I've been listening to country music a lot lately. Not the sort of thing that plays on radio stations across the vast miles of the plains, with station names like The Hawk, or have slogans about being All Country All The Time. I've been listening to Hank Williams and Weylon Jennings and Willie Nelson, and basically anything that has some lapsteel pedal guitar twanging. That specific noise is important to people from plains. The twang of lap steel is the sound of distance. I firmly believe that lap steel is important because it encapsulates the loneliness of long miles.

If you grew up in a place like I grew up, an hours drive into town is not uncommon. Seventy-five miles to a suburb, or at least a town with a mall. The towns around you have a Walmart, and if they are lucky there's still some stores kicking and screaming the last of their lives on the town square. There's a bar along the state highway that gets more business than it should, and there seem to be an inordinate amount of car repair businesses, maybe a Fairway or a Hy-Vee.

I grew up in a world where thunderstorms swept across the sky like buffalo, and the wind would kick up clouds of dust before the snows came. The sky dominated everything. Your life and the lives of all your neighbors was dominated by that sky. You were beholden to this power above you. I am not religious anymore, I don't really believe in god, but I feel the sky and the wind in my bones. When it comes from the south you smell the scents of a thousand fields, and hedgerows of lilacs and I sense that somewhere there's a radio playing in a scrubbed down kitchen with an enameled stove and sink, and outside the kitchen window, which is directly above the sink is the yard that children play in, maybe they are picking dandelions trying to break the all-time world record for number of dandelions picked, or maybe chasing chickens around for the simple and deep pleasure of terrifying a chicken.

This is the life I reconnect with when I ride my bike through Iowa. The homes that I have lost, the climbing trees and the river bottoms, the snow, and the smell of ditches burning in autumn. In the country you feel that there is something bigger than yourself. I think the most sublime moments of my life have been spent on a bicycle feeling the plains roll underneath me, rolling past these small human existential dramas. A farm is an indirect answer to the question of "why am I here? What do I do with my life?" A farm answers that question with work, and it feels good to slice through that on a trail that was once a railroad. It feels good to slice through the farms of Iowa like the wind, like a piece of something that goes onto something bigger, something bigger than a person.

Uphill

This morning I found a new route to work. I am embarrassed to say that I am currently living with my folks. They live near the intersection of Park and Fleur. I have been riding my bike through Gray's Lake each morning. Last night I looked at a map and found that I could take the 7th Street bridge across the river and into downtown. The ride was cold this morning. Thirty-four degrees, but I am finding that the temperature isn't really that bad at all once you get moving. I wear my winter coat, and my helmet is ridiculously hot. I think with some long underwear I could ride my bike on the coldest days of the year. It's like anything, you just have to start doing it.

The ride home has hills, not giants, but there is a point where you reach the top of a hill and turn a corner to find yourself at the bottom of a different hill. There are few things more disheartening than this, not soul shaking or depressing, just a grinding sort of disheartening.

I like going up hills though. There is some masochistic part of me that loves pedaling up a big old hill. I do not like going down hills. Gentle inclines yes, but I do not like steep downhills. I don't feel in control, and any second there could be a crack or a rock that appears in front of my tire and I might crash.

My brakes are just about shot because of this.

Today I started working part time for RAGBRAI.

This is excellence. RAGBRAI is annually the best week of my year. Maybe you don't know what RAGBRAI is. It is a bike ride, across the state of Iowa. It is the largest organized ride of its kind. Lots of other states have their own version, but I'm told by people who have done those rides that RAGBRAI is just the best. On any given day of the week there's roughly twenty thousand people on the ride, and most of them are smiling as if the moment you see them is the best moment of their lives. Strangers ride next to each other and talk, people fall in love. My mother and my step-father met on RAGBRAI. Now granted, I come from a family of cyclists and a lot of our family friends are cyclists, but I've heard a lot of stories like that.

This morning I rode my bicycle downtown to work. I rode through Gray's Lake park, along the trails past the lake and north to the river. A morning ride along empty bike trails, skirting the puddles, pedaling occasionally. I weaved a bobbing trail along the path, enjoying the luxury of the space, the empty trail, the whole park was mine to use.

