Christmas on the boat

It is christmas day 2015 and too late in the afternoon to nap satisfactorily before it gets dark. Day 13 on the boat. I have wanted to write about what it is like here for a good few days because there is much going on both within and without, and a snapshot a week ago was so different from the one I will try and develop now.

I wake up sometimes with a vague panic that I don't know who I am. It is usually around 615am and the sun has just come over the hill to hit my body lengthways as I lie foetal on the roof of the boat. I open my eyes to the water, a dozen or so other sailing boats, and the hill itself, deep green, palmed, sometimes with an icing of mist. I grope sleepily for points of reference, a day of the week or the time in relation to the time I have to leave the house, or at least a curtain to open, and then take a breath and remember that things are not working like that at the moment. Or to put it another way, It is like climbing a beautiful old californian redwood. Each branch is a joy to climb up, with a great smell and a feeling of reaching an eventual goal, but if you look down you think realise that much of what you have learnt and your behaviour patterns on the ground are entirely irrelevant up here in the tree, and when you look up you can't see the end point, despite the fact that you know it is there. Now imagine that you don't know that the tree ever ends, and there is no one else in sight. Similarly, as I move through each day here it is delight upon delight at every turn, but when I take a step back and look to the present in the context of my past or future... well it is better to just stick in the present.

And so in that present I usually find the rest of the boat already up, with someone making crepes or slicing mango or back from the shop with some baguettes to eat with melted butter and fig confiture (we are on a french boat after all). In fact the food is quite special both on and off the boat. This comes in part from the fact there is little diversity of ingredients, but what there is of high quality – we are basically talking fresh fish, meat and fruit. A guest turned up to a party yesterday with a slab of raw tuna as big as my forearm instead of a bottle of wine. Dozens of ripe mangoes fall from the trees along the road and are eaten with limes, coconuts, guava, mexican cherries, star fruit, pineapple. The pineapple skins are fermented to make delicious cider. The lemons and limes 'cook' raw fish. Barbecues abound. My bowels were dubious at first, but have now embraced. This food thing, coupled with striking hilly vistas, ideal climate, warm ocean, and a friendliness of the people that is genuine and unbounded without being pushy or invasive (I have never had to wait for more than 5 cars to pass before getting a ride when hitchhiking into town) gives the feeling that you are in paradise. The weather is sun with light breeze and occasional cooling rain. The internet various between 'very slow' and 'off'. The waves in the northern bays are consistent for bodyboarding.




And what does one do in such a place? Well, the heat in the middle of the day lends itself to doing not much, but in the mornings I kayak around, play music, do the dishes, the odd bit of yoga, go walking in the hills. And everything takes a lot longer here: washing clothes, for example, took a whole morning- do the washing up so the buckets are empty, kayak the clothes and buckets to the tap on land, hand wash, row everything back, stop for a chat with another boat on the way, hear about a party, figure out a way to hang the clothes so they won't fall into the sea as they dry...and on. But nothing is a chore and all can be done in a (dare I say it) mindful way. My mind used to be occupied by lesson planning, getting from A to B in london, whether or not everyone in the band was going to show up for rehearsal, how to not be so annoyed at hipsters (they are, supposedly, human after all). Now the questions are 'how do I prevent my knife getting rusty' 'how can I arrange this djembe and calabash on the kayak so they won't fall into the water' 'what book shall I read next'... I am not saying the latter are better things to be thinking about, but it does make a nice change, and my contentment or lack of hinges on them in the same way, though there is an overriding sense of tranquility that I found hard to find in London.

One of the best things about being here, though, is the space I have reclaimed in my life for music. In London, the more successful my playing and teaching of music became, the less time I had to just lean back and Play. Here there are instruments, and time, and loads of musicians around the place. I feel that my improvisational abilities are weaker now than they used to be, but other aspects of my playing are more solid, and I have started improvising on mbira again, which I haven't done for a long time. A few nights ago, maybe four, I ended up jamming with an amazing guitar player, arabic maqam, both of us singing and playing, when we were joined by two local guys – Maori and Poi – who had played drums for one of the dance groups in the festival (see the last blog post). The next night they returned with their percussion and drums and we used their traditional rhythms as the basis for something really hot.

