August 13 - Jason

Well I made it into Cannada.  Nico was not so lucky.  Sometimes things follow you from home.  He hitched back to Fairbanks and is catching a flight to Seattle this Saturday.  He plans on biking around 1800 miles to "Keep Up With Me"  It should take me about 4 weeks give or take to get down to Seattle.  After a few days of burning I caught up with Rose and Chris and have been taking it easy.  A few days of in Destruction Bay and now a few days of in Haines Junction.  In Destruction Bay the weather was wonderfull and I got a few days of summer.  The rain has started in again and doesn't look like it's going to let up much.  In two weeks I'll be about 500 miles south and maybe things will be nicer.  Tomorrow I leave from here.  Rose and Chris are sticking around waiting for a package to come for Rose.  I'll miss them, but It's time to get on the road and get some miles....er....kilometers going.

We seem to have mis-placed our camera...so thats it for the pictures.  Sorry guys.  If someone wants to sponser of a new one I will gladly take more pictures with it, but as it stands I'm running low on money.  All is good though and I'm looking forward the road ahead.  I may spend a short day in Whitehorse to stock up food again.  It looks as though there is about 700 before the next city that is more than a gas station. 

I've been working on a few peices of writting and as soon as I get those polished up I'll post them here.  I much rather do it that way then the borning "this is what happened today" blog.

Peace Frogs. 

Jason- 8-15-08

I made it to Whitehorse.  The road today reminded me of Arizona.  It was sunny for a change, very nice.  Um.  Thats all I suppose.  I'll be heading south soon I hope.

Nico 8-21

   I cannot say much about Canada.  I spent about 5 hours there, took two dumps and listened to shitty music while the border guard nervously figured out what he would do with me.  When I went back to the US I told the US border guards to buy our canadian friend a beer for me if they ever see him.  I even shook his hand and wished him a good day when he gave me back my passport and told me to cycle back to the US.  That really confused him!!!  haha!  se la vie! 

Jason 8/29/08

Much much rain and bad weather.  Just been putting in many miles...er...K's.  I'm in Smithers B.C now.  I had to do some shopping.  Replace my stolen food and stove and such.  Got my bike fixed up.  The drive train was shot after so many miles on wet dirty roads.  I'm back in cities now and will be untill Mexico I think.  I saw some fast food resteraunts and was confused to be back.  At least the produce is cheaper now.  I'm about 800 miles from Seattle and plan on being there in less than two weeks.  Looking forward to meeting up Nico again.  I miss that guy.  It seems that a buch of shitty things happened in the last two weeks or so, but like always there is possitives to be found in them.  You can read on if you like.  Sorry i'm sure grammer and the likes are all over the place but i just don't really care.

Jason

Weapons of Mass Kindness

            Last week two shitty things happened:  Someone stole my food cache, and a semi-truck ran over one of my best friends.

            Lately I’ve been riding my bicycle.  I started about a month ago at the Arctic Ocean, in Alaska.  I’m going to Argentina.

            Like all bike tours, this trip has been awesomely difficult but amazingly rewarding.  Ridiculous scenery, un-tamed nature, and the kindest people.  People who actively seek out those who need help, in order to do all they can.

            But last week I encountered a different type of person.  In the southern Yukon, I hung my food bag before going to sleep.  This is called a food cache.  The idea is to keep bears away from camps, and if done really well away from your food.  It was the first night in weeks with no rain and I slept well, enjoying the open space above my head, rather than the moist wall of my bivy sack.  I was dry and hungry when I woke up.  Biking six hours a day requires around five to ten thousand calories.  I went to reclaim my food and to my shock it was gone.  In the Yukon a rugged province of hikers and hunters, where everyone knows what a food cache is and how very important they are, someone had spotted and stolen mine.  Like that my food, stove, pots, boots, and spare tire were gone.  Four hundred kilometers to the next grocery store.  11,000k to the next bike shop.

            At this point I started to lose my hope for humanity.  It also started raining.  I walked down the narrow highway, hoping, praying to find something.  The rain clouds slowly rolled in over the peaks on either side of me.  Maybe the robbers would toss the tire or the half head of cabbage.  Anything they didn’t want.   Instead all I found where dozens of R.V’s driving south.  A convoy of 28 it turned out.  Each on the size of charter bus.  Each one large enough to carry every person in the convoy.  Each one getting five to seven miles to the gallon.  The very last one blaring it’s horn at me, the driver wondering why a stupid kid would be walking down the highway, making him slow down.

            I wondered how any person singlehandedly could cause that much pollution and waste.  I wondered how they could not care about their environment, their kids, their future, their trees, bees, birds, or their world.  What point was there for me to fret buying a cabbage that was shipped 4000 miles when someone would drive an empty bus that far just to ensure a comfortable night sleep?  How could anyone be that ignorant?  How could someone take my food cache when I was so far from groceries?

            The shock of the food was short lived, but a hurt disappointed ache lingered.  Hurt because someone could do something so inconsiderate.  Hurt because people could destroy the world, little by little, and not care.  Hurt that no one felt responsible for their actions.  “God-damn the human race.  Right now I really mean it” I wrote in my journal.  That was the moment my attitude of promoting mass kindness was temporally destroyed.

…..

            When I started my trip, I knew it had a purpose.  I wanted to spread, for the lack of a more “poetic” word, kindness.  Later the phrase “weapons of mass kindness” was coined.  To accept and distribute mass kindness.  To actively seek ways to better a stranger’s life.

