Geoff Drake is former editor of VeloNews and Bicycling magazines. He’s written two books, been widely published in bicycle and motorcycle mags, and is a social media consultant.
Genius at work at the #QuailMotorcycleGathering: Robert Egger, Specialized Bicycles design guru, is up to his old tricks. These e-bikes were awesome. Good to see him again after a few years!
This year, seeking to live a greener lifestyle—and save some green—I purchased an electric vehicle (EV). In addition to the obvious bragging rights associated with my new carbon-free lifestyle, it’s allowed me to drive disdainfully past gas stations and earn the delicious scorn of Silicon Valley warriors as I cruise past solo in the HOV lane.
But there’s more. It’s possible that I’ve joined a cult. I’m more than willing to bore anyone who will listen with chatter about lithium-ion batteries, regenerative braking, torque curves, Level 2 chargers and our woefully inadequate urban infrastructure. I follow EV-related Facebook pages and read EV forums. I’m even helping mount a campaign for chargers at my workplace.
My daughter thinks I’m a nerd, and indeed, I probably am. If you are one of the people who’s had to listen to me during this period, I’m sorry.
The fact is, I’ve become an annoying EV evangelist. And this is my story....
How did I get here, anyway? After all, I’ve always liked internal combustion, and have owned a succession of BMW cars and motorcycles that I’ve been known to pilot at, ahem, supra-legal speeds. I like being green. But I also happen to like G forces.
Most EVs, on the other hand, are not known for being rapid. Let’s just say that my Chevy Volt’s acceleration is, well, underwhelming. It comes off the line okay when you press the so-called gas pedal. But at freeway speeds, the laws of physics overwhelm the little car, and it pretty much gets left for dead by anything north of a Ford Fiesta.
This isn’t necessarily a reflection of the motor’s power. With EVs, performance is in the hands of the pointy-headed guy who wrote the software—not the mechanic. The Volt can go 100 mph, but to use an unsavory metaphor, this is a little like premature ejaculation. It’s all over in one great, emotional outburst.
But any deficiencies in the speed department are compensated for by this: the quiet. The Volt emits a whir that’s akin to air passing through pursed lips, or a ceiling fan spinning overhead. Could this be the sound of someone doing the right thing for the environment?
You need to be a bit of a geek to do this in the first place. Skeptics are correct to point out that the financial benefits of EVs, if there are any, are years away, given the amortization of a $35,000 vehicle. If thrift was all that mattered, I would have kept my 1998 BMW with 140,000 miles on the clock. Or bought a Kia.
Fortunately, the blow is softened by Uncle Sam, who bestows his largesse in the form of a $7,500 tax break. And California, being the center of the green cosmos, chips in a refund to the tune of $1,500. The state also sends me four hideous green stickers that allow me to ride solo in the carpool lane, which I view as a sort of absolution from the sin of driving.
Even though it isn’t. Naysayers will tell you that EVs are not without environmental cost—and of course, they are right. Charging an EV requires electricity. Electricity comes from power plants. Power plants emit CO2. Duh.
Still, the average EV costs about three cents per mile. And their widespread use might just help us avoid skirmishes with autocratic, oil-rich nations in far-off deserts. ICEs (internal combustion engines, as they are disdainfully referred to), bestow none of these benefits.
Okay, so EVs might be characterized as a kind of social good. But are they also real cars, which might even be fun to take on a road trip, not just in the carpool lane at 5 p.m., going from someplace to someplace else? My wife and I decide to find out. Our goal: an EV tour, up the California coast, using (hopefully) only electrons.
Who goes on a trip where your daily range is within the capability of the average bicyclist? We do. Plus, we’re proving a point here, so lay off.
Planning an EV tour starts with the many smartphone apps that show, in real time, where chargers are in your area (complete with photos and snarky reviews). Flush with optimism about our new project, I begin clicking on the icons along our planned route. It’s an amazing resource, but at first glance it looks like our journey will be confined to our own county, requiring us to sleep at home every night and dine at the same restaurants we have enjoyed for the past 25 years. In other words, there are no chargers in places you would actually want to go.
