Sequoia and Kings Canyon: Getting to Know a Boy Scout

Humbling.

There's a saying in life (or at least among screenwriters who are above explosions as catharsis): crisis reveals character. I don't know if it was Plato, or repeat viewings of Showgirls and Dubya reading children's stories that drove the point home, but it is a handy key.

I met Tim while on a bike ride up to Ventura County one Saturday a few months ago. I was riding along by my lonesome; so was he. I asked where he was headed, we were going the same place and pace, and so we rode along and chatted for a few hours. (I know, it could be a gay romance novel.) That's one way I make friends with strangers now that semi-conscious flashes of Hollywood nightlife play a less frequent role in my social life. So I didn't know Tim any better than that: we rode bikes together a few times, that's it. First impression: he seemed like a cool dude.


Starting Out Shooting the Wrong Foot

On Thursday, Tim sent out an email proposing a weekend trip to take a bike ride someplace scenic, like Sequoia National Park. He planned to drive up to Visalia, get a hotel, then do a 120-something-mile climb up through Sequoia and back down to Visalia. I'd never been to Sequoia, and had been meaning to go. But based on my limited knowledge, this plan seemed haphazard and ill informed. I told Tim that Visalia is--how does one say this delicately?--not an ideal vacation destination, and that it was miserably hot in the Central Valley during the summer, well over 100 (sounds cooler as 37 for rational metric users) every day. Apparently he hadn't done much research, beyond seeing a road on a map that went from Visalia up into Sequoia for about 120 miles (sounds even longer as 193 k. Isn't metric fun?).

A hastily unplanned trip was semi-assembled Thursday night: we were to leave the wiggedy-Westside in the early afternoon to beat traffic and secure a camping spot at a cooler elevation of about 7500 feet. Make a fire, smores, all that.

On Friday, I got all my camping and bike gear sorted out, got the trusty old four-cylinder, manual-transmission Toyota 4-Runner out of hibernation in the garage, and waited. By 2, I started to worry. At 4, I accepted that we were fucked, and Google Traffic confirmed my worst fears. At the worst possible time, 5:15, Tim showed up. In his defense, he does not control his workplace. In my defense, I did not tear his testicles from his person like an angry chimp.

As we packed Tim's stuff into my truck, he told me I didn't need to bring my tent; his was big enough to share. I took this gesture as an olive branch for his tardiness, accepted, and left my four-person tent on my porch. Off we went.

Slowly. It took two-and-a-half hours to get from Santa Monica to Valencia, about 30 miles. In that time, I learned that Tim didn't drive stick, forgot the maps at work and didn't have food, so I'd do all the driving and guesswork/navigating and we'd be stopping along the way to shop. I was okay with that; I only had enough coffee in my camping gear for one cup. My like of coffee turned into a conversation about food. We're both pretty health-conscious (surprise), we'd both read Fast Food Nation and such and agreed on what garbage people will gladly consume. I also learned that Tim is a diet-conscious vegetarian who eats fish, milk and eggs, doesn't drink alcohol regularly, never touched a drug, and doesn't drink caffeine because it has severe effects on him. At around 11 that night, we stopped at In-N-Out before hitting Target in Visalia to get camp food. (In our defense, nothing better than In-N-Out was open, except for a suspect food truck--authentic and Mexican, not all LA cupcake-yuppie.) At Target, Tim grabbed a 24-ounce Mountain Dew from the point-of-purchase fridge that he finished before bed. A 24-ounce Mountain Dew has 110 milligrams of caffeine; a can of Red Bull has 80.

The 4-Runner climbed into the beauty of the Sierra Nevadas for over an hour; unfortunately we saw only as far as the headlights shone. But this was not a climb one would do on a bike in 100-plus heat. We got into Sequoia National Park after midnight, seven hours into what could've been a three-and-a-half hour drive. In the park, we found all campsites within the first 30 miles were full. A little after 1 am, we jacked a reserved car camping spot deep in the park. Fuck it.

