It's a Hell of a State, too

[Editor's note: this entry was written last Saturday, Oct. 3rd. Evidently, the author has a hard time meeting deadlines, what with the scarcity of internet connections.]


Something happened while I was in Pittsburgh. I rolled into town with the sweat of several hot and muggy days clinging to my skin, but it's been almost nonstop rain and biting cold since getting on the road. The world must've decided that fall is here for good, but I don't think I've ever experienced such a discrete and sudden transition in seasons. Fortunately, as seasons go, autumn is far and away my favorite one, and October my favorite month; the weather has managed to dampen everything but my spirits, which have been soaring quite high.

In quite the unexpected turn of events, I met another cyclist on my first day out of Pittsburgh, Mike, who was also headed to Massachusetts, also in a rather roundabout fashion. We ended up riding together for a very enjoyable few days, as far as Ithaca. (Though we were headed in the same direction, he had a few more days than I did to get there, so we ended up parting ways as he took a more indirect route through the Finger Lakes region.)

The impossibly narrow gorge of Watkins Glen State Park.

I can't tell if I've actually gotten better at finding shelter at night, or if there's just more of it to be found, but I've been having enormous success at finding a covered, dry, secluded place to sleep every night; despite the inclement and steady rain, I haven't had to pitch my tarp since the beginning of Minnesota. The other night, Mike and I slept in a beautiful abandoned swan house, with sliding glass doors, a sunken (empty) pool, the whole building lined with fragrant cedar (I initially thought it was a giant sauna).

But oh! how cold it's been. I've been consistently wearing three or four layers on my torso, legs and feet during the day, and pretty much everything I have with me at night. My sleeping bag is only rated to 35 degrees, and I have a sneaking suspicion that the rating is equated with the temperature at which death occurs, not the cessation of comfort; either way, I'm pushing it to its limits. It's also been hard to stay properly hydrated, because my water is almost always too cold to drink.

But what a tradeoff! Through my shivering eyes, I've seen some of the most beautiful landscapes of my entire trip here in New York. I haven't even gotten to the Adirondacks yet, but I can tentatively say that New York has been the most consistently scenic state I've seen this summer. It's seems a pretty safe bet to just head down any road in any direction, and you won't be disappointed. Today was an uncharacteristic (and much appreciated) full day of sun, and I passed through mile after mile of burgeoning streams, waterfalls, gorges, all immersed in a rolling sea of hills set aflame by the fall foliage. I'm headed into a couple days of national forest tomorrow morning, and I can scarcely imagine how it'll manage to improve.

Chittenango Falls at dawn.

It is a bit sad, though, in having such a definitive deadline ahead of me; for the entirety of the summer, I've pretty much made things up as I go along, and explored places or stayed with people as much as I cared to, but that's no longer the case. I need to do at least 65 miles a day to get to Boston my Thursday evening, and I'm seeing a lot of things fall by the wayside as a result: I had the misfortune of missing a nonlinear dynamics lecture by math god Steven Strogatz at Cornell by just a few hours, and couldn't stick around for the next one; I stayed with a fantastic couple in Ithaca, who I would've loved to have gotten more time with (and who, amoung other things, sold me a new digital camera to break); a man I cycled past on a rural road invited me in to explore his land trust shared with twelve families, and to stay for a warm shower, food and laundry, but it was during the middle of the day, and I needed to cover more miles; the list goes on.

I think, though, in the grand scheme of things, that this phenomenon is a reflection of a broader truth, namely that there just ain't ever gonna be time enough in the world to do everything you want to. You just have to manage the best you can, and really, I'm managing pretty damn well. Minute by minute, mile by mile, I still pedal with a smile on my face, and that's plenty good enough for me.

The Final Word on G20

"Radical marching band playing on steps of cathedral, and riot cops continue to launch smoke bombs at them."

-- Twitter update from Thursday night protest

Okay, a few final words about Pittsburgh before I continue on my way. First, some might wonder why one would want to protest against the G20 summit at all?

