoons instead of shuffling around
outside with palm outstretched. He's not smoking cigarettes or carrying a boom
box, but the effect is the same: by not bathing, he has created a sphere of
negative influence that defines his personal space. Unable to retaliate with
the gentle pattering of my keyboard, I move discreetly away... but not far
enough. He points at the computer and asks something in that dull voice you
associate with gaping mouths and vacant stares. I nod pleasantly and turn back
to the screen, trying to look preoccupied but feeling guilty. No matter -- he
shrugs and immerses himself again in the 2-dimensional world of Jeffy, Barfy,
and friends.
Two largish women walk behind me and I hear them pause -- I smell the onslaught
of heavy perfumes. From mission to brothel in an instant: I'm dizzy; my nose
reels. And now -- can this be? -- they are bending to breathe on my neck and
read the screen over my shoulder! They murmur their delight, the sound
mingling with the susurration of clothing and the jangling of heavy baubles.
Still more scents weave drunkenly through the redolent chemical background:
lipstick, hair spray, fabric softener, skin lotions, deodorant, a dozen
aggressive aromatic attempts at femininity. Uh-oh. That sentence did it. I
hear a startled rustle and quick steps... when I turn to watch the retreating
bra-constricted pink and green backs I catch the hissed words, "rudest goddamn
person I ever saw in my life."
Well, so it goes. I came in here to write, ladies and gentlemen, not to put on
an electronic strip-tease show. I'm off duty today, OK?
Small-town libraries do tend to be strange intellectual backwaters, don't they?
Always a few years behind the times, a bit worn, they offer faded frozen
snapshots of a dynamic world; even my own books, once the echoes of high-tech
passion, look dull and serious in their library bindings (when I'm lucky enough
to find them). Despite current periodicals on the shelves, this place has an
intellectual mustiness about it -- a cross between grandma's attic and memories
of grade school. A man wants Consumer Reports articles on typewriters and sits
to read, trying not to stare too obviously at my machine. Two guys carry
armloads of books, talking loudly enough to make it clear that they want their
quasi-erudite discussion of jazz to be overheard. A ruddy, grizzled sort
sleeps, drooling a thin saliva stalactite toward a copy of VOLCANO! pinned
helplessly under folded flannel-shirted arms. A 10-year-old browses the card
catalog for anything he can find on engineering as a profession; his sister,
competing, seeks printed dreams about becoming a world-famous veterinarian.
Card catalogs? In 1986? There's no news this week. We're still in Eureka
fighting deadlines -- so instead of inventing adventures and rhapsodizing
further about the lifestyles of new friends, I want to try something a little
different. On the assumption that some of you occasionally wonder how a
once-promising micro-techie ended up on the streets, I'm going to take you
back... back... way back...
(Change was always the answer. Over the years I have tweaked my environment,
designed new machines, rearranged furniture, started companies, found new
lovers, modified my consciousness, created new filing systems, and moved time
and again -- all for the sake of change. Knowing that, the following will make
more sense.)
Electronics was passion, obsession, raison d'etre. My identity lay in my
basement laboratory; my happiness was a function of acrid solder smoke,
blinking lights, clicking relays, and that sweet mysterious crackle of
shortwave radio. When I was 9, I had a contest with my friend Rusty, a
chemistry fanatic: we each had one week to write down all the words we knew
(or could find) in our respective fields. Pentode. Grid-leak. Crystal.
Nixie. Hollerith. Ah, those were the days: early 60's in Louisville,
Kentucky.
Actually, they were dismal days, but I didn't realize it yet. Year after year
I tolerated the time-waste of school, accepting patriotic brainwashing and
sanitized history, superficial science and anachronistic literature selections
-- living not for girls, grades, and sports but for electronics and science
fairs and dreams of future laboratories. I was a social outcast, naturally,
for my adventure was measured in volts, not milligrams of adrenalin. When
neighborhood bullies soaked me with squirt guns one day, I ran home and
attached a battery-powered 14,000-volt supply (like a cattle prod) to a pair of
squirt guns mounted side-by-side on a wooden stock... with salt water as the
conductive ammo. As long as both streams hit someone before degenerating into
droplets -- WHAM! Instant panic. My relationship with the neighbors subtly
changed.
Ah, technology.
I finally made it to the international science fair, a holy grail of sorts,
with a homemade speech synthesizer. Having failed in the purely electronic
approaches after three years of frustrating work (tape loops, LC tank circuits,
discrete transistor filters...), I built a working acoustic model of the vocal
tract based upon X-rays of my own head. It even had a voice-change problem.
Graduation, anticlimactic and vaguely embarrassing, occured in 1969 -- when I
was 16. I was academically ordinary, ranked in the middle of my class. There
was such a gulf between learning and school that I didn't really care, and
doubtless responded with less than adequate concern to my parents' repeated
accusations that I was not working up to my potential. It was an old story by
then.
But college! At last! I arrived at Rose Polytechnic Institute wide-eyed,
heavy-laden with gadgetry and school supplies, ready to plunge into every
cliche of college life I had ever seen in the movies. Philosophical bull
sessions, scientific investigations of beer and other interesting substances,
the mysteries of girls unveiled, haze-crazy fraternities, brilliant and
slightly mad profs, all-night test-cramming sessions, eccentric nerds,
emotional moments of discovery, tinkering with huge computing machines, and
through it all that magical rarified air of academia, of KNOWLEDGE. Oooh... I
got goose bumps all over my alma mater just imagining the richness and
camaraderie of college life.
