I still love my ex-wife dearly. And I love my girlfriend very much.

But these two types of love are different things. The love I share with my girlfriend is the love of possibility and adventure and future. It is a fire that needs to be fed fuel.

The love for my ex-wife is a solid thing. Like a perfect shiny sphere. Like an ornament on a Christmas tree, I take it out from time to time to admire it, but it needs nothing from me.

These types of love begin in the same place and then diverge.

The love of my girlfriend is a burn barrel that needs to be stoked and tended to.

The love of my ex-wife is a shiny spherical ornament. To be admired, but no longer in need of attention.

I like those images. They feel right to me…

How KittyGirl Lost Her Meow

By Christian Jacobsen

“It was terrible!” said KittyGirl.

“What happened?” said Mousy.

“Well, I was hungry so I went to tell my owner.” She said. “She was working hard on her computer, so I walked up behind her and opened my mouth to meow and tell her I was hungry.”

“Yes? Then what happened?” said Mousy.

“Nothing came out!” exclaimed KittyGirl.

Mousy was confused. “What do you mean?”

“I opened my mouth to meow, and there was no sound! My meow was gone!” cried KittyGirl.

“Oh no!” cried Mousy.

“Oh yes!” cried KittyGirl.

“You lost your meow?”

“Yes! And I am so sad! I am hungry! And without my meow I can’t ask my owner to feed me!” KittyGirl was very upset. A kitty that can’t meow is in big trouble, indeed.

Mousy had never heard of a kitty losing her meow, so he decided to have a look for himself.

Mousy told KittyGirl, “Open your mouth. Let me see.”

KittyGirl did as she was told, and opened her mouth wide.

Mousy didn’t know exactly where the meow should be, so he looked everywhere. He looked under her tongue. He looked behind her teeth. He looked so far down KittyGirl’s throat that he almost fell in!

But there was no meow in there. He was sure of that.

“I’m not a doctor,” said Mousy, “but I don’t see your meow anywhere in there.”

“A doctor!” exclaimed KittyGirl. “That is a great idea! We will go see Doctor Owl. He is very smart. He will know what to do.”

So KittyGirl and Mousy went out into the forest behind the house to find Doctor Owl. They could hear him, but they couldn’t see him anywhere.

“Hoo hoo!” called Doctor Owl. “Hoo hoo!”

“Hello? Doctor Owl? Where are you?” called KittyGirl and Mousy together. “Doctor Owl? Hello?”

There was a whoosh of wind, and KittyGirl felt her fur move. Suddenly there was a great WHOOF WHOOF WHOOF noise of big wings, and Doctor Owl landed next to KittyGirl and Mousy, covering both of them in dry leaves.

“Hoo called me?” said Doctor Owl, looking around.

KittyGirl and Mousy brushed the leaves off their heads and said, “We did, Doctor Owl!”

Doctor Owl turned around and saw the little kitty and the mouse standing together. He adjusted his big glasses and looked closely at the two little animals.

“Hoo yes! I see you now!” said Doctor Owl. “I was afraid my ears were tricking me. I had never heard leaves talk before!”

Mousy was very small and nervous next to the big owl, but he spoke first. “KittyGirl has lost her meow!” Mousy cried, and pointed at KittyGirl’s mouth.

“Oh really?” said Doctor Owl. “Now that is very interesting!”

“Yes!” said KittyGirl. “I tried to tell my owner that I was hungry, but no sound came out! Mousy looked inside and said he couldn’t see my meow anywhere!”

Doctor Owl looked wisely at the two little animals. “Well I am the doctor here, so why don’t I have a look?”

KittyGirl opened her mouth wide for Doctor Owl.

Doctor Owl adjusted his huge glasses and looked into KittyGirl’s mouth.

“Hmmm” said Doctor Owl.

“Ahum” said Doctor Owl.

“Yes” said Doctor Owl.

“Very interesting” said Doctor Owl.

Doctor Owl stood up straight and tapped his nose. “Well.”

Doctor Owl looked up at the sky and scratched his head. “Hmmm.”

Doctor Owl looked down at the ground and pulled his ear. “Amazing.”

Mousy was so excited he squeaked, “So what is it, Doctor Owl? What is it?”

Doctor Owl looked very sternly at KittyGirl and said, “Well KittyGirl, I am afraid it is true – you have lost your meow,”

“Oh no!” cried KittyGirl and Mousy together.

“What will I do without my meow? Can you fix it Doctor Owl?” cried KittyGirl.

“Yes, I believe I can. Let’s try this.” Doctor Owl put something small into KittyGirl’s mouth. “How is that?”

“WOOF WOOF!” said KittyGirl. Her eyes popped open wide, “Oh no! That is a dog’s bark!”

“Oh! That won’t do at all” said Doctor Owl. “Let’s try this one.” He put a new one into KittyGirl’s mouth. “How does that one work?” he asked.

“Bok Bok!” said KittyGirl. “Now I sound like a chicken! My owner will feed me dry corn and seeds – yuck!”

Doctor Owl searched through his bag some more, but there was nothing left inside. “I am sorry” he said. “I’m afraid that I am all out of meows right now. You will have to find your own meow, wherever you lost it.”

KittyGirl was still a little worried. “But how will I find it?”

“When was the last time you used it?” asked Doctor Owl.

“Oh! It must have been last night when you asked for dinner, KittyGirl!” said Mousy.

“Yes! You are right. That was the last time I had it.” Agreed KittyGirl.

“Well then,” said Doctor Owl, “all you need to do is go to all the places you were since last night, and you will find your meow.”

“We will do it!” shouted KittyGirl and Mousy. “We will go look for it right now!”

“Thank you Doctor Owl” called KittyGirl as he flew away.

The two friends walked back to the house from the forest, thinking about what KittyGirl had done during the night.

“So after dinner, what did you do?” asked Mousy.

KittyGirl thought for a moment. “That was so long ago! I can’t remember.”

Mousy had a good idea. “Let’s go to your food dish and see if you can remember there.”

“Great idea!” said KittyGirl.

The two of them ran into the house, and then to the kitchen where KittyGirl’s food bowl was sitting.

“Ok, do you remember anything now?” asked Mousy.

“Oh yes!” said KittyGirl. “My owner was in the living room watching TV. I went in there and laid next to her on the couch.”

Mousy was excited, “Maybe that is where you left your meow!”

They raced into the living room, and jumped up on the couch. They searched everywhere. They searched behind the seats, between the cushions, around the armrests, and even on the back of the couch.

“I don’t see it anywhere” said KittyGirl.

“I don’t either” said Mousy sadly. “What did you do after that?”

“Well, let me think. My owner and I watched TV for a while. I fell asleep, and then – oh yes! – my owner went into the bathroom to brush her teeth!” said KittyGirl. “Let’s check in the bathroom!”

They jumped down off the couch and ran down the hallway into the bathroom. Since Mousy was smaller, he was able to stop quickly on the slippery bathroom floor. KittyGirl was much bigger, so she slid right into Mousy! BANG!

“Hey! Careful KittyGirl! You know the floor is slippery in here!” said Mousy as he crawled out from under KittyGirl’s tail.

“Oof. I always forget that.” Said KittyGirl. “Did I squish you?”

“No, I am fine.” Said Mousy. “So what did you do when your owner brushed her teeth?”

KittyGirl thought for a long time. Kitties are always doing something, so it takes a lot of work to remember all the things they did!

“Every night, I sit on the lid of the toilet while my owner brushes her teeth.” Said KittyGirl. “She likes to talk to me but it is very hard to understand her with the toothbrush in her mouth. So I watch her.”

KittyGirl jumped up on the toilet lid and looked for her meow. “But I don’t see my meow here, either!”

Mousy was searching the floor under the sink and behind the door. “I don’t see it here, either” said Mousy.

KittyGirl was standing on top of the toilet lid and rubbing her tummy. “I am really getting hungry now. I hope we find my meow soon!”

“So what did you do next?” asked Mousy.

“Oh that is easy!” said KittyGirl. “That is when I get to climb up on the bed! Let’s go!”

The two friends ran off down the hall to the bedroom. The big soft bed was easy for KittyGirl to jump up on. She practices every night. But Mousy had to stay on the floor because mice can’t jump very well.

