Journal of an Aging Hominid

It’s another year. They have all gone now. I will always remember the laughter.

It’s just Maureen and me now.

It didn’t happen right away, but over a few weeks I have become lost in a mist of confusions.

I don’t know who I am any more.

I am like a broken vase in pieces on the floor.

The manual for reassembling it uses strange words and diagrams that are hard to fathom,

It has multiple steps and…

My family all came for Christmas.

It was a surprise. I came home to find Mikey and Jamie sitting at the kitchen table. (I knew Hadley and Jake were coming).

Maureen was in on it. In fact it turns out she made it happen.

And what an extraordinary Christmas it was.

But then came a moment of truth.

We were playing a game called Articulate.

That’s the game where the describer is given a word on a…

Henry is dead.

He left a note. “I can’t stand it any longer.”

Henry called 999, told them what he was doing, apologised, rang off, and kicked away the chair.

He was dead or dying by the time they found his number and location and reached his house.

I actually heard the siren passing through the village, then fading out along the lanes.

He was hanging from a rafter in his workshop. Radio 3 was…

As for my meeting in Seattle, I did not even hear back from Steve, I’ll call him Steve.

Jamie told me: “He just said it didn’t feel right.”

That was all.

Like the China project, an interesting idea which went nowhere.

Before I left I went to see Evelyn in Los Angeles.

“Don’t hang about feeling useless and rejected,” she said.  “You bore witness. You did your job. You are free to wander now. Get…

Look around, you are always somewhere.

Look how the clouds are moving.

You go over a river, running fast on white stones

There is a garage with an old car parked outside, a model you haven’t seen in ages.

Sometimes it’s so easy. My legs and hips rotate.

I see bearings in their race as if they were inside my own body.

Huge trucks are backed-up in the arteries of the economy. I slip by them.

Today a wild west wind has demolished the October tidy-up.

A spitting wind stings my face.

Brown water runs off the fields. The lanes are full of debris.

A gravity-burdened creature, I labour up a wooded hill, looking for the hole of light that tells me I am near a summit.

I rode and rode in the autumn.

I thought about little else but riding.

I made a little record of those days.

The player is Lee Konitz. The song is I’ll Remember April.

Lee Konitz turned 87 this October, an old man now, playing an old man’s music.

Myers-Briggs and the Scottish No

This is what Henry posted today. I wanter you to hear what he said.

“I was wrong.

This Union did not disintegrate.

But I wonder if we can call it “United” any more.

The two main political psychologies must have been in balance. They are the Stabilisers and the Improvisers.

One prefers security, for things to continue as they are — if only because they could be worse. The plan for separation was…

This is what Henry posted today. I wanted you to hear what he said.

“I was wrong.

This Union did not disintegrate.

But I wonder if we can call it “United” any more.

The two main political psychologies must have been in balance. They are the Stabilizers and the Improvisers.

One prefers security, for things to continue as they are — if only because they could be worse. The plan for separation was structurally weak. Uninspiring as the No campaign was, it managed to sow many doubts. My guess is that this group must have supported the No campaign by about 2 to 1.

The other wants pride, excitement, to be part of a nation with a destiny. The Union has lost momentum, but remodelling Scotland as a small Scandinavian country did not arouse enough passion. However I think most of this group would have supported the Yes campaign.

The other political psychologies don’t matter so much in popular elections. There are fewer of them. They are the Catalysts and the Theorists.

One is obsessed by the personality play that is taking place. Who do I like? Who shares my values? It was fortunate for the No campaign that Gordon Brown threw himself into it in its last stages. This group is both deeply attached to its community and moved by the plight of others in far away places. I now think this group must have been split but I put them firmly behind the Yes campaign. I must have been wrong.

The last group is interested in ideas and power and how great changes are effected. Many of the political class fall into this group. I think they too were split, for there was not enough substance in the Yes plan. As for the geopolitics of the planet, Scotland’s role would have been marginalised.

Yesterday we learned that Alan Henning, the taxi driver from Salford, had been beheaded by the jihadists. A good man who just wanted to help.

So sad.

