Finally got some time to read something other than a guide book
In front of our Palapa with the local dogs (Mentira y Chisto) who adopted us while in Bahia de Los Angeles
Jumpin' up to touch the Boojum Tree
Drew paddling on a rare glassy day in the Sea of Cortez
A Sea Turtle at the rehabilitation center
Waking up to one of the spectacular sunrises
The Baja 1,000 Baby! Oh yeah!
I swap out the gear in my bike trailer with my costume box and Clark, Dai, Pablo, Me, Mel, and Igor close out the trip the way it started, with a ride in Critical Mass
Back Home
I have been home a little under two weeks now. Already I am settled in at my house, back teaching, and had my welcome home party. It is amazing how quick and easy the transition back into this part of my life has been. Time with friends and family, sleeping in my own bed, and intellectual challenges that extend beyond my own personal logistics of self propelled movement have all been rewarding beyond what I had hoped for while still on the odyssey.
Some times it feels dream like...did I really spend the past five months traveling up and down the coast from Juneau through Baja? If so, did I really travel that much of it on a bike and in a kayak? There are little moments when I am able to divert from the day to day, teaching classes, sorting through stuff and reflect or talk about where I have traveled, what I have been through, what I have and continue to learn. Sometimes it even becomes real again, I get so excited, I can't stop talking. It feels indulgent to allow myself to drift off to a magical world of Whales, Bears, Rainbows, Wolves, Salmon, Dolphins, Sea Turtles, wide open spaces, the simplicity of movement, and living in close concert with the Earth and its systems, patterns, and flow.
I have one real goal right now (well actually two, there is only so much time that I can spend either alone or with just other dudes), which is to bring the beauty, power, joy, pace, and presence of my trip back into this aspect of my life. Why do we work ourselves into stressful fits? Boast to each other about how busy we are? Multitask ourselves right out of the present? Gift others our time, but not ourselves? Choose to complain over celebrate? It is not that I am perfect in any of these arenas, but I have had some powerful glimpses over the past months and hope to expand upon them in my own life.
Getting out of the Eddy
Like a powerful river eddy, I am caught in the grasp of the bay area. Slow days which begin and end in the same place, relaxing, slow, and enjoyable in between. Reminiscent of trying to break free of Port Townsend, I finally gather myself for the final leg. Each section of the journey has commenced with a thorough sorting of gear and planning for at least the first few days ahead (though each successive leg the organization and planning has given way to a little more just winging it and getting out there). This last leg to Baja has been the least planned. The food I bring is whatever I have left over from Alaska and biking, the gear is everything minus rain gear. I just don't have the energy any more for careful planning.
I sort, organize, and prepare a little more as I stop in Santa Barbara to see my brother Brian, then in La Jolla to see my Godmother Gigi. When I pick my other brother Drew up at the airport in San Diego, I am ready to call the preparation, good enough. Drew has been strapped trying to get his work done in order to get out of town and arrives pretty spent. We cross the border and drive five hours south, past all the party destinations that span from the border down to Ensenada, and arrive in a little town called San Quintin (chances are you have eaten tomatoes grown in one of the many greenhouses here). There we sleep at a beach campground. It is quiet, and wrapped in a blanket of fog we sleep deeply for many hours. Our morning is leisurely, we stretch, eat, drink tea, walk on the beach...now we are ready for Baja.
The Land of Dr. Seuss
The Baja peninsula is some 1,000 miles long, a desert landscape jutting southward into the Pacific where it is bordered on the west and the Sea of Cortez (aka The Gulf of California) to the east. With the exception of a few overrun tourist destinations, Baja is sparsely populated. There is just about every variety of dominant desert plant that I know of down there, and some, like the Boojum Tree, that only grow in Baja. Traveling through there, I can see Theodor Geisel's inspiration every where I look.
The five hour drive from San Quintin to Bahia de Los Angeles takes us east from the cool, foggy coast to the warmer, arid desert side. Along the way I notice that there are more off road vehicles than I remember from previous trips down. At the junction to the bay, we spot a Swiss man who is solo bike touring down hwy 1 (the main route down the peninsula, a precipitous two lane road with no shoulders which they only finished paving in the 70's). We stop to chat with him alongside some of the dirt bikers. They warn him that the Baja 1,000 is coming up in a few days and that he doesn't want to be on the road for a couple of days (more to come about the Baja 1,000). We wish him safe travels and make our way down to the Sea of Cortez. Having driven down through Baja, I have zero aspirations to bike tour there.
