WORLDFIRE - Chapter 13, Part III

Abandonment to Providence

After spending the morning in my motel room studying maps online, I settled on an alternate route through the Appalachians. Sometimes progressing forward requires changing course. Instead of continuing east through Kentucky and West Virginia, I would backtrack north into Ohio and proceed east through Pennsylvania, where the terrain was less treacherous. For safety’s sake, I decided to also seek out dedicated bike paths wherever possible the rest of the way. Luckily for me, the first such path was barely a stone’s throw away from the Ohio side of the Purple People Bridge. After re-crossing the Ohio River, I joined the Little Miami Scenic Trail, a paved path extending more than 70 miles in my general direction. Instead of struggling next to speeding cars in the Bluegrass State, I found myself breathing easy next to a peacefully meandering river in the Buckeye State. On a glorious fall day, with the only noise the sound of crunching leaves under my three wheels, I rode for hours in a state that can only be described as bliss. That afternoon, I got a surprise phone call from a group called Ohio Citizen Action thanking me for speaking out against the Rumpke landfill expansion (they had seen the YouTube video I posted), so I did an impromptu phone briefing for their door-to-door canvassing staff while I pedaled.

Around dusk, I pulled over for a quick beer at a trailside outdoor bar called the Little River Cafe, with miles still to go to reach a campground. As I prepared to leave, a guy walked up, introducing himself as Tim Henderson. Saying he had just signed my petition on his phone (my website is prominently displayed on the side of the trike), Tim proceeded to dial up his friend, Parker Buckley, who dialed up another friend, Mike Groeber, who not only offered me a place to sleep that night, but rode six miles down the trail in the dark to escort me back to his house! Like I said, the cycling tribe takes care of its own. When we arrived at Mike’s place in the hip little burg of Yellow Springs, we were met by his wife, Connie Crockett, who wasted no time loading up our plates with mounds of pasta and salad. Sitting at their dining room table, satiated and happy to finally be back in the flow 78 miles closer to DC, I counted the blessings being bestowed upon me by providence.

The next morning, a group of us strolled downtown (everything in picturesque Yellow Springs is mere blocks away), where Parker treated us all to breakfast. Afterwards, I pedaled down to Main Street to gauge local support for the green energy moon shot goal. Standing on the sidewalk next to my canary yellow ambassador wearing my American flag bike jersey, I chatted people up as they strolled by. Not surprisingly, in a town that attracts so many artists and other cultural creatives, almost everyone loved the ten-year 100% renewables goal. One man expressed his support by handing me some cash for the road. When I popped my head into a green goods shop, I encountered yet more buckeye benevolence. The owner was so excited about my mission she donated an upgraded solar charger for my smartphone, before kindly insisting on mailing my old one back to Boulder.

Later, Mike and Connie led me on a bike tour of some beautiful local straw bale homes. The elegance of straw bale homes is their simplicity. In addition to being a widely available sustainable construction material, straw has an insulation value as high as its cost is low. Local homebuilder Andy Holyoke adds a unique “truth window” inside each home he builds so visitors can see the straw behind the otherwise normal-looking stucco walls. The fairy-sized window I opened in one of his houses was like peering into a portal of another dimension of home building.

After visiting the straw bale houses, we rolled over to Ohio’s first passive house that was under construction and nearing completion. The product of decades of German green engineering, passive houses adhere to the most rigorous energy standards in the world. Designed to be airtight and super insulated, a passive house spends only a fraction of what an average home spends on heating and cooling. The unique shape of the house, extra thick walls, super insulated windows and doors, energy efficient appliances, and water saving fixtures all help it use 90% less energy than the typical home. One would think the huge energy savings alone would create a mass market for passive houses in America. But they haven’t caught on yet. Maybe it has something to do with the sleepy-sounding German name. Maybe we should call them active houses instead, since they actively save you so much money.

Mike and Connie then escorted me 12 miles up the wooded, leaf-strewn Little Miami Scenic Trail to the Springfield home of their friend Parker. Along the way, I learned a lot about the trail. Between the two of them, they served on the boards of several bike trail advocacy groups, including Friends of the Little Miami State Park, which did so much to make it possible for people to bike safely from Cincinnati to Springfield and beyond. Telling me that all the region’s car-free adventure avenues “actually go somewhere,” Mike gushed, “I live in the middle of cycling heaven.”

