329 lines
10 KiB
Plaintext
329 lines
10 KiB
Plaintext
BICYCLE ODYSSEY OF A HIGH-TECH NOMAD
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(Computing Across America, Chapter 1)
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by
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Steven K. Roberts, HtN. (WORDY)
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Columbus, Ohio
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May 28, 1986
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Computing Across America -- what's this? A collection of articles about
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eccentrics with micros? Tales of satellite socializing? Computer industry
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forecasts written in academic third-person boring?
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Heh. Anything but. Did you ever want to break the chains that bind you
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to your desk and just take off, wandering the planet while making a living
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doing whatever it is you love the most? Seems reasonable enough... and three
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years ago I did just that. Since then, I have been living in an electronic
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cottage on human-powered wheels, and through this column I'm going to share my
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adventures with you.
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Yes, we'll be covering the burning issues of the day: Adventure, love,
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danger, weird people, radical extremes of network living, fulltime travel,
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high-speed flights down mountain roads mottled with Aspen-shade, mycological
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tone poems, unexpected ice caves, bizarre contraptions, ham radio, satellites,
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a 200-pound bicycle worth $100 a pound, real-life wizards, regional humor,
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outlandish microprocessor applications, ridiculous comments, random
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controversy, moments of pure anguish, and so much fun that something about it
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*must* be illegal. For starters.
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I am an agent of future shock -- a high-tech nomad, a pedal- pushing
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freelance writer head over heels in love with that sweet piece of asphalt known
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as The Road. My home, if I can be said to have one, is Dataspace; my vehicle,
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the Wondrous Winnebiko. My computer is a Hewlett-Packard Portable PLUS. Yes,
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I work for a living: my business is to have a wildly exciting life and then
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tell people about it.
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(It's a lousy job, but someone's gotta do it.)
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I'd like to introduce myself here on GEnie, for I intend to hang around a
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while. This is the first of a series -- a collection of tales too strange to
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predict and too diverse to summarize -- an ongoing travelogue of a romantic
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high-tech bicycle odyssey. As I move into the second 10,000 miles of this
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open-ended journey, I have switched networks and suddenly find myself in a
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whole new community. (Why should I restrict my nomadics to *physical* space?
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Howdy, neighbor.)
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So lemme settle in here and take an angle-bracketed <sip> of compu-booze,
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then tell you a story...
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*The First 10,000 Miles*
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In September of 1983, I sold my 3-bedroom ranch home in Midwestern
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Suburbia and moved to an 8-foot-long computerized recumbent bicycle bedecked
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with solar panels and enough gizmology to start a science museum. I quickly
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discovered that this was not to be just another bike tour. Using CompuServe as
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my link with the universe, I maintained a full-time freelance writing business
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while pedaling a 9,760-mile journey around the United States.
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I lived for the moment -- and it had many. During the 18-month adventure,
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I fell in love both on- and off-line, encountered a band of convicts in the
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Maryland woods, sailed through the Gulf of Mexico, tempted fate more than once,
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and learned more than I could have ever imagined. I overheated in West Texas,
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froze my ass in Utah, discovered Key West hedonism, and explored the California
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mystique. In Santa Fe, I saw firsthand the symbiosis between hawker and gawker;
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in Crested Butte, I witnessed a community so close that everybody's biological
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cycles are synchronized. I ate crawfish, oysters, and GORP -- I prowled the
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country seeking the exotic, sexy, and bizarre. The stories flowed like hot
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breath, and soon the media turned its unblinking eye on me as a high-tech
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curiosity, a peripatetic eccentric, a symbol of freedom. "Charles Kurault on a
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bicycle," gushed one local TV station as I pedaled into a perfect cliche of
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sunset.
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And I came to realize, looking back into the eyes of all those people
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looking wistfully at me, that the greatest risk of all is taking no risk. I
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noticed (once I stopped trying to score new states) that if you think too much
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about where you're going you lose respect for where you are. And I dedicated
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myself to resolving the classic trade-off of freedom versus security -- a task
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I think I've finally accomplished.
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Ah, and the people. When you look like something out of a nonviolent
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version of "The Road Warriors," you tend to open a lot of doors. Even if most
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of them turn out to be closets, the numbers are there: I spent months probing
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the asymptotes of America and finding brilliance in the *oddest* of places. I
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found communities ranging from the vaporous to the ancient, and was tempted
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time and again by their seductive tug. And I glimpsed the potential of life
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online, a life outside the strictures of physics, beyond the limits imposed by
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image and prejudice. In the electronic pub, brain meets brain and conversation
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ranges from the baudy to the sublime.
