From: akins@wizard.cis.ohio-state.edu (gregory adkins)
Subject: Steve Roberts, Behemoth, newsletter
Organization: The Ohio State University Dept. of Computer and Info. Science
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 15:10:06 GMT

Following is a reposting of the periodic newsletter, written by 
Steve Roberts, discussing his adventures related directly and
indirectly to Behemoth and his travels.  While Steve's email
address is included, he requests:

	"You can post my address if you want, with the proviso that 
	I get 60 or so pieces of mail a day and don't really want 
	to deal with a lot of one-on-one questions...."

If you don't regularly read this news-group but would still like
this newsletter.  Let me know and I will forward it to you as
I receive it.

-greg -> akins@cis.ohio-state.edu
**********************************************************************


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To: nomadness@caliban.Corp.Sun.COM
From: wordy@qualcomm.com (Steve Roberts)
Subject: Notes from the Bikelab -- #20
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-------------------------------
NOTES FROM THE BIKELAB
Issue #20 -- 11/16/92
by Steven K. Roberts
San Francisco, CA and Reno, NV
-------------------------------

Copyright (c) 1992 by Steven K. Roberts.  All Rights Reserved.  
(Intact reposting and free distribution are OK with permission; 
personal forwarding is OK without.)

IN THIS ISSUE:

        BEHEMOTH is alive!
        San Francisco streets
        A Symphony of Moments 
        Microship project status
        Snapshots and Miscellany


"Steve... friends don't let friends do DOS."
        -- 6-year-old Stephen Polly, closing the lid of my DOS laptop
        as I took a break from Mac work and attempted to sign
         onto GEnie with Aladdin.



BEHEMOTH is alive!
------------------

Hello from InterOp!  The premier trade show of the Internet world is 
going on this week at Moscone Center in San Francisco, and it's 
dizzying... what was once an obscure, almost academic subculture is 
now very much in the high-energy, deep-pockets mainstream.

I'll speak more of the city in a moment, but first:  the past week of 
frenzied bike work undertaken in preparation for this event has had 
an effect on me.  I need to retract a comment I made in the previous 
issue of this series, where I blithely relegated BEHEMOTH to the 
status of "museum piece" while turning eagerly toward the 
Microship.  Well, the new project is indeed very much alive, but 
reports of the bike's demise are way premature.  I've had so much 
fun hacking these last few days that I'm even tempted to take it for 
a ride!  <gasp>

I need to make a point here.  From many readers' perspective, I have 
become associated so much with the bike that the very notion of my 
moving to a different substrate seems a sacrilege -- as if some 
measure of fame commits me to sing the same song over and over, 
forever, ending at last on a glittering Vegas stage, donning my 
studded velvet jacket to perform the well-polished gags of my career 
as a professional high-tech nomad/entertainer.  "Give me a burrito... 
Resistance is futile." I intone, regarding the audience coldly from 
deep inside my helmet... and though they've heard it before, the 
graying fans will howl and clap, reliving their own heyday as I tell 
the tales of my own.  Well, I still have that input capacitor... I am still 
AC-coupled... I must grow.

But there's another issue as well.  BEHEMOTH has become a robust 
development platform for nomadic connectivity, and represents a 
distillation of some of the most capable new technology available.  I 
must therefore temper my enthusiasm for the new project with the 
realization that BEHEMOTH still has a long way to go, not only as a 
technomadic test site but as the very thing that brought it to life in 
the first place:  an escape pod with a patina of road dust softening its 
high-tech sparkle, lumbering along the back roads while linked via 
satellite to YOU.  

Ah, technology.  Sorry if I saddened you when my love of new toys 
distracted me from the power of existing tools.  But remember, 
wanderlust takes many forms... geographic, romantic, and 
technological.  When you are enchanted by things you don't know, 
the search itself becomes the answer.  You wouldn't want to find it 
(whatever that means), for then you'd stop looking...