As we approached Springfield on the stunningly gorgeous bikeway, a river of crows suddenly appeared in the sky, and kept going and going and going. Tens of thousands, maybe more, of the shiny black birds glided overhead under a partly cloudy sky, all headed for downtown Springfield. Mike told me they do this every night in the fall, attracted by the “heat island” effect of the city. I had never seen so many crows in my life. Had I the patience and time, I probably could have filmed them for an hour. In Springfield, Mike and Connie handed me off to Parker and his wife, Carol, who treated me to a wonderful meal, a chance to clean my clothes, and the gift of some quiet time to catch up on my blogging. Melting into the melody of Parker’s beautiful dulcimer playing was a fitting end to a mellow 17-mile ride day.

From Springfield, the 53 miles to Columbus were smooth sailing, save a short stretch under construction that created a temporary traffic jam of cars behind me, but the drivers were surprisingly patient, and I was grateful for their politeness. I was even more grateful to all the truckers I had encountered on my journey who I don’t remember ever once passing too close for comfort and who usually gave me a wide berth. Maybe it was the American flag I was flying. Maybe it was the unique craft I was piloting. Whatever the reason, the courtesy was deeply appreciated. Nearing the outskirts of Columbus, I approached a Veterans Memorial buzzing with activity. Seeing it was their annual tribute to World War II veterans, I pulled in to bring some smiles to the wizened faces of some of the Greatest Generation.

Meanwhile, as I was busy pedaling, green energy champion Harvey Wasserman was busy laying the groundwork for my arrival in Columbus. Harvey had arranged for me to stay with his friends Bob Fitrakis and Suzanne Patzer, so I rolled over to their beautiful historic home and got settled in for the night. The next morning, I made a round of media calls before heading to The Ohio State University campus to meet a photographer with the campus newspaper, The Lantern. On my way to Columbus State Community College to meet with Harvey and his students, I had a chance encounter with the head of a local bike advocacy group, Consider Biking, who I met on his bike at a stoplight. Later, talking with Harvey’s students, it was hard to tell which they liked more, the green energy moon shot goal or the space age-looking rocket trike. From the community college, I rolled down to B1 Bicycles, where in another heartwarming display of heartland hospitality, the staff reattached my luggage rack (it had shaken loose after 1,700 miles) at no cost, even throwing in some free energy bars for the road. While in Columbus, I also had the pleasure of interviewing a passionate man, Savvas Sophocleous, who urged us all to get back to the basics. “We’re all humans. It has nothing to do with political parties,” Savvas told me. “I’m just fed up with people not getting the message. And we really need to come down to Earth and really, really love this world and love this Earth, because there’s only one Earth.” I could not agree with Savvas more.

That evening, Harvey took me as his guest to the Columbus Jewish Community Center, where my sore legs were treated to a long hot tub soak, before retiring to his home, where he and his wife, Susan, put me up in their guest room. With no time for breakfast, Harvey and I biked together the next morning under a brooding sky to Capital University so I could sit in on a couple of his classes. He wanted me to speak to his students about my moon shot mission. Harvey had just published Solartopia!, his latest book envisioning a green-powered Earth. Interviewing him with my phone as we pedaled, he told me: “You are a Solartopia pioneer, showing the world how the world can work on renewables, a totally green-powered Earth, as soon as we can possibly get it… stop nuclear power, shut down the fossil fuel industry... the brave renewable world… and you are leading the way.”

I learned some fascinating things in Harvey’s classes that day. Did you know the primary catalyst for the modern-day LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) civil rights movement was the Stonewall rebellion? I didn’t. In 1969, gay men in New York’s Greenwich Village, patrons of a bar called the Stonewall Inn, got tired of getting beaten up during police raids and decided to fight for their rights, sparking days of riots and protests. Within two years of the riots, nearly every major city in the U.S. had a gay rights group. I am not one to advocate violence or rioting, but nor am I a pacifist. I believe in self-defense. I don’t know too many people who would tolerate being brutalized like that. Everyone has a human right to be who they are. It’s what we call freedom. I just hope Harvey’s students someday realize how lucky they were to have such a rare social justice activist as their professor. Credited with coining the phrase “No Nukes” in the early 70s, Harvey has been a tireless leader in the campaign to end nuclear power and usher in a green industrial revolution. He has been on the front lines making things happen.

