Technobikie

During our travels around the US in 1988, we passed through Charlotte… where we not only did a bit of media but also launched a consulting relationship with Hand Held Products. This is the newsletter of the local bicycle club…

Tarheel Cyclists Crank Mail
Charlotte, North Carolina 
May, 1988

“High Tech Nomad,” Steven Roberts, pedaled into Charlotte this past week, astride his 275 pound recumbent bicycle. Winnebiko II, is truly an electronic cottage on wheels and Steve’s adventure has covered more than 15,000 miles to date.

Corporate headquarters for Steve is a self-designed recumbent bicycle equipped with: 5 computers, 54 gears, 2 wheels, 300 feet of zippers, an electronic compass, 2 solar panels, an 80-2 meter ham radio station, 108 square feet of tent space, a megabyte+ of memory, 3 modems, 30 circuit boards, 148 spokes, telephone access, a pressurized water supply, a handlebar keyboard for direct binary input, and a complete corporate staff. And best of all has to be the view from the corporate board room!

According to Steve the actual task of beginning the journey was easy to define: “All I had to do was dismantle an active lifestyle, create a high tech bicycle, install my home and office on the stern and then pedal the whole affair around the United States while continuing to write for a living.” As far as WHY? A friend’s mother summed it all up without even realizing it… “but honey… there are things out there we don’t even know about!” RIGHT ON!

Though living on a bicycle can be fraught with danger, disappointment, derision, defeat and possibly even death. None of these things could be worse than the “psychic tapeworm of complacency” that is endemic in suburban life. Steve feels it is possible to have growth without risk, but it is the slow, vegetable kind, rarely yielding those magical breakthroughs that make you light up with understanding. It doesn’t take anything like an epic bicycle odyssey to do this, of course, only the courage to risk the unknown. Because the greatest risk of all is taking no risk. “The death worse than fate.”

Steve has written four books including his latest Computing Across America. He publishes The Journal of High Treknowledgy with an annual subscription fee of $13.00. For more information or copies of his books / journals he can be reached through the GEnie Network or at: Computing Across America Publication Center, (obsolete address redacted).