And I don’t just mean regular bad. I mean abysmal. A joke. You should be so regrettably awful that friends and tutors of your trade swear off any hope of you getting past square one. So bad that you never do get past square one.
Now, don’t expect your friends to keep doing this thing with you. Don’t expect to watch yourself improve and feel the resulting pride. Just embrace being awful, and don’t quit (spoiler alert: this is not a lecture about perseverance, it’s about being terrible).
Just be bad at something for the sake of being bad. It’s not always easy to be bad. If you do something enough, you’re liable to get better at it, and that’s at odds with the whole point.
You’ve just got to stay terrible.
Early on you will feel shame. Your friends will not join you; bystanders will gasp. Babies will cry, dogs will bark, and cats will howl at your efforts. Parents will shield the eyes of their children as you flail wildly away. They will judge you and feel pity, but pay them no mind. You know that this is not some process, but the plan.
To be clear, this is not an argument for how instructive the learning process itself can be, or how being a beginner at something teaches humility that makes you a better person, or that being bad at something is somehow a kind of necessary evil that rests somewhere along they way to mastery. Those are all valid points, but this is more simple.
Eventually, if you’re bad enough for long enough, you might just stop feeling ashamed. You might stop noticing the gawking and gasping bystanders. If you’re bad enough for long enough, eventually, you’ll get pretty good at being awful.
The more time that you spend hacking it up, the more comfortable it will become. If you stick it out for long enough, your enjoyment the things you do will dissociate from your proficiency at them. And then pretty soon you’ll just enjoy having a day out.
If you can enjoy being bad, you’ll never be afraid to try something ever again. And who knows? Maybe you’ll be good at that.
“He was the single most hopeful man I ever met, and I’m ever likely to meet again.” – Nick Carroway, The Great Gatsby
On the eve of Thanksgiving in 1971 a man bought a ticket aboard a Boeing 727-100 for a quick flight from Portland to Seattle. Once the flight was underway, and from a seat near the middle of the plane, he handed a flight attendant a note describing a bomb in his carry-on. He showed her a tangle of wires to demonstrate the seriousness of his claim. If he did not receive a ransom of two hundred thousand dollars and a selection of parachutes, he would detonate his bag in mid-flight.
Hero status.
We’ll never know if the man who went by Dan Cooper really had a bomb. Hours after the hijacking began he was bound for Mexico with a bag filled with cash and a parachute. Somewhere over Oregon he opened the Boeing’s rear hatch to jump into the freezing November rain and illuminate the imagination of generations. He was never seen or heard from again.
A few weeks ago the FBI officially closed the case: unsolved. At some point they had to get tired of fielding deathbed confessionals from people who claimed to be D.B. Cooper or the Lindbergh Baby but can’t be sure which one. But there’s still something captivating about our nation’s only unsolved airplane hijacking. There’s an infectious kind of hopefulness in carrying off a plan like that.
I can hear your incredulity now. A hijacking, you say, is the most violent throe of desperation. But hope and desperation are on equal footing in the foundation of the American Dream. We are a nation built by refugees who fled untold horrors for a crack at a new life. In fact it’s only a deeply rooted tradition of hope that can explain the rise of D.B. Cooper as a legend. Who can really believe that an untrained man could jump alone above a rugged wilderness and into a freezing storm at hundreds of miles an hour in the middle of the night wearing only a polyester suit and survive?
It’s this hope that drew settlers to a New World, then to the farthest flung corners of it in search of gold. Hope has a way of gnawing at us, and like gold itself it’s as much a gift as a curse. It allows us to believe that the future will be different from the present, not through a commitment to self-improvement, but through the work of chance. And even to this day nothing captivates us like the prospect of hidden gold.
Buried treasure is the stuff of high adventure. Of the movies and books that guided our understanding of what it means to go on an expedition. From the mutiny on the Hispaniola to the riches of the Sierra Madre to a ramshackle group of kids on the Oregon Coast, a search for hidden treasure has provided a simple and tangible objective to catalyze adventure.
A picture of hope.
But in our Brave New World the hope of improbable prosperity has been watered down to gas station keno machines and scratch-off lotto tickets. There is no buried treasure. Or is there?
Forrest Fenn’s goal was to leave a legacy behind. The millionaire art collector was battling cancer and planned to die alone in the woods, leaving a bronze chest of gold clutched in the hands of a skeleton for a future adventurer to find. Well, he beat the cancer but still thought the treasure chest was a neat idea, so he hid one somewhere in the Rocky Mountain west. No X marks the spot, but a poem gives the clues.
Forrest Fenn treasure map
Forrest Fenn’s claim to have hidden a great wealth of treasure somewhere in the mountain west is outlandish. It’s improbable. The cynic in me calls it a ploy to sell copies of his book. But then there’s the hope. Not so much the hope that I find the hidden gold, but the hope that someone of means so believed in hope itself that he really did hide a collection of gems and doubloons.