“Can you see anything up there?” called Mousy.

“Hmm? What?” asked KittyGirl sleepily. She was curled up on the bed in her usual place.

“Hey! Wake up! We have to find your meow!” scolded Mousy.

“Oh!” KittyGirl sat up on the bed. “I almost forgot! Now let me see…” She searched around the bed, while Mousy searched on the floor.

“I don’t see it down here!” called Mousy.

“I don’t see it up here!” called KittyGirl.

KittyGirl jumped down on the floor. “I’m scared, Mousy. What if I don’t find my meow again? How will I ever tell my owner that I am hungry?”

Mousy had not thought of this. He was so excited about looking for KittyGirl’s lost meow, that he never thought that they wouldn’t find it.

Now Mousy was worried.

KittyGirl was worried.

“You could always get one of the other sounds from Doctor Owl” he offered helpfully.

KittyGirl was even more worried now. “But I don’t want to sound like a dog, or a chicken, or a moose, or anything other than a kitty!” she cried. “If I walked up to my owner and said ‘BOK BOK’, she would expect me to lay an egg. Or if I said ‘WOOF WOOF’ she would expect me to go outside and fetch the newspaper for her.”

Mousy laughed at the thought of little KittyGirl trying to carry a big heavy newspaper in her mouth.

“So we must find your meow.” Said Mousy with determination. “Nothing else will do for a kitty like you.”

“But I don’t know what I did after falling asleep on the bed!” said KittyGirl.

“Well,” said Mousy, “when I saw you last night, you were in the front window watching the tree in the front yard.”

“That’s right! That squirrel was out there making noise again, and I told him to be quiet and not wake up my owner! Let’s go!”

Mousy was tired of all this running around the house, because he has little short mouse legs, but KittyGirl has long, fast, kitty legs. So Mousy jumped up on KittyGirl’s back.

“Hold on!” called out KittyGirl.

Then ZOOM! KittyGirl raced out of the bedroom, down the hallway to the front door. She was going so fast that Mousy couldn’t keep his little eyes open.

“Woah!” Mousy’s stomach felt like it had just fallen out. He opened his eyes. KittyGirl was going too fast down the hallway so when she got to the wood floor and tried to turn into the front room, she slid sideways. Mousy was holding on with all his strength, as KittyGirl tried to stop before hitting the front door.

SCREEEEECH! KittyGirl managed to stop just before hitting the door, and then, before Mousy could even take a breath, she zoomed off into the living room.

“Uh oh!” cried Mousy. KittyGirl was about to jump up into the window. Mousy had never jumped before, and was scared.

Suddenly all of KittyGirl’s muscles went tight, and then BOING! She jumped up onto the windowsill with Mousy still on her back.

Mousy finally let go and fell onto the windowsill. He sat breathing hard for a moment.

“Wow.” Said Mousy. “Wow, wow, wow.”

KittyGirl was looking on the windowsill for her meow when she saw Mousy laying there with his eyes closed tight, and breathing hard.

“What’s the matter, Mousy?” asked KittyGirl.

Mousy said, “I have never gone so fast in my whole life! I was scared! And then FOOM! We jumped up into the window.”

“Well, you can open your eyes now, silly.” She said.

Mousy carefully opened one eye. Then he opened his other eye. Then he opened his mouth, and let it hang open.

“Oh! It is so beautiful!” Mousy said with amazement.

“What?” asked KittyGirl.

“Outside! I have never seen it before!” said Mousy.

“What do you mean? The curtains are open all day. You can see outside any time you want to!” said KittyGirl.

“Well, yes. But when I look outside, all I can see is the sky.” Explained Mousy. “This is the first time I have been able to get up so high and see so much. I had no idea what grass and trees looked like! They are so beautiful!”

KittyGirl looked outside. The trees were beautiful. And the grass was a lovely shade of green. It really was a pretty day outside.

“Yes, it is very pretty, isn’t it?” said KittyGirl. “But, unfortunately, I can’t eat trees, so we must find my meow!”

“You are right!” said Mousy. “I am sorry. I forgot.”

“That’s ok” said KittyGirl. “I remember now! After I told that squirrel to be quiet, I went around the house and checked that everything was safe and secure.”

Mousy was worried. “But you look everywhere when you do your security check! How will we ever cover all of that space?”

“We don’t need to! We have already checked the couch, the bathroom and the bedroom. That only leaves a few places” explained KittyGirl. “Let’s check under the stereo.”

“Ok,” said Mousy, “but I am going to get down and go there by myself. You are too fast for me!”

KittyGirl laughed and jumped down. Mousy carefully climbed down the curtain and walked over to the stereo, where KittyGirl was standing.

“I am always checking under here” she explained. “There is never anything there, but I always check anyway.

So the two friends crawled under the cabinet that the stereo was sitting on.

It was dark. There were wires everywhere. Dust was piled up in the corner.

“Be careful of those wires, Mousy!” said KittyGirl. “Those can be very dangerous!”

“Ok, I will” said Mousy. “Doesn’t all this dust down here bother you?”

KittyGirl nodded, “Oh yes. The dust always makes me sneeze. Uh oh…”

KittyGirl closed her eyes, and her mouth opened wide, “Ah…ahh…ahhhh….CHOO!”

Mousy hid his face under his hands as KittyGirl let out the biggest kitty sneeze he had ever seen! The dust flew everywhere.

Then, in the corner, Mousy saw something. “Hey! What is that?” he said, as he went over to look.

“What do you see, Mousy? Remember, be careful of the wires!” warned KittyGirl.

“I found something here. Hey! It is your meow!” Mousy exclaimed.

“You found it!” exclaimed KittyGirl.

“PHOO PHOO!” Mousy blew the dust off of the little meow box. “Yes! I have found it! This is it!”

“Here, put it back in” said KittyGirl, and she opened her mouth very wide.

Mousy reached inside KittyGirl’s mouth. “Umph. Er. Hmm. Oh!” Mousy made funny little mouse noises as he worked inside KittyGirl’s open mouth.

Mousy stepped back and said, “OK. I think that will work. Try it now.”

KittyGirl swallowed hard, licked her lips and said, “MEEEEOOOOWWW!”

“It’s works!” they both cried.

“Oh this is wonderful, Mousy! Thank you so much!” cried KittyGirl, and she kissed him on top of his little mouse head.

“You are welcome, KittyGirl! I am always glad to help a friend!” said Mousy. “Now let’s go see if it works on your owner!”

“OK!” said KittyGirl.

Mousy and KittyGirl walked through the living room together (because Mousy wasn’t going to go for a ride like that again!), down the hallway, and into the office, where KittyGirl’s owner sat working on her computer.

KittyGirl walked up behind her owner, and looked back at Mousy, hiding under the cabinet.

Then KittyGirl opened her mouth and said, “MEOW!”

KittyGirl’s owner stopped working and turned around in her chair. “Well hello, KittyGirl! Where have you been?”

She picked up KittyGirl and started petting her. KittyGirl started to purr.

“Are you hungry, KittyGirl?” asked her owner.

“MEOW” said KittyGirl.

“OK then! Let’s get you some food” said KittyGirl’s owner. She put KittyGirl up on her shoulder, got up from her desk, and walked out the door.

KittyGirl looked over her shoulder at Mousy hiding under the cabinet. He had a big smile on his face. “It worked!” said KittyGirl.

Mousy followed KittyGirl and her owner down the hallway and into the kitchen. When Mousy got there, KittyGirl’s owner was just walking out of the kitchen into the living room. So Mousy snuck into the kitchen.

“How is it?” asked Mousy.

“Oh, it is wonderful!” said KittyGirl. “Try some!”

Mousy stuck his little head over the edge of KittyGirl’s dish, and took a bite of her food.

“EEWWW! That is terrible!” cried Mousy. “It tastes like old fish!”

“Well I like it,” said KittyGirl.

“You can keep it” said Mousy, “I am going to stick to mouse food.”

KittyGirl finished eating, and Mousy saw her eyes were starting to close.

“Now I’m tired,” said KittyGirl. “All this excitement and food has made me sleepy.”

“I’m sleepy too,” said Mousy, yawning.