Tim pulled out his camping gear. He unwrapped a new headlamp from its packaging, and began looking for batteries. It was a full moon--no big deal, he could see fine. Once he'd gotten the headlamp working, he unpacked a Marmot tent, a Marmot subzero-rated bag, Thermarest pad... Really nice gear, and it was all brand new, in the boxes, wrapped in plastic. (He must've spent a month's rent at A-16 Adventure.) After watching him struggle for a moment, I helped him set up his tent, and discovered it was a two-person featherweight backpacking tent--a very tight two-person tent, the kind where you have to sleep with your roommate's feet next to your head to fit. I honestly didn't care, but it was pretty funny when he discovered the tiny footprint of his fancy new tent. We heard yelling and a lot of car alarms going off about 200 yards uphill, but we couldn't see anything but flashing lights. Not our problem, we crashed.

This tent ain't big enough for the both of us.

Needless to say, mapless and all, we were both in the dark about many things. In the morning, we awoke to fresh, cool, cedar-tinted mountain air. We were in a grove of about 150 campsites called Dorst Creek, and apparently a bear had been roaming the area breaking into cars all night in a quest for food. Hence the alarms.

Boy Scout Becomes Him

We geared up to get rolling. Tim had forgotten to bring any cycling food, so I gave him two of my Clif bars to get him through the day. As we pedaled and chatted our way up and down various valleys and mountain sides, we decided we needed nicknames for this trip, for whatever reason. As mentioned, Tim never puffed the magic dragon, had barley sodas in his fridge from a party weeks ago, and I'd have been surprised if he'd kissed the forbidden flower or even tried a non-missionary position. Based on our brief conversations, I knighted him "Boy Scout" for his drugless, drinkless, innocent ways. He liked the nickname--typically the sign of a poorly-chosen nickname--but to me it fit. Boy Scout became him. I told him I was already PJ or "Puddle Jumper" based on an OCD-ish habit I had as a kid of never stepping in puddles. My dad called me that, so I'm partial to it. (I didn't mention I was also known to my brothers and others as "Puh-Puh-Puh-Pat" for my stuttering and other speech impediments as a child, and "Phantom Pooper" for reasons that shall remain undisclosed.)

Legs like tree trunks.

We rode about 20 miles to the main grove of sequoias, which contained the granddaddy of all trees, the General Sherman. It was breath-taking, majestic, awe-inspiring, etc, etc. Words won't do the experience of seeing it in person justice. It has all the detail and twisted wonder of the most spectacular bonsai tree blown up 10,000 times normal size. Big Sherm isn't the oldest sequoia at 2700 years old, but it's amazing to think this tree was already 700 and huge when Joe found out he wasn't the baby's daddy, Jerry Springer-style. Looking at Big Sherm is a little like pondering the stars--an ego-check to your fleeting, insignificant wastes of days during your speck of time on this floating particle of galactic dirt. And there's no cell reception there, which really drives the message home quite profoundly, since it's impossible to relieve your existential angst by diddling for emails or sending a flick via Blackberry messenger to let other people know "where you at?"

Not touristy enough, Tim.

Our little Boy Scout Timmy was as taken aback as I was by the silent majesty of this magical grove of dinosaur trees. Maybe more so, because he jumped the fence and touched the tree to--and I quote--"feel its energy." (He lives in Venice, so I guess I should expect him to want to get all up in a tree's chakra points, even if he doesn't do drugs. Someone has to tweak those Venice Beach stereotypes.) The giant sequoias themselves are almost as sensitive as Boy Scout, and only grow in very specific conditions with regard to sunlight, water, temperature, latitude, elevation and soil. So the groves occur only in very special pockets where the stars align for them, which is why they are such a rare yet massive treasure.

Of course, as we're passing Big Sherm for a second time on the way out of the grove, some dickhead Germans are smoking cigs at the base of the tree. Here we are at John Muir's altar, and they're both puffing away with their three-year-old daughter at their feet. I made a remark about the insensitivity of smoking cigarettes in one of the most precious, rare and endangered forests on earth, a place they'd donated Euros and tread halfway around the bubble to see, which received a nod of approval from an old lady on a bench nearby. "Told them!" I thought to myself. However, I was rebuked for my self-righteous buke with: "Are you a ranger? Then fuck off!" Typical Germans. Rules, moral and otherwise, apply to everyone but them.

