TT Report, Day 1: Help Me, Obi-Wan Kenpostman, You’re My Only Hope

In my last report I said I am in the running for Worst Bikepacker in Australia. Here’s further evidence of that: on day one, I made it 30 seconds from my front door before technical problems set in. 

In this case the front door was the Smuggler‘s Rest, a B&B I chose on the name alone. I had hoped for a hive of scum and villainy, perhaps with a proprietor polka-dotted with bullet holes and stab wounds. But I got someone much better than that. Her name is Irene and I could not possibly have asked for a more generous host.

On my first night, Irene had me over for wine and dinner. (I say first night, but there was only supposed to be one.) There I met the adorable Penny and Chanel, and while Chanel was trying to lick me to death, Irene and I talked about her many world travels and a few of mine.

That night I reassembled Booster, packed her all up, and was ready to go in the morning. Irene gave me a box so I could mail my laptop home, wrapped in a T-shirt from the wonderful Benny's Bike Shop in Auckland. Now everything I own fits on my body or my bike.

Irene also insisted on driving me to the post office once she saw how few places there were on Booster to put a box. I didn't want to impose on her hospitality any more, but one of the rules of this adventure is you've already signed yourself up to do something really hard, so allow yourself to take easier paths.

At the post office we meet Nice Postman Ken, who gets to talking with us. The trailhead for the TT is right across the road from the post office, and I told him that's where I'm headed, and he says "Oh, don't go that way. There's a bull up there and he doesn't like bicyclists."

Ken and Irene get to talking about other ways to get up there. Because of course they do, because every single person I've met here is friendly and helpful. At some point Ken says, "Oh, wait, do you know Gary? He's sure to know about this." And yes, Irene knows Gary because of course she does.

She doesn't have his phone number, though. Bad luck. But this is Tasmania, so she just drives me to his house and we knock on the door. Gary tells me three different routes to get up to the trail, including a backroad along the Esperance River that avoids both the bull and the steepest climb. Because of course he does, because no one here seems to have anything on their schedule that they can't push off to help a stranger. 

So it's back to the Smuggler's Rest, where despite the name no one has absconded with Booster. Irene actually gives me a hug and a kiss goodbye and off I go.

Cut to thirty seconds later, when my GPS compooter tells me my next cue is 245 km away. This is approximately 244 km off target, as I can see the mountain I’m heading for. 

I double-check it. Yes, it's kilometers, not meters. Worst Bikepacker I may be, but at least I know my metric system well enough to have mastered the difference between 1 and 1000. So I fiddle with the compooter a bit (no luck), then see if the phone can do any better (nope—it wants me to take the highway, not the trail).

But hey, this is an adventure. Plus I figure Nice Postman Ken and Nice Rando Gary have given me better intel than the machines could give me anyway. The Tasmanian Trail Association has posted markers along the way, so all I gotta do is find one of those.

Which I do, and I follow it to the next one, which leads to a big paddock behind a locked gate. The TTA has provided me a key--the trail crosses private land several times--but it doesn't work this time, because some new guy has bought the land and they haven't yet worked out an arrangement with him for riders and hikers to cross his property. (You know what would be really good at preventing those? An irascible bull.)

So I ride back down the hill and try one of the backroads. No dice. Check the compooter again. 245 km to go no matter what direction I ride. 

An hour later I'm back on the coastal road and I see Chanel and Penny walking happily along with Irene at the other end of their leash. She flags me down, Chanel starts licking me to death, and I tell Irene what's going on. "We're going out," she says. I assume she’s talking about her friends. She says, “We are going out. Be ready by 5:30."

So out we go, to the River Run Lodge where the first round is definitely on me. They serve a mean vegetarian Buddha Bowl, plus an apple cobbler to die for. The place has a Cheers kind of vibe: everybody knows your name. Warm, dim lighting, hardwood everything, and in less than an hour you feel like you've been hanging out here for years.

Then it was back to the Smuggler's Rest, where I wrest one critical detail from Google about my GPS problem. The compooter can't give turn-by-turn directions for any route longer than 200 km. And look, I know I'm bad with electronics. Tech and me, we don’t get along. But I don't know why anyone would get a piece of technology working and then google "is there an undisclosed length limit after which this gadget’s most important function will stop working?”

Anyway, better luck tomorrow, right? Get off to an earlier start. Got the new maps loaded, separating the Trail into segments the compooter can handle. Definitely not gonna blow a pinch flat 90 minutes in. 

TT Report, Day 2: Feeling the Pinch

I know, kind of jumping ahead here. I haven’t given a day one report yet. I will get to that. Finding time on Wi-Fi hasn’t been my number one priority, for reasons you will see.

Heading out from Dover, the riding was absolutely gorgeous. The weather report called for rain all day, but scrolling down to the bottom of the report, I saw it was going to rain a total of .05” in the next 24 hours. So overcast, a cool mist to counteract the sweat, not much risk of sunburn (ordinarily much higher risk down here, as close as we are to the ozone hole; apparently in AUS and NZ grade schools, their equivalent of the “hey kids, don’t do drugs“ program was “hey kids, don’t get skin cancer”).

As near as I can tell, the entire TT is a net zero elevation gain, ending each leg in a valley and biking a sawtooth trail all day long in between. But Booster really comes into her own in these conditions. My quads aren’t remotely in good enough shape for these hills, but this bike loves climbing uphill in the mud.

About 90 minutes out of Dover I finally met a patch of downhill riding, and I got overeager. At about 35 kph I heard the back wheel hit a rock and knew I got a pinch flat.

It was as nice a place as any to take a lunch break, though about two hours too early for that. Or so I thought. Changing a flat usually takes me 5 to 10 minutes. Add 15 minutes to that for taking all the gear on and off the bike, and an extra minute or two for picking all the M&Ms and cashews off the ground that I inevitably spilled from my feed bag the instant I turned the bike over. Now add two hours to that because removing this tire was a motherfucker.

Prior to this year, I had never used tubeless-ready tires before, or even known about tubeless technology. I went back and forth about upgrading Booster to tubeless, and ultimately decided against it because it adds a little bit of rolling resistance and ultimately you have to carry tube tire repair stuff anyway, in case you tear a sidewall. But on this day I sure wished I had been running tubeless, because you can’t get a pinch flat if you don’t have an inner tube.

