It is long since I've been so deeply moved, and that by only the introduction. Overwhelming.
https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780812994865/page/n23/mode/1up
It is long since I've been so deeply moved, and that by only the introduction. Overwhelming.
https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780812994865/page/n23/mode/1up
A personal reflection really, but confession is more likely to get your attention.
For the last two or three months probably, after a long long long hard day in the last hour or so I have been having anywhere between three and five beers. I work online while I consume them and I experience them as a way to slow down and unwind. Not Recreation.
Now that cold weather has forced me to stay in one place for the first one of 4 days, my body is physically shutting down, paralyzed with fatigue. This is a cycle that I should know and recognize but it disguises itself from me mercifully until I have the opportunity to stop and slow down.
For the last month on and off I have severe mouth pain and I think finally last night it came clear as it did once before that it is a matter of extreme grinding at night on a mouthguard what is bruising the jaw on my lower left side, severely.
What's the connection of all this? I'm thinking that the substance, the beer, enabled me to unconstructive Lee deal with the huge stress that I put myself under but not as constructively as maybe meditation could do. And I intend to begin seriously experimenting with that starting now.
So beginning two nights ago I have dispensed with the beer and beginning today I will attempt to reinstitute and redevelop my meditation skills at least several times a day and I wonder if that might help a little bit with reducing my nighttime grinding.
Have I been hugely self abusing and the alcohol has helped me do that? I think so.
Apparently I'm not supposed to die yet, mission is not supposed to end yet. Why do I say this.... , because by every right it should have ended early yesterday evening. I did everything possible to destroy Sol and myself in the process. Oh I'm doing my best, but the degree of difficulty is extraordinarily high. Not knowing if and when the severe pain in my mouth will shut me down I've doubled my mileage each day trying to get to Lansing my destination. It's very cold. So stopping to run the generator is not a desirable thing. So very carefully, very carefully, very carefully, I thought, I decided to run the generator while I was traveling with the back gate propped open about 7 in so the exhaust to go out. It was a very long day, about a marathon and a qtr worth of human energy. Probably 9 hours of travel. So yes very carefully, except I turned it the wrong way so that the very hot exhaust was exactly on the stack of plastic boxes and it turns out a brand new lithium-ion battery sitting there awaiting the power cord that the ebike place forgot to send me. After half an hour I begin to smell something but I thought that can't be me. Finally the generator stopped because it had overheated itself. Plastic boxes and one end of the new battery that by rights should have exploded , were totally melted, a melted Mass. I slept all night in those fumes. I'm not feeling terribly well right now. But under the circumstances the entire vehicle should have been destroyed with that battery blowing up, and my laptop should have been destroyed which was in one of the boxes, and the generator, and the inverter. But as it stands everything's working except for the battery, and maybe even that, but I've got to find a totally open non-flammable field where I can test the battery in case it blows up. And maybe my lungs. Time will tell.
What if this pain in James jaw becomes debilitating? What happens to Sol?
James is not concerned with himself or Sol per se, but with whatever value in Sol that otherwise might get to the mom in Michigan heroically raising two special-needs kids, that otherwise would be the destination for the value of Sol?
The pain in the jaw on the left hand side is generalized. Can't tell where the hell it's coming from. It was a two on a scale of 1 to 10 several days ago and is now up in the 7 range. James is currently 800 miles from where that Mom is and where he's headed. 10 miles an hour is the maximum speed.
And the weather is turning extremely adverse.
He has been doing 50 miles a day. Personally providing about a marathons worth of energy per day. Tomorrow he's likely to begin to try and double that, not the personal expenditure but figuring out how to recharge the batteries multiple times during the day.
Maybe the pain will go away. But 600mg of ibuprofen is barely touching it these last three hours. What if he becomes debilitated?
But he figures the closer he gets to Lansing the better the chances that someone could retrieve the vehicle. It is so vulnerable.
But there is still the rare soul it might be Unleashed we're protected from extermination, and that remains our work
So, Creator willing, it's 20/20 it will only be 45 states with Kansas being number 45. Then depending upon whether James expect either to head West back to Lone Pine Whitney for several months to regroup, or more quickly South to Southern New Mexico to regroup.
Uncertain what comes next.
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=1xMpdxE7z70Rm1V2GJ8QDJUxMByBt0odjhttps://drive.google.com/folderview?id=1xMpdxE7z70Rm1V2GJ8QDJUxMByBt0odj
Not complaining. James body is performing very well, Sol is performing very well, the weather is cooperating. But everything here is 50 miles apart in terms of reasonable stopping places and 40 miles a day is about the maximum of what this old body likes to do. We're tired, and sore. A marathon consumes 2400 calories as I understand it.
The goodness of these folks, of the owner Mike, is unlike anything I've hardly ever seen. Here. Seems that they saw a stranger trying to do something important and there was no end to the expertise or kindness or generosity. A great miracle for this mission. 30000 miles plus on this vehicle and creator may have many many thousands more miles in store for it. There were half a dozen opportunities for catastrophic failure and this shop brilliantly dealt with everyone that we knew of.
The country is almost literally out of bicycle tires until the spring and we are burning through trailer tires at an insane rate. So on top of all the axle work these last two weeks just to get it running that left the all-important alignment issue. Scouring for a shop that might be capable a week and a half ago using Google Maps I found one a hundred miles ahead of us where we landed this morning. Mike the proprietor, I don't know what touch them but something about the mission did and he made it clear that they would do whatever was needed. But what's the budget Mike? Will do whatever is needed. Was his answer. They're going to rebuild the entire axle assembly, the alignment was off by an entire inch they said.
I'm amazed that they covered the journey and were willing to put anything up. Of course they watered down a lot what I had to say but I don't begrudge them that. They are the only one that has tried in 14 months. 14 months, about 11,000 miles as I recall, and 39 state so far.
https://www.wkbn.com/news/local-news/eco-biker-makes-trek-across-valley-promotes-selflessness/
I think that's what happened to the truck repair crew here especially their boss. I'm quite sure they could get in substantial trouble for having worked on the vehicle like they have. They're only supposed to do trucks. But, and I'm purely guessing on my part, they saw someone trying to do something for the world they guessed and they didn't want it to fail. They tried to get the proper welding equipment and for a variety of reasons that didn't happen. So they found a site that one of them knew, I'm told they do race cars, they took it there, and just brought it back. I'm guessing it is way way way beyond anything I could have hoped for and certainly could have afforded by myself. Instead of the crude steel angle iron that I had supplied them with they decided that a thick strip of stainless steel running the entire length of the vehicle welded to the existing stainless steel angle iron was a better way to go so they just did it.
There's what I experience as an invisible economy. If you devote your life to trying to help the world no matter what, the world will let you die, but there are these invisible folks that don't even know they exist themselves, and their souls get touched, and they reach out just as you're about to hit the rocks. It is certainly not foolproof, and it's never something I have tried to activate. But the way I live does activate it. Sometimes. So far. So tomorrow morning we resume the journey.
By rights and rules I think this truck stop is taking the Bay Bridge with their company by trying to help. On that theory on Pleakley appreciative of their efforts. And doing other work on the vehicle while waiting.