Paeroa Pt. II: Parks and Rec

Peeking out from under the rain fly, I was happy to see I had not only Booster’s rear tire but also the rest of her, still attached. I also saw a gigantic red lawnmower coming straight for me.

After bike thieves, this is the second most common predator targeting urban bikepackers: the Department of Parks and Recreation. They came for me in Dargaville too, where I camped out behind a community center. And once in Tasmania, come to think of it, on a rugby pitch in Judbury. Their M.O. is a friendly drive-by, loud enough and close enough to be your alarm clock. Then they go about their business while you frantically shove stuff in dry bags to sort out later.

My default assumption—and this is fear culture talking again—is that they’d be pissed at me for making their job harder. A general principle I try to live by is don’t make people’s jobs harder. So in all three cases I apologized, and all three times the answer was perfectly friendly. It turns out they mow their lawns the same way I do mine: I don’t care which corner I start in or where I finish, so long as it’s all the same length when I get done.

Maybe it speaks to a lack of faith in humanity that I assume the response will be annoyance, not indifference. Truth to tell, if I woke up one day to find you camped out in my front yard, I wouldn’t care. Just don’t make a mess. But these riding mower drive-bys have me wondering about how we think about the homeless.

On a technicality I’m homeless. Homeless but not addressless, let’s say. I’ve rented my house out, so I have no home to return to. And maybe if people who work for the city found me camped out behind the grocery store ten nights in a row, they would lump me in with “the homelessness problem“ and not “weird tourists.” But I’m also the beneficiary of other things that would really benefit homeless people.

People just offer me food. It usually starts when they see me on the bike, maybe in a parking lot or at a campground. They ask questions, we get to talking, they give me food. But in one case, there were no introductions; a van just pulled up on the road and the passenger offered me cookies. It happens so often that I’ve started buying fewer groceries. Less weight to schlep uphill.

I haven’t asked for any of this, by the way. My best guess is people see I’m doing something difficult and they want to help.

But living on the street is difficult too. A hell of a lot harder than what I’m doing. It might be a less comfortable conversation for you, but you could ask those folks the same questions people ask me: where did you come from, how does your family keep track of you, are you by yourself, what does your family think of this, etc. Or you could just drive up and give people cookies. Or—and this happens to me too sometimes—you could cook lunch on the spot and invite them to join you.

I know, I know, handouts aren’t a panacea. The problem is more complex than that. And really what I’m thinking about isn’t “the homelessness problem.“ It’s compassion.

The major writing I’m doing on this sabbatical is about compassion. I won’t bore you with the academic minutiae, except to say I have unanswered questions about how we extend compassion to others. What is it about a heavily laden bicycle that makes that easy? Is it just the appeal of novelty? The fact that you don’t see this often? Do people think it’s kind of a cool story and they want to be a part of it?

I mean, obviously it helps that I’m just so goddamn handsome. And charming. And humble. But that can’t be all of it.

Does it matter that my homelessness is entirely voluntary? That it has a foreseeable end date? That’s not true of everybody who sleeps outdoors in quaint Paeroa. But shouldn’t that make it less likely for people to just randomly give me food? Or have I totally misjudged their motives? Maybe I look more haggard than I think. Maybe they think I’m about to keel over if they don’t feed me.

I don’t know. I do know I should recalibrate my faith in humanity. My last interaction in Paeroa was with a muscular, macho, heavily tattooed guy whose wallet probably says Bad Motherfucker. I had stopped to fill Booster’s water bottles and he walked straight at me with purpose. There are places in the world where what happens next is a bike theft. But not here. This guy says, “You don’t want to drink that, mate. Those campervans, they wash out their toilets here.” He hurried to get to me because he didn’t want me to get sick.