Here’s the thing: the way a tubeless tire works, the wire beads where the tire meets the wheel have to seat in the rim much tighter than an ordinary bike tire. I knew unseating them was a real bastard. The first time I did it, I had so much trouble with it that I rode straight to my friendly neighborhood bike shop (shoutout to K&G) to ask what specialized piece of equipment I was missing to get this done. Dude showed me a trick to do it by hand, but even he said it can be a really tough job. Even so, I have never seen a tire as stubborn as this one.

So when the first tire lever broke, I knew this pit stop would run long. If you want to see how difficult this job is, here’s a professional bike repair teacher struggling with it with three steel tire levers, a workbench, and a goddamn vice.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NLdPxWUz86M

Believe you me, I babied that second tire lever. I didn’t dare put serious pressure on it, given how quickly the first one broke. And after an hour and a nasty torn fingernail, I finally got the first bead unseated.

Patching the pinch flat was easy enough after I got the inner tube out, though the stick-on patches proved to be not so sticky in the rain. (Number two on the shopping list after new tire levers: a traditional glue-based patch kit.) The rain added another degree of complication to everything: I had to keep the inner tube, tire liner, and the interior of the tire free of debris or else little gritties would just wear down new punctures in the inner tube. Not so easy on a dirt track. But some soft tacos of peanut butter and cheddar cheese did wonders for morale.

Then it came time to unseat the second bead, which proved to be even more bullheaded than the first. But if you don’t unseat it, you don’t have enough laxity to get the first one reseated. So it had to go, but it wouldn’t go down without a fight.

You guessed it. Bye bye, last remaining tire lever.

Now I have a job that even a professional needs a vice for, and my best tool is a soft taco. Well, that and nature’s original tire levers. I tore them all to hell but after an eternity in the rain they got the job done.

The silver lining is getting that motherfucker reseated saved me a long walk back to Dover. And the rest of the day’s riding was the best I’ve ever done. The coolest stretch was called Boney Road, Miles of knobby pale stone with tons of tricky maneuvering. Found a lovely little place to stealth-camp a few miles after that, and had some veggie burritos and hot cocoa before a good night’s sleep

Mind you, I am two days into this and still haven’t finished the 28 km to Geeveston. (Day one trip report to follow.) I think this puts me in the running for Worst Bikepacker in Australia. But three cheers for my grip strength, anyway.

Introducing Booster!

Making her international debut, meet Booster! She’s a green, mean fighting machine—though not a lean machine by any means. A chunky 70 pounds fully loaded, not including food. But she’s a beautiful, headstrong creature and I’m in love with her.

She’s a 2021 Salsa Rangefinder Deore, size large and in charge, with 29” wheels and a 12-speed cassette with the biggest damn granny gear I could find. Big beefy shocks, fat-ass Surly Extraterrestrial tires, soft gushy grips on the Jones H-Bar. Said handlebar has two feedbags (water bottle and peanut M&Ms), a Wahoo ELEMNT Bolt for GPS, a phone mount for backup GPS, and a gorgeous Bedrock handlebar bag in Blaze Orange.

On the opposite end I added a Tumbleweed rear rack and two gear cages, to mount my heavy-duty twenty-liter drybag and twin eight-liter drybags. The frame bag adds another nine liters, so with the thirteen liters from the Bedrock bag I’ve got enough storage to sustain an adventure over just about any distance, in just about any weather.

I named her Booster because she’s going to get me away from covid. She and I are getting the hell off the grid, and we will stay there as long as we can. In the meantime, if the rest of y’all would just please cure covid, that would be lovely.

Tasmanian Devil of A Puzzle

Today was a day for people who like solving riddles. If that’s you, here goes:

• You have a 50-pound bicycle box, a 35-pound duffel full of bikepacking gear, and a carry-on bag just big enough that you can’t sling the duffel on your back.

• You have to get all your luggage from one bus stop to the next, which is three blocks away.

• You need every single thing in all three containers, so you can’t leave any of them unattended.

• It goes without saying that you can’t carry all of it yourself. In addition to being heavy, it’s also bulky and awkward.

• If you reassemble the bike, you can easily strap all your gear onto it but then you can’t put the bike on the bus. (Only boxed bikes fit.)

• If you don’t reassemble the bike, you can easily fit everything on the bus but you can’t carry it all to the bus stop.

• You can’t fit the bike box in a taxi, Uber, etc. because they’re all Priuses. (Pria? Priux? What’s the plural on that?)

There’s more than one solution to the puzzle. Here are some I considered:

• Carry it all one at a time, leapfrog style. (Total pain in the ass. No.)

• Reassemble the bike, wheel it along dragging the box behind me, disassemble it again once I got to the other bus stop. (Even bigger pain in the ass. Hell no.)

• Wait for school to get out and recruit a couple of kids with skateboards to hire as Sherpas. (Takes too long. No.)

• Honor system. Leave first bag at the bus stop and go back for the bike. (No. What’s that line? Trust in god but tie up your camels?)

• Ask randos what they drive and see if you can pay any of them to drive you three blocks. (Tried it. Failed.)

Here’s the solution that worked:

• Explain the situation to the next bus driver to come by, a lovely person named Miranda who is charming and cheeky in the way so many Australians are, and see if she’ll drive you another three blocks. She agrees to get you as close as she can, at which point you make a high-speed luggage-to-sidewalk insertion like a Blackhawk helicopter dropping a team of Army Rangers into enemy territory.

Let me know if you have a better solution. Bonus points if yours drops you next to a coffee shop right across the street from the bus stop so you don’t have to shiver in a bus shelter for three hours. Miranda did, and then the manager allowed me to stay twenty extra minutes after he closed for the day because he knew it was cold out and it’s pretty obvious I’m a stranger in a strange land.