The following night I invited them for a meal on the boat, and knowing that polynesian hospitality, like iranian hospitality, has a 'give everything to the guest' mentality, I thought about what I could provide, and came up with: food, beer, other musicians, a party. So the next day was taken up with finding and transporting the right food, and letting people know that there was a party. It was like being in the penultimate scene of a winnie the pooh book. At sunset I collected them from the shore and the boats trickled in, some with musicians, some with rum, and the great thing was that everyone else spoke french, so my guests were able to communicate more freely than with me alone, and everyone became at ease, and I could focus on music and cooking supervision.

Romano and his accordion arrived and someone produced a tahitian ukelele (double stringed with no resonating chamber) and a guitar, and suddenly a few new dimensions and possibilities were added to the music. The marquesan guys would play a few songs, us accompanying, then they in turn would accompany some french tango or, at one point, the internationale :). Everyone was up for playing and had some form of instrument, and the subtle energy that rises and falls dependent on the collective consciousness of the group picked up speed until the feet started stamping, then dancing, then twirling, and the voices purred, then sang, then wailed, then laughed. I was enjoying myself so much, not having to be a 'host' and make sure everyone was ok, but nevertheless having managed to create my ideal situation – diverse musicians playing diverse music, everyone enjoying, and I could just play and listen and not have to talk to anyone.

The next day – christmas eve – Maori took me to his home where his wife and four children were limbering up for christmas. From what I gather, Maori came to this island 21 years ago, chasing a girl (now his wife) who was part of a very big/well known/influential family on the island. My guess is he had to prove himself, and he did so by building for them a beautiful big house, surrounded by fruit trees (and cashew nut trees – did you know the cashew tree also bears an apple/guava like fruit that is sweet and tasty?), learnt the local Marquesan language, won a few surf competitions and now drums for the island dance group. Some life.


The thing they keep saying to me is 'tranquil ben, tranquil' and doing a sort of 'pushing the palms down to the ground' motion with their hands. This is certainly the overriding philosophy of the island, which I would sum up as 'take it easy, but take it', but I am not sure whether they are telling me this because they want me to know that despite our limited language, we are comfy in each other's presence, or whether they sense in me a restlessness or seriousness or overanalysis (something people occasionally accuse me of) and are telling me to chill the fuck out. Or whether that is just their way of saying 'everything is cool'. Either way, I really enjoy their company. Poi is a tattoo artist and offered to tattoo me. I toyed with the idea and looked at one of his books of drawings but nothing really grabbed me, and then I saw how he had decorated the christmas tree and decided that, well, perhaps we had different aesthetic tastes.

The next day, christmas day (I am now writing on boxing day) we all went to church . Don't know if I have said this before but churches are one of the only places you can go for just a donation and see a true cross section of a community doing something that is an integral part of their identity, and be accepted immediately. There are lots of reasons besides a belief in the christian creed to go to church. This church was all decked out with palms leaves and brightly coloured balloons that said 'merry christmas' in english, and the music was a man with a guitar and a deeply resonant bass voice, with a handful of strong female singers. Polynesian harmonies and lyrics, but a couple of hymns that I knew the english words to! So funny to hear, and a christmas treat! Of course the whole missionary thing was very destructive and, in my opinion, fundamentally wrong, but 500 years later you have to accept that this is the belief system of many Marquesans, and to criticise that would be to continue to think we know better than them, which or course we do not. Scientologists on the other hand...


Afterwards we bought some beers and drove to the north side of the island to Haianapa, a bay with good waves, where Marquesan families were spending their christmas day barbecuing, hanging out in the sea. We swam and chatted and walked around, and then came home. In the evening I rowed over to Romano's boat and we drank some rum and talked about rats and Marseilles and marriage and whether or not providing socio-economic relief (i.e. charity and ngo stuff) in a capitalist society is infact supporting that society. Concluded: Probably yes, but that doesn't mean it is not a good thing to do.

A good christmas.

Matavaa o te Fenua Enqta

Festival of the Arts of the Marquesa Islands



The history of the six islands that make up the Marquesa Archipelago goes something like this: a few million years ago, a set of volcanoes erupted in the pacific ocean, not too far from the equator, forming islands that shoot straight out of the sea, up steep slopes covered in lush green vegetation and igneous rock, deep inland valleys, a few beaches and natural harbours.



