Mum, do bears like whiskey?

Part 1

It’s hard travelling alone: facing the long stretches of road that lie in front of you with nothing but a syrupy, non-fat vanilla chai frappe by your side.

Heading upwards (north I think they call it) from San Francisco, the wilderness along Highway 1 is maiden and rugged. As you drive the twisted precipice of beaten coastline, the ocean on your left violently thunders. On your right, mountains rise, omnipotent; the scrappy cliffs scarred with jagged rocks and sprinkled with flushes of wildflowers.

These (and the syrupy, non-fat vanilla chai frappe) were my only companions from San Francisco to Portland. They were difficult to navigate - twisting, turning and volatile, but with a beauty that can only be described as breathtaking. Qualities not dissimilar to that of my most beloved friends.

***

“You’re taking the 1 all the way to Seattle?” Jed said with an edge of disconcerting surprise. Then, adjusting his tone to correlate with his Californian jaw line and adventure/surfer dude disposition, he said “Fun”.

Jed was just some guy I met in Port ReyesStation, California. We’d both stopped for coffee at a cafe that sold real espresso and we were enjoying the sun in the local park. He was headed south and me… well I was heading upwards.

“Enjoy your trip”, he said with a smile full of confident teeth. And with a self-assured wave, he left.

“I will” …

I meant it. Because I had nothing better to do. I was coming out of a long winter of discontent and a luxurious middle class depression. I had no future, no past, all I had was the road - and an excellent coffee to start the day.

Aside from the pimply attendant at Starbucks, Jed was the last person I spoke to until Portland.

***

If spending 10 hours a day holed up in a tin can of a Rio Kia wasn’t isolating enough, I decided to camp, by myself, along the coast, mainly because I had spent $60 on pirate goods in San Francisco and wanted to save money**.

As we all know, aloneness can be freeing, liberating, peaceful and highly rewarding. It’s a time to think and reflect, to let thoughts, ideas and preconceived notions about yourself and the world fall out in front of you and unravel with the road.

Loneliness, as we all know, is like a tepid bath. What had once been lovely and hot is now a soggy reminder that you should get out. There’s a little bit of melancholy and nostalgia, and a whole lot of wrinkly-fingered indulgence.

But both loneliness and aloneness take on a different meaning when bears get involved…

To be continued…

** It’s actually not much cheaper at all with some camp sites costing up to $45. On average you can expect to pay about $30 a night for a tent only (unpowered) site, which is about the same price for a dorm bed in a decent hostel. But there’s less 18 year olds falling over themselves in the hallways after jagerbombs.

•         For those of you thinking about camping in the US: you can do it a lot cheaper than designated campgrounds in National Parks. City parks in most towns allow for camping, you just need to ask/inform the local police. I read this in Backpacking in North America a travel guide from 1982, but it was also confirmed by my American host and owner of a hostel in San Jose, Costa Rica
• ·      However: as the number of US vacationers to National Parks for overnight or extended holidays is dwindling, I would also encourage more camping in the National Parks if you can afford it – they are picturesque and overly manicured to point of a Disney film set but there’s hot showers and elk!

elk!

  

And then...

The day had started with a moan: a damp expanse of humph. The clock radio clicked over and I woke to post-war-time favourites – Stormy Weather, The Man I Love, Aren’t You Glad You’re You.

Raspberry to that.

The previous day, I had stood on the beach and felt the “revelation” to write. Ideas about form and structure had blinked their eyes and stretched their arms in my mind.

I had been listening to the fine sand-papered voice of Sean Penn reading Bob Dylan’s 'Chronicles' on audio book. A beat poet without the awkward timing, Dylan was a writer and his rhythm was in my head. The streams of prose that were now bubbling in my brain sounded like I had something to say. And finally, I’d prove to all those who doubted, that I could in fact - write.

And so, I sat down to - write.

And I wrote in the old fashioned pen to paper style.

And the pen on the paper made the shapes of words.

And I was writing. Words. In the very literal sense.

But they were wonky words. They were bumbly and directionless.

‘What’s it about? Where is it going? Why isn’t it good? Why is it, in fact, a bit shit?’

Those babbling brooks were taken over by a sloppy fudge and the scribbles on the paper were not the genius that had been in my mind’s eye when I was swooning in my own self-revelation on the shoreline of San Simeon.

Oh god the parallels with my life were too fucking obvious and clichéd that I was getting on my own nerves.

So instead of persevering with words and facing my own pitfalls as an adult, I watched Gladiator on TV. And as the sandbags of loneliness attached themselves to my feet and the overwrought metaphors bullied themselves to the front of my thoughts, I ate corn chips, drank terrible red wine and got gooey over Joaquin Phoenix ‘do’ evil.

Eventually I found a groggy and salty sleep.

Then, with corn chip crumbs pressed into the side of my face, it was time to get up.

Breakfast happened.

Then, a scolding coffee in an oversized polystyrene cup.

Then, a pause, with nothing to fill it but a feeling of emptiness, before I pushed forward into the day and exited the hotel car park.

And then…

(Beautiful, picturesque photos were meant to follow here. I was going use the awe-inspiring landscapes that belittle any niggly self-doubt to speak for themselves.

But now I realise I only took photos of fat sea lions on this leg of the trip)

Where's the walrus**? 

** or sea lion.

***

Six hours after pressing out of the hotel car park in San Simeon, I arrived in San Francisco. The drive had actually been spectacular.

But it wasn’t until San Francisco, when I charged the little Kia up treacherously steep intersections and made the same right turn about 19 times (another parallel with my life perhaps?), that something changed (aside from finally making the left turn).

