DateLine: Thursday July 4, 2013: Read and Ride by Gary Wegner.

On the Fourth of July, forty-five years ago to the day, kids, as they are want to do, lit firecrackers near Flat Creek Lake, part of the Llewellyn Johns and Shadehill Reservoir Recreation Area of South Dakota. Not all of the firecrackers exploded.

The month of July 2013 Click Here in 2013 begins on a Monday and ends on a Wednesday as does the month of July 1968 Click Here. in 1968; thus, the Fourth of July falls on Thursday – today - just as it did exactly 45 years ago. Later today when the sun goes down and fireworks go up, listen intently and you may hear a faint echo of those firecrackers lit long ago.

On Monday morning as you awaken from your long weekend and swing your legs out of bed, pause and listen intently once again and you may hear an echo of a whack as a middle-aged man tries to gain the attention of his eleven year old son to point out a red-winged blackbird. And if you heard that whack and are now fully awake, go to your bookshelf and take down your book on cycle maintenance, find a small shady spot to sit back and rest, quiet now, and meditative. Open the book to Chapter one and ride along and read, day by day, mile by mile, chapter by chapter. “It’s going to get better now. You can sort of tell these things.”

***************
USING GOOGLE MAP VIEWS GIVEN BY PROF WEGNER:
…Below you will see Prof Wegner’s => Google Map Resources For Chapters In Book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Typical for all Google Mao Views, when you see HandWithClosedFingers, you can click-drag the Map to see parts off screen. You can also magnify and move closer by scroll your Mouse Wheel. However you will only see the location of the ZMM Route, and not see any other roads.
…Now, the real purpose for Prof Wegner’s ''Google Map Resources is => Which you see a to HandWithSingleFinger, you can click ClickOn It For=>

A) ZMM Route location of Start Of Each Day => ClickOn Orange Icon, and in Left Pannel you can read relevant ZMM Book Text, and sometimes can click to see a relevant Google Street View.

B) ZMM Route location of Events Mentioned In ZMM Book => ClickOn Blue PinPoint Icon, and in Left Pannel you possibly will see a photo, can read relevant ZMM Book Text, and sometimes can click to see a relevant Google Street View.

C) ZMM Route location of Events Mentioned In ZMM Book that Correspond to Each Day/Leg of Pirsig’s Original 1968 Motorcycle Trip: => See Satellite View & Full Landxcaoe of Roads, And a ClickOn RED PinPoint Icon, and in Left Pannel, you can read relevant ZMM Book Text, see (and ClickOn) many Blue Links, and sometimes can click to see a relevant Google Street View.

…CAUTION:

For above A) & B) This version of Prof Wegner’s 1968 ZMM Route is not intended for seeing (close-up), the specific roads and towns of the ZMM Route. ''' And although, true of all Google Maps, you can zoom-in for a close view, you will NOT be able to see any views of the Landscape or Highways..

…HOWEVER:

For above C) This version of Prof Wegner’s 1968 ZMM Route is YES intended for seeing (medium close-up), the specific roads and towns of the ZMM Route.…

… AND PLEASE BE AWARE:

For full range normalclose view of specific highways, satellite views, and road turns, you should Click Here For Google Satellite View Of Location of John & Sylvia Sutherland Home In Minneapolis, MN and Two Different Versions Of ZMM Route.

ATTENTION: After this link comes up, you will see =>

1) Red Pinpoint mark the Location of John & Sylvia Sutherland Former Home In Minneapolis, MN. Attention => To see 18 Photos of Sutherland Home, scroll down in the at left Main Menu, until you see a small picture of a Multicolor Home. Click on this, and after 5 Albums Page comes up, scroll down to FOURTH Album. Read Description and click on Photo.

2) US Highway 10 marker. Follow this Northwest for better Close Up Near top of Prof Wegner’s Travelogue.

3) Near lower center, The town of Plymouth, MN and through it is seen Rt-55. ZMMQ SiteMaster Henry Gurr Is Absolutely Convinced That Rt-55.Best Fits The ZMM Book Narrative. Follow Rt-55.Northwest for good Close Up Landscape Views. Rt-55 leads toward Breckenridge MN, and there joins Prof Wegner’s Travelogue Satellite Views.

