Tag: steinbeck

Learning Minimalism

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
~ Antoine de Saint-Exupe

Paso Robles is smaller than I expected. It’s probably not much more than a mile from the north end of town to the south. It’s a quaint little town, and very bicycle friendly. I get a cozy homecoming sensation when I see my hotel, anticipating a warm shower and soft bed.

The young fellow behind the desk checking me in has a name tag that says “James,” and it turns he’s a cyclist. “Where’d ya ride from?” James asks.

I tell him my route from today, and he smiles and nods. “I’ve done that ride several times, over and back in a day. It’s a great ride, isn’t it?”

Over and back in a day? That’s 150 miles, with steep climbing. This guy’s an animal. I’m tuckered out after doing just half the ride. I try to keep the wimp factor as low as possible when I reply. “Absolutely, a beautiful ride. I’ll bet it’s a sweet day going over and back in a day.”

“Yeah, we usually ride over in the morning, have lunch at Lucia, then ride back after lunch. Steep coming up the Nacimiento Road, eh?”

My eyebrows climb my forehead. “Steep doesn’t start to describe it! I thought I was gonna fall over a couple times.”

His laugh is full of enjoyable nostalgia, his eyes looking off into the distance, as memories of what were probably wonderful rides wash over his face. Looking back at me, he asks, “So, where ya riding tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow’s a really big day for me — I need to end up in Frazier Park.”

I watch the joy of pleasant memories drain from his face, replaced by the agony of remembered pain. “I did that ride once. Hardest day I ever spent on a bicycle. Hell spread out over 150 miles. The winds across the valley spend the day sucking the soul out of you. Then the climb at the end of the day drops the hammer of ultimate despair on any joy left in whatever shell remains.”

Uh, oh. I might have bitten off just a bit more than I can chew. James must have seen the look on my face, and tries to give me some encouragement. “But hey, maybe the winds won’t be bad for you, ya know? But either way, be sure and carry lots of water, because it’s a long way across that valley from here until you can fill your water bottles – something like 75 miles, right?”

I’m not really feeling any better. “Right. Thanks. Yeah, 75 miles.”

Falling back into his front desk persona, he continues, “You’re in room 327, Mr. Hanson. Be sure and let us know if we can get anything for you, and I hope you enjoy your stay with us. Oh, and good luck on your ride tomorrow!”

“Thanks, I appreciate that. Oh, one other thing. James, is there a way I can package up a few things and have you ship them for me?”

After a hot shower, I spread my stuff out on the bed. Sorting through it with more ruthlessness than I had back at home before I started the ride, I build a pile of “nice to have” items, ready to package up and ship back to Colorado. In the pile is my iPad, iPod, tiny speaker, Kindle, 700-lumen headlight, all the chargers associated with this electronic stuff, 4 of my tire tubes (leaving me still with 4), and a few other items. While I don’t put stuff on the scale, it seems to me that I’ve cut my weight in half.

When I packed for the trip, I wanted to stay under 20 pounds. I was able to do this while still including quite a few items that I might find handy. The iPad is only a couple pounds, the Kindle maybe a pound, the light a couple pounds. It all fit inside my 20 pound goal – why not take it?

My culture teaches that it’s good to have everything you might need. Having something is good, being without something is bad. When I was packing, my perspective was, “how much can I take, within my constraints?” Tonight, looking down at the gear spread out on the bed, I was asking myself, “how little do I need to survive?”

Minimalism. Simplicity.

Stuff adds up if you’re not careful. It builds up around you. Getting rid of stuff brings a cleansing sensation. Almost like “stuff” weighs down the soul. It happens to me when I clean stuff out of my house too: a liberating sense, a lightness, after I go through and give away or toss large swaths of stuff.

When I was younger, I was more focused on accumulating than on distributing and cleansing. Now, I find myself constantly reevaluating just how much stuff I want around me. How much clutter can I tolerate before it weighs on my soul? How much flotsam am I willing to wade through to see the world around me clearly? It keeps me from moving along the path. Each “thing” I accumulate attaches a string deep into my heart and soul, connecting me to the thing itself, making continued movement down the path difficult. An addiction to accumulation maybe? A cultural epidemic?

My extra flotsam on this bike ride is one tiny symptom, but it’s all around us. Look at how much of our life’s energy we put into “accumulating wealth.” We advertise how much wealth we’ve accumulated with the homes we live in, the cars we drive, and our pride in our continued pursuit of greater wealth.

But all our wealth weighs us down. It’s too much to try and haul up the steep hills of the back roads of life. Instead, we stay on the flat and busy expanse of the masses, where we don’t need to confront the tough climbs that might be encountered in the wilderness of discovering ourselves.

The sweetest moments in life lay waiting along the steep and winding backroads, hidden among difficult questions and tough issues. Finding them sometimes requires sorting through deep and honest introspection. But these steep and meandering backroads might be one of the best places in life to find glimpses of heaven, and to discover what that means to each of us.

Backlit Oak

Learning minimalism. Wasn’t this a common message among the great sages of the last few thousand years? Who was it that so wisely said it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a wealthy man to find heaven?

