Cris

I checked my watch.  Ten minutes to the T since the last time I looked and still 45 minutes to mid tide.  Closing my eyes,  I pushed off the ground with my right foot using the same attitude as if addressing a stray dog.  The hammock creaked violently.

"I can't take this any more,"  I said sitting up in the midday heat.  "I'm getting in the water."

"Patience, patience.  Give it another hour or so," Cris responded from a chair some 10 feet away.  Keeping his attention transfixed on cleaning the sand from a small sea shell with a pliers and needle, he continued, "the tide's still too high,  it will be all closeouts."

"I know, but this is killing me.  I can hear them breaking,"  I said grabbing my Fish from the rack and haphazardly wrapping the leash around the board's keel fins.

"I'll see you out there then."  Cris looked up from his afternoon work with a sheepish grin, conveying at the same time both his disapproval and support of my eagerness.

I first met Cris in the spring of my senior year at the very same beach in Nicaragua. Escaping the cold New England winter, two close friends and I cut class for a week and headed down for some surfing.  Cris introduced himself within 10 minutes of us arriving at the beach.   Over the next week and a half,  we made fast friends.

Cris's path to happiness contrasted with the one presented to me from elementary school on.  After serving in the Navy during the Vietnam war,  he worked for 35 years as the custodian of the Watsonville Post Office in central California.  During his time at the Post Office,  he took one class per semester at the local community college, studying topics from math to dance.  He surfed when he could and used his vacations for backpacking trips exploring the mountains of California.  Taking advantage of an early offer for retirement,  Cris had recently focused his energy back towards surfing and creating art in various mediums.  On a whim, Cris headed to Nicaragua for a month long trip by himself after seeing a show about the break on Fuel TV.

I grew up in a world where the path to happiness was an impatient focus on achieving financial and creative success.  At my college,  a small liberal arts school in Maine, my peers groomed themselves for careers as doctors, lawyers and investment bankers.  I wasn't above this pressure, and before I stepped foot on campus my senior year,  I already had a design job lined up at Ralph Lauren in NYC.  

Cris's patience and appreciation of surfing, meeting new people and enjoying the outdoors forced me to reevaluate my expectations.  It didn't happen overnight, nothing worthwhile does.

The following winter,  I took off a week from work and flew down from New York with my younger brother to meet up with Cris and catch some waves.  Once again, Cris's perspective was an eye opener compared to the cut-throat culture I was surrounded by in New York.  Two months after returning back to New York,  I started the process to leave my job.

Mark Twain once said that, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness..."  I'm not sure if Cris knows this quote or not, but he certainly embodies the ethos behind it.

By the time Cris made his way down the beach with his fins and body board and paddled out,  I was worn out from battling closeouts, just as he had predicted.  His timing couldn't have been better.  The waves shaped up and started breaking off the sandbars.   For the next three hours we took turns catching waves.  Cris did most of the wave riding and I did most of the paddling.  Maybe next year I'll wait the extra 45 minutes.

Here are some more links,

Last Minute (Facebook).

 Phil took these water flicks.

The Last Free Place

"Want to go explore this place?"  I asked Jason as I flicked a piece of gravel from a scrape on my elbow caused by a slam in the deep end of an abandoned pool.

"Yah, I'm over skating this spot."  Jason said leaning against the wall in the shallow end.

"Which way do you want to head?" Looking around in a 180-degree motion,  the occasional satellite dish on an RV punctuated the otherwise unremarkable deserted landscape.   In the distance a two-stroke engine, presumably from a motorcycle, whined.

"That stage looked really cool,"  Jason nodded west towards the main road.

"Yah, 'check that out.  I spotted some pretty neat campers too."

Leaving our skateboards by the van,  we headed back along a dirt road towards the center of an abandoned military base base in the California desert known as Slab City.

Following the road a half mile back towards the pull off, we passed a dozen or so makeshift camps composed of a vehicle and a structure of sorts,  usually an awning or tent. Each winter,  thousands of snowbirds, travelers and vagabonds pass through the Slab City.  These "slabbers" as they are called avoid rent and other obligations known to the majority of society by camping on abandoned building foundations or slabs.  An entire community has developed with a church, a barter-based internet cafe, post office, communal water source and a music venue, the Range.

Bejeweled.

 

Tyler Mummar impersonating a local.

Waiting line.

Haven is trailer in the California desert.

Purple rims.

Sign up.

The Range.

"You guys just get here?"  A kid in his 2o's said sitting next to a Chevy Astro van, some twenty feet from the road.

"Yea, just a few hours ago.  We are just passing through."

"Me too."

"This place is pretty wild,"  I said excitedly.  "How long have you been here?"