The drive to Dover was uneventful; all I did was take in the scenery and try not to vomit as my new bus driver—Kevin, charming and cheeky—careened around every twist and turn at breakneck speed. My lingering question along the way was whether my solution to the puzzle could ever work in the US. In a small enough town, I have no doubt someone in a pickup truck would offer to take me from A to B. (That’s what happened in Tasmania too: the proprietor of my B&B—Irene, charming and cheeky—insisted on picking me up at the bus stop, then had me over for wine and made me dinner). But in a city large enough to have public transportation? I have a hard time imagining a bus driver taking an entire extra minute to talk to me, much less offer me a free ride, to say nothing of driving down a different street than what’s on the assigned route, even if only for a couple of blocks.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I ought to have more faith in my countrymen. But my first thought is of general American friendliness quashed by some legalistic fear of losing your job and then your life savings in a lawsuit because the bike box wasn’t properly lashed down with a five-point harness according to OSHA regulations and the Book of Leviticus.

Auckland: First Impressions

My first impression of Auckland was from the air, coming in for a landing with dawn rising right behind the plane. Sadly I didn’t have a window seat so I can’t show you this. Picture Paris by night, except with loads of islands and the red glow of Mordor just over the horizon.

Upon landing I picked up Booster, who seems to be in pretty good shape. No giant dents or puncture wounds in the box, so that’s a good sign. Once I got her through customs, I had to make the next decision: get some riding in this week, or wheel her over to airport security storage where she can stay until I pick her up on Thursday to go to Tasmania.

As much as I’d like to ride, my time in Auckland is primarily for research and writing, plus bringing that fat-ass box into town and back demands something a lot bigger than the standard Uber Prius. So into storage she goes, which is on the opposite end of the airport because of course it is. That presented me with my first bikepacking engineering problem. She fits just fine on the wheelycart if I put her on sideways, but then it’s impossible to navigate through a crowd. So she’s got to go on lengthwise, and at 23kg she’s got a lot of leverage. Hence my engineering problem: how to build a cantilever?

(Answer key: X = All my camping shit)

Once I figured that out, it was off to the Airbnb for me. That’s when I got my real first impression of Auckland itself: was this city actually built by elves? You wouldn’t believe the greenery here. I don’t know if they built around all the trees instead of cutting them down, or just replanted everything with the care of a Zen rock gardener. Either way, the highway interchange downtown feels like driving through a very busy forest. And this is early spring! Can’t wait to see it when I come back through in January.

Imladris, but with more apartment buildings.

Also, the city is nothing but hills. I’ve always had weak ankles, but if I lived here a year I bet I’d never roll an ankle again. These people must be as surefooted as hobbits and as immovable as dwarves. They also have nifty four-legged fire trucks, as I got to see when a fire alarm went off at the apartment building I’m staying in. These streets are too hilly to deploy the ladder steadily, so the firefighters just boost the whole damn truck off the ground.

No one in the building was hurt and nothing seems to have been on fire. So thus far, I’ve had a little excitement to give me a research break, and otherwise a pretty uneventful stay apart from the occasional engineering project.

The Map

Here’s an overview of the ride I’m going to attempt. 1,864 miles all told, plus whatever back-and-forth there is to Lord of the Rings locations.

So far the trickiest bit has been figuring out how to get from Auckland all the way up to the Cape Reinga Lighthouse, way up on the northernmost tip of the Aupouri Peninsula. All the outfitters that used to run bikers up there seem to have closed up shop, or at least gotten out of the habit of returning emails and phone calls. Still not quite sure how I’m going to get up there, but something will come together. It always does.

The first leg of the ride is called Ninety Mile Beach. I bet you can guess how far it is and what the terrain will be like. But there are more profound questions, the ones my sister Kris keeps asking me whenever anyone else is in earshot: “How often have you ridden ninety miles before, Steve?”

“Never.”

“What’s the farthest you’ve ever ridden before, Steve?”

“About thirty miles.”

“How many days have you done that in a row, Steve?”

“One.”

Not All Who Wander Are Lost

My initial plan had been to fly down to New Zealand September 1, then spend a week or so in Auckland to acclimate to the time change. Then I’d hitch a ride up to Cape Reinga, about-face, and start riding south. I have no idea how many days this ride will take me. I am a draft horse, not a racehorse, and bikepacking isn’t bike touring. It’s slow. I’m riding 2.6” tires—that’s 66mm to you metric sophisticates—and I’m shlepping 30+ pounds of gear. So, 1,800 miles? People do it in thirty days. I’m shooting for more like sixty.

OK, I’m not that slow. 30 miles a day is a sluggardly pace. But I’ll average that because of days off. After all, Hobbiton is on the way. So is Rivendell. So is Mt. Doom. So are a bunch of hot springs. And Mt. Tongariro, said to be NZ’s most beautiful hike and therefore one of the most beautiful on the planet. I am a drafthorse with a love for photography and all things Tolkien, plus I’m in not in a rush.

But then time got a little tighter. Wholly by accident, I learned that one critical leg of the ride doesn’t open until October 1. It’s called the Bridge to Nowhere, and the downhill is a doozy when it’s wet. The Department of Conservation won’t even let you attempt it in the winter. (Hence the October unlocking of the bridge.)

YOU SHALL NOT PASS!

But I’m not going to change my ticket now. I mean, that would be reasonable. I could swim in my pool another month, and September is Summer II in Ohio. (August is weirdly autumnal here.) No, I’m going to fly down there on schedule, having accidentally earned myself a month of wandering around like Aragorn in the wilds of the North Island. No hardship there.

Then I wondered, are there any other closures I should know about? So I called the DOC and asked. They told me the Tour Aotearoa officially opens October 22, and even that is months before most riders attempt it. The traditional start time is in January, the height of summer. Well, I certainly can’t wait until January, because that’s when that pesky job of mine taps me on the shoulder and says hey, you better show up and do some teaching again. So now I’ve got seven weeks to kill in NZ and seven fewer to ride the TA.

Again, no biggie. I never told you I was going to finish the route. I only said I’m going to attempt it. And seven weeks in one of the most beautiful countries on the planet is the bougiest problem ever. Plus, you know, Australia. It’s right next door. In fact, I was hoping to hop over there anyway because that’s my seventh continent. So instead of starting the TA in September, I’m now slated to hang out in Auckland for a week or so, logging a bunch of uninterrupted writing hours. Perfect. Then I figure I’ll pop over to Australia.

