Mule

I keep getting asked why I am biking across the country and I didn’t really have a good answer. “I wanted change” is both trite and obvious. I have had a couple of months to consider it and I still couldn’t put my finger on it–that is until last week.

I had met a family that took me to their fishing cabin and we spent a few days in northern North Dakota fishing on an idyllic stream. This isn’t the first time someone has invited me into their lives to share a portion of it with them. I have slept on people’s couches, spare beds, in their garages and on their lawns. People have given me their cabins and their houses to use. I have been invited fishing, pontoon boating, and bird watching. I’ve been to BBQ’s and dinner parties. Bike shops drop what ever they are working on and make me their top priority. I can’t even begin tell you how many free drinks I have gotten in bars.

Just like I didn’t have a good answer for why I was doing this trip I also did not have a good answer for why people were so incredibly open and generous with me.

But I think I may have begun to figure them both out and they are related. It was 2 odd pieces of information that came at me days apart and just rumbled around in my head before they clunked into each other and seemed to fit.

The first was something someone said to me in Fargo. I had spent the day getting my bike fixed and the night sitting at a community bike repair program helping out and waiting for them to get off as I was staying with one of the employees that night. We went out for beer after they closed and the director of the program grilled me about my bike trips and my sort of semi-nomadic life. As we were biking home through the dark streets of Fargo we got to his turn and he said “Keep living the dream because it lets the rest of us think that one day we can do it too.”

The second piece came to me while I was fishing with the family in North Dakota. I was reading Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere (Spoiler alert) and the main character, Richard, had just returned to his normal life after being lost in a maddeningly-surreal world called London Below. For reasons the book makes clear, when someone slips through the cracks the real world doesn’t miss them, they cease to have existed and they can never go back. Since Richard does go back the people who used to be in his life now believe he had been on vacation. Richard finally confides in his best friend, Gary, where he has been and Gary thinks he had a mental episode brought on by the end of his engagement (which started the adventure). Richard sadly agrees, beginning to let go of the possibility of London Below, and says he is afraid Gary is right and his friend says:

“So life isn’t exciting? Great. Give me boredom. At least I know where I am going to eat and sleep tonight. I’ll still have a job on Monday.”

Those words drive Richard to seek to get back to London Below–where Velvets steal your heat with a kiss and rats rule as lords and even the mundane is dangerous and exciting.

We all have both Richard and Gary within us. It is just a matter to what degree and to whom do we listen. We want safety and stability but we yearn for the enticingly new and exciting. For the most part we listen to Gary as he does seem to be the sane one, but we definitely like the stories we hear from Richard. And, every once in a while, one of us listens to Richard long enough and slips through the cracks. We escape our 9-5, lose our houses, and start the drift.

My friend K, aside from being one of the coolest people I know, is very perceptive. Last year I read a blog about a guy who walked the entire length of the Keystone Pipeline just so that he could wrap his head around the enormity of what people were talking about. He walked from the tar sands of Canada to Port Arthur Texas. I found his blog when he was still in the Dakotas and followed him down to Texas. It was like getting the occasional letter from Richard regaling me with stories about London Below. I recommended it to friends. K read it and realized I was listening to Richard again. She didn’t say anything at the time, but when I told everyone I was leaving my job and house to wander aimlessly on my bike K told me she saw it coming (brilliant person that she is).

We listen to Richard because there is something wild and feral in all of us. The human being is the only animal that domesticated itself and that domestication is a thin and shabby veneer. Plunge deep and the animal becomes obvious. The call is seductive. We want to slough off domestication, get raw, and feel life on a more immediate level.

Gary likes to control where he will eat, sleep, and pis and how he will be able to maintain it. My life revolves around those issue in reverse–where will I get food, sleep, and take a crap–this is how animals live. And that is why I am doing this and why people are nice to me.

Why am I biking across the US? Because I am an animal. I revel in the simple pleasures of getting a snack, taking a crap, and having a nap.

