This blog post was originally written on 21 June 2009. It is reproduced here for archival purposes and your reading pleasure. It is reproduced as accurately as possible with no style, mechanical, or spelling corrections whatsoever.
Current mood:
contemplative
A few days ago I got back to Ohio from a week-and-a-half long motorcycle trip across the country. I was living abundantly. I left from Grand Rapids, Michigan on Friday, and rode all the way to San Francisco. I saw a lot of highway, a lot of scenery, a lot of people. Every aspect of the trip was awesome, and I learned a ton that I think I should share.
Nate and I left on Friday, after a farewell from Rich, George, and Caitlin, and rode to Wheaton, Illinois where Krista was nice enough to let us stay with her. It was nice to see her and Nicole again since it has been a few weeks since school ended. Nate's clutch cable broke as we were getting into Wheaton that night, and the next day we got a late start because we had to find a replacement. Unfortunately, the replacement was in Iowa City, and he had to ride all the way there without a clutch! What a feat. After repairing the cable and eating a packed lunch (courtesy of Krista and family) we headed on to Nebraska with no plans, and no place to stay for the night.
It was getting on toward 11:00 when we got into Omaha, and we still had no plan and were not able to contact any churches to mooch a place to sleep -- a plan that we were sure would have worked if only it weren't so late. Eventually we decided to head into Lincoln to see what we could find there. After looking into a cheap hotel and deciding it was way out of our price range, we began cruising around again. We found a church that we thought looked promising but it was locked. We decided we would be able to sleep on the church's back porch and get out before the 8:00am service in the morning, but we knew our bags and helmets and such would be soaked. Luckily, we heard some college kids partying on the porch of the house next door, and we went over too see if they would take us in. After introducing ourselves, and briefly meeting the kids, we asked if we could crash on the couch. The guys who lived there decided they didn't want strangers in their house for the night, but a girl on the porch heard our story and offered us to stay with her. Shortly later another girl offered us her house and said that she would make pancakes in the morning. I was really struck by the generosity and kindness of two seperate people who didn't know us and had no reason to trust us. As hard as it was to pass up pancakes, we ended up staying with Sam, the first girl who offer us a place because she was going to be earlier, and we had to get an early start the next day. But while we were waiting for her to finish her cigarette, we met a few more people on that porch. A fairly druck and possibly high anarchist named Dylan gave us contacts of people we could stay with in Denver and several other major cities if we needed it. He was incredibly friendly, and gave us his cell number incase we needed help finding a place in the next few days.
We left early Sunday morning, and headed to Denver where Nate had a friend for us to stay with. We got caught in some serious rain just after getting into Colorado, and we were freezing by the time we got to Denver. Marsha -- Nate's friend -- offered us dinner and hot showers as well as a dryer for our soaking wet clothes. She also replentished out food stash before we headed out the next morning.
When we left Monday morning we took highway 40 into Salt Lake City. It was gorgeous -- mountains, the continental divide, snow caps. It was awesome. We got a little wet but not too bad. I had an old friend -- more of an aquaintence at the time, but a friend now -- named Leigh Ann who offered her house to usin Salt Lake. I called her from a gas station about two hours outside the city, and she gave us directions. The next hour of riding we got soaked, but when we came throught the mountains near the Salt Lake valley, the sky cleared and the sun came out bright and beautiful. There was sun, clouds, rainbows, mountains, and our bikes. It was awesome. The rest of the ride was really cool. Leigh Ann and Dan (her husband) were very kind to us again letting us use their shower and dryer. I was starting to think how amazing it was that so many people were kind enough to let us into their homes.
They didn't have a computer at their house, so we didn't plan a place to stay the next day which was going to be somewhere in Nevada. We didn't worry much, and headed out with no plan. There kind of a cool feeling that comes with riding unfamiliar areas with no plan and no worries. After almost running out of gas in the Utah desert, we hopped from town to town in Nevada. In Battle Mountain, we stopped in a gas station and borrowed a yellow pages. We decided our best bet for a place to stay would be a church, and this time it was only around 2:00 in the afternoon, so we figured most of the church offices would be open. we started calling churches in Winnamucca which was the next town down the highway. We talked to dozens of churches. Some had events that night. Some wouldn't let us stay because they "didn't have the funds." Some wanted to let us stay but couldn't because of the trustees. I noticed that part of the sky was getting dark, and asked a guy sitting at a booth which way was west. He stuttered, and then hesitantly answered me. I could tell that he was somehow different -- some kind of mental condition maybe -- and my instinct was to end the interaction politely, but as quickly as possible. I went back to looking at the directory. We knew that technically we could afford a hotel if we needed to, but money was tight (we thought) and we had to make it out to California. After calling every church listed to no avail, we decided that there wasn't much we could do other than keep heading west. As we were leaving the guy at the booth (who I now realized had all of his belongings with him in two garbage bags) asked us for "an emergency pair of socks." All the time that we were trying to find a free place to stay, this guy was overhearing us and he didn't even have a pair of socks. Maybe we weren't as bad off as we had thought. Nate gave him a pair of socks, and we headed for the door. The gas station attendant offered us some free french fries, but I told her we were getting ready to leave (although french fries sure sounded good). I was glad to see that she brought a whole meal to the guy at the booth. We hit the road.
