A couple of weeks ago, I began to examine the oppressive idea that, “You can’t just do that.” Whatever that is. Then the notes and memories came flooding in about people who can, do, and have just done that. The common theme among everyone who I talk to and behind all of my best days is the agency required; that we simply decide when we’re going to do something (or not), that ultimately, by dwelling just long enough on a goal or something that we don’t want to happen, the desire or fear will drive us to act in spite of inertia or headaches or depression or anything else.
I recently became aware of the improbable story of Amanda Coker. It is noteworthy in several ways. Firstly, she just accomplished something that is radically difficult to convey in words: she rode her bike 86,000 miles in a single year. Fewer than 365 days, in fact. She smashed the previous record by over ten thousand miles. Which, by the way, is about the furthest I’ve ever ridden in a single year, and that was one in which I was sacrificing lots of things to squeeze in more time on my bike. If you click the above link, you’ll find that she often puts in two and three hundred miles in a day, an amount that comes closer to my current monthly total.
Last night, while sitting at the very pizza place that I wrote about here a few months ago, I read a story about a treasure ship that’s supposedly lost somewhere in the California desert. I chowed down on pizza after a long day spent in the Ozarks while Hank watched me through the windshield of my car and the front window of the restaurant, feeling quite sublime about the fact that I was back in Heber Springs some five months later after simply deciding I wanted to be here.
We’re a bit over a week into the New Year, and it’s been a whirlwind so far. The post I published on the precipice of 2017 was my most popular ever by far, which was encouraging and enlightening. I got the cast off my hand, rendering me the most physically free and able I’ve been since June 25th. I officially have zero corporate copywriting obligations for the first time in three-plus years thanks to a hilariously pedantic ‘layoff’ by my last remaining freelance client. Hank joined my family and has dramatically altered my life for the better.
At this point I’ve fallen so far off the chronology train that this post is out of left field, but I figured I’d pick up where the last road trip post left off. I’m challenging myself to actually chronicle this trip before too much time passes/I hit the road again, so here we go!
It appears that somehow my piece on Petrolicious is climbing its way back into the ranks of the ‘most popular’ stories this week, which is a huge encouragement in a somewhat grim time and certainly motivation to write something relevant for all the visitors to this site expecting to see lots more (car-related) content. Above all, it’s been a treat to meet, talk to, and hear from people who share some slice or another of this crazy journey. Last week, I sat down for coffee with Ty and Brock, filmmakers from Portland who were in Austin for a commercial shoot and wanted to catch up with any aircooled Porsche people they could find in town. What followed was several hours’ conversation on life and the experiential side of cars, with precious little attention to technical details or highbrow esoterica. It was a conversation of finding common ground and bringing new stories and perspectives to the table.
I’ve been tracking the car-related nitty gritty stuff on a couple of car forums that many of ya’ll probably don’t visit. For those who are interested in what all the time in between these snippets that get turned into stories are like, I’ve aggregated all those posts to-date below. Please forgive any repetition relative to my website; it’s hard keeping track of what I’ve said where!
On June 25th, I was t-boned by a car while leading my cycling team’s Saturday morning ride. I collapsed twice after the accident, and the second time I was certain I wasn’t waking up. That experience and all of the continued issues recovering from a head and neck injury led me to rejigger my priorities and bucket list a little, which leads us to everything that’s happening below…
I bought a 1984 Carrera on Bring a Trailer last month, and the details of that can be found in my Bring a Trailer Success Story.
Much has been made of the America of yore slowly dying on the vine. This topic is as timely as ever lately as our candidates have masqueraded around the country striving to convince different demographics that they’ve been systematically oppressed and victimized in the name of economy or efficiency, that interstates and free trade are to blame for their feelings of malaise.
I was stricken by a reply to my initial Success Story on Bring a Trailer that lamented, “At 52 I am too young to have made some of these journeys back when On the Road was something you could really live without pop-up fast food franchises, endless freeways, and chain motels.” I had to think long and hard about this claim, because I often find that the more we submit ourselves to what’s been canonized as Kerouac-ian kismet, the more we find that such a world is more a state of mind than a hard and fast reality. And states of mind are devilishly difficult to suppress.
There is a popular movement in the urban epicenters of hip in this country that romanticizes the great outdoors. Like any movement that starts with genuine trailblazers, it gives way to a wider swath that imitates the most outwardly visible traits of those purveyors of cool while entirely missing the point. In this case, our latest infatuation with rugged individualism spawned the lumbersexual. Someone who looks utterly prepared to fell a tree and roast a salmon over an open fire he started without a lighter or matches, only those activities might scratch his boots or tear his designer waxed canvas coat.
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