Bleak

God forbid we fix our own shit.
Let me explain myself.

But first: A Legend:

 Map of Earlysville, 1864

In 1864, with the Civil War raging around him, Link Evans was a slave at the Bleak House Plantation in Earlysville. He was a blacksmith, having learned the trade from his father, also a slave.  Bleak House was originally owned by the Michie family, of Michie Tavern fame, the original Michie Tavern having been located right at the Buck Mountain end of Bleak House Road before it was moved over to the foot of Monticello, decades later.  At that time, Bleak House Plantation was an active plantation, harvesting everything from corn to cows to tobacco (no cotton though) - even during the darkest period of the civil war.  The whole operation was run on the labor of the 41 slaves that lived there.  

Bleak House Plantation

Link Evans had something that few of the other slaves at Bleak House had though.  Because in 1865, the Civil War ended and Link was a free man, and he learned that his skill as a Blacksmith - learned under the oppression of slavery - was the key to his financial future.  Back then, before the bizarre reality that is Amazon-based consumer delivery, when something broke that you needed, and you couldn't just order a new one online, you fixed it.  And so much of the stuff that you actually needed in life - plows, horseshoes, nails, etc - were metal, all made and fixed by your local Blacksmith.  So suddenly, lucky enough to have a skillset that he could monetize, one day in 1865 Link was a free man, and he set up shop right there in Earlysville.  Link Evans Rd, right next to Broadus Wood School, marks the site of his home and shop - where you took all of your stuff after the civil war and paid Link to fix it.

Link's Home

Flash forward 150 years.  Amazon is the world's largest internet company by revenue and has a market cap of 874.19 billion dollars.  If you happen to break anything - ANYTHING - you can buy a new one online with 2 snaps of your finger - and it will literally arrive at your door in 48 hours.  Meanwhile, the great pacific garbage patch, where a small percentage of our broken shit goes to rest, now spans 617,763 square miles, 3 times the size of the country of France.  Despite those numbers, Peak Consumerism is still, by most estimates, decades away into the future.

This is Freedom?
As a form of escape, I ride over to Bleak House Road pretty much every Thursday night, and I participate in a 3+ hour night ride with a group of hard, fast mountain bikers who, themselves, are seeking the same kind of catharsis.  I say I participate in this ride, and I mean that.  I used to lead it, but these days the level of speed and endurance is way, way up - and I'm basically just hanging on most of the time now.  We end the ride, every Thursday night, riding back down Bleak House Road, past where Link Evans was emancipated, and I can't help but wonder what Link would say if he could see us.
So, this is Freedom?

My backpack, which I've used for all of my big Thursday night rides for the last decade, has some problems.
1)  The bladder.  It's completely ripped.  This is a camelback, sans camel.  So I'm always finishing this huge night ride on empty.

2)  My saw (1).  This is actually a two-part problem.  This ride, the trails we tend to ride are a little, shall we say, interpretive.  This is the fringe.  A 6 inch wide half-track with some trees down here and there is about average, but other trails, you need a saw to open them up a little just to even get through.  But my pack lacks a good spot to store my gigantic handsaw, so I've been just mashing it into the main pouch for about 5 years now, like a light saber, and hence, the torn bladder.

3) My saw (2) - Also, my saw itself is broken.  Again.  This time, though, it's the handle and not the blade - so I think I could fix it if I had the ability to craft the proper size chassis for it and remount the blade.

4) My shoes -  I make a brief effort to craft a spot on the outside of my pack with some straps to hold my back up saw (yes, I have two) but the straps I need to use are actually holding the sole of my shoe on.  Complications, one leading right into the other, and I miss dinner, fix nothing, and just barely make it out the door in time to join the guys on the other side of Bleak House Road, just past Link Evans birthplace, where he was a slave but he could fix everything.

And right way I've got problems.  Even going up the first hill, my head isn't right, and so I stop to eat something but the bars I stuck in there last week appear to have fallen out the bottom of the pack, so I settle for some expired peanut butter nabs.  Not good.  It's a cloudy night, so we turn the lights on early, and for three hours I'm yo-yo'ing off the back of the group, their lights a distant speck through the trees and fog.