But engineering school turned out to be like going to art school and learning
to paint by numbers. The infinitely interrelated universe was segmented rudely
into "subjects," taught in isolation, out of context -- despite the fact that
humans are associative systems and generalists at heart. "Remember this, and
this, and this; don't worry, Steve, it will all fit together someday."
Nonsense! But there was something more insidious still: the primary
motivation for learning was not curiosity, but fear of failure. That had the
effect of reducing the educational process to a succession of panic-stricken
study sessions -- formalized obsessive-compulsive rituals intended to ward off
the dangers of C's, D's, and those terrifying F's. Learning became secondary,
an incidental spinoff of studying.
I nursed a growing terror that the school would channel my latent creativity
into the narrow confines of a crank-turning profession: I wanted tools, not
habits. If I were to work hard enough to succeed, I knew I would change in
frightening ways.
Besides... it was 1970 and getting high was more fun than studying. It even
promoted that sweet illusion of wisdom, making it easy to feel good about
donning a headband and quitting school halfway through freshman year. Before I
knew it, I was on the road -- waving my thumb from interstate shoulders and
living out of a blue backpack emblazoned with the icon of peace.
Cynics will shout "aha!" and draw immediate parallels. But wait... the real
education was yet to begin. I was just cutting the cord (and soldering a
connector on the end just in case).
I quickly tired of penniless drifting and began sampling jobs. I grew tan and
strong as a deckhand on barges in Illinois and Minnesota; I briefly tried the
dehumanizing factory life. I worked in a department store for a month and
installed telephone central office equipment on Army bases. I finally decided
that maybe I needed a degree after all, but having cut the cord I now had to go
for it on my own. How else? I joined the Air Force, believing the inspired
fiction of a quota-oriented Georgia recruiter.
It took but a few months to discover that I was not to be in research, this was
not to be a great adventure, and there would be no free education. Stationed
in Idaho, trained rodent-like and charged with the task of swapping black boxes
in F-111's, I huddled on the frozen flightline in my parka and rankled. The
bastards! Forced by circumstances to display respect for the men who least
deserved it, confined to an intellectual straitjacket and supervised even in
the private world of my dorm room, I knew confrontation was imminent.
He was an 8-striper, a lifer, a pompous baboon with power. I was a misfit,
earning both his respect and contempt with my confusing combination of
technology and anti-war sentiments. When I heard rumors of his extended
inspection visits to my room, I built an intervalometer camera system that
would record, on film and tape, anything that went on for 15 minutes after my
door opened. Evidence mounted quickly: he was going through my files and my
mail -- commenting to his sidekick that "one way or another I'm gonna get this
#%{body}amp;!* court-martialed, even if I have to plant a few surprises in here."
I moved fast. The films impressed the commander; the sergeant lost his job and
a stripe. But victory was short-lived. Pressure mounted from all sides --
surprise inspections, harrassment, disappearance of my cat, orders to get rid
of my ham station and all the other "junk" in my room (I was building a music
synthesizer). Within 3 weeks I had orders to go to Guam in an unrelated career
field, and I quickly understood that it was a death sentence. The baboon
gloated; there were too many of 'em to fight. I saw my opening: simulating a
"schizoid personality disorder with passive- aggressive trends" yielded an
honorable return to civilian life within three months -- a year and a half
after I signed up.
Ah, technology.
Field engineer, Singer Business Machines: a year's education in how not to
design computers. In a Louisville apartment my techno- passions reached a new
peak: by mid-1974 I had designed an 8008-based computer system laughingly
called BEHEMOTH (for Badly Engineered Heap of Electrical, Mechanical, Optical,
and Thermal Hardware). I started a small moonlight company called Cybertronics
to support my habit, hustling integrated circuits and related hardware, doling
out plastic- bagged goodies imported from Silicon Valley to the growing
population of microprocessor junkies in those exciting early days of personal
computers. What the machines lacked in capability they made up in class: card
cages full of wirewrap boards, blinking front panels and massive power
supplies, teletype machines, graphics with 8-bit DACs, hand-coded monitors and
line editors...
Cybertronics became my full-time support. 1K static RAMs went down to $8.00
each, then to an unbelievable $3.50. The 8080 made a splash at $360 and I
managed to find some I could sell for $250. The excitement was tangible; I
devoured EDN and Electronics Magazine as most 22-year-olds would devour
Penthouse -- often staying up all night when some project was too exciting to
put down. Universities could take a lesson from this: learning follows from
passionate interest as surely as pregnancy from fertilization.
And so was born an engineering firm. Word got out that some guy was designing
with micros right there in Louisville, and within a few years I was building
custom industrial control systems for Corning, Seagrams, Honeywell, and
Robinson-Nugent -- working out of a local industrial park and branching out...
growing... selling the new generation of computer KITS (what's this world
coming to? any bozo can have a computer now...) and pushing chips by mail
order. All the signs bespoke imminent wealth, but something was terribly
wrong.
My all-nighters, when they happened, no longer had anything to do with passion.
They had to do with fear -- of deadlines, of customers, of disaster. One had
to do with tracking the ravages of an embezzling secretary; another with an
ultimatum from a client. I began to ache for change, for my favorite toys had
turned into business equipment. Even BEHEMOTH was tainted, plastered with tax
charts and mailing list information. Yes, it was time for major change.
