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From slcpi!govt.shearson.com!mjohnsto@uunet.UU.NET Mon Jan 7 17:27:35 1991
To: wordy@Corp
Subject: chapter-28
ESCAPE FROM THE CITY
#28 in the second online CAA series
by
Steven K. Roberts, HtN (WORDY)
Pigeon Point, CA; 12,140 miles
May 15, 1987
F I N A L L Y ! ! !
I'm on the beach at Half Moon Bay, the evening calm almost disquieting
after the unrelenting noise of the City. It feels good, damn good... Maggie
and I grin at each other every few minutes, gush something about being back on
the road at last, then fall into each other's arms for a trembling hug. Three
months we stayed in Palo Alto -- and despite all the productivity of the
layover, this return to movement has the sweet flavor of liberation.
Our new porta-condo, all 108 square feet of it, is sprawled in a field of
purple and white flowers. Maggie's over there, backing her trailer into one of
the garages (the tent's vestibules are large enough to hold our rolling
chests-of-drawers and still allow bodies to pass). Birds twitter and scree;
surf rumbles; small planes buzz the beach; my toes dig like autonomous prairie
dogs into the soft, welcoming sand. We're doing it, we're finally doing it!
It began as any other pedaling day: we let all the conflicting snippets
of road advice null each other out, meandered through residential areas as long
as possible, spent a misleadingly lazy hour on Canada Road, then hit 92.
Whoosh! Big-time motorized urgency! Though this is the easiest pass over the
mountains for our atrophied cycle-legs, it's also the busiest -- freeway-like
traffic on a winding 2-lane road with shoulders that vary from adequate to
nonexistent. You can almost live with that, except when the pavement abruptly
disappears on right-hand switchbacks and the wheels of a Big Rig drop into your
space... or when some redneck (yes, even in California) leans on his horn while
crowding you into the glass-sparkled gravel, the seconds of his life so
precious that he gladly risks all of yours to make each one of his count.
Ahem. But those are just moments. In Half Moon Bay, the crowd was
delightful, plying us with smiles and the addresses of distant friends while
marveling and tsk-tsking at our survival of 92. The obligatory small-town
newspaper interview, the shopping for provisions, the surprise offer of free
tooth-cleaning by a young local dentist <flashy grin>...
And then a surprise. At the State Park campground's check-in station, we
paid our $2 for space in the hiker-biker area and were informed by the guard
that there was a surprise in store -- whereupon she produced a cooler and
handed it over the counter. Inside, on ice: bananas, oranges, watermelon, and
Gatorade... a gift from Melissa of the Pigeon Point Hostel, 25 miles down the
road.
* * *
We awoke comfortable, well-rested. The camping experience has changed
completely since last I wrote of it -- with roughly 20 cubic feet of pack
space, we now carry folding stools, the megatent, and even, yes, even a pair of
big fluffy feather pillows. This all seems insane, decadent, a violent
departure from the spirit of camping (whatever that is), but hey, why not be
comfy? I never was the macho outdoorsman type anyway...
We emerged lazily and fed stale danish to a bead-encrusted drifter who,
the night before, had circled the camground seeking "doob" then crashed
unfulfilled under a picnic table. Our own breakfast was a celebration of the
50th anniversary of canned porcine DAF (dead animal flesh) with a classic Spam
'n eggs breakfast: on the road, every little event, even an embarrassing
repast like that, is flavored by the exotic spices of Change.
After rolling back into Half Moon Bay for Dr. Leupp's dental work, we hit
the road again -- sun baking shoulders, sweat glistening on bellies not yet
road-lean, the hills of California rewarding hours of 4-mph effort with minutes
of 40-mph ecstasy. The usual ratio. But there were great sweeping vistas of
surf and sun, vegetation that would cost $50 per square foot in potted form
back east, waves from passing cars, and thumbs-ups from leathered bikers. We
stopped at every temptation, whether an alluring beach, a hint of tidepools, a
particularly breathtaking view, or the flower raised like a toast by the
weathered hairy chap in purple jogging suit who spoke cryptically of Magic
Elixirs.
I rode along, making bike-notes in a file called FIX and comments for this
article in one called GE28... and then came to the hostel.
