Chapter 2: Freedom Versus Security
© 1986 by Steven K. Roberts
Nomadic Research Labs
Columbus, Ohio
July 4, 1986
A nation takes a day off from its countless private prisons—its
careers, its roles, its lives of quiet desperation—and celebrates
liberty. Liberty! Red, white, and boom! Company picnics, family
gatherings, bratwurst in the park. Fireworks. Tall ships, the Lady, and
40,000 shells bursting over New York Harbor.
One year ago in San Carlos, California, my bike parked in a friend’s
livingroom, I stood on her condo balcony and fired an out-of-date flare
in a small-scale celebration of freedom. The report echoed from dark
buildings, and we uttered the obligatory “aaahhs” as the sizzling
fireball arced 45 degrees over the parking lot and began its descent...
The year before that, I pedaled sweaty into Abilene, Texas after an
85-mile day—straight to the heart of wholesome Americana, a
Fourth-of-July community picnic. The dunking booth, the backward
softball throw, the rousing speeches, the egg toss... they were all
there. Liberty. Freedom. A 3-day weekend.
Now, as I prepare once again to hit the Road, I find myself thinking
about freedom a lot—especially as distant fireworks touch the sky
outside my apartment window with intermittent pastels and punctuate
Mendelssohn with muffled booms. In 43 days I’ll turn my back on this
otherwise colorless suburbia, trading my temporary home in physical
space for a life of endless adventure in Dataspace.
I’ll trade what I can’t keep for something I can’t lose.
Motivations
In the first chapter, I told you the second one would be about the
business structure that keeps all this afloat. Well, I don’t feel much
like talking about that right now—it seems a bit dry next to the larger
questions of freedom, adventure, growth, learning, and life’s true
bottom line (FUN). We’ll get to it eventually—soon you’ll know all
about the data communications links between the Winnebiko and my base offices,
methods of handling mail and money, and how all this bicycle-borne
gizmology (5 computers now) adds up to a smooth and efficient
office-on-wheels.
But before I tell you how, I think I should tell you why.
What, short of insanity, could compel a reasonably successful freelance
writer/consultant to give up the sporadic bliss of midwestern Yuppiedom
and wander endlessly on a bicycle?
A fancy getaway? That’s the most
obvious one—escape, on every level. Is the road the Other Woman, a
sweet piece of asphalt to whom I can always run when I need to sidestep
the myriad horrors of commitment? Maybe. I always have been fascinated
by the energy associated with beginnings, and the nomadic life assures
a steady supply.
Or is the whole thing a PR gambit—a clever marketing ploy designed to
bolster my chances in the brutally ephemeral publishing business?
Possibly. This is a scary way to make a living, you know: pushing a
bunch of buttons in what you hope is the right order in the fervent
belief that some editor will be impressed enough to send a check. A
news angle helps.
Or... is the Winnebiko my
non-threatening door-opener, my ego-boost, my drawing card—an eccentric
alternative to having a hot face from the silver screen and a pocket
lined with cold cash? Hmm. It does tend to elicit the groupie effect...
Or could it be that I’m just pedaling the planet looking for home,
never quite sure whether it’s out there or inside me but convinced that
I’ll know it when I see it?
Ah, how about this one: the journey is a way to get paid for playing—a
plot to cheat the reaper and live countless lifetimes of love and
delight while everyone else plods along toward the distant golden
promise of retirement. That one doesn’t sound bad at all. Why the hell
should I grow up? It never did my friends any good.
I’ve been accused of all of these at one time or another—by cynics,
parents, or envious observers—more often than not with some
justification. But when you look a little deeper, two unifying motives
emerge:
- I want to spend my life learning.
- I want both freedom and security.
The first one is obvious enough. The bicycle is a learning machine;
travel opens doors. In my high-tech regalia I attract people of all
descriptions, then filter through them to find the witty, bizarre,
brilliant, and aware. Movement versus stasis, insight versus oversight,
energy versus ennui, adrenaline versus booze. Yes, learning is very
much the essence of this, and I change a little with every mile.
But the second one is a little more subtle.
Freedom and security... the contrapuntal components of the human dance.
A brutal trade-off, it is: if you want more of one, you pay dearly with
the other. Wanna run around? Fine, risk your marriage. Want a steady
paycheck? Forget the flexibility of freelancing. It’s like
gain-vs-bandwidth to an engineer or comfort-vs-weight to a
backpacker—having both requires inventing new rules, new technologies.
Freedom and security. Hit control-S and think about it. What do you do
when your main objective in life is to have your cake and eat it too?
For a while, as I pedaled the first 10,000 miles, I had myself pretty
well convinced that beating the trade-off consisted of doing business
on the road—writing with a portable computer while having enough
adventures to fuel the process. Neat stuff, my little electronic
cottage on wheels... I fine-tuned it endlessly and wrote rhapsodic
articles about how things would never be the same.
Then I concocted a theory that the real key to beating the trade-off
was online society—made possible by the fact that “place” is no longer
a purely physical notion. This is a major change in the life of Man,
for suddenly one’s address is no more an issue than one’s birthday or
alma mater: interesting, surely, but not in the critical path to a
relationship. As the months on the road wore on, my home became
Dataspace, never more than a phone call away. I lived online and wrote
more rhapsodic articles about how things would never be the same.