I cannibalized the company, escaped the lease, and moved alone to a cavernous
Victorian house. There, through the mid-70's, I continued consulting and began
writing -- soon discovering the delightful fact that the manipulation of words
(an old hobby) could be both fun and profitable. Burned out on doing anything
with computers besides using them as tools, I withdrew further and further from
industry, covering my retreat with technical articles in trade journals and
hobby magazines. Somewhere in there my live-in girlfriend and I got pregnant,
so we unthinkingly married and moved to Columbus, Ohio -- where a high-paying
software engineering job promised to fatten my bank account at last and buy me
the space to do some REAL writing.
We signed a 30-year mortgage on a 3-bedroom ranch house in suburbia -- an acre
along the mighty Scioto River. A girl-child was born. I commuted to work in a
Honda station wagon. And in the cold, gray Ohio winter of 1980 I panicked,
recoiling violently from the mediocrity that had settled around me. My old
computers were cobweb- shrouded, host to terrible skittering denizens that made
a mockery of my most cherished dreams. Imprisoned, frightened of the scope of
the next change yet even more frightened of not making it, I quit both job and
marriage, finding myself a lone homeowner in Genericsville, USA -- paying
$2,500 a month in expenses and debt service.
I dusted off the word processor and began. For three years I wrote a book a
year, filling in the gaps with articles about artificial intelligence,
robotics, online searching, microprocessors, and anything else I could con
someone into paying me to write. My favorite book, CREATIVE DESIGN WITH
MICROCOMPUTERS (Prentice-Hall), was a complete distillation of the Cybertronics
era, carrying the exuberant message that "art without engineering is dreaming;
engineering without art is calculating."
But the energy began to fade... again. Freelance writing was a license to be
a generalist, a way to deduct every expense and charge money for key-tapping,
but still... something was wrong. I had turned another hobby into a business.
I was working my ass off to barely pay for a house I didn't like in a city I
didn't like in a state I didn't like. Every change I had made seemed only a
new trap, each prettier and more subtle than the last. What I REALLY needed
was a lifestyle that would combine all my passions: a slowly recovering
interest in computers, the endless delights of gizmology, the still-mysterious
magic of ham radio, the visceral joys of cycling, romance with all it implies,
travel and adventure, the transcendence of the well-turned phrase, meeting
wizards and other interesting people, the fun of public visibility, and most of
all CHANGE -- constant change -- weaving through my life as naturally as
breath. What to do?
Luckily, it was 1983. CompuServe was right down the street, the Radio Shack
Model 100 had just been released, and a local 65-year-old named Robby was
riding around on an Avatar recumbent bicycle. How could I miss the
implications? The idea struck the afternoon I met Robby; 12 hours later I
planted a FOR SALE sign in my front yard. For six months I lived on garage
sales while building the system and then pedaled away from Columbus: free at
last, grinning at the loud crash of assets and liabilities tangling in my wake
and settling out to roughly zero.
All I owned was either on my bicycle or connected to it via modem.
For 9,760 miles I traveled, collecting experiences ranging from the passionate
to the terrifying. The road became my equivalent of livingroom walls; the
network was my neighborhood. Another book was born -- Computing Across America
(coming in February) -- and I finally escaped the stigma of "technical writer."
I reveled in change; I celebrated it, wrote about it, encouraged it in everyone
I met. I had found my lifestyle of choice, and told people I would travel
forever.
It took a year and a half to burn out.
The visit back to Ohio was to have been only that -- a way to restructure my
base office, finish the book, and earn a little consulting money before
returning to the road. But what was the hurry? I found an almost
embarassingly high-paying job, stopped thinking about the bike, and let myself
enjoy the unfamiliar illusion of financial comfort. But Ohio winters have a
way of touching everyting with gray misery, and as I sat at my desk pondering
the implications of my newfound yuppiedom one afternoon, I knew what had to be
done. Fingering my yellow tie and squirming my toes uncomfortably in new
leather shoes, I remembered the freedom, the country roads mottled with sun and
shade, the smiling eyes of new friends, the energy of endless beginnings, the
taste of beer after 100 miles, the views from mountaintops, the sand on my
feet, the road, the road, the love of my life. I looked down at the
interactive videodisc PROLOG software I had been writing and found a rough
sketch of a recumbent bicycle, blurred by a tear in my eye.
Yup.
And so we come to the present. You know what happened: I spent 8 months
designing and building the new system, this collection of processors and
control circuitry which has turned my entire career into an exquisitely mad
self-parody. Seeking to address all the problems discovered on the first trip,
I modified everything -- to the point of finding a winsome and willing
traveling companion to warm my tent and share this next phase of my chronically
unsettled life. I moved to GEnie. And here we are, parked for a month in
Eureka to put out financial fires that never would have happened if I'd simply
been content to stay chained to that cushy Ohio desk.
We're also laughing a lot, which never would have happened either.
Merry Christmas, friends in Dataspace... -- Steve
==============================================================================
BE IT EVER SO HUMBOLDT...
#18 in the second online CAA series
by
Steven K. Roberts, HtN (WORDY)
Eureka, CA; 1,153 miles.
January 1, 1987
We would have pedaled down to Ferndale today if it hadn't rained.
For over a week we've been planning our New Year's Day departure from this
place that has grown TOO familiar. All through December the sun shone brightly
-- by Christmas I was so sure that it would rain on January first that I almost
called the National Weather Service to offer them a hot tip. Hitting the road
on a bicycle is a more reliable rainmaking technique than washing your car...
try it sometime.