🙂

That’s on my mind this evening, as I look with satisfaction at the pile of “stuff” I’m sending back home. The last thing I want is seven or eight extra pounds in my bag that might slow me down if I catch a little glimpse of heaven somewhere along the road.

Pilgrim Wheels Excerpts This post is part of a series of posts, representing excerpts from Pilgrim Wheels, a story of a cycling journey across America. Pilgrim Wheels will be released in early March, let me know if you’re interested in doing an advance review.

A Steep Climb

“Mountains have a way of dealing with overconfidence.”
~ Hermann Buhl

Reaching the detour route, I take a left onto Nacimiento Road, a forest service road that’s been paved. Crossing a cattle grate as I leave the highway, I begin a seven mile climb that combines heavenly views with hellacious climbing.

Big Sur CoastAs the climbing begins, I drop into my lowest possible gear, and I’ll rarely leave that gear for the next hour and 20 minutes. The steep climb is about 3000 feet in about seven miles – about 400 feet a mile, an average of 7 to 8 percent. Maybe only 4 to 5 percent in some places, balanced by many places at 11 to 12 percent, a couple places at 16 to 18 percent. The U.S. interstate highway system allows a maximum grade of 6 percent. A 7 to 8 percent grade on a highway is considered dangerous; 9 percent is rarely encountered anywhere.

Pedaling up an 11 to 12 percent grade is gut-wrenching, even without the extra touring weight on the bike. At 16 percent, it’s all I can do to keep moving. The climb slaps some of the swagger right out of me, and has me giving serious consideration to those “nice to have” items in my pack. Tomorrow I have a VERY long day of riding, with climbing at the end of the day. Just how “nice” are those extra ounces and pounds I have in my pack?

While pouring my focus into the work of climbing, I also need to keep a little attention aimed at the road ahead and behind. For most of the climb, it would be impossible for two cars to pass each other at speed. The road’s just too narrow. When two cars pass, one needs to pull over as far as they can, while the other passes slowly. The constant tight turns and switchbacks limit the opportunity for even that sort of passing.

Notwithstanding the steep grade and narrow road, the beauty of the ride up the west slope of the Coastal Range is hard to express. The views back down onto the coast as I climb are stunning. Time after time, the road makes a sharp switch out on a ledge that gives me a view either north or south along the rugged coastline that takes my breath away. At one point, I’m stopped and admiring the view, eating a banana, when a convertible sports car steams past me headed up the hill. The driver is one of the blonde Beautiful People, sitting so low in the seat she can barely see over the hood. She waves at me as she passes, exclaiming, “Isn’t this just so beautiful?!”

Big Sur Coast

Well, yes it is. From the top of this bicycle, with an unlimited view and the time to take it all in safely, it’s beautiful indeed.

In those spots where the road tucks back into the mountainside, the landscape changes suddenly to a deeply forested thicket with towering redwoods. The transition from the openness of the mountainside to the depth of the thickets is usually marked by a zone of smaller trees covered in hanging lichens.
The grade gets much easier toward the top, but the temperature has dropped dramatically. I stop several times to enjoy wide vistas with views that seem to go forever back down the mountains and across the Pacific, but the stops are short as the moist air cools me rapidly. At the top of the climb, the road is deep into a forest, the air itself is quite cool, and I’m chilling down even faster. I stop, put on my jacket, and take in some fluid and calories.

Descending is downright cold, and I’m shivering hard. After a few miles of descending through forest, the landscape changes quickly and the temperature climbs. In less than five miles, I’m in a dry, grassy savannah much like my home on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado.
Nacimiento Road transitions into Fort Hunter-Liggett as the descent flattens out. The traffic is still extremely light, and I can only imagine how light the traffic would be without the road closure back on the coast. A warm tailwind follows me out of the mountains, painting a big smile across on my face.
Winding my way through broad oak savannah, I marvel at the massive old valley oaks spread thinly across the plain. Giant spreading trees, some of them 600 years old, they have massive trunks and beautifully shaped crowns. I stop to enjoy the silence and beauty of the place, leaning my bike against the side of one of these old Ents, and my back against the other side.

Old Backlit OakThis old tree has called this grassy plain home for hundreds of years. Basking in the bright sun, soaking up nutrients from the ground, it’s grown to this nobility at a pace I can’t comprehend. It welcomes me under its shade, and I wonder what other folks looked like and sounded like who might have shared this shade in the past, over the hundreds of years that this old graybeard has been growing in this spot, quietly waiting for me.

I’m in Steinbeck country now, broad grassy pastures with scattered ancient trees. I imagine Samuel Hamilton jostling down the road toward me in a wagon, Lee sitting beside me in the shade. A small breeze whispers through the grass close to me as I lay against the old oak tree, a touch of sun making its way through the branches now and then to warm me, the sea of short prairie grass stretching out for several hundred yards between this tree and the next. Relaxation saturates my body as my mind brims with contentment. Soft savannah sounds fade into the distance as I doze up to the edge of a nap.

Pilgrim Wheels Excerpts This post is part of a series of posts, representing excerpts from Pilgrim Wheels, a story of a cycling journey across America. Pilgrim Wheels will be released in early March, let me know if you’re interested in doing an advance review.