Chapter 15: Humboldt County Play
© 1986 by Steven K. Roberts
Nomadic Research Labs
Trinidad, California (1,076 miles)
December 6, 1986
I have often called this journey a lifestyle sampler. If that’s true,
then when does the wild experimentation of the gourmet become the
wretched excess of the glutton? Can there be too much? With a mighty
intellectual belch I lean back 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 corporate 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...
adrenaline 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.