A few million years later, around 200AD, humans migrating south east asia in 'outriggers' – big double hulled canoes with sails – arrived, and named the place 'the land of men'. The Spanish arrived in the 1500s, followed by the french, who colonised the whole of what is now French Polynesia (Tahiti being the main island) and, along with passing whaling ships and merchant vessels, introduced gunpowder, christianity, syphilis and alcohol onto the islands, bless 'em. The result was a decimation of the population- some estimates say the population of the Marquesas dropped from 80,000 in 1700 to just 2000 (!) in the 1920s.



With this population decline came a loss of traditional cultures and values. However, since the 1980s there has been a quite amazing movement to reclaim some of this heritage- specifically the dances, music and tattooing. Every four years delegations of around 150 (less from the smaller islands) get together and perform these arts over a period of four days. It is a big deal. For starters, the population of Atouna on Hiva Oa, where this year's festival is taking place, is around 1500, so the population of the town more than doubles – temporary restaurants are built out of timber and palm, delegations of dancers welcome each island as they arrive by boat with a song that still rings in my ears (being on a boat in the harbour we were able to watch this each day), the village bakery works overtime to produce bread for the masses, two french naval frigates hang around in the bay, helping to move people between islands, sailors incongruous in their starched white uniforms.



On the first day there is a parade, with each island in their own traditional costumes, performing mini dances and listening to blah blah speeches from this man and that. Things get serious on days two and three, with each island performing a 90 minute ish set of dance-dramas with pounding percussive orchestra – I counted 25 drummers in one group, the biggest drums over two metres in height, players standing on stools to play them, a sound like a Giant pounding an oak tree on hard ground, visceral and warlike.




Indeed the men's dances are war dances, dozens of men of varying ages executing intricate Hakas in perfect synchronisation, jumping, turning, chanting. The women's dances were much more elegant affairs, with beautiful songs, the famous bird dances, me falling in love at every turn. And then together there were stylised courtship dances, the recreation of origin stories (one island used a full size outrigger as part of their dance, carried on the shoulders), twice live pigs were sacrificed as part of the dance. My favourite involved a missionary dressed in a white robe and brandishing an over sized cross being initially feared but quickly killed, his body carried off. A big cheer from the french section of the crowd, but I imagine maybe some conflicting loyalties among the many christians Marquesans.



And then there was a feast. In the true medieval, Asterix and Obelix sense of the word. Several (maybe 20?) pigs had been roasting slowly in homemade underground ovens for probably a day or so, and at 11am on day 2 the men from each island dug up their pigs with much (very aggressive) singing, decanted the meat and carried it on huge bamboo rods to a series of small marquees, where the women had already laid out all manner of delights I had never seen before – breadfruit, green grapefruit, a sort of polenta coconut milk pudding, small crabs, shellfish, bite sized chunks of raw white fish- and many more things I could name only by colour and taste. The platters of pork were added to the table and we ate and ate some more, using coconut shells as plates (plastic was banned from the meal, and alcohol from the whole festival). Special times.




The thing that made the festival so unique, and at times so surreal, was how participants were blurring the line between recreating a past traditions as a means to assert identity and pride, and actually being the people presented in the dance. Marquesan men still hunt on horseback, use tattoos as part of a passage to adulthood, take pride in their strength, seduce women by being the best dancer/general dude around. And why not? They do not, however, use plant fibres as clothes or attack other islands. To what extent were the dancers expressing their own identity, and how much was part of the dance?



This question didn't seem to be in the minds of the passengers on the Arai Nui, the exclusive cruise ship that was in dock for two days of the festival, passage on which costs around $5000 for a two week trip. It was an anthropologist's worst nightmare; 1500 marquesans attempting to recreate a tradition – their tradition – that involved beautiful, sophisticated dancing and music but also happened to involve grass skirts, ritual sacrifice, necklaces of bones, a history of cannibalism and lots of almost naked people. A group of rich, privileged americans (mostly) with camera lenses bigger than their brains, completely ignoring the purpose of the festival – to preserve traditional culture – and instead acting like they were in disneyland, getting in the way of dances to take photos, pushing to get food first, taking more photos, sitting on tikis (statues), taking more photos, switching cameras and taking more photos, arriving late, leaving early, leaving cans of sprite and cigarette ends on the floor in a place that doesn't have the luxury of never seeing it's waste again once put out of the house in a big green bin. Seeing the Marquesans primarily as one big photo opportunity to show the kids at christmas while the turkey juices run off. It completely fucked me off (and others I spoke to) and made me want to write to the organisers to apologise on behalf of my culture. And suggest a ban on cameras along with alcohol in four years time.




