From slcpi!govt.shearson.com!mjohnsto@uunet.UU.NET Mon Jan  7 17:19:47 1991
To: wordy@Corp
Subject: chapter-15

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