f the controversy, he had admitted to Tom that
he might leave the Centre before Chinmoy kicked him out.

"What would you do if you left?" Tom had asked him.

"I'd move to California and teach meditation," Atmananda replied.

On August 30, 1979, Atmananda, Dana, Rachel, Connie, and I left the
ground in a jet bound for San Diego. In the excitement of packing and
leaving, I had forgotten my wallet and daypack back at my brother's.
Now, without money or ID, I watched rays of light play off darkening
clouds and thought about the frog.

5. Bicycle Ride--Lenox

The weather had cleared since I had started pedaling west from Walden
Pond five days before, but headwinds continued to press both the
doggie-carrier and bicycle-trailer as if I were tugging a parachute.
Contributing little to the weight of the rig was a book by William
Shirer on Mahatma Gandhi. Disillusioned, but not yet ready to live
without heroes, I actively sought a replacement for Atmananda.

I rode over the mountains of western Massachusetts and rolled into the
town of Lenox. There a woman noticed the oddness of my entourage and
asked, "What exactly is going on?"

"I am bicycling across America with my dog," I replied.

Ten minutes later she was interviewing me in a nearby cafe. She was a
reporter for the Berkshire Eagle, and, as I answered her questions, I
thought about how I would answer when she asked me "why?" I realized
it was more than a love for bicycling, more than a longing for
adventure, and more than a desire to strengthen my self-confidence that
propelled me west. I wanted time to think about Atmananda's thousands
of lessons, some of which I sensed were valid and some of which I knew
were not.

There was another reason: I wanted to do something distinctly *me*.
Bicycling across a continent against the prevailing winds with all my
possessions and a Siberian husky--that was *me*.

"Why?" she asked later.

I tempered my answer with the knowledge that I was being interviewed by
a journalist and not a shrink. At one point I told her that I was
traveling with a book on Gandhi.

"Do you like it?" she asked.

While reading the book I felt proud that Gandhi had been deeply
influenced by Thoreau's essay "Civil Disobedience," proud that a
thinker and experimenter from the United States had had an effect on
one from India whose thoughts and experiments affected humankind. But
it was more than pride which attracted me to Shirer's