But wait! There’s a free charger at the Santa Clara Valley Water District, and the Hartnell College gym parking lot. There’s also the Monterey Bay Pollution Control District, the Marina Walgreens…you get the picture. Just think: while the car charges, we could spend an idyllic four hours combing the streets of Fresno, capped off with dinner at Denny’s!
Okay, if I want my wife to accompany me (and I do), we’ll need to find more sumptuous accommodations than the parking lot of the Lost Hills RV Park.
At the other end of the scale we have the Ritz-Carlton Half Moon Bay ($600 per night), or the Hyatt Carmel Highlands ($500 per night). Both have chargers, but that kind of defeats the purpose, doesn’t it? What was designed as a vacation for the eco-conscious proletariat has suddenly become a champagne tour with environmental undertones. We may be green, but we are not awash in green. Frankly, this is why we drive a Volt, and not a Tesla.
Eventually, we settle on this: we will travel north, to the Golden Gate; over Mt. Tamalpais to West Marin County; and further north, to Bodega Bay, where there happens to be a charger at a beach park. Our first stop is Costanoa, a lodge near Pescadero. They don’t actually have a dedicated charger, but are willing to let us plug into a 120V outlet for eight hours (rather than the four hours required for a 240V charger). I’ve never used the “slow” charger before (I have 240V at home), and I picture us sitting in lawn chairs next to the power outlet, waiting for our car to be cooked, like a turkey on Thanksgiving. Or worse—sending the entire campground into darkness with a blown circuit breaker.
But there is no such drama. As we walk by our car in the darkness, on our way back from dinner, we see the reassuring green light on the dash, indicating that juice is flowing in the right direction. That night, in our rustic tent cabin, we are treated to a lovely symphony, with the patter of rain on the canvas, and waves in the distance. As I sleep, I am dreaming of electrons, snaking their way through the tiny cord (at someone else’s expense), and into my lithium-ion battery. Oh joyful image!
On the second day we head north to San Francisco, where we intend to tour the Presidio. It doesn’t hurt that the grounds are a veritable Valhalla for EVs, with a neat row of five chargers awaiting us. There is a satisfying click as we engage the huge, pistol-like plug into the car. This is the sound of someone doing the right thing for the environment. Or so we like to think, anyway.
By the time we’re ready to head across the Golden Gate, we’ve accumulated a precious 20 miles of range. But we have a mountain to go over to our destination in West Marin County. As we climb the switchbacks, we watch as the available miles drop precipitously. We’re down to four at the summit. Electric cars don’t like hills, or headwinds.
But then the fun begins: Like all electric cars (and hybrids), the Volt uses regenerative braking to charge the battery when coasting. After cresting the summit, we begin reacquiring miles. It’s a fun, celebratory game as we watch the numbers change, like a clock running in reverse, and we arrive at our destination in West Marin with one mile to spare. It’s like putting gravity itself in the tank.
Of course, the penalty for miscalculation is less severe in my case, as the owner of a Chevy Volt. Here’s why: once you’ve burned through the 40-mile electric range, a small gas engine comes on, in an act of grace and mercy, to save you from roadside misadventures, hitchhiking, and being pillaged by passers-by in the fashion of Mad Max.
Things are different with a “pure” EV. With those, when you’re out, you’re out, leading to the dread “range anxiety.” While living entirely on battery power has its appeals, this is not one of them.
Then there are $70,000 Tesla S models, which are in another league entirely, with a pure electric range of more than 300 miles. Owners can get most of the way to LA before they have to be inconvenienced with a night in the nearest Ritz-Carlton. Not only that, but our well-moneyed brethren have access to their own network of free “superchargers,” which are incompatible with Volts, Nissan Leafs, Fiats, and other, more pedestrian EVs owned by us mouth-breathers.
Don’t worry. I’m not jealous or anything.
Having made it to West Marin, I look at the app, and one place shines like a beacon along the north coast: Doran State Beach in Bodega Bay. We hear the electrons are good there, and we aim to get some.
Turns out, the charger is free, and we use the opportunity for a great beach hike. This is another thing about EVs: chasing electrons can lead to some fortuitous choices.
