Paul E. Fallon turns his love of cycling into a national conversation as he pedals over 20,000 miles through the forty-eight contiguous states and asks everyone he meets, ‘How will we live tomorrow?’ Hundreds of strangers offer him food and shelter; thousands more share their thoughts about our future. His adventure includes six passes over the Continental Divide, four lonely stretches across the Great Plains, perilous navigation in driving rain, raging wildfires, and a too-close encounter with a Porsche. Yet our glorious land is mere backdrop to the fascinating characters he meets: agitators; agri-business tycoons; reclusive mountain men; bubbling socialites; raging entrepreneurs; appreciative immigrants.
People’s responses to Paul’s open-ended question, How Will We Live Tomorrow? reveal a nation defined by contrasts rather than commonalities; a coast-to-coast manifestation of Newton’s Third Law, where extreme action begets even more extreme reaction. In physics, this results in equilibrium. But a society that scratches at our differences rather than celebrating what we share becomes a centrifuge, spinning ever faster into its discordant parts.
Paul pedals through the 2015 Presidential primaries, when people don’t bother to pay attention to so many candidates in an election so far away. He rides after the race gets winnowed down to two contenders, each ripe with faults. He witnesses the political rage that fuels Donald Trump, and the dismay that follows his election, even among deep red state supporters. Shouting ‘lock her up’ was so much fun; governing is a bummer.
At ten miles per hour, Paul is a slow moving antidote to our national dissonance. Unhinged from the pressures of constant consumption and insistent media, Paul finds generous people of all persuasions and discovers the strength in asking a question rather than pretending to know the answers.