All of this gear, by modern standards, should be thrown in the trash.  Click to buy and I'll have a new one in 48 hours.  Stop by the shop and get a new one to ride immediately.  And don't get me wrong - there is a place for that.  But something about those options makes me pause too.  For starters, despite their flaws, I LOVE my pack.  I love these shoes.  Nothing fits quite like the things that have conformed to your body by sun and sweat, over time.  And, nostalgically, the places I've been with this gear...I'm just not ready to give all of that up to memory yet.

Most importantly, I have this fear, that the hidden danger of this whole trash-the-old-buy-the-new consumerism basically amounts to this: we can no longer fix our shit.

And I'm not just talking about my pack or my saw or my shoes.  My fear is that the psychological shortcoming we have created - where we can't fix our THINGS - carries over to much more important areas of our lives.  Like our marriages, our relationships, our broken families.
The environment.
Democracy itself.
Indeed, when we lose the ability to repair...anything, it's going to be a huge problem when what we really need is gone and Jeff Bezos can't deliver us a new civilization.

Our night ride starts to wind down, thank God, because I'm a bonking, drippy mess.  We turn back onto Bleak House Road, right past the plantation where Link Evans grew up, and I am dropped again right away, about 100 yards back from the group, and it's pretty bad.  I'm head-down-hot-face, at the bottom of the proverbial hole.  If I can just get to the cars, I'll (hopefully) drink about a quart of water and eat something before I dive directly into the beer cooler, face first.  But as we round the bend just past the old plantation, the guys up ahead stop, turn around, come back towards me, and in their lights I see that there are two black bear cubs on the side of the road there.  Then another, and another.  And it happens pretty fast, and I'm so exhausted I don't really even react to it, but the cubs' HUGE PISSED OFF MOTHER BEAR comes loping out of the fringe of the woods, running straight towards us, and - about 10 feet from us - she ushers her 5 cubs up the side of a big white pine tree, though she, herself, stops short of actually climbing the tree.  No indeed, she just latches onto the side of that tree so we are face-to-face, and she gives us the stink eye as her cubs scramble around in the tree above her.  There's something hugely primal about this, but also, I find myself relating to this bear in a very human way - because she's clearly having one of those days you have as a parent when you've got insane quintuplets that won't stop tipping over trashcans and there are five of them and one of you and you've got places to be, and where the hell is your spouse, and I get her perspective, and I feel bad for her, but also I need to get the fuck out of there ASAP.  And I would, except I'm cramping and I feel so absolutely terrible at this point that I'm kind of just hoping she'll kill me and eat me.

It's a big, brave bear these days that has the ability to birth 5 cubs into this world and get them all to survive.

Bonking, cramping, but still alive and uneaten, my fight-or-flight response kicks in slowly, like honey.  The bear is stationary for the time being, just staring us down, and the sum weaponry of this potential conflict is our 2,000 lumens or so vs. about 30 inches of bear claws and teeth.  We are fucked if she comes off the side of that tree, but no one wants this fight less than she does, though, this wise old bear.  Like maybe her momma told her about how General Sherman said War is Hell as he wept and burned the South.  I stare at her for a moment and she stares back, and I wonder out loud:
"Link?"

I manage to get a foot back on my pedal and point the bike back down Bleak House Road towards the cars. The bear allows us to leave.  It's only a half mile back to the cars, all downhill, and as soon as we get there I'm headfirst directly into the beer cooler without a drop of water.  Relieved, I am struck by how slow my escape actually was.  In hindsight, I imagine the bear watching me painfully depart the scene of our encounter, surprised at how slow and soft I was, taunting me as I go, "Bitch, you better pedal that bike."

Really, Bear, I am better than this.  I will fix my pack.

That was two weeks ago, and my pack is right where I left it.  I don't know how.

But I promised you, Link, and I meant it.  I will figure this out.