Why are people nice to me? Why do dogs howl at the moon? Because it reminds them that they are animals and that one day they might escape, slip through the cracks, and be free. When I am around people see the world as I do. They participate in my feral life. Or, in the words of my acquaintance from Fargo, it keeps the dream alive.

On a recent tour I biked through one of the cities where I had lived in my youth. I was excited because I hadn’t been there since moving away. An added enticement was that an old friend, old girlfriend, had seen on social media I was coming through and reached out. The invite and the memories gave me a melancholy smile.

This amazing person once described me as a “magnificent failure” while she was breaking up with me. She said it in a way not meant to be cruel, but to convey her sadness and frustration. She wasn’t being unreasonable. The dreams… well, her dreams…. a nice house, a stable career, kids, a secure future… never got any closer while she was with me.

When I got to town we had coffee. She was married, with kids, a nice house, and a secure future (I believe). And she was happy. It gave me joy to see her happy. We asked a lot of questions about what we had been doing since we broke up. After we finished filling each other in, right before she was about to go, she said “I’m so glad we broke up.”

Again, she didn’t say it to be cruel. It seemed more like she was validating a decision she had made but wasn’t sure if it was correct.

Still, it hurt.

Never being one to pass up a chance to be kicked while I am down, I asked “Why?”

She just laughed and pointed to the touring bag on the seat next to me and then to my bike chained up outside and shrugged. That’s when I remembered the “magnificent failure” line. I hadn’t thought about it since the day we broke up. She left to go get her kids and I stayed for another cup of coffee.

At that point in my life I was unemployed after having just quit a very good job, owned little more than my bike and some camping gear, and had slipped through the cracks of society and was drifting for a while. No, she wasn’t being unreasonable or cruel.

She wasn’t being unreasonable because she did not want to live my life. Everything about it was anathema to her. You didn’t cast aside good fortune. You didn’t disregard your place in society. You worried about the future. You worried about what others thought of you. You were supposed to mature, take on responsibilities, and prove yourself by how you handled it. You had clearly defined goals and you attained them.

She wasn’t being cruel because none of it was said in a judgmental tone. She laughed when I told her stories about my life. She seemed genuinely interested and sought the happiness in my eyes. It gave her joy to see me so happy. She just couldn’t fathom it.

Her smile. The care in her eyes. Her laughter. That took the sting away. It also put her original comment into context.

I wasn’t a “magnificent failure”. We were.

As I sat there finishing my coffee, it came into focus. She may have directed the words at me initially, but they were about us. The “failure” wasn’t that I would never amount to anything; it was that my potential wasn’t aimed at her target. We had come together, drawn by the other’s drive and passion, only to learn they were focused in opposite directions. Try as we might, we couldn’t stay in sync. The “magnificent” described the magic of that period. We shared our individual journeys before competing trajectories tore us apart. It was intoxicating to be in each other’s orbit. To share her confidence and knowing looks made small moments special.

I’m glad we met. I’m glad we shared our lives for a while. And I am glad we broke up. I could not have become the person she wanted and she would have been miserable on my journey. She was an intense and magical person, but her magic was for someone else.

The wind had picked up a bit and it began to drizzle lightly when I went out to my bike. The reflection of the streetlights on the wet road at dusk transformed the city. There are moments on a tour when your thoughts, your mood, and your surroundings become indistinguishable. This was one of them.

As I rode out of the memories of my youth and into the night the melancholy began to wash away. As much as I enjoyed seeing her, I realized that there was no place I’d rather be, no corporate boardroom or penthouse suite, than on that cold and foggy road headed toward a destination that would forever remain indistinct.

When I was small the world was big. My best friend lived four doors down and that seemed like another world. The houses between ours were filled with all the people I knew in the world. We had a nemesis, Curt, but he lived far away—as your nemesis should. He lived almost a full block down and on the other side of the street.

In those days, I wasn’t allowed to cross the street without a parent or holding my older brother’s hand. It was an unassuming but daunting barrier. The people on the other side of the street looked familiar, but I didn’t interact with them. How could I, I needed either a parent (too busy) or a sibling (uninterested) to cross the great divide.

