Winter Cowboy

The question is where to start.  Actually no, that's not even it.  For this, the start and the end are easy. They're already written I've told myself.  This is an in between story.  It'll be a true story.  True's better, I think.  Because the best stories aren't ones we've made up, not entirely anyways.  They have to ring true, so I don't think I'll stray too much.  Everyone stray's a little though, so that's to be expected. But always keep the path in sight.  Stay close to the road for this one.  I mean, I always do, so I don't think I'll have to worry about that.  But where to start...

There's a beginning in the end sometimes, so I'll look there first.  The end of the Daydream.  Maybe I'll start with the road.  I should.  I'll be seeing it a lot in this book, so let's first get acquainted.

*******

US 101
Coming over the hill and into the Valley on the 405, you hit US 101 right next to the Sherman Oaks Galleria.  Take that north and it'll take you straight to San Francisco in the ballpark of six and a half hours or so, depending on your timing.  And on the traffic.  It can be a bitch if you time it wrong.  If you catch rush hour traffic in Santa Barbara you're fucked, but if not you'll be in San Luis Obispo in a little over three hours, and then you'll be half way there.  But I don't think I've ever actually taken the US 101 straight into San Francisco.  I always got off about an hour or so early to take the 152 west to the coast and Highway 1 and to Santa Cruz.

I like travel light.  Surfboard, wetsuit, towel, booties, and a bag for clothes and jackets and shit.  I usually roll two splits for the drive too.  One for the Los Angeles traffic, and one for the high speed  flying guaranteed after Santa Maria. That first time was no different.  I left after a late breakfast burrito and coffee at George's around 11:00.  Traffic's not too bad in the late morning, early afternoon, and if I really run it right I can get through Santa Barbara before the rush hour with a quick surf in.

There was swell in the water, I remember, that first time going back.  Not much though, Malibu was too small.  Zuma was bigger, but mixed up and closed out and blown out like it always is.  Foggy in the hills and it started clearing up just before Leo, and County Line was somehow perfect.  Four- to six-foot waves rolling in on glass, like there'd been a goddamn oil spill up the coast or something.  Silk smoothly.  Love truly.  The tide was low and coming up.  I couldn't not pull over for that.  How could I?  No.  No, I had time for this.  There weren't even that many people out.  Weekday crowd somehow.

Luckily there wasn't any traffic coming up PCH so I never smoked the first spliff.  Usually I don't like to surf when I'm high.  And also, an after-surf spliff is just the best. I was glad I didn't smoke it.  Chalk it up to good life choices, I guess.  Burrito in the tank, that free RipCurl 4/3 and the 6'1 EPS thumbie that Bill Johnson had finally finished shaping for me.  Just in the knick of time for this, her maiden trip.  I hadn't even ridden her yet.

And let me tell you, she didn't disappoint.  I love Bill's boards.  Always have, especially the customs he's shaped for me over the years.  I'd always get the same thing: 6'1 x 18 1/2 x 2 1/4 EPS.  A Hobgood Thumbtail.  They're like my magic sticks, I love them.  The first time up on the newbie at County that day was like butter on hot toast, like I'd been warming up on her for weeks.  No slight, no stutter, just a firm rail and pop like you wouldn't believe.  It was that new board pop, and I was test-drive gunning it, fifth-gear on my trusty PC-5 fins.  Lord have mercy, what a session.  A constant conveyor belt out to the peak where the waves wrapped around south side of the point, and over to Boneyards in front of the rocks, and when I didn't feel like paddling that much anymore I caught a few lefts coming in on some mysto sandbar in front of the beach.  Those might've been the best ones. I love going left.  I love spliffs in my car too, all tired, and still breathing hard.

I made it through Santa Barbara just before 4:00.


Long Cold Winter
With the South winds that carry all the lost, uncivil, un-battoned down brevity, picked up in the dry desert air, freed of mind and all-do responsibility to the future, to structure, and to stationary living, I'm pulled North on short sails, forests, and four wheels, crisp mountain air by the sea.  Santa Cruz.  Your scent precedes you.


I was just going to help Mike and Monster move out of the Western house and into the new place on Grandview, just across the 1 from the 7-Eleven, into a two bedroom, two bath, ground floor flat with a porch that opened out onto the wide patch of grass that ran the length of the building between it, and the sidewalk and the street.

Oh, the memories.

[stop]

I started taking a lot of pictures that year.  I'd take Monster's camera out for a bike ride down Swift Street to West Cliff.  Past Getchell's and Mitchell's and the beach in the cove just north of the lighthouse.  Usually it was just to check the surf.  Get a bike ride in and warm the legs up.  But bringing Monster's camera along was always nice.  Something about riding up and down a cliffside bike path, seeing things I'd seen a hundred times before, but seeing this tree different this time.  Or that rocky outcrop.  Or the sand that only showed at low tide.  And of course, the clouds.  There's nothing more fleeting than cloud formations.  They're always different.  Never the same or in the same place, or with the same sunlight.  They're what keep the same place always new and interesting and freshly beautiful.  Sadly, not many people care too much for clouds.  Unless it's at sunset.  And even then, most times they just see the sky and the colors, and not what fills them.

