The travel guide didn’t mention the current. It said something about seasonally strong swells, that was all. But if you had known about the current, you wouldn’t have picked this place for snorkeling. It was your first time snorkeling. You are not a strong swimmer, you are a little afraid of the water. When you entered, you were taken immediately with the fish, the bright and colorful fish. And you delighted at the speed you could move, in the water, almost with no effort. After three quarters of an hour, you noticed how far you were from the beach, visible only as a thin white line below the palms, visible between swells. That’s when you turned around, into the current.

The effortless gliding sensation that propelled you from the beach has been turned upon itself. You kick and kick, legs burning, lungs burning, breath sucked in salty wet gasps through the snorkel, kicking and kicking, and still you seem barely to move. The reef is 50 feet below you. You find yourself turned perversely against the swell. Every inch a struggle. You cannot stop kicking, cannot stop struggling. To rest is to surrender, to cease even for a heartbeat may mean being overwhelmed. You cannot feel the shore moving towards you. You kick and kick and kick and kick and kick and kick and kick.
You cannnot stop.
You cannot.

on a cool dry weekend afternoon about a year ago
i took the dog to the school
near the house i used to share with my wife
to play frisbee.
lori was shopping for dishes with my mother.
sitka and i were mostly alone on the playground.
my fingers grew cold
reaching for the wet muddy frisbee
over and over and over.
i never quite understood those dishes
they were rectangular.
lori has them now.

in six years i
wrote a master's thesis
visited canada
moved to montana
changed careers
fell in love with a dog
started telling stories like
   "when we were in london..."
went back to telling stories like
   "when i was in london..."

Last week I rode my bike from Clatsop Spit (northwest of Astoria, Oregon) to the California state line south of Brookings. I rode my bike some 392 miles in 7 days. I shot 54 photographs, had 1 flat tire, ate 12 packets of instant oatmeal, and drank an estimated 6 gallons of water. In later installments of Axoplasm -- after I have my pictures from the trip developed -- I’ll go into greater detail. Until then, I offer my packing list, made 2 days before the trip.

Bike

2000 Bianchi Volpe
Blackburn front pannier rack
Topeak Ultimate rear rack
SKS plastic/aluminum fenders
Cat Eye Enduro 2 computer
Headlamp
2 blinky red tail lights

This is a fabulous bike, I can’t complain much at all. It has more than 1500 miles on it, so the problems that developed -- namely cable stretch around the smallest gears that made it difficult to find a good cruising gear, and bad seals on the headset and front hub -- are pretty forgiveable. It’s lowest gears are too aggressive for me; on rides with more punishing ascents than those on Highway 101, I have often wished for a lower granny gear. But on this trip, it was never a problem; the lowest gear was sufficiently powerful.

I didn’t need the tail lights at all, and used the headlamp only as a flashlight in camp.

Panniers

REI keystone panniers (4) -- 2 sizes
small handlebar/map bag

I’m sure there are worse panniers, although probably none cheaper. They held all my stuff and never fell off, so I guess they did the job.

Tools

Topeak road morph pump
needle nose pliers
small vice grip
Topeak alien xs multitool + chain tool
tire levers
pedal wrench/hub spanner

The pump, tire levers, and 2 hex keys on the multitool were the only tools that saw any use. This was my third-largest area of wasted weight. Although if I’d actually needed the needle-nose pliers, I’d have been glad for them.

The Road Morph pump is fantastic, maybe my favorite piece of bike equipment. It has a short hose and a footpad that allows you to stand the pump upright, so you throw your weight into it like a floor pump. Genius.

Parts

spokes
spare inner tube
glueless tire patch kit
brake pads (2)
tri-flow chain lube

Again, if nothing goes wrong, this is wasted weight. But I certainly wouldn’t do without spare spokes or brake pads. I had 1 flat tire, and the glueless patches were useless -- the glue didn’t stick. I’d never used glueless patches and don’t think I will again. In Newport, I bought 2 gluey patch kits.

Clothes

waterproof/breatheable jacket
rain pants
midweight tights
mountain bike shorts
street shorts
padded bike underwear (3 pr)
wool bike socks (3 pr)
short-sleeve polyester t-shirt
long-sleeve polyester midweight shirts (2)
fleece vest
short-finger padded gloves
full-finger insulated gloves
skull cap
Diadora Geko SPD shoes

This was probably the right combination of clothes to bring. I never used the rain pants, even when it rained. Rain pants are really sweat retainers; they’re only useful when it’s really cold and really wet.

The Zoic jacket is the best, most versatile piece of clothing I’ve ever owned. Not only is it waterproof and a good shape for riding, it’s black, so it hides dirt and doesn’t look too goofy.

Camping

Ridge Rest sleep pad
North Face down sleeping bag
Sierra Designs Sphinx 2 tent
Primus Multi-fuel stove
propane/butane gas
2 liter aluminum pot & lid
lid grabber
lexan spoon & fork
insulated coffee mug

I wasted way too much weight here. The tent is far too heavy for a solo rider. It’s big enough for two, and weighs almost 6 pounds. The stove is too heavy as well, but very useful. A 2-liter pot is twice the size a solo rider needs -- so weighs twice as much as necessary, and takes twice as long to heat. I never used the lexan fork. In Newport, I purchased an 8x10 foot plastic tarp, to line my already-too-heavy tent.

Miscellany

Minimalist first-aid kit
reflective triangle
Swiss Army knife
memo pad
ballpoint pen
cheap digital watch
cable & lock
toothpaste
toothbrush
razor
spare contact lenses
eyeglasses
bar soap
camp towel
deodorant

I wasted some weight here. The razor, deodorant, and spare eyeglasses were unnecessary, although I’m sure people in convenience stores were glad for the deodorant. I also purchased a book (Barry Lopez’ Arctic Dreams) in Bandon, which added a little weight as well.

