This piece is for Miss Berman, Mr. Eaton, Mr. McWilliams, Mr. Pintar, Mr. Strauss, Mr. Wright, and particularly Miss Hogg…and Mr. McWilliams gets a dual thanks for inspiring the style.
JULY 2: I wake up at 4:15 a.m. after less than five hours of sleep, clean up, and rearrange my bags one last time for maximum comfort, wisely choosing to switch my portable bag from a large over-the-shoulder to a backpack but leaving my camera behind in the process. I worry that Samantha and Julie might leave our problematic front door open so I tape a note to their door telling them not to leave through the front but use the easily-locked back. Typical Rostan style, I scratch out the bottom and rewrite the whole thing. Mike and Tyler already up with a little coffee and fruit salad, we load up the car and go. We don't actually get on the road out of Los Angeles until 6:20, after a stop at the Shell near Temple to fill up with gas and oil (Mike pours his own oil), a second stop to pick up Matt and his own provisions, and a third stop so I can acquire cash-on-hand from the Silver Lake Bank of America. Once on the freeway heading north, I come across a quote from the architect John Lautner I'd written last August, "I am a realist, but change is the only thing that's real." Per what appears to be a Big Sur tradition, breakfast is bought at the Van Nuys Burger King, where I eat a ham omelet sandwich which tastes oddly sweet. Mike is behind the wheel…he'll be behind the wheel for the entire weekend and drive with both flair and sensibility which I, a driver with a low opinion of his abilities, admire in the extreme, and I think he might have a shot at Le Mans. Tyler dozes in the back for a while. He just got new glasses, and as Adam's spectacles make him look like Peter Sellers, Tyler's lend him a resemblance to the young Michael Caine. We pass the hills of Malibu, the fog of Camarillo with the peaks rising above, Santa Barbara (with its six miles to Summerland sign and the sunglass-wearing saluting Santa), and Mariposa Beach, where sunlight finally streams out to a flourish from Devendra Banhart and Amy MacDonald. Tyler's awake by now and we launch into the three main conversation topics this weekend: art, life, and the opposite sex…Tyler's onetime semi-flame Erin joined the last great Big Sur excursion, and there is mutual agreement that her not being here for this ride is suitable. We put on Akron/Family as we make the final transition from the inner grasslands to the dramatic coastline, acquiring more gasoline and pausing at an Elephant Seal beach where this time I don't have to walk several miles and an observation point where I stand on a cliff's edge for a few minutes, looking at the rolling blue Pacific with brown plants below and green and yellow hills surrounding and a smell of cinnamon in the air, and I am so happy the guys, Tyler especially, made sure I had a final chance to come here. Mike steers around the winding highway while we make lousy double-entendres and sing hundreds of songs in snippet form, from 1960s pop to 1990s alternative to things we just make up, Matt's ballad of the "Motorcycle Man" the most inspired of all. Half an hour from Big Sur, we slow down, first so Mike can relieve himself, then at a construction site on a very tight section of freeway, where a Caltrans employee volunteers his approval of our packing and shares that back in his army days he was briefly married to a stripper. Repeat, volunteered. Finally we arrive at Big Sur ten minutes before noon, a land of distinct, deliberately rough architecture for motels, art galleries, and restaurants (though the logs don't seem to fit the Henry Miller Library) and giant, giant trees, not redwood-class but reasonable enough. A few weeks before I had attempted to reserve us a campsite only to find them all filled up due to the holiday weekend. Pfeiffer, Fernwood, and Andrew Molera are full but the clerk at Molera, a very disinterested man, hands us a sheet of nearby, usually more open sites and suggests Bottcher's Gap. We shoot up the coast, more spectacular now than before (when I was seeing so much spectacle I though the whole thing was getting banal), cross the Bixby Bridge to the strains of some ultra-trad country, and turn on the Palo Colorado. What follows is a 7.4 mile uphill drive through forests and curves, occasionally passing the most rundown shacks imaginable, shacks we assume cost half a million apiece. After a few minutes wondering if we'll ever see civilization or signs thereof again, Bottcher's Gap with cars and clearing. A State Park caretaker with small potbelly and large beard tells us to take our pick and we choose a spot overlooking the valley with picnic table and grille. Setting up the camp (I use a little too much water to clean my shoes), we discover Matt forgot to bring the tentpoles for his tent, so we decide three of us will cram in our tent while Mike sleeps in the Volkswagen. Camp is ready, jelly and peanut butter sandwiches consumed, the other vaguely hippie-looking hikers and jugglers are gone, and we decide to hike down to the Little Sur River along a trail the caretaker pointed out. All downhill for a change, on a wide, dusty path, and we take an easy pace while musing on how we wish Adam and Chad were here…this is the anti-Vegas…and why Holly should or shouldn't have been here and how Kate probably couldn't have tolerated it here with the flies which are NOT LEAVING US ALONE. There's one particular vista where a giant tree-covered mountain splits the middle of two others, the Pacific shines like ice on the reservoirs of Mahoning County in the distance, and the sky is azure and never-ending. A passing couple informs us the Little Sur is ten more minutes down. It turns out to be the trail to the Little Sur off the main one, a thin, steep descent which doubles back twenty times or so and requires scampering over the hulks of trees which