Chapter 8: The First 100 Miles
© 1986 by Steven K. Roberts
Nomadic Research Labs
Port Townsend, Washington (100 Miles)
October 15, 1986
It has begun at last.
The bike sits quietly blinking beside the half-finished wing of a
homebuilt aircraft. Batman the Manx sits blinking in the doorway, I’m
swilling Millstone coffee from my stainless steel traveling mug, and
Maggie’s out there in our hosts’ kitchen, conjuring a sorbet to go with
dinner. Those are the headlines. We are on the road.
It began as it always does: poignant farewells, final tweakings, long
discussions over maps. The ferry to Seattle seemed different this time;
we hugged on the stern as Bainbridge Island faded into the
fog—Bainbridge, our home for the last month, our home perhaps someday
again. A quiet kiss, breath clouds white in the gray mist, bikes the
focus of commuter curiosity. Yes, I can feel it... we’re finally on the
road.
First stop: Bothell. Seattle passed smoothly, the Burke Gilman Trail
simplifying what would otherwise have been a 33-mile ordeal of city
riding. Whispering past joggers, catching glimpses of urgent racers,
swerving to miss the occasional stray toddler, we made our way through
the colors of early fall to Traveling Software. This was to be our
official send-off, an event that would draw not only five TV crews but
GEnie’s own Steve Haracznak—director of Public Relations. When you
become a living caricature of technology’s potential, apparently, the
industry takes notice.
Dinner. Exuberant tale-swapping. Big plans. Debugging till 2. Fitful
sleep on the floor; awakening bleary to the humming of corporate
America. “There’s somebody sleeping in there,” came whispers from the
hall; then we emerged, blinking in the fluorescents, stumbling to the
coffeepot and greeting the first reporter and hour and a half early. “I
am the amazing Winnebiko,” said the bike, “do you have
any questions before we head south?”
Four hours of media. CNN’s Roger Gadley arrived and joined the
local crews standing about with cameras perched like electronic parrots
on their shoulders. Visitors included a GEnie network subscriber who
has been following these columns and had to see if this bike was for
real. Traveling Software’s Mark Eppley stood with Steve and looked on
with a sort of subdued glee—for the message that would go out over the
airwaves was that of radical new freedoms that could be gained through
portable computers and telecommunications. I rode through the Computing Across America banner to
scattered cheers, did the show and tell countless times, and then was
off—this time for real—northbound with Maggie astern and the unknown
ahead.
Northbound. In October. In Washington. Logical, eh? Actually, this is a
sort of shakedown, a minor loop around the Puget Sound area that will
give us one last brief chance to fix things in the Bainbridge Island
shop before scurrying south with winter’s blast at our backs. But we’re
moving, and that’s what matters; cold wet weather can only deepen our
appreciation of what lies ahead.
We slept in Everett that night, wrestling the bikes past leg-climbing
squirrels and up right-angle steps into the apartment of a friend from
Traveling Software. Already the differences: the human kaleidoscope
twisting with our wheels and revealing lifestyles unimaginable with
every layover. I remember now, and Maggie’s seeing it too: the
journey’s stability lies in variety, and change is the very essence of
what at first seems chaotic. Activate all receptors; set information
bandwidth to maximum. LIFE has resumed.
Cold fog, long hill, down past the gravel pit, flashers ablaze, hands
burning numb, teeth clenched in that violent grinning grimace of
exuberant pain. Living! Mukilteo ferry purring into the soup, the
twice-crashed Cathlamet
bearing its cargo of us and coffee holding gloved hands on the voyage
to Whidbey Island. The day crisp and beautiful, parking panting bodies
in spicy autumn leaves to crunch Washington apples, Maggie learning to
scream her way up the rougher grades to mask the pain. Voices tiny in
each other’s ears through 2-meter radio, the Osprey nest, the
encounters—everywhere the encounters. Normal foods made robust through
hunger, the finest seasoning of all. Hazy scenery passing like
wide-bandwidth video, the pumping of polypro-clad legs driving the
sweet whisper of chain and tire. And through it all the inaudible hum
of processors, snagging thoughts like passing butterflies in their
delicate electronic web as my fingers tickle the handlebars. Ah. It’s
really happening.
It was on yet another ferry that we met Bob: en route to Port Townsend,
preparing to seek the hostel at Fort Worden. “I just dropped my son off
at the airport in Vancouver,” he said, “he’s off to go trekking in
Nepal.” A moment’s hesitation, then a friendly grin. “His room’s empty,
if you’d like a place to spend the night... say, that console looks
like it belongs in an airplane...”
Over a day later we’re still here, comfortable with our new friends as
we engage in the basic barter of this lifestyle: snippets of our lives
for a taste of theirs. We all emerge richer, each feeling that he or
she has gained the most. This is human commerce at its finest, and
everybody profits except the IRS.
By morning, we’ll be southbound (after a flight over the Olympic
Mountains in Bob’s Grumman). No further north this year, no more
senseless flirtation with the grim misery of those coastal rains
everybody warns us about. Somewhere out there is a warm winter sun,
only a couple hundred thousand pedal cranks away...
The familiar is fading. The nomadic life—seeming as much my essence as
the sweat that sustains it—has begun. I smell it.