Oh, I suppose it's just as well -- we were up until four A.M. celebrating the
end of 1986 and the resumption of our travels. Imagine the scene:
Over a thousand rubber bands turned loose in a small house, with seven
schnapps-soaked loonies firing them at every hint of exposed flesh -- raising
welts, cries, and crazy guffaws of short-lived victory. Maggie in the new
mini-dress, her pantyhose-clad cycling legs an achingly inviting target; June
sniping from behind furniture and giggling at every strike; Micki dashing into
the open for ammo only to yelp at the unexpected zinging barrage from all
sides. The Fathers of Trollo waged their own war, thundering at each other
like F-4 Phantoms as I crept about on missions of private intrigue: gathering
ammo, ambushing the unwary, and hiding rubber bands in odd places to serve as a
perpetual reminder of our visit. Yes, it was a gentle night... at the stroke
of 12 we dashed to the alley and fired salvo after salvo from Ken's homemade
oxy-acetylene cannon -- potatoes mashed against distant walls, our ears
ringing, our retinas seared with hot streaks of muzzle flash, the
scratchin'-lickin'-bitin'- snortin'-stinkin' dog trembling against June in
mortal terror. More schnapps... more nachos... more rubber bands... and
then gradual acquiescence after far too many hours of defying gravity, bodies
sinking to couches and floors, whimpers of pain and exhaustion mingling with
the surreal sounds of late-night television and the dwindling drunken traffic
of my third New Year's Eve on the road...
And there are thirteen years until the 21st century.
So. It's 1987. It is traditional for columnists to rhapsodize at length about
the past and future as viewed from the standpoint of that infinitely small
point moving between them. But the former is colored by the present and the
latter is pure conjecture, so instead of putting travel predictions in print
I'll just tell you what I WANT to do.
If you've been following these writings for a while, you have probably noticed
a certain variance of purpose. Sometimes FUN is my bottom line; sometimes I'm
seeking a resolution of the old freedom-vs- security trade-off. Sometimes I
want to travel forever; sometimes I get all misty-eyed over the sense of HOME
that appears wherever I take the time to look. I go on great technoid binges
of logic design and system integration, getting so deeply immersed in
electronics that streets with NO OUTLET signs seem vaguely primitive -- then I
turn my back on all this gizmology and refuse to discuss it. Peer over my
shoulder one day, and you'll find me celebrating my nomadic lifestyle for its
variety of contacts; do so the next and you'll hear me muttering about the
exhausting sameness of endless beginnings.
What am I really up to? Has this just become my default mode?
OK. Here's the plan, and I welcome correspondence from anyone who can help me
pull it off. As I explained back in Chapter 2, wandering the planet on a
computerized bicycle and writing about it is an ideal lifestyle for a confirmed
generalist living in fear of commitment. It sounds a lot like large-scale
Brownian motion, but my life can actually be reduced to a simple formula: I
open doors with my bizarre key, make observations about what goes on behind
them, draw inferences from related experiences, and then pass stories and
commentary along to the rest of the world in exchange for enough of a living to
keep going. It's just a form of street theatre: The Computing Across America
Traveling Circuits...
And, interestingly enough, it more or less works. Publicity happens with
little or no effort, and even though people generally recognize the Winnebiko
instead of the guy sitting on top of it, the net effects are the same: brand
recognition, invitations, publishing opportunities, free hardware or services,
and even, amazingly enough, that absurd yet flattering "groupie effect."
Now. Let's turn all it into something that doesn't depend upon momentary whims
and chance encounters.
Throughout history, writers, satirists, commentators, cartoonists and other
interpreters of the culture have been supported by the population -- whether
through salary, spare change tossed into passed hats, or the generosity of
patrons. We pay these people to expand our vision, to digest reality and
present it to us as "entertainment." What sounds at first like something
essentially playful, however, turns out to have critical importance in the
evolution of our culture: it is the job of these people to raise human
awareness, sniff out absurdity, spotlight political nastiness, recognize
trends, and define our collective self-image -- all the while inviting us to
step outside the routine of daily life and be entertained by what they have to
say. Every component of popular culture, from the Sunday funnies to 60
Minutes, is part of the ongoing education of our complex society. It is the
measure of Berke Breathed's success, to pick one of many instructive examples,
that he can convey an elusive and essential message in the middle of
thigh-slapping laughter.
Educators, take note.
So what's all this have to do with me, my compu-bike, and big plans for 1987?
This: I have become a living caricature of information technology, a wandering
commentator on the zany American scene, a generalist/journalist with a
220-pound press pass, and a rolling media event. That's almost enough to
insure success... but not quite. What's missing is marketing, that mystical
process that turns ideas into products and products into necessities.
Publicity alone doesn't pay the bills.
"Marketing" in the context of what started out as a personal getaway adventure
sounds like sacrelige. It calls to mind vendor decals and slick packaging,
product slogans and pithy superficial distillations of my life that can fit
onto a bulk-rate glossy flyer. But here, dear readers, is the reality:
Weekly online columns make valuable contacts but earn just enough to buy one
reasonably fine restaurant meal a month, assuming moderation on the bar tab.
Occasional freelance pieces sometimes pay the rent back at the Ohio office. A
book about my travels is due in two months from a publisher that has never
tried selling anything outside the exciting but small world of library and
information science. A little bit of random consulting work pays well but
draws precious energy from the adventure itself. And I depend more than I'd
like to admit on the generosity of new friends, feeding us after a long day and
sheltering us from the night.
This -- a shaky hand-to-mouth existence -- is what supports that exuberant
grinning figure you've seen on national TV, in Time Magazine, in USA Today, and
hundreds of other places. I never really understood the difference between
public relations and marketing until now: CAA is a PR bonanza and a marketing
fiasco. I have media coverage the average small company would kill for, but no
standard products other than these weekly columns and a forthcoming book about
my first 10,000 miles.
