Tech melt-down

I'm driving through Nevada and my car starts making weird noises. I've been worried about this happening the whole trip. I have no skill with anything mechanical. Whenever my computer malfunctions I start ranting against Apple and Silicon Valley. After a couple seconds of the put-puttering though I cannot deny that there is a problem. I take the next exit and pull into a white-washed gas station whose painted sign has been faded by the sun. My car is the only one in sight, as there are no vehicles at the periphery of this small town, and so I can park anywhere in the lot. I walk into the small convenience store attached to the gas station and am greeted by a sleepy middle-aged woman at the cash register. There is a teenage boy browsing through the beverages, but otherwise the store is empty.

I ask the man at the cash register where I can find a mechanic for my car. He tells me that there is a place I can go to half a mile into town, but that it is probably closed because it is Sunday. Up until now I have been positive about my prospects, but now I let my sulking begin. Of course I have to get stuck here, in a white-washed tiny town in Nevada, where no stores are open on Sunday. Of course my car had to malfunction here and not somewhere with pleasant view of the mountains, or in a city where I can go to a museum to pass the time. Technology always seems to fail you at the worst time. Is it even worth having when it presents us with more trouble than its worth?

"I don't know what to do then. I'm just don't want to drive my car with all the weird noises its making. Is the place really not open today?" I say. The man at the cash register doesn't look me in the eye, but glances to his right nervously. He can sense the wrath of a frustrated traveler.

"I can take a look at it, if you'd like," says the teenage boy at the back of the store.

We walk over to the car, and I let him open the hood as I've never opened it myself. I am repulsed even by the look of all the wires, the greasy look of it all. The cashier comes up from behind with a toolbox that was kept behind the cash register. The teenager stood with his arms crossed, staring at the mess for a while, and then started poking and prodding with his hands, then with the metal tools.

Fifteen minutes later he closed the hood and told me everything was set. He told me what the problem had been, but I had no idea what he was saying so I promptly cut him off with a string of thank yous. Thank God he was there; I was about to have a full-on road trip meltdown. Something about technology irritates me uncontrollably sometimes. I just feel so helpless, so dumb when I do not know how to work it.

Motorcycle Men

Why do guys like motorcycles?

Is it because it represents something to them? Is it because a guy can hop onto his motorcycle just like that and zoom away from the horrors of the domestic?
Is it because of the leather jackets? Is it because of the zoom zoom noise?
Is it because of the visibility?

I was filling up at a gas station in Montana and this mini motorcycle gang stops by to fill up as well. It's a man and his son and a married couple. They look congenial enough, so I wave.

Before I know it, I'm completely wrapped up in a lecture. This man is talking my ear off here, sounding off about motorcycles and motorcycle parts and how it all has to do with his philosophy.

For someone who claims to know the biggest answers to life, he sure doesn't seem to know the simple things, the simple cues. Like when a stranger doesn't want to drink your kool aid.

I dissociate myself from my body. It's something you learn how to do when you're a woman. I'm floating somewhere over my head and watching this man yap on and on about motorcycle hardware and Phaedrus and "Quality" and I just know that he thinks he knows so much. I can see my physical body nodding at him.

My dissociated spirit gazes on at his cohort. Poor babies. Imagine going on a cross country road trip with an insufferable philosophy major. Yikes.
The man and wife look really tired. They look as if they'd like to leave this guy at any time, but, oh, now I see, they're staying for the boy. The boy looks like he's not yet a teenager. He's got this glazed look in his eye. Looks like he needs his mother. One too many days out on the road with dad, I'd guess.

Well, good on those two for sticking by him. God knows I wouldn't last as long.

"Well it was sure nice talking to you, I've got to be on my way!" I say quickly.

As I leave, I hear him mention to the woman, "Sylvia, I'm having some good feelings about these thoughts I've been thinking on this trip. I just shared a couple of them with this nice stranger here and I think what I really need to do now is write a book on the topic."

