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DRAFT
Voyage to Mordor
A Bike Ride to Crawford Texas
and other matters
Dedicated to Sufi-Quaker Johnny Wolf and the Crawford Peace House
FALL 2002- Chinese masses invaded the Texas heartland, a cold war nightmare gone wrong, seeing how they were pacifists. Pressing for Chinese human rights, some 3000 Falun Gong protestors came to the town by the ranch where one unelected despot was hosting his unelected counterpart. In solidarity, two of us rode bikes 200km from Austin. Ed Sapir II rode a circus tall-bike into mud, rain, and headwinds. Yo, Sancho followed on a streamlined nomad bike, guide and scribe.
Three days before, in light rain, we left Biosquat, laden like yaks, raiding Bike not Bombs along the way for parts and to show off a bit. BnB Ed and AJ were respectful, if not in awe. Beyond Austin, 30 miles out, my left thigh cramped up like a frozen tuna. I wobbled about, laughing in agony, and it went away. The first night we stealth camped deep in a "biopreserve" (why the cattle?) at a secret lake (L. Granger), hefting the fully loaded bikes over barbed wire, riding a mile of mud to a most isolated spot, roaring sea-shell quiet. Stars came out so the untested mutant rain flys stayed packed. It stormed at dawn. We cowered under poly until it stopped then rode hard for Temple, dirty and tired, to recover instantly at my brother's by watching movies over pizza. The Crawford Sheriff was on the tube saying how ready they were for folks like us. Next morning we rode out for Crawford in a headwind, a cold driving drizzle.
My bike had evolved steadily on the road the previous two years into a mutant cross-continent torpedo sporting puppetismo aero-fairings, hedonic trash worship survival gear, featherweight multitool circus stuff, video, solar electricity, etc. Ed’s bike was a pig, his first tall bike, welded in my shop. His excellent new mutant was unfinished so the old vet had to do. On windage, I had counseled against the bike. It made it the trip anyway. My low drag homebrew super bike and all ultralight DIY hardware matched Ed (our gross weight was equivalent, as I carried special cargoes- video gear, hammock shelter, famine resistant gut) on a windless day. But into a gusty 20 knots Ed was in trouble, with four times the air resistance. Downhill I tucked to plummet, then coasted well uphill, while Ed ground wearily against that chill wet wind. As the NW head winds stiffened I assumed upwind position, with Ed to the SE, his lower bike drafting my wind shadow.
Copters banked on us outside Crawford. A clunky old police car approached and slowed. “Hi Chief” I sang out and waved, to forestall abuse. His face said “How did some road freak ID him?". I hadn't just seen him hamming Temple TV. I had banged my search engine like a pinball machine and found that previous activists had put up all kinds of info: anecdotes, tips, maps, photos, etc. Security and dissent play a chess game of clashing folk science out in the Texas hinterland. Press hacks miss the story here. The game board is fine rolling country with wooded small rivers and streams cutting thru. The highways are the best in the world, bikes are a culture shock, uneasily tolerated. As the Chief studied our clown rigs he made a “now I seen it all” smile. He hooked back to town to await natural progress. Meanwhile my Pop had driven down to Crawford from Granbury to protest the Iraq war fever, and met us at the edge of town and took our picture under the city limit sign. I'll put that picture here when I get it.
The day before ~300 black poverty protesters hopped fence and made it onto the ranch, a first for humanity. A Crawford friend told us of huge tractor trailer paddy wagons poised to haul folks like a convoy of chicken trucks. Carl Rove or his temp aborted any actual arrests, to the bitter grief of certain law enforcement and military types. They'll evoke Nazi trains if they ever fill those wagons. In truth, any group protesting in Crawford is far less dangerous than the prez. Falun's mass meditations had a mild Quaker meeting vibe.
We rode in too late for the light farce of Citizens for a Sound Economy driving in, getting waved through the police barricades (set up "to protect (contain) protesters") to dimly discover that Falun Gong was protesting the Red Chinese Tyrant, not ours. These folks are reliably foggy on any issue.
Our mission went beyond protesting human rights violations by both countries. We were scouting a leg of the Great Migration Trail, an emergent network of biosquats (ecorancherias) and bike routes from New Mexico/Colorado in the summer to deep Mexico and beyond in the winter, migrating in endless spring tailwinds. Bike circus activists would also do actions all along the way, protesting military-prison-industrial facilities, migrant rights and other issues, particularly in places like Crawford, and the border. Insecurity inquisitors should note that we are nonviolent, transparent, free, with excellent legal representation, however sinister a horde of vegan pacifists might appear from behind the wheel of your SUV. The sad irony is that we are privileged, much less likely to be harassed, free to cross borders, compared to the starved hunted Mexicans who seek paid work.
Read about the Cycles of Nonviolence ride to Crawford.