There was a park we went to… somewhere out there. I loved that park. It had all the best slides, a field to run in, and a dark forest. I wasn’t sure where the park was. I never walked to it. I knew that park like the back of my hand (except for the dark forest—there were stories), but where it existed in the world was as much a mystery to me as China. It didn’t matter that I didn’t know where it was. It was there whenever I needed it.

As I grew older my world began to shrink. It no longer seemed to take me a long time to walk to Steve’s house. The prohibition on crossing the street was lifted and instead of making my world bigger, it got smaller. The strangers on the other side of the great divide became familiar. It turned out that they were just like me and Steve. We took to building forts in each other’s yards and running up and down the block until we were called in for dinner. The world kept shrinking.

Then one day Steve moved away. I was told he wasn’t moving too far and that I would see him a lot, but what did that mean. They moved to the next town over and, it turns out, I didn’t see him a lot. In fact, I rarely saw him. My shrinking world was getting bleak.

Steve was my friend because he could think of crazy things to do and then make it seem like it wasn’t crazy until we could talk ourselves into doing it. When it was over he would laugh and smile and admit that he wasn’t sure it was a good idea when we started, but that he was sure we could handle it. We did a lot of great stuff together.

And then he was gone. We talked on the phone a little and our parents, who were also friends, tried to stay in touch, but they drifted. First, we saw each other weekly, then a couple of times a months, then even longer. But we stayed best friends.

One weekend, months after he had moved away, my parents dropped me off at Steve’s house for the night. I was excited because Steve told me he had come up with an amazing plan. When I got there we took his and his brother’s bike out to ride. As we were riding Steve told me his plan—we were going to ride back to my house.

And we did. It took much, much longer than we thought. Steve was sure he had memorized the way on his trips over to my house, but he had missed a few turns. And we ended up getting lost. But a good kind of lost. We went through neighborhoods we had never seen. Saw faces of people we had never met and didn’t know their story. Got chased by dogs that seemed to mean business. It was exciting.

There were city buses that honked at us for being too far into the street (my neighborhood didn’t have city buses). There were rolling hills (where did they come from); a creek where kids were trying to catch crayfish (in Illinois!?!?!?); and an abandoned factory that we had to stop and climb in for a while. I didn’t know these things existed. How could all these things exist this close to where we lived?

By then I wasn’t sure where we were anymore. I asked Steve and he admitted he didn’t know either. That he had been lost for about an hour. But he didn’t seem worried and, somehow, that calmed me down. Steve said that it couldn’t be that hard, people go from my town to his town all the time. Steve’s logic was always solid. He said we could just ask people. So we did.

Steve had a way with people. He would just say what he was doing, like it wasn’t crazy, and they would then act like it wasn’t crazy (These are not the droids you are looking for…). We left the abandoned building and went to a busy street to find people. Steve asked a lady in a shop how to get to my town. When she asked why he told her. She just nodded, said OK, and drew us a map. He thanked her and we left.

A MAP. We had a map!!! We still got lost again, but we were able to keep close enough to the hand-drawn map to get back to my neighborhood. It was exhilarating plotting our course with our smarts and good guesses. Once I began to recognize the shops and the street signs I knew we would make it. As we were turning onto my street, I realized we did it. We figured out how to bike from Steve’s house to my house. We were smiling and laughing and Steve didn’t have to say, but I knew he was thinking, that this probably wasn’t his smartest idea, but we handled it.

It was dark when we got to my house and all hell broke loose. My parents were convinced we were dead or kidnapped or some other horrible tragedy. When they found out what we had done, the uproar started all over again. Did we know the danger we were in? Did we know what type of people are in the world? Did we know how easy it is to get lost (actually, yes, on that one)? Did we know how lucky we were? When Steve’s parents got there, it started a third time.

We took our punishment in silence because it was worth it. We had the best day. Who knew adventure was that close?