"Oh, two or three weeks.  I come through a few times a year,"  He said, kicking a beat-up tennis ball across the road for golden retriever.

"Ever been here in the summer?"

"Hell no. It gets to 120 in the shade.   You're not consider a true "Slabber" around here until you spend at least two summers camped out."

"Yah..No thanks, that sounds miserable."

"When are you hitting the road again?" Jason asked.

"Soon,  real soon.  I'm feeling restless.  Maybe two or three days."

Nodding in agreement, Jason and I continued down the road towards a group of RV's pulled together in a semi circle.  The golden retriever followed for fifty feet or so before being called back to the Astro.

"People lose track of time here."

"They sure do.  Did you hear that guy?  He said he was leaving real soon, '.... two or three days.'  Real soon for me is ten minutes.  Maybe fifteen."

"Haha.  When life's cheap,  things move slowly I guess."

"They do call it, 'the last free place on earth,'" I joked.

Here are some more links,

The Last Free Place (Facebook).

Let Them Eat Sand!

"Dude. Did you see that sign?" I said, taking a sip of tepid coffee from my thermos.

"No. What was it?" Spencer looked back through the rear window of the Syncro.

"'Sandboarding!  Rentals$20 for 24 hours. The sign is straight out of Back to the Future."

"Fuck yah, lets check it out."

Signaling my concurrence, I turned onto the shoulder just north of Florence, Oregon on the 101 and let the minivan behind us pass.

"I have always wanted to try this.  It looks totally ridiculous."

Five minutes later,  Spencer and I were standing in one of the world's only dedicated sandboarding shops getting the scoop about the history of the sport from the owner, operator and enthusiast.  Resembling a former WWF wrestler, and sporting a mustache and ponytail, he informed us that sandboarding has been around long before snowboarding and that it was in fact an inspiration for Jake Burton.  I kept my mouth shut and nodded.   After the "history" lesson and short video highlighting the sport's potential in various sand dunes around the world, Spencer were on our way, boards in hand.

That afternoon, we hiked around the dunes of Honeyman State park exploring shoots and picking lines.  Although the conditions weren't ideal,  (sandboarding favors dry sand and being the middle of January in Oregon, the sand was wet) we got the hang of things pretty quickly.  Sandboarding feels like riding a snowboard in powder.  All the steering is with your back foot, and bad things happen when you put weight on your front foot.

They ollie just like a snowboard.  Yours truly shredding a shoot.

Waxing up the board before a session.

Spencer summitting the hill.

The boards have similar construction to a skateboard, but with a layer of polyurethane on the bottom.  Home Depot project perhaps?

Sand scrub.

Cranking a turn,  hand on the wave.

Dodging a patch of grass, I carved my way down the narrow shoot.  Pointing the board directly at Spencer,  I picked up speed and turned to the right at the last minute spraying him with a few handfuls of sand.

"Duddde.  Seriously."

"Haha you were asking for it."

"I'm over it.  Lets head back to the car."

Taking a moment,  I looked back up the hill at our handy work.  In the distance a yahoo's four-wheeler screamed up a hill.  I kicked off the board.  "Alright.  I'll be doing this again."

"As will I."

Here are some more links,

Sand Surfing (Facebook).

Twitter.

Southern Oregon Coast

The southern Oregon ccoast feels like no other part of the Northwest.  From Portland,  it takes five hours to get there along I-5 south with a cut through the coast range near Eugene.  Take the 101 from Tillamook or Seaside, and you're looking at seven hours of winding road reminiscent to the 1 in California.   Because of this remoteness, the area gets limited visitation in the summer and in the winter, well its all but a ghost town.   Think of it as Twin Peaks with a few bags of meth borrowed from Deadliest Catch, and without the cute girls.

After a few weeks of the Pacific Northwest's signature rain and gloom,  I headed south along the coast on my way to California.  Like most Oregonians,  I grew up spending weekends during the summer playing on the rugged northern beaches of Short Sands and Canon Beach.  My knowledge of the coast goes from good to nonexistent around Lincoln City.  With my buddy, Spencer Phillips, sitting shotgun, we worked our way down the coast searching for waves and views in the heart of winter.

Blasting.

Lagoon.

Ripping a few hundred yards out.

Late night.

Foaming.

Locs only, bro.  These gulls hold it down.

Dodge Rampage.

Sometimes slide film has a mind of its own.

Fixings.

Deers,  beware.

Holding it down.

Sunrise with Portra 160 and an Olympus XA on January 7th.

Traveling is always best in places that you don't know that well.  The parks were empty save for a few dog walkers and retirees in their RV's.  If you ever get the opportunity, head to this part of the country.  Bring your surf board,  there are plenty of waves.

Here are some more links,

Southern Oregon (Facebook),

Foreverenroute,

Twitter.