Duc thots. Freedom or Chat GTP-4.o Borg?
Out and about on the (old) Duc.
O'Reilly Auto Parts, Nephi, Utah. 31 May 2024
Three days ago, I stopped at the Nephi O'Reilly Auto Parts store for some chain lube 80 miles into a 360-mile motorcycle ride from Park City to Ivins. I was riding to Ivins on the older of my two Ducati Multistrada motorcycles, the back way: West Desert. Nephi, Delta, Milford, Minersville, Cedar. There were only a half dozen oncoming vehicles on the lonely 70-mile-long UT SR 257 SB segment from Delta to Milford. As I rode, looking left, I could see the snowcapped, twelve-thousand-foot peaks of the Tushar Mountains forty miles to the east, towering over the I-15 main route. Glorious 80-degree Spring temps. Partly cloudy. Twenty mph wind at my back. The 1100cc Duc desmo twin motor purred reassuringly. I was overtaken by a rabbit just south of Milford where staying with the rabbit enabled a "safe" 75 mph (in a 65) run on the 30 miles to Cedar. Typically, I never ride faster than five over the limit, the exception being when overtaken by a reliable rabbit or on curves, when, circumstances permitting, I usually pick up the pace a bit more than five over. Riding these days, I mostly behave. My last ticket was from a US Ranger in Capital Reef National Park in 2020, the first summer of Covid: 65 in a 40 on UT SR 24 in the east side of the park. The curves there, along the Fremont River, are wonderful and the road that day was empty... except for the Fed trooper.
I asked the Nephi O'Reilly Auto Parts store owner how his very well organized and well stocked store was doing. He said, "Great! A lotta guys around here like to work on their own cars." I told him he was lucky to live and work in a small town (population 6.5 thousand, isolated on the eastern edge of Utah's West Desert) where most people were grounded in day-to-day reality and where people knew how to do practical stuff like fixing their own stuff. Methinks the time is nearing when rural America derived constructive knowledge will come at a premium and be essential to surviving as a free people, where urbanized citizens (most of us today), bereft of practical knowledge and skills are subsumed, frog in the pot style, into the transhuman, Chat GPT-4o borg. As I reflected on the value of acquiring grounded adroitness, I thought of Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote about "the land:"
O'Reilly Auto Parts, Nephi, Utah. 31 May 2024
Three days ago, I stopped at the Nephi O'Reilly Auto Parts store for some chain lube 80 miles into a 360-mile motorcycle ride from Park City to Ivins. I was riding to Ivins on the older of my two Ducati Multistrada motorcycles, the back way: West Desert. Nephi, Delta, Milford, Minersville, Cedar. There were only a half dozen oncoming vehicles on the lonely 70-mile-long UT SR 257 SB segment from Delta to Milford. As I rode, looking left, I could see the snowcapped, twelve-thousand-foot peaks of the Tushar Mountains forty miles to the east, towering over the I-15 main route. Glorious 80-degree Spring temps. Partly cloudy. Twenty mph wind at my back. The 1100cc Duc desmo twin motor purred reassuringly. I was overtaken by a rabbit just south of Milford where staying with the rabbit enabled a "safe" 75 mph (in a 65) run on the 30 miles to Cedar. Typically, I never ride faster than five over the limit, the exception being when overtaken by a reliable rabbit or on curves, when, circumstances permitting, I usually pick up the pace a bit more than five over. Riding these days, I mostly behave. My last ticket was from a US Ranger in Capital Reef National Park in 2020, the first summer of Covid: 65 in a 40 on UT SR 24 in the east side of the park. The curves there, along the Fremont River, are wonderful and the road that day was empty... except for the Fed trooper.
I asked the Nephi O'Reilly Auto Parts store owner how his very well organized and well stocked store was doing. He said, "Great! A lotta guys around here like to work on their own cars." I told him he was lucky to live and work in a small town (population 6.5 thousand, isolated on the eastern edge of Utah's West Desert) where most people were grounded in day-to-day reality and where people knew how to do practical stuff like fixing their own stuff. Methinks the time is nearing when rural America derived constructive knowledge will come at a premium and be essential to surviving as a free people, where urbanized citizens (most of us today), bereft of practical knowledge and skills are subsumed, frog in the pot style, into the transhuman, Chat GPT-4o borg. As I reflected on the value of acquiring grounded adroitness, I thought of Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote about "the land:"
The land is the appointed remedy for whatever is false and fantastic in our culture. The continent we inhabit is to be physic and food for our mind, as well as our body. The land, with its tranquilizing, sanative influences, is to repair the errors of a scholastic and traditional education and bring us to just relations with men and things. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Does Emerson's quote apply in today's world of a level of tech acceleration he could have hardly imagined? Will we always have a culture tied to the land where individuals, in a climate of freedom, can maximize their own unique potential?
The old (2015) Duc is really running well on new Perelli rubber post 50K miles service. As I rode, I took my mind off Emerson and wondered, why do I have two Duc Multistradas? Seems only right to replace one of them with a Duc Diavel. I had to admit, my helmet piercing the wind, and realizing that, likely, I wouldn't be around when the borg was operating full force, that it was good living at the apex.