On a recent Thursday afternoon I was walking back from lunch around 3:30PM, excited to soon be off for the day and go surf, eat dinner, then rest for work the next morning at 9. The weather was warm and the wind was blowing and I was tired. My district manager was in for the afternoon, I said "hi" and went back to what I was doing before I left for my brief lunch. I was working and my district manager and store manager asked me to come outside for a second. My gut told me what was going on but my ego and logic told me otherwise: I knew I was either being fired or promoted. Since I knew that the upper-level folks hadn't taken too well to my suggestions for changes in the store, the writing was on the wall: I was done, cut off, fired. I wasn't going to work in the morning.
Being fired is a strange experience and I recommend it to everyone. It can come as a shock or completely expected - mine was the former. It was a shock to be fired from this particular position because I had earned a solid reputation among the majority of my co-workers, but it was not a shock that I would be leaving. I have been itched by the travel bug since I can remember, but it was really starting to fester under my skin and I knew I needed a change. Somewhere austral, I had been thinking. South America perhaps. When I was told that my position was terminated I was taillights and didn't look back at all because I knew that being fired had freed my from that from which I was too afraid to free myself.
I was still in some shock though, wondering what had happened behind closed doors, who said what, and how long this had been in the works, and I went surfing to clear my head. The waves were shit but I came to the conclusion that the best thing to do would be a long-considered road trip to the Pacific Northwest to visit two of my dad's sisters. One of the sisters, Lisa, lives with her husband and three boys In Vancouver, Washington and the other, Janelle, lives in the woods on an island in the Puget Sound just west of downtown Seattle with her longtime partner, Pam, and their crazy crew of Corgis.
I let people know slowly, and they quickly let me know that I was insane for wanting to drive that distance solo. I don't mind driving, and never have. It is therapeutic to drive for that long, especially in wide open, green, beautiful territory because you think about everything you can think of, then at some point the mind just goes into autopilot. I spent the weekend in LA with some good friends, drinking and being jolly. I made the necessary contacts and got directions before packing the wagon and heading to Santa Barbara Monday night for bowling and White Russians with the boys (and Julia) at Zodos. My new ball took the highest score, though not really that high of a score, and we went home well pickled.
The waves were non-existent in the morning in Isla Vista and it was time to get on the road to San Francisco. From Gaviota on north I was on autopilot. I reached San Luis Obispo, fueled up on gasoline and convenience store apple pies and went back to the coast to honor the first leg of my trip with journey along the windy roads of California One. The first and last twenty miles of the One are the best, with sleepy towns, amazing houses and nooks and crannies in the craggy coast that only exist in the dreams or travels of Southern Californians. I flew through Cayucos, Cambria and San Simeon watching the aqua blue ocean get ripped apart by the strong northwest winds. The middle part of the One is home to sheer drops, slow traffic and weak radio signal, but it really let my mind settle down and be dictated by the task at hand, which was to have no tasks.
My friend from UCSB, Leah, lives in the ubercool North Beach district of SF and her new apartment is insane. I made some wrong turns and ended up guiding myself through the entire city of San Francisco rather unwittingly before I found hoirzontal parking on what amounts to the side of a cliff and finding Leah. We went and had dinner at a great Italian place a block from her house and discussed the pangs of post-college life and unemployment and then she bought this credit-card-carrying-only young man a gelato at a shop mere feet from her doorstep. We let our grub settle then managed to get across the street again to meet a friend from high school, Michele, for a couple chilly ones.
The morning meant I had to get going, this time across town to Ocean Beach to meet a former co-worker, Thomas, at his house for a morning surf mission. We drove about 30 minutes south only to end up, of course, back at his place, surfing directly out in front in some cold, punchy, and really fun surf. I haven't worn a pair of booties since I was 16 and I have never worn a hood so it was a new experience entirely. Again it was time to say goodbye and get back on the wide open road. I went east on Fulton, got in the way of some trains, the got onto 19th, which essentially turns into the Golden Gate Bridge. I went to fuel up and noticed the gas was $3.97 a gallon and there were now three payment options: Credit, Debit, and Rectal. I chose credit because I knew my ass would be hurting anyway after the long drive I had planned to Humboldt.