Boy Scout heads for another tree tunnel.

Second Impression

We rode around all the major sights of this part of Sequoia, through the tree tunnel and all that unholy crud, then rode another 30 miles to the General Grant grove of sequoias. It was also awesome (strictly in the sense of inspiring awe), but suffered from being second place, literally and figuratively. Imagine you've never seen one of the famous European cathedrals. Yada yada, you're on the steps of the cathedral in Chartres. HOLY SHIT! It's truly a religious experience the first time. An hour later, you're at Notre Dame in Paris. Well, yeah, it's amazing, no doubt about that, but it's not the first place and the first time. (Maybe I should've gone for a sexual metaphor here instead of churches.) Anyway, the General Grant tree is as impressive as the General Sherman; it wasn't anticlimactic, just not as climactic or impactful. (I mix a mean metaphor.)

Turning around to climb back to our campsite after 60 miles in the saddle, the elevation proved too much for Boy Scout, and he limped home a while after me, then sat there in a daze, unable to move for about a half-hour. Such grand plans... Our 75-mile/3500 calorie day killed him, but just imagine he'd have tried that 120-mile trip? Since he didn't bring anything to drink, I gave him an orange soda to get some sugar in his blood, and made dinner.

She was hungry, too.

How prophetic the Boy Scout nickname would prove surprised even a jaded asshole like me. For dinner, he'd brought a can of baked beans. Actually, that was all he'd brought as a meal for this two-day cycling epic--one can of baked beans. Knowing this wouldn't cut it, and that he'd never ride tomorrow if I didn't pump him full of carbs, I made a whole box of mashed potato flakes. (Isn't baked beans and mashed potatoes an English delicacy?) As I finished cooking the potatoes (dumping the flakes in boiling water), Tim was struggling with the concept of can. Yoda may have coined "Do or do not. There is no try." But Boy Scout clearly had a "can I open a can?" Zen-thing going. (Ponder that, Confucius: Can I open a can? It's like a snake eating its own tail.) He was trying to stare his way into a can of beans. Chaucer would've had a field day with this.

"Do you have a can opener?" he asked. This struck me as an extremely odd question in so many ways:

1. He had a Leatherman multi-tool in his hand. 
2. How had he been planning to eat? 
3. What the fuck, man? 
4. He had a Leatherman multi-tool in his hand.

I answered the only way that seemed to make sense: "You're holding a can opener."

Only now do I realize that Boy Scout's multi-tool and knowledge of its multi-myriad uses may have been as new to him as his sleeping pad. (Only when packing to go home did I realize he'd never inflated his self-inflating sleeping pad.) Boy Scout did not know that every Swiss Army knife and multi-tool has a can opener; if the simplest of models only has three tools, it's the thing that's not a knife and not a bottle opener. I extracted the tool and handed it to him. Nope. I took the can, pierced the lid and got halfway around the rim, then handed the set-up to Boy Scout. Suffice it to say that I had to open the whole can. After that, Boy Scout considered eating with his hands, since he had no utensil. Fortunately I dug up a plastic spoon.

Thank God for tent vents.

I will say that his blood sugar was clearly low after bonking and spending eight hours in the saddle pedaling at altitude. I sympathized somewhat; I was not untired after the previous day's grueling drive and the same 75-mile ride. Boy Scout is a smart guy, but obviously his camping/survival skills are on par with my understanding of female psychology. He was clearly new to this game and trying to learn the rules on the fly.

Boy Scout was much more coherent after eating. For my part, I had picked up a box of Target brand red wine during our stop in Visalia, and I got a little less coherent. Naturally, at this time a very large bear dashed right through our campsite with a dozen happy, laughing Latino dudes running after it with flashlights and yelling, banging pots and making noise.

Not the bear.