And so it is on the last day of our trip. Our plan is to drive to Muir Woods, after divining that the famed tourist trap has a charger.Unfortunately, when we arrive, we discover the parking lot is overflowing, due to an enormous media event. Just as we prepare to abandon our plan, a ranger appears and miraculously waves us through, directing us to the lone charging spot, bypassing hundreds of cars in the process. Another perq of EV ownership! Who knew?
Afterward, we head back to San Francisco, and straight to the cavernous garage next to our hotel, where there are—happily –a bank of six chargers. Sweet electrons!
By the time we get back to our home in Santa Cruz, we’ve logged over 400 miles in three days, averaged 178 mpg, burned less than two gallons of gas, and saved (according to the onboard computer) more than 150 pounds of CO2.
Extra planning required: lots. Angst over occupied or broken chargers: considerable. Hitchhiking required: none. Fun: huge.
And that’s the thing: it’s been a long time since I’ve driven for fun. Well, maybe it’s more correct to say, it’s been since gas was $3 per gallon. Once it got above that, the fun ceased. But now, suddenly, driving is fun again.
I’m not driving a lot less than I used to. I’m just doing it with less guilt.
In my younger days, motorcycle adventures involved unfurling a not-so-sweet-smelling sleeping bag in the dunes, eating a UFO (Unidentified Food Object) from a rusty pot, and washing the dinnerware with river rocks. Cold hands were warmed on protruding cylinder heads. Showers were an imagined luxury, and laundry time was crudely determined by the smell test.
Things are different now. On this recent trip through Vermont, Meredith and I, celebrating our 30th anniversary, stay in posh B&Bs, and are served breakfast accompanied by a five-minute soliloquy on how the berries were sourced from a farm up the road and the eggs came from a chicken known to the chef by name. We are on a rented BMW K1600GTL, which means that Meredith, instead of squirming on some tiny bitch pad, sits atop something more closely resembling the throne of Queen Nefertiti. I keep expecting people to genuflect and throw flowers as we pass down main streets from Burlington to Brandon.
Evenings are spent drinking wine from actual stem glasses rather than a rusty Sierra cup with the detritus of yesterday’s meals in the bottom. Dog-eared maps—how I love thee still!—have been supplanted by the utterly reliable monotone of the very small lady who apparently resides in the bowels of my GPS and speaks to me sternly but reliably through the Bluetooth device I have installed in my helmet. I don’t find her to be very friendly but she sure does know the way to the closest Starbucks.
In the continuum of motorcycle travel, we are surely at the decadent end. We will not be crossing the Darien Gap, prying leeches off each other, or eating a steaming bowl of gonad soup lovingly prepared by natives, who consider us to be travelers from the future.
Something has been lost. But, in this transition to comfort and complacency, something has certainly been gained....
Six Cylinders of Pleasure
Exhibit A in this epiphany is our choice of motorbike. Meredith, in the name of love, has ridden pillion on some real farm machinery, including everything from my ’69 Triumph to a Kawasaki KLR, with knobbies. At freeway speeds, the latter exhibited all the silky resonance of a paint shaker.
Lately I’ve become fond of renting bikes, which supply an opportunity to try out something different, or perhaps just more extravagant. So for this trip we went straight to the top, procuring the GTL from MotoVermont.
Where my own R1200RT occasionally labors under the burdens of passenger and gear, the GTL seems to sense no payload whatsoever. With 120 foot-pounds of torque, it pulls like a draft horse that has been asked to carry an additional bottle of bourbon to camp. Pffff.
The big six runs turbine-smooth and dispenses vehicles into the wing mirrors like runway lights during takeoff in passenger jet. Slow-moving trucks are disposed of in less time than it takes to say “135 horsepower.” The truth is I don’t need this much power. But I sure like having it.
When the weather turns evil, we dial up enough electrical accessories to evoke the smell of burning flesh. A really cool LCD display in the GTL’s dash indicates that the handgrips are now at roasting level, and so I use the “mouse” on the left handgrip to dial it down. The mouse, if I understand it correctly, can do almost anything. I don’t really know how to use the thing but I’m pretty sure it has the capability to summon the president, exercise stock options, or resolve differential equations, all at 90 mph.