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Life aboard the Winnebiko is a life of extremes. I am at once a being of
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cloud and soil, satellite and bicycle -- living two simultaneous lives. One is
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visceral, sweaty, attuned to every hill and headwind -- the other is ethereal,
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intellectual, an electronic interlocking of imagination and communication.
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Something about the contrast casts both aspects into sharp relief, and I
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suppose I've become something of an online proselytizer.
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9,760 miles. The journey wound down a year ago in the frenzy of
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approaching book deadline -- along with the exhaustion of some 2.5 million
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pedal cranks and over 200 different beds. (Time for the commercial: the book
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is called *Computing Across America: The Bicycle Odyssey of a High-tech
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Nomad*. It's being published this fall by Learned Information.)
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Anyway, the bicycle sat dormant for a few months in a Silicon Valley
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attic, then found its way back to the land of its origins for six months on the
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operating table. And that brings us (far too quickly) to today.
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*The Next 10,000 Miles -- A Sort of Prospectus*
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It's happening again; I can feel it. Every daydream involves the Road;
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any new purchase has to be something "bikeable." The journey is obsession,
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addiction, religion, and lifestyle of choice -- by August I'll be rolling.
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Ahh.
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But there are differences a-plenty. The Winnebiko is again the substrate,
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but it's now layered with more exotic systems than ever. Not including
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dedicated controllers and "smart logic," there are four on-board computers --
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along with a satellite data link, ham radio station, and navigation equipment.
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The biggest problem on the first trip involved time management, something
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that affects nomads as much as it does executives. I spent roughly half a
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business year pedaling -- 1,000 hours sitting alone on the bike. I would
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cruise all day across American vastness, composing tales in my head and itching
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to get my hands on the H-P Portable riding behind me. ("Ah, such a chapter
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shall this be!") But by evening I would be tired and hungry and surrounded by
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people clamoring for stories... and the day's ideas would drift away like the
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smells of camp cooking, gone without so much as a memory of the insights that
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spawned them. Wasted.
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And so the bike has become a rolling word processor. There are two liquid
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crystal displays on the console in front of me, and a keyboard built into the
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under-seat handlebars (eight buttons for text along with various other
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controls). A dedicated 68HC11 microprocessor performs key code conversion
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while attending to bicycle management tasks, decoding finger combinations based
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upon an arcane letter- frequency-based coding scheme.
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Whenever a valid character comes along, the 68HC11 passes it off to a
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handful of CMOS logic that is interfaced to the guts of a Model 100 -- making
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everything described so far look exactly like the original Radio Shack
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keyboard. The net effect is a full screen editor that I can control while
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pedaling.
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But it doesn't stop there. An RS-232 line allows text in the tiny 32K
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buffer to be transferred to the 896K Hewlett-Packard system -- and from there
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to disk via the 3.5-inch floppy drive. Two modems cover all combinations of
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pay phones and modular jacks, and a fourth processor (CMOS Z80) handles AX.25
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protocol control for packet data communications through the 2-meter ham
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transceiver... which will soon include an orbiting electronic mailbox known as
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Packsat. Of course, all this takes power, and the original 5 Watt solar panel
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has been replaced with a pair of 10 Watt Solarex units -- along with 8
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amp-hours of Nickel-Cadmium battery to hold it all. Other electrical loads on
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the Winnebiko II include twin air horns, lights, flashers, Etak electronic
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compass, paging-type security system with distributed sensors, CB radio, stereo
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system, cassette deck for dictation and music, digital shortwave receiver, and
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the usual speed- distance-time-cadence instrumentation.
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"Are yew with NASA?" asked the Ohio farmer, slowly chawin' tobacco while
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peering at the strange apparition gleaming beside the small-town pay phone.
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"Sure," I answered, looking up from my online session on the burning
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pavement. "This here's one o' them Loony Excursion Modules."
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*And Now...*
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It will be August before everything (inluding the business structure,
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subject of my next article) is working well enough for me to abandon this tacky
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apartment complex to experience, once again, the pure exuberance of full-time
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travel. Once on the road, I'll publish weekly updates on GEnie; in the
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meantime, I'll post an occasional message to let you know how the preparations
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are coming. I welcome your responses, suggestions, and invitations for the
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hospitality database (another of the H-P's jobs) -- I can be reached via GEmail
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as WORDY.
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And maybe somewhere, out there, we'll meet. I'll spend my life prowling
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neighborhoods electronic and physical, pausing for months at a time to explore
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and touch the magic. I guess that's the point of all this... I finally figured
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how to get paid for being a generalist. And I couldn't possibly do it without
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computers and networks.
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Ain't technology wonderful?
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...Steven K. Roberts
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