Das Motorrad

(Please click on the title for a reading aloud by the author.)

The motorrad pictured above is my BMW R1200R. I love this bike.

For the past six months I’ve been working on a memoir, for the moment titled “The Making Of A Motorcyclist,” drawing upon my experiences with motorcycles starting at age five to present. There’s been no shortage of stories to tell, but I’ve been wondering just why is being a motorcyclist so important? A couple days ago I stopped by Santa Fe BMW to visit the crew and while I wasn’t looking for the answer, I found it. The motorcycle is a conduit out of the mundane.

Riding a motorcycle focuses the mind and fills the senses. Any trip on a motorcycle, whether into town for a coffee or across the country, becomes an adventure no other form of transportation can replicate. You’re out there. A bond between rider and machine gets into the blood. And the machines are fascinating in their design and engineering. When we talk about motorcycles, we become animated – one of my favorite words from the Latin anima. We have enthusiasm – another of my favorite words, this time from the ancient Greek en theos.

My friend Andy tells me he is thinking about buying a bike which out of the crate makes 175 rear wheel horsepower. Given it weighs only a touch over 450 pounds fueled and ready to go, the acceleration would be blinding. However in his next breath, with a grin from ear to ear he talks about adding a performance kit to it so it will make 200 rwhp and drop a few pounds to boot. I grin… I know… oh yeah, I’m with ya, brother.

Everything about it is beyond us. We need this. Not to mention it’s just plain old fun.

Gordon Bunker

Flight

(Please click on the title for a reading aloud by the author.)

At dusk the small birds – robins, finches, bluebirds and a sage thrasher – who have been at the bird bath suddenly scatter. In one fluid and decisive motion a cooper’s hawk lands on the bath, it’s strong yellow feet and steel grey talons grasp the edge without any adjustment. It sits on the bath for a few moments without drinking. Master of it’s element, the hawk then spreads and pulses it’s wings, lifts, turns and with the same confident motion is gone.

Every evening a dozen or more aircraft pass high overhead. They are six miles away, straight up. More often than not I’m outside watching them go by, amazed and thrilled by what I see.

I wonder what it would be like if I could somehow sit quietly in a chair out in the open at 35,000 feet while a 747 passed by. Six stories tall and four hundred thirty seven tons of aircraft passing at 567 mph. From a tiny speck far away, it would come, this aluminum behemoth, flash by, again to a tiny speck and be gone. What would the sound be if that of the engines could be deleted? Perhaps only a slight hiss.

A pressure wave builds before the aircraft as the atmosphere parts at the nose and airfoil’s leading edges. Once broken it slips around and comes together aft with a minimum of turbulence. The parting and gathering goes on and on, the work of sixty three thousand pounds of thrust. All this and four hundred passengers sip coffee, read, daydream or nap. In a matter of hours they could be on the other side of the planet as though nothing had happened. Remarkable.

Gordon Bunker

Make Something

(Please click on the title for a reading aloud by the author.)

Cornelia was a very wise and thoughtful Episcopalian Nun. We had some good talks. She said, “The most important thing to do in life is be creative.”

Nonetheless, I almost went to Target recently to buy a bookshelf. Then I thought, “Gordon… wait a minute. You have the materials and you have the tools, and you used to build furniture for a living for Pete’s sake. Build a bookshelf!” So I did.

The redwood is in it’s fourth form. It was: 1) a tree; 2) an outdoor deck railing; 3) a desk top; and now 4) the bookshelf. It is straight tight grain stock. Of all these iterations it was undoubtedly most beautiful as a tree. So, years ago when I saw the boards headed for the dumpster on a construction site – we were extending the deck – if for no other reason than to honor the tree, I had them in the back of my pickup truck pretty quick. Building the bookshelf took the better part of a day. At first it felt like a pain. I don’t have a shop anymore and I’m rusty with the tools. However as it came together, I started feeling good about it. It was satisfying to do and the results are lovely and have more meaning to me than anything Target has to offer. I look at it and feel connected to life.

Last weekend R. and I went to Costco. This was my first visit and while admittedly it was the end of a busy day and I was pretty well whooped, the place overwhelmed me. My eyes were googley pinwheels by the time we got out of there. Costco is a big, and I do mean big warehouse store and has all kinds of stuff in great towering stacks. Most items are sold in big quantity. It’s at least a gallon of olive oil or twenty four rolls of toilet paper at a time. The selection of processed, just throw it in the microwave food is almost endless.

