But riding in the city and out to the country and covering lots of the ground in-between this past summer has really given me a lot of perspective on the way this part of America is put together and what kind of folks live here.
Downtown, for all its pollution, noise, and crime, is also home to the elite set and young go-getter types who just don't care. The university district just outside downtown is like Land of the Lost, with young hopefuls ranging from serious and studious to painfully pierced and tatted. Their stories and hopes and dreams are all there, etched in their "sidewalk faces" as they power walk the city streets.
Riding out from there are a nested series of concentric rings of increasing wealth, like some kind of dress-pants-required gladiatrial suburban combat arena. Lexuses and Range Rovers and a slurry of rageful Beamer types occupy these spaces, and they daily fight it out for slots in the ever-growing crawl of traffic, driving like they're always 'late for something very important'.
Finally, riding out, the landscape starts to flatten and the good country folk take over (or they never left :-). Simple people, simple lives, but even here the class system seems divided among congregations and acres owned and old family names. The "simple" life doesn't seem so simple anymore, as small towns try to balance high taxes and low incomes and keep things going. Lots of meth and drugs and drugged-out types around here, and I ride past lots of bank foreclosure stickers and run-down farms, and feel lots of hidden agendas.
The failing rural economy also seems like it's pushing anybody with a patch of land into government hand-holding programs and corn production. Or maybe it's just greed. Insanely, our government plants and then buys back corn that nobody can eat just to add ethanol to fuel that doesn't need it while using more energy and doing more environmental damage than the whole process is worth. And non-food GMO corn has literally taken over the entire rural landscape. It's crazy and it's planted everywhere I ride.
The failing rural economy also seems like it's pushing anybody with a patch of land into government hand-holding programs and corn production. Or maybe it's just greed. Insanely, our government plants and then buys back corn that nobody can eat just to add ethanol to fuel that doesn't need it while using more energy and doing more environmental damage than the whole process is worth. And non-food GMO corn has literally taken over the entire rural landscape. It's crazy and it's planted everywhere I ride.
In short, the world (everywhere) is kind of a mess right now.
Nobody has it "figured out", despite how much they claim to the contrary. Sure, some areas may appear on the surface better than others, but every spot has its plusses and minuses. From richy-rich suburbs to big-city slums to piss-poor rural towns, and everywhere in-between, I've noticed that life and people seem to collect and live in "pockets". Some pockets are bigger than others, but they are all not without good and bad to varying degrees. And no place is "best".
Nobody has it "figured out", despite how much they claim to the contrary. Sure, some areas may appear on the surface better than others, but every spot has its plusses and minuses. From richy-rich suburbs to big-city slums to piss-poor rural towns, and everywhere in-between, I've noticed that life and people seem to collect and live in "pockets". Some pockets are bigger than others, but they are all not without good and bad to varying degrees. And no place is "best".
As I ride now, I guess I'm more of an observer than a passer-by. I travel more intimately through these pockets of people and places, and I see and interact and feel a part of them in a way I didn't before. I'm starting to pay more attention to the world now that I'm focussed more on the journey than the destination. Or maybe it's just an age thing...
No place is perfect or has it all figured out, at least none that I've found. It's just like Buckaroo Banzai said:
"No matter where you go, there you are."
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