It is, in fact, too much motorcycle for me but that practical view is easily clouded out by the sheer exuberance that comes from twisting the right handgrip. At about 4,000 rpm, worldly concerns begin to recede from consciousness. At 5,000 rpm, personal conflicts, financial challenges, employment anxiety, and a lingering case of athlete’s foot have been rendered a distant memory. At 7,000 rpm, it seems unlikely that I have ever experienced the most fleeting difficulty in my life or exchanged a cross word with anyone over the course of the last 50 years. All these things are gone in a faint vapor trail, jettisoned out those six elegant holes in the sensuous exhaust system.
May I please have this in pill form?
Muggles Be Gone
Northern California, where I live, has some of the best riding in the world, but it’s conducted in the presence of so many muggles that we sometimes forget what a completely empty road looks like. Well, it looks like this. On roads from Rutland to Randolph, it seems we’re accompanied by nothing more than each other’s voices in the intercom. I suppose you could find an unsightly strip mall in Vermont if you wanted to, but it might take some doing.
By day three we are in the rhythm of Vermont roads—I’m mostly in third on the two-laners, exercising that exquisite-but-not-obnoxious-sounding six up and down the tachometer. Every 10 miles or so, we see a yellow 30-mph sign, indicating a village. I click down to second, flip up the faceshield for a fresh breeze, and enjoy a good look at the village green. On the opposite end of town, once again freed from civilization, the faceshield goes down, the revs come up, I click into third, and the landscape is rendered in a subtle blur. The whole thing is a kind of meditation. I could do this all day.
In much of the Green Mountain State, the general rule is that if you are traveling east-west, you are climbing passes, across the spine of the mountains. If you are traveling north-south, you’re shooting down valleys and river drainages. This makes it easy to pick your riding style on the day. Many of the river valleys reveal startling damage from Hurricane Irene, with houses that have had their foundations pulled out from under them like that obnoxious tablecloth trick your uncle does at dinner.
We drop into Montpelier, which is, unbelievably, the state capital. The tiny town seems freshly cut from the wilderness. From the look of things, the governor could go out the back door of the domed capital building, hike for an hour at lunch, and never see a soul. The only people hiking around the capital building in my state are ones looking to make a drug deal.
I have a thing about ferries and motorcycles, and at one point, we’re able to take two in the space of an hour, ducking over to New York on the tiny Ticonderoga cable ferry, then quickly crossing back 40 miles north at Essex. On one ferry we get the front spot on the deck, and discover that the GTL looks fabulous as a figurehead, pointing the way to opposite shore, like Washington crossing the Delaware.
Due to a pinched nerve in my leg, I’m stopping at town greens and splaying myself out on the grass, stretching. This quickly becomes a kind of bizarre photo essay chronicling our journey, placing me in different photographic circumstances like the Travelocity Gnome. Here’s Geoff doing contortions in Pomfret! And Montpelier! And Woodstock! Collect the whole series!
Due to my injury, my only form of exercise is swimming, and so the trip is pleasantly punctuated with stops by every available river and lake, where I do my superman routine in the bushes, trading Cordura for a swimsuit and goggles. In minutes I’m stroking my way to the far shore, looking at fish. Then I’m back in my riding gear, dreaming of river bottoms and the next body of clean Vermont water.
In Vermont, dirt roads are not an occasional diversion or oddity, but rather an integral part of the transportation matrix. And we find ourselves using them on occasion without warning. Such roads are not the preferred ecosystem of the 800-pound GTL, but the surface quality is good and it’s easy to stay upright. If not for the persistent fear of dropping a bike I do not own, it would be really fun to let the back end step out in a joyous and dusty burst of acceleration. Unfortunately, this might also contribute to a conspicuous silence at dinner, so I refrain.
All told we cover only about 650 miles in four days of riding (albeit, without touching an inch of superslab in the process). But we find the concentrated span heightens the pleasure, like whiskey undiluted by ice or H2O. It’s a refreshing dose.
Welcome to Adventuring 2.0. We are better when our lives are punctuated by such things, no matter the length, or the quality of the bedding. It’s less important how we do it, than the fact that we do it at all.
