Chapter 16: Computing Across Humboldt County?
© 1986 by Steven K. Roberts
Nomadic Research Labs
Eureka, California (1,106 miles)
December 15, 1986
We have just spent three weeks in Humboldt County with old friends—old
friends whom we first met three weeks ago. Such is the time distortion
of the traveling life. We’re living as a family of four, and the time
before our arrival seems vague and distant. Oh yeah... I remember...
aren’t we on some kinda bicycle trip?
But these three weeks have been a therapeutic dose of home, something
that we need now and then to temper our rootless nomadics with the
illusion of stability. Sometimes Dataspace isn’t quite
enough—especially when childhood memories of Christmas begin to season
the festivities of others with little wistful pangs.
Christmas persists in being a strange time to travel. On my first
journey (solo for 500 days or so), I endured two of them. Both were
warm, yet somehow sad—for even with no religious interest in the
holiday I have been deeply inculturated along with everyone else. The
Christmas trees of others all seem deficient in contrast with that
perfect prototype fantasy tree imprinted 30 years ago; the traditional
music is somehow evocative, the non-traditional music grating. The
season is a confusion of love and tackiness, beauty and clutter,
generosity and guilt. I try not to participate, but still feel the pull
of behavioral quicksand, the well-intentioned brainwashing of a culture
in transition. Christmas is mostly a habit now, a hysterical
celebration of mass obligation... and how can a present you should buy
convey anything other than emotional self-defense?
(And besides, I don’t have room on my bicycle for new toys.)
But no matter how philosophical I try to be about this yearly
commercial bonanza, I am still drawn in, still affected. I look at my
friends’ tree and get wistful for the bubble lights of my childhood; I
walk downtown and feel the credit cards itch. “Oh, wouldn’t Duane love
this?” “Honey, do you think Ian would like some dinosaur mugs?” What
are we going to do for all of our friends back in Ohio, out in
Dataspace, and in every other place touched by my wheels or my hands or
my words or my heart?
And so we have been torn all week. Stay or go? Stay or go?
Lists of pros and cons, lists of things to do. Aw, let’s wait—they say
it’s gonna rain; I have to do the Popular
Science proposal and install Maggie’s new drum brake... and
Duane and Micki invited us to go caroling on our bicycles. But we’ve
been here too long, and it really is a pretty day and I’m restless and
damn it, if we don’t get our asses south we’re going to be stuck up
here till April. No... until May. That’s when they have the Kinetic
Sculpture Race. Isn’t there some way to do it all?
Understanding why I stop reveals even more about why I go, doesn’t it?
What’s particularly intriguing about all this is that from the
perspective of movement, standing still is high adventure. The little
events of daily life—going to parties, renting movies for the VCR,
cooking a fresh seafood dinner with friends—are all cast into sharp
relief by the exquisite transience of passing through. Savor this... it
won’t last long.
One such tableaux of modern Americana occurred last night. We found
ourselves at a Christmas party hosted by an atypically colorful
accountant and his flawless fashion-model bride—in a home obsessively
gardened and passionately maintained. I kept seeing myself as if in a
commercial, one of those soft-focus testimonials to an ideal lifestyle
(dependent upon a certain brand of wine or coffee). Everything was
perfect, from the thematic and color-coordinated 10-foot tree to the
roaring fire to the dizzying spread of roasts and exotic drinks.
Fortified by the latter, we poured into the night and climbed aboard a
chartered trolley car for a caroling excursion.
I hung crazily off the side, playing my flute in occasional synchrony
with Duane’s guitar, as we clanged our way along Eurekan streets.
30-odd mouths vented synchronized steam; we laughed in wholesome
self-mockery; familiar Christmas melodies, slightly raucous, echoed
from Victorian buildings. Cheery waves, jingle bells, shouting kids,
heavy-laden shoppers, full-moonlight on white lazy plumes of distant
millsmoke. At a sleazy bar known locally as the VD, we dismounted and
wove our way through the pool tables, playing and singing Jingle Bells
while eyed sullenly by drunken denizens. (The kids waited outside for
this one, and we seemed to step a bit more quickly than we had back in
the Ritz.)
“Lifestyle sampler,” I whispered into a fragrant Maggie-ear, and she
smiled—remembering one of the motives behind all this. We clattered on,
exhausting our repertoire of first verses, arriving again at the dream
house to overdose on hot buttered rum and increasingly incoherent
conversation as jingle bells echoed in our heads and the night grew
fuzzy...
Three weeks. Like Bainbridge, Humboldt has held us, teased us, mocked
our plans to move on. To the database of potential homes I add
Humboldt—for the friends, the ambience, the undercurrent of looniness
that touches daily events with a sense of play. Though we’re broke and
living a hand-to-mouth existence based on advance book sales, life
seems rich here, full of those non-financial components in the success
formula: the four F’s of fun, food, friendship, and passion.
But we’re moving on; it’s time. Maggie’s fine-tuning her new 48-spoke
wheel; I’m poring over the maps and lists of contacts with obsessive
concentration, eschewing offers of still more parties in lieu of
loose-end tying. Christmas or not, we’re getting back on the road this
week—fully prepared for the legendary winding grades of Leggett hill
and the convoluted Highway 1 to follow.
Special Bonus Recipe Section
As we travel, we are exposed at least once a week to something tasty.
Maggie’s compiling a collection of recipes for a possible book (Eating Across America?), complete
with food-related anecdotes and quotes (“I never eat anything that once
had a face,” said a vegetarian friend here.)
But this is the Christmas season, and I’d like to pass on a hot
buttered rum recipe that will have you swilling helplessly until you
run out of ingredients or consciousness. This stuff is exceptional:
Create the batter by mixing a pound of brown sugar, a half-pound of
butter, and a teaspoon each of cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg. Add a
little rum to give it a mousse-like consistency.
To conjure a mug of hot buttered rum, start with a generous gob of
batter, adding an equally generous dollop of rum and enough boiling
water to reach the top. Drink. Make murmuring sounds of ecstasy. Repeat
until discretion dictates otherwise, and drive nothing but a bicycle
till the next day.
Enjoy...