Simply stated, the G20 is a group of the twenty most powerful leaders in the world who get together to make economic decisions that inevitably impact the lives of the other 6,000,000,000 people on this planet. These leaders are mostly white, almost always men, and most certainly wealthy, and as such, represent only a very small slice of the world's population. Protesting the G20 summit is an attempt to make sure that other voices are represented and heard as well, many of whom reject capitalism, globalization, free-trade, and other values intrinsic to the G20 economies. For these beliefs, and to show solidarity for others who feel marginalized, I chose to protest the summit by helping to bring music to the streets, to provide a backdrop for the message that so many thousands of people had to deliver, which I think can be succinctly boiled down to this: money can't be given more importance than people's lives or liberties.

Tuesday

I arrived in Pittsburgh last Tuesday evening, just as the sun was setting, and high-tailed it to Jessica's house, the clarinet player in Breakaway Marching Band (and a real charmer if I've ever met one), where I would stay for the rest of the week. I spent the evening with her roommate, Rob (trombone and melodica player in BHB), and Matt (sousaphone), who showed up from New Orleans later in the evening. I stayed up until the 2am tomato canning project got started, when I decided my efforts would better spent sleeping after my 97-mile day, and went to get started on the first of several nights of too little sleep.

Wednesday

The band headed down to Carnegie Mellon University by bicycle, where we played in a student march, protesting the profiteering of universities from education. BMB happened to have a beat-up but perfectly playable baritone for me to play for the week, and I just stuck it in my saddle bag, sans case, bell sticking out the top. After marching, we stayed outside the library for a spell to run through our repertoire for the week (which I had never played before). Right as we finished our impromptu rehearsal, the sky opened up and let loose like a fire hose. We rode our bikes home through the downpour, only for me to find a pool of water collected inside my horn, and a sizeable puddle in my saddlebag, my poor, poor camera floating helplessly at the bottom, sealing its fate.

After drying off and warming up, we headed back out at night to downtown, where a free protest concert was taking place (Joan Jett!). Our ranks swelling with the addition of Ben (mellophone, New York) and Stormy (percussion, Humboldt), we led a crowd away from the concert and went caroling through the neighborhoods, singing and playing traditional protest songs. Toward the end of our route, we found the road barricaded with a battalion of police in full riot gear. At this point, many in the band decided it was too early in the week to get into trouble, and slipped away down a side street, to live another day.

Thursday

Several of the folks in the band are involved in the production of a radio show for Pittsburgh's IndyMedia station, and for the week, their show and studio space transformed into the focal point of all independent media in the city. Their were at least a dozen people at the studio at any given time, people calling in live to give updates about police activity, people checking police scanners, and lots of folks working to constantly update their website (www.indypgh.org), which collated various updates, Twitter feeds, videos and more from all over the city. It was a fascinating perspective to be continually plugged in to media which provided such a drastically different perspective to the newspapers and news channels. On Thursday morning I got to check out the studio space and watch the action unfold through the mics and headphones.

In the afternoon, we biked to Arsenal Park to play at a march that was quite distinctly not sanctioned by the city, and that everybody was expecting to be the flashpoint for the week for the mounting tensions between police and protesters. This proved to be more or less the case, though certainly not the worst of what the week would have to offer; riot police quickly informed us over loudspeakers of our impending doom if we did not immediately disperse, followed rather quickly by lobs of tear gas and the deployment of the LRAD system, a sonic, eardrum-shattering weapon that can be focused at crowds (and, somewhat flatteringly, was also the first time it was ever used in this country). The black bloc retaliated with dumpsters used as battering rams, and a game of cat and mouse ensued through the neighborhoods of Pittsburgh, with the crowd continually splitting up in different directions and reuniting a few blocks later. We ran around and played until it seemed wise to leave. On our way home we stopped at a farmers' market, where we saw several battalions of cops armed with rubber bullet rifles pass through toward the fleeing crowd, police tank in tow.

