The Awkward Pose

November 21, 2016 – Sunny, 70 degrees

Miles Today: 76

Miles to Date: 19,179

States to Date: 47

 Forecast tomorrow is strong winds from the south and rain. So, I pedaled through the University of Arkansas campus, ducked out of Fayetteville a day ahead of my plan and pedaled to Fort Smith during another Indian summer day. So glad I did as there were enough challenges navigating the Ozarks even with benign nature. By late afternoon the winds had shifted from the east and I could feel the rain coming.

I will be staying with close friends in Fort Smith for three days for the Thanksgiving holiday. I wish everyone a sumptuous Thanksgiving celebration. May we all be grateful for blessings to numerous to count.

November 20, 2016 – Sunny, 50 degrees

Miles Today: 36

Miles to Date: 19,103

States to Date: 47

 Happiness is all about underplaying expectations. Thirty-six miles on a gorgeous day along the Razorback Greenway all the way to Fayetteville: what is not to love? Trail detours and construction all over Rogers that sent me spinning through Target and Cabela’s parking lots. By the time I recognized my frustration – and laughed at it – the detours ended. The last twenty miles through Springdale and into Fayetteville were every bit as lovely as my conceptions envisioned.

A mini lending library and a bike – two of my favorite things in one!

Once I arrived at the hometown of the University of Arkansas, the day was all talk. I spent a lovely afternoon with Elysse Newman, recently appointed Head of the Department of Architecture at University of Arkansas, and her husband Michael Repovich, an architect working on the new Northwest Arkansas Children’s Hospital. Then I pedaled to my evening’s host, Hayden Sewall, for a fascinating discussion about Christianity that touched upon many of the perspectives of the 83,000 denominations worldwide that follow that religion.

Hayden toured me through this nifty college town and took me to fountain that espouses peace in over 100 languages. We landed a streetside table at Tiny Tim’s Pizza for in-house brews, a tasty pizza, and a primo panorama of the holiday lights on Fayetteville’s square. Sorry Bentonville, Fayetteville’s lights are way snazzier.

November 19, 2016 – Sunny, 50 degrees

Miles Today: 7

Miles to Date: 19,067

States to Date: 47

My day at Crystal Bridges, the Museum of American Art built by the Walton family. It is a lovely place with wonderful art, a great Frank Lloyd Wright House, an inviting cafe and welcoming research library where the staff was happy to let me spend a few hours writing.

I don’t love the architecture: Moshe Safdie’s buildings are too idiosyncratic and arbitrarily curvy for my taste. But that matter of preference that does not diminish my admiration of the care instilled in this place. Crystal Bridges is well conceived and thoughtfully executed architecture: Every Day Low Prices transformed into high art.

I stayed with the Templeton family who live within walking distance of downtown Bentonville. We walked to the square to see the holiday light display, a scene straight out of a Frank Capra movie. Kurt joked, “Living in Bentonville is like being in The Truman Show.”

November 18, 2016 – Cloudy, 55 degrees

Miles Today: 7

Miles to Date: 19,060

States to Date: 47

Bentonville Arkansas is the 21st century company town, home of Wal-Mart, the world’s largest corporation. The numbers are staggering. More than 2.4 million ‘associates’ work at Wal-Mart: only China’s red army surpasses its workforce. The company has over 11,000 locations worldwide. Over 100 million Americans shop at 4600 Wal-Mart stores in our country, choosing from more than a million items for sale. If Wal-Mart were a nation, it’s GDP would rank 28^th in the world.

All of that is run out of a town that, twenty years ago, had less than 10,000 people. No more. Now, Bentonville has 40,000 people, suburban sprawl and traffic. Neighboring Rogers is even larger. Northwest Arkansas is now referred to as a single region, the megalopolis of the Ozarks.

Three themes stream through my mind on my day in Bentonville, touring the Wal-Mart Museum, eating an undistinguished but low-priced lunch at a Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market, reading Sam Walton’s Entrepreneur’s Creed – straight out of Ayn Rand – in the food aisles, and meeting Wal-Mart people everywhere I go.

