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.

Last Minute

"You made it," I yelled to Phil as he walked away from a dust covered Toyota Yaris, bags in hand.  In Nicaragua,  these subcompacts brave the dirt roads, in frequent, white knuckle passages from the Coast to Managua.

"Sure did. The flight was flawless. This place is gorgeous,"  Phil said, motioning toward the cabanas and palm trees.

"Yah.  Beats the shit out of  Jersey doesn't it?" Rolling out of the hammock I was rocking in, I set down Hayduke Lives and walked over to help Phil with his bags.

"Actually it was 70° yesterday.  We've had a pretty mellow winter, but still,  this is incredible."

"So I hear.  You ready to get in the water?"

Five days earlier, Phil and I were shooting the shit on Google Chat when I asked him if he would be interested in heading down to Nicaragua for a bit.  Fed up with the rain and mediocre waves of the Northwest,  I bought a ticket to Managua in a crime of passion a few days early.  My alternative employment allows me to plan my travels with a few days notice.  Few twenty-somethings have this same flexibility, so I often make journeys with the company of my camera and a book on tape.

"Let me get back to you about it,"  Phil said before signing offline.

"Just putting it out there."

Normally, a noncommittal line like that is a death sentence for trip but with Phil, the founder of the Madbury Club and The Award Tour,  I withheld judgement.  Twenty minutes later my phone buzzed with an email saying he was in for a week.

The Window Seat.

Quiver Me Timbers.

#vanlife Nica style.

Beach Cruisers.

Equipped to rip.

Kicking back.

Duck diving.

Stump town.

Sun bleached.

Selfy on the Nikon Action Touch with Portra 160.

Exchanging Phil's bags for a hand plane and a set of fins,  we headed towards the beach for a little white water baptism.

"The tides are wrong for surfing," I explained. "But we will have a blast with these," I said holding up the fins. "We'll get you on a surfboard tomorrow."

"Man, I'm just happy to be here.  It reminds me a lot of Haiti." Phil said as we walked through the hot sand

"It's pretty wild. It's tough to only come here once. I'm glad you could make it."

"Yah man,  the best stuff always happens last minute."

"Sure does."

Here are some more links,

Last Minute (Facebook),

Phillip Annand (Twitter).

25 Thousand Miles

The windshield wipers slashed futily at the northwest's signature rain as the Syncro hummed along at 63 mph up I-5 in southern Oregon.  Due to the limited top speed and my frequent breaks to take photos and refuel,  I had traveled just over 400 miles in 11 hours.    Ken Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion on tape kept me occupied and I was in no rush to make it back to familiar sites.  Kicking off my shoes,  I turned up the heat and prepared myself for another chapter of Kesey's novel.

Dusk faded into night as tales from a logging community somewhere to my west continued on.  I peered down from my blank gaze north. The gas gauge hovered just over 1/8th full, or 7/8ths empty.  Already?  Taking the next exit, I headed towards an Arco.  Filling the tank with premium and grabbing a cup of shitty coffee,  I leaned against the side of the Syncro and read emails on my iPhone.  The nozzle clunked, satisfied with 17 gallons. Locking the gas cap,  I hopped back into the van and reset the trip meter on the odometer.

Accessing the vital signs, oil pressure, coolant temperature..., before hitting the road again, I paused at the total mileage on the odometer.  Subtracting the existing mileage from what was on it when I picked her up nine months ago left me with just over 25,000 miles.  The Chrysler sedan waiting patiently behind me flashed its lights, reminding me that I was taking my sweet ass time.

Pulling back on to I-5, I opted for the best of Dire Straits over an audio book and reminisced over the last 25k miles.

I've filled up the Syncro over a hundred times since July. This was one of most harmful for the her heart.

I could live here.

Cold times surfing on the Oregon Coast.

Capturing the last bit of summer at Elk Lake in central Oregon.

Surfing at County Line near Malibu.

For the first time since moving to Maine in 2006, I saw the seasons change in the Pacific Northwest.

Weeks spent in Northern California.

