Portland, continued, and apologies

It is hard to write these re-hashed notes from the bike trip. I am picking up from some time ago. Moraline is not on a typical "vacation." No, this man isn't "traveling." He is overcoming the human condition, and acting far outside of his species' characteristics. I would say that he is a good man, but it seems he's gone far beyond that. He is something else now, and a description of his character at this moment would be an embarrassment to greatness. This all-too-human language just doesn't get at it.

But I continue doing what I feel I must--finding these scraps of paper from these old trips--there are 3 or 4 trips--and getting back to these ideas. Maybe I was on to something towards the end of one of these trips. Maybe there is nothing there. I know it is clear I write about women and loneliness in this most recent journey, and it is abhorrent. But I, too, will criticize this muck. I must work my way through this.

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6/30/10 Portland

I wondered about the limits of my body. I am accustomed to my being fatigued--but actual pain--the saddle area, upper neck, knee: this grew weary. What I perhaps needed was 2-3 days away from the bike. [note (2/19/11):Can Moraline stop and rest, or is water always an issue? Or, even with water, even in a room, would there be a problem with spending more than one day in a small town? A journey which is unlimited in time can be good for the man with a bicycle, because he can rest when his knees or back grow weary. Perhaps Moraline has overcome weariness. Blessed be the man who knows no fatigue.] But logistically this would have affected my trip and in the interim I would have been stuck in a small town at $100 per day with 'little' to pursue--of course, I could have made the best, but compared to one of these small towns--Gold Beach, for example, it might have been to small for my spirit's attention. Eugene or Portland would have worked, two towns where a 2-3 day focus on running would have been perfect. Now I must find another shirt to wear and perhaps some pants.

But let me return to Gold Beach--the owner of Anna's Place. I can find his name and later review his place on Yelp as I has promised him [Editor's note: the writer never fulfilled him promise, but he did order a case of wine from the man.]. He had left Phoenix 6 years earlier where he had established a large restaurant and apparently was a big deal. Wanting to find love, he went to China to find wife and child. He returned with both. The mother and daughter both worked in his joint, which was now a simple wine bistro. Communication between the mother and father was scarce, a muted pidgin of silence and resentment. She interpreted my "parfait" as "I want to go to a cafe." The daughter, about 10, spoke English, but seemed alienated from the father or at least partially oppressed under his direct order and supervision. She read Chinese comics on the computer behind the counter and drew a picture of a cat for her father and showed it to him. He feigned interest and provided mild criticism. But she was provided mild relief by his "not bad"; it thrilled her.

I lingered there for two hours and he shared Danish cherry liquor which followed the Mexican shrimp, two plates of bread, crab bread pudding, and the raspberry parfait.

The next morning should have theoretically been to Coos Bay (75 miles), but instead it was 50-55 miles to Bandon.

There was much pain in the ride from Gold Beach to Bandon. 5 cyclists with run down vintage bikes and little gear were resting in the town center on their journey from Portland to San Francisco. (It is often said it is better to ride from Portland and head south, in the way it is better to die unexpectedly.) They asked me how the weather was "up there." "Of course, it varies. What city?" The question perplexed them greatly.

I do not remember the name of the girl from Los Angeles whose lips I kissed in Mendocino. It was passionate. Now I head to cycle through Portland and explore.

Eugene is the other missing piece of the journal's puzzle. It was a near 30-mile time trial to North Bend from Bandon [Editor's note: this sentence appears to be interrupted; a search for Page 9 does not materialize in a discovery. The editor has decided to invest in a scanner to help the reader understand what he is up against.]

Portland

6/30/10 10:41 a.m. Portland, Oregon

I have not written in the journal for 2 days. Eugene must be accounted for, and Bandon, Christine in Bandon--Sarah, her co-waitress. Christine, sadly, was or is the woman I am looking for. Do I head out in a rental car and see her? Today is Wednesday--Sunday was her Friday, so her weekend has passed and she will be there tonight. I could drive to Bandon and she could tell me of her horseback riding weekend. She had scratches across her arms due to an unruly horse who no one would ride except her. It is worth the challenge, and cheaper, for her to rent such a horse.

Emblematic of Christine is her presence, place, and peace in Bandon. One returns to a small town and realizes that only there do they belong. Or perhaps that one never wants to return again. For Christine, after her having lived in Medford for a year and finding boring or troubling or too big-city, too disorienting, or perhaps too fake, returned to Bandon and found what could be called peace and happiness, two words which I normally could not use without extreme cynicism but which made perfect sense to me after nine days of riding, suffering, and solitude.

To go to Christine would be to go to Bandon and accept her on her own terms. Would she be big enough to realize that anything in Bandon between us would flourish outside of Bandon? Or would she want to follow me to Denver? She would be out of place there, or suffer, or she would have finally found her element and would have been even happier outside of her place of great familiarity and peace, Bandon. I can't say. Maybe she would have accepted what could have happened that night, or perhaps what happened that night was as perfect as it could have been and the resolution of an external tension is the very thing both of us were looking for.

