Father’s Day

On Father’s Day weekend I took my youngest kid to a bike race in Bend. Father/kid road trips a semi-regular thing that I do with my kids. Sometimes they are a whole-family thing but these one-on-one trips have a different texture, they feel more salient to life.

She did great in the bike race, by the way, which was a criterium in downtown Bend.

We spent the weekend with her teammates, both junior and senior, and the parents of the junior racers. I also connected with one of my oldest Oregon friends — literally one of the first people I met thirty years ago when I moved to Eugene.

All the elements of a typical father/kid/family/friends sports weekend…the long drive over Mount Hood and through the high desert. Oregon landscapes of heartbreaking beauty. Ada — on the verge of teenagerhood — slept half the ride, and when she woke up we talked about nothing important, which is somehow everything important. The juniors stayed in one host house near downtown, I stayed with a couple teammates’ parents a bit farther away.

Race day: We made waffles for the junior team. Set up the team tent early — centrally located to the entire race on Corner 3. Hanging out all day in the High Desert sun. Beers with my buddy and his wife by the mirror pond during an afternoon lull. Oregon landscapes of heartbreaking beauty.

The races got faster and more terrifying (crits are like that) as the day went on.

Attending to injured racers. My kiddo with top spot on the podium. The infectious energy of being around young people all weekend. Long convos with grownups I like and love, whom I have known for one year or thirty. Shared meals, shared expenses, shared miseries, shared chores, shared victories. A group ride with a local retired pro racer up to Tumalo Falls. Oregon landscapes of heartbreaking beauty.

I drove home alone (kiddo rode back with the other young juniors in a separate car) — a surprisingly low traffic cruise through those Oregon landscapes of heartbreaking beauty. During the drive I turned the weekend over in my mind.

Such small stuff; ephemeral. A road trip. My kid and her buddies. New friends and old friends. Bicycles, beer, waffles. Mountains, forests, rivers. Sunshine, wind, sunburn, deep sleep. The kind of small stuff that nourishes a human soul. The color of your small stuff might be different, but I bet your life has small stuff like this too.

I hate that the person I found myself thinking of was…Elon Fricking Musk. A dude who is, in rough outline, kinda like me. He’s approximately my age. He’s a father, too. He’s a sort-of engineer (like me) and a business man too, of a much greater degree than me of course. But unlike me he has a gazillion kids by a gazillion women; the kids have numbers now I guess? Has Elon Musk ever taken a solo road trip with one of those kids in an aging car over a mountain, while they talk about their favorite animals? Has he ever made waffles for any of those kids? Has he ever cheered one of them at a sporting event? Has he ever sat on a porch by a river drinking a beer with a buddy he’s known for thirty years? Has he ever ridden his bike up a mountain road into a forest, wearing the jersey his wife gave him for Father’s day?

I dunno, maybe he has? I don’t think that’s how he spent the latest Father’s Day weekend though. I try not to pay attention to the guy but it is nearly impossible, and for someone who commands so much attention he seems like an absolutely miserable person. I feel sorry for Elon Musk, who ultimately has nothing but a number: his net worth. Even if there are people in his life who love him for something other than that number, still he can never be sure. One of the virtues of being (comparatively) broke is that anyone who loves me, I’m pretty sure they don’t love me for my money.

I’d guess that Elon Musk’s net worth is 100,000 times greater than mine, but his soul is 100,000 times smaller. He has dozens of kids he barely knows, I have three kids who I see every day and think about almost constantly. I have friends and family and healthy hobbies and those Oregon landscapes of heartbreaking beauty, that I get to experience at bicycle speed (the best speed!).

In 100 years Elon and I will both be dust and ashes. Like every dead person ever, we will have lost everything. I will have lost the best Father’s Day weekend ever. He will have lost a number.