So that's the plan for 1987: adding business survival to my long-established
objective of FUN. It's not just an adventure, it's a job! But there's one
subtle problem... my essential message is FREEDOM -- that you can accomplish
anything if you want it enough, that risk is healthy, that your resources of
intelligence are probably a lot deeper than you think. We have new
technological tools to free us, new worlds to explore, and even a new
population of people who cavort freely in Dataspace unconstrained by location,
color, appearance, or education. FREEDOM. It's an exciting message, and
people easily relate to it in these days of urine testing, polygraphs, poorly
maintined credit databases, economic pressure, horrifying new social diseases,
and a resurgence of misguided puritanism. A whiff of freedom perks up the
imprisoned like that first hint of morning coffee.
But try living as a public paragon of personal freedom within the
bottom-line-oriented constraints of a marketing plan. There's the challenge:
treating this as a business without having it look like one. * * *
Let's close this week's installment on a playful note, something that every
reader can relate to. Something that touches us all deeply, evokes intense
memories, and rouses strong feelings...
I floated easily in a nitrous fog, the Walkman pumping Bob James into my head,
my wool-shrouded toes tapping in their well-worn Birkenstocks. Through
half-closed lids I saw the needle approach my mouth and prepared to wince,
flashing painfully on the closing scene of the movie "Brazil." But the nurse
tapped my arm, some kind of swabbed on local anaesthetic numbed me, and I
failed to notice the violation of my gums. So far so good.
Mega-numb -- no way for me to transcend dental medication. I was calmed by the
delightful gas but intellectually nervous, my normal dentist-chair panic
elevated to a sort of bemused abstraction but still very much in evidence. I
had never been to a painless dentist and didn't truly believe them to exist...
and he was probing a very large hole in a broken wisdom tooth, the subject of
many a horror story.
Jazz swirled through my head; I heard the drill scream. It entered, rising and
falling in pitch as it carved living tooth, raising a cloud of hot enamel-dust
that shocked my nose as would my own burning flesh. Yet the sensation was of
someone drilling into a block of wood lodged in my mouth: multiple smooth
hands, the glint of stainless steel instruments, the suction tube, the detail
of the overhead light, the smells of rubber gloves and faint perfume and
powdered tooth... but no pain. Stunned, I waited for it -- 5% of my brain
quailing at each approach of the drill while the rest soared through the pure
bliss of the Touchdown album and wanted the experience to never end.
And then the smells of solvents and sealants; the welcome poking and prodding
that bespeaks an end to destruction and the beginning of reconstruction... and
soon the vaguely depressing news that I had already been on pure oxygen for
five minutes and did I feel normal again? NO PAIN. This had to be the most
unusual Christmas present I had ever received: a gift certificate from Ken (of
Trollo and Bionic Taco fame) good for "X-Ray & anesthesia with a filling or
extraction" at the offices of Michael Holland, D.D.S. -- and then to find the
experience genuinely pleasant as well!
Ain't technology wonderful?
See you next week, from somewhere south of here. This time I really mean it.
-- Steve
==============================================================================
A WEEK OF MOVEMENT!
#19 in the second online CAA series
by
Steven K. Roberts, HtN (WORDY)
Mendocino, CA; 11,324 miles (see NOTE)
January 12, 1987
(NOTE: Mileage from now on will include my first 10,000-mile trip, of which
this is, in essence, a part. Actually, it was 9,760, but I rode another 240 in
central Ohio last summer to simplify the arithmetic.)
Rolling! Suddenly the deeply familiar texture of life on the road mingles
again with the chronic unfamiliarity of daily movement. In the week since
leaving Eureka, our range of experiences has been so diverse that only the most
abstract of themes could begin to capture the overall flavor. So... rather
than maunder on philosophically about lifestyle sampling, constant change,
strangeness and all that, I offer a collection of daily snapshots:
Day 1: Ferndale
It was with deep relief that we pedaled away from Eureka, though the sadness of
leaving our friends was tangible. Real tears, last- minute gifts, hugs, a
cannon salute, and then the familiar streets that suddenly, almost shockingly,
became passing scenery. This slow cycle -- stopping, meeting, staying, leaving
-- is the bass note in the music of my journey. I work in tenor, play in alto,
pedal in soprano...
The first stop was Ferndale, home of Hobart Brown: metal sculptor, museum
curator, kinetic race organizer, local celebrity, ex- Okie (from the town of
Hobart, naturally), accidental guru, astrologer, and self-styled "happiest man
on earth." Hobart is an epicenter of successful eccentricity, with legions of
groupies, admirers, imitators, and sycophants -- as well as a few envious
enemies who accuse him of everything from scandalous behavior to devil worship.
And his house, well...
Imagine a cavernous Victorian mansion, occupied for 20 years by a man obsessed
with playful sculpture. There are secret rooms, trapdoors, tunnels, symbolic
towering creations of copper and brass, suspended fanciful flying machines,
crazy memorabilia of a fun-filled life, posters on the ceilings, private jokes,
Things That Move By Themselves, spooky little dark places, tangled excesses of
twisted plumbing, one cat, and an ancient freezer-burnt pork chop nailed to the
wall. Through it all moves Hobart, fiftyish, arthritic, soft- spoken and
twinkling -- always happy, philosophical without being heavy-handed about it,
returning every few hours to the welding torch and his latest diorama of
castles and magic.
Not a bad place to display the bikes and spend a weekend writing about the
future of process control in the chemical industry -- and yes, Ferndale has
been added to that bulging database of places to which I must someday return.
