Posted Spring 2009 on iWeb
Call
me Frank. It’s an alias. You have to lie to tell the truth. We propose and Reality disposes. The most important idea is the infectivity of
Truth. Love is the most important human attribute. It is a sure connection to the Real. We know
it when we see it. But then we move on
and need something else. Love is not an
effort it’s an expansion or, if it is a sacrifice, then it’s a different sort
of love. My children just are,
perfectly. Now if I was making a movie and I thought it would make a better story…… My selfishness pours into trying to see the
world like it ought to be seen. But why
the “ought”? Is it possible for all men
to somehow HARMONIZE? Let’s go on a bike
trip instead.
A hard coming we had of it. Just the three of us, Hardy, his friend
Daniel, and myself. We would meet Ralph
in California to start the ride. We took
entirely too much stuff. We had a bike
stand for repairs if need be. (We
didn’t). We had a Coleman camp stove and
lantern we used but didn’t need to. We
had two large coolers, one for drinks the other for food. One is sufficient. We had a guitar, played 20
minutes in two weeks. We had three bikes
on the Allen rack on the back of an Olds Silhouette and three empty rooftop
Thule racks. We had a plethora of “bike
stuff”. The hardest stuff to manage
though is the electronic toys a bunch of guys bring. Consider: 3 laptops, 2 GPS devices, 2 Garmin cycle
computers, 4 cell phones, and 3 iPods.
How do you keep this stuff charged with one cigarette lighter in the
car? I forgot my cell phone charger and
when you are trying to make miles everyday, you don’t have time to look for a
Verizon store. We left Thursday night
and drove to almost Little Rock. The
next night we were in Albuquerque (1000miles).
It was hot-105 degrees in Oklahoma City at lunch and all the way through
Amarillo. The “third” travel day we
detoured to the Grand Canyon and ended up in Las Vegas--109 degrees at
10PM. I thought we could camp but the
heat was frightening. I can’t sleep in a
tent with temps of 109. Our last driving
day was through Death Valley early morning, Yosemite at noon, Central Valley of
California in the evening and roll into Marin County at 7:00P for dinner at my
sisters house in Larkspur. Our car
overheated in Death Valley, temps were 87 at Tioga Pass (10,000’) and brutally
hot in the Central Valley, 111 degrees coming out of Yosemite. I could not conceive riding a bike 100 miles
a day through the conditions we had experienced. Marin County had record heat that
day! Fortunately, it cooled off some
that night and we Alabama rubes pitched tents in my sister’s backyard. Yea, we’re a classy bunch.
The
American moment is beginning to fade.
America had a dream at one time.
We were a freedom-loving bunch of money grubbers but we “aspired” to
starting something really special.
Perhaps a multicultural utopia, perhaps a society so rich no one had to
work, but the facts are in-“Show me the money”.
The rest is window dressing.
Let’s raise a wan toast to the projects of the 21st century—a
lot of the same ones we had for the 20th that didn’t turn out and
didn’t get done, like peace, justice, sustaining the environment, meaningful
work, meaningful play. If we were
explosively creative we were also explosively destructive—two World Wars and a
boatload of wars declared and undeclared.
So if we consider the last century “successful” then there were still a
lot of things that didn’t get done. When a country is declining, how do you
define Progress? It used to mean going forward getting better, but now it may
mean going back to something that almost worked, to a critical turn we may have
missed. Two billion plus people when I was born but now pushing 7 billion…Do we have a prayer of
achieving something called Civilization?
The Captain D’s we have sprinkled across the landscape do not bring to
mind the Sistine Chapel or the David statue. If we are starting to decline, is it beat the
riff-raff out of the lifeboats and by the way where are my season
tickets to the Symphony? Societies
choose to fail. Our leaders are choosing
to fail us and we are choosing to let them.
High minded hijinks in the desert.
Let democracy bloom in Baghdad. We know what the problems are but we
don’t want to work or sacrifice. We’ve contracted that to the Army. I will say straight out, I’m guilty. You may
be an idealist and blameless. What we need are a bunch of people that have a
dream of the future and do not mind the hard work of the present. Most of us prefer the opposite: Bookmark the “ideals”, order pizza in, check
the tube or PC for something entertaining.
Maintain cool cynicism about honor or nobility. One shouldn’t touch dangerous things.
Where
can we find honor or nobility? Tomorrow
we will ride our bikes around Marin and I might come up with something. California is paradise but it’s too expensive
and doesn’t have any money....
It is
hard to plan a possible once in a lifetime trip with strangers. The Adventure Cycling Companions Wanted page was a good resource.
I found TWO guys who wanted to make the cross-country trip BUT each had
last minute issues that prevented them from going. This could have been disastrous if I was
relying on them. A ride across America by myself would have been
anti-climactic. So my old friend Ralph
got fired up about going when his summer family reunion was postponed a
week. Ralph and I have been friends
forever and ridden together forever and so was perfect that he could go. He is a venture capitalist and entrepreneur
while I am a stay at home dentist. I
save teeth and he travels to Singapore or Sidney chasing some idea. He’s plugged in, I’m a little cottage
industry craftsman. I climb better on
the bike though. He loves to fly downhill.
On the flats we are exactly equal and we make a great partnership. The trip dynamics would be better--I didn’t
have to pretend to be young with my son and his buddy and they could do what
they felt like while we rode together.
On the trip out, we only touched the
bikes to store them in the hotel rooms.
I had imagined that every day, I would take the bike off the car and
ride a time trial maybe 20-30 miles, keeping in shape. But traveling is a lot
about getting there and it’s always hard to be deflected from the goal. But in Life?
Death is the end so what’s the rush?
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