Chapter 37: Technology Update
© 1987 by Steven K. Roberts
Nomadic Research Labs
Richmond, Virginia (4,241 miles)
October 28, 1987
At last we have fled the madness of metropolitan DC. Looking back, it
seems a marathon—a sort of delirium like those tangled memories of
fevers past. For a month we cruised the confusion, working, doing the
media dance, visiting new friends and old... torn between the myriad
temptations of megalopolis and the sweet silence of the countryside. We
visited GEnie, toured the Solarex plant, and added a new ham radio
station; we hunkered over keyboards various and pounded away on writing
projects until the sense of a season passing became a sort of agony...
It’s getting cold and wet out there!
And so, last week, we headed south. Again on a bike path (this time the
Mount Vernon trail), we lazily cruised along in blissful ignorance of
DC traffic. The petroleum-gobbling phalanx was but a dull roar to our
right, no more challenging than the jets overhead, the languid Potomac
to our left, or the dank marsh under the wooden bridges that clattered
occasionally beneath our overloaded wheels. Insulated thus from
reality, we drifted south until—abruptly—the shoulderless nightmare of
rush hour Highway 1 reminded us of all we’ve been missing during our
long DC layover.
6:00, encroaching dusk. Our host was yet 20 miles south in Dumfries,
waiting dinner, watching down the lane for the errant cycling strangers
who had called from the blue to announce their arrival. Frenzied
commuters and massive trucks blasted by, irritated by our presence,
kicking up a heavy wake of hydrocarbon haze to sting our eyes and blur
our vision. The land was folded like a massive washboard, 3 mph up, 25
down, over and over, over and over in the cold darkness, hot sweat
soaking fabric only to chill our flesh with each downhill run. Through
it all we pedaled with a sort of panic, wide eyes searching
headlight-dazzled mirrors, muscles taut, teeth clenched... pushing our
exhausted bodies far too hard in the subconscious but entirely rational
need to get this hell over with as soon as possible.
We survived, barely, and staggered shivering into a spacious house of
wealthy attorneys for a grilled dinner and a fitful sleep of restless
dreams. Then morning, on the road again, just like in the old days—DC a
whole map-fold away and already sort of... unreal.
The next night, we found ourselves in Fredericksburg—in the home of Rus
Phillips, a bright high-school student and GEnie subscriber who
responded, many months ago, to these random tales. “You know he’s only
17,” his mom warned me on the phone, a bit hesitant, not quite sure
what to make of her son’s electronic invitation to a couple of sweaty
strangers out there on the highway.
“That’s the beauty of the network,” I told her, standing sore-kneed in
the phone booth. “People can make brain-to-brain contact without being
distracted by each others’ physical attributes. Your son’s an
interesting guy.”
“That he is...” she said, and gave me directions to the house. In short
order we were there—meeting the young computer-wiz and his whole active
family, reminded intensely of the lifestyle sampler that makes this
journey what it is. In the lingering aromas of a crab ‘n chili dinner,
still chuckling at the antics of the twins and the flying squirrels out
back, we fell asleep, hard, out of shape from the month of DC
interviewing/writing/visiting/playing/etcetering.
And then there’s technology.
There have been quite a few high-tech treats in the last couple of
weeks—as well as a few of the usual battles with balky hardware (the
mere fact that something is exotic and expensive does not, alas, make
it useful). My disc brakes continue to hold the record for receiving
the most curses aimed at any piece of hardware on my bike, and the
little inclinometer looks pretty but never budges from the 0-degree
mark (the steel ball rusted within a month).
But the electronics systems are growing vigorously. I’m writing now
from Richmond, where our host is the architect of the local packet
multi-port BBS and mail-forwarding network—a fellow addict of high-tech
toys who has had me drooling over the latest gizmology all week.
Seeking the source of RF noise in the Winnebiko, we rolled a
1.5 gigahertz spectrum analyzer in from the back room and
signal-averaged the trash down to a few key birdies. When an NMOS ROM
in my bike mysteriously blew on Sunday night, we downloaded a new
version from Motorola and stuffed it immediately into CMOS. Video is
piped throughout the home; a Rolm computerized phone system keeps
everybody in communication. This is a glimpse of What Might Have Been Had I Not Been Restless—a
maddeningly inviting playground of ham radio, computers, tools, toys,
widgets, and entertainment systems... all paid for by his product, the
miniature barcode wand used by Federal Express. This has been a week of
technology transfer: I replaced the ghastly C&K buttons on my
handlebar keyboard with sleek units from the Microwand... and Jim is
now online.
His arrival on GEnie opens an exciting new communications path to me.
I’ve been using packet radio somewhat sparingly since my address keeps
changing (how do you define a “home BBS” when moving all the time?).
