Exit Bag (Brief Behind the Scenes)
An addiction to the solitude not found in cities, parks, or even the crowding mountain trails. My soul’s preferred and possibly deranged fixation on stressing my self in isolation. The stressed physical conditions and the battle of consciousness of a solo touring cyclist that leads to perfect freedom. My interactions at market counters, random people I’d ask for directions and suggestions, the police i ran into, all were very brief leading to a refreshing fluid state of self- consciousness. Not to say that conversation can’t be enlightening as well, and the people who took me in for a yard campground or carpet, for whatever particular reason it became necessary for a bit of help, these people each came with there own peculiar perception of the world. Yet if the buddha is in all of us than the forthright way to reach satori would be in honest, intense self reflection, not easily achieved in our new digital regime. This is a brief glimpse of the perspective that drives me into these remote locations, the inspiration for both the trip and the song lyrics. The rest of this essay is a bit of a behind the scenes, literary style, of the stories untold in the video to give you a full picture of the events, say magic, that transpired.
My trip began thirty miles north of the northeastern California Oregon border, after my good friend Tim drove me down, camping together for a few nights along the way from Portland. Instantly I had forgotten my helmet where Tim had dropped me off after biking 10 miles, then my charger was missing when I reached the state border. Dammnit, but as I sat there stressed a car with three kids just a bit younger than myself pulled over and told me how cool my bike trip sounded. They gave me a joint and cruised off. Highway 395 was a constance of farm lands through the high desert, meaning that I slept against fences, looking for big bushes or preferably quick sloped land in a turn so the cars wouldn’t catch the reflection of any of my gear. This became a cat and mouse game of watching the high beams pass by like a surveillance chopper just missing it’s mark. I was greeted by the first slush in the high mountains and it was also goathead season, a weed with a spiked seed, the bane of my trailer tires, for a good duration of the trip. Reno was my first town with a bike shop and I had planned to land a place to stay on the WarmShowers bicycle touring app to recuperate. At this point I had eight patches between my two trailer tires so I rolled right into the bike shop. Little did I know this would be where I would meet my first night’s rest angel. My angel was an oddity in the shop. He was a man locked in methadone handcuffs, and lovingly referred to as Uncle. After failing to secure a night’s rest using WarmShowers I gratefully accepted his offer to sleep on his floor for two nights to regain my energy, chargers and other supplies. He was an angel indeed. Although, my luck in Reno wasn’t all good. As I was leaving town, I had the unfortunate experience of losing my keys. Thankfully I found them after doing a pointless 70 mile round trip ride to my previous camping spot. This camp was on a down slope 50 feet off the highway. One more trial in the undying shitstorm ordeal after another that comes with travels. Plus, affirmation in the zen principle that the more items you own the more mental turmoil associated with these items.
After Reno I headed back to the Sierra Mountain range, Lake Tahoe some 50 miles away. I had mismanaged my morning and thought to little of the mountain climb ahead. A stark contrast to the lowland desert town I had slept in. Just reaching the first minor climbs, late in the evening, I pulled over to check my brakes. While investigating, I was again helped by a man who drove me up the incredibly steep ski resort mountain and took me to the town on the other side of the mountain for snacks and a beer before driving me back to the top of the mountain where I spent the night. I gloriously rode downhill into the small yuppy town next to Lake Tahoe the next morning. My first large body of water, filmed in Exit Bag, stretching on a beach like bay. Wandering around filming the ducks, looking at the illusive sand under 6 inches of clear gorgeous water, my soul content in ethereal contemplation, as family tourist in there cars watched my possibly bizarre behavior. I lost my condition to adhere to social rules long ago on other travels, the thoughts of my perceivably odd behavior, only brief thoughts of my self conception now impenetrable in my mind.
These stories are just a small illumination of the solo touring life style. The thoughts the psyche goes through while alone in deeply remote areas is something that is impossible to convey. Even after years of self introspection I know I would never be able to explain the condition and development of my mind and who I am.
Before this point I had done very little filming, fearing the loss of my charger. I’ll skip ahead to more relevant information, but I wanted to build the emotion behind the video, illuminate a deeper understanding of the trials and tribulations associated with my travels in hopes that the same excitement or wanderlust can cross-pollinate in the extremes it does for me. It’s probably the fact that this video, was my life in stronger intensity, but I can watch this video endlessly and always feel the same energy flow through me as the credits come.