Because the gold isn’t really the treasure. It’s the idea that the gold might be out there, sitting in a hole or a hollow tree, just waiting to capture the imagination of a new generation of adventurers.
And if we never find it? Well, as long as we look, that might even be the point.
With 98 days to go until the election [President, United States], it’s going to become very difficult to think or hear about much else over the next three months. We’ll be reminded continually that our lives are terrible (in case you forgot), that a man in a turban is definitely going to murder you some time in the next 36 hours, and that the only possible way to improve the economy looks a lot like the beginning of Ferngully.
And it’s all true. Especially about the economy. Just look at Texas, that shining example of how government regulation just stands in the way of unfettered economic prosperity for all [natural born, white] Americans. I’m sorry I didn’t hear you, what’s that about the oil market? Oh, shit. I meant Utah. Let’s look at Utah. It’s a shining example of . . .
There’s going to be a lot of back and forth, in this next quarter year, about the economy and how best to fix it. Many of you probably feel strongly about that conversation which is interesting because many of you probably don’t really understand it. I sure as hell don’t. And so I’m not going to spend these thousand words on getting into treasonous ideas like suggesting that sustainable energy production can avoid the boom/bust cycle that ravages rural America, or that the War on Drugs hasn’t actually failed at all because it was never about drugs in the first place, or that neo-conservative foreign policy over the last several decades can go a long way to explaining the whole “ISIS” thing, or that the strongest proxy for economic growth is investment in education and not lax regulations at all, or that (and stay with me here) one popular candidate didn’t know that Russia invaded Ukraine like a year and a half ago (and, like, let that last one sink in for a minute).
Instead I’d like to spend a few minutes discussing a different set of economic principles that are a bit more tangible for folks who’s biggest uncertainty in life is whether to go fishing or mountain biking this weekend.
Tenets of a Dirtbag Economy
On Beer – Beer is the common currency of a dirtbag economy. A six pack is legal tender for early rides to the airport, borrowing a trad rack, or putting a huge core shot in your roommate’s brand new DPS Wailers. But remember that not all beer is created equal.
There are two suitable avenues for beer-as-remuneration. You may purchase semi-ironic macro produced swill (Pabst, Hamm’s, Schlitz), or you may support a local brewery. Here in Montana, it would be considered bad form to show up with a case of Sierra Nevada or New Belgium. Those guys make fine beer, sure, but keep it local, yokel.
The Growler Problem: A growler is the worst way to transport beer (except for maybe in your cupped hands). A growler goes flat in like 4 hours and is a half inch too tall for every refrigerator shelf. On the bright side, a growler encourages revelry on delivery and so it’s a great way to drink a portion of the gift.
Depreciable Assets – Skiing powder is about the best thing a human being can do. Now, I’ve never skydived from space, or received total consciousness or anything, but I’ve seen some shit and skiing pow is at the top of the list. And it’s well documented that you cannot ski powder without this year’s skis, so you’re going to need to unload those sticks from last season.
Of course everyone trying to sell their skis every year creates a market surplus, which combined with the fact that no one wants your clapped out shit, leads to 80% or more depreciation of skis in the first year. You thought motorhomes lose their value fast? Try selling a pair of Soul 7s with last year’s topsheet art.
A similar phenomenon exists with mountain bikes, stand up paddleboards, and devil sticks, but nothing depreciates like skis. Of course everything depreciates, so we can’t that bent out of shape if the curve is a bit steeper for the best toys.
The Toyota Paradox – Everything depreciates except, by definition, investments. And to hell with gold and Apple stock, I’ve never seen a better investment than an old Toyota. I have a friend who bought a Toyota Tacoma, drove the shit out of it for four years, and then sold it for a profit. That’s a true story. No blogger creative license necessary. And that wasn’t even a classic.
You know that the pre-’86s had a solid front axle, right? That’s so sick for four wheeling and for looking rad in the Whole Foods parking lot. The 22re engine is well documented to run for infinity miles. All you have to do is change the oil and I heard you don’t even have to do that. Seriously. Look it up. It’s on Expedition Portal’s Instagram.
116k miles (or 216k? 316k?), only kind of rusty. 90th percentile of quality, I swear. $5k. Won’t last long. Solid front axle perfect for picking up chicks at the farmer’s market.
As a dirtbag economics certified financial adviser I recommend that you cash in your 401k immediately and go buy this truck (this deal won’t last long).
This extends to pre-1992 Volkswagen vans, bonus points for a Westy. If you have a Syncro just retire now.
The Nalgene Proletariat – You have never purchased a Nalgene bottle. You are incredulous, but it’s true. It’s just not how dirtbag economics work. You can’t, like, own, a Nalgene bottle, man. What you really purchased was a share in a global Nalgene bottle co-op. They come, they go, we don’t get all teary eyed about it. It’s beautiful.
