One Fine Morning...

"Who gives a shit what the Holy Grail is? It's the quest that's what's important. The transformation is within yourself. That's what's important."
—Yvon Chouinard, explorer, environmentalist, climber, founder of Patagonia Inc., septuagenarian bad-ass

Time turns and then it flies
A waterfall of lullabies
A smiling girl with crying eyes
Forget her

Will we turn loose at last
The schools of thought from nets we've cast
And let our boats go sailing past
Untethered?
......
One fine morning
One fine morning
The machines...are gonna cut us down
One fine morning
One fine morning
The machines...are gonna cut us down
—Mason Jennings, "Machines", 180° South soundtrack

So, power in Wisconsin gets its way again (surprise!) and the Democrats can pretend they really tried and, well, just got fooled by those sneaky Republicans, darn it! And continue to perpetuate the myth of two opposing parties to undermine the reality of one class.

And on my birthday, no less. Eugene Debs must be redlining in the mother of all sepulchral spins right about now.

The wealthy in this country are our moai; we cut down everything, consume and waste, while they quietly build themselves up. And when they stumble, when the market fails them, we bail them out. They take and take as we line up to give it to them. In return, they offer us promises, rhetoric, and lies. And in the emptiness, we pretend to see hope. We close our eyes and drift off to sleep. Until one day, we wake to find there's nothing left on our little island. All of it gone. Plundered, pinched, pilfered by privilege.

Everything is not all right.

The only consolation is that it has to end sometime, has to fall victim to its own rampant avarice. The totems will again turn to stone—soulless, meaningless—and topple. As it should be. That's called poetic justice. Take and take and take from a pool with increasingly less and less and less to give up, and it won't be long before you're knotting your own noose in a rope donated by the downtrodden. Or, to quote a sign from the protest in Wisconsin, "Screw Us and We Multiply." Time to make like rabbits. The tide is turning.

I, for one, can't wait. Pop the popcorn and pour the beer. It's showtime!

Rant over. For now.

Okay, so the greater—some might say grandiose—idea behind this cross-country bicycle trip is to write a book about it, based on notes written along the way (yes, it’s been done before).

From the cozy comfort of my seat in the bar (as the spring limps in slowly on frost-numbed feet), beer in hand, I conjure an eclectic but cohesive mix of impressions and reflections, poetry, prose, art, philosophy, beauty, love, luck, loss, narcissism, nihilism, sublime success and unforeseen failure, euphoria and misery, surrounded by—and sometimes set against—cogent, by turns discursive, descriptions of token towns and rural roads and urban avenues and the impersonal interstates that link them all together, sprinkled liberally with local history and color, transportation issues, environmental politics, and the general bliss and bane of traveling by bicycle. And oh yeah, I'm committed to spending every one of my nights inside a tent, regardless of weather or weariness. And the idea of making it an out-and-back grows ridiculously stronger every day.

In the meantime, some more bad news: yesterday, my boss told me the new position is pretty much a done deal. The only thing in question is my start date. Seems the uncertainty about the potential (and purely symbolic) government shutdown looming on the outside edge of the periphery is putting on the stall, so I'm left in a sort of limbo until the script plays out. If I'm still hanging by the end of April, I'm throwing a leg over the saddle, thrusting two defiant middle fingers heavenward, and pedaling to the west. If things are resolved before then, I'm sitting tight and doing it all next spring with a little fatter wallet. Got a rider who is interested in accompanying me if it doesn't go down till next year, so that's kind of cool. The months between will measure his sincerity. Guess we'll see. Regardless, time rolls on, and so will I. But tonight, I've got blisters on almost everything I need right now. Enjoy...

Orange is the New Brown...

"If I had to live my life again I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week… The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature."

—Charles Darwin

Damn. As if the improbability of my bike trip going down this year isn't bad enough, Salsa had to come out and twist the blade. The second generation Vaya is now available, and it's not only new, but arguably improved. First, the clever bastards have added a replaceable derailleur hanger. That's a "nice-to-have" (more so on a mountain bike), but obviously not lust worthy in and of itself. The real bite in the bully bag, to me, is that they changed the color from butt-coffee brown (okay, it's not that bad of a color) to opulent orange.

I love orange frames, never mind the fact that I've never owned one (which just makes this accidental near-perfidy that much more difficult to stomach). And damn, that appears to be a really fine shade. To add invective to injury, to make me rue my unruly impatience, they even improved on the graphics, with edgier down- and seat-tube logos and the substitution of a new chain-stay catchphrase, "Adventure by Bike," for the slightly less apt, "Ride & Smile" that adorns the rear quarter panels on both my Vaya and my Casseroll frames.