I'd seen a bear. This was a long time coming, and I became a bit emotional. (It definitely could've been the 2008 vintage from the vineyards of Target that I'd consumed.) I'm not Timothy Treadwell or anything weirder, but I have always respected animals that can kill humans. I always hated fucking Nerf and the Nerfing of the world. Fuck Nerf. Let the bears and big cats live in the wild. Tough it out. Don't like it? Stay indoors.

Kings Canyon 

Go deep.

Clouds above, clouds below.

The next morning, I felt the effects of Target's version of Jesus' beverage of choice. Surprise. But Starbucks Via coffee packets are stronger than Alka-Selzer, and mountain men don't whine about hangovers (nor drink Target wine and resolve its effects with Starbucks). Today's route (which I finagled from some local cyclists the day before) would take us to Cedar Grove, an area in the depths of adjacent Kings Canyon National Park. We started out somewhere around 8000 feet up in Sequoias, and rode 20 miles down-mountain--wheeeeeeeeee!!! It was obvious we'd hit the bottom of the canyon after the first 20 miles, because for the next ten miles of this there-and-back loop, we were climbing again alongside the very rapid-filled Kings River (rapids are a sign of steepness) to Cedar Grove. I already had a feeling that Boy Scout wouldn't make the climb out of Kings Canyon.

Wheeeeee!

The road keeps snaking down like this for 20 miles. What goes down must come up.

Kings Canyon National Park is a huge park featuring a series of steep granite canyons carved by ancient glaciers. I think. The centerpiece is Kings Canyon itself, the deepest gorge in the US (suck it, Grand Canyon!) with vertical drops of up to 8,000 feet--that's like a mile-and-half down when you look over the ledge. Despite its rugged beauty, the park is pretty much off the map among national parks, because very few roads access it--well, one road accesses a small part of it. To plagiarize: "Vehicular access is even more limited than Yosemite as the dead-end canyon approach drive is the only road of any kind within the 462,000 acres of the park and so extended hiking is the only way to visit the wilderness areas."

"Hello, Moses."

Grizzly Falls. Grizz are extinct in CA. Sad irony.

By taking away roads, you effectively preserve the wilderness from the to-do list of about 99% of the population, which includes trusted resource stewards like oilers, miners and loggers. (Then again, if there were oil, they'd find it and find a way. Not having resources is also precious.) I mean, if there weren't a road to the sequoias, or through Yellowstone, how many people would hike even five miles to see them? I'd say about 1%. Look around you.

Don't even need to leave the car.

But I digress; I always do. We were on the only road. And the ten-mile climb up to Cedar Grove, after the 75 miles of undulating roads the day before, had taken its toll. Fortunately, they sold ice cream sandwiches at the campground at the end of the line. I ate one, and was ready to work my way back into and out of this massive gorge. But Boy Scout seemed to lack motivation; he was taking too much time which we couldn't afford to lose. I'm no sports psychologist, but mentally I could tell he doubted himself, which Yoda would've also detected. Boy Scout was thinking of trying, not convinced of doing. After backtracking ten miles downhill to the low point of the gorge, the 20-mile climb out began. And it was now around 11 in the morning and getting hotter by the minute. I began the climb. As luck would have it, Boy Scout got a flat.

This was no fault of his--flats happen. To his credit, he had a spare tube. What he didn't have was a pump to inflate said tube. He had a CO2 cartridge--probably the worst tool ever sold to a cyclist. They're great for one tire, but should you get a second flat, you're empty. And his CO2 cartridge was already empty. Luckily I had a pump and we changed the tire under the midday sun in 100-degree plus heat, using a lot of energy we could ill afford to waste. Though his tire got pumped, his morale had taken another swift kick to the mesolimbic system. He just wasn't going. He was struggling, and later told me he was seeing spots. I went as far as the only water stop on the climb, filled my bottles and knew he wasn't coming any further.

I left Boy Scout at this cougar bar. Shocking.

Once again, a recurring theme of my life's story appeared: I was on my own. For 17 miles. Uphill. LET'S DO THIS. And boy, did I suffer for those hot, unrelenting miles. But I was going to keep going whether it was 17 more miles or 200. That's what I told myself. And it felt like 200 miles. But I would not quit.