Which is really fucking far, by the way. 1,400 miles, 2,250km, whatever floats your boat. So I book my flight from Auckland to Hobart, and because this whole adventure was originally conceived as a bikepacking trip, I’ll head straight for the Tasmanian Trail. Originally it was a 289-mile horse trail bisecting—you guessed it—Tasmania. I’ve got seven weeks to kill, so why not? I’ll spend a couple on Tassie, then catch the ferry to Melbourne so I can set foot on continent number seven.

Ten seconds after clicking Confirm Purchase, I wonder, what’s the weather like in southern Tasmania in September?

See, if you’re going to ride the TA in the spring, there’s a really good reason to start as far north as you can get: it’s warmer. Tasmania, not so much. The next thing south of Tasmania is Antarctica. So what’s Tassie weather like in September? Wet. With snow in the high country. Does this route traverse the high country? Yes. For like a hundred miles or something. Are there rivers to ford? Yes, several. By summer they all have time to dry up, but I’m not going in summer. I’m going right when I’m not supposed to go, when they’re deep.

Which I’m okay with, because you know what else you get in Australia when it’s cold and wet? Sleepy snakes. Much better than wakeful snakes, since everything in Australia is built to kill you. Let those little bastards hibernate, and I’ll find a way across these rivers on my own.

Hm. Maybe I better write the DOC to see if Tasmanian snakes can swim.

How to Keep from Growing Old

That silver fox on the right is my Uncle John, who isn’t my uncle. He’s the uncle of the other guy in the photo, Nate, one of my favorite die-hard travel buddies. Twenty-some years ago Nate and I started climbing together up in Mokuleia, on the north shore of Oahu, and I would be remiss not to mention his ass looks fabulous in a climbing harness.

Nate has roots in Durango, where John lives, and I started going on river trips out west with that crew in 2003 or 2004. The upshot is I’ve spent more time with Nate’s uncle John than almost anyone in my extended family. Avuncular is exactly the right word to describe my relationship with him. To me family is whatever you say it is, so I don’t know how Nate feels about me horning in, but in my head his Uncle John is my Uncle John.

Here’s why I’m telling you about my Uncle John: I took this picture of him on his 72nd birthday.

This is exactly how I want to spend my 72nd birthday: smiling ear to ear and whizzing by so fast I’m a blur. I took this picture somewhere along the Great Allegheny Passage, a 150-mile bike trail we kinda sorta bikepacked last summer. We had a sag wagon, which is cheating, but it was a good first run. I finally met Andy, Nate’s brother (and now my default cousin, I guess, if John is my uncle), I learned a hell of a lot about playing the ukulele (very much a beginner here), and met a few serious bikepackers along the way. They kinda gave me the bug.

If I had to do that ride again, I wouldn’t change a thing, because without the sag wagon we couldn’t have brought John’s dog Ripley. But if I had to do it again sans dog, I’d do the whole ride unsupported. And that’s what I’m going to try to do in New Zealand.

This is my profile picture on dating apps. Cheesy as hell, I know, but Ripley gets more swipe-rights than I ever will.

 The route I’m going to attempt is the Tour Aotearoa, which stretches from the northern tip of the North Island to the southern tip of the South Island. 3,000 kilometers—that’s 1,800 miles for you metric-illiterates—winding through every kind of terrain New Zealand has to offer. Which is a lot. Plus, you know, orcs and elves and dragons, which are not to be trifled with. Am I going to stop off to see all the Lord of the Rings stuff? You bet your ass I’m going to stop off to see all the Lord of the Rings stuff.

I guess this is the part where I mention I could do all of this at much less risk—and cheaper too—if I just buy a car down there, big enough to lay out a bedroll and sleep in the back. I could cover more ground, see more stuff, then sell the car right before I leave. That was Plan A. Then I thought of biking NZ instead, and that’s just a cooler story.

To which my brother Dave replied, “You know you can tell people whatever story you want.”

He’s not wrong. And I’ll be honest, this trip scares the shit out of me.

Exactly how I feel about solo bikepacking on single track.

I’ve always been leery of mountain biking because of how quickly you can get so far away that no one can help you when you totally wreck yourself. Hiking, sure, I’ve rolled my ankle before. Mountain biking injuries break you like Peter Griffin falling down the stairs. And I have to do this solo, because for some reason no one else wants to take four months off work to attempt a difficult and dangerous thing.

All I can say is I think the path to being a smiling blur on my 72nd birthday is to bike this thing, not drive it. It’s what John would do, so I’m going to give it a go.

Goodbye Covid, Hello New Zealand!

I have a big adventure coming up and I’m going to try using this site to log my progress. The last few times I went off on my own for a major odyssey, email was the only way to keep in touch. No, wait a minute. *Asks the googlebox.* Okay, fine, so blogs had already existed for like ten years or something. But still, email was the only way I had to keep in touch, because it’s the only tech I understood. Unless you count postcards. (Yes, I still send those.)

Anyway, the new adventure. I’ve got a sabbatical coming this fall and I am sick and tired of this pandemic. I caught covid once and it sucked. I taught online for a year and it sucked. I went back to a classroom full of covid and it sucked. And I got off light. It didn’t kill anyone I know personally, it didn’t cost me my job, yadda yadda yadda. But I’m still sick of this bullshit, so I want out.

Lucky for me, I also have a sabbatical coming. The timing couldn’t be better. So I looked at all the places I want to go and all the countries that have handled covid well, and lo and behold, New Zealand was the number one spot on both lists. My grandparents went down there when I was in sixth grade, and looking through their pictures when they came back, all I could think was I want to go to there.

Milford Sound. Also, upside down Milford Sound.

 So I’m going. The University of Wellington is going to host me for a lecture, I’m in touch with a few other universities in NZ and Australia to line up the same, and everything I need to do my sabbatical research fits in my email inbox. This site isn’t the place for me to bore you with the research, but I do want to figure out how to use it to record the more adventuresome part. My goal is to go full Aragorn and stay off the grid as much as possible. All I’m bringing is my bike, my camping gear, and a general willingness to get lost and see what happens from there.

