The Underpinnings

underpinnings noun (ˈʌndəˌpɪnɪŋz)

1: the foundation used for the support of a structure
2: ideas or concepts that inform an endeavor or line of research, as in philosophical underpinnings

Invention has its own algorithm: genius, obsession, serendipity, and epiphany in some unknowable combination.

— Malcolm Gladwell, New Yorker, 12 May 2008

In August 2020, as the US was roiling with racial and political tensions in the middle of a deadly pandemic, I’ll admit to having experienced some difficult moments, fraught with stress and anxiety. I’d been indoors for five months with no end in sight as a looming “second wave” had started. This virus was taking its toll on the sick and the healthy. The walls seemed to be closing in for me and many others. As I have written in “The Rebuild”, riding my stationary bike while Zooming with other homebound souls to great tunes on the Sweat Connected website was part of the way I was coping with the isolation.

One Sunday morning my online spin instructor, Danielle Devine-Baum @ddb_fitness , caught me at a particularly vulnerable moment at the end of one of her classes with a very special song, “The Rising”, written by Bruce Springsteen about our collective recovery from 9/11.

Sky of blackness and sorrow (a dream of life)

Sky of love, sky of tears (a dream of life)

Sky of glory and sadness (a dream of life)

Sky of mercy, sky of fear (a dream of life)

Sky of memory and shadow (a dream of life)

Your burning wind fills my arms tonight

Sky of longing and emptiness (a dream of life)

Sky of fullness, sky of blessed life (a dream of life)

Come on up for the rising

Come on up, lay your hands in mine

Come on up for the rising

Come on up for the rising tonight

Exhilarated from the effort but emotionally exhausted, something inside of me snapped, triggering memories of being in NYC on that awful day. Bruce had written this song, possibly as a hopeful counterpoint to another song on the same album, “Into the Fire” about those who gave their lives that day. “The Rising” has always been for me about hope, recovery, rebirth, and the dream that we could build back better.

There at that moment on the bicycle, the song touched something deep inside my skull, loosening all the feelings. Riding and singing and sobbing, it was an epiphanous moment, simple and illuminating. Yet, in the momentary emotional break, I was overcome with hope and joy rather than sadness. Ummmm, “The Rising”…

After getting off of the bicycle the lyrics percolated in my brain and somehow, from deep in the cerebral gyri and sulci, I recalled a passage from Martin Luther King’s last speech. What was it that King had said about “rising up” and how was this all connected?

On the night before his assassination, King was sick in bed and asked his friend Ralph Abernathy to speak in his place at Mason Temple for the striking garbage workers. Abernathy convinced him to rise up, and he arrived an hour and a half late to an overflowing crowd. As a storm blew through Memphis and thunder shook the building, he spoke these words:

The words of Dr. King and the lyrics of The Boss swirled in my brain, triggering a notion that maybe we were entering into “powerful days, these days of challenge” and, like Persephone leaving Hades, taking those first steps out of the Underworld, we might be moving upwards, out of the political, moral abyss. Were we at a nadir in the history of our Nation? Was this a low point from which we could recover? Were we now living those days of challenge? Rise up? Ride up?

Then the song showed up again!

That next evening, August 17, on the first night of the Democratic National Convention, America watched this powerful video (below) set to Springsteen's, “The Rising.” The DNC wrote about the video, “Now more than ever before, Americans are coming together in unprecedented numbers and alliances to demand a more just, more democratic future for all. ‘The Rising’ highlights the resiliency of the American people in overcoming the many crises of the last almost four years, crossing divides, and rising up together to move our country forward.”

In mid-September, the Adventure Cycling Association announced the tentative dates for their 2021 bicycle tours. On 19 September, I paid the deposit on a two-month trip that had been on my bucket list for several years, riding self-contained from Missoula, Montana to Mt. Denali, Alaska, a trip that is scheduled to leave on 19 June 2021. However, between the virus and the closure of the border between the US and Canada, there was a good chance that the tour might be canceled. But, but maybe, just maybe, if it happened, I could combine it with a solo ride starting in Key West, Florida in late January (with a stop in Washington, DC, with my bike to attend the inauguration.) I could follow warming weather, crossing North America diagonally, picking up where I had abandoned my 2020 trip on the Natchez Trace, and follow the Great Rivers bicycle route up through the Midwest, picking up the Parks, Peaks & Prairies route and arriving in Montana in time to start the “North Star” tour in June. (The continued viral spread in January-March 2021 has forced a change in the route and departure date.)

I’d been dreaming, since the doors closed in March, of getting back outdoors and to return to adventuring by bicycle, discovering the world at 18 km/hr (on a good day) without having to experience it through either glass or on screens. After spending so many years inside windowless negotiating rooms at talks on how to protect the climate and the natural environment, I now wanted to spend some years out mucking around in it. Over the following weeks, the idea of an adventure kept percolating in my mind. Maybe, just maybe, if things turn around, a big adventure was possible!

On 25 September 2020, I purchased three domains, hoping against hope, that this year might bring a change from the downwards spiral that this country has been in, pulling out of dive to rise up again.

1)      theriseupride.com

2)      riseupride.com

3)      rideacrossamerica2021.com

I’m not a poker player, but I knew that the chances of drawing against an outside straight in the November elections were pretty slim but always possible. The outcome was against all odds and an inflection point in that moral arc of the universe as it bends towards justice. What transpired has given us another swing at the piñata, a “mulligan” in our two-hundred and twenty-five-year history of attempts at a more perfect Union.

The Rise Up Ride has its philosophical, structural, and emotional underpinnings in a combination of 1) pathological optimism and 2) a belief in those principles that informed the founding dream of America. Like King and Springsteen, I feel that we can rise up to make this a better nation. Despite the obstacles of racism, ignorance, and tribalism that have characterized our social discourse recently, I feel that we are now on a redemptive pathway to making America a better nation. Over the next months, I’m throwing myself out there for the world to catch, expecting amazing things…. and am looking forward to telling the stories from the adventure in this unique as-it-happens format: The Rise Up Ride.