With our first glimpse of Bahia de los Angeles, we turn off on a dirt road to a view spot. The town below is tiny against the backdrop of islands, sea, and mountains. We are met there by Kenny Howell and his family on their way into the bay. I love bumping into friends in places like that, in the Sierra high country, in a small village in Guatemala, a stop along the road to say hello as you pass one another en route to run different rivers, in LaConte Bay, Alaska, at a waterfall in the Grand Canyon...
We spend the next few days camped at the edge of the water in a small Palapa, next door to Kenny and his family (Kenny and his wife Peggy both went to Urban in the 70's and Kenny and I have worked a number of Urban School kayak trips together), while we wait out the West winds that blow day and night. While we are there, we read, eat fish tacos, visit the Sea Turtles at the recovery center next door, play with Kenny and Peggy's kids Jean and August, and hang out with the German Shepards who seem to have come with the palapa.
Eventually Kenny and his family continue south on their adventure, while Drew and I wait out the wind and explore miles of dirt roads in to the desert where we find an old mission from the 1700's. At last after waiting out the wind for 4 days, we awoke to calm. We load the kayaks and head out to the islands.
Our visit to the islands is magical, pods of Dolphins splashing their tails as they fish and dive for food, gliding over turquois patches of water, nesting Osprey, Peregrine Falcons, Magnificent Frigat Birds, endless Pelicans... We set up our camp and explore Isla Ventana on foot, it is the driest place I have ever seen...truly moonscape. The beach is filled with shells and bones which we gather and lay out to try and figure out what they are and what goes with what. After I cook up a less than Phil caliber dinner, we lay down in our bags to read, talk, and eventually lie in silence taking in the vastness and clarity of the universe above...it is truly humbling in a way which I cannot put into words. As our eyelids grow heavy and the vision of the stars above grows dreamlike, a whale surfaces at the entrance to our cove, the lullaby which finally puts me to sleep.
Our return to the palapa is accompanied by just enough wind and wave action to make the trip fun and interesting without being scary. We unpack and lounge about until the late afternoon when we head into town for some fish tacos.
The Baja 1,000
We have been in bed every night by 8:30 and up by 5:00, living by the light of the day. We figure that we will eat some fish tacos and go to the check point in the middle of town to watch the first couple riders in the Baja 1,000 ride through then head to the palapa to read a little before calling it a night.
The Baja 1,000 is an off-road race through Baja. The route changes most years, and this year it went 1,300 miles from Ensenada to Cabo San Lucas. The racers travel day and night, with the fastest finish times in the 30 hour range. Most people are a part of a team, but some (iron men) ride the whole thing, taking power naps in between stretches of 100 mph down dirt roads. There are all sorts of groupings, categorized by age and vehicle type (the most impressive to me is the stock Volkeswagon Bug).
The town is energized. It has swelled to quite a bit larger than its normal numbers and people have set up lawn chairs and coolers for watching the race. There is a whole crowd present who would only ever come to Bahia de Los Angeles for the race, they stand out even more than us.
It is estimated that the first rider will come through about 5:30 PM. A little after 5, Drew and I wander down to the store for a beer. While at the counter we hear the whirl of the helicopter blades, the shop keeper dashes outside and returns quickly yelling and waiving her arms, "señor, señor, la primer! la primer!" We leave our cookies and beer to run out to the road...false alarm, the helicopter is out in front of the first rider.
A half hour later and many conversations with some of the race enthusiasts and the first rider comes through, one of the guys from Team Honda, he is all business. He stops, gets his slip of paper and hauls ass out of town. The true fans are beside themselves, "was that Jonny Campbell or Robby Bell?" They jump up and down, high fiving each other. Instantly, Drew and I are transformed from curious skeptics into fanatical fans.
I could go on and on about the Baja 1,000, but maybe it is best to let you all check it out for yourselves on line or even in person (it is one of those things that is worth the effort to see in person at least once), but I will say this... I can't imagine any scenario where anything quite like it could happen in the U.S. With just a few pieces of caution tape with the thickness of yarn, the race course is diliniated from the spectator area. The streets are lined with kids jumping rope, dogs wandering about and rambunctious onlookers getting more and more drunk as the night wears on. At times, racers get mixed up and come screaming down the spectator traffic side of the road at 75 miles per hour.
The word from those in the know is that the "trophy trucks" are the real sight to see. Imagine million dollar Nascar race cars jacked up for off road. Huge light sets 5 times brighter than the brightest car lights I have ever seen. Drew draws a comparison to being in Africa...the motorcycles are like watching the gazels as they dance their way across the plain, we are drawn in to watch them as they wave to the crowd and do wheelies to the delight of all...suddenly the Lions arrive in the form of trophy trucks and the whole energy changes...it is edgy and dangerous (cutti as my students would say). Their lights pan across the night sky from miles away until they crest the hill and illuminate everything in their. As they approach, the roar of their engines reverberates throughout our bodies. It boggles my mind how no one got taken out by a trophy truck.