***************

Google Map Resources For Chapters In Book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance that Correspond to Each Day/Leg of Pirsig’s Original 1968 Motorcycle Trip: On Below, Click Any Day To View Relevant ZMM Passages & Map, Which Have Above Mentioned, RED Icons. .

Monday July 8 Chapters 1 through 3
Tuesday July 9 Chapters 4 and 5
Wednesday July 10 Chapters 6 and 7
Thursday July 11 Chapters 8 through 1
Friday July 12 Chapters 11 and 12
Saturday July 13 Chapters 13 and 14
Sunday July 14 Chapter 15 (1/3rd)
Monday July 15 Chapter 15 (1/3rd)
Tuesday July 16 Chapter 15 (1/3rd)
Wednesday July 17 Chapters 16 through 18
Thursday July 18 Chapters 19 through 21
Friday July 19 Chapters 22 and 23
Saturday July 20 Chapters 24 and 25
Sunday July 21 Chapter 26
Monday July 22 Chapters 27 and 28
Tuesday July 23 Chapters 29 and 30
Wednesday July 24 Chapters 31 and 32

Read and Ride: Gary Wegner’s Travelogue of the Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance ZMM Route as traveled by Robert Pirsig and his son Chris in July 1968.

OH, Those Unexploded 4th Of July Firecrackers: BANG! That Was Chris, Giggling, In The Middle Of Chapter Five.

With regard to the importance of the firecrackers which Chris found, you might be interested to know that the chronology for Robert Pirsig’s trip that I present here was arrived at through a process of deduction in the winter of 1977, before I retraced part of his trip in the summer of 1978. …. As Robert Pirsig wrote, “So we navigate mostly by dead reckoning and deduction from what clues we find.”

First, I established the year the trip took place based on a review of 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance entitled The Enormous Vroom, by R.Z. Sheppard, which appeared in Time'' magazine, on April 15, 1974. Sheppard wrote: “To do so he alternates philosophical discourses with descriptions of what happened on a trip that he took out West in 1968 [italics mine], his son Chris riding on the back of the cycle.” Incidentally, on that very day, based on that review, I went to the bookstore that evening and bought the book.

Second, I established the month the trip began based on this sentence that appears early in Chapter 1: “But now in July [italics mine] they’re back and everything is at its alivest and every foot of these sloughs is humming and cricking and buzzing and chirping, a whole community of millions of living things living out their lives in a kind of benign continuum.”

Third, I established the day the trip began based on this description that appears a little later on in Chapter 1: “She perceives well but there was nothing unnatural about it. ‘Well, you know, work,’ I repeat. ‘Monday [italics mine] morning. Half asleep. Who goes to work Monday morning with a grin?’”

And so, with a Monday in July of 1968 in hand, I turned to one of those perpetual calendars that were around back in those pre-internet days and discovered that there were five Mondays in the month of July that year. Which one to choose; which one is the most logical?

And that, of course, brings us to the firecrackers which Chris found and lit on the second day of the trip described near the middle of Chapter 5: “BANG! There’s a loud explosion behind us. Then I hear Chris giggling. Sylvia is upset. ‘I found some firecrackers [italics mine],’ Chris says.”

Since we know that the first day of the trip falls on a Monday, it follows that the second day falls on a Tuesday; therefore, the real clue is on which Tuesday is it likely that Chris would have found some unexploded firecrackers and then proceeded to light one? Right about now you may find yourself stumped, stuck, snared by your own rigidity. Right about now you have to…well… just stare at the calendar.