Ah, hostels. I'm always delighted by these places, these dynamic
monuments to the wandering spirit. Much of their appeal lies in absolute
unpredictability -- hostels are quite the opposite of motels. If you seek
plastic key fobs that you can drop in any mailbox, split- image postcards with
both aerial and in-room views, wake-up calls, bolted-down TV sets, and little
paper strips that are Sanitized For Your Protection... go ring a bell for
service and plop down a credit card. But if you want unpredictable roommates,
a melange of languages, morning chores, dubious mattresses, no security, and a
lights-out curfew -- all for only $6/night -- try a hostel.
Why go through this? Why prefer crowding and confusion to, say, the
Regency Hyatt with its grossly overpriced veneer of luxury? Well...
The vaporous community of travelers condenses every night, forming circles
around campfires real or imagined -- all over the planet. Stories flow as
friendships form; even the part-time nomads swap equipment tips, road advice,
addresses, and snippets of their native culture. The net effect? A sense of
family that keeps the mad anonymous rushing unknowns of the highway at bay.
Safety. Warmth. Home.
The same need touches everyone on the road, even business travelers:
watch the action in a Holiday Inn cocktail lounge sometime as people struggle
with internal battles between loneliness and shyness, tipping the odds by
tipping the elbow, hoping someone else will make the first move.
But hostels make it easy. There are no more walls than necessary.
Pigeon Point is a delightful discovery. We're living at the base of a
115-year-old lighthouse perched on a cliff, a place steeped in maritime history
and named after the most famous of a series of shipwrecks on the foam-swirling
black rocks jutting offshore (the Carrier Pigeon, lost in 1853). Lashing the
foggy night at 10-second intervals, the light has become one of the best-known
navigational features of the Pacific coast. It's been automated for years, of
course, so the cluster of former Coast Guard housing surrounding the tower is
now a hostel.
And what a hostel it is! Last night we arrived in a flurry of excitement,
the rapid-fire questions and comments colored by the speech patterns of a
half-dozen different countries. Natural drinks from Odwalla in Davenport
("Juice for Humans"). Bright, alive faces; knowing smiles; other cyclists.
Melissa of cooler fame, shaking her head and grinning. And as we all walked to
cliff edge for sunset and stood amid the ice plants and rocks with the
lighthouse towering behind us, I recalled once again the hosteling allure that
almost always makes them ideal places to stay. (Imagine instant rapport and
food-sharing with a community of guests in a Motel 6 along the freeway...)
Night. I sprawled in the hot tub with three pretty women -- a German, an
Aussie, and a Buckeye. The German, young and new at this, had been uncertain
(asking in broken English if she should bring soap). The Australian, a wise
and confident traveler named Lynora, was an emigre of the computer business who
felt, at age 30, that it was time to start thinking about her own life before
iff, tang legs in rumbling hot water while gazing out
over the rumbling cold.
Beside us, heaps of clothes glowed a ghostly green in the indirect
lighting. Above us, starlight danced its way through a 3- mile refractive
jumble after light-years of perfect clarity. Seaward, their glittering
pinpoints softened into mist, then disappeared behind a cloak of fog that
seemed the product of our own tub-generated steam. And through it all, insanely
surreal like the set of a science-fiction movie, lashed the thick
680,000-candlepower beam of the Pigeon Point lighthouse, beginning immediately
over our heads and ending somewhere out there, sweeping the horizon. Every ten
seconds the cycle repeated, arresting, intriguing, as much an intensification
of NIGHT as a busy Air Force Base or a head full of Magic Elixir. The German,
the Aussie, and the Buckeye lay their heads back on the deck, half out of the
luminous froth, gazing quietly skyward as light played gently across smooth wet
skin -- as soft breath merged with the steam, merged with the mist, and merged
us all into a single pulsing universe of light and color.
* * *
It's so easy to forget this in the swirl of distraction, noise, and
responsibility. So easy to forget the infinite range of possibilities; so easy
to believe the fiction about America's media- driven homogeniety. We may have
a lot of the same icons and newsjokes, but there's a diversity out here that
quite outdistances the imagination. Why, ANYTHING is possible in a land where,
in a single month, one man can collect $8 million by claiming that God will
kill him if he fails and another can lose a presidency by being accused of
doing what any man would love to do. It's a strange land, as limitless as life
itself, and I'm delighted to announce that I'm once again loose in it.
The doors of the shop are closed. We're on the road.