How My Garden Grows

             Rain not snow....exposed to the elements: Tomato, peppers, broccoli, kale, peas and so forth. Warm days and good eatin' ahead. So, here it is...I'm predicting a long, hot Summer. This means many trips to the lake,  more bicycle rides around the lake and up the Quiet Volcano. I have to warn you in advance, I may be hard to corral this Summer...my 62nd.  A season of hiking into remote pools, stripping down to the suit God gave me, immersing in cold water hoping that it's enough to keep the mosquitos from drinking me dry before I pull on the bike shorts and race home to my quiet cabin in the woods.
                  This is the future I envisioned while sitting in William Everwine's Writer's Workshop in 1972. His assignment: Imagine your life as a professional writer forty years from now....Well, I didn't know I would be a small business owner, wrenching on bicycles and encouraging small town folks to go out and use them, but I did see the quiet cabin in the woods and me skinny dipping to keep the mosquitos at bay. I didn't imagine that I'd be such great friends with a black Labrador who loves to accompany me on so many lake and woods outings, but I did imagine that I would be partners with a precious woman who is adventurous, amorous and fair about all things we share.
                     I didn't know that I would have published five small titles that have brought me the smallest level of fame or,  that I would no longer own a typewriter, even though I hand-lettered all of my books. I did see me as loving the reading of books, while struggling to be a better writer, but I didn't foresee me needing cheater glasses to perform either task. Predictions are funny things...you are going to be wrong...much of the time, in fact.     I am still amazed when I'm right. However, I have not given up the prediction business...yes, I see hard times ahead for Western Civilization and I see the Detroit Tigers playing the San Francisco Giants in the 2012 World Series.

The Weather Is Not Getting Me Down

I'm thankful for rainy weather, honest I am. Snow, at this point, I could do without. Mild depression, any depression, is a stranger to me...but, I am ready for the command to "Play Ball!"

Politics, floundering economies, climate change, gun control, gas prices, bankrupt state governments and school districts...these are all issues I am letting go of for the next seven months. I will not be investing any energy...that should read; Wasting Any Energy, on these and related issues until November...make that December, 2012. Yes, I will vote but, I don't want to talk about it.

I'll be concentrating on: Love of family, all things to do with Bicycling, Major League Baseball, exercising the dog, eating healthy and skinny dipping with friends. Focusing on these activities will keep me excited about life and looking forward to good times as a sixty-something character. We've all got our minds made up about religion and politics anyway, I think our days are better spent appreciating the sensations that come with living each day as it comes...being spontaneous, flexible and somewhat impulsive...and giving thanks for all that we have.

I've drifted away from being a preachy reformer, believe it or not, and I've given up on thinking that Education is the answer. The information is out there, has been out there for a half a Century, and still folks cling to their self-destructive behaviors with the tenacity of an Octopus.

This is one of the great things about surviving for more than six decades...you gain an ounce of "Wisdom" and a ton of "I don't give a hoot if I'm embarrassing you" attitude...this helps you see the humor in most circumstances and situations...the same ones that a decade earlier drove your blood pressure through the roof. It really is simple: just keep your nose clean, drink lots of liquids and don't waste so much time sitting on your ass....and never hold back a laugh (or a fart) when something strikes your funny bone.

Since my recent Hawaiian vacation my dreams have been full of playful people and joyful situations. I wake up with a big grin on my face and a lightness of step that feels spiritual and ridiculous at the same time. The first thing I do is step to the pot and pee...but, why am I giggling...maybe it's the Ginkgo biloba!

Trouble ahead, trouble behind...just crossed my mind

We landed in Lihue on March 9, greeted by twin tornados and a hail storm. The gals at the car rental shed were amazed, they'd never seen either on Kaua'i. Thirty inches of rain fell during the week leading up to our arrival. The roads and the hillsides were in bad shape, the highlands visible from the North Shore were curtained with hundreds of waterfalls. Our rental house was not accessible due to mudslides and submerged bridges. We squeezed through on the second day, only to hear that the road washed out behind us.

The vacation house was exceptional, perched on stilts and surrounded by exotic upper tree foliage that was harboring a choir of tropical birds. No problem...No worries, even though the rain came down in sheets, this was a welcome change. Northern California was having the driest Winter in the last hundred years. We flew out of Reno, which was even drier, so the warm/lush/humid air of Hawai'i was just what we needed.

The sun came out a couple days later, the ocean calmed down and the beaches heated up.... we absorbed all that solar energy like pink-bodied sponges. By the end of the next week we had newly arriving tourists from the mainland asking us if we were "locals". We hiked, we biked, we swam and we sunned.... ten days flew by like an Osprey diving out of a treetop for a Trout. We're back and we are refreshed. Adventuring never placates the travel bug. I'm already checking the Web for tickets to Europe. Which airline flies bicycles for free? Yes, it is always money well spent.

Look Out America, We Are Leaving The Mainland.

This is not a prediction, however, we have an uncanny record of flying away from North America the day before a very large event shocks the country. Yes, you remember, it was Sept. 10, 2001 when we flew to Paris. It was also early Sept. 2008 when we flew to Barcelona...the first headline we read when we landed was about a financial collapse....Goodbye Lehman and AIG. In 2010 we flew to Toronto first and then to Frankfurt, that worked out better but, a month later we flew out of Marseilles on the same morning that French authorities stormed a motel next to the Marseilles airport and arrested 13 terrorists who were planning to raise havoc that very day!