There is a cost savings over other stores, but looking at fellow shoppers at Costco, most appeared tired, disengaged and not particularly happy. Maybe it was just the end of a busy day for everyone, but the experience left me feeling sad. No matter what a person might need for getting on in daily life, it was there and all one had to do is consume. In that capacity, plugged in to the end of an industrial production line practically no thought, creativity or effort is required of us. In the Costco formula it seems not much of anything is left to feel good about.

Fortunately there is still the alternative to make something.

Gordon Bunker

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dr. King believed justice prevails. I wish I could say the same. Where our beliefs do much to shape the way we live, of all the examples Dr. King set for us perhaps this one is the most important to emulate.

A couple of years ago I read “Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63,” by Taylor Branch. It is a 1088 page page turner which left me with a deep understanding and respect for the work and sacrifice of Dr. King and many others. It also left me with hope.

Gordon Bunker

The Basin

(Please click on the title for a reading aloud by the author.)

Thousands of years ago a lake occupied the space. Fish swam here, waves lapped the shores, stones got tumbled smooth by the water’s action. The air was soft and there were lake sounds. There were no people.

Hiking across the now arid range land of the Galisteo Basin, R. and I noticed the rounded pebbles. They lay everywhere. We are both rock hounds and started gathering a few. There was a moment each particular stone came to sit still. They have been sitting here all this time. I think about beginnings and endings and continuity. I think about our place in this world. So many changes around us are of a grand scale and we do not have any power over them. These processes are in motion at this moment.

Our lives afford us only a brief view, a brief experience. We see evidence of how entirely different things used to be but what will come is an unknown.

Gordon Bunker

Thin Ice

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Years ago my dad and I decided to pay Deke a visit. He and his wife Bea lived across the road from the Pemigiwasset River in Bridgewater, New Hampshire. It was a wooded area and on Deke’s acreage there were a number of small ponds. It was December, and while we hadn’t had much snow we had a couple of cold snaps - perfect conditions for the first ice of the season to have formed and thus for ice skating. Keen to give it a go, dad put his “Hans Brinker’s” in the trunk of the car.

The friendship between my dad and Deke started after WWII as the two men crewed transport flights together in the Air Force Reserves. My dad was a pilot and Deke was a navigator. They were the best of buds and had many adventures flying to every corner of the world. Deke was a true Renaissance man and had my admiration. He could hold forth on the constellations (north and south hemispheres), the fine points of using a sextant, the ecology of area rivers and lakes, the history of the American Civil War, and the care and feeding of antique automobiles.

Years previous Deke worked for the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department and had been given the task of gathering data on fish being caught by ice fishermen on the state’s lakes. Quickly realizing this meant covering hundreds of square miles of ice… on snowshoes?... he set to designing and building a means of higher speed conveyance. Modeled after an airplane, the contraption had an enclosed cockpit of welded steel tubular space frame covered with aircraft fabric perched on top of surplus military wooden aircraft skis. With a small aircraft engine in the back and a pusher prop, it was reputedly capable of doing over 100 m.p.h. I had a ride in it one day on the frozen Pemi and don’t doubt it. The experience is among my most wild and wooly. Suffice it to say, Deke had no trouble getting around to interview ice fisherman.

Dad and I arrived at Deke and Bea’s after lunch. The sun being over the yardarm, we decided a drink was in order. Deke drank straight gin out of a small Pyrex beaker, and dad and I probably got into some Scotch. Knowing Deke, it would have been a fine single malt, so fine you wouldn’t want to bastardize it with ice. Pour it in a glass and sip. With our spirits thus lubricated we set off for the nearest pond. I informed Deke I would sit it out. I didn’t know how to skate and didn’t have much interest to learn.

