The Journey

...little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Mary Oliver


First let me thank my meshuggenuh cousin Carolyn for popping up in G-chat or whatever it is called asking me:

Sat, Apr 19, 2008:

3:01 AM Carolyn: It's the middle of the night HERE -- what are YOU doing up?

And -- when are you going to Chicago again?

And -- How the heck are you?

3:05 AM me: You know the muse keeps her own hours. Gotta do some writing about the relationship between the global concept of tikkun olam and the only thing that counts--my personal struggle with tikkun Yeshaya. The rabbis say if you save one life it is as if you have saved the world. Mary Oliver says "save the only life you can--yours."

Then I have to ask Carolyn's forgiveness for not responding to her further conversation. Here it is, the middle of the night before seder, Shabbat, a good time to be resting--and being a Son of Israel instead of resting, I'm wrestling. That should be a fairly all-consuming matter in itself and yet so many distractions even at 3:29 a.m. It's all part of the same fabric. When intention meets Yeshaya there is struggle with all the parts of myself that do not want to be mended.

Let's step back.

A few weeks ago I sent a message to the clan who will be gathering at our home later this day. It was the day after the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament had ended. Last year I had used that as the theme for our seder since the final game coincided with the first night of Pesach. The focus was a 64-bracket "contest" between all the aspects of Passover. Match ups such as Matzah Brei vs. The Wise Son or The Afikomen vs. The Plague of Locusts. We spent the evening debating the pairings until we got to our Final Four Questions. I had picked some foods to win it all, like Chicken Soup with Matzah Balls over Chopped Liver in the final, but my enlightened guests led us to a loftier winner--"Feeling personally redeemed by G-d from Egypt".

My message to the troops this year:

Well, we had one shining moment...that was the night of last year's NCAA final when Annette was the big winner of Nisan Insanity.

So this year we will do something entirely different. (Mah nishtana..)

Nothing will match the combination of sports and deep intellectual and spiritual probing that we achieved at seder a year ago.

As it says on the shield of the University of Rochester--Meliora!

The inescapable theme for this year is Green. Sustainability. It's the Environment, Stupid!

How we will connect that to freedom from 400 years of slavery, burning bushes that are not consumed, ten plagues, crossing the Red Sea and arriving on dry land, receiving the law at Sinai, wandering for forty years in the desert, Four Questions, Four Sons, Four Cups of Wine, the bread of affliction, manna, an only kid, dayenu, etc. is anyone's guess.

WE have 11 days to figure that out.

Do some research.

Come prepared for enlightening discourse.

I have no idea what we will do (when I know you'll know), but I'm sure it will be talked about for generations.

So much can be said about that communication and the flurry of responses it spawned. The salient point here is that at some level I sort of expected that drawing analogies between Exodus and Sustainability would be a simple thing. And on some levels it is.

The fact that Passover and Earth Day coincide this year cannot be overlooked. The fact that we begin the seder with a blessing and then quickly move to celebrating what is green is most evident. Debbie took that idea and created the most magnificent centerpiece--literally and metaphorically. She arranged 18 2-inch pots on a large planter saucer. In each pot she planted a herb or lettuce variety. In the week since she put it together it has grown into a beautiful arrangement of greens which we will snip for the Karpas segment of the seder and then at evening's end each guest will depart with one of the pots to plant in their own garden!

Wow! One single act that encompasses the full meaning of the holiday and the discourse that I initiated--an artistic, generative, wordless summary of everything I would hope to say and in hundreds of words so far in this blog am still waiting to capture.

Then again, at another level the personal meaning of seder and sustainability has been hard for me to grasp--at least until I sprang from bed minutes ago.

My mind is teeming with so many aspects of the metaphor that I am grateful that Carolyn caused me to capture the gist of it in three sentences. I am also grateful and amazed that in my quick response to Carolyn, Mary Oliver's words came to me--words that also capture in a snapshot what ultimately may be chapters of introspection in my prolix vocabulary.

The outline that runs through my head is the Maggid--the telling of the story of the birth, journey and maturation of a people--as metaphor of any single person's journey, particularly my own. So many parts of the story align--some of which I began revealing to myself and others in my adult Bar Mitzvah d'var Torah last year--how I cast myself into a pit and sold myself into slavery, and so on.

Now I look at those 400 years of proliferation as the unbridled, unburdened years of childhood. I look at Pharaoh casting a dubious eye as that divine discontent that causes struggle, growth and maturation. I look at the plagues as evidence and encouragement to initiate change, to cast out the past, to move on. And I look at the many times Pharaoh reneges on the promise to move on as the natural tendency for me to lapse, and relapse into old behaviors.