I have been following the battle for the Syrian town of Kobani  in which Kurdish freedom fighters are defending the city against the ISIS jihadists.  I think about them every day, hoping for an intervention that will save them.”

Henry had told me that when he was serving in the military he became interested in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test and associated Temperament theory  because they were both helpful in assigning  people to the right roles and building teams with complementary skills and attitudes.

He told me that he believes the Myers-Briggs system is also helpful in predicting political choices or developing political strategies and is under-rated.

The four Temperaments are: Stabilizers (45%), Improvisers (35%), Catalysts (12%) and Theorists (8%).

Henry actually travelled up to Scotland last week and talked to people and read the Scottish papers. He is still there.

I think Henry is a Theorist.

During the summer Jamie kept asking for reports on my training. He took at a look at the British Heart Foundation training programme and sometimes added instructions like: “Learn how to do controlled climbs by anticipation, setting the right gears in advance and maintaining a good cadence”.

I told him I thought of him as my personal trainer!

He also started sending little messages. He didn’t say…

During the summer Jamie kept asking for reports on my training. He took at a look at the British Heart Foundation training programme and sometimes added instructions like: “Learn how to do controlled climbs by anticipation, setting the right gears in advance and maintaining a good cadence”.

I told him I thought of him as my personal trainer!

He also started sending little messages. He didn’t say where he got them from. I don’t think he made them up himself. He would add them to texts or emails sometimes with a little bicycle emoji. I have collected some here.

“A person who can ride and maintain a bicycle and operate a personal navigation system is a person who can act and think freely.”

“Mind and body are not distinct. The body informs the brain. Freedom of movement and freedom of thought are the same. Setting an original course and mastering it is the physical partner of original thought. They are complementary.”

“Personal mobility is not just a physical thing. If you have mastered some basic technologies relating to personal movement and direction-finding you are a free individual.”

“Some say that GPS technology has removed the challenge  of personal navigation. Not so. What matters is setting the course and completing it.”

“Make an 80-mile  circular ride and you have increased your home range far beyond what you could cover on foot. Movement enhances knowledge.”

“A bicycle is a mobility device, powered by your own body, both of which you must be ready to repair and maintain yourself.”

“Physical exercise brings the brain and body together. It stimulates the growth of new brain cells and delays the hardening of arteries. It’s a key part of body maintenance.”

“Many important human activities are social but original thinkers need time to walk alone.”

“A bicycle is not like an automobile. With six months training and preparation you can buy a frame, select your components and build a bike. In other words, you can build your own personal motion machine.”

“Our brains and bodies carry a history of old instinctive behaviours which can make us angry, provincial, intolerant and stupid. Our cortex regulates and moderates them. To maintain that we need fit bodies and good cortical training.”

“When you exercise or practice to perfection you take charge, you redirect old instincts, you annul the old brain.”

I at first thought some of these pronouncements were affected and extreme. But they played in my mind as I trained in the summer and began to make more and more sense to me.

I felt myself drawn into the slipstream of this thinking.

It began to power my training with a sense of mission.

I went to a nearby city to see an old teacher today and picked up this mail from Henry. It’s the day of the Scottish referendum.

“The Scottish people are voting. Little did the British government know when they let this happen that it would change a country for ever.

It will do so because the UK will become a federal country. Probably the process of disintegration will continue even if Scotland…

I went to a nearby city to see an old teacher today and picked up this mail from Henry. It’s the day of the Scottish referendum.

“The Scottish people are voting. Little did the British government know when they let this happen that it would change a country for ever.

It will do so because the UK will become a federal country. Probably the process of disintegration will continue even if Scotland does not separate today.

The country is in transition from a nation state to a market state. Outside the UK some expressed concern about the weakening of the UK’s role in world affairs. But the campaigns had little to say about the UK’s  global presence and influence.

That, it seems, has been delegated to the US or to the European Union.

The referendum campaigns have been about economics and welfare, arguments about whether citizens of Scotland would or not be better off under their own administration.

That is market-state-lite, with zero fizz or pizazz.

Once a nation like the UK loses a leading role, the pride and influence that comes with it, — something the US still has and which inspires its people to act collectively —  the risks of disintegration get serious.