San Francisco streets
---------------------

Objects.  That's the word that keeps occurring to me as I walk around 
this once-lovely city.  San Francisco still echoes with charm, drawing 
the eye to countless delights and amusements... but it has become a 
sad place, a frightening one -- especially at night.  On the street, 
everyone becomes an object:  a target, a hooker, a hustler, a homeless 
person, a panhandler, a cop, a local.  Elaborate rituals determine the 
interactions between types, to the point that protocol violation, even 
in the midst of being panhandled, creates confusion.  Ever hunker 
down for a relaxed chat with someone who holds out a cup as you 
pass?  It takes a while to struggle past the mutual assumptions and 
achieve enough balance to actually communicate.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the elaborate dance of the 
prostitutes.  On Geary Street, near ACT, I discretely watch a couple of 
them for about an hour.  Dressed in a way that would be suicidal for 
any woman not in the business, they market themselves to passing 
traffic, no ambiguity in their intent even as their actions are cloaked 
in a superficial layer of respectability (in case a cop happens along).   
Just as I start wondering how they could possibly manage to fend off 
the unwelcome advances of horny street people, a shaggy drunk 
accosts one of them -- slurring lewd remarks and bouncing off a 
utility pole as he lurches toward her.  Long-legged, long haired, 
wearing a skimpy microskirt in the cool night, balanced precariously 
on spike heels, her beauty honed to a flawless professional edge... she 
shrugs him off with enviable ease.  I actually perceive a nonverbal 
message between them:  "back off, Jack, I'm working.  Get away from 
my corner."  This penetrates the foggy brain of the interloper after a 
moment or so, making him mutter and retreat... but even while this 
is going on, her eyes flicker over the more promising German sedans, 
rocking her hips just so to deftly invite one person while actively 
repelling another, the whole event choreographed to the practiced 
licks of a saxman wailing the blues from a shadowed doorway.

Moments later, she steps into a car and is gone.  The music stops with 
a brief obligatory tonic... pauses a long moment... and begins again in 
a different key as another woman takes center stage, props her 
elbows onto the back of a parked pickup truck, and thrusts her lure 
into the flow of traffic to await the inevitable nibble.  The metaphor 
is no more scrambled than the reality, and I watch, repelled yet 
fascinated.

I turn to see a woman in a wheelchair, wrapped in a shawl, holding a 
cup that contains exactly one quarter.  It's 10:30 PM.  She's pretty 
and soft... we make eye contact and something changes...  she doesn't 
fit here.  "What's wrong with this picture?" I ask her, deliberately 
withholding cash until I find out why this doesn't feel right.  "I 
need... um... well, actually, I'm not really homeless or anything.  It's 
just the end of the month, that's all."  She grins sheepishly, dropping 
the act.  Again I feel the shock of transition from object to human 
and stay to chat awhile as equals.  Much better.  Giving her a couple 
of bucks now seems more a friendly gesture than a guilty penance 
for staying in a fancy hotel while others slink into dark concrete 
corners to shiver through another empty night.

Moments later, I pass a hard-core street bum, slumped against a 
gray wall -- the colors of his body, his clothing, his bags of 
possessions, all blended into a sort of uniform dark brown.  As I 
draw near, I feel yellow eyes regarding me from under a wool cap, 
and I see a sign on the pavement.  Expecting the usual plea for 
money to buy food, I am startled to read, crisply lettered in a neat 
hand: "Need booze bad.  Please help!"  Startled, I add a couple of 
quarters to his cup, flashing him a grin.  "I appreciate honest 
marketing," I say.  He looks in, nods, and grunts his thanks as I pass 
by.

Of course, he probably doesn't drink....

Actually, walking city streets at night like this rather frightens me, 
but I've found a trick.  My Icom dual-band handheld transceiver 
happens to receive over a very wide range, and it is a simple matter 
to tune in a busy cop frequency (around 460 MHz in San Francisco) 
and exude simulated confidence.  This I do whenever people on the 
street seem more threatening than benign, and it works amazingly 
well:  eyes scan me to assess the likelihood of an easy mark, then 
freeze on the radio.  The sound clinches it... "Roger, two baker 
eleven... proceed to Union Square.  211 in progress."  They avert their 
eyes and veer away as if I'm wearing a repellatron -- I may not look 
like a cop, but ya never know these days.  Besides, if the illusion of 
the radio is insufficient, one button switches me to an active 2-meter 
repeater where I can REALLY call for help...