That was my first bike tour. And it was incredible. I was able to connect two points in my life, separated by a great distance, with one continuous line of pedaling. Instead of making the world smaller, it made it a thousand times bigger. All that distance that seems so small and unconnected in a car was suddenly filled in with mean dogs, rolling hills, abandoned factories, and nice shop ladies. It was incredible. And I felt it in the core of my being. That day resonated in me. It was magical.

That is how I feel every time I go on tour. Like a 7 year old boy finding out that the world is filled with wonder. Between the places I know, even those close to each other, lay adventure. A turn off the well-worn path, down some unknown lane, shows me how little I really know, how small my experience has been.

And that is why I tour.

I Tour Because the World is Still Big.

I was riding through the outskirts of a large city one night on tour. It was about 35 miles of suburban neighborhoods punctuated by the occasional break of forests and fields. As I rode down the street houses would disappear, streetlights vanished, and I would find myself in the still darkness of an empty road with only the hiss of the city in the distance. Within a mile or so the homes would pick up again, the lights would reappear, and I would be back in the commuter belt riding past quiet houses that had settled in for the evening. It felt like I was a stone skipping across that liminal space where urban sprawl and nature were still contesting ground and vying for dominance, bouncing between two alternate realities.

I like riding in urban landscapes at night. The human world has a different feel in the dark. The glaring nature of modern life ebbs in the shadows. The sharp angles are softened by the purple-blue light. With primordial deference to the unlit, our diurnal nature calls us to withdraw. We retreat to our caves, pull family closer, and wait for the dawn to bring us renewed vigor. There is something intimate about cities after dark. They reveal something about us that the harsh light of day conceals.

As I rode through the neighborhoods I studied the homes. As I always do when riding through big cities, I felt the sheer weight of the humanity around me. If I turned directly toward the heart of the city, rather than skimming its edges, I could ride for 30 miles of uninterrupted and ever-increasing density before I reached its center—and there would be another 30 miles of similar density on the other side. These colossal structures of human existence are mind-numbing. As I rode along the outskirts, I felt the immensity of it. At its center stood glowing towers of humans stacked on top of each other, jutting hundreds of feet in the air, defying nature, surrounded by a corona of humanity-filled tendrils reaching scores of miles into the countryside around it. On their surface cities seem to be a testament to the social nature of man.

But like I said, darkness often reveals more than the light. Something stood out as I rode through those empty streets. As the houses slid by, I began to recognize a certain ubiquitous presence. In the windows of almost every house was a distinct blue-white flicker of light. The universality of that light was striking. Almost without fail, unless a house was completely dark, that flicker existed. As I left the suburbs and headed back into the country toward my campground, those flickering lights stayed with me. There was something about them.

The further into the night I got, the more prominent those darkened houses with their single, quivering light became in my thoughts. That image was trying to find its companion in my mind. It was seeking to make a connection. Alone, on a dark road, I gave it the freedom to roam. One of the great joys and rewards of bike touring is the luxury of time.

A chill had set into the hollows between hills. I put on a warm jacket from my bags, checked the map to orient myself, and made the final miles to my destination. It was past dinner when I got to the campground and went looking for a spot. People saw my helmet lamp and waved as I passed. A few raised beers in salute.

As I rolled through the loops looking for a vacant site to set up for the night, the image of the flickering, blue-white light found the companion it was seeking. As universal as the blue-white flicker of the urban houses, each site had the warm red-orange flicker of a campfire.

Those two images were dancing with each other in my mind as I set up camp, but I wasn’t sure what the importance of the dance was at first. The image of a flickering television and a campfire were still juxtaposed in my head—teasing each other—when one of my neighbors came over to invite me to her camp for some leftovers and beer.

As I sat around the campfire eating a cold burger and drinking an IPA I finally made the connection. Listening to these good friends talk, feeling their open generosity, watching the orange light flicker across their faces it came to me. I suddenly remembered a thousand similar campfires I had shared over all the years. In a crush of understanding, I felt the immediate and powerful fellowship of intimate human community.

