Chapter 22: Sonomarin Snapshots
© 1987 by Steven K. Roberts
Nomadic Research Labs
Sausalito, California (1,565 miles)
February 5, 1987
Suddenly there begins another mad macrophase. The changes struck with
our last wild descent, an abrupt transition at the dusky end of an
exhausting 50-mile day. BMW’s and solar-heated redwood hot tubs. Vanity
plates and chocolatiers. Evidence everywhere of treats turned de
rigueur, of expensive toys, of the Good Life. We’re in (where
else?)
Marin County.
As I write in this wooded suburban oasis, a dog named Stony goes mad
with frustration (her tennis ball is imprisoned beneath my
Birkenstocks). Two little girls, flawless, frolic about their two-story
playhouse, intent on adult-simulation. Birds chirp in gentle cacophony,
the coffee smells exotic, and a distant murmur from Sir Francis Drake
is the only clue that I’m not really far out in some idealized image of
“country.” We’ve been living a sweet laziness for the last week: plenty
of space, good food, redwood sauna, separate phone line, bright kids,
music, foamy fragrant margaritas, and yet another new circle of
friends.
My foot healed, more or less, in Healdsburg. I still gimp about on my
nifty collapsible aluminum cane, but I can ride OK—and it took three
pedaling days to make it to the beginning of our Bay Area adventure.
First: a flat, easy trek to
Santa Rosa. I visited Lemo,
one of my equipment sponsors (they make ultra-high-quality
water-resistant connectors), and now have a 12-pin medical-grade
interconnect on my brain interface unit. While there, we did the
obligatory interviews, yielding a nice full-color story in the
Press-Democrat and a mediocre
TV spot. But the article, in this
New York Times-owned paper,
triggered a succession of radio
mini-features across the country—significantly simplifying my recent
quest for more sponsors. (This is such a strange business.) Life’s
events range from unexpected strokes to unexpected insults: the Wells
Fargo Bank in Santa Rosa insisted on charging $5 to cash a $10 check
drawn on one of their local branches, but there’s no charge for me to
mail it to Ohio and have it processed back across the country.
Mystifies me...
Photo from Santa Rosa Press-Democrat
Second: a mildly hilly,
picturesque cruise to Sebastopol, on a day so beautiful that we almost
pressed on past our new host and into the rural hills. But we stopped,
yielding a delightful afternoon of bike work and bike talk at the world
headquarters of Ibis Cycles. Quality stuff here: these folks build
TIG-welded Chrome-Moly mountain and “trials” bikes, having discovered
that the temperatures reached through traditional brazing lead to
eventual frame failures in the brutal off-road environment that
attracts the fat-tire set. We hung around for a day, watching their new
house get built, risking my ankle trying to balance a trials bike, and
making the obligatory pizza run.
Third: a big one. 50 miles of
up and down—up to the sky and down to Petaluma, then back up, past
countless Arabian ranches, down past the reservoir, past Nicasio, and
finally up over one last hill to the sudden profusion of rush hour
imports and the unmistakable signs of City instead of Town. Through it
all, climb after climb, the ankle grumbled and complained, never quite
disabling but always very much there. Robbed of my natural rhythm and
doing most of the work with my right leg, I tired easily—arriving
almost delirious at the home of our Kentfield host.
San Francisco, the City, the traffic, the frenzy of the next phase...
all are very close. No hurry. This home, complete with 6-and 9-year-old
girls, has been a place to gather strength, play telephone tag, play
tickle-monster, and line up business meetings. We babysat, dogsat, and
sat around. We have planned grand video productions and rapped into the
night. We have thrown the tennis ball for Stony, gotten our host onto
Genie, and taken lazy afternoon saunas. And, most recently, we rode
over to the girls’ school and presented ourselves as the ultimate
show-n-tell to about 300 kids, grades K-5.
They filed in orderly and agape, floor-sitting in rows on the other
side of a masking tape boundary. I spoke of travel and freedom, letting
the bike’s synthesizer speak for itself. “I tried growing up,” I
concluded, “but it wasn’t any fun at all. Why not enjoy your whole
life? Are there any questions?”
A hundred hands shot up. I chose randomly.
“Name some of the people you’ve met,” said one little girl. Um... Jim,
Laura, Jackie, Jerry, Dave, Duane, Ken, Michael, and Dave. And Rosie.
And another Dave. And...
“Where do you keep your toothbrush? How many clothes do you have?
Where’s your money?”
“How do you two get along?” Fine, we met on Valentine’s Day. Giggles.
“What if you come to a river and there isn’t any bridge? What happens
if it falls in the river?”
“How many hours does it take to go across the United States?”
“Where did you get all the stuff to make that? Does it play video
games? Is your stereo a Sony?”
“Do you ever not know what state you’re in?”
And this poignant one, from a third-grader whose parents are divorcing:
“How long would it take a dad and a boy to build one of those together?”
Every time I moved the bike—or opened the console to display the
circuitry—the room erupted in a chorus of ooooohhhh!s One young fellow,
clearly in a state of rapture, stretched across the masking tape line
and gazed at the expanse of chips and cabling. Eyes wide, he cried,
“Wow, it looks like... the whole world!”
When it was over and most were on their way back to a more traditional
education, someone had an idea. “Um, can I have your autograph?” asked
the small voice from somewhere below a proffered scrap of paper and a
chewed #2. “Sure,” I said expansively, not realizing what I was getting
into. Within minutes the room was breezy with the flutter of old
library catalog cards, notebook pages, and paper scraps—all waving
urgently in my face in a total abandonment of the order that had
prevailed a moment before. I haven’t signed my name so much since
buying that house in suburbia, way back in those dark years...
Lifestyle sampler. We clambered about Mount Tamalpais with 6-year-old
Shannon, holding her hands, collecting manzanita berries and bits of
serpentine, feeling very much like parents. That night, we tucked her
and Corey in, telling them stories until eyelids grew heavy. Life has
become a multidimensional catalog of realities, a wish book of cultural
options.
Down the road—last stop before the City. Sausalito tonight: in a posh
townhouse with two thirtyish pretty single women working in big-city
radio ad sales. Fine furniture, talk of men and occult and stock
market, cozy hot tub, Duraflame logs making decorative flames while
electric panels in the cathedral ceiling chew $250/month. Good art,
good conversation, the kind of space that bespeaks comfort and success.
The magazines, neatly stacked: Money,
Business Week, Travel & Leisure, Vogue, Metropolitan Home, Bon Appetit. The books: eclectic
best sellers, economic self-improvement, coffee-table art collections.
This is the target culture of media-fed America—the spacious decor of
the American Dream, baby-boomer style. Very nice.
Tomorrow the City, fast trip, straight shot to Silicon Valley. A
layover begins—the bike needs waterproof handlebar keys, installation
of the new 2-meter transceiver (Yaesu, joy of man’s desiring...),
packet system debugging, final helmet wiring, audio switching, a new
speech board, console legs, hydraulic brakes, air horns, a new tent,
electronic compass software, map case velcro, more memory for the
Motorola supervisory processor, a CD player, touch-tone decoder, a
cellular phone, and elimination of that irritating little buzzing noise
that’s been nagging at me since somewhere back up the road in
Washington.
That oughta keep me busy for a while.