The Awkward Pose

November 15, 2016 – Sunny, 75 degrees

Miles Today: 76

Miles to Date: 18,912

States to Date: 46

One year on the road. A full 365 days of bicycling and meeting strangers and asking people ‘How will we live tomorrow?’ I still have six weeks or so left to complete my 48-state objective, but I am in the red zone of my journey. Despite my desire to have the experience and then decide what to do with it, conclusions are beginning to coalesce, patterns are beginning to emerge.

What have I learned over the past year?

I have learned that no matter how much a body does something, we can always get better. A year older and several broken bones later, I am a better cyclist: stronger, faster, more patient, more observant. Seven hundred plus blog posts later, I am also a better writer: clearer, quicker, more economical, more observant.

I have learned how to be a professional guest. I communicate with my hosts. I arrive on time, I don’t ask for anything yet accept what is offered. I clean up after myself. I leave on time. I leave a token of appreciation. I write a thank you. But mostly I listen. People everywhere are starving to be heard.

I have learned to be grateful for the benign majority and the generous minority. I don’t let the twenty or thirty motorists who’ve heckled or hit me detract from the million or more vehicles that have passed me with respectful distance. So many more have slowed down than have revved past. Similarly, I pass thousands of souls hunkered behind garages and security systems. I believe they yearn for fellowship but fear has paralyzed them into isolation. So I appreciate all the more the tiny number of trusting folks who invite this stranger into their home for conversation and connection.

I’ve learned how to ask for people’s time, be appreciative when it’s offered and not upset when I’m ignored.

A year on the road is more than a list of lessons learned; it’s a litany of new fellowship. I count friends in every port, and they have a safe haven should they ever come to Boston. I’ve celebrated births and birthdays, anniversaries and graduations, and, I’ve also shared tragedy

I detoured my route to stay with Juanita Campbell in Pecan Island Louisiana because her warmshowers profile highlighted ‘smokers and drinkers here’. Juanita fired up a giant crab boil. I helped feed her chickens and load a sofa on her pick-up. I slept on a too-short futon with a half dozen dogs underfoot. Afterwards, I sent her a note every time Southern Louisiana flooded, which made us regular correspondents. Juanita died last week. I don’t know if she died of high water or charred lungs, the cause doesn’t matter. What matters is that I was privileged to meet this feisty lady of the bayou. She will long rest easy on my mind as an integral piece of our nation’s mosaic.

And so I mark a year on the road with the bittersweet reality of life’s wondrous gift, a gift we embrace in our joys and savor in death.

November 14, 2016 – Sunny, 65 degrees

Miles Today: 59

Miles to Date: 18,836

States to Date: 46

Vacations are all well and good – the conference was enlightening, my niece was delightful, her three boys enchanting, and the rooms I fresh painted look good – but when you love your work like I do it’s great to be back at it, pedaling again.

Turns out it was a good week to be stationary since everyone in our great land suffered a bout of disequilibrium. Who is more confused? The confident Democrats who thought Hillary was a shoo-in, the mainstream Republicans who now bow to the standard bearer they abhorred, or the Trump supporters, who relished the prospect of belly-aching Clinton crimes and rigged elections for the next four years. Now actually have to govern. There will be no fun in that.

To my mind, the only clear winner is Melania; the White House’s period rooms will set off her striking features more elegantly than her husband’s Modernist towers ever have, though I doubt she will get Michelle’s kitchen garden dirt under her nails, so that’s an instant loser. For the rest of us, the gains and deprivations will unfold with time.

Suddenly my continental meanderings take on new meaning, as if being so slow and close to the ground this entire election season empowers me to know what others missed. Tonight, In Perkins, I participated in a post-mortem dinner with a group of small town souls searching for the meaning in it all.

I did not predict Trump’s victory: no one did. But I am not surprised he won. In primary after primary we dismissed the man. In primary after primary he came out on top. Trump supporters distrust everyone and everything at the most elemental level. They’re covert operatives who provide misleading information to every arm of the political elite, and that includes pollsters. But when the curtain was drawn in the voting booth, millions of our citizens’ disgust with the Federal government trumped all other considerations.