collapsed in the wildfires and under some natural archways, but oh, it is beautiful, the hollowed out black trunks straight from Disney forests and Pan's Labyrinth and more trees turned sheer red and orange from exposure to the flame. At the bottom…oh, the bottom, the natural clearing next to the gently rapidous river holding no attraction for us and we keep going to a point where there's wide open space on the other side…and plenty of rocks. I pull of my shoes and socks and soon I'm leaping from one stepping stone to another, after a lifetime of only seeing this done in cartoons. The guys strip down to their underwear and dive straight in. I'm more cautious (of course), but I'm reveling in the wonder of it all, a land which feels like God's country for the explorer and the dreamer. We sit on a giant log next to a single orange flower and a few white buds breaking the monotony of the trees, some alive, many others ready for a caber toss, Mike plays his portable guitar, Tyler and Matt share stories, I listen, we dress, we smoke a little weed, and climb back up. Mike does double climbing when he finds an especially awesome tree similar to the one Aunt Susie had in her backyard in Highland Heights. It's getting on 5:00 now, the sun sinking lower in the sky, and when we return to the triforce of a vista we stop for ten minutes to climb to some higher ground and admire where we are and how different it is from Los Angeles. Tyler takes a bad leap down and rips his only pair of jeans and skins his knee. Matt has more pants above, and I'd like to think my marching us on to the beat of the theme from The Great Escape helps pull us through. Back at camp, Mike and I gather more wood for the fire as the bugs keep flying around. Dinner is roast chicken with onions and potatoes, carved up and served on buttermilk bread, with two bottles of Burgundy Pinot Noir acquired for three bucks each from Trader Joe's to wash it down. Mike brought the food, I brought the wine. Everything is delicious. A single man with his own bottle of wine and a corkscrew (we forgot one) is next to us, and we invite him over. His name is Charlie, a slightly paunchy man with an easy, friendly smile, who's actually from Pittsburgh. He graduated from Penn State the month before with a degree in electrical engineering, and is now camping alone through California for a few weeks before starting grad school at Yale. He's a little bit of an interloper, but soon the red wine and our general drowsiness goes to our heads and we don't mind. There is time for a Frisbee game on the high plateau next to the campground, and then we sit on the edge of the plateau and watch the sky turn purple and the sun set over the green peaks and drops and it is so dramatic better than Arizona border and Carmel sunsets and I quietly thank God I am here with these people. There really are NO WORDS. We pass a bowl and I successfully use a lighter for the first time in my 24 years. At the campsite Tyler grabs a guitar and spends half an hour coaxing one riff after another from it with his beautiful, hypnotic strumming and we stoke the fire and watch people with bigger tents and more provisions set up shop next to us. If I wasn't in Big Sur I would have been at the St. James Men's Group and I quietly sing our theme song, "God is so Good." 10:00 quiet hours and we scrunch into our tent and sleeping bags and wish each other good night while I lie awake in the heat, the wine and Tylenol doing nothing for me.
JULY 3: I wake up at time immaterial and immemorial, but early enough to say good-bye to Charlie, making an early start, and watch the colorless void move to pale blue turning deep and rich as velvet in the sunrise. The bumps and scratches I'd heard the night before were courtesy of Matt, who couldn't take the compression and slept outside. I read Newsweek to pass the time while awaiting the others, and discover not only that I've read six books on their "what to read now" list, including three in the Top Ten and the number-one (The Way We Live Now), but also a poem by Kay Ryan called "Ideal Audience" which reminds me of my housemates the same way the Grateful Dead's "Playing in the Band" does. Of course, when Tyler, Matt, and finally Mike rise and shine (Mike can sleep through anything), Tyler rips the page with the poem out so we can kindle the fire. We grill bagels and eat them with fruit and cream cheese, pack up the tent, finish the dwindling water supply (there wasn't enough to make coffee), and are on the road again around 8:30, half an hour from when Mike arose. The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan takes us through the 7.4 miles downhill, and we wonder how the oxen who helped build these roads managed as we slip around trucks. We sing along with the young Dylan and fret on how three nice-looking girls arrived as soon as we were leaving. Forty minutes later I'm in very familiar territory: Monterey and Carmel, where Beth and Andrew took me and the parents two years ago…they're in England, the one time I was able to come up to San Francisco. We grab lattes from a Peet's and then set out on the two hour straightaway up the 5 to San Francisco, and I am almost quivering with excitement...last time, I walked across the Golden Gate Bridge and saw Coit Tower and City Lights but little else. The only worry is in where exactly I'll be sleeping. Matt has friends on Haight Street and Mike has Lauren's house outside the city but we're all counting on some arrangement with Tyler's longtime friend Liz. We call Chad and Adam as soon as reception is established. They left with Kate early this morning and are fast approaching San Francisco. We put on the Department of Eagles, Kid Koala, then Harry Chapin, and shoot down a boring stretch of road which resembles the Ohio Turnpike, stopping only in the upscale community of Casa Del so Mike can pee on a long, winding driveway. After a few red