From here on my trip would be different and I began to just write. Maybe it was the Haight/Ashbury sign, maybe it was the hippy history of San Fran, or maybe it was pirate socks from Dave Egger’sValencia 826, but from here on in my notebook became filled with literary sketches, ideas for sentences and blotchy memories of moments I found funny. And it didn’t matter if the words were a little wonky. I had no one to write for, no deadlines to disappoint and no expectations to not be a bit shit at it (not even from myself).

There were no big revelations or poetic clichés. Just a doughnut, an open schedule and the freedom to fuck it up.

And who knew, maybe I’d find a perfect coffee along the way.

And yes, that was another parallel for my life.

(Little did I know how much I would rely on this newly inspired catch cry. Three months from this moment, I would fly into Heathrow airport and within 24 hours my well-laid plans would melt from under my feet because I had, in fact, fucked something up. And it resulted in the direction of my life for the next year changing, irrevocably.

But that’s a story for another time - the colour of my eyes have not yet been changed in Mexico, I have not yet been healed by Dudley the basset hound nor have I been won over by the Jalapeno/Cheddar biscuits in Silverlake with friends I can only describe as some of the best.

So for now, it was farewell to northern California and on to Oregon state.)

Let us be lovers we'll marry our fortunes together...

From the dusty carnival of Los Angeles I travelled north... 

So obviously the drive was tedious. But then...

Wah hey! It's San Francisco!

I like this wobbly shot...

...but the lines in this one are better... in my professional opinion...

Outside my hotel window.

Is it too cliched for me to be a Dave Eggers fangirl-stalky-type? I think so! 

Things I bought at 826 Valencia: 1 pair of woolen pirate socks (which will be invaluable in the hot Mexican summer no doubt), 2 eye patches for smaller pirates than I, 1 packet of Mermaid Repellent (they're so prissy those mermaids with their long flowing hair and siren songs, I don't know what the boys see in them anyway - and no. I'm not jealous), a treasure chest and the necessary accompanying treasure (because who has the time to pillage these days).  

On the radio, I listened to Tony Kurshner ruminate on President Obama's announcement. It was an excellent day.

Dough and longing in San Francisco

She shovelled the doughnut into her mouth. Its flesh: bouncy and light, with a whiff of decadent indulgence. Its frosting: some sort of crusted, sugary glaze stuff that sweetened the dough to poofy perfection.

But there was an emptiness beside her, a ghost of a lover, a hot and trusty phantom she had longed would materialize since she was 14. As yet, he hadn’t. And on a quiet San Franciscan street, she had an urge to turn to this absent person next to her and tell him that, “Thi-th e’th faw-ing del-lith-or-th”. It would be difficult to annunciate with a mouthful of dough.

The mouthful soon disappeared; a chew, maybe two, and the poofy dough evaporated.

Another bite.

Shit she wanted to inhale this thing. She wanted to lay herself down on a bed of doughnuts and wake up, naked and lazy, and nibble gently on the ear of a doughnut. She wanted to awaken slowly and to have distracted petting escalate into full-blown hungry munching. Clammy morning skin and dough, squishy and malleable, sweet with a sugary film that blistered and glistened in the dimly lit dawn.

She was a bit drunk.

An oversized glass of white wine at dinner and a double G+T at a bar where a wobbly nugget of man was on the decks. His cap turned sideways and a thick silver chain bounced against his trampoline of chest. He was wearing the requisite XXX-large t-shirt with matching-sized jeans that hung below any agreeable pantline as he bobbed emphatically pumping some oversized phat beats.

Here, everything was oversized. In the United States of America, the take-away coffee cups, the thundering cars, the mountains, coastlines… the pastry goods; they were all slightly cartoonish in their largeness. But this was San Francisco and for now she wanted to fill herself up with it.

Or at least to fill the absence that she felt next to her.

A blinking red LED lighted ‘open’ sign caught her attention on her way back to her downtown hotel. But it was the lifeless snack food in the display cases that drew her in. The whiteness of the florescent lights inside store made for a clinical observation as she perused the specimens: glazed, chocolate, sprinkled or pineapple doughnuts.

One. Last. Bite. And it was gone. Farewell to a phat, ephemeral friend. Nothing left but a sticky residue on her fingertips remained. Even the ghost had left, and was replaced by a sweaty, short man, “Pretty girl like you shouldn’t be walking the streets alone at this time of night.”  

“Thank you…” she said. “I think.”

He walked on with, what she could only assume, were doughnut-like thoughts of his own.

She threw her wrapper in a nearby trash can. The street lamps laying shadows on the empty streets. The click of her heels echoed as they hit the sidewalk.

She was alone.

But the doughnut was fucking delicious. 

In the hands of the uncertain and the fickle, a trail is left behind...

Wielding an overpriced camera that I barely knew how to use, I went looking for something on the foreshore of Santa Monica and Venice Beach... 

...and found a neon sign...
 Santa Monica, May 2012

...some pizza and hot dogs...
Venice Beach, May 2012

...and a rare store holder that didn't tackle me to the ground for taking photos .

Some local colour on Venice Beach.

It's just gross.

Wielding an overpriced camera that I barely knew how to use, I went looking for something on the foreshore of Santa Monica and Venice Beach... and all I found were these shitty looking peace necklaces.

There's also an hirsute "Gorilla Man" in the bakground of this photo.

Lunch.

Inside the $5 freak show, a tiny freak show of yesteryear.

I have no caption for this - just a chimp wanting money, what a chump.

The fairground on Santa Monica as dusk begins to settle.

Mark Nunan this one's for you x

Santa Monica Beach, May 2012