KittyGirl and Mousy went over to KittyGirl’s bed in the corner of the kitchen. KittyGirl climbed into bed, turned around once, and then curled up with her chin on her paws. Her eyes closed slowly.

Mousy crawled into bed next to KittyGirl, and pulled KittyGirl’s tail over him like a blanket.

“What an adventure we had!” said KittyGirl.

“Yes it was, KittyGirl. Next time be more careful when you sneeze. You don’t want to lose your meow again!” said Mousy.

“I will be more careful” said KittyGirl. “Good night, Mousy.”

“Good night, KittyGirl” said Mousy.

And the two friends fell fast asleep.

THE END

By Christian Jacobsen. All rights reserved.

I loved it.

It was perfect.

And there was nothing else like it in the world.

It fit perfectly into my hand, like the curves of my lover. The surface was some combination of black and matte silver that seemed to change depending on the angle you held it at. It was metal, but felt more like a wetsuit, or the skin of a gecko.

It inspired confidence. Holding it deep in the pocket of my coat I felt somehow invincible…no, not invincible…but infinitely capable. Like I could accomplish any feat, or answer any question with little thought or preparation. Like my skin was an impermeable protector of the perfect fathomless machine inside of it.

But without arrogance. This was not some cheap steroid. It didn’t turn me into one of those lunkheads at the gym. No, this feeling was the one of the ultra successful businessman, with overseas bank accounts that will keep him in Italian shoes and Beluga caviar for the duration, should anything go wrong with the daily job.

A cool confidence, like Steve McQueen in “The Great Escape”, (or in real life, for that matter).

All of that from this simple, harmless little device.

I had been searching for something for a long time. There was a hole that I couldn’t seem to fill. Money, objects, love, learning, food, accomplishment; I tried fitting everything into the hole yet the depth never diminished. Always this hungry maw deep inside my psyche somewhere inaccessible to my conscious mind.

For in my dreams I found fantastic, incredible, and unlikely things that filled the hole, sated the desire, and gave me the confidence of being complete. All of which were lost upon waking. Sure, there were unintelligible chicken scratches on the pad of paper on the bedside table, and there were recordings of bizarre streams of thought that set random sparks off inside my head. But never was there a clear waking image of what the hole wanted.

And now I had it.

And I loved it.

And it was perfect.

By Christian Jacobsen. All rights reserved.

Friends of mine had a baby yesterday. September 11, 2002. Exactly one year after fanatics piloted four airliners full of human beings into the ground and three buildings.

With that single birth, the entire objective of the fanatics has been nullified. That one small, wet, shrieking, confused infant has shown, through the simple act of being born, how absurd and impossible the hijackers goal was.

Life is resilient. All forms of life have an immune system that works constantly, sleeplessly, against any invader that would terminate that life. Bacteria are tolerated when they are kept in balance, but when a certain type of bacteria gets out of hand, the immune system is there to beat it back into submission.

One of the goals of the terrorists was to kill as many people as possible. Through his birth, Jack has demonstrated in the most natural and eloquent way possible that this was a pointless exercise that resulted in showing just how powerless the terrorists really are. The world, as an organism, replaced the lives lost in these terrorist acts in less than 5 minutes.

Jack and his world-siblings are being raised on a planet that views these terrorists as deranged and perverted messiahs for a sick clique of selfish people.

The second goal of the terrorists was to put the fear in America, and show Americans the error of their ways.

The United States has had an immigration rate of almost 3,000 immigrants a day since 1970. These people come to the US for a variety of reasons, but the most common reason is FREEDOM.

Immigrants leave their home and relocate to America to seek freedom. The freedom to practice whatever their religion may be, the freedom to try to gain a status beyond what their birth would allow them in their home country, the freedom to pursue whatever their goals may be.

They immigrate to America to take advantage of their potential: to rise above their limited station and become something more and achieve more than what tradition or the situation in their country dictates they can achieve.

From that perspective, people have said that America is everyone’s second country.

To become an American you need not practice a particular religion.

To become an American you do not have to eat a certain diet.

To become an American you need not have an affiliation to any political party.

To become an American you need not bring anything other than the belief in an ideal. Accept the American credo, and you are an American. As the Economist magazine said, “America is an immigrant’s land, open to anyone of any race or culture who accepts the ideas … on which it was founded.”

Here the terrorists have failed as well: you cannot destroy an idea.

The infant, Jack, will be raised on the beliefs of tolerance and acceptance of others. He will get to speak his first words twice: once in his mother’s tongue, Hungarian, and once in his father’s tongue, English. Everyone will remember the first day he said an English word. His world is multi-cultural from the day he was born. He is a child of the world…one who will make a home wherever he goes, because the day he entered the world he already had two countries.

As he grows up, Jack will learn about the events that are commemorated worldwide on his birthday. He will learn about people in France who lit two tall candles in their windows to commemorate the Twin Towers that he will never see in person. He will hear about men in Egypt who knelt on their prayer carpet and prayed for the people who died that day. He will watch his parents as they take a moment of silence to remember where they were and what they were doing that day in 2001.

And Jack will be told of a group of misguided men. Men who had short, vicious lives filled with hatred and intolerance. Men who championed the causes of bigotry, prejudice, and fanaticism, while plotting to kill those who they accused of the same faults. Men who will be remembered solely for their inability to understand the most basic tenet of every philosophy in the world: you cannot kill an idea.

I believe Jack will mature into a world where he will have a difficult time understanding what these people were thinking. He will have the privilege of growing up in a multi-cultural family and will have all the advantages that come to those with an open mind. With a journalist/author father, and a lawyer mother, he will also get the proper mental toolset to begin with.

And the best part of this all is that Jack is not even an American. He is Canadian and Hungarian!

So congratulations to John and Erika for bringing their small, wet, shrieking bit of future hope into the world, and congratulations to Jack for choosing to make 9/11 into a good day for me, for the rest of my life.

By Christian Jacobsen. All rights reserved.

Onions?

Yep. Onions.

Fresh, wet, growing spring onions, with a healthy dose of rich wet soil thrown in to make the bouquet complete. The sun has been warming the fields for about an hour now, and the scent of fresh growing onions fills my nose as the still-crisp air sweeps up the front of my bike’s fairing and through my helmet’s front vents.

This bike really likes speed, and running now at about 100 MPH along this forgotten farming valley highway in Central California, the bike feels like it is on rails. The only indication that we are moving fast is the surprising speed at which the telephone poles whiz past, like railroad ties under the steel wheels of a train.

The onion field passes and the air warms noticeably. That is one of the first things you notice when you get out of a “cage” and onto a motorcycle: the world is full of environmental microcosms. Pass a farm that has recently watered its fields, and the temperature can drop as much as 10 degrees on a hot day. Pass 5 different fields planted with 5 different crops and the scent will change within a few feet of each field. Smell the salt of the ocean on the breeze and know immediately whether tonight will be foggy or not.

Pushing 100 on a motorcycle will eat through tires quickly, or at least create some uneven tread wear that will annoy you in corners. I am enjoying mother natures’ work and thinking about excessive tire wear when I see Rocky check his left rear view mirror for me, then he relaxes his right wrist and moves a foot to his right. He wants to talk.

His bike slows slightly, and he falls in next to me. With his left hand he points at his fuel tank, and then tilts his hand up to his mouth in the international sign of “drink”. His bike is low on fuel so we will stop at the next gas station. I nod, and he speeds back up to his position in front and slightly to the right of me.

We always seem to ride this way. To a motorcyclist, even a one-lane road is actually two lanes: one lane where cars put their left wheels, one right lane where they put their right wheels, and a greasy, slippery, nasty bit of no-man’s-land in between. Rocky rides right, and I ride left. Always have. Dunno why.

We usually ride side-by-side like California motorcycle cops, so there is a better chance that the stereotypical old man wearing a hat sees at least one of us before pulling over on top of us. But at 100 there are other concerns, like a blowout, engine seizure, animals running out into the road, etc. It is safer to stagger and leave a few yards between us.

Skid marks and a small sign indicate a town off to the right with a restaurant and gas station, so we sweep around the corner to see a place we have never been, but have been hundreds of times before. Every small town out here is essentially the same, with the same distribution of people and shops, and the same amount of nothing to do.

