Trip Trap

A show of hands, please: Who remembers the talk of a motor trip around the States that Laree and I planned early in September? Who noticed we were gone? Hello. Can you hear me? It's nice to be back.

We left the gym in Santa Cruz but the muscleheads that we are came along for the ride. Our own enchanting redwood countryside was soon replaced by moody stitches of freeway as we untangled ourselves of the knot that is the sprawl of San Jose and San Francisco. Colorado here we come at the breakneck speed of stop and go traffic, which has come to define the lives of more and more Americans everyday. Give me land, lots of land and the sunny skies above. Don't fence me in.

Through Nevada we raced along at eighty in a straight line in the slow lane for a long time. Why rush? we agreed. We chose an off-ramp with no distinguishing features and pulled into a withering motel that's sign revealed in dim, flickering neon the secret word, "vacancy." Labor Day weekend can be laborious for the travel-weary. "You're in room number thirteen next to those Harleys parked by the staircase," said the red-eyed proprietor, "They don't bite."

Six in the morning our mild-mannered neighbors decided to get a head start on the day. Mimicking the patter of little mice, the black leather band fired up their slumbering creatures and with loving attention gave them lots of time to warm-up. Four bikes with four separate personalities, I noticed. One sputtered and spat on the verge of stalling. No luck there. Another rumbled with a deep, throaty voice. My personal favorite. A third snapped and popped, which gave delight to Laree. And the last beast refused to start at all causing some foul commotion amongst the concerned parties. Thankfully, after exactly sixty-three hefty cranks of the ole kick-start it did, indeed, join the quartet with an unbridled baritone. This particular bike we affectionately named Big Thunder. As if a checkered flag was dropped, the steely four fled an imaginary starting line in the general direction of the scorched highway, Interstate 80. The race was on. See ya.

It wasn't long before we observed our undeniable insistence upon watching the people around us: People Watching, mankind's number one pastime. We assured each other sufficiently that we were not judging those whom we scanned or locked in our vision. Two pairs of objective and dispassionate eyes looked, saw and assessed. What else can mature and intelligent people do? we sincerely proposed. Though we viewed the limitless and immortal horizons, the luring yet unattainable mesas, the rebellious buttes and the grinning gorges in awe; though we were stirred and set afire by the grandness and beauty and mystery of the planet called Earth and left breathless by its vastness and antiquity as, at once, wonder staggered our mind and soul when the land's timid smallness was inevitably sensed, the people about us provoked no such exhilarating emotion. A thing seen can be loved or hated by the beholder; a being, however, needs to be known to be truly weighed by the heart.

Yeah. Yeah. The point, please. The vacation tickled us; the space encouraged us and nature enthralled us. Day after day without a deadline, a responsibility or an obligation freed us. That we missed it all renewed our perspective and hopes. Our muscles relaxed and our minds let go and in the calm our mission surfaced like a red-striped life preserver. Laree and I were alarmed. There's something very wrong in the world we witnessed. It's no secret, no more than the presence of toxins in the air, but it is devastatingly out of control. It's epidemic, it's a disease on its own merits and it is the symptom of a sickness of far greater proportions. It is obesity. It is common over-weightedness. It is simply the self-imprisoning condition of being fat. A conservative estimation: Eight out of ten people are twenty to eighty pounds overweight and the muscles in their arms are small. I want to stand on a box and call out, "People, wake up. You're killing yourself. Why? Stop stuffing yourself with junk!" If they could hear me I'd scream, "Exercise." And, I might need to wipe an errant tear from my eye. It is sad.

Next week I'll elucidate. We need to get busy, my friends. They're slipping.

Your buddy bomber, Dave.

THE TRIP TRAP