Chapter 4: Northwest Passage
© 1986 by Steven K. Roberts
Nomadic Research Labs
Bainbridge Island, Washington
September 11, 1986
Hello from Puget Sound! For a place so close to Metropolis, this wooded
island is about as calm as can be imagined: the ferry to Seattle may
just as well be transoceanic. People around here amble; they move
slowly and stop to watch the sunset. A New Age coffee shop called
Pegasus offers classical music and interesting reading materials to go
with its fresh Costa Rican. The Streamliner Diner conjures robust spicy
omelets of fresh veggies, and days in the fern-carpeted forest become
nights, and then days again. Mañana
outside the Caribbean? Haven’t been this relaxed since Key West.
The setting is appropriate. This is the month of final preparations
(always more final preparations, eh?), a time of wiring and debugging,
programming and tweaking. We came to the island in our well-traveled
van, ready to move once and for all to the bikes and head south
properly—under our own power.
Much has happened in the weeks since my Granby, Colorado update. We
glided west, too smoothly, joining the throng of lumbering campers
fouling the beauty of Yellowstone and motoring on—over mountains,
deserts, farmlands, wastelands. The scenery passed as video, stripped
of smell and texture by our metal cocoon. By the time we rolled into
Vancouver, I was so sick of the van I was ready to dump it in the ocean.
We spent a week in that town—doing Expo to the point of exhaustion. The
motive, of course, was not to gawk; this is not one of those dutiful
pilgrimages of what Edward Abbey calls industrial tourism. It was a
chance to display the Winnebiko
in the energetic company of over 150 other bizarre vehicles... and,
more importantly, their creators.
There are a lot of strange ways to put together wheels, pedals, and a
seat. High-speed humans zipped around town all week, grinning back at
the gaggle of confused touroids stopped in their tracks by the
weirdness. Dave on his sprightly Vacuum;
the Swiss team in their flawless Trivia;
the tattooed punk smoking cigars inside a full fairing; the Humboldt
County blondes laughing in their kinetic sculpture dubbed the Bionic Taco. All shared the delight
of invention and speed—the week was a celebration of creativity. This
is the essence of competition: not muscle against muscle inside the
conceptual straitjacket of traditional bicycle racing, but brain
against brain, concept against concept, human against human. Cortex and
quadriceps alike were involved here, and the atmosphere was electric.
Of course, Expo went on in the background, a mass of roiling humanity,
bright color, street music, pavilions ranging from the deeply
philosophical to the blatantly commercial, and overpriced food. Curious
behavior emerges in a place like this: in our “scoring” culture,
numbers are more in demand than experience. Tourists gripped their
“passports,” queuing impatiently to have them stamped at every
attraction, seemingly more interested in the trophy than the game
itself (sometimes sneaking in the back door of a pavilion just for the
stamp, or, eventually, buying fully-populated ones in the gift shop).
Public address systems directed the masses, food smells tickled the
nose, groups of Japanese tourists stopped randomly to photograph each
other, and the scream-punctuated whooshes of rides were ever-present in
this state-fair-turned-city. But here and there were pockets of
brilliance—the roller-skating khaen-player who travels the world to
learn native instruments, the Spirit Lodge of GM, the videography
behind Discover BC, the nonverbal message in the movie Rainbow War, the occasional spark
in an eye in the crowd. Always from the mundane emerges magic, if
you’re willing to wait long enough.
Photo in Equinox
magazine, taken during our week at Expo 86
We left with relief, fleeing to the unselfconsciously picturesque town
of Victoria for a few days, wondering soon if the journey would become
a succession of painful good-byes. New friends already, and we don’t
even live on the bikes yet... but it won’t be long.
A strange phenomenon is the border: any border, from county to country.
If you view the world from an incoming starship, the imaginary lines
separating kingdoms are of no interest—there’s one species down there,
citizens of one planet. It was with this attitude that I approached US
Customs, mildly annoyed at the delay and thinking it no more meaningful
than waiting for a driver’s license renewal. But the scowling agent
squinted past me into the van’s cluttered cargo bay.
“What the hell’s that?”
“Oh, just a bicycle.”
“What’s all that junk on it?”
“The usual. Computers and so on.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“I built it in Ohio—had it in Canada for Expo.”
“I need to see some registration.”
“You don’t register bicycles.”
“Around here you do.”
“Look, I just took it to Exp--”
“How would you like to have that thing impounded until you can come up
with some proof that it came from the US? Would you like that?”
The agent, in his grim way, was obviously enjoying this. Before I could
answer, he told me to pull around to the office. Within minutes, the
chief came out, nodding seriously at the explanation given by my
tormentor.
“I built this in Ohio,” I told the guy.
“Yeah, yeah. Let’s see the papers.”
“It’s a bicycle,” I told him, feeling that quaver in my gut that comes
from total powerlessness in the face of ignorance. I handed him a flyer
for the Computing Across America
book.
“Look,” he said, jabbing a tobacco-stained finger into my electronics
package. “Half that junk in there comes from Korea. You can’t import
electronic equipment without paying duty—with no documentation, we lock
it up. Just like that. If you really took it to Canada, you would have
declared it at the border.”
This was news to me. The Canadian agent had simply smiled, asked how
long I’d be in Canada and if I was carrying fresh produce, then waved
me on.
Finally, of course, we managed to convince him—with armloads of photos
and media coverage—that we weren’t smuggling high-tech contraband over
the border. But my already negative opinion of governments dropped
another notch, and the sudden tackiness of Port Angeles did little to
dispel the shadows. Why didn’t we just stay in Victoria, a garden city
of bakeries, bicycles and beaches?
But things always improve. Through that succession of chance encounters
that inevitably results from wandering around in public on
computerized, solarized, gizmologized recumbents, we ended up living in
the Bainbridge Island woods atop a fully equipped machine shop. Ya just
never know. The company is called Octo, and manufactures the Browning
automatic bicycle transmission that allows riders to shift under full
power. Heh. We’re engaged already in a bit of impromptu technology
transfer, a barter of intellect, an arrangement that makes everybody
happy. And, just like back in Ohio, I’m surrounded by a sea of parts
and tools and cables and papers and databooks and...
Somewhere, very close now, is the road. The “day rides” around the
island tease me—quick winks from the Other Woman, temptations of the
spirit. I’m slipping into her arms, this time in a menage a trois:
Maggie has recovered fully from surgery and yearns, as I do, for a life
of total uncertainty—a life whose constancy lies in change.
Mutual tire itch, it seems, is even less curable than my old solo
variety. Why stop when every new road is a beginning and home is right
there by your side?