The festival ended with a massive drum and dance off, with all the drumming groups gathering tight and improvising together,a wall of sound, and dancers from different islands improvising parts of their dances while everyone looked on. Certainly a once in a lifetime experience, and well done (almost) everyone.

Recipe a Poisson Cru de Polynesia (Recipe for raw fish with coconut milk)

Ingredients:
Red Tuna
Coconut milk
Red peppers
Cucumber
White onion
Salt, pepper
Limes/lemons

1. Open coconuts, shave off flesh, and strain in a teatowel to create coconut milk
2. Chop fish and veggies into pieces as big as the top joint of your little finger, with exception of onions, which should be very small.






3. Mix together.








4. Leave for 45 mins for flavours to infuse
5. Add lime juice and serve immediately with rice.

Tahiti – Hiva Oa (Marquesas)

Distance, like time, is relative, but unless you are talking galaxies, the Pacific ocean is in the 'pretty bloody massive' category. The entirety of the world's land mass would fit into it, as would all the other oceans combined. La mere grande. And dotted around it, covering thousands of square miles, (the internet here isn't fast enough for me to check exactly) lie several groups of islands that collectively make up French Polynesia. In the north east of this colonial territory lie Marquesas Islands, six in total, the second biggest of which is called Hiva Oa. Hiva Oa's largest 'town' has 2000 people, a tiny harbour and an airfield, and within this harbour is a boat, and within this boat is a cat. This cat that has bitten me once (on the ankle), but I now feel like we have come to rest a place of mutual disregard, except for the odd miaowing conversation, that I always have the final say in.



the cat is licking her paws and I am writing to you.



I had never heard of the Marquesa Islands before the name was dropped in an email to me – 'in december we will be in the marquesas for a cultural festival that happens every 4 years, and is the coming together of the 6 islands in the chain. It is kind of a big deal. We will then be doing a Big Trip to asia. If you want to sail with us, meet us there'. These the words of Tom, accordionist and captain of a boat I stayed on several years ago in La Paz, Mexico that I had reconnected with on a cold scarborough day last winter. Their blog had shown them in Tahiti, all lagoons and spear-gunned 4ft tuna, and there didn't seem to be any good reason for me not be there too. So, in short, I did my best to make it happen, and sure enough...



The couple of months spent in Vancouver with my grandma and fam, and then in California with Uncle Rich, Travis, and old Santa Cruz pals, formed a happy pre-season set of fixtures before the adventure proper began.



So the flight to the marquesas felt like a beginning. I had been going on about wanting to get outside my comfort zone and this was now it – no familiar faces, new language (french, which I have been working on for a couple of months but it is hard), new sets of skills, consistent heat, the potential for disruption of bodily functions, no decent cheese. But more than that, giving away my freedom to move at will to the captain and the wind. And even more than that, having no clear end point (the boat aims to be in borneo in july, but then I will be in borneo, and it will be july) and no regular way to fill/spend/pass/complete the days.

Being busy, which I invariably was in london as was everyone I knew, leaves little time for reflection or self-development, but it certainly makes time pass quickly, which in some circumstances is no bad thing.







The airport was straight of the Rum Diaries, or stories of colonial journeys to africa in the 50s and 60s. There was torrential rain as we got off the plane, and we got handed an umbrella on the top step for the walk to the 'terminal building' which was basically a corrugated iron room with a timetable of flights and freight prices on the wall. Nice. The rain (mbira calabash acting as a makeshift hat) made it easy to hitch to the

dock where, as instructed, I waved in the direction of the 20 or so assembled boats and looked generally purposeful. Out from behind one of the boats rowed tom, a blue eyed frenchman with a broad and only slightly cheeky grin. The drink here is rum with lime, brown sugar and a bit of water, and the rest of the crew were kneedeep in a lunchtime indulgence. Friendly and, I could tell straight away, a diverse set of dudes.

That evening they threw a party for my arrival (there may have been a party anyway, but this is my interpretation), and as darkness fell and the edge came off the heat, dingys arrived one by one by the side of the beat, bearing the cast of characters on this particular stage. Mostly men, all french, all French, all with (mostly metaphorical) salt in the creases of their skin, eyes chiseled deep from hours watching the horizon. Everyone there had sailed thousands of miles to get here, often alone, and after weeks or months would sail thousands more – south west to tahiti, east to panama, west to indonesia or the philippines. They were together tonight and were happy of that, but the transitory nature of our party was absolute.




