How to win bets using spiritual oomphAnd a Tribute to The 1903 Winton Horseless Carriage

Cynthia Winton-Henry

The Winton was the first horseless carriage driven cross-country.The Challenge? No roads.

San Francisco. 1903. Dr. Horatio Nelson bet 50 bucks that he could drive a car to the East Coast before there were roads. What?

Wow.

Reminds me of dad, Hal Winton, retired engineer Holy Spirit guy, Park Service Volunteer and trail boss.

Dad collects feats –the annual Catalina Island fifty miler, the John Muir trail, traversing the Grand Canyon back and forth. To feel productive he clears trails in LA’s San Gabriel Mountains, leads the annual Angeles Crest 100 mile Endurance Run, and wields the chain saw that keeps trails open around Palos Verdes Peninsula, site of his first marathon decades ago.

I feel awe and pride at dad’s accomplishments. But you won’t catch me running! Running makes my thighs itch!

Endurance runners are rare athletes who move through pain and ridicule. Horatio was a kind of endurance athlete. He had to love adventurous physicality to confront…

A fuel leak that drained out his gas and caused him to rent a bicycle, ride 25 miles, fix a flat tire on the bike, return to the car with fuel, and drive back the same 25 miles to fill er up.

The time he lost his coat in Idaho that contained most of his money but said it was not missed, and arrived in New York City July 26, 1903, two months after beginning.

Being too old when World War I broke out and contacting President Roosevelt in order to get commissioned as an officer.

Spiritual Oomph?

Perseverance is credited as the single most important characteristic for

success in any field. To persist means to stand through, keep going...no matter what. In InterPlay we call this Incrementality.

Those who willingly stand discomfort long enough can reap rewards. But there must something underneath, an unquenchable curiosity, a need to satisfy ones devotion to accomplishment, or Something Greater coded in ones DNA or spiritual lineage.

Dad attempted the five mountains Hard Rock 100 on a sprained knee. Doctors told him to stop running but he didn’t see it that way. That’s a bad case of stick-to-it-iveness. Bull what else?

I too plunge ahead with enthusiasm. I take things on big projects like the Art and Social Change Program for Millennials, The Race Dance Project, and the Parliament of World Religions Performance. But I am not alone. Incredible colleagues want this too, especially Phil Porter. Thank heaven for his incredible work ethic.

I have to credit “Winton energy” for the day-to-day drive to support InterPlay, the creative method that helps people play well with others. It's the drive we see in artists or architects with big visions. And then there’s love, the kind needed by moms and dads to hang in with kids.

And. heroic insanity may also be a sign of the times!

We may do some crazy things as an evolutionary response.

“The 1903 Winton trip "was a pivotal moment in American automotive history," said Roger White, curator of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History exhibit "America on the Move." "At the time they made the trip, there was a perception that the American frontier was closed. The Jackson-Crocker trip excited people across the nation. It got people thinking about long-distance highways."

When Horatio Jackson left Oakland, California he blew a tire after 15 miles. He replaced it with the only right-sized tire he could find in all of San Francisco. Then he went on. So did Hal. With a sprained knee dad ran the first 29 miles of the 2007 Hard Rock 100 with the mindfulness of a Buddhist monk, two walking sticks, and by walking backwards downhill to manage the pain.

Passion trumps pain and fear of being crazy. A run through wild country is dad’s way of drinking the nectar of life. The spirit he encounters outdoors drives his physical activity. Isn’t wildness something that we need in the machine age? And Spirit? And a love of adventure? And a way to dance with it all?

The more we tame and control life, the more we need mystery.

When I was ten years old I began following dad on weeklong backpacks, motorcycle excursions, and Jeep trips in the California deserts. He’d get a strange look in his eye and say, “I’ll be back.” I would sit and wait. I learned to track my surroundings and heed landmarks in case I got lost. I earned a healthy respect for danger and fear yet always wanted to go again.

To do inexplicable things is a mystery to all but the one doing it. A Chinese proverb says, “Those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it.”

Passion. Perseverance. Love. Tracking an Evolutionary Pull. I’d call that Spiritual Oomph.

Like Horatio, the quest for what people get in InterPlay is worth it. We see that when we simultaneously move, think and engage spirit wisdom falls into place and Life flow like a dance. We find uncharted resources, ideas, and energy. Long relationships form and we find ourselves traveling in caravan…. crossing insane distances, applauding each other as pioneers of a way of being that is delightfully human, compassionate, and joyous.

Dad is still “on track” at 80. At sixty I am placing a 50-dollar bet that the secret to life is Joy in Living. That is what makes me Free! I think it’s a God thing. Because it's a lot harder than it should be I am determined that as many people who want to know it can. I am headed for that goal. Crazy!

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Long-before-the-interstates-there-was-a-Winton-2608886.php#photo-2095810http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Long-before-the-interstates-there-was-a-Winton-2608886.ph