After dinner back at the house, several of us decided to bike up to the north end of town to watch a mock trial of the G20, accompanied by lectures and speeches. Most unfortunately, Stormy's bike chain snapped halfway there. Faced with the prospect of being stranded a few miles from anywhere we wanted to be, no open businesses in sight, and a long uphill walk back home, we opted for the most ridiculous yet practical option: Jessica and I rode our bikes with Stormy on the broken one in between, and we pushed her uphill all the way back home. Resigned to missing the trial, we decided to fashion some costumes for that night's protest, Bash Back, a reclaiming of the streets in the name of LGBT rights. We ended up making pink bandanas by dying strips of bedsheets with beets.

Bash Back ended up being a rather thinly veiled guise to, well, bash back at the police for all the day's activities. The crowd quickly headed to the location of the G20 welcoming dinner, leaving the streets strewn with broken windows and flaming dumpsters in their wake. They rendezvoused with another group outside the G20 building to block the exit, and all hell broke loose with the police. They were out in full force, more than a thousand of them, and wasted no time in throwing tear gas every which way, tackling people, beating people, arresting people. The band retreated to the nearby steps of the Carnegie Mellon cathedral, where we utilized the archway as amplification into the scene of chaos unfolding before us. Tear gas canisters bounced off of Stormy's tom, and I distinctly remember blasting one back into the army of police with my mighty lungs after it landed in the bell of my horn, but I'll admit that my memory may depart from reality a tad here. We ended up having to run around the streets for hours hiding from the storm troopers, because the police had barricaded the road where we had parked our car, and after watching a protester get smashed into a brick wall by a cop in full-body armor about twenty feet from the car, we decided we could wait until the coast was clear. The streets raged into the night, well past me returning safely home and into bed.

Police by the hundreds.

Sadly, many innocent students got swept up by the police in the process; I later watched a disturbing video of a skyway full of students being gassed, and the police refusing their pleas to be allowed to exit, even from a young girl who was bleeding from her neck.

Friday

The day of the officially sanctioned protest saw several thousand people turn out from all walks of life: union workers, socialists, Code Pink, raging grannies, Tibetans, anarchists, you name it. We took the stage at the beginning to send off the march, and then joined in the fun. The march was surprisingly and pleasantly uneventful, at least as far as conflict goes. Afterward, we went to the city jail to play for the protesters who had been arrested over the course of the week.

"Free Tibet Before Free Trade"

I spent that evening at home, quietly listening to the night's events unfold on the radio. There had been a plan to have an anti-police brutality vigil that night, but as a small crowd gathered, so did a number of student onlookers, and the police came and unleashed another night of arrests, gas and physical violence on the innocent bystanders. I think Friday night was the worst of it, which isn't terribly surprising to me; after a week of thousands of police being given all kinds of special riot gear, and holding it all week long without getting a chance to use it, it doesn't seem like a stretch for them to look for any excuse to get to use them when everything is finally over. This viewpoint may seem unfair to police and their professional demeanor, but I disagree; I saw so many unnecessary and blatantly excessive uses of force this week against completely
innocent people who posed no threat, it's hard for me to sympathize with their position. Intimidation and unmitigated violence is no way to protect and serve.

Saturday

I woke up at 7:30am, after several days of five hours of sleep per night, ready to pack up and hit the road. As I looked blearily out the window into the pouring rain, though, and back at the comforts of my warm bed, I quickly concluded that nothing was worth getting out of bed at that moment, and ended up taking a much-needed full day of rest. By Saturday evening, protests seemed to have died down to a couple of diehards standing off with the police with a Wu-Tang sign, and some students playing hackysack.

Sunday

Back on the road again, finally, despite all weather reports telling I should do otherwise.