This is my luck. I think the Mayans might have been off a year in their eschatological estimations. Twenty-eleven just ain't cutting it thus far and seems poised with outstretched arms and open heart to embrace the apocryphal apocalypse and bring this hyperreal horror-show to its ineluctable end. But, of course, there's still plenty of time left in the year to turn things around, to salvage the sordid seconds that have already slipped past, to betray the banal, to ditch the diabolical diorama of everyday life, to make a prison-break in a blurred-legged beeline across the gallows grounds, to dart past the Dule trees (index finger tugging absently at a necktie already nixed), to ditch the Maxwell's demon who manipulates the script, casting doubt, causing questioning, pulling me back into the mold.

The days drag on, but this ever-present me is homeomorphic to the man on the bicycle pedaling ever toward the west. I am changing, becoming myself, almost him already.

No word on the new job yet. Got my fingers crossed in a counter direction.  Soon the verdict. But right now, the bottle over the bike...

I claim proneness to exaggeration
But the truth lies in my frustration
The children of the night, they all pass me by
Have to drench myself in brandy
In sleep I'll hide
But however much I booze
There ain't no way out
There ain't no way out
I don't care what you say, boy
There ain't no way out
* * * * * *
And the night comes down like a cell door closing
Suddenly I realize that I'm writin' now more honestly
While sitting here all alone with a bottle and my head a-floating
Far away from the phone and the conscience
going on at me and on at me
And I don't care what you say
There ain't no way out
—The Who, "However Much I Booze", The Who By Numbers

Of Fate and Foible, Faustian Bargains...

...and dreams deferred. Okay. Fuck. It appears I'm about to take a big bite out of a huge shit sandwich McFate has graciously and with loving care prepared for me, garnish and all. No easy way to put this so I'll just come out with it and say that my trip by bike across country this spring will very likely not happen.

Cue the shit storm.

It comes down to this: I've been offered a promotion at work to a job that, in addition to affording me more brass in pocket, is much more interesting than my present one, and has the sweet little bonus of occasional travel to such places of personal interest as Hawaii and California, among others. I can't turn it down.

But there is at least one roll of the dice that could save me: it all hinges on whether my employer scores the contract. But these dice are loaded, the pips leaded for boxcars, and that is almost certain to happen. And get this: if it pans out and I take it, it all goes down in April, the very month I'd planned to begin pedaling my sorry, self-disappointing ass across this nation.

Thus, this felon will likely do more time.

The flip side of accepting it? More cash to pad the coffers for next year. Yeah, that's right. I am going to do this cross-country voyage at the same time next year, come hell, high water, or Hyperborea. The contract would be guaranteed for a solid year, with a high probability of stretching into more. Be that latter bit as it may, my ass will be in that seat no more (and actually less) than 260 business days, regardless of what happens in the meantime, and will be on a saddle shortly thereafter. Another year also means more time to "train" (i.e., drink more beer), more time to "plan" (i.e., procrastinate), more time to make contacts out west (i.e., mooch with payback), and a little more time to spend with the people I love on this coast before embarking for the other. Plenty of solid plusses there.

The downside? No fucking bike trip across country this year. And no fucking bike trip across country this year. Lastly, no fucking bike trip across country this year.

No fucking bike trip across country this year. Are we clear on this?

Plusses and minuses, yeah. So how come bittersweet tastes like straight-up shit?

* * * * *

The boozy warmth of the Curieux slips in and envelopes me from within like an overcoat beneath my skin. It is the best part of the bargain, the beginning of the buzz, when anything seems possible, save the salvation of a self-replenishing bottle. Delusion and illusion give birth to epiphany and illumination. The walls are pliable, the bars chimeric, shimmering like waves of heat from summer asphalt. If only for the moment...

It takes more than it gives now. The muse, once manic and mirthful, has passed out in the corner, vomit-breathed, with mouth agape and eyes rolled back like blank slot reels into a head as empty as a broken bottle. He's finished, too, played out and paid out. No new ideas. He pissed it all away, squandered it on his own phony promise to himself of endless tomorrows and plenty of time. But time has run out, and truth bangs its bony knuckles upon the only door in the house. It's mostly regurgitation or flat-out effluvia now. Take your pick and don't complain and hurry home for the evening. Straight home to sleep it off. The dawn brings new lies. It's too late for talk, and anyway, when did talking ever do any good? Hemingway had it right. Best to keep it all on the inside and let the fingers finish their work.

The maenad stoops once again. She whispers into my ear with a slurred tongue, swaying on wine-weary legs, lying to me, until I almost believe her. But I see the lines in her face, filigrees, like flaws in a diamond, stealing her beauty with each passing day. The devil always gets his due, and the hour approaches. The best liars, the ones who believe their own bullshit, go down hardest in the darkness. And they always manage to act surprised. Know thyself, yes. But knowledge is only prelude.

* * * * *

So much of what we give our lives over to is only fiction, a contrivance we've created for the sake of what we mistake to be comfort, make-believe that transcends fantasy only with its very real consequences. We buy into it, returning everything we extract back to the machine one way or another. And it is all-consuming, this ritual. It steals time from—indeed, is the opposite of—Love. We know this. And still we get in line for it to battle one another for the best parking space, the pole position. Every day we place a bet against blackness, blind to the fix. I am lucky enough to be fortunate enough to have enough to complain about it all and, at least philosophically, reject a large part of it. A paradox with a punch. But it all rolls on until it doesn't. Until grit and rust and dross bring it to a standstill.