And there was music! I had been told in advance of Romano the accordion player. If Angus had spent 15 years on a boat, I imagine he would play like Romano. Two nights before I came they had played the internationale and had complaints, so now every hour, or in fact in every break in the music or conversation, this revolutionary anthem was sung in french as loud and raucously as possible, just to piss off the complaining boats. And in between we played klezmer and gypsy tunes, searching for a common repertoire and banging out some classics, or improvising, or passing the guitar to lily for some french ballads. Romano plays accordion tight but in a way which always makes you feel like he is on the edge, pushing himself and you, and this is exciting, melodies coming mid way through progressions that I did my best to weave around and extrapolate, sudden double times and rubato. And then he would open his mouth and sing, a husky, staccato but tuneful voice, each syllable dismissed as the inevitable truth somewhere between his throat and lips. Eyes blazing with fire, rum and an indignation that the painful words he sang were so accurate. (check the song). He was from Marseilles, where the canons point not out to see, against invading armies, but inland against their own government, and like many solo sailors in the harbour, literally sailed away from a society that didn't allow him to live in a way he felt meaningful and just. First along the canals from holland to the south of france (who knew you could do that! Definitely up for doing that sometime), italy, down the coast of africa to cape verde, then across the atlantic, 9 years in colombia and panama, and now here. And in the future? He is not sure, and he is not looking too far into it. As he told me as we walked back from the village the other night,'i do not yet know my place on this earth'.



But anyway, first big jam for a while (or a 'cool minute' as they would say in california) and I was loving it, and it eased the difficulty I was having following the french conversation. Not having that input of language allowed me to take a step back and see the people around me, and enjoy the process one has when with a new group of people in which individual personalities slowly rise to the surface among the group. Olivier, a tall, skinny, handsome belgian with neck-length lank grey hair and huge blue eyes whose entry to the party consists of a sustained and apparently hilarious attack on one of the younger crew's newly grown moustache. Michael, always grinning, always passing the rum, spent the whole night playing the djembe almost in time with an enthusiasm that could not be dampened by romano's protestations and accusations of incompetence. Lily, one of only two girls in the gathering, with a no nonsense attitude and voice as sweet as you could find simile for, who listened as there was a general agreement that everyone on the boat at that particular moment was in love with, and bore this love with broad shoulders and another song.



There was no bed for me those first nights as the old crew had not yet left, so I slept where I am sitting now, on the roof in the middle of the boat, looking at the stars and a new moon, feeling like I had arrived and the signs were positive. That this would not be an easy journey, but definitely a journey I wanted to be on.

A Few Days in Tahiti

Tahiti

My stay in Tahiti was brief but memorable. Ten hours time difference from england – almost the other side of the world - and it really felt like it. On the Air Tahiti plane the first thing they did was give each passenger - and there were only around 40 of us on a big jet – a little white flower. And flowers were everywhere on the island, giving the place a paradisiacal air and a heavy scent – something between shea butter, honey and cinnamon. But the main difference was the interaction between the people. I love england (wow, reading back that statement and feeling slightly uncomfortable putting those three words in that order makes me realise how much the far right has stolen) and I love that many of us are totally anal and understated and unable to communicate our warmth, but in Tahiti everyone is just in the zone of communication. Like ageing ladies on buses in west yorkshire. Sat at a show of a local amateur dance troupe, I felt someone hold my hand, I looked over and a man sat down next to me, looking at me and grinning. This was his way of saying 'may I sit here?'  but the translation was 'I am sitting here, great to be here with you' and probably 'you haven't had any physical contact for a few days, let alone a hug, so I am just going to remind you that you are part of this world and everything is ok'... or at least that is what I took it to mean.

We were in a basketball court that had been tastefully redecorated to make a big stage. I was there as the guest of my couchsurfing host's running partner, and so was party to a regular event in tahitian life. The dancers – ranging from maybe 4 years old right through to 40s and 50s – danced in groups, all in beautiful and coordinated dresses. The younger ones were all about the bum waggle, arms outstretched, big grins. The older women (all were women) were much more sophisticated, graceful, creating patterns of movement as they shifted around the stage in groups. I am sure stuff like this used to happen everywhere, but has been gradually stamped out by urbanisation and TV (though I imagine morris dancing was never quite so... assured)

Other highlights included picking and eating my first pineapple from a tree (so tender you can eat the middle even) and a massive ocean swim in a thunderstorm, rain bouncing off the surface of the water in my breaststroking face, rolling waves sucking me in and out at will. Jet black sand on the beach. Oh, and did I mention the fish? Huge slabs of maki, mora mora... ugly looking things, but flesh hard like tuna and a more delicate taste.