Yet packet seems a perfect technology for the bike—an ad hoc network,
unconstrained by the need for nodes and phone lines. I’ve been playing
with packet, of course, active on the network when in a town for more
than a few days but disappearing into the vapors of Dataspace when on
the road. Packet mail follows me around for weeks before catching up.
But now, there’s a gateway. Mail from the ham radio community reaches
me through KA8OVA@WA4ONG, the PBBS address here in Richmond. Jim’s
system notices the address, forwards it to a holding file, then signs
on to GEnie in the middle of the night to send it to WORDY—in the
process checking for mail from me that needs to cross the other way
into packetspace. The net effect <heh> is a cusp linking two
layers of Dataspace, a phenomenon which, as you know, has been all too
slow in coming. We need lots of them.
Ham radio has been much on my mind in other forms as well these last
few weeks. I finally got the HF station working—based on a little box
called the Ten-Tec Argonaut that shoves a couple of watts out the coax
connector on its back whenever I activate the electronic keyer. It’s
only gravity, only another 15 pounds or so...
It’s difficult to express the feeling of prowling the ham radio
spectrum to readers already familiar with networking. There you are,
out there at your computer, routinely swapping mail with people all
over the country and cognizant of the fact that global communication is
not all that exotic. Satellites float around, joining earth stations
and a host of large computers to form a stable substrate for reliable
datacomm. Networking is cheap—and only rarely is there even a glitch in
the dataflow.
But try to imagine a signal about as powerful as a miniature
Christmas-tree bulb, generated from captured sunlight and shoved into a
wire hanging in the trees. It makes a standing wave out there (through
some mysterious process), propagates rapidly into space, hits the
ionosphere and bounces back to earth a time or two, then causes a few
millionths of a volt to appear in a similar piece of wire... in
Germany. A stranger’s ears perk up; he touches a key to call my name;
then through a symmetrical process I hear distant beeps, dredged out of
the static by a box of stuff mined from the earth. I tell you, this is
magic... no matter what the engineers say!
It’s also a hell of a lot of fun. It was a thrill to sit outside at
midnight, breathing porchlit vapor in Arlington, Virginia, chatting
Morsewise with a guy named Greg in Armour, South Dakota. It was even
fun to beep back to Columbus—for there’s something deliciously
adventurous in cruising the spectrum for action, watching for soft
signals in the noise that are every bit as tempting, in their own way,
as those mysterious special smiles in the singles bars of yesteryear.
This cannot be compared to computer networking—or even to the digital
anarchy of packet radio (which sacrificed mystery for the sake of
reliability). Packet is a marriage of magic and efficiency... DXing is
a wild flirtation with a whole spectrum of unknowns, an endless quest
for someone a little bit farther out or a little bit hotter than your
last contact...
And as the sexual revolution dies in the stranglehold of AIDS hysteria,
the radio world explodes with new possibilities—for the sunspots are
coming back! Too bad most hams are male...
Before leaving northern Virginia, we made one last foray into
Maryland—to Rockville. GEnie hosted a press event in our honor, even
providing a police escort through the busier parts of town. I offered
the cop a full-time job following us around the country with his blue
lights a-flashing, for the sense of protection from traffic was an
unfamiliar delight. But he declined, expressing doubt that he could
make off with the car.
My existing impression of GEnie as a healthy company was reinforced by
the visit. Unlike the competition, this is not a stuffy corporate
culture (even if it IS a part of a big company). Security in the
building is tight, but behind all that people are friendly and playful,
happily taking the time to gather in the parking lot with balloons and
cameras to enjoy a morning of socializing. ESPN covered the event,
which aired on Nation’s Business Today on the morning of the 14th.
We also visited Solarex, where the bike’s rear photovoltaic module
mysteriously put out 770 mA for the first time ever (about 10% over my
previous record). “So that’s why you located in Rockville,” I observed.
“The sun does something special here.” Turned out there was more than
one sun that day—a ring of bright clouds was acting as a giant lens.
Duly inspired, we pedaled up to Frederick to see the “breeder,” an
impressive facility with one of the world’s largest PV arrays—a place
that turns incoming rock into wondrous devices for making power out of
thin air. Why this still hasn’t caught on with the general public, I
don’t know... but it produces free energy with no overhead or safety
problems. We upgraded to the latest models and pedaled toward the sun.
Visiting Solarex
And so I’m writing this on our last night in Richmond. It has been a
week of work: of online searching and writing for clients, writing
proposals, doing bike surgery, building a new friendship, and catching
up with the endless flow of information. How people keep up, I’ll never
know. One new project: online in the CAA area about now is a new series
of articles—a biweekly column I’m writing for Computer Currents
about the technology that makes this adventure work. If you’re
interested in the infrastructure of the Traveling Circuits, check it
out.
South, now—hopefully to land somewhere warm before winter! Cheers from the road...