Class dismissed, I stepped outside to a light drizzle. Amazingly, it was the first time I had to contend with rain. Slipping on my rain jacket, I unrolled the ragtop rain cover from its Velcro sleeve inside of the trike, snapped the cover into place, turned on the rear red light flasher, and snuggled into the cockpit, before shooting across campus. Having skipped breakfast, and needing to fuel up for what looked to be a long day of wet riding, I happened upon an Italian restaurant that looked like a winner. It was. Famished, “Stomach” packed away a large plate of spaghetti and meatballs for breakfast and a medium-sized pizza for lunch, with room to spare.

My first experience riding the rocket trike in the rain was not without its challenges. One of the trike’s design flaws is lack of sufficient ventilation. On hot days, insufficient airflow turned the trike into a sauna. On humid days, like this one, the lack of circulation caused the windshield to fog up from condensation created by the heat radiating off of my body. As a result, my hope of making the town of Zanesville by nightfall was dampened by low visibility, forcing me to have to frequently pull over and wipe down the inside of the windshield with a towel. The rain splatter on the windshield and lack of windshield wipers made visibility even worse. I should not have even been out on the road in such poor riding conditions, but I was anxious to get more miles behind me. The steady rain made for a tough day of pedaling. Fortunately, the going was mostly flat.

Late in the afternoon, I spotted a campground a few miles from Zanesville and pulled in to investigate. Two kids living on the property informed me that it was closed. Pushing on, I made it to a motel on the edge of town right at dark. As if Mother Nature wanted to show me what she could do, the skies opened up just as I pulled into the parking lot. After checking in at the front desk, I rolled the trike into my room, relieved to be out of the drenching deluge. I could hardly believe I had knocked out 49 miles, given the weather. Considering the poor visibility, not only for me but also for the drivers alongside me, I was just happy to have arrived alive.

Shedding my wet clothes in the bathroom, I was startled to discover a puddle of blood on the white tile floor and an oozing red gash on my left ankle. It had to have happened when my foot slipped in my rush to get out of the trike in the downpour. I remember my ankle scraping the sharp edge of one of the floor vents, but I didn’t feel any pain when it happened. Maybe because I couldn’t afford to be sidelined by such an injury, I never did feel any pain. Slapping a Band-Aid onto the wound, I was more concerned about drying out all of my rain-soaked gear. My laptop, secured in a plastic bag, was thankfully bone dry, but the side pockets of my saddlebags were filled with enough water for tadpoles to swim in. I poured the rainwater into the bathtub. Within minutes, everything in the room with an edge had something hanging on it to dry, which it did while I slept.

My wake-up call the next morning was from a local NBC news affiliate (my friend Paul had emailed them in advance of my arrival) requesting an interview. The storm had passed and the sun was shining. It was a perfect day for riding. I rolled down the National Highway to meet the news crew, which resulted in a piece they aired called “2,500 Miles in Hopes of Renewing Energy.” I learned from the reporter that I was just in time for Zanesville’s 52nd annual SERTOMA Pancake Day, an all-you-can-eat community fundraiser held every year to help people who suffer from hearing loss. Not having had breakfast yet, I followed the news van there. The cavernous hall I entered was packed with people, seated at row after row of cafeteria-style tables. When my server, Jim Drake, heard I had biked all the way from Colorado, he tossed a couple of extra flapjacks onto my plate before slipping me a $5 bill for the road. After wolfing down the first stack, I returned for a second, then a third.

With a belly full of flapjacks, I pedaled on to New Concord, the boyhood home of John Glenn, to pay tribute to the intrepid space explorer. The first American astronaut to orbit the Earth, the former United States Senator from Ohio helped unleash the best of the American spirit through his heroic exploits into space, inspiration we can draw on today to achieve a green energy moon shot worthy of our generation. In committing ourselves to this mission, we can come to experience the truth of what Glenn once said: "If there is one thing I’ve learned in my years on this planet, it’s that the happiest and most fulfilled people I’ve known are those who devoted themselves to something bigger and more profound than merely their own self-interest."

From New Concord, I easily made it to Cambridge before dark, where Paul had thankfully located a campground for me. 38 miles from where I started the day, I set up my tent under a grey overcast sky, adding the rain fly for extra insulation. Emerging from my sleeping bag cocoon the next morning, I discovered ice on my windshield for the second time of the trip, but it was the first time I could actually see my breath. Old Man Winter was nipping at my heels.