It's the clouds that keep me going.  Still, to this day.  And on low days, if there're clouds in the sky - just clouds, mind you, not rain, because fuck the rain - they can turn everything around for me.  I just look up in wonder and feel the soul fill with the white puffs and swirling heavens.

I had taken an intro course in photography at Santa Monica College before transferring to Santa Cruz for my last two years of university.  When I say it like that, it doesn't sound like much, I just learned the basics.  But with something like photography, the basics are all you really need to know anyways.  It's like writing in a way.  Except I'd had much more practice with the latter.  And it doesn't come so easy.

[stop]

BsAs: When In Doubt, Call Cotton Jones

I finished today.  In a sense anyway.  The final link's in the chain anyways.  What luck it is, to be high when it happens.  Like in Santa Cruz last time.  I should make it a habit, and give it a pithy one-liner like, "always finish on a high note" or something of that such.

So Buenos Aires.  
I still have my lollipop too.

What a pretty, such a city, this is.  And I can say this, drinking with Columbians is good for the fucking soul.

[on the bus on Sunday]

Layovers

It's said with a heavy sigh, am I right?  Can't stand them.  Can't afford to live without them.  Lucky for me, time ins't money in my line of work.  It's just something I take more of when I travel, and not always by choice.

It's eight hours and change in Lima.  2:00 in the morning to a little past 10:00.  That's plenty of time to sleep.  Comfort's different than time though, and although the time's flooding like spring rivers in the air-cooled terminal, unfortunately the well of comfort for me has run nearly dry.  No full buckets being heaved up here in Peru.  It's understandable.  It's an airport, not a day spa.  And I should've fucking worn higher socks than these Nike dry-fits I have on.  Stupid.  My achilles were freezing through the night as I turned every hour or so on the long sets of seats.  Thank god I brought a sweater.  An a beanie for that matter.  Still, I don't know why I brought two.  Superfluously cautious packing I suppose.

Huevos y toastada pora desayuno.  A Huashcu.  Cafe au leché as well.  I watched Arsenal win the FA (FC?) Championship at 8:00 in the morning.  Was it live?  I don't know.  Maybe a re-run, but still the gold cup.  The celebration.  It's a dreary haze warm up for three weeks from now.  God, I love the World Cup.  

And airport bars.  Hello, Tonya.  Hello, hazel brown eyes.

Quote of the Day: Birds of a Feather

When Kerry Sings, It's Not What She Has, It's What She Brings That Rings True

She brings the world it seems, or the Old World at least (I don't know where she's traveled, or been to or come from or strolled through on this earth.  I say only she is Europe to me).  She brings youth from a decade ago.  Two decades ago, like she never grew old or wilted ever after she flowered.  She kept shinning in the night, chasing the moonlight and the sound 'round, in her skin, and the pearl white petals never closed and sang loud.  Always shining, always smiling.

THAT'S JAZZ

Enter Claire

She's a breath of fresh air.

She's a kiss at the faire.

She's the wind in my hair,

she is.

Enter Claire.

Auburn hair that she has,

(more are blonde, but they're there)

And that perfect white ass,

(whiter still when it's bare)

Have minds think and pens sink

To dear Claire.

Blues in the Daylight

Politics light in the broad day bright.  Two politics.  One deficit.

What do I think?

I think we're fucked either way.  With this whole deficit thing, we're fucked, so I'm just not going to worry about it.  Because I know it doesn't really matter to me.  Let the greedy bicker about their money and their world standing and the power of our dollar.  I'm sure if you got a room full of Doctors in Economy and Statistics together to pour over our finances for a week - bathroom breaks only, take-out for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, cots in the room to sleep - they could figure it out.  No politicians allowed.

Hell, if they really cared about the country, but understandably can't fathom the idea of campaigns without campaign donations, well, just change the recipient.  Of all of them, those damned donations.  To the country instead of the campaign.  To the US Treasury and to that room of Economists and Statisticians to soundly pour back into their painstakingly precise and concise budget balanced on three pillars of common sense and compassion and fiscal soundness.  

And then the Economists and the Statisticians would start to copulate - it's a co-ed room with, I don't know... room dividers thrown in there.  It's a grand room.  And alcohol is a deliverable service (with discretion, of course, but still, they're Economists and Statisticians.  It doesn't take much.  And they're doing what they love.  Like the Manhattan Project.  Except instead of nuclear physicists, it's Statisticians and Economists).  But no bankers either.  Academic types only.  The college scholars.  The ones not in it for the money.

And then fuck it.  Establish a monarchy of Economists and Statisticians that passes on through some families from the Room.  The country would love them, they'd be darlings, and they would be our teachers and we would be their children.  

That's why a monarchy is better than our oligarchy (that's what it is).  An oligarchy is a business unit.  A monarchy is a family one.