The metaphor as it extends to the Earth is blatant. How many environmental plagues will we endure before we make a fundamental irreversible change? The fact that this is so hard for society reduces to the fact that while many if not most of us can see what we must do collectively, it is our individual actions which count. Mending the world would be easy if we were truly amenable to mending ourselves.

For a person, such as myself, espousing a commitment to Tikkun Yeshaya, the truth lies in the many small errors of omission or commission. It is in those moments when I as God-wrestler and as Yeshaya-wrestler win and lose. Every heavy rotation of my pedals up a steep slope is a victory. Every sneaky bite of something I just know my body doesn't need is a loss.

The journey took our people generations. The first to leave slavery found the transformation unbearable. They wanted to return to the "comfort" of slavery rather than face the challenges of freedom. God and Moses had to summon all their power to guide a reluctant people across the Red Sea, to Sinai where recidivism was worshipped in the golden calf, through the desert where manna and the promise of milk and honey did not provide contentment. And when at last the Promised Land was reached, Moses never quite crossed the finish line, suggesting that the work is never done.

So my quests--physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual are a never ending journey.

The rabbi's also said, "The day is short, the task is great, the laborers are sluggish, the reward is much, and the Master of the house is urgent. It is not thy duty to complete the work, but neither art thou free to desist from it."

Oy, now what have I done?

"Oy, now what have I done?"

Those words, often overlooked over the centuries, are exactly what Caesar uttered just after crossing the Rubicon.

Maybe you get the idea already that in the last few days, as I have started to do more than leisurely biking, I have had some doubts about where this whole thing may end up. I shouldn't be surprised by the fact that propelling my body even on a fine machine such as my Roubaix (I love saying Roubaix) across " long distances" and especially up hills is simply not an easy task. Come to think of it, this hill thing really doesn't make sense. If I were to set down a heavy object, say a 200-pound yam, on Page Mill Road it would be extremely difficult to push up the hill from Peter Coutts Road to Foothill Expressway. Moreover, if it were very round--and mind you, I never took physics, but--it seems to me the force of gravity would tend to send the yam hurtling down Page Mill halfway to El Camino Real. So what's the logic that encourages people to sit on two round wheels and think going up the hill is even possible? This has crossed my mind more than once this week.

This should not have come as a surprise. It wasn't so different when I was testing bikes and taking them up steep inclines. True, some bikes made the grade easier than others, but there wasn't a single one at any price upon which when I reached even a modest summit I did not find my legs burning and my lungs heaving. Now that I have my very own bicycle and a commitment to go ever-increasingly challenging distances and heights, I do wonder, "Oy, now what have I done?"

I suppose it is common to have this chatter in the mind constantly questioning the merit of one's undertakings.

I have done a reasonable job of pushing aside some of the not unreasonable fears of sharing the road with two- and three-ton machines hurtling along at speeds often four or five times faster than my own. The recent headlines about the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Deputy whose cruiser crossed the double yellow line and drove head-on into three cyclists is sufficient to give one pause to consider the dangers out there. And when experiencing what well may be considered the reward for climbing a hill--the opportunity to then speed down the other side--it has immediately occurred to me that there is some inherent risk here as well. Thirty mile an hour with no steel cage or seat belt wrapped around me--well that's different. But risks aside, when I find myself struggling along, as I did peddling the 9.4 miles to shul yesterday, I can't imagine what transformation will have to occur to allow me to accomplish 300 miles through the desert.

Getting to shul really wasn't all that bad. I tooled across Palo Alto's Bryant Street Bicycle Boulevard--pretty flat. Headed up University Avenue onto Palm Drive of the Stanford campus. Cut across the back of the shopping center to Sand Hill Road. Hung a right at Santa Cruz where one car seemed a little uncertain whether to brake or mow me down as I merged left onto Alameda de las Pulgas. This is a route that avoids any really big climbs, It has its ups and downs--overall a steady rise. Not too bad. It was a cool day. It took around 45 minutes--about the same as the circuit I have ridden for years from my house around the Baylands path. Definitely more of a climb than presents itself at the edge of the bay.

A few hours later, after answering the rabbi's request to facilitate a thorny meeting with parents from the religious school, I headed home. Since the return was overall more downhill than up I was a little surprised when I found myself running out of gas about halfway. Then again fuel may have been the issue. One thing I think I need to learn more about is just what to eat, how much, and when, in order to keep the furnace inside me cranking. Fortunately I had a power bar to give me a boost.