We pull into the 2-pump station (always the first building at the near end of main street), shut the bikes off, and sit up for the first time in more than 3 hours.

The sound of the road and engines fades in our ears, and as we pull our helmets off the familiar quiet of Sunday in a small town settles over us.

The first kids on bicycles are pedaling their bikes madly down the street to see the “bikers”, as the old gas station owner (“Walt” it says on the front of his coveralls) comes out to see if he can be of any help.

Rocky has finished putting in his 4 gallons, and hands the nozzle to me to fill my bike up too. I have an extra 1.2-gallons in my tank, so I could go for another hour, but we always fill up at the same time to make sure we get the most hours possible in the saddle.

“Those are sure some pretty machines” says Walt, wiping grease off his hands and admiring our bikes with the eye of a man who is remembering his days in the saddle, so long ago.

“Thanks” I reply.

“You get good mileage on those?”

“I get better mileage than he does, but I am a smoother rider.” I say, smiling.

Rocky hits me with a glove and replies, “Yeah. I remember the way you smoothly slid off the road into that tree last year.”

“Was better than the other option of sliding under that station wagon that was in my lane”, I reply a bit bitterly.

Walt cuts in, “Boy I miss the old Norton. I rode a 500 back when they first came out. Fastest, scariest thing I’ve ever been on, and I used to work horses, too! But these bikes you guys have today are way too fast for me. Would scare the hell out of me.”

“Maybe, but you don’t have to ride fast to have fun. The right road at 25 MPH can be a lot more fun than a straight road at 100” says Rocky.

I hand Walt exact change for the fuel and two Cokes.

“You may be right there, son. Just be careful near Silverdale. They got some new radar guns, and Walker has set himself up a speed trap about half a mile outside of town.”

“Thanks for the tip. Mind if we rest here on your grass?” I ask.

“No problem, boys. Feel free.”

“Thanks” we both reply simultaneously.

We push the bikes over under the shade of a tree and sit a few feet away on the grass. The flies are eating their dead comrades off the front of our bikes, and we don’t want to be too close to the gore-fest.

The boys on their bicycles have taken up a safe position across the street, where they can watch us, but not get too close.

Some of them race up and down the sidewalk making racing engine noises, and jumping over curbs in what must be spectacularly high jumps to them. I know when I was that age, jumping a curb was a leap into the unknown, sailing through the air seemingly forever, and worrying if I could keep the handlebars straight when the front wheel made contact with the ground again.

Some of the show is for our entertainment, and some for the inevitable group of giggling girls who seem to be magnetically drawn to motorcycles. But the magnets switch direction as the girls get close, and there is a perimeter around the bikes and us that the girls never penetrate.

“Nice town” Rocky says, half kidding.

“Yep”.

“Kinda place I’d like to live.”

“No you wouldn’t” I offer. “You wouldn’t last a week. Die of boredom on your perfect front lawn.”

He knows it. “Yeah. But it is a nice place to visit.”

“For 10 minutes.”

Eventually, one of the smaller boys comes over (they always do) and, looking at the bikes he shyly asks, “How fast does it go?” Now that the perimeter around us has been breached, the other boys come over to get a closer look, too.

“Fast enough.” Is my reply.

“But…but,” he is still pulling at his shirt and looking at the bikes instead of us, but his confidence is building, “how fast does it go?”

“Oh, I guess it could go 115 MPH.” One of us answers, truthfully.

One of the cooler, older boys at the back is propped sidesaddle on his bike: “That’s nothing! My dad’s Ford can go 160!”

We don’t bother to explain that the biggest number on the speedometer is not an indication of the maximum speed of the vehicle, or that most vehicles will be inaccurate as much as 7 MPH at 60 MPH. This serves two purposes. First, the boys tend to disperse fairly quickly once they have established that we aren’t going to go 250 MPH down main street. Second, the questions tend to stop and we can rest undisturbed for a while.

The girls across the street have realized we are not paying attention to them, and even the haughty older one has stopped whacking the smaller ones to show her Alpha Female status.

Every once in a while there is the one kid with a little extra gleam in his eye, or who gets into a trance state around the bikes. He will walk around looking at every detail of the bike. You have to make sure he doesn’t touch the exhaust pipe, because they are still smoking hot and his skin will burn and stick instantly to the shiny chrome.

But he has that faraway look in his eyes. You want to give him your phone number and say, “Hey kid. You got the fever. Call me in 20 years, and we’ll go for a ride. You on your bike, and me on mine.” This kid is going to be a rider.

This time it is just the usual assortment of kids on bicycles. They all want a Trans Am or Camaro, and a girl with big tits and blonde hair.

Our jackets are folded as pillows under our heads and the Cokes are half gone when Rocky breaks the Sunday afternoon silence: “So how you doin?”

“Surprisingly,” I say, “I feel OK.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. It feels good to be out and riding again. Forward motion is good. Makes me feel like I am alive. And the world is still here, and still OK, and plants are growing and farmers are tending their fields, and small boys are drawn to motorcycles, and girls breasts are all funny looking when they are 12 years old.”

Rocky snorts a quick laugh, “Yeah, and at that age they all dress like it is 1976…flared pants, striped tight shirts, long straight hair and tennis shoes.”

“This part of the world seems to have been frozen in the Brady Bunch era.” I suggest.

“Yeah, but it is good of them to do it. Someone has to remind us what we are working so hard for.”

That’s why I ride with Rocky. His head is clear, his opinions are simple, and his solutions always work. He also keeps the conversation to a minimum, which is good when you are riding. All you need is someone to remind you that you are not actually a part of the machine, but someone riding it. I sometimes feel that I could sleep for a while and the bike would just know what to do instinctively through its contact with me in my most intimate places.

Yeah, I am sitting on it, so my balls are resting on the seat, but it is the inside of your thigh, the palm of your hand, the sole of your foot and the space between your shoulder blades where you are in the greatest contact with the vehicle. All directional control of the bike is done with the thighs, while speed and braking are done with the hands and feet.

I can feel the tire wear changing through the handlebars. The engine and gearbox transmit their signals through my feet and hands. I am wired directly into the heart of the vehicle from the nerves in my palms and soles of my feet. I am one with the vehicle, and the vehicle lets me be that close to it because I maintain it with my own hands. I have seen it’s intimate insides and it’s hard parts and soft places, and I have given them the love that only a mechanic knows. Imagine if your lover was able to take your heart gently out of your chest, wash it down, polish it, adjust it so it ran more smoothly, and then put it back in the exact place again, all shiny and new and with a special coat of love on it.

Yes, my machine loves me, and I love it too. Call me weird, call me an anthropomorphic fetishist if you will, but when I am leaned over into a corner, feeling the ground with the tip of my left toe, head up, watching the corner open up, rolling on the throttle, my bike and I are a single entity, breathing and living as one.

“Fresh air does help the perspective, doesn’t it?” he asks.

“Yes it do…yes it do.” I reply in my best cartoon-Texas accent.

“Shall we?”

“We shall.” And with that we get up, put our jackets, helmets and gloves back on. With a quick consultation of the map we fire up the bikes and ride through the middle of town to the highway at the far end. We ride slowly because we do like the attention, and the sound of a pair of twin engines on main street on a warm Sunday morning will bring a tear of memory to many a man, hearing it from on his lounger with the Sunday comics in his lap.

By Christian Jacobsen. All rights reserved.

Lessons of Indeterminate Nature

A shallow stream runs down from the hills between Kosovo and Montenegro, passing several small farming villages in this lazy, pretty valley. The dramatic snow-capped mountains that are the trademark of Montenegro define either side of the valley with their sheer cliffs and dense pine forests.

Three single-lane roads come together into an intersection at the mouth of the valley with a café, a grocery store, one or two other merchants, and a nice new bridge.

This was our second time driving through the town of Murino. The first time was around 8:00 AM (roughly 2 hours earlier), as we traveled up into the mountains looking for a border crossing indicated on our map. We needed to be in Kosovo in a few hours. Time was short, the snow was falling, the truck was heavy with 1500 kilos of humanitarian aid and other merchandise, we had already been driving for more than 12 hours and this pass was lower than the only other tiny little line on our map that connects Montenegro (“Crna Gora”, to the local population) and Kosovo.