I wasn't concerned about Boy Scout, he'd hitch a ride in an RV or something. It's not like I could carry him, and I had my own very real mountains to climb. I only hope he'll be more careful about getting into situations he's not prepared for or can't get himself out of in the future. What would he have done if we'd hiked down into real backcountry? Hitched with a backpacker three days later? That's not really an option. He might've dropped $15K on a helicopter rescue, if he was with someone who could relay the message when there isn't any cell reception. Bottom line: Boy Scout hitched out of Kings Canyon and was fine, but later sent me his photos, and they leave doubts. Mostly about his "lifestyle."

This is a picture Boy Scout took after I went ahead. Curious.

Boy Scout's ride out of the canyon. Again, a curious lack of sleeves.

Aesop's Take-Away

I hope Boy Scout learned a lot, and a bit about self-reliance, rugged individualism, and all that mumbo-jumbo. In places where your character is still considered more important than your possessions--you know, places where people aren't phony facades projecting what they want you to see of them like a Facebook profile, but are judged by their actions--mountain men are the most respected. The West is not all paved-over with Applebee's--just yet. It can be a tough place where water doesn't fall from the sky. (In fact, water is fought over and hoarded like gold.) The West used to make and break men. There are reasons the tough, self-reliant cowboy and mountain man characters evolved in the West, and not in Poughkeepsie or Honolulu. I will not enumerate them here. It's definitely not about having lift on your truck.

I am not a poppa to preach to anyone; I am filled with poo up to my ears and seeping from my faults. But on this trip, I hope Boy Scout became a little less soft, a little more of a mountain man. Boy Scout may have been naive about camping or riding 120-something miles over the Sierras for his first taste of thin air, but that doesn't say anything but that he may simply have lacked experience. Crisis may or may not reveal anything; but I know experience builds character.

Call me a self-hating optimist, but I'm positive he learned just as much about my salty, idiosyncratic character as I did about him.

We're still on speaking terms after 140 miles and 20,000-plus feet on the bike in two days. To me, that's basically a good road trip.

Watching Boy Scout grab a Mountain Dew Code Red from the mini-mart on our last fill-up was a classic finish. Love live Boy Scout. I had a blast.

But, damn, this was like novella length.

Dick!

Christmas Card

I forgot about this Christmas card my friend and old roommate Cameron made a couple of years ago for his store, Hot Rod. Although he's very strictly drug-free due to a medical condition, he had a theory about Rudolf's red nose. Cameron is a funny guy, never afeard to push the envelope of bad taste.

Hot Copy

Now that's what I call copywriting.

 

And that's what I call marketing, simply because I can't read the copy.

Mulholland Drive: The Disorganized Race and The Disorganized Report

David Lynch's Mulholland Drive features a nightmarish dumpster monster in horrifying contrast to the dreamy, delicate beauty of Naomi Watts. Ye be forewarned: this Mulholland Drive tale is more akin to the former.

Hollywood's rough.

Casper Casparian organized a "gentlemen's race," or, as I prefer to call it, a disorganized race. (And seriously, his parents must be total homophone-philes; they probably say stuff like "Our son's rose buds rose from their meaty, stocky stalk to meet the sun.") While an organized race has start times and finish lines, numbers pinned to jerseys, legal releases, race officials and other honesty-preservers, a disorganized race adheres to the much-flawed honor system. After all, real gentlemen don't cheat, and if they did they'd face any insinuation of dishonor with a pistol duel like formerly honorable Congressmen used to.

This informal race was posted on Facebook, the online home of honor, honesty, updates about fro-yo and manic thoughts. Surprisingly, this format apparently proved popular at attracting some of the best racers in the area, who're all over 30... Creepy.

State Champ Hime Herbert looking virginal.

Beginning at 8 am at the intersection of San Vicente and Ocean, the route would take us on a "fast but neutral roll-out" along the Pacific Coast Highway for about 35 miles to the bottom of the Mulholland climb, the real start of the carnage.

