Geekrant vs The Oregon AirTrail

Greetings Geekranters!

Welcome back to the pages of my blog! It truly is a blessing to be able to write to you and I'm touched that anyone reads my words. I really appreciate it.

As I'm learning the more that I write these blogs and post them online, our words have power. So many of us in these modern inter-connected times, share all of our innermost thoughts with the world. We post onto the message boards, social media and websites of the internet, with no filter. The relative anonymity of a computer keyboard or smart phone touch-screen creates a separation between the reader and ourselves which causes us to write so often without care. We wail at the world, we explode in anger, we call the powers to be to account. As if we were the only judge, jury and executioners that matter.

Our way of seeing the world becomes the only way. Anyone who allies with the other side of an argument or even merely suggests that we exercise restraint when expressing our views is naive at best and a moronic simpleton at worst.

When I was a teenager, it seemed that the internet offered so much hope of a more accepting and tolerant world, I'm sad to say that it hasn't followed through on that promise, at least in my eyes. The internet has, it seems, become the perfect place to craft our own world and world view, blocking anyone who disagrees with us. Secret Gardens which only the partisan faithful may enter.

I'm not attacking people who write like that, they are merely trying to work out their world just as I am, mine. I simply mean to say, that when I write, it is for you, as much as for me. I am no judge, I'm a university drop-out who struggles with feelings of inadequacy. I try to explain the way the things I see in this transatlantic life of mine make me feel, but I have no true certainty in my conclusions. I'm simply trying to let you see through my eyes for a moment. I hope I do that well.

America is a fascinating country and although I have lived here for nearly 3 years now, I have still seen relatively little of its massive area. Most of my writing, therefore, has been about what I have so far experienced and observed, which tends to mean the American Mid-West.

Today, that changed. My wife and I decided to take our first proper holiday together in the U.S. A road trip from Portland, Oregon, all the way down the West Coast of America to Camarillo, California, where Mrs Geekrant has family. 

Today, I took my first "commuter" short haul flight across the United States. The first flight I have ever been on where my passport wasn't needed once. I have glimpsed the mighty Rocky Mountains from thousands of feet in the air, the massive expanse of prairie plains stretched majestically below us too.

I am still amazed that I get to live in the U.S.. I never thought I would ever see the Rocky Mountains or the Pacific ocean, or the massive redwood trees reaching for the skies. And yet soon I will have done all three.

I like flying, which is ironic for someone who is as afraid of heights as I am. Airports are a little too much for me however, all the rushing around, the hustle and bustle, the delays. The flights, however, I enjoy. They help me think.

As I looked out, from the plane window, on a land so vast and strange to my comfortable island-bred eyes, I was struck again at the bravery and, truthfully, the possible insanity, of the men who pioneered this country, stepping into nowhere, walking landscapes as alien to them as the Moon was to Neil Armstrong.

I realised, and not for the first time, that America is as much an idea and an ideology as it is a nation. The land these men found was a dream to them and to so many who came after. They built the foundation of the West Coast of America, The Old, Wild, West. They were legends.

Legends made the land here. Heroes who, in their own time were as famous as any celebrity who exists today.

 America is still figuring itself out, however, trying to understand the dream and just who's interpretation of the dream matters most. It is an argument that so often in recent months has become more and more violent, even in the online world.

 As I flew towards Portland, however, looking out at all of God's beauty scattered over the landscape, I understood that America has weathered greater storms than this and built a nation out of nothing. For that, I am grateful to them as a people. As I sit here tapping away at my keyboard in a Portland hotel room, I am blessed to be here.

It maybe easy for us as non-Americans to take sides in the online fights of our American cousins, judging them through the medium of meme and smart mouthed internet comments. We miss the point when we do that, I would argue. We are not a part of the nation that carved modern civilization out of this land and the President of this country isn't our President. Its not our job to call him to account when, for many British people I see making comments online, he has nothing to do with us.

The Rocky Mountains made me feel small, dwarfed by such beauty, I am nothing and my opinions matter little. It is not for me, or any other outsider to make judgements on the U.S.. I just say what I see. This journey is about so much, personally. About my wife and I getting away and having a good time. Its also about opening my eyes to what makes America what it is or at least to make a start in finding out.

I hope you will read my humble writings along the way, it truly is a blessing to know people do and find something in them. Until then... Good Bye Geekranters!