We are such sensual creatures at our core. As cerebral as we pretend to be, we are as driven and controlled by primordial urges as the spawning salmon or the migrating swallow. There is something deep in us, coded into our very DNA, that draws us to fire. Back, before the first human erected a building for shelter, people had been coming together around fires at night for warmth, safety, and companionship. As I sat, food in my belly, heat on my face, laughing with my new friends, I understood. Here, miles from the city, was the true example of the social nature of humans. Gathered around a fire sharing food, warmth, and stories, we were experiencing our humanity as it had existed for hundreds of thousands of years.

I also understood why the blue-white lights of the television stuck with me—why they called to me. It wasn’t that they represented another form of this community, but rather they were such an alienation and bastardization of it. While I rode through the city, feeling the weight of humanity, those flickering lights were calling to me. Each one was telling a tale…   a lonely tale about separation.

House upon house…   street upon street…  neighborhood upon neighborhood…  millions of people lived side-by-side and yet they were isolated. In their individual homes families sat around their artificial campfires seeking in them the community that was just outside their door.  For many, they know more about the imaginary people on TV than they do about the family a few doors down. The wonders of technology and modern society have brought us many things, but they also cost us something. They have cost us community. A hundred feet in any direction were scores of people they could share a fire with, but somehow they had lost that ability. They no longer spend their nights with each other.

We are genetically coded to slow down in the evenings and seek the flickering lights that used to bring us into community. It is no wonder that as the pressures and dictates of modern society have made this harder to realize we would invent a substitute to take its place. The oft cited idea that TV is the new religion misses the mark. The TV isn’t God, it is community. It has replaced the hearth of old and the campfires of our primal beginnings. We turn to that cold fire searching in it for the connection with others that so many of us have lost. It isn’t surprising that one of the most popular shows in the last 30 years is simply called Friends—at our faux campfire await our imaginary friends.

As I sat around the fire I reflected on this insight. I realized that when I am not on the road, I am guilty of this voluntary isolation myself.  I let my job and the other distractions of modern life cleave me from my surroundings. Too often, I have spent the night in front of the TV or at the computer letting them replace basic, essential human connection.

In the flicker light of the campfire I finished my beer and vowed that in the future I would spend more time with people and less time with Friends.

It is 2500 miles to bike up the Mississippi River and 1000 miles to bike around Lake Michigan. I have crossed scores of rivers, thousands of streams, and seen countless lakes and ponds during this journey of exploration. 

I have spent the last 2 months next to some of the most iconic waterways in North America getting to know their course and understand their moods. When I read stories like Huck Finn or hear The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, I understand them better now. I know what the river bottoms smell like. I understand what it means for a cold wind to race down the Great Lakes.  They are not just shapes on a map anymore. They no longer exist in the abstract to me.  They sparkle with a thousand colors. They sing with a multitude of sounds. They are in me now and I am changed by them. 

The experience of encountering them at 10 mph has been humbling and enlightening. I feel like their history is now my history. That no matter where I go or what I do  the Mississippi and the Great Lakes will always be in me. I have followed them, slept next to them, been incredibly frustrated by them, and actually brought to tears by them. 

I can’t truly convey how special this journey has been. It has been about so many things—people, storms, rivers, lakes, seasons, hardships, and joy—but most importantly, it has been about wonder. 

Every morning I pack up my life and set out. What lies ahead is unknown and that is its charm. I am being told the most incredible story and I can’t wait for each new installment. 

Soon this chapter of the story will end. I will go back to my house, a job, and a routine. But that doesn’t mean the story is over. I know that down the road, around the bend I’ve never taken before, are more chapters waiting to unfold. And they are filled with things I can’t imagine—like abandoned forest roller coasters, magical homesteads, and kind old Southern Gentlemen. It is the story we write when we find the wonder in our lives. 

Find that story in your life and chase it. You’ll never regret it. 

Tonight I am in Hog Island State Park, a primitive campground on the Upper Peninsula. It is at the highest point north you can get on Lake Michigan—just a few miles from Canada. The geese have been calling to each other all afternoon, the frogs join in occasionally with their viewpoints, and soon the crickets and owls will complete this incredible symphony. I am the only person in the campground tonight because the midge flys are swarming. The midges don’t bother me and I am OK with the solitude. I feel a powerful connection to the lake and the woods in this place. It feels right.