Up around 2000 meters (6000+ feet) they had stopped plowing the road, and even with tire chains, we were unable to continue on to the border crossing. So we had turned around and carefully made our way back down the little one-lane road, hoping to find that the other route into Kosovo was not similarly blocked.

Arterial Blockage
It was just after 9:00 AM when we pulled up to the bridge and were forced to stop due to a large commotion on the bridge itself. A truck was sideways across the bridge, several cars were strewn around at odd angles, there was a crowd of people milling around a fire, and several policemen could be seen speaking to the crowd.

I dispatched Boris, my co-driver, to use his knowledge of the Serbo-Croatian tongue to determine what was up. Driving a large truck in this part of the world, with doors sealed by the customs department and large SFOR and NATO shields on the front and back, is not an entirely risk-free venture. So, keeping the engine running, remaining a safe distance back from the bridge (where a quick U-turn was possible), and keeping my eyes on the side of the road to keep anyone from successfully sneaking up on me, I waited for Boris to return with his report.

Safety, and/or The Lack of Same
Montenegro never officially participated in any of the Balkan wars that made the SFOR and KFOR peacekeeping missions necessary. However, the Montenegrins have never made it any secret that they really consider themselves a part of Serbia, and generally like Serbia (or the “Former Republic of Yugoslavia”, if you prefer the country’s formal name).

In less politically correct conversations, you can hear the Montenegrins referred to as “the Texans of Serbia”, without the benefits of big hair and great barbeque.

The western part of Kosovo and the south-eastern part of Montenegro are areas that are particularly proud of being Serbian, and the common belief is that NATO’s war against Serbia was blatant unwarranted aggression against a sovereign state. Add to that the generally held belief that the trial of Slobodan Milosevic in The Hague is an elaborate conspiracy, and you have an area that is not openly hostile, but not friendly to Westerners or those working for SFOR/KFOR.

So it was not without some trepidation that I sat conspicuously in my SFOR/NATO labeled vehicle and awaited Boris’ return and report. The large crowd of people all staring at me with unshielded dislike added to my concern. All of my senses were running at 150% as I tried to read the intent on the faces in the crowd, scanned the bushes to see if they concealed anyone, watched my rearview mirrors, checked out the men in the crowd with their hands in their pockets, assessed possible escape routes, kept an eye on Boris’ location in the crowd, estimated the weight of the vehicle blocking the road and if I could get up enough speed to ram through it in an emergency, etc, etc, etc.

This was taking too long. Boris had his back to me, so I could not see his expression, but his posture seemed to still be laid back and relaxed. (In fact, on reflection, I realize I have never seen Boris anything other than laid back.) But I am sitting on this bridge, exposed from all sides with a crowd of Serbian-sympathizers carefully checking me out.

Just when I think I am going to burst an artery, Boris scratches his head, turns around, and walks back to the truck in a slow and thoughtful mode. He climbs into the passenger side, shakes his head and gathers his thoughts for a moment before enlightening me.

“It’s a strike.” He says with a puzzled smile of the truly mystified.

My eloquent reply consists of one word: “Wha?”

“They are on strike, and we are stuck here until 3:00 PM, but the organizers want to buy us a coffee.”

When In Rome
The demonstrators were quite understanding about our urgent need to get to a border crossing with Kosovo, but their resolve to maintain their blockade was absolute and there was nothing we could do.

So we went into the one café in town and did what all people in the Balkans do when they stop moving for a moment: we had a coffee. One of the organizers, a stocky laborer with the demeanor of a construction site foreman, said the two of us were the most excitement the town had seen in several years. It was also somewhat of a coup for their small demonstration to have netted a fish as big as an official SFOR vehicle, and they were not about to let us go until 3:00 PM. Maybe they would even have a media circus!

The matronly café owner with the two gold teeth took us under her wing immediately. We became her favorites. She was determined to feed us, and to get us married to some local girls before we left town that afternoon. (Not an unusual set of activities, I gathered.)

The event organizer bought us both a coffee, and after some small resistance on my part, convinced me to join him in a shot of Rakia. Every country in the world has their version of Rakia. The important parts of a good Rakia are that it be made with some readily available local fruit (usually apricots or plums), be very clear, very strong, and easy to make at home in your backyard still. Call it Moonshine, Palinka, Vodka, Slivovitz, or any of hundreds of other names, but it is all the same.

What a Balkan morning…I was the chief attraction in a public disturbance, and was drinking coffee and moonshine before breakfast.

Your paycheck is going to be late…again
It was time to get to the root of the problem and use our Western ingenuity to devise a way out of this situation. We had been on the road since 5:00 PM the night before, and were looking forward to a meal, bed, and not sitting in the truck any more.

So we started asking about the demonstration. Maybe there was a crack in their logic somewhere big enough for us to fit through.

On the other side of the river is a modern building that looks “designed” enough to be made by Ikea. This is one of the textile factories that make Yugoslavian military uniforms. The crux of the demonstration was that the workers were upset that they had not been paid…

…in TWO YEARS!

Unsurprisingly, we could see their point, and so our desire to run their blockade subsided substantially. After all, they had a good case, we were being fed free coffee and Rakia, and our short time in the café had already turned us into small-scale celebrities. (Apparently it is not every day that a Dutch man who speaks fluent Serbo-Croat and an American get stuck in their blockade!)

Their demands were reasonable as well. They did not expect back-pay or compensation for the two years of lost salary. All they wanted was to make sure that their pension plans continued uninterrupted for that two year period.

That seemed like an extraordinarily reasonable position to Boris and I. But apparently the owner of the factory did not see things the same way. Or at least he didn’t agree with them the last time they talked to him about three months ago. Gossip was going around that he had gone to Australia with all of the company’s money, but wherever he had gone, they could no longer find him to continue the negotiations.

The woman running the blockade (who we dubbed “Blue Hat”) had taken the workers’ case to the government, but had not been able to get anyone to listen to her. They called, they wrote, they banged on the Mayor’s door until their hands were raw. Nothing worked.

Then they hit on the idea of the blockade.

Their reasoning was that they could get the media’s attention (and hopefully the government’s as well) and finally be able to come to some resolution. After all, at the end of the valley were logging areas and a small border crossing…someone would notice the blockade, and then they would finally get the attention of someone who could help.

That was three weeks ago.

Every weekday from 8:30 AM until 3:00 PM, they blockaded the bridge. If you had a note from your doctor, were a member of the police force, or were driving an ambulance, then you could pass. But nobody else got by.

As with everywhere else in the Balkans, the taxi drivers were the first to capitalize on the situation. Several of them grouped up on either side of the bridge and ferried people up and down the valley on either side of the blockade.

Amenities
During the course of our conversation, the café had become very full. It was only the size of your average bedroom, but now there were around 15 people sitting and standing around us as we talked with Rakia Man.

Someone tapped me on the shoulder.

I turned around to find a very large man sitting on a chair near the wall and leaning conspiratorially toward me. He had either had a lot to drink already this morning, or all of the synapses in his brain were not wired up correctly. (I never did find out which was true, although everyone just treated him as if he was a bit of an embarrassing older brother.)

He pointed to a coyly smiling bleach-blonde girl sitting in the corner of the room and said, “She is very pretty, no?”

I knew where this one was going already. But Boris and I had decided that we needed to be as polite as possible and avoid causing any possible offense. So I turned to look at the girl, and I saw a pretty woman around 23 years old, who had seen a lot of Baywatch and was doing her best Pamela Anderson impression with what she had. With her head still tilted down, she looked up at me and smiled. I smiled in return.

“Yes.” I said. “Very pretty.”

He smiled and said expectantly, “I can get her for you, if you want.” And followed that up with a wink and a good-natured punch to my shoulder. “Is true!” he continued. “I get her for you. You tell me, and I get her for you.”

I looked over to her and she was a little exasperated with Big Dumb Dude, but clearly fancied the exotic stranger from America.

I told him “Thank you, but it is too early in the morning for me.” He smiled, winked again, and reasserted his offer with a knowing nod, then retuned to his coffee with a self-satisfied smile.