(And yes, Philosophy Department, I will still get my research done. I owe the university a book chapter during my sabbatical. But I’m still old school: I do my best writing in pencil, in a college-ruled notebook. I wrote my last few books that way and see no reason to change now. Plus, laptops are heavy. And the opposite of waterproof. And did I mention I’m bikepacking this whole thing?)

This kind of travel writing is more high-tech than I’m used to, and much higher tech than my grandfather’s medium, which was a Kodak Carousel projector shining on a white wall. The irony is he’d have been much better at blogging than I am. He also taught me everything I know about photography, and though he had many more tools in his camera bag than I have on my iPhone, I will try to do him proud and come back with some decent pics. Finally, he was a riveting storyteller, so if anything interesting happens to me, I’ll try to live up to him on that count too.

Because I’ll be working via phone instead of my compooter, these stories will probably be short and sweet. But right now my plan is to post photos and stories here when and as I can, and if you want to follow along, sign up below. You won’t receive any spam from me, because I don’t know how to spam. Not even vegetarian spam. You’ll just get a note whenever I post something here.

#amwriting

I’ll post to this blog again when I have news on the writing front.

Expectations: So Low

Okay, so I finally got out to see Solo. I was on the fence about seeing it at all, but two things swayed me. First, “This is America.” We’re all big Donald Glover fans in my house, but that video blew our collective minds. We had to see Glover’s Lando Calrissian. Second, I figured the cops would come and revoke my nerd card if I didn’t go see this one. And hell, I sat through the prequels. Surely this movie wasn’t going to be worse than those.

Well, it’s not. So that’s good. But it’s in the same category, which ain’t good at all.

Solo was doomed to failure from the very moment it was pitched. It’s built on a premise that’s fundamentally flawed: take a character we know and love and tell the story of the younger version of that person, before they got to be cool. The premise itself is intrinsically boring. If you start by stripping away the cool stuff about this character, you’re already dealing with a less interesting protagonist, and if you then tell the story of how the cool stuff came to be there, we already know the ending. The best you can really hope for is a knowing wink at the audience.

If you count Episodes I-III as Star Wars movies (I don’t), the premise has already failed at least twice in Han Solo’s own social circles. Young Anakin Skywalker sucks and young Boba Fett sucks. But expand your search for this premise as far as you like and you’re going to find many more misses than hits. Need I remind you of the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles? (Which, by the way, scores higher than Solo on IMDb.)

Hell, even when it’s targeted at young people the premise still sucks. Muppet Babies was terrible. (And—ouch—also scores higher than Solo.)

I can only think of one example where the premise actually worked for me, and that’s Better Call Saul. I love that show. Love it to pieces. Almost as good as Breaking Bad, which is arguably the best TV drama of all time. (For me the three finalists are so close I can't call a winner: Breaking Bad, The Wire, and Deadwood.) But it’s got three things going for it that stitch it together even when the fatally flawed premise might have broken it apart. First, it’s a comedy. That goes a long way when you’re starting with something silly. Second, Saul Goodman started as a bit character, not the star. Third, and probably most important, Saul’s story is the story of a fall from grace—so, in effect, it weaves together the character’s rise and his fall, which from a storytelling perspective is intrinsically interesting.

What I’m calling “the premise” isn’t the same thing as the Origin Story. That one is tried and true. (Every superhero gets one, of course, but so does Moses. The Buddha. Jackie Chan. We’re talking epic, larger than life, world-changing figures here.) The premise I’m talking about here isn’t about origins, it’s about milking the cash cow. Solo was doomed to fail because it wasn’t a genuine attempt to tell the origin of the character. He starts as the charming outlaw who lips off, takes reckless risks, acts like he’s in it for himself but really is a good guy at heart. So there’s no character arc, there’s just a prop arc. We never knew where he got his trademark DL-44 blaster pistol. Now we know.

(Though while we’re on the subject, Tobias Beckett? Seriously? How the hell do you justify naming a Star Wars character "Tobias Beckett"? If that’s the best you can do, just name him Woody Harrelson.)

I imagine this movie would be utterly thrilling to anyone who’s never seen a movie before. But if you want to enjoy this movie, go see it with a small child you really care for. It’s visually stunning, and Disney’s fingerprints are all over this thing. The cool parts are cool, the funny parts are funny, but there’s no attempt at surprise or plot twist or complication—and certainly none of the moral uncertainty that you’d think would be at the heart of any Han Solo story.

Han and Chewie in their cutesy pose before they break into a reprise of "A Whole New World."

In the end, what we’re left with is another Star Wars movie made for children. And here’s the thing I wish these filmmakers would understand: Star Wars movies really suck when they’re made for children. Kids love Star Wars, but not because the movies are made for them. They love aliens and robots and spaceships. They love big mythological archetypes. And yeah, sure, they also love massive marketing campaigns dumping an avalanche of toys on them, but that’s independent of storytelling itself.

Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back weren’t kiddie movies; kids like me loved them anyway. Return of the Jedi was clearly directed at children, and even as kids we thought it was the worst of the bunch. All three prequels were made for kids, and they’re all worse than Jedi. (Much worse, for many reasons, but like Solo they misidentified what the target audience should have been.)

Okay, so I like my fiction dark. I dig tragic Shakespearean endings. So while a lot of Star Wars diehards thought Rogue One was too grim, I loved it. But everyone loves The Empire Strikes Back, which is certainly the darkest of the original trilogy. Not for kids, that one. Yoda scared the shit out of me.

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I said Solo is in the same category as the prequels, and here’s why: it’s made for kids. (It’s also a callow attempt to milk the cash cow instead of telling the origin story Han Solo deserves, but that’s a separate problem.) If you can watch this movie through the eyes of a child—maybe while sitting next to one of your favorites—then maybe you can get past the Disneyfication. I didn’t, so I couldn’t.

In one sense I did get what I came for. Donald Glover is absolutely perfect as Captain Lando Calrissian. But please, Disney, for the love of all that’s holy, don’t make the movie of how young Lando got to be as cool as he is.

Ta-Da!

Finished the new book tonight. Just sayin'.