Response to The Man and His Son

     Driving across Montana had not been part of my original route from San Francisco back to Nebraska, but the road had taken me off course the way that I had learned that it could. So there I was, driving my new car on a back road past a gas station when a boy walks into the road so close to my car that I almost hit him.
     Alarmed, I pulled over. I don't know if it was to make sure that he was okay, or to make sure that I was okay, or to make sure that the car was okay, but I pulled over. The boy was still standing right next to the road! It seemed like he had been doing this for a while.
      "Are you okay?" I asked him.
      "Sure," the boy said, looking up at me for a second before looking at the road again. Confused by him and feeling out of my element (after all, I wasn't too many years older than him), I looked around for an adult.
      "Excuse me sir, is this your son?" I asked the man standing closer to the gas station with two motorcycles.
      "Yes, he is," the man answered.
      "Well he could have been killed standing so close to the road like this," I told him as politely but firmly as I could.
       "How could he have been killed?" the man asked. Honestly, this wasn't the reaction I expected from him.
       "I don't know, from the cars!"
       "He would have to be in the road for the cars to hit him. If the cars stay in their prescribed lanes, he would be fine."
       "Well yes, that's true but... shouldn't you be more concerned that he could be hurt?" I asked, exasperated.
       "I am a person who focuses more on the details of how things function than on the big ideas," the man answered philosophically.
      "When the big picture is you son getting hit by a car and dying on the highway, I think that should take prominence," I said rather harshly. Why was this man getting so caught up in unimportant ideas? If there was one thing I had learned out here on the road, it was that you had to focus on the big things (the journey, the sky, the landscape, the purpose) in order to enjoy travel. Otherwise, it was just a series of small annoyances and discomforts.
       "I see your point," the man said neutrally. I turned to see that his son had ceased his game of chicken with the highway and was playing with an anthill on the side of the gas station. The problem I had stopped to rectify having been resolved (and my desire to speak with this man decreasing by the second), I nodded at him and returned to my car, pulling back out onto the road effortlessly.

Visiting Max

My mom was surprisingly relaxed about the idea of me taking a gap year to travel. In fact, she encouraged it.
"YES! get out there, live a little," she said.
I was taken aback a little by this. I had expected the conversation to be a lot more tense and wasn't prepared to get her blessing so easily. Actually, her quick response freaked me out. I panicked. What if she asks me my plans, I thought. I don't have any plans, fuck, this could be bad.
"So, do you have any plans? How exactly do you plan on supporting yourself, umm, financially during your time away?" was her next contribution to the conversation.
She brought up the two words I had been dreading the most "plans" and "financially," rats what do I say? I tried to come up with something off the top of my head.
"Well, I was thinking of starting by going on a road trip to visit Max at school in Montana," I squeaked out.
"Max, like Mary's brother, Harry's cousin," she responded.
"Yeah, that Max," I said back.
"Sounds like an interesting idea," she said with a contemplative look on her face.
"Out of all people why Max, when was the last time you even saw him?" she added.
This was a good question. Why was going to visit Max Rodriguez the first thing that came to mind when I thought about my gap year? My mom had a point, I hadn't seen the guy in like a year. Growing up though, Max was my definition of cool. Long boarding, BMX bike riding, football, baseball, girls, this dude did everything. A year older than me and my friends, Max and his pals were the trendsetters. Now, he had become a mountain man while studying at Montana State University in Bozeman.  I'd seen a lot of Facebook and Instagram posts of him backpacking and snowboarding in the mountains around his school and I wanted to a chance explore the area with a local expert.
Another part of me was curious to get to know this area because I had just read (or tried to read) Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I found the book pretty much unbearable and got through about half of it, but I reached the part when the narrator described the mountains of Montana, and I was enamored.
After my conversation with my mother I sent Max a text.
"Yo, would it be chill if I crashed at your place in Bozeman for a little while in September?"
"LOL. Dude, you're going to be in Bozeman, awesome. Of course you can stay here as long as you want," he responded.
His enthusiasm definitely calmed me down and inspired me to really follow through with this plan.
"Yeah, I'm taking a gap year and want to get to know Montana."
"Look at you, finally doing something adventurous instead of studying all the time. I love it, bro." Typical Max response.
With that it was set, I would be spending a few weeks with Max in Montana and I couldn't be more excited. I was finally getting a chance to do my own thing. No more papers, presentations, or exams. In the mountains of Montana, grades don't matter. I would have to rely on my wilderness abilities to survive. Max, the mountain man, and me, out there all alone. I can't wait.

Also Somewhere Near South Dakota

So there I was, spinning out of control as I pumped the brakes to no avail, about to hit a big old elm, and all I could think was: What is the definition of Quality? Okay, fine, I wasn't actually thinking of strange philosophical definitions, but Quality certainly had something to do with why I was careening toward what looked like a misshapen ent with an iron deficiency that my Buick was about to solve.