I didn't bring any maps on the trip at all, only used google maps to get a brief view of where I was going before heading out each day. I really liked this. I knew Humboldt was way up north and that it would likely be my last stop before Seattle, but I didn't know how many miles it would be from San Francisco or how long it would take me. I crossed the bridge and didn't really worry about that. Marin is beautiful and now I understand why people pay so much to live there. I went through the western parts of Napa, Sonoma, Santa Rosa and then up through Mendocino and the area known as the Lost Coast. When you get north of San Francisco, and during my whole trip north, the speed limit changes constantly. It much be the tao of northern city planners to embrace constant change. It goes from 70 to 25 and a stoplight in seconds, so chronic users of cruise control, like myself, have to be more alert.
I kept seeing signs for Eureka and it seemed like it was always hundreds of miles away. I reached the Humboldt County line around 4PM and figured I was close. This part of the drive is simply beautiful. There are massive redwoods lining the road, only broken up by picturesque bays and rivers. I got a call from my friend Cole, asking where I was and letting me know that Arcata, where he lives, is about 15 minutes north of Eureka. I had driven for about five hours when I finally pulled up to Cole's house right down the street from Humboldt State University. The wind was still blowing but it was considerably colder than San Francisco or the rest of my northerly drive had been.
Cole and I shot the shit about a lot of different things, from surfing, to mutual friends, to the environment and how to save it. I told him that I didn't understand why there was such a fuss over trees being cut down because there are so many of them in Northern California. He got my humor. We went to dinner then back to his house, then he went to study and I fell asleep. I had decided that I would leave early the next morning and make it to Seattle before too late. I had predicted that it would take about 10 hours to get from Humboldt to Seattle, covering over 600 miles of rugged northwest territory.
I pushed out of Humboldt before 7AM and said goodbye to the coast at Crescent City as I jumped on the 199 to wind inland across the Oregon border. It was a beautiful morning and I saw one surfer about to paddle out in tiny, frozen surf. I crossed the Oregon border around 9AM as my car was breathing gas fumes. The next gas station was in a small town called O'Brien, and gas was considerably cheaper - $3.64 versus $3.99 in California. I wondered why: State taxes, property taxes, price of land, etc. I still haven't come to a conclusion.
The drive through Oregon along the 5 is amazing. The redwood forest corridor is veritably different from the 5 most of us experience in Southern California daily. It is windy in the mountains then drops flat through the plains that cover most of central Oregon. I stopped and ate somewhere along the way then had to succumb to the subsequent food coma and sleep for about 45 minutes right before I got to Portland. I powered through Portland, which is a beautiful city, and blasted through Washington all the way to Seattle, finally pulling into my aunt Janelle's driveway somewhere around 7PM.
Janelle and Pam live in the middle of the woods. Pam and her dad built the house themselves about fifteen years ago and Janelle has lived there almost the whole time. They were amazing hosts. They made me breakfast and dinner each day and we talked about politics and other progressive ways of making the world more enjoyable. We tried to figure out answers to some of the world's most pressing issues, like terrorism and social health, all over our cups of tea, incubated from the chilly, damp outdoors.
On Friday I got to go into the city, which is a 20 minute ferry ride from Bainbridge Island. I wore a corduroy jacket, thinking it would be plenty warm. I forgot to leave my Southern California weather-ego where it belongs. I froze from head to toe with air temps hovering around 40F and a strong wind whipping through the sound. I did get a good chance to check out Seattle by foot, and I saw the really cool market they have right on the waterfront. I had a cup of chowder that was different from any other I've ever had and it was really good. In the afternoon I walked to Janelle's office at Starbucks, where she gave me a tour of the whole building and gave me the whole story of the company. It sounds like a great place to work. I even saw Howard Schultz, the CEO. It was like seeing Michael Jordan...well not really, but pretty cool still.
When I was in the guestroom at Pam and Janelle's house I notice a photo of a family that looked like it was taken in the thirties. The gentleman looked like my grandfather and he was with his wife and their three kids. Turns out it was a photo of my grandfather as a toddler with his brother, sister, and parents, who are my link to Portugal. We spent a lot of time discussing family history and now I really want to find exactly where my great-grandparents came from. Here it is:
I had decided that I would leave Saturday to get to southern Washington and stay with my aunt Lisa, uncle Ron, and their three boys. Pam, Janelle and I walked to the beach down the street from their house and looked for sea-life in the tide-pools. There wasn't a whole lot of activity, maybe even the sea animals don't like the cold, because it was freezing. On out way back we stopped at their neighbor's house. The neighbor's mother-in-law was gardening in just jeans and a teeshirt and I thought she was nuts. When it started snowing I knew she was completely nuts. We chatted for a while and it was back to the warm house. They people up north are just so different. There is a genuine lack of concern for material possessions, and their purchases, tiny to large, seem to be based much more on function and necessity than aesthetics or image. It was very refreshing.