But it takes more than technology to solve the problem, as sweetly
alluring as she may be. Adding new tools to our armamentarium of
information-handling devices does not in itself erase the habitual
lifelong traps that limit our options and make us drop anchor,
intellectually speaking, long before we learn to sail. It takes
something else to change the rules of the game and create new freedoms.
It takes a genuine passion—for life, change, growth, and experience. It
takes pulse-quickening excitement at everything from a new
switched-capacitor filter chip to seeing what’s over the next hill,
from understanding the life cycle of that little flagellated protozoan
bastard named Giardia Lamblia to questing after the transcendence of
the well-turned phrase. Passion. A rebirth of wonder.
And from this, surprisingly enough, comes the ability to avoid the
trade-off entirely: if you’re not enslaved to a single specialty, you
can move freely and conjure a home anywhere at all. You don’t need to
be a writer or information professional—just curious and ALIVE. That
sounds like a pretty good definition of having both freedom and
security at once.
Intellectual Goldmines
So that’s it. Roll all those motives together and you’ll see why I’m
doing this. I get asked that a lot, as you can imagine—the question is
almost as common as “what are the solar panels for?” They stand there
beside the road, Americans of all descriptions, studying my bicycle as
if somewhere in the tangle of eccentric machinery lies the answer.
Their curiosity is obsessive, for they see something of
themselves—something they feel deep inside and struggle to recognize.
Freedom, growth, learning, adventure, hope, joie de vivre...
But many miss the point, and ask: What are you selling? Do you have a
sponsor? Is this that bicycle race across America? Are you trying to
set a record? You testing this here new kinda rig? Is this something
medical? What are you trying to prove? Where are you going? Are you
crazy?
It’s hard to explain on the street, this need to wander endlessly with
body, mind, and heart. Sometimes I fumble with the real explanation;
sometimes I just smile and say, “Well, I got tired of the 3-bedroom
ranch in suburbia and this is the next logical step.” That’s true, but
a bit abstract.
No, this is really about mines—intellectual goldmines.
Every professional specialty, every sophisticated technology, every
instance of superhuman dedication represents yet another mine shaft dug
deep into a great mountain of potential human knowledge, a mountain
riddled with glittering mineral veins and awesome riches. Into the
mines go the specialists, and from their pick-clinking wizardry emerges
goodies of all descriptions: microprocessors, designer genes,
carbon-fiber-reinforced polymers, geosynchronous communication
satellites, flute sonatas, macro zoom lenses, predicate calculus,
sheer-when-wet bikini fabric, Tae Kwan Do, aerodynamic derailleurs,
bold new life insurance plans, supermarket psychology, science fiction,
and Post-it notes. There’s a lot of magic in that mountain, probably an
infinite amount, and it is the skill and persistence of the knowledge
miners that makes it available to the rest of us.
I know. I used to be one. I spent years conjuring custom
microprocessor-based control systems and writing the software to make
them dance. It was... rewarding.
But something was always missing. One by one, I watched my passions
die: every hobby became a business, every plaything a professional
tool. Computers, lasers, precision measurement equipment, logic design,
photography, communications gear—each one lost the glitter of “new toy”
and took on that worn, dusty look of “business equipment.” Jaded,
dulled, I turned to freelance writing... a license to be a generalist,
the perfect profession for one versed in the art of BS.
But it wasn’t enough. I still worked in a mine—I was just free to visit
others occasionally, sometimes taking the miners out to lunch and
quizzing them about their work. It was much more interesting than
staying in the same mine all the time, but still, I was chained to a
desk.
I just happened to own it.
So on a hunch, I dumped the desk and moved to a bicycle. The theory was
simple enough: since this mine of mine yields words, and words have no
mass, I should be able to carry it wherever I go, right? And if I
travel far enough, slowly enough, I’ll not only provide myself with an
endless source of literary stimulation, but also have a helluva good
time in the process. Right? Right. I could visit every damn mine in the
country, if I wanted to—never again trapped in a single one, growing
endlessly without having to drop anchor and specialize.
And my timing was perfect. A few years ago, this crazy idea would have
required far more discipline and dedication than I could have mustered.
Maintaining a mobile writing business before the era of portable
computers and data communication networks would have involved heavy
machines, tape transcription, mail drops, a hundred pounds of paper,
huge phone bills, and no small measure of frustration. But now... well,
this adventure IS called Computing
Across America. Computers aren’t the point of the trip by any
means, but they are at least as important as my bicycle wheels.
Yes, without this magic electronic window into the lives of friends,
readers, publishers, and business associates, my high-tech adventure
never would have made it past the trauma of departure. My office is
electronic; my neighborhood exists in Dataspace... and if I work in any
mine at all it is my private one of sweat and ecstasy, adventure and
fantasy, new friends and discoveries galore. There’s the freedom and
security. Is there a better way to spend a life?
And so it all fits. I’m not a bum; I’m a nomadic entrepreneur. And now
that you know where I’m coming from, neighbor, the stories that follow
will make a lot more sense.