In Winnemucca we filled up our tanks, but didn't see any obvious place to stay (we had already called all the churches) so we moved on another hour to Lovelock. We stopped in a gas station to warm up since we had been rained on a little. The gas station attendant gave us free hot chocolate to warm up, and suggested a few churches where we could try to find a place. Most of them were locked, but the catholic priest lived next to his church, and we went to see him. When we asked us if he could help us out, he told us that "the church is not a place for sleeping." What the hell were we thinking!? We figured that our friend Dylan didn't know anyone in such a small town, so we made our way to one more church where the pastor and her husband were legitimately concerned and wanted to help us, but the wife had recently been kicked out of the church and only had a few weeks left so she couldn't let us stay there because she didn't want to make the situation with the congregation any worse. She helped us find our way to the police station, and the sheriff's office where we filled out an "indegant form" -- something we had never heard of before. Filling out the form allowed us to get a free hotel room. We assume that the city picked up the tab for us. I had never heard of this servicec before, and I wonder how many cities offer it. So far the Random girl and her anarchist friends from the porch in Lincoln, the local government in Lovelock, and several gas station attendants had been for more kind and helpful tha many churches. Interesting.
The next day we rode to Placerville, California (just outside of Sacramento) and stayed with Karl Falk and family. The ride to his house was awesome because we took several side roads, and saw some great mountains and lakes including Donner Pass road, and Donner lake.
Thursday Morning, Karl's mom gave us a bunch of food, and we rode into San Francisco over the golden gate bridge, and along highway one. We made it to the camp where Nate was working for the summer, and parted ways. He gave me his atlas, but I lost it immediately -- literally, I didn't have it at my very first gas stop; I have no idea where it went. I rode around Palo Alto and Mountain View for a while and then headed back to Karl's.
The next day I sold my bike for $1000 after having a listing online for only 10 hours. I hung out with Karl and his brothers for the next few days, and got a taste of California, and I got to See Nate Frasier -- a friend and teammate -- also. On Sunday morning Karl took me into Sacremento where I boarded a train toward home.
The first day of the train ride was pretty uneventful. I saw some good landscape, and talked to Annika and my sister on the phone to pass time. The next day I met a girl who said her name was Nova. I wasn't convinced... She was hitchhiking back to Indiana for an old friends wedding, but decided to get the train because her traveling companion had met a boy and decided to stay put. I found out she was an athiest despite her father having been a pastor before he died, and her stepfather also being a pastor. I told her I was a Christian, and that I was interested in the Mormon church, but that I was a little disillusioned by the way that churches had responded to our requests to stay with them the past week. She told me to keep traveling around. We talked a lot.
Eventually the train made it to what I'm referring to as hell-on-earth station in Chicago. Everyone is in a hurry, and nobody smiles. Scary. A random guy came up to me and asked me if I could help him get to South Bend. I reached into my pocket which was bulging with ten benjamins, pretended it was empty, and told him I couldn't help him. It was a small lie but I was sure he was trying to con me. I had a three hour layover and decided that since I hadn't spent any money on food so far on the trip I wouldn't visit the food court, so I made myself comfortable in the waiting room. After all, I still had one granola bar left that Karl had sent with me and I could eat that on the second train ride even though a five hour ride was a lot and I would proably be starving with only one granola bar. I made friends with a guy sitting opposite me. I told him I grew up near Cedar Point and he said that he loved roller coasters, and his wife used to like them too. He told me about a vacation that he and his wife went on to visit several theme parks. I noticed that he always talked about his wife in past tense, and after about a half hour I decided to ask him about it. He said that she had died of brain cancer. I figured that he probably didn't want to talk about that much so I didn't say anything else. I mentioned that I was planning on taking a nap in the waiting room, but meeting him was much more interesting. He said it was good that I didn't take a nap or the security guards would think that I was "one of us" as he put it. I wondered who "us" was, and then realized that he was homeless. He had a backpack of stuff with him, but that backpack and the pink floyd T-shirt on his back were all he owned.