Day 2: Ferndale to Redcrest
Into the forest -- the famed Avenue of Giants. The theme in this area is the
43,000 acres of redwood groves: tourists flock to see 'em; astute businessmen,
knowing that the naked grandeur of megatrees isn't enough for gawkers, turn
them into Attractions. There's a redwood you can drive through, one
2,000-year-old monster carved into a 42-ton house, a hollow one known as the
chimney tree, yet another dubbed "immortal." Next to each has sprouted a colony
of gift shops and accommodations -- you can buy live burls, polished slabs,
trinkets, seeds, postcards, clocks, gifts, furniture, sculpture, little
placards of folk wisdom, and all the usual touristy junk. Billboards advertise
the endless human embellishments to what's already perfect... but then, that's
the nature of the trade. At least THESE trees are protected from the logging
companies, which would happily hack 'em down in an instant if given the chance.
Nightfall found us in Redcrest -- at a motel I shall always remember for its
unwatchable television (between the immovable TV set and the immovable bed
stands a solid wood post, wide enough to fully block the screen). But the
grounds were stalked by peacocks, silky chickens, and guinea hens; when we
pedaled off in the morning a neighbor hailed us to see his collection of
Japanese Koi -- like a marriage of carp and goldfish -- in his homemade
fountains. Ya just never know.
Day 3: Redcrest to Miranda
But that could hardly have prepared us for Miranda, land of the thousand
pizzas. After a short 20-mile ride of continuing redwood drama spiced with
conversation on the Garberville repeater, we stopped at the Redwood Palace.
Finding places to stay has become strategically critical: the towns are far
apart, the days are short, and it's too cold for camping with our wimpy
lightweight sleeping bags. We sat in the parking lot and discussed our few
Garberville- area contacts (the closest 10 miles off the highway on a hilly
dirt road), when a lady burst grinning from the doorway with a shout and a
camera. "I don't believe it! You're really here!" Turns out she had spoken
with Hobart...
In short order we were installed in the guest house, plied with beer, and
presented to all who passed by as the event of the season. The bikes were on
display until closing time, and we found ourselves surrounded by the energetic
personalities of Harry and Carol (the proprietors) and their countless friends.
The local oil baron from the gas station, the science teacher, the traveling
sales rep, the high-school kids, the truckers, the marijuana growers, the
trickle of off-season tourists... all evening the swirl of south Humboldt life
drew us into its voracious vortex, hungry for adventure and entertainment and a
teasing hint of that wild wonderful world outside these cold winter redwoods...
Ah yes, the pizzas: as the lucky recipient of their 1,000th pizza, we had
dinner on the house (though we did have to go back to the kitchen and make it
ourselves). Sometimes treats have nothing to do with our bikes at all...
Day 4: Miranda to Leggett
By now you're getting the idea that daily movement becomes a blur of changing
scenes, highlighted here and there by human delights. This day was one of
exhausted pulls up long grades, the blasting passage of trucks and campers,
ongoing ham radio chitchat, and the slowly nearing town of Leggett -- the place
where we would diverge at last from busy Highway 101 to take on the highest
hill of the west coast bike route. Softened by the long Eureka layover, the
ride was taking its toll; we staggered into Leggett and rented a cabin, cuddled
under the covers, nibbled cheese and crackers, and stared at the fuzzy black
and white images from the only available TV station... Eureka. Odd effect:
news from there had the flavor of news from home. We nudged each other over
changes in the transit system, fires -- even the tide reports.
Day 5: Leggett to Fort Bragg
Oooh. This was it. We stepped out into a 36-degree morning, fixed my 13th
flat tire in 11 thousand-odd miles, and began with a short freezing descent.
Frost on the foliage. Violent shivers. The occasional incredulous driver.
And a sense that the ocean was yet far, far away.
That notion was quickly reinforced, though not in a painful way. The climb was
manageable: 3 mph for a couple of granny-gear hours, sweat-soaked shirts
clinging to skin in the brisk morning air, light courteous traffic, puffs of
breath hanging still in the mist. As the altimeter slowly climbed, the clouds
thinned... and thinned... and then dropped away completely to reveal a
blazing vista of sunlit cloud-tops puddled in the folds of low mountains like
snow in the frozen tracks of cosmic bulldozers.
We stopped at the summit to take it all in, walking from one side to the other,
west to east, east to west, pointing out the sights like a couple of
interplanetary explorers perched on the first available promontory of a new
world. Success.
And then down, the other reward, the thing that differentiates hills from
headwinds. Dozens of switchbacks, tight and smooth, the sensation of skiing
tangible in the rhythmic dance of a fast descent. On a recumbent, there's a
feeling of wild openness, the exact opposite of the tuck position of a
10-speed; when the speed climbs, the whole world, not just the road surface,
blurs into an impressionistic confusion of streaked light and color. By the
time the sparkling surf welcomed us back to the Pacific, the dreaded Leggett
Hill had become a sweet memory of concentrated beauty, physical triumph, and
pure unalloyed bliss.
A mile or so down the road, I stopped to offer assistance to an old maroon
Washington state Eldorado driven by a tubby Shriner and his nervous wife. The
right rear wheel was smoking heavily, reeking of charred brake composites.
