I'm a Retired Machinist

February 23, 2016

Midnight comes and the thick line of green followed by yellow and then red on the radar tells the same story. Probably we'd be safe but wet if we stay where we are. But probably isn't certainly and it's clear that what Kristen needs in this moment is certainly, so we pack everything back up and load the bikes in darkness. We walk them over to the bathrooms, to the women's bathroom in particular, because no woman has ever pooped in a urinal and so I like our odds there much better.

Then, nothing. Kristen is early to every event in her life, including severe thunderstorms, it turns out. We wait beneath the covered entrance to the bathroom, looking toward the west, wondering when the wind will hit and the rain will start. It goes on like this for half an hour, which is long enough for the adrenaline that got going while we packed up to wear off. By the time the storm shows up for real – with flashes of lightning so powerful and bright that every tree branches stands in stark relief against the momentary background of grayish-white – we just feel tired and want to go back to sleep.

And so that's what we do. With our sleeping pads wedged against the far wall of the bathroom, our heads beneath the sinks, and my feet jutting into the left-most stall, I bury my head in the sleeping bag to block the light that won't turn off. The giant fan that won't shut off either chugs so loud that even the grandest cracks of thunder and hardest spells of driving rain are reduced to vague rumbles and rushes. So passes the night at Lockhart State Park. Thanks to the steel-bladdered retired women tucked away in the nearby RVs we fall into deep sleep that's never once broken by the sound of an opening door or flushing toilet.

We're on the road as soon as it's safe to do so. There's a short window in the morning to get to a motel before winds gusting as high as fifty miles per hour straight in our faces show up and stick around all through the night, making both riding and sound sleep in a tent all but impossible. We plan to make the most of that window.

The dawn does a fine job of concealing the madness that's soon to come. Birds chirp and frogs croak in the post-storm stillness. The air is heavy and warm and welcoming. We continue our tour of the obscure back roads of mid-Texas, far from the highways, all alone in a state of quiet, potholed happiness. Much of the time we're surrounded by scrubby little honey mesquite trees that we imagine once covered most of this part of the country.

Later we hit a road of dirt and gravel. Kristen wonders if it'll be sticky and muddy after all the rain, but she mixes up her letters and ends up wondering if it'll be smutty. We spend the rest of the ride judging the relative smuttiness of all the roads that appear before us. The short potholed section of concrete that runs over a creek, the one covered in deep puddles, the one lined with a thin layer of mud at its edges, the one that causes Kristen to wipe out and slam into the ground and end up covered in dirt with a swollen left knee – that road becomes the day's undisputed smuttiest.

We know the winds are close at hand when blue skies start to appear where once it was all clouds. But by this point it doesn't much matter because we're all of three miles from San Marcos and a windproof room. In fact we reach town so early that McDonald's is still serving breakfast. We eat biscuit sandwiches across from four old men sitting around and bullshitting over coffee, except here the bullshitting takes place in Spanish. The American and Texas flags raised in front of the Burger King across the street never fly at any angle but straight out to the side.

Another old man talks to us as we pack up to ride over to the motel an hour later. This one speaks only English. He says it looks like we're on a long trip, then asks us where we're going. But as we answer the questions I can see he's distracted because his eyes fall off of me and onto my bike frame. He inspects how it's welded, both by sight and by touch.

"I'm a retired machinist," he tells us. "From Missouri. I used to work for a company that fabricated frames in that way for Huffy. I don't know where this one was done..." and his voice trails off.

"China, Taiwan, something like that," I say. "Where most everything comes from now. I've looked into trying to put together a bike out of all American parts, but even if you try really hard, there are some things they only make over there now."

"I know it. You know what that is? It's them trying to knock down the American working class."

By them he's talking about big business, corporate manufacturers.

"What do you do for a living?" he asks me.

"I'm a website developer."

"A what now?"

"I build websites."

And in that moment a switch flips. The slightest hint of a smile sneaks into one corner of his mouth. I'm not just some crazy guy on a bike anymore, but a maker, a creator, someone of a different age but not so different from himself.

"Ahhh," he says half a second later. "You build websites. I build machines. And here we are."

Then he shakes my hand.

The heyday of American manufacturing is long gone and it's never coming back. Such is the way of modern life: ever-changing, never looking in reverse. But in our race toward greater and greater efficiency, I hope we as a country figure out ways to generate more creative jobs than we destroy. And this is exactly why. This man who's been retired for decades still identifies himself as a machinist. A core part of who he is involves being a person who built great things, important things, using his hands and using his mind. His job was more than just a job. It helped him define himself. If we lose that, we lose more than any measure of economic production can quantify.

We find in San Marcos more of what we expected to see back in College Station. It's old brick buildings, people on foot instead of driving, coffee shops and tattoo parlors, college kids riding bicycles out to the bars, and the most packed and excited Zumba class I've ever seen or heard. It's a great place to forget about cycle-touring for a night and go on a date, so that's what we do. The strong winds on the long walk to and from downtown leave us chilled, but the good food, the good beer, the good ice cream, and the good times that surround them more than make up for it.

Evening gives me the time and space to appreciate the design aesthetic unique to the low-end American motel. Our room at the Econo Lodge is filled with textbook examples. There are the faint stains in the dark carpet, the cracked lampshades, and the spackle on the ceiling with the texture of chunky vomit. There's the floral-patterned comforter meant for the bed that I always send straight to the floor because who knows how many different diseases live within it. There's the tissue box somehow embedded into the bathroom countertop. And of course there's the one and only piece of framed artwork that hangs on the wall above the bed, the print that's so neutral in both content and color that it might as well be invisible.

Today's ride: 22 miles (35 km)
Total: 1,567 miles (2,522 km)

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