One of my readers suggested I revise my route map to feature blue dots instead of red, in solidarity with the Democrats. My dots are not political affiliations. I am no more a Democrat than I am a Republican. I am an observer. I listen to what people say, I witness what they do, and I filter it through a sieve of human decency. My dots will remain red, my politics unaffiliated.

During the year I’ve been riding people argue we’ve suffered the most divisive election ever. I disagree. Reread John Adam’s letters to Abigail during the first presidential election ever and accept that electoral circus is a national pasttime. Rather, we have just completed an extended, exhaustive conversation about one man. Every one of us has measured ourselves against Donald Trump and determined whether he is a narcissistic buffoon or the elixir for federal indigestion. Every other player, including Hillary Clinton, has been peripheral. In the end more people voted for the woman who prepared to be President, but that doesn’t matter because The Donald concocted the winning electoral strategy.

Some people I’ve talked with call Trump a despot who, if elected, will terminate our democracy; others predict nothing will change. President Donald Trump will have a larger say in tomorrow than most of us. But he does not have the final say, unless we abdicate tomorrow to him.

November 2, 2016 – Sunny, 80 degrees

Miles Today: 21

Miles to Date: 18,777

States to Date: 46

 Bicycle maintenance day! Al’s Bicycles in OKC did a great job sprucing up Tom for his 2,000-mile check-up. While he was getting a new chain, cassette and tune-up, my high school friend Marion Paden took me to lunch – three hours food and talk to catch up on more than thirty years.

The short but harrowing ride to my nephew’s house included a left turn from the traffic lane of NW 122^nd Street at Hidden Creek with rush hour cars racing toward me over the blind hill. Thanks to the considerate pick-up driver who stopped to left me escape that busy road.

Jeff and Joey and I enjoyed a great evening of historic baseball as the Cubs shook off 108 years of coming up short. Jeff’s girlfriend Lana captured the identical, drab shirts and shorts all three of us wore. Fallon boys are not fashion setters.

Tom settled into the garage for an extended break. Tomorrow I fly to Seattle to deliver the keynote address at the NW Sustainability Conference and spend a week with my niece and her boys while her husband is deployed in the Middle East.

I will begin the last leg of my cycling journey on Monday November 14 and look forward to sharing more Trip Logs then.

November 1, 2016 – Sunny, 80 degrees

Miles Today: 20

Miles to Date: 18,756

States to Date: 46

There are two truths I run up against everywhere I go: our public education system is failing; our public library system is thriving.

To paraphrase Dallas Police Chief’s David Brown’s remarks after five Dallas police officers were killed, ‘we ask to much of our public schools.’ We expect our schools to reflect the America we hope for – a place where our children are educated and fed and socialized and integrated; while in reality our culture devalues, often denigrates, education, tolerates hunger, fosters inequality, and remains largely segregated. People argue about funding and teacher salaries, unions and charters. But ultimately our schools are failing because they are not supported by the society they are supposed to prepare our children to enter. Teachers feel beaten down and unappreciated, parents feel shortchanged; taxpayers are unwilling to pour money into a floundering system.

Our public libraries, on the other hand, are the most well utilized democratic institutions in our country. Libraries allow everyone, regardless of race or income, to access the information and technology necessary to be an informed citizen. I’ve visited hundreds of libraries across the country and am amazed at how well they’re used. Patrons respect these facilities. Librarians are consistently positive and helpful. I’ve observed librarians help non-English speaking adults navigate the Internet, assist transients in obtaining identification, and coordinate a line of homeless through the men’s room with patience and respect. They are not just reference sources; they are our new social workers.

I spent most of the day at the new Patience Latting Library in Northwest Oklahoma City. When I arrived on a weekday morning most of the computer terminals were already occupied and I landed the last available study carrel. The 35,000 square foot, LEED building that opened in 2012 buzzed with purposeful inquiry. It’s bright interior is rich in Oklahoma imagery: skylights that evoke oil derricks on the roof top identify key elements of the open plan interior.

The $8.2 million facility cost is less than one quarter of this year’s Oklahoma City Schools capital budget. The schools don’t seem to get comparable bang for their buck.

Schools are not a high priority in this state; Oklahoma ranks 46^th in per pupil public school expenditure and people throughout the state report that teachers move for higher salaries. An effort to curb this trend, ballot initiative 779, would boost sales tax to increase teacher pay. Right now, it is polling favorably.