Nomadic Tech Notes
This trip shook down lots of new gear and protocols. A big success was the improved Trash Worship Hammock, a heavenly pendulum made from poly lines and plastic fencing, boldly cut and strung on a diagonal, so as to lie fully flat as across a big Mayan, yet can hang short, ten foot gap or less. It only took two hours to make at half the weight of an equivalent Mayan. I am heir to the Huastecan (Northern Mayan) tradition of invention. The downside is bulk, the fencing is stiff and rolls up big. Fortunately there is plenty of volume in a faired bike. I lean the bike against the tree and step up on the top tube to tie the hammock high and hang cargo bags at hand from the sides above the wet ground. If surrounded by trees in a low area, I will stay in the hammock during lightning hoping for dielectric protective effect. In bad lightning I might sit up a bit to shift a jolt away from my heart. If this works I might still be fried in flash fire and steam as the currents raged over the wet fly. I could cover my face in the bedding. But to banish fear a little ethanol is a wonderful thing. Use it as an antiseptic, disinfectant, preservative, fuel, and grog base. Another hammock trick is to rig a side swing-line; a tiny rhythmic tug creates a glorious rock-a-bye breeze, cooling the human body more efficiently than a fan.
The Candle Stove took 15 minutes for two small hot breakfasts, in wind and wet, using a half inch of candle. It consists of a featherweight hanging 12 oz. cook pot with tight lid made from a giant beer can. The bottom is stove paint black to absorb IR that bright aluminum reflects. The pot has a piano wire handle and hangs from any branch or pole. It is lowered into a windscreen made of a three liter soda bottle, top and bottom removed. The top’s slant cut, tall side upwind. An aluminum foil reflector/ firewall is curled inside two thirds, shedding lots of light into the camp while cooking. Short candle stubs in sand or dirt or tea candles are used below the pot, taking care to get the height just above the flame tip. The concave pot bottom nicely transfers heat from the flame, the close fitted foil skirt and clear plastic windscreen, cut from a 2 liter bottle, keep heat from wafting away. The secret is to use food ready at first boil, but bring it only to pasteurizing temp (~160) for a few minutes, letting it cook while cooling slowly (lid and cloth wrap) or diluting with raw ingredients to eating temp (~120). The stove is a bit slow so your rhythm and multitasking gracefully adapts. It will boil but why burn up candle if avoidable? Socially one can prepare dish after dish, hot drinks, etc. over an evening, with a cheery light. A candidate for the world’s lightest most fuel efficient stove/lantern.
Anti-Sleep Deprivation- Nomadic bike activists keep no-trace camps, pick up preexisting litter, noting conditions, caretaking. In the US there is a public sleeping legal crisis, so one must Stealth Camp by melting into bushes late and leaving early. Tricks abound- Latin American village soccer fields, small airports, rural bridges, biopreserves, shallow camps on plains, camo, spread camps, etc.
The new generation White LEDs shined. Three on my helmet allow me to zing distant drivers or scan terrain by aiming my head. A clip LED shines on the track ahead. Its bluer and dimmer than my old krypton, but higher quality smoother beam to scan pavement and better night vision, four times the battery life- while saving a pound in batteries (incl. spares).
The Furry Dog Survival Suit made its first trip, but was only used in Crawford for my underdog personae.
Litter Bale Tech- temp shelter/flotation/etc. from litter, then dispose properly.
Dinosaur of the Future
30 miles southwest of Fort Worth, Pecan Plantation is a vast working nut farm overlaid by a sprawling gated sim-city. This is a surrealist promised-land of McMansions in a microfascist utopia. The Brazos river, tamed upstream by a Grandbury dam makes a big loop around the enclave, a giant moat, for real. I got family there, so I ride my bike in, evading security by a special route, out of inclination, a few times a year, incidentally riding thru Crawford on the way.
Ironic that the noble native pecan is a key to sustainable bioregionalism in Central Texas. Here are 10,000 acres of protein & omega 3 trees planted on a vast grid, alas, too far apart for my hammock, anywhere, but enough to feed a Woodstock of grateful vegans or Amerinds, or the resident white folk, if they deigned to be fed by their own backyards. And the shade! Unused in summer, then the leaves drop for an unnoticed winter brightness.
This is an aerotropia, aviation second only to golf as a community focus. Many homes have airplane hangers, entire aircraft collections shoehorned in some. A network of taxiways cuts across trees and roads to a private airport. This aviation class is, on the whole, highly skilled, technically very self reliant, but square.
Neutron bombed serenity prevails, save the odd SUV, private plane, or golf cart. Deer and turkeys loiter listlessly under the trees as in a zoo. The big houses could hold entire clans, but seem vacant. The sandy red soil is fertile if compost dressed, with Brazos river water to grow anything, but robbed from nature for lawns. The trees don’t need irrigation or pesticides, but folks wage holy war on fire ants, and endless similar fears. They poison with self-righteous relief.
Its an inferiorizing landscape for the Latino worker underclass at the Big-House Plantation. Illegal humans pile into contractor pick-ups to daily pass security and do all the outdoor jobs around the big houses they built. The maids within are invisible nuns. The normal conviviality of Mexican culture is as constrained as the dogs around here. INS routinely raids the rampant home construction, but only the roofers get caught easily, creating a trade shortage. I have never seen a black person about.
