Introduction

Time is the steady stream of pavement rolling smoothly backward beneath the rubber of Bob Manbeck's bicycle tires as he pedals down the highways along side the waterways that Lewis & Clark explored two hundred years ago. Two centuries have ridden off into the pages of history since Thomas Jefferson commissioned Meriwether Lewis and an expeditionary force to go and explore the wild and unknown Louisiana Territory --two centuries of steady progress overriding a pristine and primal landscape. And standing at the dawn of the 21st century is Bob Manbeck, setting his sights back to the 19th, intent on riding back along the trail --to stand on the same sites, view the same panorama, and squint into the same unblinking sun with his mind's eye recreating the adventures of that rugged band of outdoorsman Thomas Jefferson called the Corps of Discovery.

Manbeck is a semi-retired horologist, amateur historian and long time cycling enthusiast. After many years of repairing clocks and watches, of mending and tuning the gears and gizmos that turn the hands of time, he indulges his other passions. Bent over the handlebars of his 14-speed Guerciotti touring bike he takes to the open road, turns back the hands of time, and leaves the 21st Century. It is not his first cycling adventure. The old Santa Fe Trail, 1100 miles of steaming pavement, is a recent memory glinting in his rear view mirror. St. Louis, Missouri, where the Santa Fe Trail ends and the Lewis & Clark begins, marks the starting point of his current adventure. The confluence of the two serves only as a grounding point for Manbeck's tires as they draw an invisible pattern of repeating cycloidal curves across the pavement of time.

And it is a chance encounter with Bob that marks the starting point of my own adventure, an armchair hypertext journey that I wouldn’t have taken without him. I have brought him my tired out heirloom cuckoo clock for a much needed tune-up. I have explained that, somewhere between the beginning of the hour and the end, it loses time. About ten minutes I figure. It’s been doing so for a long time, and now the ornate little hands are stuck at ten past eight. The cuckoo no longer pops out to note the hour or the half hour. It needs cleaning and oiling. I like the reassuring sound and the feel of the weights at the end of their chains as twice a day I pull them up to the top of their ceaseless journey. I want it fixed.

Bob understands and invites me in. He works from home now and tells me I can wait if I like. The walls are covered with all manner of clocks. They chime and bong and tick and tock at odd intervals throughout the course of my stay. Only one clock tells the right time, and only he knows which one it is. His tools and rags and oils are spread out before him at the kitchen table. After pouring coffee he begins the job, and while his hands are busy tells me stories about Lewis & Clark and their monumental exploration.

The links found throughout, and on the menu bar to the left, will take you to a number of loosely connected nonfiction pieces, essays and musings that are evolved out of stories and facts that I found interesting, thought provoking, or just plain funny during the time I kept company with Bob Manbeck. I hope you enjoy them.