Libraries are not schools. They are elective rather than mandatory use facilities. But I can’t help thinking what make libraries so wonderful – that they serve across generations, that they invite independent inquiry, that they are staffed by people who support the patron’s interests rather than deliver prescribed content – are ingredients we ought to stir into our efforts to revitalize our schools.

October 31, 2016 – Sunny, 80 degrees

Miles Today: 24

Miles to Date: 18,736

States to Date: 46

I indulge in local culinary delights of the highbrow and fast food variety wherever I go. Today an old high school friend invited me to her favorite sushi place for lunch. Delicious.

Unfortunately, sushi hardly fills a guy pedaling against the Oklahoma wind, so I bookended lunch with snacks from Oklahoma’s premier fast food emporiums: a mid-morning pair of Sonic Drive-in 50 cent Halloween corndogs and a Braum’s double dip cone in the afternoon. Warning label: my diet is hazardous to the health of anyone burning less than 4,000 calories a day.

October 30, 2016 – Overcast, 75 degrees

Miles Today: 48

Miles to Date: 18,712

States to Date: 46

Oklahoma City went from 0 to 10,000 citizens in a day: April 29, 1889. For the next hundred years, OKC continued to be a boom and bust place: many credit the 1980’s recession with the failure of Oklahoma City’s Penn Square Bank.

In the 1990’s, while the city was still recovering from the fallout of Penn Square, Mayor Ron Norick and the Chamber of Commerce proposed MAPS (Metropolitan Area Projects), an innovative way to fund specific capital projects bundled together for broad appeal through a one percent city sales tax, overseen by a citizen’s committee rather than a government agency, and built with cash derived from the tax rather than bonds. Over the past twenty years, voters have passed three specific MAPS initiatives. In the process, OKC has boosted its urban core, diversified its economy, and become nationally known as both a progressive and easy place to do business.

I cycled through downtown on a lazy Sunday afternoon, visiting the Boathouse District (OKC created a permanent basin off the North Canadian River to become the center of US Olympic Rowing), and Bricktown, a San Antonio-like canal and warehouse district.

OKC’s initiatives are not limited to downtown. A few blocks from where I lived in the 1980’s an abandoned theater and grocery store became home to the Lyric Theater. The city throttled traffic and expanded the sidewalks. The Plaza District became the hot place to be in a city that, for many years, had few cohesive places at all.

October 29, 2016 – Sun, 85 degrees

Miles Today: 60

Miles to Date: 18,664

States to Date: 46

Back in College Station TX I visited the land that inspired my New York born father to pioneer west. Our Conestoga wagon was a Winnebago. His strong-willed wife refused his lead and insisted we settle 350 miles to the north. Our homestead was not 160 acres, but a brick ranch that we could not inhabit until the bankers were satisfied. We did not circle the wagons at night; we parked in the Safeway parking lot. I did not rise with the dawn to help with chores; I unhitched my bicycle from the back of the motorhome and pedaled against the wind to school. To any rational 1971 eyes we lived in suburban America. In my fathers eyes we were battling the elements and conquering the West circa Oklahoma Land Run 1889.

My father’s business never prospered. The bank took back the Winnebago, then the ranch. My parents shuffled among houses and apartments all over town. My mother went to work. My father drank more. Eventually they split. The pioneer returned to New Jersey, his dream unrealized.

Meanwhile, I arrived in Oklahoma with a mop of bad hair, a thick accent, and an urban attitude to match. But I thrived. I landed at University High School in the middle of my junior year, met great friends, dated a terrific girl whom I eventually married, and got accepted to MIT, in part, I am certain, because I applied from a geographically sparse niche. Less than two years after becoming an Okie I shipped out to college. My lasting lesson of heartland was appreciation for all regional attributes our country embraces and the conviction that our commonalities are more plentiful than those differences.