"Want me to call for help?" I asked, gesturing at my boom microphone. The man
hesitated; the woman urged him to say yes; the man mushed crackers and washed
them down with beer; the woman fretted about these awful steep hills. Finally
he decided against calling AAA, tossed the beer can onto one of the most
beautiful coastlines in the world, and turned to go. "Expecting somebody to
pick that up for you?" I asked, but there was no response. He drove away in a
stink of automotive overkill. A mile later, I added an entry to my huge file
of Things I Should Have Said: "Here. I have room on my bicycle; let me
dispose of that properly." (This week's assignment: Give a Shriner a shiner.)
Now the narrow winding road began taking its toll. Traffic picked up as we
wound our way through the steep, abrupt turns, more than once forcing a
driveway detour to let a truck pass. Pedaling grimly, we hit the day's 48-mile
mark in the noisy mill town of Fort Bragg. It took but a moment: while I was
a mile away seeking a "big gun" ham operator I'd heard about, Maggie fell into
conversation with a quiet couple in front of the library... who promptly
invited us home for the evening. The connection? Technology, of course:
Charles, a cyclist/ham, had spotted the unmistakable 2-meter rig on her bike
and hailed her in passing.
Day 6: Fort Bragg to Mendocino
But Mendocino, not Fort Bragg, is the town we've been hearing about. A lazy
10-mile ride got us here -- to a place that has optimized its tourist-oriented
picturesque character without seriously compromising a deep counterculture
flavor that continues to attract artists, writers, musicians, and New Age
refugees of the City. Street conversation was peppered with references to
acupressure, astrology, macrobiotics, energy, brutal exploitation of the coast
for corporate gain, and so on; within hours we had a network of local contacts,
a three-hour lunch at the Sea Gull with visitors from Napa, and one
particularly interesting invitation.
It came from John, owner of the Brewery Gulch Inn -- a classically relaxed Bed
and Breakfast on two acres south of town. "I saw you two holding hands on TV a
while back," he told us as the rain began. "Being an incurable romantic, I
couldn't resist -- do you need a place to stay?"
Within the hour we were settled: my machine dripping on a sheet under the
antique dining room chandelier, Maggie's outside on a covered porch. We were
given the Garden Room -- with fireplace, huge windows, and antique furniture --
suddenly warm and comfortable in graceful surroundings thanks to one man's
recognition of the strange romance of our life. Those "soft dollars" keep
mounting up...
Day 7: To L.A. -- and Back
Ah, the unpredictable daily grind of touring. As I sat quietly tapping HP keys
on the comfortable bed that night, warmed by a roaring fire and Maggie's soft
presence, there came a knock on the door. Into the room burst exuberance
personified: Mendocino Cyclery folks who had finally managed to track us down
after a few frenzied hours of trying. Once past the initial greetings and
basic tale-swapping, they mentioned that they were leaving the next day for the
famed Long Beach bicycle show (otherwise known as the Bicycle Dealer Showcase
Expo). We moaned in envy. This is the big time -- the COMDEX of the bicycle
world. My mind reeled with visions of dazzling new gadgets, potential
sponsors, book buyers, old friends, new friends, and a warm southern California
weekend...
Why not? We left the next evening, armed with hastily produced book flyers,
our bikes locked in the B&B's garage. We crammed four bodies into a tiny
Toyota, motored over to Willits and down 101 to San Francisco, then crossed to
I-5 for that endless drive through the central valley... lasting until well
after dawn. (Now I remember why I prefer pedaling: it takes a lot longer, but
is never as numbing as the SAMENESS of auto travel.)
It was well worth it, though, for the weekend was rich with images, absurdity,
and high-tech excitement. We stopped in San Francisco for a triple espresso on
Columbus Ave, and watched a guy running furtively through side streets with a
parking meter -- post and all -- tucked under his coat. We raced on foot up
the switchbacks of Lombard Street, collapsing at the top to the consternation
of passing trolley riders. Chinatown, the stripper district, the Friday night
swirl of Big City life... it was all quite dazzling after six weeks in
Humboldt and Mendocino counties where the only noises are surf, highway,
laughter, and the chill wind in your ears.
But the show! After the sleepless all-night drive in heavy fog we arrived in
Long Beach, plunging into an international orgy of the surprisingly diverse
bicycle industry. Hydraulic brakes. Clever new recumbents, finally combining
quality and affordability. Not just shoes, but shoe SYSTEMS. Endless sleek
variations on the traditional boring diamond-frame bicycle -- and still more
innovation in its welcome spinoff, the agile mountain bike. Computers, pulse
sensors, and graphic-display training cycles that simulate mountains.
Automatic transmissions, freewheels, halogen lights, sealed bearings, composite
tubing, tools, posters, silicone seat pads, kevlar tires, disappearing locks,
streamlined helmets, energy drinks, camping gear... name anything even
remotely connected with cycling and it could be found in Long Beach in a dozen
hotly competing variations.
For two days I wandered this mecca, passing out book info, riding demo
machines, picking up 8 new equipment sponsors, and seeing even more familiar
faces than I do at computer shows. Must be some kinda change of life...
But now we're back in Mendocino, it's raining again, and I'm trying to sort out
all this new information so we can continue the long-overdue southward trek.
Since chapter 18, we've made it about halfway to the Bay Area, and our next
known stop is... oh, never mind. I should know by now not to make
predictions.
I'll just see you next week from somewhere else. Probably.
-- Steve
NOTE: Are you interested in recumbent bicycles? I get a lot of reader mail
about that, mostly asking for access to manufacturers. If you'd like to find
out more about the only comfortable way to pedal, contact the International
Human Powered Vehicle Association -- represented here on GEnie by its new
president, Marti Daily (M.DAILY).
