Adding It Up in Ecuador (or, “Math Math Revolution”)
I am on the back of a small, plastic motorcycle on a dirt road twisting through the Andes mountains as they violently shove the middle of this little country, Ecuador, miles into the sky. A car battery is cradled in my left arm, my right is wrapped tightly around the driver. I have known him for twelve minutes. He has only one hand. I am trying to remember whether he is missing the clutch hand or the brake hand. I am wondering which is worse.
Cotopaxi volcano (February 2022)
Last night I left the rental car lights on. This morning the battery is dead. Cause and effect. It’s so neat and clean, so mathematical.
Spencer is my travel companion. He doesn’t speak Spanish, so he stayed back at the tiny, mostly off the grid hostel, watching the owners build a parking lot with dirt and cinder bricks. I’m not sure who will use this parking lot; the hostel is miles down a lonely, rutted dirt road. Two plus two equals five. It doesn’t add up. But they sell decent hot chocolate. So, two plus two equals four-and-a-half.
I mounted the motorcycle. I was promised Zumbahua is forty minutes away and that it’s a big enough town to host a guy who can charge the battery. When you’re out of options, you’ll trust fall into just about anybody’s arms.
Here I go again on my own (with this guy I don’t know). Like a drifter I was born to walk alone (with this guy I don’t know); February 2022
There is thin air and cloud vapor blowing past my face and tangling my hair. The motorcycle rattles. My hat is on backwards, we meander downhill, 12,000 feet high. The sun feels close. My face is sunburning. I can’t do anything about it. I have no control over anything right now, the sun, the bike, the existence of someone who can fix the battery, the integrity of my appendix. It feels good, embracing my own impotence, letting the road twist and dive and go where it’s gonna go. There’s no math in that. Or, if there is, it’s math that doesn’t add up.
How did I get here? Why does it matter? It’s a Sunday morning. I’m thousands of miles from home, wherever that is. Mom and Dad cross my mind. They’re sitting on their back porch right now, I bet, drinking a couple Diet Pepsis. Meanwhile, their son is on the back of a motorcycle in the bright, rugged Andes, holding a dead car battery like a football, straddling hard the backside of a man he does not know, trying desperately not to fall off, roll to an unconscious stop on the shoulder of the road, and get eaten by llamas. Mom and Dad would not approve.
Carnivorous llamas (February 2022)
I think of Spencer back at the hostel. He is also hoping I do not get eaten by llamas, because I have the battery to the car that he needs to drive back to the airport by tonight to catch his flight. How did we get here? Why does it matter? Does it add up? No, it does not.
A dozen years ago I met my law school cohort for the first time. Fifteen first-year law students stuffed into a little room, self-consciously introducing ourselves. Except Spencer, who has never in his life experienced the sensation of self-consciousness. None of us knew him when his turn came and he stood up and, before revealing his name or any other biographical or other type of data, said, “Look, guys, I’m not a tool or anything.” He was right.
There were 150 people in my law school class. Somebody, some committee maybe, divided us into these small groups of fifteen. They probably did it mathematically, x number of females to a cohort, x number of males. We were just names and LSAT scores and hometowns on a page. Me and Spencer ended up in the same little group. Random math. That’s a contradiction in terms. No it’s not. It makes as much sense as anything.
The Donkey and the Chevy Spark. Like a rock. (February 2022)
Later, the fully operational rental car is spiriting me and Spencer through the afternoon sun and shifting mountain clouds back to Quito. We’re eating dry cold cereal from a bag with our hands. We’ve got the windows down. We’re wearing jackets. I’m sunburned. I spent all Spencer’s cash to pay the one-handed guy for the ride to Zumbahua and back. Spencer doesn’t care. He laughs all the time.
It looks like it’s going to rain, then the sun splits the clouds. The pieces swirl, congeal again, look angry, fall on the road, then rise in sudden sunshine. Rain. Rapture. I can’t control it. It’s up to chance. It’s up to fate. It’s up to God. That’s how we got here. Does it add up? No, it does not. Except, yes, it does.
