"That's going to be a tough act to follow," admitted Rama. Then he began to speak. Within minutes he transported me with a tranquilizing voice and abstract language inside a fuzzy, familiar bubble where words were not questioned and consciousness seemed high. I found myself being drawn into his world. It was comforting being back. Earlier, he had given me some play. That made me feel important. I let my thoughts drift aimlessly about. I found myself gazing, without blinking, into his eyes. I found myself mesmerized by the sound and the rhythm of his words. Somewhere far away, I found myself floating...my vision blurred...things went fuzzy... "Hey!" I thought, bursting the mental bubble. "He's formatting us again--only this time without the LSD!" I stood back up. I was ready for action. I did not know what to do. Rama stopped talking, squinted his eyes, and aimed his index finger at me. I recalled a scene from The Last Wave, a movie Rama once took me to see, in which a sorcerer kills a man by pointing a "death bone" at him. I now saw Rama as both friend and foe, mentor and tormentor, Christ and anti-Christ. I was frightened and confused. Estranged, yet held by his seductively androgynous, authoritative face, I lapsed into a meditative stupor... A glint of light caught my eye and snapped me out of the trance. Rama was chanting something in a low, monotonous tone. I seized the string with the bicycle lock key. I pictured bright purple sparks and blue lightning bolts radiating in all directions from the key. The light shielded me from attack and lit the path to the door. "Gotta go," I said and slowly walked away. "I've got your number," Rama replied, still pointing his crooked finger. "You're full of it," I returned and stepped outside. Here the light was soft and grey. A morning dove cooed. The bicycle was there for me. It was 1985, and I was twenty-five. In the months that followed, I occasionally bicycled to Walden Pond, where I read about Thoreau's experiment with self-reliance. Distracted by haunting memories, I gazed at the water in search of calm, but the wind spawned new waves and the surface swelled with complexity. "There's plenty of time to sort it out," I reassured myself. "Maybe I'll take myself for a ride across America and do some thinking." 21. Bicycle Ride--The Continental Divide Three months into the cross-country bicycle trek, I pulled off the road west of Walden, Colorado. I was stuck. The problem was not so much the physical journey. True, I was towing additional weight because towns were farther apart and because Nunatak was no longer a pup. But my leg muscles were rock solid from the miles in Massachusetts, New York, the southern tip of Canada, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, Wyoming, and Colorado, and I felt confident I could ride to the coast.