I cannot recall much about the day riding to Bandon. It was from Gold Beach. The day before I rode from Klamath where I had adjusted a cleat and had assumed I had alleviated a knee problem in doing so. The first part of the Klamath-Gold Beach ride (75 miles?) was splendid--very difficult climbing that my knees and body and soul were able to tackle with elegance and grace, as I had done on my climb. The night before as I had descended, in the clouds, to 1485 elevation. The day would precipitously break down, first as my knee began to cause trouble once again as I approached the Oregonian border (missing Case Rubio) and then again the upper neck and saddle sores which only worsen with slower speed and a longer saddle time.

I was exhausted upon my arriving in Gold Beach and settling in at Ireland's Lodge, recommended to me in Klamath the night before by the German woman.

Bob Cook

Bob

It killed me when Bob died.
I loved the man like a brother,
and his bravery was a huge
and pioneering thing.

When Bob died it made us all feel sick.
The mountains went away and beer didn't taste good.
Then the rain and snow came, and the roads were dangerous.

That's when we took to them.
We rode on the rain and snow
and soon the weather didn't matter.
Cold was an opinion, and as long
as you rode, your opinion was a good one.

We didn't believe Bob could die, but he did.
We distinguished the risk he took
and his actions
from his body.

We began to see
the things around us as fake, and we began
to challenge ourselves and ride stronger than ever.

Bob Cook made the bitter cold warm.
Bob Cook made death disappear.

Ode to Moraline

A man goes to Argentina

He says:

"These hands will bleed when I get there.
I will bleed when I don't want to, when I'm tired.
I will leave this blood in desolate areas,
and sometimes on the soft body of a woman.
I will leave this blood on my tools,
and maybe all my tools won't make it.
Maybe I won't make it.

My friends have been attacked by pussy and structure.
They have fallen deep in wombs and
they're lost or trapped or hiding, I
can't tell which.

We lose good men to crevasses
in the mucous
and blood where NUUUUR-TURE and MYUUUU-SICK
take breathing to its most shallow.

'Doctor--he's not breathing!
Don't let him die.'

The women continue knitting.

I hear screams as I true these wheels.
My own soul."

harder riding

There have been many critics who have decried lack of consistency and frequency: "Maximin. What gives?" Ah, California was delightful, as always. I went to the North.

6/25/10 10:11 a.m. Eureka, California
Icing my left knee in bed. Some harder riding out of the saddle in big chainring towards the end.

The Project

Written September 2010:

"Maximin, Maximin! Are you there? If you are, what about the project?"

Ah, yes, the project. Go to Bulgaria, live in a hija, and write down things. Indeed. I wasn't stupid at the time, so even though quite a few years have passed, it still sounds like a good idea. Yes, such a project. You see, Moraline thinks Europe is boring. Ah, but has he tried Eastern Europe? Well he may say so, but he has only experienced Central Europe. Ah, he might file a semantic restraining order, but I say there's a distinction. Bulgaria was far more wild west than the rest of Europe, and was especially so in 1998. I find it has many things in common with the place he seeks, Central and South America. I may have beat Moraline to it, as I think now. I may have already been there.

But this still doesn't mean that Moraline is living and I am dying. Because Moraline is living and I am dying, even as I may, if my hamstring doesn't snap, break 1:20 in the half marathon. Yes, how can a man die in such health? A man can die when his soul cannot breathe anymore. I have no air left, very little. I am a dead man despite the fact I can, with ease, run one mile in 5 minutes. A man my age. I am not a happy man. I say I sing happiness, but it is short lived. A project makes a happiness last. This is what Moraline has, and a man cannot kill or rob him of it. He is immortal now.

I have never been more happy than I have been in realizing these things. Men live and die. There is much empty space in the lives of many men, but there is plutonium density in the lives of others. Are there few of these men? It depends on the language game. The few men who have lived so many lives, amount to many men. But there are few men who can do this, so there aren't many of them.

"Maximin, are you a fake?"

No, actually, I'm not. I have some notes I have not shared yet:

Barcelona.
Girona
Banyuls de Mer
P

The forest

I made it out of the forest, nearly 4 hours of riding. I would ride Evans later, and each time I wanted to shift to a later gear, I would tell myself, "remember Northern California," and this is what I remembered. Never have I ridden such a difficult road (in recent memory, and the idea of "recent memory" can be discussed, but why bother--according to Moraline, I'm all about wine, women, and song, so what's the fucking point of thinking about anything too deeply). Each time the road would 'end,' a new ascent would be revealed. Each time a new ascent would be revealed, I would promise my legs and neck and back that "this would be the last, just over this climb, then the trees will give way to the flattest road in Northern California." Eventually, I knew I was in a maze, trapped for my sins, the way I was wasting my life. It was as if Moraline had created a death-tree-maze and propped up signs to goad me along the way: "Lovely cycling here, please continue. For nice cycling, keep riding this way."

When I had given up all hope of my ever leaving the forest, the forest cleared, and I reached Leggett, one of many world famous drive through tree attractions in the area. Leggett had a few buildings, one of them a service station.