Of course, most of this week has been spent in Moscone Center, at 
some other pole of our complex socioeconomic spectrum.  InterOp is 
one of the more energetic trade shows of this industry, and 
BEHEMOTH has been on display in a simulated 20'x20' campsite, 
complete with my Eureka megatent, prompting one passerby to ask, 
"you mean these people were too cheap to put you up in a hotel?"  

Of course, I am just high-tech homeless if you want to get technical 
about it.  Brother, can you spare a dollar?  I blew an RS-232 driver 
and can't catch the bus back to Dataspace until I can talk to my 
modem again...

The days are filled with conversation and short, intense learning 
curves -- with people assuming incorrectly that I'm a network guru, 
asking about the bike, and then contributing to my education by 
telling me what THEY do... the basic intellectual commerce of my life.  
The nights, alone in the Hotel Diva, are a blend of familiar network 
haunts and the strangeness of the hotel roof -- where I flee after 
dark to escape the constriction of my boring air-shaft vista.  Around 
and around I walk, 7 stories above the street, stepping lightly on 
graveled tar, getting to know the neighbors and watching the city 
from a safe perspective.


A Symphony of Moments 
---------------------

After The City, I press on -- to Santa Cruz to dress in a satin sheet for 
Halloween and dance wildly to the magic of Pele Juju, to Monterey's 
Regency Hyatt for a keynote address, to a generic motel in Fresno to 
speak at CSU and participate in an intense meeting about packet 
radio networks, to an idyllic wooded retreat in North Tahoe for the 
Hackers Conference, and on to a netfriend's house in Reno for a 
writing layover.  I keytap now in the Java Jungle, taking my daily 
break from the too-quiet setting of the sedate neighborhood to walk 
downtown for latte (yes, Seattle, there's espresso in Nevada!).  

It's easy to fall into patterns -- even in 2-week layovers like this, set 
like eddy currents against the smooth flow of mothership life.  I walk 
the avenues this crisp fall morning:  trees denuded, chill Nevada air 
brisk and invigorating, retired men sweeping already antiseptic front 
walks, one idiot neighbor wasting precious desert water to saturate 
her lush anachronistic lawn, the feeding frenzy at the opening of a 
garage sale, a pleasant hello from a woman tidying a churchyard, the 
well-kept riverside park with a few obligatory homeless men and 
one tormented soul in strident dialogue with his private demons, the 
increase in tension as my walk continues into the seedy edge of 
downtown, the tackiness of pawnshop row and the ragged 
underbelly of a casino-based economy, the glittering marquees and 
garish facades luring tourists into the cacophony of hungry slot 
machines, and the somehow incongruous blocks of banks and 
NORMAL city buildings.  At last I drop sweaty and thirsty into my 
usual chair under the "Invasion of the Latte Snatchers" T-Shirt, whip 
out the PowerBook, and write these words.  It's not a bad ritual 
overall, as rituals go, but it's the SAME every day... yet nobody is 
complaining!  I walk and walk, eyes open, an outsider enjoying the 
scene's novelty while dreading the possibility that I may someday 
fall into a routine just like it for more than a couple of weeks.  

(Only a moment ago, a woman wandered to my table and struck up a 
Mac-triggered conversation.  "Where do you call home?" she finally 
asked.  Startled by the question, I gestured vaguely at the screen.  
How do you explain Dataspace in a brief coffee shop encounter?)

Change is an addiction, in whatever domain.  If you are always 
lusting after the latest computer or piece of ham gear, then you 
already know what I mean:  just extrapolate to include all of life.  But 
if that whole notion seems absurd, then these writings must appear 
as the twisted, driven outpourings of a pathologically restless man... 
doomed to wander between extremes of passion and loneliness, 
discovery and torpor, beauty and banality... landing at last by default 
whenever and wherever the resources fail... bitter, angry, clinging to 
a final dream of escape that becomes, ultimately, a metaphor for 
death... adopting that wild-eyed demeanor that makes the tourists 
nervous as I hunker beside my solar shopping cart, flailing away at 
an antique laptop, hiding its screen from prying eyes...

<shudder>  Sometimes it feels like that.  

But usually not.  The fuel for the entire adventure, now entering its 
tenth year, is the dream of unending discovery, total freedom, and 
nonstop connectivity.  This all sounds rather philosophical, but it is 
the moments... the MOMENTS... that make it all worthwhile.  