For the ruling class its a world of high hedonic comfort and motorized mobility, aviation in particular. The native planted organic edible landscape barely registers. It merely stands in for a despised natural landscape. High resource consumption, sedentarism, obesity, wage slavery, social isolation, monoculturalism, degraded ecology, lusterless education, blinkered ideologies, etc.; all taboo topics, unmentioned, little thought of.
The many electric golf carts could be solar retrofitted, nuts eaten more, meat less, and the McMansions done over as neohippy housing coops, food gardens everywhere. The community might develop intensity along creative loving lines; class and ethnic insecurity phased out and the old river become the social focus.
Radical Encuentro- Spring 2002
What a long first day out of Granbury. With no sun compass, I wind steered along county roads not on my highway map. These roads would go 8k or so out, on course, and loop back maddeningly near the start. I was repeatedly fooled (lesson- get right maps). A tad deconditioned on a loaded bike, I was tired and glad to camp at the autogiro fly-in at Waxahachee, of nonsupercollider fame (where a childhood mentor, Andy Keech, was lanching his successful world record altitude attempt). Small airports are valuable camping places for bike nomads, as aviation folk share nomadic values and there's lots of semi public land and infrastructure around. This was even more; a real party, karioke notwithstanding. The next day I got to the Encuentro, the only radical on a bike, for shame.
These events are instant utopias, the finest of times socially, with so many new friends in a loving atmosphere, so much new to learn, camping, great vegan food, all outdoors, plus a bit of excitement in uncovering and booting a pair of police infiltrators by running their plates on the net to a Dallas anti gang undercover unit. Surveillance vans patrolled around the ranch to no apparent effect. The Fort Worth paper denounced us as "ecoterrorists", a stupid lie in this heartland of mindless consumerism, perpetual war economy, and ecobrutality.
After the enquentro many folks went to protest at the annual Exxon-Mobil shareholders meeting in Dallas. Corporate planners start controversial events as early as practical, confident most hardcore activists are late sleepers. So the protesters must party all night, perfecting banners and props, because once they fall asleep, forget it. Hard core activists are not the ultimate party animals. They could rise early but no one has the requisite instrument of oppression- an alarm clock. The counter-protesters, who begin to stir hours before dawn, still beat us there.
Citizens for a Sound Economy suffer under a confused oppositional identity to eco-action, as if the world desperately needed to liberate corporate and govt. power from the menace of veggie pacifists. Aggie students, the youth wing of this old crowd, shouted in rage. I was finally able to discuss climate change and environmental degradation by reminding them that if their science regarding oil use was as flawed as the engineering of their tragic bonfire (itself a symbol of heedless CO2 emission). In neither case are deaths worth it. Anger faded into grief, they were cordial after that, we had some consensus.
Nothing could tame a hate contorted old lady, her life savings plausibly in Exxon stock, spitting demented insults on the young who chanted love to her. Oh, the parading obese, hippo-crits carrying signs equating the SUV with America's essence. They shouted ancient slogans, "Get a bath!" (most activists are cleaner than cats). "You're on Castro's payroll!", as if Fidel, not Exxon, had oil money to burn, or anyone thought him relevant. Some said we should leave the country if we didn't like things, as if one should flee what needs healing. These folks spent the sixties in the twenties (& now their eighties in the fifties).
A Glorious Bike Raid on SEE-1 Ecovillage
As a child I learned of the great Fourier, mathematician. Only decades alter did I perceive, behind the nerd, like an eclipsed antiplanet, a quirkier Charles Fourier, the dreamer utopian socialist, who now inspires my new hobby of raiding ecovillages. Charlie's most controversial prediction was that the oceans would someday evolve into a sort of lemonade. Engels, reviewing the early socialists, defended Charlie, setting him above the grim philosophers who promised no lemonade. Dostoyevsky underwent a mock execution and Siberian prison sentence for being part of a Fourierist circle. It will take a fearless planetary scientist to admit Fourier may be right, we have so little idea how geochemical evolution will proceed over billions of years. And yet there is a prediction that the oceans will acidify if not sweeten.
A-n-y-hoo, here's the glorious raid saga-
There is a strange space-oriented "ecovillage" east of Austin called SEE-1 (Space Environments Ecovillage). Two ex-militaries and a dog live there. "Sarge" is a retired Harvard trained military doctor, sharp, but boneheaded. "Gomer" is a young screen potato that services the website. Dallas Morning News cruelly skewered them; they deserve somewhat better. They are the imploded remnant of a worldwide space movement inspired by a body builder turned space theorist who dumped his fans as too flakey when they failed to conjure up a nifty sci-fi sea colony.
So, last year, drunk on fourierism, I "raided" them on bike, some 50 km. from Biosquat. We talked about our parallel experience and disagreed on most things. We share a bit of futurism, but little else. They have a few interesting projects in process- his & his adult kiddie pools and an aquaculture-hydroponic loop. The structures are typical trailers with satellite TV with the pathetic "space systems" outside. A true ecovillage is so hard to fly. I offered much advice, but they weren't buying. Next day they ran me off, but not before I scored booty- the doomed sea colony tee-shirt and balked at fee for a dog shit filled "guest room" (I camped out).
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