Last fall, I worked on The Impossible Project for Urban Outfitters.  Check out this post for more info.

Exploring the Gunnison National Forrest.

US 50 cuts through one of the least populated parts of the lower 48.  Dan and I spent a few days exploring the surrounding area in September.

This van started me on my quest to document vans and other vehicles I come across on the road.

An unforgettable backpacking trip on the Lost Coast.

Working on the Burning House book in LA.

In Nevada, I ran into Nate Damn as he was closing in on the final stretch of his walk across America.

I saw and rode some beautiful waves in Santa Cruz.

Basin and Range regions often look similar.  Beautiful.

A baja buggy in Baja Mexico.

Summer run steelhead in the Columbia River Gorge.

A mentor of mine once told me that if you take the most fun, responsible option at every opportunity, you'll live a fulfilling life.  I was back from New York on a long weekend and we had just split a bottle of wine. Although I didn't think much of it at the time, I now look back to that as one of the moments that started me on the path I am now on.

The more I make decisions with this mantra, the easier it gets.  The first 12,000 miles were more hard fought than the last 13,000.   Momentum builds quickly.

Thank you for being a part of my travels.

Here are some more links,

25k Miles (Facebook).

Spring Break Snowboards

Corey Smith marched past, brandishing an exaggerated swallow tail with teal bindings. "How are you doing man?" he asked.

"Good.  Still adjusting to this 9,000 feet elevation shit," I said standing a few feet off to the side of the trail on a pass overlooking Lake Tahoe.

"Is it that high? It's tough alright."

Nodding in agreement,  I took off my gloves and shoved them in my pocket.

"Last time I hiked in the back country was... eight years ago almost to the day with Jarad Hadi and Nick Dirks.  Remember that winter when there was no snow on Hood?"

"That winter was a huge buzz kill.  Nowhere got much snow," Corey recollected.

"We came down here to South Lake and shredded pow and handrails for a week.  So fun."

The wind ripped a blast of loose snow down from around the group of trees on top of the hill.  Corey kicked his snowshoes into the next holes and continued up the grade.  Pulling my board from the snow,  I tightened the ratchets on my snowshoes and awkwardly side-stepped back onto the boot pack trail.

At the summit,  we regrouped and waited for the stragglers.  Despite having snowboarded only a few times in the last two years,  the motion of kicking my heel into the back of my binding and then ratcheting the toe strap brought back memories of countless days spent hiking out of bounds on Mt. Hood and other mountains around the Cascades.  Standing up with both feet strapped in, I shuffled the board into position in the lineup.

The sound of clicking bindings worked to a frenzy and then stopped.  Grabbing my snowshoes, I shoved them into my backpack and clicked the waist strap.

"You guy's ready to rip?"

Everyone nodded in agreement.

Corey cuts out the boards from sheets of plywood, shapes them with a sander and planes and then glasses the top and bottom with polyester resin, all in his studio in downtown LA.  Designed for powder, the boards ride more like a surfboard than a conventional snowboard.  No two boards are the same.  Check out  Spring Break Snowboards for more info.

Surfing doesn't just happen in the water.

Walking on the ridge line.  That's Reno off to the left.

Brendan Gerard hitchhiking.

Powder hoggin' it.

Erick Messier brandishing his sword.

With a hoot, Eric Messier and Ben Rice dropped in, leaning huge turns down the exposed face.  Their carves sent fresh Sierra snow shooting behind them like the wake of a water ski. Grinning with anticipation, I slid forward on my heel edge into position.

Next Corey dropped,  taking a different line towards a small group of trees to our right.  Leaning in,  he let his hand touch the snow, sending a wall of snow towards a filmer and photographer.

"You ready?" Brendan Gerard inquired, in a tone suggesting that I should shit or get off the pot.

"Born ready," I joked, transferring my weight to my right foot and kicking the nose of the board out towards the bottom of the hill.  With a crunch, I slowly slid forward.

Here are some more links,

Spring Break Snowboards (Facebook),

Spring Break Snowboards.

Spring Break Snowboards (Vimeo).