Norman’s physical fabric, so transformed between 1889 and 1973, has stabilized in the last 43 years. True, University of Oklahoma Football stadium is getting enlarged again, like an inflatable toy that refuses to pop: 87,000 seats plus an attached parking garage so fat donors can drive to their skybox. Sure, the commercial strip along I-35 is banal as any in America. But everything else is much the same. OU’s campus is still anchored by a pair of handsome ovals. Main Street storefronts survive despite the big box stores. The wooden bungalows in the older part of town still need a coat of paint. The brick houses in the subdivisions beyond appear smaller only because the trees have grown.

I arrived on Homecoming Day. Campus buzzed with anticipation of the night game against University of Kansas. The parade down Boyd Street could have been a Jimmy Stewart movie: Pride of Oklahoma marching band, cheerleaders, Greek letter fraternities and sororities. But a few boys wore pink shirts with the OU logo, women with cropped hair held hands, interracial couples clapped along with everyone else, one Homecoming Queen candidate was from Mumbai.

When I first came to Norman Mumbai was Bombay, and we didn’t consider anyone from there pretty. Girl’s held hands as a joke, interracial couples hid, and boys’ didn’t wear pink shirts – period. The physical fabric of this college town may be little changed, but the society it supports has blossomed in directions this oxford-clothed high schooler could never have imagined.

October 28, 2016 – Sun, 85 degrees

Miles Today: 96

Miles to Date: 18,664

States to Date: 46

It was a great day to be a cycle tourist, and a great day for singing. I woke to a bright golden haze on the meadow. Yes, a bright golden haze on the meadow.

The ranches are immense, bounded by stone cairns and highlighted by rustic signs.

Mill Creek has few people but several strip mines for limestone and silica. The dust from the Martin Marietta plant fills the air and coats the trees.

Chickasaw National Recreation Area in Sulphur has picturesque waterfalls. I pedaled five miles out of my way to indulge in the Bromide Springs that made the place a mecca for tourists over a hundred years ago, only to find that the springs have dried up.

The Trail of Tears, in which the ‘Five Civilized Tribes’ (Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw and Seminole) were resettled from their original lands east of the Mississippi to the area that is now Oklahoma, is an ugly chapter in our historical abuse of native peoples. Then, we infiltrated their new lands anyway. But the history and status of Native Americans in Oklahoma is quite different from other parts of the west because there are no reservations. Nine percent of Oklahomans are Native Americans, similar to South Dakota and New Mexico. Yet, they are much more integrated into society.

Given enough time histories losers can become big winners. Today, the tribes are cashing in our penchant for gambling. The Choctaw casino in Durant and the Chickasaw casino just north of the Red River are glittering places where, mainly Texans, pay Native Americans to spin and roll and poker. The Chickasaw have invested some of their profits on the Chickasaw National Cultural Center: a stunning series of pavilions organized around walks and water elements reminiscent of the Getty Museum with a Native American tilt. I was particularly pleased to see that Frankfurt Short Bruza, the Oklahoma City firm where I began my career, designed the elegant place.

Indian summer prevailed, the wind remained at my back, and I reached Pauls Valley in daylight; a long travel day filled with worthwhile sights.

October 27, 2016 – Sun, 80 degrees

Miles Today: 75

Miles to Date: 18,568

States to Date: 46

Kudos to me: I have survived Texas yet again. The first time I exited the Lone Star State I enumerated the finer points of heckling. After 18,000+ miles, I’m keyed into the hazards cycle tourists face living on the shoulder. Pedal at your peril:

10. Shoulder debris

9. Right turns from side street. Make eye contact with everyone entering from the right. Curse those tinted windshields.

8. Shoulder gravel. Slow down or skid.

7. Trucks passing cars in the oncoming lane. They gun right down on you.

6. RV buses pulling autos, usually driven by retired men without commercial license who are Masters of the Universe in their minds but don’t really understand how big their rigs are. Oh, and they sometimes forget to push the side steps under the chassis before pulling out of their driveway, which can clip you right in the ankle.

5. Right turns from behind. People in a hurry, which is pretty much everyone, will not yield to a cyclist.

4. Rumble strips in the shoulder. Instant migraine.

3. Darting across a main road from a side street. Who looks for cyclists?

2. Single direction drainage grates aligned with your tires. I yield to all drainage grates. Get your tire stuck in one of these and you’re flying over your handlebars.

1. Unsignaled left turns. Been there, done that. Can’t blame that one on Texas, but I am wary of it at every intersection.