I thought a little more. How could a homeless guy have afforded to take vacations to see amusement parks. And didn't he mention the house that he and his wife used to live in? I guess that was past tense too. For the first time in my life I really truly comprehended that fact that people could start out lucky like me and my family with a house and enough disposable income to take vacations and then somehow end up on the street. He said that his wife had been diagnosed with brain cancer about a year ago. After two operations and countless checkups, she didn't make it. By the time the bills were paid he was on the street. He told me about the trip they were on when they got engaged -- a vacation to Alaska. She suggested they hike up the icy hills alone and he asked her and she said yes. He sat quiet for a minute, "I miss the hell out of her." The contemplatinve silence was interrupted by a guy who asked me for ten bucks to buy a bag of weed. I told him I didn't have any money for that kind of thing. My new-found friend kicked the him out of the station, and explained to me that if the guards saw someone asking for weed money they would kick all of the homeless people out of the station. We spent the next half hour talking about rock and roll, and his old band, and my band, and all kinds of other stuff. As I was leaving I asked what he did on rainy nights like that and he said he just tried to stay as dry as possible and when he could afford it, which was rare, he would buy a bus ticket and ride all night, but it was very rare because that cost about seven dollars. I blew seven dollars on two tripple thick shakes a few weeks ago... Before I walked away I offered him my last granola bar. It would be easy to make it five hours without food.
On the second train ride I thought a lot about the guy I had met at the station. He had had such a normal life until recently. I wonder what the guy in Battle Mountain who needed the socks was like before he was on the street. I wonder if the guy who was trying to get to South Bend really did need help. I could have easily afforded to give him $10.75 for a ticket. I guess I'm not much different that the priest who told me that the church is no place for sleeping.
The problem isn't that I can't afford to help anyone, it is that I can't afford to help everyone, and I'm afriad that if I help someone it will be someone like the weed guy. Maybe that wouldn't be so bad. If I can afford Calvin College I can probably afford to be scammed a few times if it means that I could be helping someone out along the way.
I learned a lot on that trip, and I think I'll take Nova's advice and keep traveling around.
love, Joshy Woshy
ps. Chadwick, I hope you don't mind that I used your phrase "live abundantly." And I'm sorry I missed you graduation party.
This essay came after a long break (over three years) from writing, and I think that shows not only in the content, but also in the stylistic choices that I made. Rereading that article now makes me think quite fondly about that trip and also makes me wonder what the hell I'm doing letting myself fall into a routine. Don't get me wrong, my routine these days is pretty sweet. It involves running up scenic California mountains, chasing my dream of playing with a band, and riding a motorcycle in January. But somehow, day-to-day life seems bland compared to everything that I squeezed into that week and a half discussed above.
Helping or not helping homeless people is something that I still struggle with a lot, and probably always will. Since writing the original essay, I've realized that a lot of needy people are just like the guy I met in the train station, but others really are mooches. There is one guy who sits in the same spot on Colorado Blvd in downtown Pasadena everyday with his tattoos, cigarettes, and fat-ass cat just asking for money. It's obvious from his inventory, and even more so from talking to him, that he is not really hurting, just lazy. I don't help people like that ever. If they can get by and be happy living that lifestyle, then all the power to them, but it certainly isn't my responsibility to support it. On the other hand, there are a lot of people who really could use a hand. I think the essay did a good job pointing that out. And unfortunately there are even more people who can't easily be placed into either group. I guess all things considered, it is better to err on the side of generosity.
When I was coming out to LA with Annika we got to talking about this kind of thing after a guy asked us to buy him lunch at McDonalds. She, or course, was familiar with this essay so I didn't re-hash it, but neither of us had any definite answers as to when it was a good idea to give. The best thing I could come up with was this: I want to live in a world where people can trust each other and help each other out, but that just won't happen unless I start trusting people and helping them out myself.
So that's pretty much where I stand for now. I've come an embarrassingly short way toward actually being more generous since the writing of the original essay, but progress is progress, and the future is bright. On a separate note, it was really hard to reproduce this one with the same typos and mistakes that I made when I typed it up a year and a half ago. But I decided to do it anyway. I really believe that reproductions like this should be as accurate as possible. Sure I could probably change "contemplatinve" to "contemplative" without losing any of the original meaning, but any time you edit an essay, you bring a little bit of your current mindset into it. And I really want these blogs to serve as an accurate record of my thoughts and feelings at the time of writing. So I didn't change anything. That being said, I'm going to be extra careful to proof-read this commentary before I post it :)
Please post your thoughts or ideas as comments. If you commented on this essay in one of its previous locations, don't feel obligated to say anything new or unique here, or anything at all for that matter. But this is probably going to be the final home of this essay, so if you want your comment preserved, this is probably the place for it.
love, Joshy Woshy