Finally, at 2:30 in the morning, Drew and I peel ourselves away from the race in order to catch a few hours of sleep. Our palapa neighbor, John, is waiting for his team to come through. His son Kurt had ridden an earlier leg and had driven over to wait with his dad and see him off. We want to see him off as well, but need to sleep. As we drive off, John is sound asleep in a lawn chair, decked out in his full riding gear, a vision of tranquility amidst total chaos. An English couple who spend half the year in England and the other half in Baja are across the way. Earlier in the evening they had seemed so prim and proper, even out of place there. Now they are transformed...they jump up and down, pumping fists into the air and screaming as racers fly past them into the night. You never know what you will get in Baja.
The Return
Eventually, we make our way north, stopping in San Quintin for some more kayaking, birding and wandering the miles of beach. We cross the border in the town of Tecate and drive through the burned out canyons east of San Diego. Back in the U.S. the place feels foreign, it is so clean, orderly, and safety conscious...we stand out in our car covered in dust and mud, gear piled high in the back.
I drop Drew at the airport and start my slow trip back home. I stop to see my friend Brian Melley, who paddled with me in Alaska. We go out for a beer in Pasadena and I can't even fathom the culture around me, the outfits, get-ups, and energy, and conversations, we pass a club that is glass across the front, in the back, in full view from the street are women dancing in glass boxes wearing tiny little laungerie outfits...where the Hell am I? I visit with my cousin Elliot and his family in Simi Valley before heading to see my brother Brian in Santa Barbara. I return to Palo Alto, to my mothers' just in time for Thanksgiving, head up to San Francisco the next day, and am back at work a couple of days later.
Some more Lessons Learned
The physical aspect of the trip came to a sudden end with my return, but there are memories, new friendships, and life learnings that are very much with me, and in some cases have transformed me. My friend Tana sent me a card in which she so eloquently grasped where I am, "settling back into life-familiar-yet you are not the same." Indeed I am changed from this odyssey, in ways I am cognisent of and ways not.
As I boarded the ferry in Washington, bound for Alaska, I can remember the feeling, the atmosphere. It was a beautiful, clear, warm day. Everyone was festive, chatting, waving, joyful. It was the first time in weeks where I had nothing to do, it was the beginning of three days of just being on the ferry and taking it all in as it carried me northward. I can remember the feeling of panic setting in, not for any of the dangers that lie ahead, but for the expectations I had laid out for myself. What if I don't have anything profound to say from this trip? What if I am unchanged? What if this is just a break and I go back to my life exactly as it was before? Despite encounters with Brown Bears, big crossings, wind waves, fast moving currents, sometimes with icebergs, logging trucks, adolescent boys harassing me as they drove by...I knew that I had not set up a trip that I considered to be particularly dangerous. I have had plenty of trips where I was terrified by water conditions, encounters, exposure, where I was pushed to the edge of my comfort zone and abilities. I did not intend for this to be such a trip, and it wasn't. In the end, the greatest terror I faced was my own mind, my own insecurities, my own endless questions of "what if..." It was a conversation that I would have with myself over and over again, until, when I finally reached Santa Barbara, I was done having. Thousands of miles traveled over many months to find peace in my heart and mind.
I wish this experience upon everyone...not this exact one, but the time, space, and opportunity to lose yourself in a journey which takes you away from the "life-familiar" and into the depths of your own being. It is perhaps the greatest gift I have ever given myself.
I thought about including some final thoughts about my learning here, but it started to read a little like a self help book. So instead, I will leave you with this...Dream, Dream BIG! Don't let that opportunity pass you by, it may not come back again. It will be fun, hard, exciting, scary, lonely, beautiful, and things will happen that you couldn't possibly plan for, and most importantly, it will be an opportunity for you to learn exactly what you need to learn and experience for yourself on your unique path.
What Next?
It is so nice to spend most of my time within about a 2 square mile area! The occasional trip down to Palo Alto is about as far as I plan to venture in December. I do have a back country hut trip planned for the first week in January, I figure I will be ready for a little adventure into the snow towards the end of break. I am working on putting together a presentation, which I hope to have completed before heading out on the hut trip. As well, I have some magazine articles I am working on. But most importantly, I am working on being present in my "life-familiar" and embracing all the growth and change that has come and is still emerging. And then there is next summer hmmmmm, we'll see?
Thank you to all who have helped and supported me on this journey. There is no way that I could possibly have done this trip without all of the logistical support, travel companions, cheerleading, well wishes, and kindness of strangers. It may have seemed a small offering on your part, but I guarantee that it was huge for me.