There will be no blog post today. The requirements of the Missoula XC preclude my fealty to the attention to detail to which you are accustomed, and which you deserve. I have no excuse beyond that I am sleepy. I hope that you will find it within yourselves to forgive my sloth, and check back next week for a new and exciting edition from The Gentleman at Large.
Race season is here! pc: Tom Robertson
There will be no blog post today, but not for lack of thoughtfulness. I tried, I really did! I even had lots of ideas.
I considered for a while that only two weeks after the last edition, we’re already past due for a third installment of the God Bless Our Parks series.
I thought about laying out a study on how long a person can subsist (thrive?) on caffeine and cortisol alone.
I explored for a few minutes how our current national discussion might be different if that bigot from New York had been arrested on a fluke but that redneck from Indiana had carried of his plan instead. Would the conversation still have migrated toward xenophobia? Or would we have considered for a moment that religious extremism is religious extremism whether the evangelist is brandishing a Quran or a Bible, and that heaping additional punishment on the perpetrator of a violent crime (to say nothing of his or her community) based on his or her ideological convictions is a violation of the rights guaranteed to said violent criminal by First Amendment to the Constitution of Our Great Nation, and that if we actually have any interest in stopping such violent crimes we might be better off exploring the disenfranchisement and alienation that fuels extreme ideology in the first place. And that’s not even to mention that there is only one common thread that runs through every single mass shooting foreign and domestic, which exists more consistently than ideological extremism and even hate. That is, of course, that a gun was used to kill a large number of people.
But then I figured that by press time we’d all have just shrugged our shoulders and written off violent crimes like those that took place in Orlando and Los Angeles the other day as inevitable, as an unfortunate byproduct of living in the Best Goddam’ Country On Earth, and gone on with our lives. (Well, some of us, anyway.) I was also busy with race promotion stuff, and didn’t have the opportunity to read up on today’s mass shooting; I was worried the post might have come off as stale. In the fast paced world of blogging, it’s important to stay relevant!
So to you, my adoring fans, I am sorry. But I promise to do better next week with a new edition of witty, biting, and insightful commentary on how you’re hanging the toilet paper wrong, or the best way to level a wobbly table in a restaurant, or something. But to tide you over, here is a quick clip of what I’m pretty sure Teddy Roosevelt had in mind when he founded the Park Service:
I’ve got a little bit of a complicated relationship with my bike. For five or six years, all I wanted to do was to ride, and to ride as fast as I could. I passed on dinners with friends to spend time on the stationary bike, got most of my calories from weird powders and gels, and pretty much every time I rode it was at an uncomfortable pace.
At the time, or for most of the time, I loved it. There was never any danger of doing it for a living, but I got good enough to travel to big races and to start with the guys who do do it for a living. The hard work really was fun.
Race Season – pc: Kevin Horan
After a year or so of bad results and burnout, though, I got tired and disillusioned. My expectations soared while my results stagnated. After a bad season I quit racing, and then I quit riding. I told myself that it wasn’t so much that I stopped loving to ride bikes – I just needed to see other people for a while.
See, when I moved to Montana I was way into climbing on rocks. And ice. And trail running. And backpacking. And hunting. And you get the idea. After a season or two of racing, though, it was all I thought about. After racing lost some of its luster, I went looking for some of the things that I lost.
Backcountry skiing moved to the forefront and got me back in the alpine, and I even took up running-when-not-chased. Riding bikes moved to the background, and while racing is still very much a part of my life, I didn’t even own a mountain bike for a few years (which is my circles was akin to sacrilege).
Ski Season – pc: Ben Brunsvold
And then I bought one again. It’s not light, or particularly speedy. It’s not much for racing. It’s a big squishy thing that’s made for long days and backcountry trails, or, more simply, for fun.
I’ve been riding it a lot, and being back on the bike is like meeting an old friend in a new place, or hooking up with an ex. It’s simultaneously familiar and new. It’s exhilarating. It’s fun, and it’s reminded me why I spent so much time riding in circles in the first place.
Riding without tracking my power profile is great. I don’t ride with a watch, or keep track of how far I ride. If I don’t feel like going I don’t go. Sometimes I try hard and sometimes I just screw around, but every time I get out it’s fun. And now that I’m back on the bike, I’m starting to remember what motivated me to train so much a decade ago.
Through freezing, rainy training rides and mind numbing hours on the rollers; through long drives to races I didn’t finish; through an identity that was caught up in unrealistic expectations, racing for me was rooted in fun. And now that the expectations are gone and the fun is back, I wonder if it would be so bad to pin on a number again.
So go hit a jump (or don’t, whatever), or have some beers and get sunburned on the river, or call in sick and spend all day smoking ribs on a Tuesday. Take a little time to have fun.
Fun Season (aka late night campus bike jousting)Like