I took a different route home which included going down the Page Mill hill. Bummer that I hit a red light at the bottom instead of using my momentum to keep on gliding. Gotta figure out how to time that better. When I got home I was spent. The round trip--about twenty miles--was a very different twenty miles than Bruce and I enjoyed on Sunday. A little later, after dinner, I found myself experiencing a strange physical problem. Just for maybe fifteen minutes there was a hard to describe disturbance in my visual field--kind of an op art thing going on--that may or may not be associated with the physical exertion I had engaged in. I will literally keep an eye on that.

So there are no shortages of challenges in the early going. What this sixty-year old overweight guy was thinking when he decided to take this on sometimes baffles even me. And yet, despite some very real disbeliefs, a small part of me--the part that is often gasping for air--says, "Yes, I can."

Or was that Barack Obama?

Rumi says...

These spiritual window-shoppers,
who idly ask, How much is that? Oh, I'm just looking.
They handle a hundred items and put them down,
shadows with no capital.

What is spent is love and two eyes wet with weeping,
But these walk into a shop,
and their whole lives pass suddenly in that moment,
in that shop.

Where did you go? "Nowhere."
What did you have to eat? "Nothing much?"

Even if you don't know what you want,
Buy something, to be part of the exchanging flow.

Start a large, foolish project,
like Noah.

It makes absolutely no difference
what people think of you.

Every time I have walked into a bike shop in recent weeks and told them my plan, this poem comes to mind. I say I am planning to ride 300 miles across the Negev desert. I tell them I have never ridden more than a dozen miles before. I mention that the ride will be in November. They give me a quick once over, and invariably say, "You've got time."

Implicit is, "You've got a lot of work to do."

That is why I have been so anxious to make this bike purchase as quickly as possible.

The learning curve has been steep since I walked into Palo Alto Bicycles it must have been Tuesday, March 18th asking them to repair a badly frayed and swollen tire on my third hand Gary Fisher mountain bike. (I was so far down the learning curve at that point that I didn't even know that what I was riding was a mountain bike.) The mechanic looked at the tire, the rusty components, the worn saddle, and the grimy chain and made a quick calculation in the hundreds of dollars to put the bike in operating order.

He listened to my story--how I liked to bike the 8 or 9 mile trail around the baylands, and how I aspired to take this immense road trip. His logic was flawless as he escorted me over to the hybrid bikes demonstrating that for a very few hundred additional dollars I could be riding a brand new machine far better suited to handle the highways and the hills as well as the trails. And it was red!

I would have been sold right there on the spot had I the time and the riding clothes required to test it out. I didn't buy the bike, but I did commit to myself to return ASAP.

Shomer Shabbes I am not, but I have always resisted most commercial activities on Saturdays as a rule. The following Shabbat I decided to invoke the exemption for "saving a life" and do everything I could to get a new bike--my passage to months, maybe years of exercise and improved physique. (That's the initial motivation of this particular foolish project.)

I started my search on Saturday at the shop I have frequented most in recent years--Mike's Bikes. It is closer to home than Palo Alto Bicycles and gets five stars from consumers. Palo Alto, on the other hand gets rave reviews from some and castigation from others. People see it as either the finest shop with the greatest commitment to excellence or as an effete purveyor to Peninsula elite.

I tried a few hybrids at Mikes--a Specialized and a Cannondale--both pricier than the bike I had seen at PA Bikes. I liked the Specialized. As soon as I rolled off the lot I sensed a lightness and speed I had not imagined possible when I had been pushing my mountain bike around. After trying those, I decided--just for the heck of it--to take a road bike out for a spin. I had no intention of buying one of these with their dropped handle bars. I liked the upright configuration of the hybrid. Trying the road bike was either the stupidest or the smartest thing I did in the past three weeks because one climb up Hanover Road and there was no going back to a hybrid. About six bike shops and many hundreds of dollars later I am the proud owner of a Specialized Roubaix Comp-Triple all-carbon frame road bike. Yes, there are bikes out there easily three and four times the price, but I am already in the stratosphere with this purchase. Remember, it all started with a bulging tire!

I'll spare all the agonizing details of my tortured selection process. At one point it seemed to come down to the design of the store jersey--in which case Palo Alto Bicycle with it's powerful green shirt would have won hands down. Ultimately, the bike I wanted there was not available in my size. After three lost Shabbats testing bikes I could taste a new bike and I wanted whatever bike it would be NOW. That menacing black Roubaix had just rolled into Mikes. One look at it and the dirty deed was done.

Today I took it for a leisurely twenty mile ride around and through Stanford with one of my biking mentors--Bruce Kahan. Riding the baylands paths in my beat up mountain bike had always rendered me a twelve year old. Climbing Page Mill road on this bad boy may be a bit too strenuous to have the same affect, but racing downhill at close to thirty miles per hour is a feeling all its own. Sweet!

I can't wait to slip my clips into the pedals tomorrow!