Robert M. Pirsig

The description of the Robert Pirsig letter received by Ted DuPont is best told in his own words: In the spring of 1974 I was a 20-year old college student at the University of Chicago (where, perhaps not coincidentally, Pirsig studied for his PhD.) In the throes of an existential crisis, I left school, but without a plan. In short order I met another U of C ex-student named Jim Vavrinchik, and we hit it off. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance had just been published, and that was all we needed. In short order, we bought a 1973 1/2 BMW R75/5, outfitted it for long-distance touring and formed a mad plan to do a road trip from Chicago to San Francisco and back again. We decided to retrace part of Pirsig's route west. Our first stop was Minneapolis, and we decided to pay him a visit for his spiritual blessing. Robert Pirsig was listed in the phone book so his house wasn't hard to find. We pulled up in front of a tidy white suburban house. There was no answer at the door, so we went around back. We met Chris, Pirsig's son, who was very friendly and told us his dad was out doing errands. And that was that. Following a diversion up to Hibbing to see Bob Dylan's stomping grounds (that's another story), we gunned the bike west, having the time of our young lives, The Black Hills...the plains...sleeping in our pup tent and sleeping bags. Nearing Yellowstone, we decided to take the Bear Tooth Highway, which Pirsig described so luminously. It was exhilarating moving through all the changes of altitude and topography in just a few hours. We treated ourselves to a hotel soon after, and decided to write to Pirsig to tell him what it meant to us. We continued on our 5-week trip, miraculously arriving back in Chicago in early September without any hitches but with a million stories to tell. Soon after I got back to Hammond, I got a small letter with Pirsig's return address stamped on it.

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