Road Trip

Scott needed to go to Canada for a wedding. He was home from U.C. Berkeley the same summer I was figuring out what to do with myself at all. The previous autumn I returned from Belgium and found myself in Portland reconsidering my life's ambition. By the following spring I had been through Mono, Pneumonia, a failed attempt to get fit for the coming Cycling season, a broken foot, simultaneous day and night shift warehouse jobs, and an asleep-at-the-wheel collision in my mom's car. Emphatically finalizing the destruction of all my morale and financially wiping me out completely.

So I returned to friends and the familiar comfort of free-couch-surfing, inland of California's Central Coast. Scott's option of being in a wedding was his most vexing immediate decision. His dilemma was that he had no car. When I offered mine and the scenerio of dropping me off in Portland to meet up with a girl I met the previous winter, amid my failed attempt of residency; he committed.

The girl and I dated a couple of times before I dismissed the northwest and returned to the bird farm of San Juan Bautista to keep it a-float while the Bird Man took his family on a cross country vacation. Bird farming had in the past, been an ideal flexible, part time job for an aspiring bike racer. Feeding, cleaning, shoveling and whole-sale delivering of birds was less my forte than Cycling and Cycling had broken me. The bird business made sense as a part of the whole equation, but was hugely depressing as a stand alone reality. I was free falling in a void of ambition and being a bird farmer was not helping me fly out of my dispair. A do-over in Oregon, even for a few days might be what I needed to reset my clock. I hoped.

The details were decided that we would need nearly as many cigars as gallons of gas. And a third contributor to bring the total cost down to something two penniless twenty-somethings could afford. I opted for hitch-hikers but was over ruled. My Honda Civic, purchased from the original owner, a large, single, Samoan women, had low miles considering the wear. Given my palmares and lack of SAT scores, the car was a shining asset and often 2nd home. The driver's seat was beat down and torn apart like a bike racer who had given up. The rest of the interior was mint condition 1982 blue-vinyl. The car needed suspension replaced on the driver side and a new carburetor. The body was in good shape but the paint, well, the paint was blue oxidized crap.

Customization's I made included a melted, improvised ashtray on the driver's side view mirror fairing from extinguishing cigars and a Candle Box cassette stuck in the tape player. This was 1995. Besides the car, I owned one pair of shoes, 3 shirts, 2 pair of shorts and one pair of Gap Khaki pants (for formal events), a sleeping bag and the complete REM catalog to date on CD but no CD player. I owned 3 books; On The Road, The Subterraneans and The Bible. As well as two suitcases stuffed full of cycling clothing for any season or weather condition. I had zero continuity.

Stu was happy for me to go, mostly because it got my free-loading apathy out of his house for a week. The twist was him choosing on the fly to go with us. Perhaps for bonus marital credits as it gave Doreen some serious solitude. Stu, 12 years my senior had been (and still is) a mentor and sounding board since I was 17. He was a Butcher by trade and as good if not better than any old, cigarillo chewing drunk Belgian at motor-pacing bike racers as well. For the trip, Stu would be let off in Tacoma where his brother would pick him up. A week later he would fly home. Scott would connect again with me in Portland after witnessing the nuptials.

During the drive up, I don't remember much other than Stu naming each song on the radio within the first three chords, and Scott reciting literature and grinding into me with each quote that I needed to get myself together and go to college. The Civic had no A/C so the oven hot wind pounded through the car as we each yelled whatever needed to be said. I'm not even sure how much I drove.

Portland was the briefest of rest stops for my companions as I quickly stranded myself so as to guilt my brother into let me into his house. The plea of, "I have no where to go and no way to get there" was enough to squat in his basement for a few days. My plan was to shower, call the girl and hope for the best.

Unfortunately Scott and Stu drove off with my shoes still in the car. Knowing that without shoes I would likely hang around the house longer, my brother hurried me into his car and chased down my friends at the Chevron station on Powell Blvd, half way between I-205 and the Ross Island Bridge.

The week passed quickly. The girl kept me entertained with a trip to the coast, walks in Forrest Park, a Toad The Wet Sprocket concert in Washington park and dinner with her parents one evening. The blunt questioning of her father from across the dinner table, surmising my sub-standard state, "So, you work on a bird farm?" confirmed my suspicion that I was likely the lowliest rescue his daughter had ever brought home. At the very least, I could not disappoint.

Four days on, I sat on my parents porch on a Monday, watching cars drive past on the wooded, rural highway. I don't recall if it was under the guise of wanting to visit them or if I had maximized my welcome at my brothers house prematurely as to why I was there. Regardless, by the time Scott drove up the gravel driveway, I was well into the 3rd Cuban Cigar of the dozen I brought home from Europe and stashed for special occasions. His tardiness didn't bother me so much as the fear I would still be sitting on the porch when my parents returned from their days work.

Scott had been held up at the border. Apparently when you are 22, a resident of California but driving a car registered in Oregon to your "friend" and there is no registration document in the vehicle, you don't profile well and your mother country isn't convinced they want you back. Fortunately for me, the 6 hour drive once he was released, to where he picked me up, allowed him to process and see the experience as a valuable life lesson and not want to choke me to death. But I still sensed some tension.

Nothing calms the nerves like a good Cuban and we were back on the road before dinner. Again, much of the drive is long lost from memory, but what is still vivid is the re-kindled motivation that comes with a goal. The optimistic, youthful conversations of a future you know nothing about, the glowing red light behind the ash of a cigar mid-drag, and the almost cooling night air in August on I-5 at 75 mph sometime after midnight.