A huge crowd of macho dudes in colorful spandex blanketed the intersection, and the finest local race teams (LaGrange, Helen's Cycles, Ritte van Vlaanderen--I don't know, some ersatz Belgian-themed club replete with excessive vowels and a strange dearth of glottal stops) were well represented. I don't usually race with the best guys (it's bad for everyone's morale), yet the elite racers were ready with their $2000 carbon deep-dish wheels with hand-sewn "tyres" and gay Oakleys in colors like "Retina Burn."

(As long as we're wasting time on a blog: I don't know if it's possible to make uglier glasses, but that hasn't stopped Oakley from trying with models like the Jawbone, shown below in the popular "Retina Burn" colorway.

Inorganic, yet grotesque.

Of course, as long as we're talking ugly brOakleys, I'd be remiss if I passed an opportunity to plug my all-time favorite brOaks...

Clearly Bluetooth headsets in line at the grocery store weren't dickhead enough.

No, not the horrible Thumps with a built-in MP3 player and headphones, but the over-the-top in every way, "What? I don't have ears?" monstrosities popular with poker dorks and this slick dickhead below. Anything this ugly could only come from HR Giger and/or Oakley. Fuck, look at this tool. I'd love to join his homophobic, Bud Light-sipping, cigar-smoking foursome with the Hummer golf cart... Wait, is this John Daly?

"You fuckin' nailed that shit, bro."

Bark all you want about faux-kley marketing-speak cliches like Iridium® and Unobtainium® and I'll splatter you with O-Matter®. Oakleys are hideous, and only ever cool in an ironic-moronic 'so bad it's great' way.)

With that out of the way... We set off on the roll-out along PCH with about 80 riders, chaperoned by the lovely Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. They'd properly surmised that this group was either going for a bike ride or about to riot, harassing us over the megaphone with ludicrous requests like "Ride single file, please." Finally, the Sheriff picked out a guy in a red jersey (literally, "Hey you in the red jersey, pull over NOW!") and the rest of us pushed about 26 miles an hour toward the start.

Robin Hood: Men In Tights takes a piss stop. Diedrich smiles, and Tuttle rocks the World Champ stripes. Still making fun of him for it, too.

A bathroom break, which took place behind the Chevron station at Trancas or Zuma Beach, preceded the start. It was pretty funny seeing all those bikes stacked behind the station with streams of urine trickling down toward the highway... Just like any old day in Paris. (The French take a little piss anytime/place they can, like dogs marking territory.) It was then that my training buddy Tim dropped out of the race for an immediate morale boost. But with a group this big, at least I wouldn't race alone.

We proceeded right on Mulholland and the race was ON. And upward. I don't know what happened behind me, but I stuck with the lead group as the road veered immediately toward the sky. I was climbing with a group of about 10 dudes with a combined body fat percentage of about 3%--real racers, nothing but tight little muscles and huge bulking veins. I should know, I was studying them from the back, trying to hold onto a wheel for about ten minutes at my maximum heart rate of 190. Cliche-ridden announcers know the mountains separate the men from the boys, and I quickly learned I was a breathless little girl. In cycling-speak, I popped.

"Not a problem," I'd have said aloud in an English accent if I'd had any breath to spare, "I'll simply drop back into the chase group. Surely they're holding back a little." No sooner was I caught by the first chase group of about five before being dropped by them. "Fuck!" I exclaimed without accent. I was solo again, with no other group in sight below me; I was hurting, my heart was pounding, my legs were screaming, it was just the first five miles of the race, and I was going to have to go it alone. It never got any easier from there, either. Heading over the mountains into the San Fernando Valley, the temperature started to skyrocket into the 100s, and I quickly realized that wearing my all-black kit had been an unfortunate idiotic choice.

"This is how I get high." --Andy MacDonald

I could go all sentimental/ubi sunt/southlandtopology.com about the beauty of the coastal range that is Malibu's backdrop, how I prefer the solitude of the mountains to the thousands of $20 million-dollar mansions stacked six inches apart, forming a stucco seawall along most of Malibu's (and SoCal's) once-beautiful coast. But this day I didn't notice much beyond the brain-sucking heat and my own breathless suffering. This was a race, not a ride, and that created a myopic focus on the challenge at hand: "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women." At least that's how Conan the Barbarian would've described my flailing mission.