May your heart always be joyful and may your song always be sung. May you stay forever young. –Bob Dylan
In the early 1960s, Carmel, California, was sanctuary to a Bohemian assortment of singers and artists that would soon leave an indelible mark on American culture. The protest singer Joan Baez had taken up residence on a rocky outcropping overlooking the Pacific, in the Carmel Highlands. There, she was joined by her lover, a precocious young singer by the name of Bob Dylan. Nearby, her sister Mimi, enchantingly beautiful at just 17, had rented a cabin with her new husband: singer, novelist and poet Richard Fariña.
It was a time of remarkable potential, the folk music scene just then unfolding like a chrysalis, taking an entire generation on its wings.
It’s not hard to imagine Dylan, the Baez sisters, and Fariña plying the roads of Carmel and the Big Sur coast, prior to the current tourist inundation, while laying the groundwork for 50 years of folk music in America (an epoch chronicled in David Hajdu’s book, “Positively 4th Street”). In the spring of 1966, it seemed almost anything was possible.
They could have no way of knowing what the next few months would bring.
Aura of Invincibility
In recent years Fariña had played music with Pete Seeger and Dylan. He had toured and lived in Europe, and played and recited poetry in the creative cauldron of Greenwich Village, New York. He had married (after 18 days), and quickly divorced famed folk singer Carolyn Hester. Now, married to the lovely Mimi Baez, and armed with a penchant for self promotion, he found himself nestled among the cultural iconoclasts of the day.
But while he had been cavorting with the famous, as of late, Fariña had also been facing demons. Deep down, he was bitterly envious of Dylan’s soaring success on a world stage, and the ease with which he wrote songs—a great font of creativity that continues to this day. Moreover, Fariña had struggled for years to publish his novel, “Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me,” a fantastical fiction that stylistically resembled the work of his college friend Thomas Pynchon, author of “Gravity’s Rainbow.”
After years of rewrites and petty squabbles with publishers, Fariña’s great project finally came to fruition in 1965, when Random House agreed to publish the work. With this news, and the undying support of his young wife, Fariña was positively flying. A book signing was organized to celebrate the great event, at the now-defunct Thunderbird Bookstore in the Barnyard Shopping Center, at the mouth of Carmel Valley. The date: April 30, 1966—his young wife’s 21st birthday.
It’s easy to envision Fariña, then in his 20s, heady with the publication of his new book, and intimate with some of the world’s most famous and influential artists, conducting himself with the certain aura of invincibility that accompanies youth and accomplishment.
The event started in the afternoon. There is a haunting image of Richard and Mimi Fariña, taken on a sunny deck outside the Thunderbird. She seems proud, yet strangely skeptical, as if his new trajectory in life couldn’t quite be possible, or if she was witnessing some implausible hubris.
For his part, Fariña is looking skyward, slightly askance, as if he knew some strange visitation was in the offing. It was.
Zoom
After the intoxicating experience of the book signing, and with another one planned in San Francisco the next day, Fariña was primed for adventure. According to Hajdu, each book he signed at the Thunderbird had been accompanied by this simple inscription: Zoom.
After the signing, he and Mimi both attended a party, in honor of the book and his wife’s birthday, a few miles up the valley. A friend, Willie Hinds, then studying at Hopkins Marine Station in Pacific Grove, had arrived on a new, red Harley-Davidson Sporster. Fariña imagined that a fast ride on that beautiful road would be the perfect capstone to his day—a fitting harbinger of the great future that lay before him.
One can only imagine the mental state of the driver of the new Harley-Davidson, Hinds, infected with the enthusiasm of his famous passenger and the power of what was then one of the fastest motorcycles on the road (if a bit ill-handling), on one of the best motorcycle roads in America.
Did Fariña—in his unbridled enthusiasm—urge him on, the pair conspiring toward speeds that made the big bike weave and groan in complaint? Or was it all Hinds, the driver?
It’s impossible to know, but within half an hour, according to Hajdu, sirens could be heard in the distance. They had taken a corner too fast. Or, Fariña was fighting Hinds in the corner, leaning the opposite way, a common urge of self preservation that actually has the opposite effect, making the bike nearly unmanageable for the driver, like an unwieldy snake.