From the chilly campground, I rolled down the road to a Denny’s for breakfast, where yet more buckeye benevolence awaited me. Upon entering the glass doors, I was instantly warmed by smiles from two friendly waitresses. After hearing about my mission, the restaurant’s manager extended the kindness even further by picking up my breakfast of a veggie omelet, toast, hash browns, more hash browns, oatmeal, and yogurt, washed down with orange juice and copious cups of coffee. The loving-kindness of those three women made me want to cry.

Before leaving town, I did a radio interview and also made a pit stop at The Daily Jeffersonian. Although the day was cloudy and cold, the lack of wind made it comfortable enough pedaling in the trike’s enclosed shell, with my pumping legs serving as my heater. While not as rugged as West Virginia’s Appalachian Mountains, I still had Appalachians to cross, so I was relieved when the day’s predicted rain didn’t materialize. On the steepest inclines, my electric-assist motor provided just enough juice to help me up if I pedaled hard. But with the battery charge only good for so many long hills, I used it sparingly. It was days like this that made the extra fifteen pounds of the rear hub motor and lithium-ion battery pack worth every ounce.

Helping me even more than the electric assist motor were red-tailed hawks #18, #19, and #20 that appeared one after the other as I struggled up the toughest mountains. If not for their reassuring presence, I might have been unnerved by the hulking semis that would loom up in my tiny rearview mirror, patiently follow me on the downhill stretches, then roar past me on the climbs. Mid-day, I encountered something that caused me to laugh out loud, lightening the load even more. It was one of those moments you wished you had someone to share it with. In a front yard was a huge pile of firewood with a handmade “4 SALE” sign on it. Perched atop the woodpile was a large pink stuffed lion. I snapped a picture, wondering how much firewood they expected to sell with such a ferocious looking (not) lion guarding their pile. Toward the end of the day, I did an interview on the side of the road with a reporter from the Harrison News-Herald before limping into the town of Cadiz, my legs begging for relief after 50 grueling miles of mountain climbing. In a campground that felt more like a ghost town, I pitched my tent in the fading light and wolfed down a couple of energy bars for dinner. After slipping the felt liner into my sleeping bag for an extra layer of warmth, I crawled into my soft nest and dropped into a deep slumber.

Rising with the sun, my goal was to make it to Pittsburgh by nightfall. Strolling down to the campground host trailer to pay, I found the office padlocked, with pools of frozen ice on the deck. That explained the place feeling so deserted. Standing there shivering in the cold, I imagined the proprietors to be happily sunning themselves on a beach somewhere in Florida. En route to the town of Steubenville, I passed a welcome sight that is becoming ever more common: a roadside hybrid solar/wind system being used by the Ohio Department of Transportation. But what we really need to be doing is turning those empty grassy medians into solar farms. Before I knew it, I was in the riverside town, where a reporter with the Herald Star had arranged to meet me at a convenience store. Early, I parked in front of the store and went inside to warm up, where two of their kind employees treated me to a hot chocolate on the house. Later, as the reporter and I chatted outside, he seemed surprised by the number of people (more than a dozen) who kept walking up to ask me about my wheels. I wasn’t. The rocket trike had a magnetic quality all its own.

Rolling up to the Ohio River, about to leave the state where I was raised, I did so with a newfound appreciation for its people. From the start of my journey, I had felt forces greater than myself protecting me. Now I knew I was also being provided for, as evidenced by a steady stream of benevolent encounters in the Buckeye State. By putting my trust in the Universe to guide my undertaking, I had released my ego’s vice-like grip on control. By traveling like a pilgrim with no fixed abode, I had surrendered to the divine grace of providence. What I was experiencing felt like a small personal step on a much longer collective journey I believe will decide the fate of our species. This is the journey from ego consciousness to what courageous psychonaut Chris Bache, Youngstown State University Professor Emeritus in Philosophy and Religious Studies, calls soul consciousness: “The ego is the psychological structure that built this world and the ego will never be able to solve the problems that we have generated. It takes the expansion of the soul to really have the depth of courage and the depth of compassion and the depth of insight to really carry us into the creation of the next stage of our planetary evolution.” This journey is one we must begin without delay.

NOTE: The written form of WORLDFIRE is the authoritative version. Any inadvertent errors in transcribing the recordings are mine and mine alone.