Review: Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jumanji

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In a daring move, Disney released its contribution to the series of Jumanji films just one week before the release of Columbia’s newest adaptation of the beloved children’s book. One might think two Jumanji films in a single month would be overkill, but this film sets itself apart from the others with a surprising twist: the appearance of Luke Skywalker.

It’s the Jedi Knight’s first appearance since J.J. Abrams’ The Force Awakens, and Mark Hamill gives a command performance. Die-hard fans were thrilled to see him appear in The Force Awakens, and Hamill himself said he was disappointed not to have a speaking role in that film. His appearance there was the Teaser to End All Teasers, and his surprise appearance in The Last Jumanji does not disappoint. He steals every scene he’s in, and we are left wishing the entire film were about him.

A horsebunny, saddened upon learning Luke Skywalker would not be in any of its scenes.

Otherwise the movie delivers everything one would expect from a Jumanji movie: silly romps with giant CGI animals, a saccharine romance to keep pre-teens entertained, and cute children who step in as dei ex machina to save the day for our heroes. The children are endearing scamps in the style of Newsies, though instead of contributing to the plot they distract from it. Then again, anyone who wants to see yet another installment of a movie based on a nonexistent board game probably isn’t all that interested in plot.

What they come for is digitally rendered wildlife, and on that count The Last Jumanji does not disappoint. The lovable porg are the crossbreed of penguin and guinea pig that every youngster would love to keep as a pet. The vulpix are an exotic vision of what might happen if foxes evolved from rock candy. And the massive faithers, a cross between racehorse and pet bunny, are—disappointingly—the film’s action highlight.

The Last Jumanji needs their Disneyfied stampede because every other action sequence is a letdown. The agonizingly slow space-chase feels like Mad Max minus the action sequences and cool cars, and ultimately it distracts from the CGI critters that children come to see. It’s too hard for kids to follow the obscure storyline of Finn and Rose, which ultimately has no bearing on the film. Now and then they ram a spacecraft full speed into something-or-other—hoping it will save lives, strangely enough—but apart from these gratuitous thrills, the two add nothing to the film. In fact, if their scenes were cut out entirely, literally nothing about the plot would change.

In the end, most adults will find Rian Johnson’s contribution to the Jumanji film universe scattered and disappointing. But children will delight in the furry fun-fest and die-hard Star Wars fans will get thrill after thrill from Luke Skywalker, who hasn’t spoken a word since 1983’s Return of the Jedi. He is arguably the most eagerly anticipated character in film history, and Hamill delivers what may well be the single greatest performance of his career. The Jedi Master truly is masterful.

For that reason the film is aptly—if boldly—titled. This may well the last Jumanji, despite the fact that the fourth installment in the series opens just six days after this film’s release. It is unlikely that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson can outshine Hamill’s command performance with nothing more than his trademark eyebrow-raise. Rian Johnson and his fantasy hybrids clear the (admittedly low) bar set by the Jumanji franchise, but it is Luke Skywalker who sets the standard by which all future Jumanjis must be measured.

C-

It's out in the world!

Passed a important milestone this week: people I've never met before are reading the new book. They are in the publishing business. This isn't what you'd call a big deal, but it's the sort of thing that has to happen before anything like a big deal can happen.

So that's cool. Milestone reached, and passed, and now it's back down into the cave to write.

Thumbs up!

The first 300 pages of the new project went to my wonderful agent, Cameron McClure, who is also the best beta reader I know. Last week I heard back: she thinks it's great. 

I can't tell you how glad I am to hear that. Cameron and I signed on together after she read Daughter of the Sword. Because she liked that book, the probability of her liking Year of the Demon and Disciple of the Wind was pretty high. They do form a trilogy, after all. Whether she'd like the new project was, at least in my mind, very much in doubt.

I'm one of those writers who never has any idea how good a piece is while I'm working on it. Call it self-doubt, or a need for validation, or exactly the right amount of humility a writer ought to have in order to write the best book possible. I don't know what it is. All I know is that when Cameron thinks something needs work, it needs work, and when she thinks something is good, it's pretty damn good. (Take a look at some of the authors she represents. They're pretty damn good.)

So the new book needs work -- all drafts do -- but on the whole it's looking good. This, of course, means I won't be on the blog for a while, as it's back to full steam ahead on this project. I'm on Twitter more, if you want to keep in touch.

Experiencing creativity; please stand by

I'm pressing ahead full steam on the next novel, which means the blog is going to be on hiatus for a bit. Please stand by.

ETA: The first 100 pages are going to my agent soon. Looking forward to having another pair of eyes on this thing!

I've got a killer case of boredom and the cure is more Wonder Woman

So I saw Batman v Superman last night. Ugh.

I considered it my civic duty. As bad as all the reviews have been—and they undersell just how bad this stinker is—we do live in the democracy of the dollar. I think a big opening weekend gross for this film is our best shot at getting a decent superhero film out of DC comics in the future. So I went.

This movie is a lifeless, shambling zombie that just won’t die. I don’t like speaking ill of the dead (or the undead, I guess), so instead I’ll focus on the one character in the whole two-and-a-half-hour death march that shows some spark: Wonder Woman.

It turns out she’s the perfect case study for director Zack Snyder, because everything he gets right about her is everything he gets wrong about the rest of the film. For one thing, she’s the only character to have fun. If there’s a future to DC Comics filmdom, Wonder Woman will be its Thor. She understands the joy of the worthy opponent, of being outmatched and outmuscled, of being well and truly walloped.

She’s also mysterious, while everyone else is just baffling. Snyder doesn’t seem to understand the difference. He invites questions about all of the characters, and that’s a good first step, but few of the questions are interesting and most of them are left unanswered. Mystery requires intriguing questions (so not, for instance, “Why does Lex Luthor care about Batman at all?”) that actually get satisfactory answers (so not, “Maybe he wants a proxy to fight Superman, though then we’d have to explain why he tries so hard to keep Kryptonite out of Batman’s hands…”).