Let's back up a moment. It started when my brakes stopped catching so well. They still worked; I just really had to stomp to get them to work. Also, I really wanted a burrito. This led me to stop in some town in the middle of nowhere, South Dakota that happened to have a mechanic, and, more importantly, a Mexican place. Thus sated, I pulled the old Buick into the mechanic's garage. It was a dingy, grey sort of place, the kind of place that would give you chronic depression if you stayed too long. The actual employees were all busy working on someone's F150 (either that or taking their dose of Xanax necessitated by just how dismal this garage was), but luckily there was some dude and his kid working on their motorcycle. I asked them for help -- hey, maybe I wouldn't have to pay the mechanic's crazy fees after all. Besides, cars are pretty much the same thing as motorcycles, right?

It turns out that they are -- depending on how you define it. The man, Phaedrus, had to lecture me about oneness, zen, the difference between classicism and romanticism, and all sorts of mumbo jumbo as he worked. It turns out I had a small leak in my brake line.  Of course, he couldn't just say so -- instead, he had to use it as a convoluted metaphor about Quality, and how it represents some sort of way to reconcile technology and humanity in the modern world. He ended up patching my line with a spot of old rubber and a lot of duct tape, then sent me on my merry way. I think it was this patch that ultimately failed, sending my brakes to Tartarus (he was big on the Greek stuff) and me toward a tree.

So yes, I most certainly blame Quality for the fact that my car was about to do a facehugger impression around the elm's trunk. I was all set to go with Quantity next time when at last the brakes caught, my prayers to live to see another burrito were cut off, and I crashed to a stop an inch in front of the tree.

response to home for the holidays

I was driving down a straight, vacant highway in central Indiana, watching the sun set and considering how I was nearing the end of my journey.  As I drove, I considered the wide variety of interactions that I had had on my journey.  For whatever reason (maybe because I was missing my family?) a particular conversation that I had with a young man in central California stuck out to me. 

I had been waiting in line at a gas station, buying a Red Bull because I needed to stay awake for the long night of driving ahead of me. 

“That stuff is so bad for you,” a voice me behind me said.

I turned around to see a young Hispanic man. 

“I know, but I have a far way to drive, unfortunately, and I need to stay awake” I replied.

“Oh, where are you heading?” He asked. 

I told him how I was heading home to see my family, as my father had recently become ill.  Soon we were talking about our respective families.  He was from Mexico, and his entire family still lived there.  It turns out that a lot of the men working here had families back in Mexico, and homesickness was a major sentiment shared by these men. 

I, too, had been feeling homesick lately, and was struck by the fact that all of these men were also experiencing the same feelings. 

            We talked about how it was certain little things, like familiar smells that reminded us of our parents’ cooking that triggered this homesickness that so many of us felt.  Although he and I were living in very different circumstances, our homesicknesses were almost identical.  I soon realized that, although everyone yearns for a different place, the sentiments of homesickness are shared across all varieties of people, and is truly a shared human experience. 

Response to Somewhere near South Dakota

I forgot to mention this, earlier in this blog, but it seems apt that I mention it now as Ethan and I begin the final leg of our trip.  It was almost something surreal, and even now as I think back on it, it is hard for me to believe it actually happened.

            Somehow, Ethan and I had gotten lost and we ended up driving late at night in the middle of nowhere on the Great Plains.   It was getting dark outside and we not only needed directions, but we needed some help.  We had run over a rock somewhere in the middle of Wyoming and it had become embedded in our tire, so that eventually we had a flat tire.  Of course, the one thing we forgot to bring was a spare tire.  How could we be so stupid?  Yet, we couldn’t believe our luck as we saw a small town with an old auto repair shop just up the road.  We pulled in and walked inside.

            Inside the auto-repair shop was one of the most random assortments of people Ethan and I had ever seen.  There is an old lady who looks extremely out of place, a young boy and his middle-aged father, a tired looking woman, and a guy in a wife beater.  They looked like they had been clumped together by chance but didn’t seem to mind.  I started to talk to the older woman.  She told me about her journey across America in her truck and how it started to make the guttural sounds of a “dying moose”.  We then talked about the mutual experience of living in the Northeast and what an exhilarating experience it was to be out on the road in the Wild West. The man and his son were fiddling with their motorcycle and Ethan walked over to them.  After five minutes of talking to them, he came back to me and whispered in me ear: “We need to get out of here, that guy is crazy”.   