Casper creeping up out of nowhere.

A few hours later, finally relieved of solitude by Casper "The Casp" Casparian creeping up alongside me, I crested Seven Minute Hill (I think it's called Cold Water Creek Drive by non-cyclists) to reach the finish. There were a lot of dudes who'd whooped us--probably about 15 or 20 already there. Oddly, not very many came in after us. Out of 80 or so who started the race, only 25 or so finished. Everyone was completely wiped. And now we simply had to climb over to the ocean side of the coastal range to get home. In the words of Casper, "Next time I'm going to pick a route that ends closer where we'll finish."

Finish line/middle of nowhere. I think Calabassas?

Thankfully there were some cold Cokes and workout beers/Lance beers (Michelob Ultra) waiting at the top of Old Topanga, which helped us over the final hump.

My computer says the race was around 70 miles with 3300 calories burned; more importantly, I didn't get last place.

They say competition is half mental, but I'm pretty sure this race was full-mental. I really enjoyed abusing myself, I hate myself a lot.

Yah trick yah!

I'll look forward to the next disorganized race. Then I'll steal another photo of myself looking fast and pain-free from rockstorephotos.com, to leave another alternate yet photographic impression of that day's reality. Like a mother after labor, I'll look back somewhat blindly, and fondly.

I didn't pee myself, that's the sweat running off my chin.

McBeach in China

People like myself and Thomas L. Friedman often accuse America of buying so much disposable plastic crap. I must've forgotten who's making it and trying to live up to our standards.

Clearly someone at McDonald's is greasing the right palms in China.

God’s Fucking Country

Pray for surf? Answered.

To the man on the street, El Salvador may be best known for those murdered nuns, the prominent murderous gangs filtering north, or maybe the long civil war and accompanying death squads. But for adventurous, naïve surfers like myself, this country is also known as the home of some of the best waves on earth. The best of them is a stony headland appropriately known as Punta Roca, and it sits just a short paddle-out from one of the foulest towns in the world, a suburban ghetto with another misnomer, La Libertad. La Libertad kind of looks like Satan’s worker’s dormitories dressed down as a poor fishing town infested with crack. And though it looks pretty bad on the surface, the smell is still much worse, a searing combo of raw sewage (plumbing? What plumbing?) and discarded fish guts and trash marinating each other in the constant, humid heat of Central America. Paradise.

My welcome into La Libertad was no less inviting. As I first rolled into town, I waved a cheerful hello to some dozen children eyeing us sore-thumb gringos as we passed by. The corners of their mouths never even flinched toward a smile, and a few responded to my benevolent gesture by playing air machine guns and pretending to mow us down. Aw, precious. As if that weren’t a flashing neon achtung, we stayed in a penal colony/apartment building fortified by ten-foot cement walls topped with barbed wire, and the only spiked gate in and out was guarded by a guy in a brownish wife beater with a thousand yard stare and a pistol-grip 12-gauge at the ready.  

Los Tigres Del Norte 

A few nights later, bored of sitting in our cell block in La Libertad and passing the evenings drinking beer, reading magazines, and watching the same four reggaeton videos rotate on Latin MTV, we decided to acquire some culture and taste the nightlife of the capital city, San Salvador, and sped toward the lively Zona Rosa. Which is when things took another unforeseen turn. As we left an early dinner ready to hit the town, we found six shady-looking dudes standing around outside the restaurant’s entrance. Three government vehicles (beat-up white Nissan Sentras with badge-ish stickers on the doors) were parked on all sides of our car, blocking us in against a wall. The men approached us, flashing badges and identifying themselves as immigration agents. I’d seen traps like this several times before during my travels in Mexico and Colombia. It’s known as la mordida — the bite. Usually you just hand the Keystone cops a $20 and its all smiles and no hard feelings, maybe even a friendly beer afterward, cop’s treat. But I wasn’t sure how it worked with immigration agents.

The leader of the good squad asked for our passports. 