I can’t say Wonder Woman’s moral motivations are clear, but at least they’re not totally self-refuting. That’s not true of anyone else. This film is supposed to be a moral drama pitting Superman’s idealism versus Batman’s grim justice. Instead we’re left with Super-utilitarianism versus Bat-utilitarianism, and neither of them is all that good at the utilitarian calculus. Both of them kill indiscriminately, and Batman’s only edge on Superman seems to be that he doesn’t claim otherwise. (Superman flat-out lies about it.)

By contrast, Wonder Woman is the only hero to show any concern for civilian casualties. Superman spews heat-vision willy-nilly, throws bad guys through inhabited buildings, and generally lays waste to any urban center around him. His most egregious kill comes almost as soon as he steps onstage: we all know he’s faster than a speeding bullet, yet instead of plucking said bullet out of the air he chooses to bash down walls with the shooter. Batman shows the same disregard for human life (and with a particular penchant for machine guns and high explosives, no less, making him more like the Punisher than the Batman we all know and love). Compare these reckless testosterone junkies to Wonder Woman, who fights with sword in hand—a deadly weapon, so she’s ready to kill, but only those she can stand with toe-to-toe.

Wonder Woman is also the only hero in the film not to be vexed by disjointed dream sequences. All of these raise more questions than they answer, and they all hint at the sequels Snyder wants to but can no longer be allowed to direct. Fans who know what Darkseid’s parademons are and who know the Flashpoint storyline are the only ones to have any hope of recognizing what the hell these scenes are about, and all of them will agree that it’s way too early to even give a hint in that direction. One movie at a time, folks.

You’d have thought it was obvious that a superhero movie ought to be fun, that the hero ought to have some mystery to her, that we should discover the truths underlying the mysteries, and that the hero ought to be, you know, heroic. Wonder Woman is the only one who’s a hit on all counts. The real tragedy is that she only gets seven minutes of screen time, less than five actually in costume doing Wonder-Womany stuff.

In all, BvS feels not like an action movie but like an early stage in the storyboarding process. If I had my druthers, the final draft would eliminate the jibber-jabbering Lex Luthor completely, and it also wouldn’t have the most important plot point turn on the fact that the two quasi-heroes both have mothers names Martha. Most importantly, it wouldn’t take itself so goddamn seriously. It would learn a thing or two from Wonder Woman.

Why idiotic pseudo-science matters, and why reason is losing the war against it, as explained by lions and rhinos

This is the time of year when media outlets will list their top stories of 2015. Cecil will probably make the list. You remember him: he’s the lion who was killed in a dentist-involved shooting this July. You probably don’t remember Nola or Sudan—not unless you really like rhinos, anyway. Nola and Sudan are more important than Cecil in every respect, but so far I haven’t found them in anyone’s top stories of 2015.

At the beginning of the year there were five northern white rhinos left alive on the planet, all in captivity. One of them, Nola, died this November. Of the remaning four, only one is male. His name is Sudan, and he lives in central Kenya in the Ol Pejeta conservancy, along with two females of his species. It’s highly unlikely that he’ll ever impregnate either of them—he’s 42 years old, fully a decade beyond his best breeding years—but even so, the conservancy is doing its utmost to protect him. Bodyguards with assault rifles follow him day and night. He’s also had his horn cut off. This isn’t to protect his bodyguards, but rather to protect Sudan himself from pseudoscience.

In China there is a folk belief that rhino horn has medicinal properties—most notably as a remedy for erectile dysfunction, though these days cancer has been added to the list. (By “these days” I mean sometime in the past century; Chinese folk beliefs are very, very old.) This belief in the curative powers of ground rhino horn propagated, along with many other aspects of traditional Chinese culture, throughout southeast Asia. The upshot, as far as Sudan is concerned, is that roughly a third of the world’s men have access to markets where ground rhino horn is sold as an herbal variant of Viagra.

This is why Sudan is the last remaining male of his species, why the Javanese rhino is also nearing extinction, and why rhino poaching in South Africa is up 18% this year.

Even this understates the point. This is how the Guardian put it:

A total of 1,215 rhinos were killed in 2014, compared with 1,004 in 2013, 668 in 2012 and 448 in 2011.

The numbers began surging in 2008, when 83 rhinos were killed. The year before that just 13 animals were poached.

So what’s to be done?

If you’re a rhino poacher, you could start by selling pretty much anything other than rhino horn. Bonemeal is cheap. The dust under your couch is even cheaper. Both of them are exactly as effective as ground rhino horn for curing erectile dysfunction.

Of course, not many rhino poachers will be reading this. Among my non-poaching readership there will be some who find my thesis offensive. Maybe you’re one of them. Maybe you want to say it’s not my place to criticize the traditional beliefs of other cultures. As a philosopher my only response is, “Sure it is, and it’s your place too.” It seems to me that a basic dictum of intellectual responsibility is to critically evaluate the pros and cons of anything you like. I think any intellectually responsible adult ought to be doing this on a daily basis.

I’ll place traditional Chinese beliefs about rhino horns on par with contemporary American beliefs about the dangers of vaccinating children. Neither of these belief sets has the slightest basis in scientific evidence—in fact, all of the available evidence indicates that these beliefs are patently false—and both of these belief sets cause grievous harm to innocent parties.

Yet Cecil the lion is the one to make the list of 2015’s top news stories. Conservationists might point out that there’s more at stake with Cecil if only because his species still exists in the wild and might still be saved from extinction. The northern white rhino has no chance.  Genetically it’s already finished; now we’re just waiting for the last four bearers of those genes to keel over. I agree, but I think there’s a larger point to be made.

Here’s why Nola and Sudan are more important than Cecil: because it’s in the nature of celebrities to fade into obscurity. If Cecil’s death had brought his species into the broader conversation—if he’d become not a celebrity but a symbol—then he’d be on par with Nola and Sudan. Instead we saw legislators pay lip service to conservation efforts by making it harder to import some parts of some trophy animals into some countries. Whoop-dee-doo.

This is what’s really frustrating to me as a philosopher, and why I’m basically a pessimist at heart. Idiotic pseudo-science is winning the war against real live scientific science on too many fronts. One reason it’s winning is that stupidity is easier than intelligence. Make ten intelligent decisions in a row and one stupid decision can undo all of them. Make ten stupid decisions in a row and one intelligent decision may be no remedy at all.