Tomorrow I will start to head south to Chicago and my eventual return to New Orleans.

I can sense the coming end of my journey and it is bittersweet. While a house, a bed, hot food, and mornings that don’t start with me packing up my camp and setting off for a full day of riding is attractive, those luxuries come at a cost.

The cost is time.

Time spent in nature. Time spent in contemplation. Time spent meeting new people and seeing new sights. Time spent alone. And, most importantly, time to spend with the most elusive of seasons–Spring.

I have been able to follow Spring from the Deep South to the Far North. I have watched her fill the bayous and backwaters with returning song birds; brighten the Tennessee forests with lightning bugs; paint the Kentucky hills with wild flowers; call the turtles and frogs back to their ponds in Illinois and Missouri; and tame the bitter winds of the north with gentle southern breezes full of moisture and pungent with life.

Winter doesn’t retreat easily. He fights Spring the entire way. Their battles are waged with thunderstorms, tornadoes, and hail. I have watched these two seasons engaged in this eternal dance. It is terrific and humbling. I feared for my life on this trip, but I wouldn’t have given up my front row seat to this magnificent show for any amount of safety.

The thing about Spring is that she isn’t like the other seasons. The other seasons ARE, Spring BECOMES. Summer, Winter, and Fall possess you. They make you about them. Spring isn’t so possessive. She comes to battle Winter back, but doesn’t stay. She leaves and lets Summer have the stage. Spring is the most vigorous of seasons, but also the most elusive.

I’ll never forget this vernal odyssey. I got to chase Spring north for 2000 miles. For almost 2 months I rode the leading edge of Spring’s fleeting show and was transformed as much as the land around me. She leads with storms and rage and leaves a trail of bloom in her wake.

We’ve all spent a lazy Summer day in languor. Or sat by a window on a rainy Fall afternoon with a glass of wine and our memories. And huddled under the covers in front of a fire with a warm cup to fend off Winter’s touch. But Spring can’t be experienced that way. Spring is about motion and change. To spend time with Spring you have to chase her. Only in action will you truly encounter her.

So on the final day of my northern pursuit I am finding myself both reflective and melancholy. I have met Spring. Glimpsed her in flashes of lightning and outlined with funnel clouds. Heard her call me with the voice of a thousand birds and a million insects. Felt her caress with gentle breezes and her rage with angry hail. Smelled her in the rich Delta soils and the musky wetlands of the river bottoms. But, just as Spring does not possess us, we cannot possess her. She will be gone soon and Summer will be here in her place. But, as the sun sets, and Spring continues north while I turn south, I want to remember this moment. I want to burn the image of her fleeting glory into my mind so that I never forget our time together.

Good night.

Fun fact: The coastline of Lake Michigan is 1400 miles, making it 107 miles longer than the Pacific Coast of the US from Canada to Mexico. It gets its name from the Ojibwe word michi-gami meaning “great water”.

I’ve biked them both and have to say they are each incredible in their own way. Do yourself the favor and bike either (or both) you will never regret a moment of it.

I had this conversation recently.

Me: “This jelly has been on my bike for the last month or so un-refrigerated and it definitely is a different color from when I left on this trip. Do you think it is safe?”

My friend: “I wouldn’t recommend anybody else eat it, but your probably safe.”

I ate it and it didn’t make me sick, so there you go.

This illustrates something that is happening to me. I am beginning to devolve. I am actually regressing as a human. On this trip I have:

• eaten some very questionable food;
• gone days without a bath;
• consistently used my dirty laundry as a pillow;
• worn the same dirty clothes for days;
• not spoken to anyone for hours (twice it was for days) on end;
• mostly slept on the ground and have one foot that is covered in fire ant bites;
• fallen asleep wet more times than I care to count;
• fallen asleep during insane thunderstorms and thought “Eh, if I’m going to die I’m not going to wait up for it to happen”;
• eaten most of my calories while moving;
• asked my body to go beyond whatever limits I thought it had and it has happily gone along;
• laughed hysterically at an idea I could fully understand but never express.