Whatever the cause, the bike tumbled off into a vineyard, at an estimated 90 mph. Hinds was badly hurt, but survived. Fariña, the passenger, was not so lucky. Unhelmeted, he died instantly of massive head and internal injuries. He was just 26.
When Mimi Fariña returned to the home on Mount Devon Road in the Carmel Highlands days later, she discovered that Fariña had set out a gift and card for his young wife, trying to make amends for the fact that he had forgotten her birthday.
Life at the Apex
I find myself fascinated by these events, perhaps because of the small ways in which my own life intersects with that of the man I never knew and have only read about. Like Fariña, I also know the Carmel Valley—I would even say intimately—from the seat of a motorcycle. Like Fariña, I have also written books—though not nearly as grand in scope—and I know the elation that comes with taking the first copy in hand, and the likelihood that one might feel just a little invincible, and prone to excess—vulnerable to the certain opiates of speed and two wheels.
Like Fariña, I have reveled in the sinuous curves of that road, and have even stiffened with the anticipation of a fall which—fortunately for me—never came. It seems every California motorcyclist knows that road, and has scraped hard parts trying to execute a perfect line among its hundreds of turns. From the ocean, it gently courses through the open valley, then tightens to a thin rope past Carmel Valley Village. In spring, the pastures reveal dizzying expanses of wildflowers. It then passes the tortuous road to the famed Tassajara Zen Center, established by the groundbreaking monk Shunryu Suzuki, author of the seminal book of Zen in America, “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.” Eventually the road snakes its way to Cahoon Summit, before plunging down through a delectable series of decreasing-radius turns to Arroyo Seco, a ride of almost 50 miles. I have done it dozens of times, and never tire of it. I am so fond of the ride that I even wrote an article about it, published in “Rider” magazine.
There are those who have done analyses of the location of Fariña’s accident, calculating the exact patch of road just outside the village, a series of left/right decreasing-radius turns, bordered by a low stone wall. It’s a place that has nearly caught me out on occasion, during my own riding. Was that the spot? Another more commonly accepted account puts the accident site a few miles from the ocean, at a point called Steinbeck’s Pool. This section, with its long, sweeping curves in an open valley, looks to be nothing either spectacular or particularly challenging for a motorcyclist. However, when traveling at an estimated 90 mph, with a passenger fighting to keep the big bike upright, any curve is dangerous.
Is it an obsession? A desire to avoid the same fate? Or a little of both? It is in any case an investigation borne of necessity—a compulsion, even. It lingers in the mind, like a recurring dream.
All motorcyclists know these thoughts. We ride these roads, we know the quality of the pavement, the turns, the braking points, and the gear required to accelerate cleanly out of each apex. When done right, it’s a thing of beauty, poetry. When done incorrectly, or in haste, it’s a mess, an abomination, a source of embarrassment. And maybe death.
Postcript
Richard Fariña is buried in the Monterey City Cemetery, which I view every morning over my right shoulder, while riding to work. His small, flat stone is emblazoned with a peace sign. Judy Collins sang at his funeral. Mimi Fariña died of cancer in 2001. Her sister, Joan Baez, built a home on Miramonte Road, not far from the spot where her brother-in-law died.
Richard and Mimi Fariña’s house on Mount Devon Road is still there (and is shown on this page): a low, flat structure that’s unspectacular in comparison to the multi-million dollar estates that now surround it. It nonetheless still commands a striking view of the rocky coast, and it’s easy to see how it would impel the writing of any book, as it did for Fariña.
Dylan, the genius of his generation, seemed to have learned nothing from the tragic incident, if he was aware of it at all. In an ironic twist, just months later, he crashed his Triumph on a country road near Woodstock, New York. Afterward, he dropped from public view for years, though it has always been said that the accident merely served as an excuse to remove himself from the public eye, and that his injuries were not serious.
Such things happen, sometimes at the absolute apex of your life. Or the moment becomes the apex of your life, simply because of what follows. Either way, you are remembered for it. And hopefully, for many other things. Richard will be.
This story was originally published in CityBike magazine.