In closing, I can't say that I can condone the actions of some of the protesters, such as the breaking of windows (even if it was a McDonald's), but any wrongdoings that I saw by protesters are thoroughly overshadowed by the policies of our and other governments that continue to rape and pillage the environment and cultures in the name of economic "progress". When one tries to live the best one can, being morally and ethically responsible to one's fellow beings, I can understand and sympathize with the feelings of frustration and futility that arise from a lifetime of oppression and marginalization. I do hope, though, that this week's events can start a conversation that focuses more on how we can start doing things right for each other than what it is we're all doing wrong.

Okay, I'm off my high horse now. I'm curious how many people actually made it all the way through this post; if you did, please send me an email with the words "Wu-Tang" in the body: scott(dot)rinnan(at)gmail(dot)com.

La Revolucción, en Fotos

"This is so cool. I mean I know the riot situation and everything is harsh, but a friggin marching band? That's just awesome."

-- response to a YouTube video of BMB in action.

The last four days have been an intense mixture of music, emotion, tear gas and crowds. I've been trying to write about my experiences here at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh every day, but every day, as now, I've found myself at a loss for words. Until something comes to me, I thought I'd just post some pictures instead.

My "war tuba".

Storm troopers at the ready.

Five minutes before the police barricaded and teargassed the skyway with the students inside.

The bombs bursting in air.

Students fleeing from tear gas.

A press photographer getting his eyes flushed.

Jail solidarity for the arrested protesters.

Protecting the jail.

The Breakaway Marching Band in action.

A very happy horn player, indeed.

Reporting to You Live

After Toledo's relatively poor welcome to the Buckeye State, it was a refreshing change of pace to arrive at Oberlin College, buried deep amidst the drabness of Ohio's agricultural heartland. I literally know a dozen people in Seattle who've graduated from Oberlin, and thought I should stop by and check out the Midwest's most dependable hipster factory while I was passing through. I stayed with a great guy, David, fellow outdoors enthusiast and all-around good guy, who helped to introduce me to the campus' extensive student co-op network, and, in the process, about half the student population. The night I arrived, David and his roommates were having a triple birthday, in the form of a curanto, a traditional "barbecue" from the island of Chiloé in Chile. The rather elaborate dish involves digging a large hole in the ground, heating up several large stones in a fire until red-hot, placing them in the hole and piling alternating layers of cabbage leaves, clams, beef, pork ribs, chicken, sausages, onions, potatoes and garlic, and covering it all up to let cook for hours as a sort of pressure cooker. To be sure, the karma that one will enivitably reap from the destruction of so many creatures' lives for a single culinary dish is outweighed only by its sheer tastiness.

After my meat-filled visit to Oberlin, it was back on the road for a very drizzly, muggy two days travel through the hills of eastern Ohio, and into Pennsylvania. The hills surprised me, both in their existence (I guess I didn't really know when Appalachia began) and their scale. Miles and miles of the steepest hills I've ridden on this trip passed underneath me; if it hadn't been for traffic, I'd've easily been able to cross the elusive 50 mph threshold. I followed the ups and downs all the way into Pittsburgh, which is where I am now, and will continue to be for the next couple of days.

I've met up with some local brass band brethren, the Breakaway Marching Band, and together we aim to fill the streets with music for as much of the G20 protests as we are able to. Today was my first day playing with them; we took part in a student march and rally at Carnegie Mellon, and went "caroling" this evening, leading a crowd of people in protest songs, parading through the downtown area. It poured buckets and buckets of rain earlier today (mostly the bike ride back home), to the point where I ended up with a large reservoir of water inside the bell of my baritone and the contents of my saddlebag immersed in a pool at the bottom (including my poor, poor camera). The next two days (the actual dates of the G20 conference) are filled with more parades, protests, dances and workshops, and I'm planning to attend as many of them as I can.

The police presence here is obscenely huge, and it seems as if everyone is gearing up for conflict, no doubt exacerbated by relentless media reports of nonexistent violent protesters. Tomorrow's major protest and march, beginning at Arsenal Park, is distinctly un-sanctioned by the city, and everyone is looking to that event to be the fuse that sets everything off. I expect it'll be largely peaceful, but we'll see! I'll try and keep this updated if there ends up being anything fun to share.