“God hates a coward,” he bellowed. “Come into the barn… we’ll find you a pair of skates.” I sputtered some meager objection but there was no resisting his good humored, mischievous nature. In the barn sat a box full of dusty, rusty, mouse eaten skates from which we extracted two, making more or less a pair. We three then merrily hiked off into the forest. My apprehension melted as the Scotch took effect and dad and Deke bantered back and forth about their double axels and speed skating on the Charles River and…

The pond was frozen over, all milky white and the ice was smooth as glass. Deke produced a hip flask of gin which got passed around as we put on our skates. The sun was shining, the air had a sharp bite to it. So did the gin which burned all the way down. We got onto the ice. Dad’s “Hans Brinker’s” were a pair of speed skates from his youth, with extra long blades coming to a rounded bullet point far beyond the toe of the boot. He pushed off, gliding easily, fluidly, turned a hundred eighty degrees and was skating backwards. He wore a grin from ear to ear. Deke took off with attempted gracefulness, initiated a spin and instantly fell on his back. His head hit the ice like a watermelon with a loud dull “thonk!” I stood there, a hobbled goat not knowing what to do, wondering if a mad dash to the house and a call for an ambulance would be next. But Deke got up, took a stride on the ice and went on his way as though nothing had happened.

I’d taken a few tentative steps away from shore. Before I knew it dad and Deke came up from behind, one to each side and whisked me away. They were gliding easily, we built speed as they offered words of encouragement. And then they let me go. I sped across the pond in a straight line. I just stood there as the blades and ice gave to pure fluid motion. It was exhilarating. But I was headed right for the place where the brook fed the pond.

“Watch out… thin ice over there!” Yelled Deke. I slithered to stop.

In this spot the ice, clear as glass, was much thinner from the brook’s current. A few feet away it thinned to… water. Ice cold water. I looked down. I could see aquatic plants swaying gently underneath me. I could see the muddy bottom. I could see myself going for a swim. Falling was not an option as the impact would certainly break the ice. Likewise it would not support the three of us, so I was on my own. With tiny little steps and pushes and glides I turned and skated back to the middle of the pond. Dad glided up to me.

“Well done Harry,” he said and gave my shoulder a squeeze. It’s amazing what we can do with the proper motivation.

Gordon Bunker

Dear Bill, Et Al

(Please click on the title for a reading aloud by the author.)

The agony of the poor impoverishes the rich; the betterment of the poor enriches the rich.

- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The 2010 U.S. Census reports 43.6 million Americans, or 14.3% of the population live below the poverty line. For a single parent with two children under 18, poverty is annual income below $17,285. Imagine housing, feeding and caring for yourself and two kids for a year for $17 K in the United States. To put it mildly, this is living close to the bone.

The “Forbes 400,” published annually by Forbes magazine lists the wealthiest 400 people in the United States, ranked by their net worth. Most are smiling. All are billionaires. According to the 2010 report, together they are worth almost $1.4 trillion. Considering the national net wealth for the same period hovered above $50 trillion it’s fair to say an exceedingly small number of people in this country control a huge chunk of the money (0.0000014% of the population controls 2.7% of the wealth).

Bill, you’re at the top of the heap with $54 B. Next is Warren Buffet with $45 B, and the rest of the top ten looks like a Walton family album. The Waltons occupy spots 4, 7, 8 & 9, and together are worth nearly $84 B. Squeaking in at the bottom of the list is Tamara Gustavson with only $1 B. Having been the plump red head kid with glasses, I know how being the last pick can feel. (At least now I’m not overweight.)

The list also shows the sources of wealth. We know how you and the Waltons make your money. Gustavson makes hers in the public storage business, speaking volumes about how the rest of us spend our money: on more second rate crap than we need. Of all sources however, the most frequently cited is “hedge funds,” so it’s possible to get rich quickly without really doing anything.

A person can live very nicely, lavishly even, on the proceeds from $20 million. So what is it about the 400 that they choose to accumulate so much more wealth? The Obsessive Compulsive Foundation defines hoarding as, “the acquisition of and the inability to discard worthless items…” While this usually applies to living rooms full of magazines, after an individual has made 20 or 50 million, what real value do all those additional dollars have? They certainly do not make for additional happiness. The few individuals I know in control of millions of dollars are not commensurately happier than the many individuals I know with much less. If anything, they tend to be less happy.

For extra work or extra cleverness we capitalists get extra money, thus stimulating work and cleverness, both arguably good things. But what we have are a few people sucking the well nearly dry. By law it’s fair play, however in terms of what is happening to our society this kind of disparity is a great sickness.

How can anyone hoarding big money in this country, or anywhere else for that matter, feel even remotely good about what they’re doing?

Gordon Bunker