The Cure for Loneliness

Hint: It comes with a rechargeable battery. WRITTEN & ILLUSTRATED FOR FRONT RANGE NPR, by PETER MOORE

MY LATEST COMMENTARY for NPR was about my new e-mountain bike, and how it helped me be a part of the world again. Want to give a listen? Click here! And let’s go for a ride together.

Not that difficult, really.

---

I DIDN’T KNOW I WAS LONELY, until suddenly I was. I had a very full life. Lots of office colleagues. An engaging life partner. Two fascinating sons, growing and mutating like a science project: They’re alive! Alive!

And yet, they were part of the problem. My boys really were growing–growing apart from me. At nine or ten they began developing their own weird pack of friends, sharing interests I didn’t understand. That’s all as it should be. But it hurt. My personal wolfpack was heading over the mountain, seeking its own territory. And now I was a lone wolf, long in tooth. With nobody to share a bite.

Don't get me wrong. My wife is great company, but she’s lacking in opinions about the NFL draft, or whether Shai or Nikola deserves the MVP. And she hates chicken wings. You see the problem: I had someone to share my life. But I needed someone to share the nacho platter.

I wanted to take James Taylor’s “You’ve Got a Friend” literally. But JT never called me back. Millions of other guys were facing the same dilemma. An American Perspectives Survey revealed that right now, only a quarter of American men have as many as six close friends. Thirty years ago, more than half of us had enough buds to form a pickup basketball team, plus one guy to fill the beer bucket.

Now we’re all just…bowling alone.

That was the title of Robert Putnam’s landmark book about social isolation. The title came from Richard Nixon’s habit of stealing down to the White House basement in his wingtip shoes, and bowling into the night. I guess Nixon’s best buds were too busy breaking into the Watergate to join him.

One salient quote from Putnam’s book: “People divorced from community, occupation, and association are first and foremost among the supporters of extremism.”

Does that sound like anybody you know?

Men are also twice as likely as women to own guns, which partly explains the hair-trigger anxieties of this era. It also explains my own intense, emotional need for high-caliber technology.

That’s right: I bought myself an e-mountain bike.

And my Velotric Summit might be the thing that keeps me from running amok. For one thing, I now ride amok, with friends, which makes me less likely to hide in the bushes with a rifle.

My outcast state began to fade when I ran into my outdoorsy pal Pedro after church one Sunday. His eyes were aglow, but not with religious fervor–we both belong to the Unitarian Church in Fort Collins, which favors rationalism over holy rolling.

And yet, there was a kind of evangelism going on here. Pedro could barely contain himself as he talked about the power of his E-MTB—how it was getting him out more, how he was riding with a like-minded group of sprocket heads. So I hustled over to Recycled Cycles after church, just to, you know, kick the tires. After three high-velocity e-bike loops around the parking lot I was breathing heavily–from fat-tire infatuation. All it took was a chain-drive motor and a tax rebate from Colorado and I was one of the gang, again.

Pedro invited me to join his e-bike pack and explore a gravel road that rolls through the luminous valley west of Horsetooth. The ranchers, and their horses, scratched their muzzles as we rolled past, just as their forebears had reacted to Model Ts. Only I was fueled by solar electricity flowing from my roof and the rambling conversations I could now have with my bike buddies. Our motors were doing half the work, so our jaws kicked into overdrive. Sure, it’s embarassing to admit that your own muscles aren’t up to self propulsion. But shame is worth it if we riders can avoid becoming lonely extremists.

In fact: We need each other.

And I guess that means we need e-mountain bikes, too.

My Velotric transports me. To the mountains. To inclusion. To friendship.

And, hey, it’s way mas macho than pickleball.

Looking to find more great newsletters, where you (probably) found this one? Click this link! You get cool things to read, I get cold hard cash from the guy who runs the Refind.com. Everybody wins!

Many thanks for saddling up with me here on the Road2Elsewhere.