Write as I Ride Miles 7665-7740 September 25

Write as I Ride Miles 7665-7740 September 25

I write in my head as I ride on the road and when I stop I put on paper what I have composed enroute. Riding is as necessary to my writing as it is to my walking. If I don’t ride, I can’t walk. If I don’t ride, I can’t write. Oh, I could put words to paper without riding. But not these words. The ideas and inspiration that come as I pedal never visit me as I sit in my basement study at home. So my daily routine is to ride my bike to some small town café miles from home and write in the tablet I carry the thoughts that fill my head as I make my way here.

Friends sometimes ask if I get lonely out on a bike for hours by myself. I don’t. They have suggested that I get a headset and carry a radio. That would be dangerous. I might not hear traffic coming up behind. And the sound of the radio would drive away the sound of silence, the sound I find most congenial and productive.

So for the third day in a row I have come to Catrick’s for lunch. Jenny Corns is again my waitress. “I’ll have a baked potato with shredded cheese and onions, a grilled cheese sandwich and ice tea.” “Same as yesterday,” Jenny says. She brings a pitcher of tea.

As I’m eating, a man comes to my table. “Your last name Chasteen?” “Yes.” “The one who rides bikes and fights hate?” “Yes.” “God bless you,” he says. Then he’s gone. I take out my pen to write.

A feeling is percolating upward from deep inside me, persuading me that I have misunderstood my mission. The miles I ride and the money I raise are not ends in themselves but the means to a far more satisfying and more difficult objective: to wit, the spontaneous and complimentary striking of that spark of goodness and genius that flickers inside every person on the planet. A bicycle is not designed to bring me into the presence of great numbers of these people, but no means of transportation ever invented is better suited to bring us together with the eagerness of children to get acquainted. And in our eagerness we completely forget the acquired inhibitions that fence in all adults.

An old and chronically ill man riding a child’s toy around the countryside and asking everyone to like each other does not compute. Someone tilted the pinball machine. Don Quixote lives. That spark of goodness and genius that flickers inside each of us almost has gone out. The barrage of mass media messages have shunted us onto a cul de sac where we go round and round in pursuit of the biggest and fastest and latest.

Then an old sick man comes on a bicycle and that spark flickers. And catches hold. It lights our way. It warms us when cold thoughts come. And while it lasts we understand what Don Quixote knew: “Too much sanity may be madness. And the greatest madness of all may be to see life as it is and not as it should be.”

To see the world as it should be, and to live every day in that world. That’s the real intent of my mission. And I live there in the company of the people I meet, people whose spark joins with mine to cast a light that shows us all our way to life beyond and above what ordinary daily living tells us is possible.

The particular project I undertake for this year matters hardly at all. So long as it is meant to inspire and encourage and help us live together as friends, it will inevitably draw people to it and produce in them an ardor and an intellect that gives it wings and makes it invincible.

So even though less than 15 percent of the money I hope to raise has come, I know in my heart that it’s in the bag. So long as I don’t give in, give up or give out, there is no way that all of us can fail.

Inspired by Robert Frost Miles 7740-7795 September 26

With Robert Frost as my inspiration, I stop this morning at River Park in Missouri City to jot down this tribute. I call it Stopping by Small Town Cafes on Glorious Bike Riding Days. It goes like this.

Small town cafes are lively, light and cheap

And I have promises to keep

And people to meet before I sleep

Orrick’s Fubbler’s Cove is my destination. When I arrive just minutes before noon, every table in the place is occupied and more people are coming. Today is Friday. Orrick High may be playing a home football game tonight. Or maybe Fubbler’s is this busy every noontime. I hope so. Several of my favorite small town cafes have turned out the lights and closed their doors, setting us regulars adrift and ending our association with each other. Fubbler’s wasn’t here a few years back, but with business like this, looks like I’ll be coming here for years to come.

A quick walk-through today and I’m out the door. I might stay and wait for a table. But I promised Bobbie I’d be home by three o’clock so we can go see Robert Duval’s new movie, Secondhand Lions. So I hurry over to Snappy’s Convenience Store to grab a sandwich and a drink. I’m standing in line to pay when I hear a voice behind me. “I carry your card with me all the time. I consider it an honor.” The young man speaking works here, through not on duty today. From his wallet he has taken the Mickey Card I gave him weeks ago when I stopped one day for a drink and a restroom. He reads the card to me in a delightfully accented English.

We sit down together at the counter so I can eat and we can talk. His name is Danny. He is from Lebanon. He lives now in Richmond. His sister is in Australia, brothers in Brazil and France. Only his parents remain in Lebanon. “Lebanon was a beautiful and peaceful country. Then the Israelis and Palestinians came. The Israelis are gone. The Palestinians are still there. They don’t listen to our government. We are not safe,” Danny says.

What do you like best about America?” I ask. Danny’s eyes light up. A smile comes. “Here you can fight with one another and walk away. There you must kill or be killed.”

In the movie Duval is an old man who has lived a swashbuckling life straight from The Arabian Knights. He and his brother now live as recluses on a ranch in Texas. A small boy, a distant relative, comes unannounced to live with them. Near the movie’s end, the boy begs Duval to give him the speech he gives to young boys about to become men. The boy wants to know if the awesome tales he has heard about the old man’s life are really true. “Son, there are some things you need to believe. Whether they are true is not really important. You need to believe them because they are good to believe. Things like good always wins. Money and power are not important. True love is. ”

There was more to Duval’s speech and I have not quoted it verbatim. When you’re laughing and crying you miss some things.