            My friend Trey, I’ve just realized, lived his life with the same cause in mind.  In the years I knew him I never knew him to be anything but extremely positive.  Whenever I saw him I would get a huge smile from behind his matted beard and a “Hello Jay-Jay!”

            And so I would respond “Hello Trey-Trey.” Unable to keep from smiling as well.

            “I think I need to go caving today,” I told him once.  “You want to come?”

            “Well I need to study but I would always rather roll around under ground,” he told me, still smiling.

            And so we went go to Hollow-Ridge, a small cavern near Marianna, Fl.  We always got a little lost getting to the cave mouth.  At first it would annoy me.

            “You have to get lost at lease once if you want to go caving,” he would remind me, while waving a stick in front of him to find the banana spiders before his face did.

            In the lower lever of the cave there is a small lake.  It was one of our favorite places.  We would take a few drinks of water and then start throwing globs of mud at each other, while making farting noises.  Playing the games of three year olds and the age of twenty three.  This time was different though.  Rather than tossing the mud Trey just sat there, packing it between his hands.

            “Those guys at home don’t respect the kitchen,” he finally said.  “I always clean it and they just go messin’ it back up.  Cooking meat again.”

            I could see on his face, one of the few times ever, actual disturbance.  Then a change and a characteristic Trey smile.  As big as his face.

            “At lease there’re cooking.”

            Trey finished FSU with a degree in nutrition.  He took it very serious.

            “Why cook all the nutrients out of it?” he asked and then popped the raw carrot, broccoli, cabbage, onion, garlic, radish, or whatever into his mouth.  “I don’t understand why anyone would throw the rind away,” he would say and pop the orange peel into his mouth.  “All the vitamins are there.  Once he gave our friend Sarah some 100% raw coco chocolate.

            “It’s bitter as hell,” she said, her mouth puckered.

            “You get used to it,” he replied, smiling and biting off another chunk.  Always smiling.  Trey was always smiling.

…..

            Trey and I spent a good number of hours in the cave.  In that moment, in the bottom level, I saw a side of him, I’m sure very few ever did.  It was the only time I ever saw him upset, and only for a moment before finding the positive.  Sure Krieg was cooking meat, but at lease he wasn’t eating at Hip-Hop Fish & Chicken.  It was a step.  Trey would continue to clean the kitchen.  Trey would continue to teach the values of raw vegetables.

            He fought for mass kindness with a full face smile and good food.  He would cook for anyone who would eat.  He would hug anyone he could grab.  He would smile at anyone who looked at him.  And his smile radiated joy, like the sun does light.

            I fought for mass kindness by biking, and giving everyone I could a big smile and a peace sign.  I knew the bike would grab their attention, the smile would change their confusion into another smile, and I hoped the peace sign would linger.  It would remind them of when they had long hair, lived by the moment, and loved the world and what ever little they had.

            After my food was stolen I stopped smiling to passing cars.  I stopped flashing the peace sign.

            Yesterday I checked my Email and followed a link to an article in the Tallahassee Democrat describing an accident where a semi ran over and killed a 24 year old avid cyclist, Arthur, “Trey” Hayworth.  I cried.  The only thing I could do was cry.  Cry, alone in a truck stop, in northern, British Columbia.  Again the hurt feeling crept through me.  Hurt that someone as full of life, love, happiness; someone who radiated joy, like the sun did light; hurt that trey could be gone.  That it could happen two blocks from my house.  On a street corner I sat at everyday.  It shocked me.  I cried.  And I cried longer.  I read the article over and over.  I sat and cried well over the twenty minutes I was allowed on the computer.  But no one bothered the smelly crying young man in full spandex with a mullet mohawk and a full beard.

            Finally I stood up.  I called my parents from the pay phone.  I told them one of my best friends had died, that I was okay, that I loved them.  Then I got on my bike and I rode.  Still I was crying.  Still it was raining.  Still there was a twenty mile an hour headwind.

            But, then, as sometime happens, the clouds parted, the sun came out a little.  To my left was a green mountain range with jagged rocks chewing their way out of the trees near the top.  The fog was clearing and the sun streaked through.  I smiled, wiped the tears, and the rain from my face.  It could always be worse, the voice in my head said.  The voice was Trey.

            Today I started giving smiles and peace signs back to passing cars.  Toward the end of the day the sun broke though.  As I was riding up a hill, surrounded by pine scrub, and feeling very much like I was back home in the southeast, I passed a large truck towing a trailer with four ATV’s.  The truck had pulled off the road and was trying to get back on.  As I peddled by I gave the driver a big smile and the peace sign.  The old man looked at me like I was a circus bear.  Totally confused.  The strangest thing he had ever seen.  I laughed and pushed to the top of the hill.  As I cruxed the hill the truck passed me.  The old driver with a full face smile gave me back my peace sign.  Smiling like Trey.

            My attack, my small weapon of mass kindness:  A bike, a smile, a peace sign; had give this man a few seconds or even a full minute of a “Trey Hayworth full face smile.”  I saw my friend in this 85 year old man; smiling, radiating joy like the sun does light and life.

            Sometimes all it takes is a smile and to know it’s never that bad.  That it’s never over.  Sometimes the smallest effort can change a stranger’s day.  Sometime the biggest gift can be the simplest gesture.  Sometimes all it takes is a smile, a wave, a peace sign.  Sometimes all it takes is a reminder.  To know it’s never that bad.  To know it’s never over.

            A reminder to cut through the pain, or the rain.  To cut through loneliness or monotony.  Everyday Trey reminds me it is never over.  Trey reminds me that it is so much better, than if it were worse.