==============================================================================
CHANGING THE WORLD IN MENDOCINO
#20 in the second online CAA series
by
Steven K. Roberts, HtN (WORDY)
Point Arena, CA; 11,363 miles.
(c) January 15, 1987
Nowhere is the infinite interconnectedness of human relationships so clear as
in a succession of small coastal towns, isolated from the rest of the world --
towns small enough to be interdependent, yet large enough to be vigorous;
places rugged enough to discourage the lazy, yet beautiful enough to attract
the intelligent. Such a zone is the western edge of Mendocino County: a sort
of meta-community spread along the cliffs of northern California. We've been
traipsing through a sparse network of linked relationships like a couple of
hundred dollar bills in Miami.
This coastal culture differs dramatically from the rest of the country. To
some extent, it can be attributed to the scenic character of the land,
something that can have sweeping effects on natives. Beauty sells, you know:
Highway 1 winds along the coast like a varicose vein, offering the seasonal
torrent of tourists an optimum view as they bring economic hemoglobin into
these areas of marginal industry. A long-established love-hate relationship is
in force here, a reluctant symbiosis between hawker and gawker.
There's something about low-bandwidth communication between non- miscible
cultures that affects everybody. I've seen it in other tourist areas: each
group, locals and visitors, begins to generalize about the other -- to lump
them together into a single stereotype. The brash tourist. The uppity local.
Those stupid RV'ers. Those weird hippies. Residents look the other way as
they draw their livelihood from the people who prompted their flight from the
city in the first place.
But there's more, though, quite a lot more. Success in these parts isn't on
the same economic scale as it is in mainstream America. Trade work abounds.
The land provides. Friends support each other. And it works well because the
economic bottom line is simply not the point; quality of life is. And the
deeper you look, the more interesting it becomes...
These little towns harbor a remarkable population of creative people -- the
kind you would normally expect to find in high-tech node cities blanketed in
stimulating vapors of silicon. Boat designers who combined the dimensions of
Noah's ark with computer analysis to yield a high-performance open-ocean kayak.
Networkers who have eschewed systems with a corporate substrate in lieu of
electronic anarchy (FIDO and packet). A guy who turns Cadillacs into bizarre
artworks. Another who builds high-performance audio cassettes.
Monkeywrenchers dedicated to the battle against despoilers of the wildernass,
practicing "ecotage" on an increasing scale. A fabricator of custom dental
equipment. A man who makes computerized biofeedback systems that sell for
nearly $50,000. And everywhere, literally everywhere, a degree of awareness
that fulfills the oft-lamented promise of the 60's. Even the bookstores, small
though they be, are dizzying.
And encounters can be funny. Phoenix introduced herself as having "seven fire
signs, and two air signs to fan the flames." A fellow named Raven B. Earlygrow
runs a travel agency. A Mendocino radio pirate got busted for his innovative
auto-answer "you're on the air" machine, bought into a public-access cable TV
channel, and now broadcasts whatever people send him. Reagan is profoundly
unpopular around here, to the point that I was recently presented with an
interpretation of ancient biblical prophesy predicting his demise on August 17,
1987. And a friend in Elk explained the lingering personal effect of the World
Instant of Cooperation: less cynicism. This is the land of rural
counterculture.
The thing that's pleasing about it all, despite frequent overdoses of HMB (hip
metaphysical bullshit), is an intellectual liveliness that has at its roots a
lot of the right motives: protection of mother earth for reasons beyond her
continuing usefulness to Man, prevention of human self-destruction over matters
of idealogical nonsense, revision of our self-poisoning habits, and the general
objective of peace on all levels. A lot of us, um, sorta forgot about those
things as we "grew up" from the Age of Enhanced Consciousness into the Epoch of
Bottom Lines -- a dubious maturation indeed.
But isn't it hard to change the world when you're eking out a small-town living
as a part-time pump repairman, part-time gatherer of sea urchin eggs, and
part-time poet of the revolution? So what if one of your poems ran in the
Mendocino Review last summer, and so what if you successfully planted a
tire-spiker in a fording spot up Elk Creek to discourage the mob of littering,
noisy off-roaders? It's a big world. How ya gonna change it from here?
Well, my wanderings have suggested an optimistic comment on that. Contrary to
popular news stories of the day, social change does not hinge on government
overthrow. Those are just the warrings of competing ideologues, not
incremental steps in the evolution of consciousness. Growth -- the recognition
and elimination of ignorance -- happens on a human level, slowly, building over
time like the gradual conversion of a successful anomaly into a whole new
species. Governments and eco-trashers simply apply selection pressure,
insuring their eventual deterioration.
The essence is communication, one of my main motives for becoming a writer in
the first place. Freelancing is actually a maddening business, as the
frustrated ramblings of Chapter 18 may have suggested -- not many people make a
full-time living at it. I barely manage. But amassing private riches is not
nearly as important as protecting public ones; a larder full of stocks and
bonds is but a hollow trophy without good food, air, water, communication,
recreation, security, and personal freedom. Whatever one person can do to
raise the awareness of another is the best social contribution of all -- one
small step at a time until we ALL realize which of our systems are healthy...
and which ones should be replaced.
This coast is an area that enforces understanding of whole systems. You can't
pick your way among the tidepools, marveling at geometric chitons and
subtly-hued anemones, bending to touch massive starfish and strange whiplike
growths 20 feet long, without sensing something of the planet's complexity and
deep interconnectedness. Everything is part of the food chain -- we've just
grown cocky because we happen to be on top.
All we need now is a few healthy predators to remind us that we're all in this
together: one species, one planet, one whole.
-- Steve