So yeah: well done tahiti. But this was more of a acclimatisation period for the Marquesas...

Spaces for Stories

 

"The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.” ― Muriel Rukeyser

Ursula Le Guin says something similar – about how groups of individuals forge multiple perceptions into a collective reality through the medium of storytelling. How a moment of drama – being sick in your friend's car – can turn into comedy when told in retrospect, or how someone who has done you wrong can be forgiven in the context of 'their story'.

I have been wallowing in stories these last weeks. Back in the Bay Area (San Francisco, Oakland) after four years (some claim it is five), eating, drinking, moving, sniffing out live music, chattering away with old friends. And before that a big old hitch down from Olympia, Washington through to California, 600 miles, where every ride had a story.

A story needs space to be told, and at risk of repeating earlier posts, it is worth briefly outlining what makes hitching one of the best spaces there is:
 
1. Both driver and hitchhiker have taken a leap of faith, putting trust above fear, and it has paid off, and that makes both feel really good about themselves, and the other person.

2. The two will never meet again, so can communicate the whole, nasty, beautiful truth of it, free of consequences. The lack of consistent eye contact also helps.

3. The absence of an expectation for anyone to say anything at all means that there is a good rhythm to the conversation, with nothing forced and time to digest.

4. Both parties are sober, overcoming the tragedy of the problem I often have that the best stories always present themselves when I am too drunk to remember anything but a vague outline...

Listening is of course also an art, and I feel my ears are definitely wider open on this trip. Fewer presumptions, less dismissive. More able (I think) to quieten the internal dialogue of judgement and hear the intent behind the words and the words behind the intent.

Some were funny, some sad, some really remarkable (though none as crazy as this). I retell some of them here for my own record, and because they give an idea of the window into lives that hitching brings.

Lucinda picked me up in Bellingham. She is a personal injury lawyer who had just ended a long relationship with her boyfriend after sleeping with a man twice her age on a trip to europe. The boyfriend hadn't been angry about it, and this annoyed her.
 
An industrial floorer with a huge pick up truck (the wannabe monster truck kind with a huge suspension) and one eye dropped me off at a truck stop, where a construction foreman on his way into the mountains for the first day of Elk hunting season picked me up and satisfied entirely my curiosity for the practicalities:  When an Elk is killed, it needs to be fully gutted and boned there and then to save on weight for the hunters carrying out the meat. Even then, it may take three or four trips to carry out all the meat, and each round trip can be 15 miles plus. So you hunt for the first couple of days then spend the rest of the week carrying the meat out. Some people hunt from their trucks. It is true that people do occasionally get elk and other hunters mixed up. We made a stop at a shop that sold hunting equipment to buy some 'meat bags'. Very exciting all in all.

America spent $248 million dollars on Halloween this year, including $16 million on costumes for dogs.

The man who took x-rays, my age, was going with his girlfriend to climb in Bend, Oregon, sleeping in their truck. He had a wanderlust that manifested in him selling his house and spending the money on a helicopter pilot's licence. He now had the licence, but realised ($50,000 later) that helicopter flying was too dangerous for him...
 A musician gave me a 5 minute ride to a 'better spot' which was infact a terrible spot, but he did tell me that at 30 he had found himself living in Kansas, and one day he realised that if he split up with his girlfriend he would have no-one and nothing, and that what he wanted above anything else was roots. So he moved to Oregon and had 6 children, and had a network and a reason to be and was happy.



Emergency Hitchhiking Sign

After a three and a half hour wait at this nightmare junction I was ecstatic to get a ride from a guy who paints the trucks that paint the lines on the road. What money he makes he gambles away. Has to live in a caravan with no door on the property of his rich cousin, and watch this cousin lavish gifts on his children as he demands rent for the drafty, cold water caravan.

A carpenter drove me into Eugene explaining how he used to have all these ideas, many of them (but not all) whilst in thrall to various psychedelics, and not be able to explain them, so he dedicated actual time to improving his (mostly scientific) vocabulary so he could better explain. And he did, and as he spoke I was thinking 'wow I have never thought of that' and now I have forgotten what he said.