            So, after finding a tire in the back and helping us put it on our car, we left the auto shop and were on our way.  We were there and gone in less than an hour.  It almost seems surreal, like those people never actually existed; they were just there in our imaginations.

The Man and His Son, Rural Montana

I hopped out of my most recent ride at a gas station in rural Montana. Rural Montana. That was probably an oxymoron.

The air was thick with mist and seemed content to just rest on the tops of the Mountains like a blanket. The sun was going down, and it was getting colder. I was starting to pace around, hands in my pockets, trying to think of my next move, when a man and his son ride up on a motorcycle. The man hopped off wearing a bizarre outfit of dirty, wrinkled army fatigues, a beard, and a tattered black beret. The smaller version of him stumbled off the cycle looking unbalanced.

“Chris! You see this! Look, this nut is loose. I could hear it five miles ago.” The boy, Chris—apparently—did not look up. He started kicking rocks by the side of the road with an upset look on his face.

Seeing no response from his original audience, the man looked up at me. “No one cares to know about how motorcycles work now. Everyone just drops them off at a mechanic, with disinterest, as if it’s not their problem.”

He turned to me. “Tell me—do you think the world is improving?”

I was a bit startled, but I responded, “Well, I guess so. Technology helps. See, if you had a self-driving car, you wouldn’t be having this problem. Or just a normal car. Or even a newer bike, I guess.”

He looked at me simultaneously with disgust but also interest, like a predator that’s just spotted intellectual prey. “What would that do? What would that help? Would that help me in some kind of never-ending hurry to god-knows-what? What’s the hurry even to—endless shallowness, that leaves you feeling—“

I cut him off to tell him, “Um, sir, I think your son, he keeps heading out into the road.” A car flashed by the boy now just inches from the road, whipping air into his face. The boy had a glassy-eyed stare. The man ignored me and kept going.

“No, you’ve got it all wrong. Working on this bike…I’m working something else out. I become part of a system of intricate, working pieces, and the pure, beautiful rationality of it, that makes it worth it. You have to start small. Working on this bike, I’m working on myself, piece by piece, bit by bit. There’s a synergy. I think that’s what quality is, it’s when—“

I stop listening to run over to the side of the road, where the boy has fallen over from the force of wind of eighteen-wheeler rushing by. I kneel over to him on the ground. He’s crying. The man does not look up, and continues muttering to himself as he lifts the cover off of his bike.

                                                                                                                 

Hailey Learns Basic Motorcycle Maintenance (Yay!)

I was hitching a ride with a woman named Emily. She and I were on a similar journey: touring the country for no apparent reason other than exploration. We crossed paths somewhere in Ohio and she was kind enough to take me all the way into Wisconsin where we met a group of four people. One of their motorcycles had broken down, so Emily, being the kind soul she was, decided to stop and see if we could help out. We came to find out their names were Phaedrus, Chris, Sylvia, and John. While John and Sylvia were nice enough, I was fascinated by Chris and his father. It seemed like a simple enough fix for us, we just needed to take off the hard cover plate and see what exactly we were dealing with. Emily swears she had done it a hundred times, all you needed was the right materials and a bit of patience. Unfortunately, the group had gotten a bit antsy and instead decided to try to remove the screw with some pliers, effectively stripping it.

Phaedrus was weirdly calm about the whole situation. He knew that they were in a bit of trouble, but he was totally Zen about the art of motorcycle maintenance. He explained to me about the concept of “stuckness,” a state of being that described our situation perfectly. No matter what you do, you’re just stuck. Physically, the screw was stuck, and we were quickly running out of options, leading us to feel mentally stuck as well. This tends to make us feel inadequate and frustrated, and the stress of the situation continues to grow and grow and finally we’re so beyond furious at this tiny little screw! All we wanted to do was kick the motorcycle over and move on with our lives, but we couldn’t. We were completely stuck, sweating, angry, and Phaedrus seemed perfectly fine. Every logical solution we can think of doesn’t work, and we’re left questioning everything we thought we knew about the world because we are just SO FRUSTRATED OVER THIS DAMN LITTLE SCREW! After about an hour of total anguish, Chris walks back. He had been exploring a small thicket of shrubs and came back with a string (of unknown origins). We all watch as he wiggles the string underneath the thing’s head and ties a loop. Then, he slowly pulls it out, twisting with his fingers when he can, until it’s finally out and the cover is off. He simply shrugs and then sit down next to his dad. Huh. Who knew an eleven-year-old knew how to become unstuck?