A disintegrating nation state will need to think more carefully about the dangers of diminishing pride and reputation. The UK has been deeply damaged by foreign policy failures and the banking collapse. The danger of such failures is not just losing the war or losing a government but losing people.

All old nation states face such challenges. Without that collective pride, the different tribes of a state will slip away into nativism and localism.

The market state must hold and attract talent. It needs a good economy to attract the best people. It needs a highly educated and well-equipped workforce. It needs a good infrastructure. It needs institutions that claim admiration like Britain’s two greatest universities.

Its leaders needs to keep telling its citizens that an old country is in competition with younger ones. Our great institutions  and industries like the City of London’s financial industry are hugely important assets.

Its tax rates must be competitive. It must encourage investors and entrepreneurs.

Many things stand in the way. In England, the middle classes in the shires — mostly over fifty and retired or semi-retired— oppose the infrastructure building we need.

Welfarism and dependence are deep-rooted. In the schemes of Edinburgh and Glasgow they will be voting got the SNP because they have been promised an end to the hated “bedroom tax”.

Equality is a dangerous standard. It must be driven by increased education levels, mobility and successful companies. It must be an output of good management, not an imposition.

All that, no one has been willing to say.

In fact, noone has even said what the United Kingdom is for nowadays.

I support the idea of a referendum but I do not welcome its outcome.

I predict a narrow win for the Yes campaign.”

Inventors of My Ride Part 3

They were the Larkspur Canyon Gang, teenagers buying curvy old Schwinn cruiser bikes with fat tyres, stripping them down, racing them down forest trails.

They called their bikes “beaters” or “ballooners”.

In Cupertino too they were the Morrow Dirt Club. The Morrow coaster brake held up longest.

Their bikes were “bombers”.

Each kid built his own bike.

In 1973 Russ Mahon put a rear wheel with a…

Preparing for the Great Divide

I researched the Great Divide Trail in detail. It is a challenging and exciting prospect.

Jamie said we would start on a section that would take 8 to 10 days.

I will need to carry a considerable load and cover up to 50 miles a day.

A lot of it will be off-road. The going will sometimes be very difficult.

I downloaded training schedules from the British Heart Foundation. It includes exercises like…

“There is someone I want you to meet,” said Jamie.

Surprised. He had only mentioned seeing Amazon’s new HQ design as the reason for coming here.

Jamie took me to the lobby of a large hotel.

He looked around and took me to a table where a man was seated and talking on a cell phone.

I recognised him immediately.

He smiled and gestured us to sit and wrapped up his call.

“So you completed the ride. Good.  The bicycle is a great invention. It amplifies our personal motion. It extends our home range. It is full of innovations. And it’s a great way to stay fit. That’s why I love the bicycle.”

Let’s just say he was the leading figure in a famous technology firm.

“I am hoping you can help us”, he said.

“The human race is walking backwards into the future. We have the brain of hunters who lived in tiny groups and hated every other group. Creativity, our unique gift,  comes out of the neocortex, but 85% of our behaviour is unconscious and driven by the old brain. It is a miracle we have got this far….”

He went on to say that we face great dangers which threaten to destroy the species. Religions, for example, serve to unite groups and motivate conquests and massacres.  Religious fanatics now have the capacity to do terrible harm.

If we understood better how our brains are seized by religions, we might find better ways of satisfying that need.

Religions also reinforce old attitudes that stand in the way of progress. We are not designed to live forever. We should all have the right to end our lives as our bodies and minds deteriorate but religions stand in the way.

The most advanced countries are the most civilised countries. They can offer people good lives. But even they have many flaws. For example they have huge demographic problems over ageing and unhealthy people which they are committed to supporting. This makes it hard for poorer countries to adopt this model.

“We hate war but we are not pacifists’” he said. The civilised countries must maintain the technology and resources to detect and resist aggression. Most civilised countries pay too little attention to this.

“So we want to conduct an experiment. We want to create a community here we have the absolute freedom to do things our way, to experiment with different rules. For instance where people might have the right to end their lives when they wish, a place where we can set high standards of personal fitness, maybe a place where  the only religions is a true recognition of who and what we are as a single species in a huge universe.

