
---------------------- 
NOTES FROM THE BIKELAB 
Issue #12 -- 9/20/91
by Steven K. Roberts
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Copyright (C) 1991 by Steven K. Roberts.  All Rights Reserved.
(Intact reposting and free distribution is OK with permission; 
personal forwarding is OK without.)


IN THIS ISSUE:
	The Rhythms of the Road

 
 NOTE:  It's been a long time since my last update... I haven't published  a
word since leaving Silicon Valley in July for this new journey.  This  tangled
retrospective is an attempt to catch up and report on the  highlights.
 
 
      1.  The view from Menomenee, Michigan (9/8/91)
 
 The rhythm of the road is once again the backdrop of my life.  After  three
years of building and planning -- a time characterized by simple  measured
tempos of rising urgency -- the roadsound is now complex and  impassioned: 
sensual undercurrents laced with technoid syncopation and  sizzling cadenzas of
childlike play.  It's a music without idiom,  evolving from moment to moment as
whim and chance dictate -- one day  somber, the next frenetic.  It's wild and
free, the ultimate melody,  primal yet civilized... and I can't get it out of
my head. 
 
 Nor do I want to.  It will change form again, of course, but being 
essentially formless that's hardly a problem.  (Noticing that I gravitate 
always to water, largely for the lack of traffic and hills, I'm having  mad
thoughts of human-powered watercraft...).  But today it's the Road  Host Motel
in Menomenee, just into the Upper Peninsula of Michigan after  weeks in
Wisconsin, and it's long past time for an online update. 
 
 Life aboard BEHEMOTH is filled with change and adventure on so many  different
scales that it almost defies characterization.  On one level,  there's the
endless tedium of packing and unpacking entirely too much  stuff (580 pounds
total).  There are hills, slow sweaty ordeals that can  turn into sudden
disasters -- like in Paddock Lake when I lost traction  halfway up a gravel
grade, locked my brakes and put my feet down to  ponder the problem, and had
the Disk Brake from Hell suddenly unscrew and  send me rolling out of control
downhill until the trailer jacknifed and  dropped the whole rig onto my leg.  I
remained trapped in mild agony  until a passing motorcyclist stopped,
quizzically, to rescue me. 
 
 Yes, it can be a pain.  Two days ago outside Oconto, my friend Susan and I 
stopped for a lakeside walk and the trailer hitch broke off (.080 wall  4130
CrMo 1-inch tubing broke clear through... we're talking STRESS).  But with pain
comes pleasure:  the failure occurred in an undocumented  county park with
perfect campsites... and we frolicked the day away while  using ham radio to
coordinate the next morning's rescue by Amore's towing  service and Dan the
welder.  Warm, clear night, stars alive above the  whisper of Green Bay...
campfire warm and crackling, bodies energetic and  healthy from hundreds of
pedaling miles, Kahlua and soy milk warming  within, a lunch of fresh perch
sizzled in garlic and butter... Frame  fracture?  Equipment failure?  So what? 
 
 That's much of the appeal, you know.  When it doesn't matter where you  are,
delays mean nothing and roadside repairs are just another twist in  the
adventure.  Eventually, these wheels will turn south to track the  fall colors,
but the general attitude right now is one of ambling hand-  in-hand down a
country lane. 
 
 Speaking of country lanes, Wisconsin has to take the prize for excellent 
roads.  There is a whole network of "letter roads" here, with names like  Y and
BB, and for the most part they are smooth and free of traffic.  Aided by the
DeLorme Atlas of the state, we've been meandering up along  Lake Michigan with
hardly any moments of panic except in towns big enough  to be painted in orange
on the map (indicating places where people are  stressed and in a hurry). 
 
 This all calls to mind another musical metaphor that struck me on the  first
trip... Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition." If you're  familiar with
this, you know what I mean; if not, check it out.  A  "promenade" theme recurs
throughout the work, interspersed with musical  sketches suggestive of browsing
an art museum.  Life on the road is like  that... the undercurrent of pedaling
merely the thread that binds a  diverse succession of experiences ranging from
hot romance to high  science. 
 