And you never know when or where they will occur -- only that 
they are almost never expected.  A few nights ago, having finished a 
filming with the Japanese NTV program "Show by Shobai," I returned 
to my room in the Hilton (don't be impressed -- the food was 
mediocre and they wanted an additional $8.00 to use the Jacuzzi) and 
gazed out my 22nd-floor window to the south.  In a letter to a friend 
a few milliseconds away via internet but endless miles by diesel, I 
wrote:

"The sky is purple gold over the massive jagged mass of mountains, 
touched here and there with pockets of snow that highlight the 
desert sunset colors.  The stars begin, tentatively, to show 
themselves.  Below, in the valley, a million lights twinkle -- some 
arrayed in sinuous rivers of diamond/ruby glitter, others quietly 
pushing their yellow spheres into the night.  Airplanes are lined up 
to infinity, waiting to land, bright against the sky like a rare 
planetary alignment.  Here and there are beacons:  transmitting 
antennas, a cop, the airport tower, a sign, construction barricades... 
collectively animating the scene and drawing the delighted eye to 
and fro.

"Inside, freshly showered after the day's filming, I sit cozy in soft 
pile Kokatat clothing, wanting so much to hug you that the places 
where you are NOT feel chilly.  Somewhere out there is a beacon in 
the night, flashing me a smile from the vapors of Dataspace..."


Microship Project Status
------------------------

In the last chapter, I described my vision of the new machine:  a pair 
of sea kayaks, linked by a flexible bridge structure carrying 
recumbent drive train, operating console, and small sleeping cabin.  
People knowledgeable in such matters have pointed out that for all 
its utility, this is a suicide machine -- more stable upside-down than 
right-side up, guaranteed to break apart and swamp in surf or heavy 
seas.  I paid attention to their advice and abandoned that idea.

The plan now is to use a Fulmar-19 -- a sort of kayak-trimaran with 
an 11-foot beam across the amas, designed by John Sinclair in 
Seattle.  This comes with a prop and recumbent drive train (which 
will of course be hacked to allow solar propulsion from 2 square 
meters of panels mounted on the outrigger structure, as well as 
pedal-powered battery charging), an 80 square foot sail, and ample 
pack space.  It will be a solo machine, with a Mac PowerBook 
repackaged in the console, chord keyboard on the rudder handles, 
thumb mouse, distributed network of low-level controllers, 
Qualcomm satellite terminal, electronic charting (on the SPARC?), 
ham and marine radios, environmental data collection, MIDI, and 
marine radar and navigation tools as determined by packaging 
constraints.  I still want to do the folding recumbent and trailer idea 
(thought this is fraught with engineering problems), and plan to 
carry a small inflatable kayak with Werner carbon-fiber paddle as a 
sort of dinghy.

My companion (yet to be named; getchyer applications in soon) will 
pilot a Wilderness Systems sea kayak with outriggers and pedal 
drive, similarly Mac-equipped and networked to the Microship via 
RF modem.  Two vehicles add overhead, but increase autonomy, 
security, and pack space.

There is a growing probability of a project development site in 
Seattle, but it's bad luck to talk in detail about a deal before it 
actually materializes.  Stay tuned.


Snapshots and Miscellany
------------------------

I received positive comments on the snapshot format I used in the 
last installment -- little snippets of insight or absurdity picked up 
here and there.  Shoehorning all these into a coherent story has 
always been a challenge, so I close with another stack of miscellany 
from Out There.

It's election day, and I arrive in Fresno to speak at the Cal State 
campus.  Poking along in the permanent traffic jam of Shaw via 
mothership, I pass the exit ramp for highway 41.  A big sign reads:  
"EXIT POLL.  Honk once for Bush, twice for Clinton, three times for 
Perot." A local radio personality is there to collect the data and report 
to the populace.

In the motel, it briefly amuses me to read "Sanitized for Your 
Protection" on the toilet seat,  even though a more subtle and 
dangerous vector is via the hands:  pens at check-in, doorknobs, 
telephone handsets.  The route of a pathogen from sneeze to hand to 
object to hand to mucosa is short and effective... much more so than 
via that vast expanse of skin protected by those little signs found in 
a certain lower-middle class of motel rooms.