Shelley dropped me at an amazing spot early the next morning, in time to get a ride and half a cupcake from a horse trainer, followed by a long ride (about 150 miles) in the back of a pickup truck with two Guatemalan mushroom foragers. This was a nice break from chatting, as the noise of the engine and the glass between us meant I could sit back and enjoy the Oregonian mountains unfold as we went through pass after pass.


A nurse going to an indian reservation casino to give the flu jab (the casino being the place where everyone gathers...) and then the jackpot – a huge articulated lorry going all the way to Los Angeles! The driver another chap that I could fill a whole blog about, but in brief: Grew up with his grandparents in Tennessee until the age of 13, when his mother inexplicably picked him up and took him to California. Her boyfriend was black, which didn't sit well with his racist grandparents' influence. He railed against this man and this man in turn beat him. At 15 he ran away from home and, living on the streets, still managed to complete a year and a half of school before being taken in by someone. He finished high school and started trucking. He had a wife and two children, and decided to stop trucking across the country so he could spend more time at home. They bought a home and he dug a huge pond with just himself and a shovel. He got bored and started fighting with his wife and went back on the road. He now has more children with another woman, but they have split up too. His keeps photos of his children, posed wearing shirt and tie, above the sun visor in his cab.  He has a few women up and down california who know his schedule (LA to Seattle and back once a week) and pick him up from truck stops, and drop him back again the next morning. This is cool, but he wants to quit trucking. He once went to alaska to hunt bears, but didn't get anything. He made up with his mum's boyfriend and now they are good friends. If I want a ride to LA, he passes through northern california on tuesdays generally, but call him first to make sure.


Oregon is a cool place

 
A fisherman enlightened me on the contrasting etiquettes of fly fishing in the US and UK. A beautiful aging hippie lady with sage on her dashboard was coming back from watching the salmon jump up the river, a volley of flashing silver. She spends 9 months in oregon and 3 months camping in hawaii, but now her grandson 'is old enough to know who I am' she thinks she will spend Christmases in Oregon.

 I filled up my water in a diner in Kerby, Oregon, got chatting, one of the customers brought me out a portion of fries... with mayonaisse! I'll be taking my own grandchildren back there.

Finally, a retired couple shouted out from across the street 'do you like dogs?' and I spent 90 minutes with two huge dogs licking my ears as we drove the final stretch over the hills to the Californian coast. We stopped to see a type of insect-eating plant that only exists in the wild within a 50 mile radius of where we were. They operate like sticky plant-lobster nets and reminded me of the hattifatteners from the moomins.

 

A story needs space to be told. I reconnected with Nick on the way down from Vancouver – we were last together in Honduras doing some serious scuba diving – in Crescent City,and together we drove the 8 hours south to San Francisco, stopping to make a fire in a dry riverbed and sleep among those silent deities we call Giant Redwoods. Space enough to contextualise the 'whats' of our separate journeys since our last meeting with the 'why's' and 'therefores', and to find comfort in the fact that neither of us was any more settled or certain than before, and that the crossroads we were meeting at was indeed a, er, crossroads. The same crossroads. More of a spaghetti junction infact. Hence the meeting... Nick had divided his time between living on a small boat in a small town in Alaska, living a life as close to a hunter-gatherer as is possible in america. His boot was filled with jars of home smoked, home caught alaskan smoked salmon – the most incredible stuff I have ever tasted (my mouth waters now just to think about it – not sliced and salted like in the supermarket but great chunks you can fill your mouth with, moist and strong and dark red.) I asked him around the fire – my first for a couple of months – how often he found himself out in nature, cooking on a fire... he responded by telling the story of his and his partner's trip down to Mexico on a 750cc bike, camping out in the desert, rice and beans on the fire, the road unfurling in a heat-mirage of traction, until an oncoming driver misjudged an overtake one night and clipped nick's bike, sending him flying off his bike and, ultimately, into hospital, first in Mexico and then, after a 12 hour bus journey with a broken collar bone, a few fractures and a bizarre experience at the border – in Arizona.