“I know a title bit about you, about your history as a journalist and about and the business you helped to create. I think could be a person to begin the process of establishing such a community.”

He explained that others like him would be supporting the project but that he could not be personally involved while still leading his company. “That could have  a drastic effect on the share price of the company and that would help none.”

He said Jamie was a key figure in their group and he had recommended me but they wanted some assurance about my physical fitness.  Hence the idea of the bicycle ride.

“You seem to have come through…” he said.

He said he could provide resources and people but first I should think carefully and come up with questions.

Jamie took me to lunch. He said:

“I read all your posts. You are not a reporter any more.  What good is pity without power? This is something very different.You can do this. You are still in reasonable shape….”

It is now August the 20th, the day after the American journalist James Foley was beheaded by a jihadist with a British accent.

I am staying with Lonnie and Elsa in Klamath Falls, Oregon.

I just said I had something to think about, and could I stay for a while?

They always seem glad to see me.

I was never caught by the drama of the gold-rush. Nor apparently was Jamie, as I found on our rather cursory visit to the town museum the next day.

In fact Jamie seemed preoccupied. He had made some long phone calls in the evening.

And he said something odd over dinner:

“Old age is disgusting. I am glad you are in good shape.”

Last night was the night of the supermoon. I  stood outside my room on the walkway at about 3am and watched for 20 minutes.

It was as if the yard of the motel had been floodlit with a soft, cold white light.

Others were watching too, talking softly, down the walkway.

The news today was telling us that the outbreak of the ebola virus in Africa is more serious than they had realised. Over 1000 people have now died.

Early in the morning we picked up a rental car, removed the bicycle wheels, stowed the bikes in the trunk and drove to Whitefish, 208 miles away, a three-and-a-half hour drive.

Jamie let me drive. He was quiet most of the way.

We collected our bags and stayed near Glacier Park Airport ready for an early morning flight to Seattle.

Jamie had said he wanted to see the plans for the new downtown HQ of Amazon, his current employer, before flying on to San Francisco.

Two more crossings today, than a long descent down nearly 2000 feet into Helena.

Helena started as a gold rush town in the 1860’s. Instead of becoming a ghost town when the boom ended, it became a regional centre and a state capital as the mining of gold gave way to the mining of hard-rock quartz lodes.

We found a motel and had a quiet evening. My body was aching. I lay on my bed for a long while, going over our ride in my mind.

Throughout this trip I had pictured the two of us in a long shot, two small figures in the middle distance, making their way up a long sandy incline with dark woods on either side.

Woods where your footfall is the only sound in a  directionless space.

As Jamie said one evening, a man on a bicycle in a wilderness has to pay good attention both to his body and its companion machine.

In the two-day section from Lincoln to Helena, we were aiming to camp in the public lands of the Helena National Forest.

This day would be our first crossing from the west to the east slope of the Rockies.

We bought pasta for our dinner and filled Jamie’s various bags with other food, like bagels and cheese slices. Jamie’s supply of trail food and Power bars was getting low.  We supplemented that with Fig Newtons to eat on the ride.

I carry my trail food in a ziplock bag in the back pocket of my jersey

Someone had said this could be a difficult section to track. We should be careful to match the odometer to the waypoints in the guides and in the gpx files downloaded from the Adventure Cycling website.

We reached the divide at sixteen and a half miles after some difficult terrain up so-called Poorman’s Creek. The  open desert-like slopes told us we were over the watershed.

Our guide book had said there was a spring just over the divide. We found it and we filled the Grayl water filters and purifiers that Jamie had recommended as a precaution against the cold water parasite called Giardia, which is carried in the feces of wild animals.

Then it was an easy ride downhill to the public parts of the forest where we camped in open ground off Lost Horse Creek Road.

I cooked this time.

Jamie said he wanted to listen to some music for a while and he sat for an hour or so on a log just up where the trees started.

The Yahoo news app showed the picture of a small Australian boy holding a severed head by the hair. The picture was  taken by his father who had taken him to Syria.

The prime minister of Australia spoke of his shock and disgust.