First, Bentonville mirrors perfectly the explosive growth of the last fifty years. Development crawls over the Arkansas hills without regard to terrain or ecology.

Second, the downtown core is beautifully preserved and lively. A few people commented on the irony that the company that destroyed so many downtowns has such a nice one. I don’t buy that. Sure the Walton’s have enough money to create whatever downtown they like. But they didn’t ruin the rest of them. We did. When we chose to shop at Wal-Mart. Sam Walton was a savvy guy in the right place at the right time. 1950’s America was keen to climb in its automobiles and leave its heritage behind. Every corporate and governmental program fueled the idea: Interstate highways, zoning, vertical integration, cheap gas. Sam did not create the economy-driven society.; he merely facilitated a nation quick to shed history, culture, and community in the quest for Every Day Low Prices.

Third, and most disconcerting to the architect in me, is how Wal-Mart’s low-cost mantra manifests the environment the company creates. Downtown is quaint, but the Wal-Mart ‘campus’ is a series of monochrome commercial strip buildings in a sea of parking partitioned into windowless offices and rudimentary workspaces. The message of Every Day Low Cost extends to the workplace. But we know these low cost workplaces, just like their low cost merchandise, have collateral costs that are not reckoned until tomorrow. It is not healthy for people to spend 25 to 30 percent of their lives, and most of their daylight hours, in an artificially controlled environment.

I appreciate that Wal-Mart does not have a grand corporate headquarters and I understand the message of prudence their facilities convey. People here highlight Wal-Mart’s increased focus on sustainability, healthier products, and mandating a $10 minimum hourly wage as demonstration of the company’s corporate responsibility. Where Wal-Mart goes, the rest of America follows. I hope they will extend that to providing healthier work places. I am sure their Bentonville employees would appreciate it, and because Wal-Mart establishes the defacto standard of corporate behavior throughout the world, it would lead to healthier work places for others as well.

November 16, 2016 – Sunny, 80 degrees

Miles Today: 84

Miles to Date: 19,053

States to Date: 47

Exciting weather today, on the precipice of change. Still warm, but the strong south winds pushed me north, a last blast of summer. Last night’s hosts lived deep in the country; I pedaled twenty miles of gravel, narrow pavement, and creek level bridges before I reached a numbered highway. The beautiful country compensated for the hard riding.

Fifty miles in I reached Siloam Springs, totally spent. A Eureka Pizza refueled my legs and I arrived in Bentonville by 3:30 p.m.

I spent a great evening in this bike-friendly town with a Wal-Mart Sustainability Manager. Dinner outdoors alongside the main bike path included wood fired pizza from Pedaler’s Pub and craft beer at the Bike Rack Brewing Company.

November 15, 2016 – Sunny, 80 degrees

Miles Today: 57

Miles to Date: 18,969

States to Date: 46

The excitement of the new President-elect, my Seattle vacation, and achieving a full year of cycling has eclipsed reporting on some of the best cycling of my trip. For three days I’ve enjoyed perfect Indian summer weather; cool mornings, warm afternoons, gentle breezes, and variegated foliage just past peak that laid a crisp carpet along the side of the road. The air is pungent and heavy, as if I’m cycling through miles of fresh laundered sheets billowing on the line.

I wear a baseball hat underneath my helmet to keep the sun off my forehead (sunscreen on your forehead sweats into your eyes and stings). Cycling is very hard on hats. I went through four before I found the perfect hat in Seattle last year – a durable camouflage model whose message complimented my spandex. I wore it for 12,000 miles, only to leave it behind when I returned to Seattle last week. I pedaled one day without a baseball hat while on the lookout for a suitable replacement, and got a wicked headache and sunburned brow as a result. I spotted a perfect replacement – a black McDonald’s visor – and inquired about buying one. Not available for purchase, but the manager gave me one. When I arrived at my host’s that night, he presented me with an official Surly cap “so you don’t have to wear that McDonald’s thing.” Within an hour I went from no hat to two. Such is the luck and life of a bicycle tourist.

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.