{"id":19845,"date":"2018-10-29T09:22:59","date_gmt":"2018-10-29T13:22:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/?p=19845"},"modified":"2018-10-29T09:22:59","modified_gmt":"2018-10-29T13:22:59","slug":"the-why-behind-the-big-bike-ride","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/archives\/19845","title":{"rendered":"The Why? behind the Big Bike Ride"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>K asked me recently whether I&#8217;d posted anything about the thinking that led me to plan a serious long duration bike tour and I had to confess that I hadn&#8217;t. I&#8217;ll remedy that with a bit of the history of the idea and some of the things I hope to do on the ride.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve thought about going mobile for a long time; I was struck by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.abebooks.com\/book-search\/title\/a-rage-for-falcons\/author\/bodio\/first-edition\/\">Stephen Bodio&#8217;s description<\/a> of prairie\/basin and range grouse hawkers and their Airstreams and tipis back in the mid-80s and the <a href=\"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/archives\/145\">urge to try my hand<\/a> at technomadism has been in my head ever since. Over the past few years, a constellation of factors, personal and societal, brought the desire to a full boil. There was the heart attack that demonstrated conclusively that I&#8217;m not immortal, a different kind of heart issue that led to a period of grieving, and all the thoughts and feelings that accompany watching loved ones in cognitive decline. The larger world doesn&#8217;t supply a lot of hope either. We&#8217;re rushing towards 1.5C\/2.7F global temperature increases within 20 years and a country (hint: the US) that could lead on global warming issues is led by an incompetent kleptocrat, And as a side note, news came in this morning that Brazil has elected the fascist Bolsonaro who, among other things, has vowed to open up the Amazon to commercial exploitation. That&#8217;ll sure help with climate change (true, but not in a desirable direction)! Seems like a good moment to chuck it all and travel a bit. But how to travel? I had 3 options in mind:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Airstream. Pros: comfy! Cons: price (esp when the tow vehicle is factored in), lack of maneuverability.<\/li>\n<li>Van conversion. Similar to the Airstream, but less comfy and more maneuverable.<\/li>\n<li>Bicycle. Pros: cheap! Low\/no carbon! Cons: much smaller load capacity.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The bike option won. I love bike touring &#8211; I think it is one of the very best ways to actually experience the country one moves through. It can be stealthy, low impact and inexpensive. And a well set up bike can handle a huge range of terrain: pavement to singletrack. My body was also a consideration; apparently I am not getting any younger and if I do want to take a big ride, sooner is favored over later.<\/p>\n<p>So a-riding we shall go! The thing I most want to do on the trip is simply to experience the landscape: rocks, rivers, trees, birds, lizards, people, bridges, stars in the night sky and everything else I can wrap my senses around. And I want to learn! I want to pick my high school Spanish back up and get way better at it. I want to write more, and more betterer. \ud83d\ude09 I want to learn the names of unfamiliar things, I want to improve my photography and film making chops: I&#8217;m bringing a camera with macro and tele lenses for wildlife stuff and a couple GoPro Sessions for on the bike vids and kite aerial photography. I&#8217;m going to go fishing &#8211; and swimming! And I&#8217;m going to ride where I want at any pace I feel like. The riding itself is also part of the point. I find it to be meditative and a good way to sort things out in my head. I&#8217;m hoping to spend significant time in the moment &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Flow_(psychology)\">Flow<\/a> for Dummies &#8211; and I want to think about post-ride activities &#8211; how I can help my loved ones survive <a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/116132074\">The Jackpot<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a title=\"Pre-ride. Bundled up.\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/doncoyote\/45502761392\/in\/dateposted\/\" data-flickr-embed=\"true\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/farm2.staticflickr.com\/1938\/45502761392_df65815f73_z.jpg\" alt=\"Pre-ride. Bundled up.\" width=\"640\" height=\"368\" \/><\/a><script async src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re now a couple weeks from departure (I hope). Soon, this space will become a travelogue blog!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>K asked me recently whether I&#8217;d posted anything about the thinking that led me to plan a serious long duration bike tour and I had to confess that I hadn&#8217;t. I&#8217;ll remedy that with a bit of the history of &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/archives\/19845\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[342],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-bike-ride"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdqxx-5a5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19845"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19853,"href":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19845\/revisions\/19853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}