Winnebiko
microship.com
microship.com
######
Suddenly Amy snuggled against me and asked if I had come back to stay with her forever. I held her and glanced over at Kay, but there would be no support from that quarter: she looked at me as if to say, “Tell her, Steve. Tell your daughter you’d rather ride a bicycle than be with her.”
I nuzzled Amy’s hair. “No, sweetheart, I have to leave soon.”
“I want you to stay here.” She wiggled and hugged. “I love you, Daddy.”
“Oh, Amy, I love you too.” My voice was on the edge of breaking. “But I’ll have to go in a couple of days.”
“Why?” She looked up at me, her face perfect and innocent, warm in the soft light of the living room. I had a sudden image of a winter night years before, cuddled with Kay before the antique fireplace of that old Victorian house in Louisville. We had gazed into the flames while sharing popcorn and hot apple cider, drawn together in the warm security of our endless love — the sense of family. Now I awkwardly held my little girl and tried to figure out how to explain the lure of technomadic adventure. They both waited for my reply.
“Honey, I have to travel — I have to… oh, I don’t know how to explain it. I’m riding my bike around the country and writing a book about it.”
“Why?”
“Well, it’s exciting. It’s fun.” I almost launched into a whole explanation of the freedom versus security trade-off, but I was talking to a three-year-old.
She smiled up at me and gave me another hug. “OK. I’m going with you!”
“My bike’s not big enough for both of us, Amy.”
“Then I’ll ride my bike.” She started to cry.
Selfish asshole is an apt term to apply here. Imagine telling your child "I have more fun riding my bike than being with you."
Long days at the factory were the norm, not the exception. However, to leave them entirely for months at a time was definitely not normal. I think most men would not want that.
Maybe in urban context, but in the country it was common to:
* go to the summer pastures for several months;
* go for agricultural seasonal work for 1 month, 2 months (nowadays it is about picking fruits and vegetables, it used to be about cutting hay and harvesting corns (scythe works));
* the same for mining work; so basically in agricultural down times at your place, you'd go and work as a hired hand somewhere else; agriculture as mostly a mean of subsistence, not much as a mean of income, income would come from the salaries brought back during those "down" times; it is still like that in less developed countries/areas.
And I am not sure that, in those days, all kids were extremely happy to see the return of the fathers when they returned, for they had heavy hands and sturdy belts :-)
These days we are much more dependent on dads being present. Which, as a dad of two myself, is so much more rewarding than working a day job anyway so while I think we’ve lost something in terms of communities we’ve definitely gained something in terms of Dads being more active.
I honestly can’t understand why anyone would chose cycling on their own over bonding with their kid. You lose out, the kid loses out; everyone loses.
Still fascinated by what he did but I'm sad to see the people he hurt.
Maybe circumstances unexpectedly got him into the situation of having kids yet not ready to prioritize the kids over other things he wanted to do.
Or maybe he didn't think kids would benefit from a parent around as much as I and many others think kids would.
My own parents seemed to put the kids first, then other duties, very selflessly, so that's my default assumption and feeling for what I'd do. And effectively why I don't yet have kids, since career isn't yet where I want it to be.
And that sums up the Boomer generation in a nutshell.
In fact, reading this stuff really stirred me up. It makes me think of the C.S. Lewis book "Surprised by Joy" which I think described this sort of feeling, but with the feelings in the book sourced from fiction/fantasy works. At least that is what I remember from reading it 7 years ago.
Edit: Trying to think of other websites that I loved like this:
AfroTechMods.com like 20 years ago
Ludens.cl about 10 years ago
...these are hard to think of, but I'm sure it is not a once-a-decade event.
this was the Doom Monitor project
In article <65315@newstop.EBay.Sun.COM>, wordy@Corp.Sun.com (Steven K. Roberts) writes:
|> Hi...
|>
|> Are you interested in ongoing reports from the bikelab here at
|> Sun? I am working around-the-clock on BEHEMOTH (the successor to
|> the 16,000-mile-old Winnebiko), a 350-pound recumbent bicycle with
|> satellite earth station, GPS satnav, handlebar keyboard with
|> thumb mouse, ultrasonic head mouse, SPARC IPC for CAD and mapping
|> and file-serving, Hypertalk user interface to the trio of FORTH
|> real-time systems, heads-up display on the PC LAN, biketop
|> publishing environment, complete ham radio station, micro security
|> sensors, 54 speeds, regenerative and hydraulic braking,
|> refrigeration and active helmet cooling system, speech synthesis
|> and recognition, audio crosspoint network, MIDI, CDROM drive, 82
|> watts of solar panels, amateur television station, portable R|> &D
|> lab, RF packet data link between manpack and bike, stereo,
|> extensive camping gear, and so on.
|>
|> Sun has become a major sponsor, providing workspace and
|> facilities here on the Mt. View campus, and my job is to
|> disseminate diverse information on bizarre human interfaces,
|> portability, packaging, wireless networking, and the underlying
|> nomadness that has kept the whole project alive for 7 years.
|>
|> To facilitate publication of technical reports on the project, I
|> have started an alias called Nomadness. If you'd like to receive
|> ongoing updates, subscribe by sending a note to:
|>
|> nomadness-request@bikelab.Corp
|>
|> Thanks, and cheers from the unixycle lab!
|> Steve Roberts N4RVE
|> x65037But yeah, overall, way to much weight. But 80's, 90's tech probably needed the current.
A modern nomadic bike would just be a touring bike + iPhone?
I'd rather have the solar panels, even though they only charge in daylight, they charge whether I'm moving or not, and I don't have to supply the energy from my legs.
A solar panel can develop much more power.