“What you have to do, if you get caught in this gumption trap of value rigidity, is slow down—you’re going to have to slow down anyway whether you want to or not—but slow down deliberately and go over ground that you’ve been over before to see if the things you thought were important were really important and to…well…just stare at the machine. There’s nothing wrong with that. Just live with it for a while. Watch it the way you watch a line when fishing and before long, as sure as you live, you’ll get a little nibble, a little fact asking in a timid, humble way if you’re interested in it. That’s the way the world keeps on happening. Be interested in it. At first try to understand this new fact not so much in terms of your big problem as for its own sake. That problem may not be as big as you think it is. And that fact may not be as small as you think it is. It may not be the fact you want but at least you should be very sure of that before you send the fact away. Often before you send it away you will discover it has friends who are right next to it and are watching to see what your response is. Among the friends may be the exact fact you are looking for. After a while you may find that the nibbles you get are more interesting than your original purpose of fixing the machine. When that happens you’ve reached a kind of point of arrival.”

Look closely at the calendar and I think you will notice that two dates seem to jump out: the 2nd and the 9th; look closer still and I think you will notice that the 9th makes the most sense, especially when you pay attention to that niggling, nibbling, red 4 staring back at you.

It’s interesting that the word deduction appears six times in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance And it is deduction and its doppelganger induction that is in the heart of the “. . . ghost that Phædrus pursued—rationality itself, that dull, complex, classical ghost of underlying form.” The “ghost” points at the 9th, yet we still don’t know that it was the 9th. We intuit it. Just so! And that it as it should be….

Years later in 1990 when Ron DiSanto and Tom Steele published Guidebook to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, I was gratified to note that the trip chronology they included in their book matched up well with my deduction; However, as far as I can tell, they did not indicate the unique date the trip began. I have searched in vain for Forrest B. Shearon’s paper Visual Imagery and Internal Awareness In Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which forms the basis of the chronology in Di Santo and Steele’s guidebook. It would be interesting to know if Mr. Shearon indicated a unique date the trip began in his paper.

Anyone who takes notice of my Travelogue would tend to believe that Robert Pirsig’s trip began on Monday, July 8, 1968. But perhaps I should warn them that I don’t know this; I deduced it and, in the final analysis, intuited it. Perhaps someone should ask Mr. Pirsig. But that would violate the spirit of uniting the classic and romantic wouldn’t it?

~Gary Wegner

Special Thanks to Gary Wegner for giving ZMMQuality permission to publish the above on our website.

Pirsig’s Original 1968 Trip Photos. ZMMQuality's exclusive of Robert Pirsig's own 1968 photos.
See 832 Photographs of the ZMM Route: Each photo show a scene described in the book Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. This is A Color Photo Illustrated Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Indeed A Photo Show Book for ZMM. Sights & Scenes Plus Full Explanation"

...AFTER The 5 Albums Page Come Up, SCROLL DOWN To TOP Album & Read Description.

Mapping the ZMM Travel Route: Click Here And AFTER This Page Comes Up, Scroll Down To => The ZMM Route Shown In Annotated Maps.
Pirsig Pilgrims, are you following the ZMM Trail? Share your stories, photos and insights! We want to hear from you! Contact us (link at bottom of page) or share on our ZMMQuality Facebook page! https://www.facebook.com/zmmquality

DateLine: Saturday 16 Sept 2023: by Henry Gurr. :
… Next April 15, 2024 marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of Minneapolis native Robert M. Pirsig's book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”. ZMM Enthusiast are currently making plans for Celebration Events, which will have speeches, as well as Groups Retraveling “The ZMM Route” in July 2024. Please study Our Facebook Page For Announcements And Information. Click Here.

CreatedByGaryWegner+DavidM 5July13>GaryWegnerEmailRev15July15, HsgRev230916.
[File=WikiZmmq45ReadandRideGaryWegner+DM130705.150715.Hsg230916v3]
[PrevFile=WikiZmmq45ReadandRideGaryWegner+DM130705 GW&HSG150715 v02]

Contact Me = Prof Henry Gurr.		My Text Pages. Powered By PmWiki 2.2.0 beta 34, GroupsUsed.
Legal & Copyright.		My Photo Gallery Click For All Nine Albums. Powered by Gallery.

DateLine: Thursday July 4, 2013: Read and Ride by Gary Wegner.

Google Map Resources For Chapters In Book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance that Correspond to Each Day/Leg of Pirsig’s Original 1968 Motorcycle Trip: On Below, Click Any Day To View Relevant ZMM Passages & Map, Which Have Above Mentioned, RED Icons. .

More