Friday 11/22/96
Some quotes from
http://www.americanborders.org/borders01.html :

"I hate it when people stereotype me, when they don't listen
and just sum me up the same way I'd unconsciously summed up
Bob:  gas-station attendant.  No one to take notice of.  It
slapped my consciousness awake.  Maybe that's the way I can
look at people as I travel in America.	As breakers of
stereotypes, as surprises.	All of us different, unique, and
indefinable."

"Similarly, it is ever so difficult to resist grabbing
something that you know is going to fall off.  Perhaps a
plastic instrument cover, a side mirror, a wire flapping
loose, a map blowing away.	It's against nature, and
underneath it all you realize that these things are worth
less than the risk of damage or death, and that taking a
hand off the grip to catch that something you could go back
for, or buy another of, is just not worth it."

"Already I was beginning to slip into deep-thought mode.
I've never quite been able to meditate, and I think the
closest I get to it is when I'm riding on country roads.  My
active mind is busy with the details of bumps, curves, and
engine noise.  But somewhere underneath is a smooth track of
thought that works itself deeper and deeper into a groove, a
downward spiral onto a higher plane."

About blood/death:
"Is it somehow necessary to view such spectacles in order to
confirm that we are alive?	The adrenalin rush, the horror,
the despair, the elation?  What other events allow us to
experience such an intensity of emotion, other than death?"

"You know, you buy into the system, you're making money, and
one day you realize that they've really GOT you.  You're
captured."

"I think he doesn't talk much about himself, which made me
curious.  Strange how attractive that is.  I found myself
being pulled in, trying to figure him out."
This is how Aloof person type in Celestine Prophecy.

"I've known a few people who've given up most of their
possessions.  I do remember feeling rather naked in their
homes, with no toys, or the "screens" possessions provide.
I remember a discomfort, but also the joy of distractionless
conversations.	I remember them letting the phone ring in
favor of present company, and I remember thinking that I'd
like to try living that way."

"When you have come to the edge of all of the light that you
know, and you are about to step off into the darkness of the
unknown, faith is knowing one of two things will happen:
there will be something solid to stand on, or you will be
taught how to fly."

"I ward off danger by saying to myself that people are
basically nice, that I'm competent to ride and fix my
machine, that natural disasters are rare.  It works, I
think, because people are reluctant to be mean to someone
who wants things to work out well."

"But I've worked out what fear means.  It means False
Evidence Appearing Real."

"Following instincts is what this trip is about.  For a long
time I've made decisions based on what others expect.  I'm a
free spirit but sometimes I get sidetracked and a lot of
what this trip is about is following my intuition."

"I fluctuate between confidence and uncertainty, and just
then I needed reassurance.	That, or confirmation of my
unstable state-of-mind from someone of like mind."

"When you're stuck somewhere with nothing to do, waiting for
someone to show up, every minute they are late is either an
irritation or something to worry about."

Engine:
"And it all works until it gets old or is deprived of
   something it needs to continue. Just like us."

About gossip:
"I'm having fun, and they're bored and silly.  Let
them talk."

"So now I know how guys feel when they have to go home and
they don't want to.  When they would rather be sitting
around in a garage, greasy, fixing something, riding it
around, making jokes, drinking beers -- when girls seem a
huge interruption necessary only because of something so
tedious as a previous commitment."

"And I wondered, not for the first time, What is this
obsession with speed?  Everyone agrees that it's great I'm
taking back roads and not freeways.  That it's great I'm not
trying to break time and distance records.	But no one else
seems to want to do it."

On focus:
"As I rode, my eyes were drawn to a certain kind of sign.
Antique-hounds see Garage Sale and Flea Market signs.
Farmers see signs that say Tractors and Feed, and mechanics
see Small Engine Repair."

"The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in
the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle
transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the
petals of a flower.  To think otherwise is to demean the
Buddha...which is to demean oneself."

"I argued that physical discomfort is important only when
the mood is wrong.	Then you fasten on to whatever thing is
uncomfortable and call that the cause.	But if the mood is
right, then physical discomfort doesn't mean much."

"I hope later she will see and feel a thing about these
prairies I have given up talking to others about; a thing
that exists here because everything else does not and can be
noticed because other things are absent.  She seems so
depressed sometimes by the monotony and boredom of her city
life, I thought maybe in this endless grass and wind she
would see a thing that sometimes comes when monotony and
boredom are accepted.  It's here, but I have no names for
it."

"Explore it a little, to see if in that strange separation
of what man is from what man does we may have some clues as
to what the hell has gone wrong in this twentieth century."

"When you want to hurry something, that means you no longer
care about it and want to get on to other things."