Today was the first day it has been warm enough to ride this year. On March 1st the temperature in Des Moines was -7, that's Fahrenheit, not Celsius. The weather finally broke though. There's nothing like the first warm day of spring to remind you how nice optimism feels.

You step out of your door and hear birds in the morning, birds are coming back, and the sun is out, and you are wearing less clothes than you've worn in five months. Maybe you're walking or maybe you're driving, but you will undoubtedly see someone jogging on your way to work. Today, the first warm day of spring, is the first day that the act of running around outside doesn't seem insane, in fact it seems like a really nice idea.

Everything is ahead in spring. That is why we talk about love in the context of spring.

I had lunch with some of the guys who I ride with. They're actually the ones who got me the RAGBRAI gig. We were talking about what causes drama on a RAGBRAI team. We decided that it was people who were unprepared to suffer. I think it's a little bit more than that. I think it is people who don't laugh at their own pain. I might be wired differently though. My Dad told me a story about what I was like as an infant. He said "You know when a child is first learning how to walk, they fall down a lot. Usually when they fall down their parent rushes over and the kid just starts screaming and crying. That's what happened with your sister, every time she'd fall down I'd rush over to her and I'd have to calm her down and wipe her eyes and nose. You though, you were the complete opposite. I'd see you fall down, and Michael, you've never fallen over gently, when you fall, you fall hard. I'd rush over to you expecting you to be crying and screaming, and more often than not you'd be sitting there laughing." I like to believe that I understood in a sort of instinctual way that it is fun to be alive and pain is incidental to that. It is certainly incidental to bicycling. I'm two days back in the saddle and my ass hurts already, in a really funny way though.

It Begins, As All Things Do With Failure.

This blog is an experiment. A year long experiment. Basically, I'm going to ride my bicycle and write about it.
 
I have decided to get rid of my car. Her name was Isabel, and we'd been together since high school. She was a 1996 Jeep Cherokee Sport. She was white with red strips accenting the fact that she was sporty. I sold Isabel to a friend for $1.00. She had stopped starting, out of nowhere in early December she just stopped. My friend is handier with cars than I am, and he was and remains sure that there is some profit to be had in her repair.

This experiment was going to be easier. I had intended on living in Chicago. I was going to move there to pursue comedic activities. I may yet. I didn't move this winter for several reasons. Chiefly, I ran out of money. I hadn't saved up enough to weather the amount of time it takes to find an apartment and a job in Chicago. Which seems to be at least more than two months of mostly earnest searching. I liked the people I met in that town I made some really good friends, but I didn't like how many people there were. I get claustrophobic in crowds, my heart starts beating too quickly and I start breathing all wrong, and suddenly I'm sweating and my hands are clammy and... It's strange I know. I'm a big person, a big personality, I perform on stage in front of people a couple of times a week. I don't mind being on stage at all. I just don't like crowds. I feel lost, and I don't know which way to turn, and I don't want to hurt anybody, even though I'm standing still. That is how I feel in crowds.  

So I moved back. Here I am in Des Moines. I've been back for a couple of weeks. I've been living in my parents' basement, and I'm fighting a battle. I want to live in this town, and create fun things with my friends in this town, but I don't want to live here like I have been. I don't want to work in a cubicle. I don't want to commute in a car. I want to be outside and be excited.

I don't think my Mother will understand. She's a really impressive person. She started working as a bank teller sometime shortly after I was born. Now she's in upper management with a Fortune 500 company. She and my Step-Dad work like most people go to church. They firmly believe in the value of being in an office, in the value of stability.

I do to, to a certain extent. It is so comfortable being in an office, three low walls around you, metal desk drawers that every entry-level employee locks at five-thirty, even though there is nothing in them except some envelopes that will never get used, a highlighter and maybe a binder they got in training. The benefits, the health insurance, the stable income, all of these things are desirable.

But right now, not for me. I may come back to those things, maybe sooner than I'd like. Right now though, I am twenty-seven and I haven't been ambitious or adventurous. I keep making safe decisions in my life and I'm tired of it. If there's an idea that our society has sold me, it is that life is supposed to be an adventure. I sure as hell don't feel like I'm on an adventure in a cubicle. This experiment is going to be about more than just not having a car. It is about finding adventure and excitement in my life.