I looked back at Blondie, and she waved him off but gave me another smile which told me everything I needed to know.

Goldentooth, the café owner, loved all of this and started going off on how, just over the hill in Kosovo (someplace she had never been), that every man had five women.

To Be Continued…

By Christian Jacobsen. All rights reserved.

I am an Atheist. I realize this thought makes some people uncomfortable. They associate Atheism with Satanism, or Nihilism, and believe Atheists to be akin to anarchists or others that seek the destruction of national, political or religious systems.

Proving the old knee-jerk reaction that anything unfamiliar must be evil or at least dangerous.

So I am an Atheist. What does that mean to me? Very simply, I do not believe in heaven or hell, God, Yahweh, Allah, the Earth Mother, any sort of hereafter, or that the Knights Templar are controlling the leaders of the world from their secret base in the center of the Earth.

Again, people tend to see this as a dangerous thing. “Well, if you are not answerable to a higher power, then what is to stop you from shooting me?”, goes the common reasoning.

Very simply, I am not going to shoot you for the same reason most other people are not going to shoot you: I’m a nice guy.

My beliefs are simple, based in a scientific and critical view of the world that has developed from the combination of my insatiable curiosity and “amazing powers of observation”, as Pink Floyd so eloquently expressed it.

I am an avid student of history, as well. Anyone who understands even the smallest fragment of history knows that trying to understand the past without understanding the world’s religions is like watching a football game from the stadium parking lot: there are a lot of bursts of noise and excitement and activity, but you can’t make much sense of what is going on inside.

With the recent excitement in Germany (WWII), Israel, Bosnia, and September 11th, the common man cannot ignore the role of religion as a world-forming force any longer.

As an Atheist, I have the bizarre sensation of watching all these events happen inside an aquarium that I am looking into from the outside. I see the combatants, the fields of battle, the issues being battled over, but I cannot understand the basic motivation of the combatants. I feel like someone watching two Japanese fighting fish go at it with each other: Both fish are obviously very agitated and want to tear the other apart, but I cannot understand why.

Imagine going to your local multiplex theater and buying a ticket to see “Titanic”. Playing on another screen in the multiplex is “Shrek”. And half way through your movie, everyone gets up and goes into the other theater to kill everyone watching “Shrek”.

Why do they do this? Well, maybe the motivation is simply that Shrek is a comedy, and not a romance, and you believe that comedies should not be allowed. Or maybe you feel more people should be able to see Titanic instead of Shrek, so you want to chase everyone out of the adjoining theater so Titanic can play on more screens.

Sound silly? It is. And that is what the world looks like to me through my Atheist eyes.

Still doubtful? OK, what about Muslims and Christians? What is the root of the problem there? In essence, one group believes that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and another believes that he was a particularly good one in a long line of prophets. The irrationality of the other sides’ opinion resulted in one group hitting each other with sticks and throwing the odd rock or two

Unfortunately, two things happened to escalate the situation from a parochial schoolyard scuffle to the ultimately unsolvable war of tit-for-tat that we have now. First, someone threw a rock too well, or hit someone a little too hard with their stick, and the victim died. Since the combatants are invariably male, this put the dead man’s family at a distinct disadvantage in an area where every single hand was needed for coaxing food from the stingy soil. The loss, therefore, was not just one person or a family’s pride, but possibly the entire family. Vengeance is a natural human reaction (no matter what the tree-huggers think about the enlightened state of the human animal), and it was in the air.

Then along came an early arms dealer. So they have sticks 1 meter long? OK, I can sell you a 2-meter stick. Their rocks are 20 grams? I have 40 gram rocks.

The bereaved told their story of loss and woe to their friends, the arms dealer did some business (and then moved quickly along to the next town), and the bereaved family took an eye for an eye.

So what if they had been arguing over the size of a loaf of bread? Or the amount of heat a particular oven baked at? The argument would have been heated (no pun intended), and maybe even blows would have been exchanged. But there is a fundamental principle under debate in this case, and therefore no room for astro-meta-physio-psycho-babble-ical debates on fictional characters.

And there is the rub. When you attribute particular goals, actions or sayings to an individual that may or may not have existed, there is little possibility of informed discussion. One person believes someone said something, and one person doesn’t. The conversation can make no more progress than that

As Richard Dawkins says, we are all Atheists about most of the religions the world has ever known. Atheists just go one god further.

By Christian Jacobsen. All rights reserved.

All it comes down to is how you choose to spend your money.

The book is written from a very positive and energetic perspective. It is a “can do” set of examples and principles that you can put into place today, to make sure you spend your money as powerfully as possible.

Capitalism is not inherently bad. It just hasn’t been executed very well so far.

As they say, Money Talks and Bullshit Walks. Your money – every single dollar of it – can speak volumes if you spend it consciously and with a little forethought.

This is a guidebook for how to feel great about everything you buy. And it will also ensure that you are sending the right message to manufacturers: a message of responsibility, change, and sustainability.

Excerpts will be published here, as appropriate

Night time drops fast and hard in the Balkan winter. A cold, concrete block, the night snuffs out the dim, lifeless light of day. One minute it is simply dreary. The next it is dark, with a hard cold that leans on you like a crumbling wall.

During the day, the wind is formed in the soft and sophisticated winter of European skiers. Layers keep you warm and deflect this western winter coming down from the forests and mountains of northern Italy and Austria.

Suddenly you shiver. You look up. You check behind you. Something is different. Something has changed.

It’s the wind. It comes from due east now… from the ancient steppes it blows across the Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria. Unhindered, the wind gathers the cold as it sweeps across the fallow plains and frozen waterways of eastern Hungary and Serbia. Cold needles from the east penetrate your winter layers, freeze your skin and chill your bones.

The eastern cold is here. This is a night when families huddle round a fire that never seems to be quite big enough, quite bright enough, or quite warm enough.

I am somewhere in Bosnia i Herzegovina, also known as BiH, or just Bosnia, driving down a small two-lane road. At irregular intervals my headlights illuminate uninhabited villages that still show prominent evidence of the battles fought here recently. More often than not, the village or town is inhabited, with only the most badly damaged homes and businesses still abandoned. Other villages are modern ghost towns.

Even with the windows up, my truck’s heater strains valiantly, but I still need my layers, my jacket, my gloves.

This is a part of the world where countless generations of hard-fought history lie close below the surface. In daylight, the path the Yugoslav army took through these idyllic villages is obvious. The depressions in the fertile soil left by tank treads and trucks. A path of young trees forming a stripe through old growth forest indicates where the army broke through the woods. Gaping holes in the eastern walls of homes indicate where the tanks came from. Deep scars from machine guns ring bedroom windows, the only testament to some local villager who stood their ground for a few desperate minutes.

The scene becomes darker and more sinister in the Balkan night. I catch brief glimpses of destruction as my lights pan across roadside buildings. A peek into an abandoned living room through a hole left by a tank. Splintered door frames stick out of the rubble of a demolished home. Bullet holes trace an upward arc along a wall. These are only the most recent marks of history on this well-traveled path between Europe and Asia.

The nightfall brings the single most disturbing thing to see. This countryside is littered with cemeteries. Some official, next to a church, and others stand alone in fields or at the edges of villages; cemeteries built according to need. Some with graves in neat rows, others hastily dug or jammed in tight along a bend in the road.

In each of these cemeteries, families and friends of the deceased come out every night and light a candle in front of the grave markers. I see a stone marker capped with the crescent moon and star of Islam. Another with the Star of David. Another with a cross. And others with the double-bar cross of the Serbian Orthodox church. All these graves, side by side, and most of them illuminated by a single candle.

Each candle is shielded from the wind with a red glass globe like you find on the table of a cheap Italian restaurant. The flame casts an eerie flickering red glow onto the grave marker.

Coming around a bend in the road in the utter darkness of a Balkan winter, and seeing a clearing in the trees with hundreds of these red flickering tombstones is a memory that will forever cause a tightening in my stomach and shoulders. As I write this, years after the experience, goose-bumps rise on my arms.

The sight itself is enough to leave an indelible impression… but when you think about it, there is more. Much more.