 All of which makes a retrospective of a few hundred miles almost  impossible. 
I did this, then that.  Susan read about me in the late  lamented DISCOVER
magazine, joined me, and we did this for a while.  Now  we're doing that, and
soon she'll leave and I'll do something else.  Throughout, BEHEMOTH lumbers
along, catapulting me in its recumbersome  way from one mad interlude to the
next.  The experiences seem framed by  place and time, linked only by wheels
and chance. 
 
 There are images, though.  I recall an afternoon on John Sawhill's farm in 
Winterset, Iowa... after a broken hub on the first night out aborted my 
participation in RAGBRAI (the driving event that launched me from Silicon 
Valley on deadline).  John, an active ham (WA0O) and repeater owner, had 
hosted a party for all the RAGBRAI radio-folk, and when they moved on,  Maggie
and I stayed for a week to repair the systems and get to know the  hogs and
cats, dogs and cattle. 
 
 I pitched camp by the old manure spreader out back and spent my days  fixing
things and making notes.  One day the bike was in the sun, the CD  stereo
system issuing fine clear Artie Shaw into the Iowa afternoon.  Hogs grunted,
cattle lowed, insects chirred and chittered.  Somewhere a  tractor growled over
a field beneath a brown puff of dust.  Time passed  slowly.  I fired up the
Qualcomm satellite terminal to send a message to  San Diego, and within the
little white dome a feedhorn swept azimuthally  and locked on on the GTE GSTAR
bird 25,000 miles away.  I sat surrounded  by 3 keyboards, the Private Eye
display buzzing in my helmet, a Poqet PC  displaying notes, the console Mac
running a comm package.  Big John  motored over on his Honda 4-wheeler, and
70-ish Jessie, his mom, strolled  out from the house followed by five head o'
cat.
 
 It was a contrast of technologies and cultures.  Jessie started dancing 
around the bike to the big-band jazz, the clarinet articulate and  playful. 
The satellite antenna quivered nervously, passing spread-  spectrum data.  John
sat bemused on the big 4 wheeler; ham antennas raked  the sky; storybook clouds
puffed along; cats rubbed against my legs; hogs  snuffled and snorted.  It was
one of those moments, a tableau forever  etched into my brain as a sort of
freeze-frame fantasy image. 
 
 There have been others.  More than ever before, BEHEMOTH is a techno- 
door-opener... I rolled onto the 6800-acre grounds of Fermlabs, home of  the
massive proton accelerator and playground of physicists from the  world over. 
Armed with one contact there and the bike, I ended up  spending two days...
giving an informal colloquium, doing a video, and  best of all... getting a
grand tour from an insider's perspective and  spending a couple of nights in
the Rutgers house with visiting  physicists.  What a playground:  gizmology on
a massive scale, with all  the best features of industry and academia.  Of
course, on my way out of  the labs, I was pulled over by an officious security
cop who demanded my  license, fished around in his head looking for a charge to
bust me on,  and finally said, "Uh, we prohibit vehicles of the racing
wheelchair  variety from all areas other than bike paths, due to their slow
speed.  I  have decided to allow you to proceed this time, however, due to the
fact  that you are headed offsite.  But if you intend to return, I suggest you 
register this vehicle with the security office to prevent further  difficulty."

 
 Yeah, right.
 
 At this writing, just through with Wisconsin and beginning the Upper 
Peninsula of Michigan, I can report with a sort of subdued glee that  despite
all sorts of frustrations and unfinished bike projects the  nomadic life is
working.  Details to follow... but it's time to play. 
 