“We aren’t carrying them,” I replied in Spanish. Who carries their valuable passport out at night in a dangerous country?

“Then how do we know you’re not here illegally? We need to see your passport stamp.”

We were being harassed by la migra? The irony of the whole situation was not lost on me, though I did lose my wits momentarily. I began telling the immigration officials how we’d traveled thousands of miles from el Norte searching for work, following our dreams, and finally stealing across the border into God’s Country. This joke was in poor taste, I admit. It did not amuse the immigration officials, either; they threw me against the wall with a little extra oomph, and cuffed me. In retrospect, I had been drinking and it was a real asshole thing to say. But still, they were robbing us, I wasn't about to thank them.

Fortunately we’d befriended some local surfers, and one of them, Manny, was to be our guide for the night. He arrived right as I was being thrown into the back of a car and intercepted. He grabbed my arm, ripped me right from the grips of the cops. I didn’t know what the fuck to think. I was cuffed and being pulled in two directions. The agents surged forward, then suddenly Manny stepped up and began yelling at the authorities, bitching them out about their lack of manners and how corrupt officials are ruining El Salvador and killing tourism. To paraphrase, "What tourist would return after this kind of treatment?" I speak some Spanish, but I couldn’t quite follow the train of expletives he nailed them with as they retreated to their cars, unboxed our ride, and fled. 

It was a stunning display, one little guy chasing off a group of cops. And from what I hear about Salvadorian prisons, Manny might’ve saved my life. At the least he saved me some bribe money, which I gratefully donated to him.

As denouement to this dramatic climax, we scrapped the night and sped the whole way back to our preferred Salvadorian prison.

Tangentially, I don’t know why Salvadorians can cuss out the cops, but Manny told me it’s common practice over there. As another example of the disregard for the authorities, people sped up when they saw cops, as if to say, “Oh shit, there are the cops! Speed up before they have time to notice us.” People would drive 50 miles per hour down the road, then suddenly gun it to 90 if they saw a cop car parked by the side of the road. Manny told me he wanted both a head start and good head of steam in case he attracted the corrupt coppers' attention. Only a fool stops for the cops in El Salvador, Manny informed me, they’ll just rob you if they get the chance. 

A very cliche joke in Latin America goes: What's the difference between the cops and criminals? A badge.

Adios, Jesus

Despite these bitchy rants about my misadventures in Jesus country, it wasn’t all bad. My favorite fruit, mango, littered the ground everywhere, and pupusas, the Salvadorian national dish of stuffed tortillas, were dirt cheap and damn tasty. Of course it wasn’t until I was home that latent “pupusa’s revenge” set in, and my bowels began reacting like a fish out of water. But before the ultimate price became clear, the food was cheap if not free; the surf was free and perfect, if as bacterially suspect as the food; and the country is clear proof of an angry, Old Testament-style God, in spite of all of that country's dedications to Skydaddy's hippie love-child.

Pray for a lack of intestinal parasites? Hello-ooo?

Moreover, after this bad trip I came home with more respect than ever for my Salvadorian friends and neighbors in L.A. (Well, I only have one Salvadorian friend, Jon Juan, who I surf with.) Salvadorians worked their asses off to get to the States, to escape that place, and they (I mean you, Jon Juan) are some of the nicest, most generous people I know.

Should you think I’m the one being harsh on Salvadorians, do a bit of research on how they treat each other. For example, the laws restricting abortion in El Salvador are among the strictest in the world, and the very first words — Article 1 of El Salvador’s Constitution — protect life from the moment of conception. Abortion is forbidden for rape, incest, fetal malformation, and even threat to the life of the mother. Ectopic pregnancies cannot be treated until the embryo dies or the fallopian tube bursts. Women can get two to eight years for sparing their own lives and from 30 to 50 years if the fetus was viable. Thirty years in the can years for a mistimed pull-out — that's some Old Testament-style punishment.

Travel is the best teacher, but what's becoming most clear after these surf trips are my own cultural biases. Then again, if you want to read about sunshine instead of a critical analysis, read somewhere else.