Every day, people go out there and light candles at these graves. Every day, they plan their trip to the cemetery. Every day, they check if they have a candles for tonight, or if they need to go by the shop on the way home from work. Every day, these people kneel in front of the grave of a friend, family member, loved one, and remember them. Their life. Their vibrancy. Their times together. It impels these people to make their daily pilgrimage to the graves.

During that Balkan winter the chill needles of the eastern wind, the wind from the steppes, the wind like icy concrete, cold and gritty on your cheek, the wind from the Ukraine that has been gathering the cold like a mother gathers a frightened child to her breast, the wind blows across the memories in the Balkans. The cold headstones and their religious ornaments scream of the death they represent. Scream to the deaf wind.

And another person kneels down, lighting a candle for the dead.

By Christian Jacobsen. All rights reserved.

In 1987 I graduated from High School in Mill Valley, California. A week prior to graduating I had gotten a job at a small startup tech company riding the leading edge of the big computer boom. I was making a great salary, had no expenses, and was ready to start drinking deeply from everything the world offered a good-looking egotistical rocker kid from the upper-middle class.

I quickly moved into San Francisco proper, into a 3-storey beach-front house with two of my co-workers. The house was full of high-end audio gear, remote controlled cars, laser toys, etc. We had money and were working in highly desirable jobs in a booming industry that was redefining the way people would work for ever. We jacked the system. No college, no experience. Just quick, flexible thinking, and a willingness to ignore the accepted norms.

Through some of my older co-workers I got introduced to the Cacaphony Society. This loose group of loonies came up with all kinds of oddball things to spend their time on. Some of them I enjoyed (the tour of the San Francisco sewer system was a blast!), and others I just didn’t understand. Why go into the center of the business district dressed in silly outfits? What were they trying to accomplish? Confuse a few Yuppies on their lunch hour? At the time I didn’t get some of it.

What I did “get” was the beach. I was an avid skimboarder, and a terrible surfer. My roommates and I invested in some bright lights, so we could go skimboarding at night. Rob would hold up these million candlepower lights in the fog, so Bob, Mark and I could go skimboarding even in the dark and fog.

An essential part of this whole beach scene in San Francisco was The Mermen. A surf band that Neptune himself would be proud to have at his wedding! Every year, The Mermen had a big outdoor concert on Baker Beach, with a giant bonfire in front of the stage. A tent off to the side would serve drinks and barbecued goodies. Kids would play in the sand, while people danced to the groovy tunes and got baked out of their skulls. As the sun set, The Mermen would get into longer and longer jams, as people huddled closer and closer to the fire.

It was a beautiful hedonistic love fest, and seemed to exist outside of the law. The cops never showed up, and we never gave them a real reason to. They turned a blind eye, we kept our hedonism within certain physical boundaries, packed up before it got too late, left nothing but ashes and footprints, and apparently the neighbors never complained.

One day, I saw a bonfire on Baker Beach, so I rushed over to see what was going on. Was I missing The Mermen’s beach party?!? I hadn’t heard anything about it?!? Was I missing it?!?

When I got there, I found a group of people standing around the crumpled pile of some sort of wooden statue. They seemed to be entranced by the fire. I was too late. Something had happened here, and I was too late to have any reference for what happened.

So I went home.

Later I was talking with a co-worker, Mike, and mentioned the bonfire. He said these people had been doing it for a year or two, and I should go next year. So I did. It was cool. Kinda a weird arty group of people, but the wooden man they were burning was a really interesting structure and it made a great fire! As a licensed pyrotechnician – from a family of actual professional pyros – I was always drawn to fires!

It was probably two years later when I heard the organizers were going to have to move the event, because there were too many people, and it was too obviously contravening the Parks Service laws. (Both the Mermen gigs and the Burning Man events contravened a lot of beach laws, but as long as you were respectful and not too disobedient, the cops let you be…)

As Labor Day approached, there was a lot of panic among my Cacaphony Society friends. They couldn’t find a place to burn the man!

Finally, I heard that they had gotten approval to use some property that was out in the farming valley near Sacramento, or something. It was going to be a lot farther away, so it was going to be a campout instead of a one-night event.

I was really busy, and wasn’t sure I was so excited about camping out with all these weirdos for a whole weekend. But getting out of town, and seeing some countryside sounded good, so I pounded on some coworkers until they decided to go, too.

Then something happened… This was before the Internet. Cell phones were exotic toys for rich businessmen. Information passed by answering machine and word of mouth. (There were a couple of BBS systems I ran, and a few others I checked in with from work, but I didn’t have a computer or modem at home… and I was a seriously high-tech guy!)

People said the property owner backed out at the last minute. I heard that he’d panicked when he heard how many hippies were gonna come invade his land. He didn’t want Woodstock in his back forty!

I got the feeling that the organizers were totally scrambling. Visions of them sitting up all night making calls to everyone they knew… driving around and meeting with people… talking logistics… it seemed really crazy. I heard new stories several times a day for about a week.

Then it was settled: The Black Rock Desert in Gerlach, Nevada.

WHERE?!?

Well hell… NOW I was totally committed to going! It’s gonna be in a DESERT in NEVADA out in the middle of NO-FRICKIN-WHERE? Excellent! That is a trip I can get behind!

So Mark, Bob and I packed into Bob’s new Subaru Legacy wagon, and trekked out to the Black Rock Desert, with some sleeping bags, cases of beer, road food (chips, beef jerky, etc), a Nevada state map, and some general directions.

“Drive through Gerlach, Nevada. On the east side of town, there will be a fence on the right. There will be a hole in the fence with a flag tied to it. Drive through the hole in the fence onto the open desert. It is super dusty, so KEEP YOUR SPEED DOWN! Drive for 1.5 miles. You will see a sign. Follow the directions on that sign when you get to it.”

And that was it.

So we headed out to Nevada.

When we got to Gerlach, there was a building that looked like a WWII supply shack, and it said it was a Casino in big letters over the front. We thought this was HILARIOUS! Remember, this is 1990… Vegas was still Sin City. Sleazy, sexy, fleshy, and flashy. This building had plywood siding, no lights on the outside, and it called itself a CASINO?!? This we gotta see.

So we stopped in. Got some lunch. It was deserted. The people were nice enough, but it was like walking into the middle of the movie “Paris, Texas”…. quiet, dusty, and stagnant.

Back on the road after a quick lunch, we left Gerlach, followed the directions, and were a bit puzzled….

We drove out into the desert, but there was NOBODY out there! Just a horizon and mountains.

So, we trusted the directions, and set the odometer. We drove too fast and raised a lot of dust. We slowed down. Still dust. We slowed down more. Still had dust coming in every crack and pore of the car. So we slowed to like 10 MPH, and finally got the dust down.

About then we saw one of those a-frame signs construction crews use. There were a couple of rags hanging off this sign too, and hand-written on it was an arrow, and it said “.5 miles that way”.

We looked in that direction…

Nothing. Desert. Horizon. Heat waves. Mountains.

Where was everybody?

We followed the tire tracks, and up from the heat waves a bright yellow Ryder rental truck grew. Ah ha! The truck is over there!

So we drove toward the truck, and eventually the rest of the random collection of 50 cars or so became visible.

We drove around this clutch of cars and stuff, and parked on the far side.

“I guess this is it!”

We popped a few beers and went to look around.

People were building the Man on the ground. His feet were staked to big metal hinges, and a steel A-frame with a rope over it stood above the Man.

We pitched in where we could, but these guys obviously knew what they were doing, so we backed off.

The rest of the day was spent idling around, drinking far too much beer, marveling at the desolate landscape, and doing pointless things. The three of us were sitting on the Playa behind the Subaru, getting some shade from the hatchback, and marveling at how many beers we had drunk already (we had a half-circle of empties arrayed around the car like a fence), when I got boggled by the size of things.

For some reason I fixated on the number 1,000.

“So what IS one thousand?” I asked.

“What?” They responded.

“What is a thousand? What is a thousand of anything? How many is a thousand?” I was getting worked up.

“I dunno” said Mark.

“Well I’m going to find out!” I said. “I’m going to walk one thousand steps in that direction”, and I pointed off in a vaguely southwesterly direction. To fortify myself I brought a six pack of bottled Moosehead with me. I had no idea how far I was going, how long I was going to be gone, or anything! This was REAL adventure!