 
 
      2. East Lansing, MI (9/18/91)
 
 
 Yikes.  It happened again.  I lugged a file around for ten days as it 
gradually cooled, becoming stale and dated.  OK, here's the latest, and  this
time I'm going to get this finished and uploaded before hitting the  road south
-- cold weather or no. 
 
 First, I must explain the overload.  We're all familiar with this -- I  don't
believe I've met more than a dozen productive people in my life who  are not
beset by constant stress over all the things they're not getting  done.  My
chosen lifestyle merely intensifies this, as it does  everything.  I just
transferred my internet mail spool file today from  the SPARCstation in my lab
at Sun to a friend's computer here at MSU in  East Lansing.  617K of unread
incoming mail!  This is more than a little  embarrassing, folks, and if some of
it is from you please accept my  apologies.  
 
 One work-in-progress item that should get the mail flowing more smoothly  is
the software for the Qualcomm satellite link.  A couple of resident  wizards at
the company have written some custom code to link the terminal  to the bike's
Mac, and another package will handle the gateway between  the satellite hub and
internet via a Sun workstation.  This is a major  design goal of the bike, and
all key links are tested and ready to  integrate:  more-or-less real-time mail,
24 hours a day, via the bird.  I'll keep you posted.  In the meantime, please
keep mail to me to an  absolute minimum -- it's just piling up pending the
occasional ftp to a  friendly system (I can dial up and rlogin, of course, but
let's see...  617K at 2400 baud, long distance...) 
 
 The bike mechanics are stressed by the weight, but are more or less  holding
together.  My next actual bikelab report will be a collection of  short product
reviews from the field, but in general the weak points seem  to be, not
surprisingly, the components made for normal bicycles.  I have  broken one
chain and one freewheel, cursed fluently at my brakes, and  blown one front
tire.  I'm gradually weeding out most of the weaknesses,  but gravity is still
gravity.  On steep hills, in the 7.9-inch granny  gear, I creak along at 1 mph
or so, depending on the landing gear and  component integrity to prevent a
recurrence of the Paddock Lake wreck.  Cruising speed on level ground seems to
average 9 mph, and downhill is an  adrenalin-pumping thrill as always,
intensified by horrific images of  what would happen in a high-speed wreck. 
 
 The function-to-weight ratio is still far short of potential -- my  departure
deadline served the necessary purpose of getting my ass out the  door, but left
many things undone.  Next on the agenda is a layover of  about 6 months (after
continuing down through Ohio to Louisville) to  bring the system to an
acceptable level of completion that will make  open-ended travel here and
abroad effective and satisfying.  Obviously,  the communication links and
mobile computing capability are of highest  priority.  Power systems, lights,
stereo, and ham radio are already  working very well.  (One note on the stereo,
by the way -- CDs can be  trashed by extreme temperature cycling.  The disks
carried most often in  the map case up on the sun-drenched console are
beginning to fail.) 
 
 Business:  It's as complex and crazy as ever.  As a career, this is both 
successful and haphazard -- cash flow a random mix of consulting,  freelancing,
publishing, trade-show gigs, speaking engagements, product  sales, and
happenstance.  There's always something afoot -- recent  filmings with NHK,
NBC's Earth Journal, and First Look leading to another  round of exposure
during the next month or so.  More than ever, this  whole gambit is a three-way
symbiosis between bike, sponsors, and  media... with my role an amusing blend
of work and play, love and sweat,  pedaling and hacking.
 
 Then there's the social side of all this, perhaps the infusion of energy  that
really holds it all together (would I do this for long in monastic  isolation? 
I doubt it...).   The thrill of beginnings, the exuberance of  romance, the
unexpected discoveries... these still drive me down the road  as they have
since 1983.  The down side of the human issue, however, is  the sheer
impossibility of explaining this thing on the street.  Back in  the old days, a
few comments could summarize the Winnebiko to anyone's  satisfaction.  Now, it
takes at least an hour to do BEHEMOTH justice, so  more and more I seem to be
giving people a polite brush-off unless I  really want to talk to them.  "Hey,
what IS all this?" someone asks.  "Just a computerized bicycle," I reply,
quickly fastening my helmet and  pushing off.  "The solar panels run everything
but the wheels.  Seeya!" 
 