So maybe this is the best solution I can offer: if you just graduated from college into a lousy job market, become the Warby Parker of rhino poaching. Sell powdered rhino horn online at discount prices. Make it look legit by getting yourself a Zimbabwean cell phone number and a web site ending in .zw. Advertise the hell out of it all over Asia, then sprinkle a little Viagra into the sofa dust you’re passing off as powdered rhino horn. You’ll have the cheapest, most effective product on the market. Hell, it’s even eco-friendly and cruelty-free.

Just do it soon, okay?

The Force is strong with this one

Okay, confession time: I was the guy who was warning everyone to keep their expectations low for The Force Awakens. Everyone’s been so amped about it, while I was the guy reminding people that there’s a non-zero chance that this movie might totally suck. 

We had hints of its possible suckassery in all the trailers (an R2D2 ripoff, stormtrooper ripoffs, a Darth Vader ripoff), still more in the posters (Death Star ripoff) and merchandising (not just ripoffs, but the same TIE Fighters and X-Wings I wanted for Christmas in 1977). Everything said this thing was totally derivative.

Here’s the thing: it is. And yet it’s awesome. 

I love, love, love this movie. The more I think about it, the more I like it. Yet somehow the more I think about it, the longer my list gets of all the plot elements J.J. Abrams ripped straight out of the original trilogy. That shouldn’t be possible: I’m supposed to like it less for all of that. But I don’t.

I won’t share spoilers here. I’ll just say this: Star Wars fans, this is a Star Wars movie. A real one. The kind we haven’t seen since 1983.

Most film critics make the same category mistake reviewing Star Wars films as they always do reviewing martial arts movies: they think these movies are like other movies. But they’re not. Like Elvis movies, they’re a genre unto themselves.

The benchmark for a great Elvis movie has nothing to do with storyline or performance. What matters is whether Elvis is in it. The benchmark for a great martial arts flick is similarly singular: do the fight scenes kick ass? If yes, then no one cares whether Jet Li or Tony Jaa can act.

Star Wars occupies a loftier position—the writing and acting do matter—but it still stands apart from any other genre because of this one overarching criterion: does it feel like a Star Wars movie? If not, then you get kinda sorta science fiction, kinda sorta fairy tale, but no one gives a crap. Layer a John Williams score on it if you like, but that doesn’t make it Star Wars.

This was one of the most important, most unforgivable mistakes of the prequel films: they don’t feel like Star Wars movies. Apart from getting the Force all wrong, apart from all the other fanboy complaints, they make the galaxy feel smaller, not bigger. Episode I was doomed from the very first shot, when those big scrawling yellow words said, “Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Republic. The taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is in dispute.”

Seriously? Tax turmoil? And for this you send Jedi Knights? That movie was doomed to failure before the title got off the screen.

Not many critics picked up on this. They took aim at contrived dialogue, wooden performances, boring cinematography—all legitimate complaints, but they missed the bigger picture. They can’t miss it with The Force Awakens, though. This is no mere sci-fi movie. It’s Star Wars.

And I think it’s all the cribbed stuff from the original trilogy that makes the magic happen. I had braced myself for derivative bullshit, but what we got was derivative genius.

And hot damn, I am so glad to be a rabid Star Wars fan again!

What do Wyldstyle, Rodin, and Lao Tzu have in common?

I got the kind of email this morning that every writer likes to see: an acceptance for publication. That makes today a good day. 

This new piece will appear in LEGO and Philosophy, due out next year, the latest in a series of pop culture and philosophy books I’ve been following with interest from the beginning. Another volume I’m looking forward to in 2016 is The Ultimate Star Trek and Philosophy, in celebration of Star Trek’s 50th anniversary. I have an essay in that one on Kant, Confucius, and the Prime Directive, written with my friend and co-author, Alejandro Bárcenas. Alejandro also contributed a chapter to The Daily Show and Philosophy, which goes to show that this series has the versatility to address almost anything, from major cultural landmarks (Star Wars) to passing fads (Twilight) to passing fads that have become cultural icons (The Daily Show).

What sets the LEGO book apart from all the rest is that the source material isn’t a text. We do have texts to go with it now, most famously the blockbuster movie, but that’s only a recent development. The call for papers solicited “works focusing on the many aspects of the multimedia LEGO phenomenon,” so, yeah, there’s text there. We’re talking cartoons, video games, advertising strategies, even theme parks, but first and foremost this philosophy book is about the toy. Not a text. A bunch of plastic.

So when I got the call for papers, two thoughts struck me almost at once. First, “Hey! Awesome! I love Legos. I should write something.” Then, about a millisecond later, “Wait, what’s there to write about?” I couldn’t see anything to agree or disagree with. How could I? LEGO would have say something. 

Okay, as a commercial product it says, “Buy more of me!” But in a free market economy everything says that. As a toy LEGO speaks to the gender norms being pushed on children, but so does virtually everything in the toy store. What does this toy say that only it says, in a way that only it can say it?

The more I thought about it, the more unsuitable LEGO seemed for a philosophy book. After sidewalk chalk it’s about as close to a blank slate as a toy can get. 

And that was it. That was the realization I needed. At its best LEGO says nothing. It says nothing, and it says it better than just about anything else you can find in the toy aisle. That’s why there’s so little need for improvement. It’s the ultimate expression of possibility. It’s inexhaustible. No matter what you take from it, it can always give more.

There’s one other philosophical concept that’s described this way, as an inexhaustible source of infinite potential: the dao. So that’s the subject of my chapter. It’s called “The Brick, the Plate, and the Uncarved Block: LEGO as an Expression of the Dao.” 

Now then, what do Wyldstyle, Rodin, and the legendary sage Lao Tzu** have in common? An appreciation for infinite possibility. I’ll close this post with the Rodin quote I’ll use to open the book chapter. Rodin was asked for the secret to sculpting his many masterpieces. His answer: “I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don’t need.”

Has he said nothing about sculpture, or has he said everything?

* In the philosophical sense, not the extreme BASE jumper’s sense. Or maybe you figured that out on your own.

** If you want to write me an email telling me to correct this spelling to Laozi, since I spelled dao with a D and not a T, give yourself a pat on the back.