So I started walking.

When I would finish a beer, I’d set it down wherever I finished it. Little green glass mile markers in my trek of a thousand steps.

I stopped a short way into my fourth beer. I turned around and looked back at the car. I waved to the guys. They waved back at me. I sat down. I finished my beer. I took a look around. I breathed a few deep breaths, got up, and traced my steps back to the car, picking up the bottles on my way.

As I got back to the car, Bob asked, “So that was a thousand steps?”

“Yup.”

“Oh.”

Around early afternoon, we were really bored. We’d seen several people out doing crazy shit in their cars (putting their automatic transmission in gear, letting the car drive away, and then running after it, etc), so we decided to go for a drive.

Mark had heard from someone that there were hot springs in the south east end of the desert we were in, so he decided we should go find them. They warned us that it would be VERY hard to find the rest of the encampment, because the horizon came up so fast. If you were a mile away from camp, you’d never see the big yellow truck.

So, with some trepidation, we headed out.

Eventually we came near the foothills of the eastern range of mountains, and the terrain changed from flat dust, to little mini-mesas a foot or two tall, covered in razor-sharp lava rocks. We picked a path through it for bit, but decided to stop when it was clear we were going to slash a tire or three. We also saw something we wanted to investigate. Some sort of man-made thing.

So we got out and walked over to the remains of a covered wagon.

A genuine, right out of the fucking 1850′s, covered wagon!!

The wheels had broken long ago, and the buckboard was sitting on the ground, but three of the four hoops over the top were still in place. Standing on it, it was still solid. Built to drive across the country.

This is where I had a vivid, visceral, transformative experience. I felt like I was standing in that settler’s shoes. Here I am as the settler: My wife and daughter are inside the broken down wagon, son, dog and horses standing around waiting for my wisdom. I looked west. Scorched black hills. A long ways away. Across a dead expanse of dusty, waterless, foodless desert.

I looked east. The foothills “I” had just come over. Nothing but desert and hardship for 3 or 4 days in that direction, too.

I felt the desperation those settlers must have felt. They must have been in hell. And to think, I had just come from the west… from the ocean… through verdant green valleys full of food and water. But all of that was beyond an essentially insurmountable mountain, and I had a wagon with a broken wheel…

The three of us guys stood there for quite a while. Very quiet. We were each having a very deep, very personal experience.

A few minutes later we gravitated back to the car. Bob drove, while Mark and I walked just in front of the car, and pointed out especially sharp rocks or steep ledges Bob needed to avoid.

We lucked out and drove back to camp pretty directly. We took a weaving path, like a skier going down a hill of fresh powder, so we wouldn’t miss camp, and we only missed it by about a half mile or so. So we saw the Ryder truck, and homed in on it.

We arrived just in time to be a part of the man-raising-crew. Everyone took up positions along the rope. I think Mike was working on the head of the Man, and getting the lights installed, and I showed him my secret stash: a bunch of fireworks! We surreptitiously filled the Man’s head with these illegal fireworks I had gotten from my job as a pro pyrotechnician, and I took my place on the rope.

Over the next 10 minutes or so, the long line of volunteers on the rope delicately lifted the Man into his standing position. It was like tug-of-war, with 100 people on one side, and a huge wooden man on the other.

I was very surprised, actually. I had never seen an A-frame like that, and hadn’t figured out how it was supposed to work. But, as we all gently pulled, the Man slowly rose up. It was clear that there were a lot of force on him (he is NOT light weight!), and I was amazed that he held together as we raised him. He was built hell-for-stout!

Once the Man was up and secured into position, people started personalizing him. They wrote messages on him. One woman had some X-rays – I assumed of a tumor, or something – that she placed into the framework of the Man’s legs with care and deep intent. She rested her right hand on the Man’s leg, and her left hand on the X-rays, lowered her head, breathed a few quiet words to herself, and then moved away.

It was there that I realized the deeper meaning of the Man, and why we had all come together to this insane place to do something so essentially silly, and yet so powerful.

To this day, almost 20 years later, I still remember the feelings and experiences I had there. I grew up that day. I grew out that day. My mind expanded that day.

That night there was a lot of craziness. I remember a lot of stupidity with cars. People going out and driving around with their lights off. Us chasing one car, with our headlights out. We pulled up next to the unsuspecting driver, who was probably blasting along at 40 MPH or so, and suddenly we flipped on our lights.

It must have been like a UFO was flying next to him! Here he is driving alone in the desert, when all of a sudden there is this blaze of lights not 10 feet away from him!!! He swerved away insanely to the right, and we laughed our asses off.

The next day was more wasting time during the day, waiting for the night to start. I don’t remember much of it, except that Mark went out for a drive, found the hotsprings, got stuck in the mud, and had to be rescued by the local air patrol. He came back 12 hours later, caked in mud to his waist, with an amazing story of dehydration and near-death experiences in the desert.

That night we burned the Man. One guy had brought out a drum set, and set it up a reasonable distance away from the Man. A fire-breather walked up to the Man, blew fire on his left leg (right where the woman had placed her X-rays the day before), and the Man went up in flames. The drummer began playing, and continued to play while the Man burned.

Most people stood quietly in deep thought while he burned. A few women here and there danced like wisps of smoke. I heard some people quietly singing to themselves. But for the most part, it felt like we were connecting with something much deeper within ourselves… very much the way the Temple Burn is at Burning Man today.

The next day was Monday. Everyone packed up their camps, cleaned up, and headed out.

We were some of the last people to leave, and were helping with the final cleanup and loading of the Ryder truck, when someone came over and asked for help with their VW Bug. Apparently it wouldn’t start.

People worked on it for a while, but it just wasn’t going to run. Almost everyone was gone at this point, and we were all getting concerned about what we were going to do with the Bug. The driver we could get home. We could get her stuff home. But we couldn’t just leave the car, and we had no way to tow it.

Then I measured the width of the car with my arms.

Then I walked to the back of the Ryder truck and measured it.

People understood what I was getting at, so about 8 of us got together, picked up the Bug, and put it in back of the truck!

When I saw Mike later that week at work, he said that it had been REALLY hard to get the car back out of the truck! They apparently drove the truck all over San Francisco looking for a loading dock that was the same height as the bed of the truck, so they could back up to the loading dock and roll the car out!

The next year I went back to Burning Man again. I remember that several of the guys from Survival Research Labs, including Dezso the rocket expert, were out there. I’d been spending more of my time in the SRL crowd over the last year, and was mostly interested in what they had brought to the desert that they couldn’t do in San Francisco. (Years later, in an odd twist of fate, I wound up relocating to Budapest, Hungary, which was where Dezso was from!)

I did not make it to Burning Man after that. My new wife and I were involved in other things, like the burgeoning swing music revival that was happening in San Francisco, and I fell out of touch with the Cacaphony Society gang.

As I said, I moved overseas for many years. Then moved back to Seattle in 2003.

In 2004 a friend gifted me a Burning Man ticket. He was a rabid fan of the event, and I had written it off in my head as a big commercial rave. “Hell, we didn’t need TICKETS and porta-potties back in the Good Ole Days!” I ranted. We went back and forth, me praising the old days, and him praising the current event. Finally he challenged me to overcome my prejudices and join him and his camp on the Playa. So I did.

He was right. And I have not missed Burning Man since my return in 2004.

Burning Man today is important in a much deeper and more meaningful way than in was when I was originally involved. The way I describe it is that Burning Man back in the day was “a buncha loonies doing illegal shit in the desert”. Whereas the event today is the most wonderful art gallery, community experiment, and pure unadulterated wild fun you can have in this country any more.

This last year – 2007 – I was riding my bicycle on the Esplanade, and I ran into my old co-worker, Mike. The guy that got me to my first Burning Man experience on the beach in San Francisco. He’s a bit of a legend in the Burner community nowadays, and it was nice to catch up with him. His influence at that important time in my life has had a fundamental effect on who I have become today.

Hello. My playa name is Bucky. And I am proud to call myself a Burner.

By Christian Jacobsen. All rights reserved.