Also, I don’t think the way I used to. Not even the way I thought a month ago. Before, much of my thought was verbal—a literal conversation in my head. That isn’t happening anymore. A type of conversation is still happening, but it isn’t verbal. Words are not being expressed. Words take energy. Words are a kind of subterfuge.

One of the reasons I bike tour is to be alone. The other is to slowly peel away the layers of civilization to find the human animal underneath. By stripping the superficial from my life I can get to a more primal state of being. For me, bike touring is an ontological experiment. It is a quest into what it means to be.

Riding with someone else wouldn’t allow that. We would need to talk and talking would keep me centered in a part of my brain that is already dominant. It wouldn’t allow the lens of consciousness to shift its focus to another part of my psyche. But not talking and being alone is not enough, at least for me, to move the locus of my consciousness. It requires more. It requires something physical. It requires a break from the physical trappings of our civilization.

Civilization is an artifice that we have created. It doesn’t really exist.  Jean Baudrillard, in Simulacra and Simulation, examines the relationship between reality, symbols, and society. He posits, correctly I believe, that we are living not in a simulation, but a simulacra—a simulation of something that never existed (think Disney’s Main Street America—this mythic ideal never existed, yet we yearn to return to it). We are emulating phantoms of phantoms and elevating them to levels of profound importance. We have created a society that has produced the Kardashians for fuck’s sake. They are famous simply for being famous—if that isn’t a simulacra then nothing is.

But how do we pull out of the simulacra? How do we reorient?

For me, it is to start to shed the trappings of simulation. That is why the absence of language is so fundamental to these periods in my life. Language is representational. It is symbolic.  When you think in words, you are at least one step removed from reality. Verbal though is a simulation of reality. The word “dog” is not a dog. It is a sound your brain equates with the idea of a dog. It is a placeholder so that your mind can string together different ideas to create abstractions.   Becoming silent is to start the mental break with the illusory world we have created. But that alone isn’t enough for me.

We live in a physical culture that structures our reality as much as the words in our head. From the type of car your drive to the jewelry you wear, it is representational of your place in our artificial society. That is why I need to pull myself from my house, leave my bed, stop eating regular meals, drop physical comforts like heat and a/c, and push my body to its breaking point every day. Its not because I like driving myself to the point of exhaustion, but because when you get to the physical limits your core being, that primal part of you that is still animal, starts to release the non-essential. It can’t maintain the façade. It just doesn’t have the energy.

Couple the release from the illusion of words with a disregard for the artifice of society and things begin to change. When you go to bed wet, in a thunderstorm, covered in bug bites, wake up wet, ride for 50 miles, and then go into a store to get some oatmeal packets and then realize people are looking at you because you smell from wearing the same riding clothes and not bathing for 3 days, you just don’t have the energy to care. And you don’t have the words left to form the thoughts that would make you ashamed. Instead your mind is filled will vibrant images of forest ponds and bull frog songs.  It isn’t possible for your mind to be pushed into artificial constructs like shame and humiliation. I don’t care.  I am an animal looking for food.

I knew that transformation was beginning about my 3^rd week on the road. I was riding down a single lane, dirt road in the country when out from under a porch came shooting 2 enormous black mastiffs. I noticed the hair was standing straight up on the ridgelines of their backs. They were racing at full speed and were angled to intercept me about 50 feet up the road. I didn’t have a verbal thought. I was in stride on the bike and ready for them to come. When they were about 20 feet out, I hopped off the bike, grabbed the pocket knife I keep in my handlebar bag, and turned to face the dogs. I didn’t yell or even get frightened, but I did growl to myself. It wasn’t a confrontational sound, it was my body telling me and the dogs it was ready for whatever came. And the dogs stopped dead in their tracks. They lowered their heads and continued to bark but didn’t come closer. I just stood there and after a minute they turned and slowly walked back to their porch. I got on my bike, laughed out loud, and continued my ride.