There's something to solipsism. The truth is out. I've likely fucked myself for another year to avoid being fucked by others.

It's 1:30 in the mourning, and I'm just drunk enough right now to go to bed.

Dreams die today
(Do you call this living really?)
Too much hassle, too much risk
(Inside the hole you're digging)
Dreams die today
(Do you call this living really?)
No more disappointments

Please remain seated
Your number's coming
Do not question these commands
Just walk the dog
Be a bump on a log
Watch TV until you're blind

Dreams die today...
—Jawbreaker, "Equalized", Etc.

forgetters, "Not A Track Bike"...

Blake's got a new band. Lots of energy, I dig it. Live at The Barbary in Philadelphia, September 25, 2009.

Hope this one stays together a little longer than the last few, ha.

Subject to Change...

We're too smart to watch TV
We're too dumb to make believe
this is all we want from life

And I'm too dumb to talk to you
You're so quick to listen to me
Saying nothing you don't know
Nothing you don't know

Walked out and I won't be rerouted
If I don't go outside today, I never will
Too old not to get excited
About rain and roads, Egyptian ruins, our first kiss
—Jawbreaker, "Jinx Removing", 24 Hour Revenge Therapy

I rode down to the tracks
Thinking that they might sing to me
But they just stared back
Broken, trainless, and black as night
Climbed out onto my roof
So I'd be a poet in the night
Beat the walls off my room
I saw the big room that is this life

This is my condition
—Jawbreaker, "Condition Oakland", 24 Hour Revenge Therapy

I own an SUV.  I own a TV. Both sit idle, have languished unused now for quite some time, the difference being that the TV has the benefit of shelter from the elements and is thus in a better state of visual appeal. The truck, on the other hand, is on the fast track to eyesore status, having been peppered by pollen and pounded by precipitation in all forms while resting in the driveway. Amazing, what just a little neglect brings. We would do well to remember that when it comes to living, breathing, warmth-producing things.

But the truck and the TV? Done with them both, at least for the nonce. The truck disappears as a donation this year, not likely to be replaced anytime soon. The TV goes out the window and over the fence, figuratively speaking (Arlington County will recycle it, or at least go through all the appropriate visual motions to make me feel like they are recycling it. I have my doubts).

I am becoming boring, I fear. At least to all but the alcoholic, bibliophilic bicyclist. No talk of Mad Men or the Superbowl, no spur of the moment day-trips to lands too distant to be practicably reached by bicycle, none of that good stuff. But I am, I feel, the better for this, somehow. Certainly no worse. The TV (a pandora's box if ever there was one) can go straight to fucking hell, do not pass go, do not collect etc. Television, like radio (including most satellite stations), is, in so many words, shit, pure and simple. This is not revelation. Invasive, ubiquitous, vapid, unimaginative, addictive, insidious, selfish, imposing, wasteful, let it slip from memory, disappear, become to me no more than a fuzzy hircocervus (now there's an animal!). As for the automobile, I won't go cold turkey anytime soon. I am, right now, still that most contemptible of propriétaires immobiliers: a suburbanite. I make do as necessity dictates.  And sometimes I defy it.

So, what does all this have to do with my all-too-quickly-approaching cross-country bike trip? Not a damn thing, really. But how much can I write about something that hasn't happened yet and is, at the moment, relatively unplanned? Well, this much, at least...presented for your perusal, my tentative itinerary, pinched from the Adventure Cycling Association web site:

Yorktown, VA, to Astoria, OR (4,262 mi.)

Yorktown, VA, to Christiansburg, VA (367.5 mi.)

Christiansburg, VA, to Berea, KY (381 mi.)

Berea, KY, to Murphysboro, IL (410.5 mi.)

Murphysboro, IL, to Girard, KS   (411.5 mi.)

Girard, KS, to Alexander, KS   (333.5 mi.)

Alexander, KS, to Pueblo, CO  (292.5 mi.)

Pueblo, CO, to Rawlins, WY   (390.5 mi.)

Rawlins, WY, to West Yellowstone, MT (349.5 mi.)

West Yellowstone, MT, to Missoula, MT  (332 mi.)

Missoula, MT, to Baker City, OR  (419 mi.)

Baker City, OR, to Coburg, OR (340 mi.)

Coburg, OR, to Astoria, OR (234.5 mi.)

Coming up next: a breakdown of the gear I'll carry. Oh, a thrill for ya!

I've been there and gone there
I've lived there and bummed there
I've spinned there, I gave there
I drank there and I slaved there

I've had enough of the way things have been done
Every man on a razor's edge
Someone has used us to kill with the same gun
We were killing each other by driving a wedge

My life's a mess I wait for you to pass
I stand here at the bar, I hold an empty glass
—Pete Townshend, "Empty Glass", Empty Glass