Oregon Coast Bike Ride, Day 7

May 5, 2002

Humbug Mountain State Park to the California Line
59.52 miles
4:46 saddle time
12.5 mph avg. speed.

Weather: Sunny and cool, moderate NW wind; morning rain.

Today, to my vast disappointment, I reach the California state line. This was, by all conventional measures, the best day of my trip. The roads nearly empty of cars; only a little rain, in the morning; mile after gorgeous mile opening in front of me.

By a rough calculation, I have had a hundred hours or so alone inside my head. Quite a lot of stuff is rattling around in there: my sick dog, my failed marriage, my new and not entirely welcome life of retirement. These thoughts are easy. More than a year ago I discovered a thumbnail guide to personal happiness, which has maintained my spirits through the messy stuff of my life. Besides, in my life outside this trip, I have day after day of nothing to do and everything to think about. Many of those 100 hours of thought eventually went into an appreciation of distance, and an assay of authentic experience.

One of the most striking discoveries I made on my trip is that whether I found a particular landscape or vista “beautiful” was almost unrelated to its textbook qualities of beauty. I found, for example, I had little desire to snap photographs of the usual postcard spots. My desire to record this little bike ride was smaller than the experience itself.

See, it’s like this:

The Oregon coast is a Designated Beautiful Place. No, really. Signs remind you constantly, they literally say “Scenic Byway.” On top of that, there are Designated Beautiful Places within the Designated Beautiful Place of the Oregon coast. They are Waysides or Viewpoints or Turnouts. They bear the official stamp of beauty, and have become shrines to a god of landscapes.

But when I’m moving at 13 miles an hour, they are mostly disappointing. By the time I’ve reached a Designated Beautiful Place, I’ve spent the past umpteen minutes riding through it. It’s only at the headlong speed of an automobile that I feel those places are really any different than all the other places along the Oregon Coast.

An interesting psychological effect of calling some places “beautiful” is that you begin to imagine all the other places as “not beautiful.” Ugly, even. It’s a short step then, from thinking of a place as ugly to treating it like an ugly place which has the queer effect of actually making it ugly. This phenomenon is most starkly revealed in the Tillamook area. Frankly, Tillamook has a lot of scenery going for it: it has a bay and rivers, pastures and cows and cute little dairy farms, hills in the distance. It’s as pretty as any Designated Scenic Place in the Willamette Valley. But ask anyone in Portland what the ugliest piece of the Oregon coast is and you’ll probably hear “Tillamook.” And we treat it that way. It is as if the shoulders are actually paved with broken glass. Cars roar by at 70 mph, anxious to get out of the Tillamook hellhole so they can idle for a few minutes at the next Designated Beautiful Place. And there”s nothing uglier, from the outside of a car, than a car.

Are some places really more beautiful than others? Of course. But that doesn’t make the other places ugly, it just makes them harder to appreciate.

In response to the elevation of some landscapes to “beautiful” status, we have evolved a ritual of landscape worship which serves to reduce the actual meaning of the landscape. On the face of it, it”s obvious that driving as fast as possible through a landscape will do nothing for your appreciation of it. After all, it took thousands or millions of years for that landscape to form; as a blur it”s nearly meaningless. But this is what I really mean:

I stopped at nearly every scenic wayside on the coast (if for no other reason than to stretch, take a piss, or eat a powerbar), and at almost every wayside I saw this scene at least once. A car pulls off the road onto the wayside with enormous haste. The passenger side window rolls down, the passenger leans out with a camera, and takes a single photo. The passenger side window rolls up, and the car speeds away. The occupants of that car paid the least possible supplication to the god of landscapes at that particular shrine. They have their token of devotion, and they are on their way to the next Designated Beautiful Place to worship. In their careful adherence to the form of the liturgy, they have completely lost its importance.

The implications of my realization -- and it’s not unique -- could fill and have filled books. Ivan Illich made a career out of it. I could carp endlessly on cultural and psychological and moral implications: the erasure of place, the homogenizing of places, the loss of moment, the ecological disaster.

But really, so what? I won’t get anyone out of an SUV and onto a bike. I only know what I realized:

I would rather experience an ugly thing deeply than a beautiful thing superficially. We have the convenient notion that interesting things are rare and thus rare people experience them. Just as most places become “ugly” because only a few places are “beautiful,” a mere handful of experiences are “authentic” and the rest are commonplace. Taking a stroll on Mt. Hood is nowhere near authentic as climbing Mt. Everest, so why bother doing either? I’ll never climb Mt. Everest but John Krakauer has. I’ll leave profound experiences to the professional and rent the movie about his adventures. Besides, climbing Mt. Hood sounds so difficult; it would be much easier if you could drive there in a car. And either way you reach the top, right?

When we cheapen our experiences, it is economical to gather as many of them as possible. This is why the lazy pilgrims don’t even bother getting out of the car. When the closest we can get to an authentic experience is stopping at a scenic wayside, we need to stop at as many as possible. After all, 20 nickels are the same as four quarters. Rather than seeking to do a few difficult things, we’ll settle for doing lots of easy things. I fear that through our unslakable thirst for authenticity, packing into our lifetimes as many cheap experiences as possible, our lives may lose authenticity entirely.

I have a friend who correctly points out that because so few people live this credo, those of us who do get more of the good stuff for ourselves. When I was backpacking in Yellowstone almost 10 years ago I noticed that, while the highways and parking lots were packed with a hell of humanity, if you walked 100 yards on a trail the crowds dropped to half. If you walked a mile you were probably alone. National Parks have the reputation of being ovecrowded; but geez, Yellowstone is HUGE. A million people could walk around in it at once and barely glimpse each other.

See my gear list