I’m not saying I scared the dogs and that is why they stopped chasing me. I have been chased by thousands of dogs over all the years of touring and all but one eventually just gave up the pursuit. The difference was that I didn’t have a mental dialogue and an “Oh shit!!” moment. I just took in the dogs and reacted. This is the way animals react. Monkeys don’t think as they swing through the trees. They just reach and grab.  It is motion and reaction.

But it is more than just reaction. It is a way of being present. Silence, discomfort, and exhaustion help to strip away any hermeneutic filter between me and the world. It creates an acute sense of existing and unity.

The road isn’t just my favorite place to be, it is my preferred state of being. Through touring I become an Asphalt Buddha.

I had a very interesting encounter the other day.

I was standing outside of a service station/convenience store in a small town in Northern Wisconsin. I had just spent the last few hours slogging up a bike trail that was strewn with downed trees that I had to either crawl under or heave my bike and gear over. Additionally, I had been awoken at 3:30 am by the most frightening storm I have ever experienced while camping (and that is saying a lot considering that I have had 3 encounters with tornadoes on this trip alone).

I was standing there, eating a sleeve of honey roasted peanuts, when 3 guys pulled up in a 1975 Plymouth Squalor. As they got out, the driver looked at my bike and trailer and said “What you got in there?”

When I told him it was all my camping gear he said “What for?”

I said it was because I was biking from New Orleans to Canada. The guy looked at me, then back at his friends, then said in the most snide tone I have ever heard outside of a John Hughes villain “Why would you want to do that?”

I’ll be honest, my ability to put up with dumbshits and asshole remarks doesn’t exist anymore. Not like it was much of an ability before, but now it is nonexistent. So listening to this jackwad be a smart ass to look clever to his friends irked me.

So, to his question “Why would you want to do that?” I looked him dead in the eye and said “Because my cock is thick and meaty.”

There are moments in life when time seems to slow down. This was one of them. I could see the entire mental process on his face as he realized what I said, understood what it meant, and then assessed his options. It went something like this:

Wait!! Did he just say that?

He did!

What does that mean?

Wait!! Is that an insult to my manhood?

I think it is!!

Did he mean it that way?

He did!!

This was like watching a slow motion silent film. His mouth and lips actually moved and twitched as he went through the process. His eyebrows narrowed at the end when he realized his manhood may have been insulted. Then, very obvious, he looked me up and down trying to assess it he could take me. His shoulders hunched a bit like he was bracing to charge and he clenched his fists. The whole time this was going on I just stared straight into his eyes.

In the end he came to the conclusion that I was probably more fight than he wanted and he backed down. His shoulders un-hunched, he un-balled his fists, snorted, and said “What the hell does that mean?”

I said “If you need it explained to you, you’ll never understand.”

This got his hackles up again, but he backed down even quicker the second time, didn’t say anything, didn’t look at his friends, and just turned and walked away.

Like I said, it was a very interesting encounter.

It made me think 2 things.

One: If you’re going to be a smart ass, have the stones to back it up. It is awfully humiliating to decide to fuck with someone only to tuck your tail between your legs and cringe in front of them.

Two: The longer I spend on the road, the more aggressive and feral I seem to be becoming. When that little, domesticated house pet decided to be a dick to me for no good reason other than to show off to his friends, my first thought was how soft and insubstantial he was and I wanted to dominate him.

I know, it’s a weird fucking thought, but something in me got offended by the idea of him thinking that just because I was alone and on a bike I would let myself be intimidated. Sure, I could have gotten my ass beaten. I wouldn’t be the first time and, most likely, it won’t be the last. But it just didn’t matter.

Plus, when he couldn’t hold my eyes, I knew. I have spent the last 45 days living outside, facing the worst storms we have had in decades, pushing my body to its limits 7-8 hours a day, while trying to navigate a path from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada… alone… on a bike. If I went down, it would have taken a lot more than that guy and his friends had in them.

Still, that I was willing to go there that quickly is … 

Like I said, it was an interesting encounter.