Chapter 28: Escape from the City
© 1987 by Steven K. Roberts
Nomadic Research Labs
Pigeon Point, California (2,140 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 Cañada
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 campground 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
emigré of the computer business who felt, at age 30, that it was
time to start thinking about her own life before that of the company.
And the Buckeye was a woman who had abandoned her stable small-town
midwestern lifestyle to join the Computing Across America Traveling
Circuits. Four different accents, four different lives, drawn together
under the stars atop a cliff, tangling 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 breasts—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
homogeneity. We may have a lot of the same icons and news jokes, 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.