convertibles and skirting Palo Alto, we clock into San Francisco, California at 11:37. It's Tyler's first visit here (same with Adam) although he almost moved here, and he immediately judges it to be similar to Boston. Wonder of wonders, Mike finds a no-limit parking spot after dropping Matt and his things off, and we cover our belongings with tarp and set out for THE Haight-Ashbury, a locale I have only dreamed of since elementary school. Matt catches up with us fast, and the entire group is reunited at the Haight-Ashbury Music Center, a room full of guitars and more percussion than anyone should know what to do with. I am a little surprised how warm my heart gets when we're all together again. I tell Chad how much I wished he was there yesterday, and Adam and I quietly celebrate that the trip we talked of all last year is finally happening…it may not be Disneyland, but it's cool enough. Adam is clean-shaven again probably due to Kate's insistence, and we're all hungry. We pick the People's Café—we like the name—and I order a fish sandwich just to make sure I get to eat fish ONCE in San Francisco. It's delicious but so messy a chunk of fish falls onto the floor at first bite. Chad unnecessarily apologizes for this and Mike in turn tells me I have mayo smeared in the corner of my mouth, and I lose my temper. Immediate shame. Thankfully, by now we know each other so well that Chad and Mike know I have NO ill feelings towards them and they happily tell me I have nothing to apologize for. Chad loves San Francisco, pointing out that you can find an arts center anywhere you live, but why would you want to live in Omaha? We poke through some stores, including Ever After, owned by a woman whose relationship with her used books (one of which is a graphic incestual text) is like Jack Black and John Cusack's to used records, only more gritty and nasty, and Aardvarks, where I would have bought a 1982 Air Supply world tour shirt if it wasn't $45. The Julian Lennon is $75. After a stop in Held Over, we walk straight down Haight, past the weirdly incongruous but older Amoeba Music and a movie theatre showing Truffaut and The Secret of the Ooze, to Golden Gate Park. The women are beautiful, mostly dressed in black and with soulful eyes, and I can ignore the tattoos and piercings a little easier. The man who ate by us at the café is selling art on the street. Mike leaps around a mural. In the park, we find an open grassy plain and start up seven-way Frisbee, Chad trying to take pictures while playing. Kate is fascinated by his camera and he begins what will be a weekend-long tutorial in how to use a top-of-the-line digital, which will yield beautiful pictures from both parties. All our worries and stresses vanish with the rapidity of me clanging into a maybe-homeless man's shopping cart full of recyclable cans to make a catch. Adam flops on the ground, Matt and Tyler look cool as ever, Mike looks like a member of Little Feat or a similar 1970s act on Warner Bros. Records. After hearing a loud, obscene argument between two other people we leave the Park (though Chad lingers at some walking signs he judges as masterpieces of graphic design…he has the most extraordinary eye and he's a natural teacher) to catch a bus to the Mission district, stepping into "the real San Francisco," only it's so real and not hipstered enough that we can't find the head shops or dealers we'd been looking for. The most exciting things that happen are 1) we see some absolutely beautiful churches and quirky shop signs 2) we see a gigantic armory-type building with no identification and 3) my hat blows off my head and I run fifty feet to get it. Keeping up our walking, fueled only by lunches and a shared potless brownie, we get to Philz Coffee on the outskirts of the Castro. Liz stepped out on her break a minute before, so we go to a gay bar with the most stereotypically gay music-filled jukebox possible, share beers, grab a free map (which happens to be gay-oriented, just like the "Happy Penis" health signs on the buses), and return to Philz. Liz is back, a plump, pretty girl with laughing eyes and a tasteful nose ring. Around hugging Tyler, selling two lbs. of two of the twenty varieties always for sale, and laughing about how San Francisco's hipsters would go crazy without music, Liz says the magic words. Only one of her roomies is in town, so we are all welcome to share her six-bedroom house. She gets off work at 8 and insists we spend some time at Dolores Park beforehand. Dolores Park not only hosts the San Francisco Mime Troupe (RIP Bill Graham) but also allows you to drink, smoke, and whatever with no fear of punishment unless you break John Stuart Mill's principles. After loading up at 7-11, we find the park and sit down in a circle to enjoy this beautiful afternoon. I sip my Foster's, share a little marijuana, and watch Adam and Kate snuggles while the others settle. Not much talking, but no words are needed. Chad has two giant beers, as he intends to enjoy himself fully (as fully as he can) and temporarily forget the Holly situation. We actually have a deep conversation about Holly, while Adam and Kate have a typical argument about how historical people died…I could make a million bucks if I just transcribed their conversations each day and based sitcom scripts around them. Matt describes downloading Marc Bolan's TV show. I tell Kate about Bill Graham, and she has the quote of the day: "Wouldn't it suck to be in a concentration camp?" That also might have been Adam, but I don't know now. People walk by selling marijuana, shooters, pot brownies, etc., and then a young black man on a fancy Fat Tire limited edition 2009 bicycle says the words we all wanted to hear, Chad especially. We turn down the morphine but Chad acquires nearly ¼ ounce of mushrooms…the irony is we'll not seriously ingest them.
More to come…
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