Our house is a very, very, very fine house. -Crosby, Stills and Nash & Young
In 1978 I arrived in Seattle on a Greyhound bus with a suitcase and a letter of admission to the University of Washington. It was my second-ever trip west from Connecticut, made in a great paroxysm of energy that was equal parts desire and flight. I have no idea why I went. I only knew I had to go.
Shortly after arriving I learned of a coop house in the University District, with a room for rent. I was promptly interviewed by the six tenants, at the dining room table. Suddenly, they stood up and left, apparently to consider my candidacy. They never came back, which I could only interpret as a bad sign. But then, 10 minutes later, a tall, Gandalf-like figure emerged from his subterranean hiding place, walked quickly past, and muttered: “You’re in.”
And so began a joyous, maddening, and altogether amazing stay at Hospitality House. The house was an egalitarian experiment, a study hall, a debating society, a crucible of intellectualism, a culinary exploration, a sanitary mess, an argument, a laugh, a tear, a joke, and perhaps most of all, a party.
As an exercise in communal living, it was accompanied by chore lists, shared shopping tasks, dinner assignments, and shifts in the garden, shoveling manure. As with all such experiments, we rode high on our successes, stumbled on our failures, hated each other, loved each other, accused each other of great negligence, and generally had an amazing time. You know: The full catastrophe.
Everything in those years now seems pregnant with importance. I was living in Hospitality House when, at 19, I met the love of my life. We are still married, 35 years later. (I was not alone in this. Like me, Cathy met John while in that house. Like us, they have a daughter. Like us, they are still together. ) I also met Dennis, the most enduring friend of my life. Each time the two of us have arranged a rendezvous over the last 35 years, from Vermont to Big Sur, we never fail to touch on the venerable Hospitality House. We reflect on its joys, its humorous moments, its maddening squabbles. What can it mean when something lodges in memory like that, for all those decades? Of course, it can only mean one thing: we loved the place.
The house, in its brief existence, created its own weather system of politics, culture and philosophy. We cared deeply about the environment. We loathed what had become of our government. We clung to high ideals. We felt we could do something about the whole mess.
At the same time, we were burdened by the conventional necessities of work, and school, and figuring out how to pay our onerous monthly rent of $79. We were uniformly tormented by personal relationships. We drank, and smoked, way too much. We had no idea what we were ultimately going to do with our lives. But we were sure it was going to be good.
I was, at 19, the youngster of the house, with all the cockiness that comes from that station in life. I’m quite sure I contributed less to the general well being of the household than anyone else. I was probably more annoying than anyone else. And I was surely the least capable in the kitchen. But, for whatever reason, I was tolerated and perhaps even embraced. (And for that, I thank you all.) I was nothing if not impressionable. It didn’t take long to figure out that I had picked a good group of people to be impressed by.
Unfortunately, the house was also visited by unspeakable tragedy, with household members losing two close friends (or lovers, I was never sure which), in the space of a year. We did what we could for each other, but the incidents cast a pall over the house from which it never quite recovered.
And now, incredibly, two of our own have been lost in the last year: Casey and Dan. How is this possible? I remember Casey as being enchanting, prone to bursts of laughter, but also vexed and occasionally dark, seemingly carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. Then there was Dan, with his cheese blintzes, remarkable culinary skills and musical talents. Dan was the music teacher I never had, fostering a love of early folk and blues. Dan was also the angry Marxist, proclaiming his philosophy with relentless passion, and no small amount of smugness.
And yet, all this tragedy has served its purpose, as it always must. In mid-October, momentum began to build, inexorably, toward a grand reunion, in memory of Casey. E-mails flew in a great storm of excitement, from California, to Oregon, to Alaska, to Texas, and of course, to Ravenna. Like a force of nature, the whole project gained inertia: flights were made, floor space was located, airport transportation arranged for. All the alumni of that great house converged, from throughout the west, to remember what was.
I pass by this house now and see it has received the fitting care we could never give it, and that it ultimately deserved. It’s resplendent with new paint, fixtures, and landscaping. Last time I visited, there were children’s toys scattered across the front yard. A family lives there.
In this, things are not so different. A family lived there in 1979, too.
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