Day Twenty-One

Today started at 6:15am to say goodbye to Andrew and Stephanie and to get my bike onto a trail that led to the Mississippi river, 40 miles round trip from Cannon Falls through Minnesota country. So I rode, and rode, and rode to Red Wing, MN which is basically Wisconsin. On my way over I stopped six times. One time because there was a deer and it's fawn in the path staring at me like a deer in bike reflector, one time because a wild turkey was on the path, one time because I saw two eagles being chased by birds smaller than pigeons and that came off as peculiar. And the other three times I stopped because I was choking on bugs. Once I arrived in Red Wing I parked on a park bench and finished the book Brave New World about a dsytopian future. It was a fascinating read and really was something fun to wrap my mind around as I sat on the river. The book is based on a bleak future of world order by intense social control where feeling and free thinking is totally abolished through caste systems, extreme behavioral conditioning, and just some really crazy stuff that turns people happy all the time, but totally mindless. Society is at peace, there are no diseases, life's pleasures are at a whim.. but at the cost of free will and being numb to life. The optimism of the whole thing is that there are a few who are able to question the system. They realize that in it is not just the happiness and pleasures in life that give us the human experience. It is the pain, the sufferings, the challenges that we encounter in life that make happiness genuine only through the reference points of feeling life's downturns. We have the opportunity to live mindlessly through life's distractions and work through the system, or we can choose to really feel life.

"And that is the secret of happiness and virtue- liking what you got to do. All conditioning aims at that. Making people like their inescapable social destiny." - The Director, Brave New World

Day Twenty

Thursday morning I packed up my belongings and left the Nesvig's home. The night's rest helped me recover from my crushing Farkel blow the evening before.

I drove into St. Paul and left my truck in a park to explore the city on bike. I know this sounds a lot like yesterday's post, but rather in the other twin city. However, I assure you that yes it was pretty much exactly the same, except for the fact that I had a Chipotle burrito for lunch making the day totally different.

After reading on the river for a while and conversing with some new friends, I packed up and headed down to Cannon Falls to stay with Andrew Holloway and his wife Stephanie. Andrew and I played football together at PLU, Stephanie didn't quite make the team. It was much fun to hang out and laugh at stupid things and eat good food. Some of the simple joys of my visit came from the stories these two west coasters had about their adjustment to Midwest life. Tatertot hot dish anyone? And from dubunking Waterworld. Here's our criteria: 1) You'd think that if it took hundreds (thousands?) of years for the earth to turn into an ocean, in that time wouldn't all the inhabitants of Waterworld lose their southern accents. 2) If the Earth is all water, why is everybody so dirty all the time? I'm sure the conversation is open to suggestions and theories.


St. Paul from that park I left my truck at.