Now I'm reading about extraordinary Solar Flares affecting the upper atmosphere and messing with radio communications...don't pilots still communicate by radio waves? Oh Jesus, it's enough to get me down on my knees. All I want is a balmy, relaxing ten days in Kauai.

We are spending a chunk of our retirement/savings on travel. This is largely due to the prediction, on my part, that we will have to be happy living out our lives tending to a garden and goats while living in a Pacific Yurt at a lower elevation, while our fellow middle class Americans accept the fact that here is no "trickle down" from the 1% that'll keep gas in their tanks and food on the grocery store shelves. These are "tough times"...about to get a lot tougher. Google Clusterfuck Nation or Club Orlov or Crazy Eddie at The Motie, to see where I'm coming from.

Our necks are so far out there...might as well concentrate on enjoying each day...and each adventure. No, you don't have to travel far to find awesome adventure. We explore remote corners of California and the West every week, month and year. We test our bodies to their physical limit often and we stretch our minds daily with conversation and varied research...not wasting the hours that remain...unless you classify watching Baseball and drinking a Torpedo Ale as a waste of time.

Well, here goes, our bags are packed, our son and our dog are in charge of "the ranch"...traveling laptopless, just a good book, some letter writing supplies and a swimsuit.

Celebrate The Freedom Machine

Forty years ago I began my rant: Car usage is overdone, we are addicted to the automobile and the apparent "convenience" of happy motoring. The oil companies/countries hold all of the cards and the noose will tighten. Driving is violence and we've become callous to fatality numbers as high as fifty thousand deaths a year...just in this country....and this does not include the cancers, lung diseases and effects from a quarter of a million injuries resulting from automobile accidents each year. A gallon of gas at the Terrible Herbst gas station on Shaw avenue in Fresno set me back 25 cents in 1972. That was the last gasoline purchase I made in the seventies. I scrapped my fire-prone Mercury Meteor in May of '72 and invested in a bicycle.

Jimmy Carter had it right in 1979 when he explained that the Middle East was holding US hostage, and maybe we shouldn't be in such a hurry to use up the Earth's account of dinosaur juice. Nobody wanted to hear it. Americans wanted a big dose of patriotic cheerleading, we wanted to hear that we were bad-ass invincibles, we voted for Ray-Gun the Conquerer. I didn't return to car ownership until Ronald Reagan was voted in for a second term...."I might as well help use it up," I reasoned.

It wasn't a major purchase, I bought Grandpa's '63 Chevy Nova for $1. We drove the snot out of that car...98,000 miles of California backroads while researching our California Dream Cycling guidebook. In 1998 we upgraded to a Jeep Grand Cherokee, a vehicle that could carry us over deteriorated highways after the "coming depression". In 2005 we re-Jeeped so that we could drive through the coming financial disaster and inevitable lack of road repairs....sure to be on the horizon...and now I have a 4WD Honda Element, a go-anywhere delivery van, beautifully sensible for errands run from Bodfish Bicycles, a shop we have orchestrated and composed as a livelihood for eighteen years now. During this period I have commuted by bicycle ninety-five percent of the time.

Of course, gas and oil are not getting any cheaper ($4.59 a gallon as I write this)...oh yea, I was going to wax brightly about my freedom machine. I love my bicycles, best bargain of a lifetime, I throw effort into my bicycle and it rewards me immediately...free locomotion, birds singing all around me, a speed sensation that is earned but controllable and sweet, deep breaths and full circulation of life fluids to every extremity and all I had to do was hop in the saddle and rotate my legs. There are numerous roads and paths where you are not battling with motor-bullies. It's out there, right now. Wait for what you consider acceptable pedaling weather and get out there...rediscover the magic of self-propelled travel one more time and you are guaranteed less stress about these tumultuous times.

A Pause Between Wars

Here we go again! Gas prices in the small village of Chester just hit $4.50 a gallon...what'll push them to $5? There are a half-dozen possible scenarios that I can see unfolding in the next month...all include Iran and most involve a pissed-off Israel, and hawkish Americans. It's time to bring the kids home from Afganistan but, I'm hoping the trip doesn't include a layover in Tehran.

Regardless, we knew 2012 wasn't going to be a "business as usual" kind of year. The bicycle business could improve considerably...I've seen three Nightly News interviews at gas stations this week which featured disgruntled motorists saying, "It's time to buy a bicycle."....warms the cockles of my heart. These commuters and shoppers might just fall in love with their own bodies and their ability to self-propel. Hearing the birdsongs of Spring and smelling the daffodils on their way to the Post Office or grocery store may cause permanent change...may give us all a little relief from busy-ness as usual.

Oh ya, it's going to be ugly, in so many ways...but, it's already ugly. There seems to be no way to put an end to all the unrest and unhappiness in the Middle East. Ron Paul is on to something, " isolationist America" is not even possible yet, I'm sure a few hours of thinking like an isolationist could be a good thing. In addition to pedaling around town to accomplish a handful of errands, I prescribe a few hours of silent foot-twiddling on quiet roads and paths in the country. Regular doses of "meditation in the saddle" can help us gain perspective and to savor each new day. We are only along for the ride...might as well take in as much oxygen and put out as much CO2 as you can with each breath as you possibly can, and I know no better way to pull this off, (without ruining your knees and ankles), than in the saddle under your own power.