I left in the early afternoon and drove through varying weather, including more rain and snow, to make it to Vancouver by 6PM. Lisa greeted me with a beer, which would be followed by several more as the night went on and we ate dinner at the restaurant Ron runs a few miles from their house. Their family is hilarious and as glad as I am I went to visit them I am disappointed that we live so far away. At the end of the night we watched "American Gangster," which had to be one of the worst movies ever. I only stayed on Saturday night because I wanted to get to San Francisco to see my friend Sasha on Sunday, then be back in Santa Barbara for bowling on Monday night. It seemed perfectly plausible.
I was about six hours into my ten-hour drive from Vancouver to San Francisco when my car shut off on a bridge over Lake Shasta, about 100 miles south of the CA/ OR border. I assumed it was like every other time this has happened and I would be able to restart it right away, but my car wouldn't start. I got a tow truck to come and pick me up, but there was no way to get a repair at 7PM on a Sunday. I would have to stay the next morning and try to get it fixed ASAP so I could get on the road. Well, the next morning I had to play musical repair shops and get my car towed again, finally to find out that I needed a new fuel pump and it wouldn't get there until the next day. I had to stay a second night in a Motel 6 that was only within walking distance of a few car repair joints, another hotel, and a gas station/ convenience store. I got my car back at 2:30 on Tuesday afternoon and not a minute too soon. Here's what I saw mere seconds before my car called time out for two days.
I booked it south down the 5 right through farm country. I called friends in San Francisco and Santa Cruz, but they weren't around so I made the call to ride my steed all the way to Santa Barbara before she would rest. I crossed west before Sacramento and passed through the East Bay at rush hour, but didn't really sit in traffic. I hit San Jose by 6PM and Salinas just as the sun was eeking its last few rays into my eyes.
There isn't a CD player in my car, and my iPod and radio player were stolen last year, so I am stuck listening to the radio as audible entertainment. The farmlands south of Salinas along the 101 are pretty unique to the rest of the West Coast in that the only radio stations are Spanish-language stations blasting Ranchero music and a classic rock station with a show hosted by Alice Cooper. I found quite a few really good classic rock stations along the way. One of the best was based in Eureka.
I don't know by what cosmic connection this transpired, but the song "Jump" by Van Halen made its way to my radion no less than five times on the trip. If it were a current song and I listened to pop stations I would understand, but this song is over twenty years old. It was ironic, of course, that I would hear this song on a road trip. On the night I got my DUI two years ago I sang that very song at a Karaoke bar in San Diego. Here I was, midway through the biggest road trip of my life, hearing a song that had previously held a negative association. It was great to be able to once again put that behind me.
The gusty winds on Gaviota reminded me that I was close, and before I knew it I had made it to the Dome. It didn't seem like it, but I had driven for ten hours and 500 miles. It may as well have been all in the blink of an eye because it didn't phase me at all. I stayed in Santa Barbara for a couple of days to unwind with the boys, drink, ride the waverunner, and be merry. Driving home to LA, the final stretch, saw me pass the 2600 mile mark for the trip. I saw a sign just north of Rincon that LA was 81 miles away. I laughed. Eighty-one miles is nothing. The world just shrank in my perspective.
I had a ton of time to reflect on everything possible during the 40 plus hours I was in my car over the last two weeks, and two quotes sum them up. The first is by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who said "Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains." I like this one because it is so universally applicable. People are constrained by the government on a larger level, but they are also constrained by their parents, society and its expectations, friends, and school. I came to realize that these things can be overcome and are just mental obstructions. Let them go and be free to do exactly what you want to do. Life distilled of these constraints equals being much happier.
The second quote is by Ernest Hemingway, who said that the only things that matter in life are "War, women and wine." I think Hemingway spoke from his heart and loved all of these things, but I don't, because war doesn't quite do it for me. I do think, however, that the only three things that matter in life are waves, women and wine. So elusive, so beautiful, so frustrating and so satisfying. When you find the right one bliss doubtlessly ensues. Had Ernest lived today, and been in my shoes, I think he may agree.