 Maggie and I parted company, a condition which may or may not be  permanent
but which restored much-needed perspective to both of us  (despite the agony of
tearful parting hugs that rainy day in Illinois).  After 5 years of shared
adventure, our paths diverged in Joliet -- she  headed southeast to Marion,
Ohio on her bike (carrying the cat); I headed  north through the western
suburbs of Chicago, visiting companies and at  last finding the Fox River bike
trail that can perhaps be credited with  getting me out of that zoo alive.  I'd
forgotten the general hostility of  city traffic... the occasional passing bozo
(usually in an American-made  pickup/camper, most often red) who zooms by with
only inches to spare,  yelling out the window for me to "get the f*** off the
road!"  I never  seem to have time to explain that the real problem is with
lousy highway  designs that funnel cars and bikes into the same narrow concrete
trough,  bounded by square curbs and trimmed with broken glass and potholes. 
"I  would if I could!" I want to shout, but he wouldn't understand anyway. 
 
 On the trail, life improved.  Impromptu meetings yielded new friendships, 
evenings of dining and story-telling, hints of intrigue.  I camped in  Paddock
Lake, just into Wisconsin (after getting trapped under the  bicycle, a most
embarrassing situation), and mingled with the campground  culture.  "When you
first came in here, dude, I thought you were a  robot!" a little girl told me,
going on to lament:  "I wish I had a bike  like that so I'd be popular."  An
8-year-old boy named Steven hung around  all evening, reminding me so much of
myself at that age that I didn't  even mind.  The next morning, he rode out
with me on his BMX bike, riding  alongside and pushing me up the hills, quietly
asking questions, and  dreaming of a life beyond the limits.  He turned back
reluctantly, with a  long sad look, and the impression lasted with both of us. 
 
 Racine... a visit to Master Appliance, maker of the wondrous butane 
Ultratorch (the only decent soldering iron and heat shrinker for the  road...
and it's even self-igniting).  A swirl of media and walks on the  Lake Michigan
shore; hot tub evenings and smiles with a new friend who  found herself sparked
and amused by the life-changing implications of a  career founded on passion. 
On, reluctantly, to Milwaukee... a week in a  hotel for the human-powered
vehicle races and an NBC filming, the city  providing another lifesaving bike
route (76) and not at all as hostile  and dangerous as all this recent Jeffrey
Daumer publicity would have you  believe (though it is still a big city, not
the kind of place I like to  ride). 
 
 And then Newburg -- the Wellspring hostel.  This was unexpected, another  of
those delightful experiences that would merit its own article had I  been
keeping up with these reports as planned instead of trying to cram  two active
months into a hurried 21K retrospective.  Wellspring is a  hostel, but is
primarily an "intentional community," one of a growing  number of homes created
by people, not otherwise related, who want to  live as a productive family.  I
stayed a week, wiring antenna monitoring  and audio processing equipment in the
bike's ham shack (the J-Com Magic  Notch audio filter is AWESOME!), helping a
bit in the garden, reading and  writing by the pool, and meeting Susan.  This
was our rendezvous point:  she drove from Dayton to East Lansing, bussed to
Newburg, biked with me  to Escanaba (stopping in Manitowoc to boat and
jet-ski), then trucked  back to Lansing in order to drive to Cincinnati and
start walking to  school.  A tour-de-force of transportation alternatives...
punctuated by  the magic of like-spirited humans at play. 
 