The opening scene is a perfect example of what I mean, an unassociated back stories that develop a richer understanding of the scene. Me stretching in a thunderstorm, an amazing and liberating sensation, yet the night was merciless. At one point in the video you see me crouched under a make shift tarp tent, making an egg tuna wrap, drinking whiskey. This was the start of the storm and although the temperatures were fair, the extreme winds and sporadic rain made it impossible to really set up camp. I’m not an alcoholic per say, at home I stick to a few beers a week, but that half gallon was bought mainly out of desperation to hang on to money, it was a ridiculously cheap deal and it ended up being drank by a women just on the other side of joshua tree who let me stay in her airstream. A serious alcoholic who drank nearly that entire bottle alone and then proceeded to sexually assault me. Anyways I was ecstatic to have this footage, but sleeping in a metal staked tent that was starting to leak was not an enjoyable night. The wind loosened a flap on my sleeping bag through the night as the wind and rain kept up, howling, screaming synthetic fabric woke me in the middle of the night with a shock, half drunk in my warm, wet sleeping bag I had to fasten my tent again, it was the make shift machete stake that had come loose. Stumbling in the dark, stormy desert night I kicked the blade edge just between my large and neighboring toes. Now adding blood into my, sandy, sweaty, wet sleeping compartment. The morning rose with clear skies and a foggy head. This was my first night back on the road after staying with the people who I hitched with from central Nevada all the way to Quartsite Arizona, where they would stay the winter in a long-term campground, home to a huge gem show that attracts wild masses of people. I started back on the road after the ritualistic coffee, porridge and self dug toilet. Not, but a few miles in I found a friend, a plastic four inch t-rex who was abandoned roadside, unseen by the cars flying by. In some strange way, feeling as though I saved a lonely survivor of that horrendous night, I was not alone and my spirits were renewed as we traveled with one sided conversations through the duration of my travels. Shit gets weird while traveling, and the 24 hours surrounding the opening 13 seconds of film is probably what truly exhilarates me from the start of Exit Bag, the calm stretching, but a necessary readjustment of my shooken temperament amongst the soul renewing lightening I placidly sat in.
The long hitching was barely touched in the video, but it gave to some very interesting scenes from Vegas that could never have been developed otherwise. Some cyclists think it’s cheap to take rides, but for me it offers a whole new experience not achievable with just a bike. I was in central Nevada, 30 miles left in my first 120 mile stretch with absolutely no amenities, chiefly water being a huge concern. I had stayed the night at an abounded hot springs in the middle of nowhere, a truck driver was just finishing up his soak and told me the background story of how the farmer kept it clean and in use for his family, but the aging bar had long since been closed. It was nice crossing paths with him and he left me with some snacks and electrolyte drinks, which I greatly appreciated. The day leading up to this was three little mountain passes back to back. Long stretches of straight forward mild elevations that seemed endless in their expansive view, slight headwinds that i cursed as they kept at a sub 9 mile per hour pace. Two things I learned from biking in central Nevada. A gallon of water per day is hardly enough in full fall exposure, each gallon of water an 8 pound weight fixated on slowing the pace. Also 15 miles is a long distance, but it’s even longer when you can see that 15 miles in a long undying open stretch. Biking in head winds with mild elevations I could see as far as I could bike without taking a break, a very defeating feeling when the objective is getting from point A to point B without running out of supplies. Between the excruciating boredom, lack of any water sources and the uncaring community I was happy to stay with my roadside angels long term. When I decided to hitch car after car would pass by with little consideration for what perils I put my self in, as if they would prefer I learned my lesson by death, than stop to even give me a liter of water. I was finally picked up as I started to ride and hitchhike simultaneously. I looked back to see a slowing van, could it be? Yes! A hippie couple headed south for the winter, Oregon licensee plates and warm feelings had me very comfortable instantly and as we reached conspiracy riddled Racheal Nevada, an alien themed town I was excited to visit, I was more than happy to take there offer of going to at least Las Vegas and eventually much farther in there 80s Dodge van.
It sounds like a broken record of disaster and ethereal, bizarre joys, and it is. The things you see at a much slower pace, tarantulas in the road leading to Joshua Tree or my precious little dinosaur friend, probably thrown out by an ungracious child. The strange people you meet in passing for directions or the much more intimate encounters with people who give you a roof or yard space for the night. The wild lady in Benton California, a reflection of who I may become as she rattles off theories of Sasquatch. I would later get a tattoo in L.A to always remind me of that encounter. The mountain who speaks years of wisdom, sang through the songs of the birds who have lived there for generations. All this lost in our new digital dependent society. The lonely mountains only lonely, because their most vocal decibels have left them for cardboard houses, visiting them by car once a year to take family photos to prove they were there, that they “conquered” the mountain. Yet I know the mountains, their theories deeply engrained in my quiet eager mind. A famous beat poet, Gary Snyder first turned me onto the theory that the mountain is always moving, and if you stay with him long enough, so will you move in stillness and knowledge, passed down since the dawn of the earth’s creation, long before muddled theories of self-conservation and a glorified perception of who we really are. Our minds are the most complex muscle on earth, but we fragile beings on a time scale that is nothing more than a blimp in the cosmos. The importance of finding your Exit Bag is incalculable in importance as the world, the universe, the oceans, the mountains, have much more to teach us than we have to teach them.
