I can only hear the words “Pismo Beach” in my head in the voice of Steve Buscemi. Why?
It was days ago in Monterrey that I first caught glimpses of the sort of archetypal imagery that comes first to mind when someone says “California”: the land of big box stores sitting on high sunny hillsides. The land of lines of girls in short cotton outfits which are all identical except no two are the same color. The land of racecar ya-yas. Then it was all gone, lost between the immense hillsides looming in the layered curtains of golden oceanic haze. For a day I rolled along above the cloud bank, sometimes going down far enough to dip my hand in it before groaning up into higher altitudes, spooning Jif on gravelly overlooks where you feel like you’re on the edge of space. Below you only the infinite plane of lumpy white; above you just a deep blue empty abyss with a sun floating in it. The day after that, the clouds rose over my head and everything was gray again.
Affordable avocados are a blessing of SoCal. They need no embellishment; I will bust one open and simply spork it on the highway shoulder. They’re the cleanest-feeling way to get each day’s necessary giant intake of fat. Fat, salt, carbohydrates and protein: all of these must be crammed in abundance. Fast food also works well, but it leaves you over time with a strange dirty feeling, as if you witnessed a crime and did nothing.
Part of the idea of this has always been that I could so exhaust myself on the road that I would never look back once I returned to the land of real beds; I would be forever innoculated against the restlessness of the domestic life. I think about part of the opening monologue of Apocalypse Now. “Everyone gets everything he wants. I wanted a mission. And for my sins, they gave it to me. … It was a real choice mission, and when it was over, I’d never want another.” But some people are dubious when I tell them this. They suggest that there is a bug you can catch. The sort of bug that Ian Hibbell caught. It gets into your blood and pushes you on down the road forever.
Ten days to Tijuana.
How amazing that you are in Pismo Beach today. Sean was there today on business at the Cliff’s Inn. . .but returned to San Francisco much more quickly via airplane. You’re biking in a place of singular beauty; hold that dear. Love following you in cyberspace, keep up these entries.
ten days to tijuana… how ominous to hit it the day before halloween.
i tell everyone that doesn’t know you all about your trip. i tell them how inspiring it is. i tell them i’d like to attempt this next summer.
i mean just down the west coast, not past the border. not yet.
That doesn’t seem ominous, that seems fantastic. You’ll be in Mexico for Day of the Dead. Commune with some spirits.
I think the travel bug and the gateway drug reside somewhere deep in the human psyche, swapping stories with Chuck E. Cheese. It’s not something you can catch. A junkie doesn’t become a junkie because a friend passed him a joint, any more than a wanderer refuses to settle down because of a trip he took once. As everyone knows (I hope) a giant mouse simply has no actual relation to pepperoni, outside of mass-marketing.
My parents bought a house when they married, and still live in that same house. I was born and raised in about the most stable, unchanging environment imaginable. Including the bed I slept in. However, every summer for a week or two, they would pack up the minivan, and we’d meander across the country, going someplace different each time.
I attribute the unchanging home life to why I have been a dedicated gypsy since college. Those annual road trips simply taught me what I needed to know about packing, and how to sleep in a moving vehicle.
If you want a real bed by the end of this, you will have one. If not, you will be such an old hand at not having one, it won’t concern you. Trust me: the closest I’ve had to a bed since college was a futon that didn’t rest directly on the floor, and that came with the room. You actually met me at my most stationary, and I was still incapable of living in the same place – or even part of town – for more than a year. After 5 months in a tent, it is apparently no longer possible for me to sleep in a closed room, and I wonder why I wasn’t living in a tent sooner. Oh, yeah… the climate here. The number of people simply handing me avocados, because they have too many that are ripening too fast, may have something to do with it as well. Too many avocados could be my personal definition of Paradise.
You are still truly the master of description.
Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it—
Donny was a surfer. As a surfer he explored the beaches from La Jolla to Rio Coreo….and up to Pismo.
La Jolla was one of my most favorite places. Don’t know what it’s like now. Got a frisbee?