 Off we went, eyeing each other curiously across a few feet of asphalt.  Susan
is 20, a lively young Welsh-Italian woman in that carefree stage of  life
characterized by intellectual alacrity, insatiable curiosity, career 
uncertainty, general playfulness, and vast untapped resources of untamed 
youthful passion.  We had never met before... but something in the  Discover
article (July 1991) touched her and induced her to track me  down.  The nervous
anticipation had been building for a couple of months,  though we carefully
avoided any expectation of romance.  So here we were  at last, pedaling into an
adventure of unknown proportions:  a beautiful  black-haired theatre student
and a seasoned high-tech nomad old enough to  be her father.  <pang> 
 
 The trip took on a dreamlike quality.  Electronics drifted into the 
background (except for the all-important CD stereo system, power  management
hardware, and the 2-meter console rig that yielded trailer  frame repair, the
jet-ski day, a house of our own in Escanaba, and the  usual plethora of new
contacts).  It was the timeless dance of the sexes,  spiced with dramatic age
difference and the constantly-changing texture  of the road:  we traveled north
along the lakeshore, camping, exploring,  learning.  The energy of beginnings
is always potent, but when  intensified by a rapidly nearing ending it is
almost nuclear... a fusion  reaction fed by fission chips roasted over an open
fire. 
 
 Dirty dancing in a Green Bay nightclub after conning our way past the ID 
checker.  Midnight frolicking on playground equipment, a couple of kids  drunk
with silliness.  Serious campfire discussion of nomadic business 
possibilities.  Chocolate, Rachmananov, and jalapeno peppers.  Bowling,  photos
in a stadium field, swimming, boating, and oh yes, cycling.  Slipping in
darkness through a forest, ferns to our waists,  circumnavigating a group of
houses just for the hell of it.  Teasing  people with our curious relationship:
 I toggled between daddy, brother,  lover, and technoid pack mule for a rich
heiress traveling the world. 
 
 Hey, don't frown disapprovingly; this is my job!  As the pendulum swings 
abruptly back to a brain-dead morality of neo-Christian mythos, erosion  of
personal freedoms, and well-founded but excessive AIDS paranoia, those  of us
who still celebrate LIFE must do what we can to remind people of  their true
nature... and if it takes the exuberant example of a playful  existence, well,
it's a lousy job but someone's gotta do it.  
 
 Ahem.  Don't get me started.  It's just that more and more, I see the  fear: 
a sort of wide-eyed envy tinged with horror, people cocooning in  safety and
frightened of the unknown.  There's a widening gulf between  them what do and
them what don't... couples frozen into de facto  marriages; more people
retreating into religion; chance encounters  friendly but guarded; an
increasing sense of being an alien on the road.  In a twisted sense, this
adventure is becoming a sacred responsibility --  anyone capable of spreading
wild notions of freedom is obligated to do  so... before it's too late and we
plunge into the kind of intellectual  dark ages that would delight the current
political administration. 
 
 Gee, this isn't just a bike trip, is it?  Maybe I'm promoting a cause  after
all, even though I always deny it. 
 
 Anyway, the three weeks passed too quickly, a time that in retrospect  seems
somewhere on the order of 3-4 months.  Funny thing about time  perception on
the road:  it's so rich with experiences great and small  that the past seems
vast and the present flies by... the precise opposite  of the way we see it
when sleepily turning 9-to-5 cranks.  Before I could  grapple with the shock,
she was gone -- back to Ohio and the beginning of  a school year. 
 
 Which brings me to the present.  I'm staying with Joe & Pam Tyner, owners  of
StarPath Systems, makers of a remarkable multitasking environment for  DOS
systems called VMOS.  Ahead lies the university at Ann Arbor and a  jaunt
through Ohio to visit everyone, and then on to Louisville to see my  parents
for the first time in almost 3 years.  And then... back to  Silicon Valley
again to bring the function-to-weight ratio up to a level  that will make this
even more fun, if that's possible.  As I said, I'm  having thoughts of
watercraft, but BEHEMOTH has to pay his dues first...  there are miles to go
yet...  
 
 Cheers from the road!!! 
 
 
         -- Steven K. Roberts
       


