Fault Lines - John Knoop

eard. He wears riding boots, jeans, and a blue work shirt from the pocket of which dangles the
yellow string and paper pull disk of a Bull Durham bag.
After we order he turns to us and says, "You fellers sure picked a hot one. Where you
coming from on that machine?" We tell him and he gives a long low whistle, pushes back his
plate and rolls himself a cigarette with clean rapid movements of his nut-brittle fingers. Then he
tells us the story of a kid he knew who used to herd cows with a motorcycle until one day he was
fooling around in a corral full of horses, "spinning around on the bike and raising dust with the
horses all bunched together over in one corner of the corral, nervous and jumpy as mustangs
holed up in a box canyon. Then the kid comes a little too close and a big gray stallion plants both
his rear hooves up to the hocks right on the engine of that thing. It knocks the kid off and he
crawls away and watches the stallion spin around to raise up on his hind legs and come down
like a hammer on that machine 'til it’s all smashed to hell. Damnedest thing I ever saw."
A cautionary tale from the frontier of the machine age.
I am overwhelmed by what has haunted so many, from De Tocqueville to Thomas Wolfe.
The terrifying vastness of America. That aspect of the country seems incorruptible. Where’s our
famous progress here in the sagebrush? I thought rain and civilization followed the plow.
Berkeley, July 3
We average between 35 and 45 miles per gallon cruising at 70 or 80. From Ohio to
California we spent thirty-six dollars for gas, oil and food with tips. The wind is an almost
constant force against us after Missouri. A pure headwind is best. A quartering wind means
leaning into it, bracing against it, which is a physical effort. Going across the Utah salt flats we
had such a fierce cross-wind that to breathe we had to turn our heads away from it and I could
only get 80 mph out of the bike at full throttle. I checked it the next night in Nevada on a windless
stretch and got 105 mph.
Down the long slope to Sacramento yesterday afternoon. Alfalfa as far as the irrigating
eye can see. Visions of a thousand toiling wagons loaded with green-cured hay merging with the
horizon on their way to the feedlots. San Francisco Bay is red with the blood of the dying sun, as
rocking horse happy, we ride into Berkeley. We’re staying with a former classmate of Naren’s
near the UC campus. Today I’m in San Francisco to check City Lights bookshop, then to hang
out at one of the cafes on Grant Avenue in North Beach. The scene reminds me of the Village, but
I don’t connect with anybody. I’m sending Judy a postcard of Sausalito Harbor and asking her if
she would consider living there with me some time. I think I may be a total romantic. It’s
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