Far from Fresno, in Seattle to be exact, there is a large tower called 
the Space Needle (a remnant of the World's Fair).  It provides me 
with an opportunity for a gratuitous pun:  at the top, you see, there is 
a bar known at the Eye of the Needle, and it rotates slowly so patrons 
can see the city slowly revolve below.  The motor drive assembly 
that accomplishes this should therefore be called the Eye Cantina 
Turner.

Early in this series, while ensconced full-time in the lab at Sun, I 
tended almost exclusively toward technical topics in these reports.  
Then I moved to the road and waxed rhapsodic, relegating the 
technology to the role of substrate.  Well, there has been a recent 
update:  DOS laptops are now out of my life, for I acquired a 
Macintosh PowerBook 170.  It's wonderful.  I wish I could say that 
about the PowerPort Gold modem nestled within it, however:  I'm 
already on my third unit, which does work at low speed and for fax... 
but the external QBlazer is an average of 5-6 times as likely to 
connect successfully at high speeds (especially in hotels, with an 
additional switch attenuating line levels).  The PowerPort software is 
also brittle, often requiring system resets, restoration of default 
parameters, bizarre key combinations, calls for tech support, 
dragging things out of the System Folder, and other kluges in order 
to survive mode changes.  I hope all this is temporary, because the 
concept and packaging of the product are excellent.

This past Friday I found my way into the desert north of Reno to 
participate in a high-altitude research balloon launch sponsored by 
Utah State University.  Present were about 30 people, many of them 
hams, and the 76-foot helium balloon of .48 mil nylon carried an 
extensive telemetry package including ATV, GPS, photometric 
atmospheric analysis, packet data link, on-board datalogger, and 
direction-finding beacons to aid recovery.   The plan was for the 
balloon to exceed 100,000 feet and send continuous video and data 
while helping map wind circulation profiles enroute across Nevada, 
Utah, and Colorado... whereupon the payload would be severed by 
remote DTMF control and parachute to earth.  At the same time, the 
disconnect command would fire "squibs" that burn a large hole in the 
top of the balloon, allowing it to fall as well (carrying a 10-meter 
voice beacon from WB8ELK to attract the recovery crew).  In general, 
this is an extremely impressive project.  Alas, in the very final stages 
of preparation, after all testing, the payload was plugged into the 
balloon's bulkhead connector... and a static discharge (we assume) 
fried the command decoder logic, firing the squibs and severely 
damaging the $10,000 bubble.  An expensive lesson... but I hope I'm 
still in Nevada for the next attempt.  This is good science, and very 
much in the spirit of ham radio.

Ah, technology.  While writing a recent article for SunWorld Japan, I 
decided to run the grammar checker.  One sentence read, "For a 
chronic nomad accustomed to unfamiliar beds and new faces, this is 
almost an adventure."  The machine highlighted "chronic" and 
suggested:  Consider using "constant" unless you are referring to an 
illness.  Hmph.

The Hackers Conference (8.0) once again spoiled me.  If I had the 
resources to create an "intentional community" of like-spirited folk, 
this is the crowd that would provide the intellectual kernel.  I recall 
the first one I attended, four years ago:  it was my first stop in 
Silicon Valley, and I was so delighted by the culture that I 
immediately assumed the whole SF Bay Area was like that.  Imagine 
my dismay when reality intruded two days later.  I'm less starry-
eyed now, but it can be mighty addicting to spend time among 2-300 
people and know that ANY random conversation is bound to be 
interesting.  

Finally, since about 350 new people have been added to this 
distribution list since issue #19, I should mention the archive site.  
All back issues of this -- as well as previous tales of the road, 
archives of the technomads discussion group, and related miscellany 
-- may be found in ftp.telebit.com under /pub/nomad/...   (Thanks to 
David Harris of Telebit for maintaining this!)  Also, the print edition 
of Nomadness, complete with photos and many articles not published 
online, is $15/year ($21 international) from NRL, PO Box 2185, El 
Segundo, CA 90245.

Cheers from the desert,
    Steve




---------

Steven K. Roberts, N4RVE           wordy@lorien.qualcomm.com 
NOMADIC RESEARCH LABS

Currently in Reno for a 2-week writing layover.
Newsgroups: rec.bicycles.misc