Hospitals and health have been an ongoing theme of the trip. I saw Travis just after he had spent 3 hours on the phone to the government health insurance people (Obamacare). The American government, God Bless It, has it's own advisors on commission, trying to upsell more products to often low income, low disposable time individuals who are trying to get health insurance for the first time. To the point where they now have another service that advises people how to use the first service! It seems that the very thing that makes California such an amazing place – the constant forward thinking, innovative mindset that allows people with good ideas to rise quickly to the top – also creates the most ridiculous and damaging situations. For example

- Whilst it looks like cannabis will be legalised in california next year (as it has already been in four states), the biggest two groups lobbying against the move are current pot farmers, who currently make BIG BUCKS due to the black-market nature of the industry, and...the police, because they get loads of money to help fund the 'war on drugs' so they can buy their shiny SUVs, assault rifles etc... Blimey.

- There is a huge drought happening in California at the moment, and the central valley, which produces 40% of america's fruits and nuts (and plenty more besides) continues to suck up water at a rate that geologists say will make the valley stop being able to sustain large scale family in between 20-60 years... and the government is subsidising the water they are using to the tune of $450 million dollars a year! And we know how much of the food produced will end up in the bin... (30-40% of all food grown)

I could go on (the other big one being the massive budget cuts to acute mental health services in the state, which has naturally impacted on what is happening in the streets), but surfice to say that I am often left both baffled and frustrated, but not nearly as much as if I actually lived here.

Oakland: Succinct

And my own story? It stinks of Karma. Walking around San Francisco one day I was thinking how much I missed cycling, when I overhear a conversation between two gentlemen, who obviously know each other, one of them offering to sell the other their bike for $40. Now this was no ordinary bike – it was a beautiful, shiny-new cruiser, beige and maroon with a cup holder and – check it out – a bottle opener attached to side! Big, chunky wheels, it was the perfect complete California Chiller bike. I walked past them, crossed the road and stopped, weighing up my options. On balance, much like when you are sitting next to someone interesting looking on the bus but don't initiate a conversation, and then get off the bus wishing you had, incase they knew the secret of all life, or were your future life-partner , I thought that I would be filled with regret and 'what ifs' unless I at least enquired further about the bike.

So I went back over and began making compliments about the bike. To my feigned surprise, I learnt that the bike was on sale for just $40! Wow. Well I best have a test ride then. She was smooth and heavy and I felt about 15% cooler just sitting on her soft, faux-leather saddle. So I bought it and whizzed off to meet travis, the bike dancing round corners and purring underneath me. I imagined the envy of all the car drivers, with me so free and stately on my bike and them in mere automobiles. I bought a lock for more than the cost of the bike and rushed to get to the twitter building (unremarkable) where I was to meet Travis. I told him the story, slightly shy as the moral arguments for buying probably-stolen-bikes are I think sufficient, though not necessarily comprehensive, as I rushed to show him and get off to the pub... but where were my keys?

Within the 5 minutes of locking my bike, walking into a building, then out again, the bike lock keys had disappeared. I took all of my possessions out of my pockets/bag one by one but no bike keys to be found. So we sighed and laughed (a bit) and went to the pub, at which point I realised that during the process of looking for my keys I had infact lost my bank card. Sighs and a bit more laughter. The next day we returned, hoping for a miracle... we found a bike savaged by moonlight mechanics, and a few days after that the bike was gone all together. Ça va, ça vient...

Thanksgiving I spent with Uncle Rich and several other chaps from different walks of life, united in their love of Rich and his culinary excellence (I contributed a rather excellent sausage, leek, pecan and cornbread stuffing), in various states of glory and glorious decay (as we all are), and after a while the stories flowed – getting out of stifling towns in the middle of the country, getting into (and out of) the army (national service lasted between 1943 and 1974), childhood thanksgivings, work, migration... but there was one person missing this year, and that was Ernie, Rich's husband, who died just a few days before I arrived, after a 6 month battle in hospital.

Ernie was a quiet man who knew a lot of things and got a lot of things done. As is often the case, we find out many things about a person in the process of their remembrance that are swallowed up in the day to day 'hi how are you gosh the dog is big these days' river of blah. As I heard more and more about Ernie, his struggles and victories, his times supporting friends dying of AIDS when that disease was a dark spectre over his community, his opening line to Rich when they met at a bar on the Russian River – 'you got a light?'... and my own memories of him, missioning around in Ireland, Las Vegas, Yosemite, walking the dog, I began to understand the quote at the top of this blog a little better. In the same way universes and atoms grow according to identical geometric principles, so the wider narrative of our lives is made up of multiple mini vignettees, strung together in fibonacciesque clusters that reach for wider meaning and inform who we are. And as we get older and we have more control over what mini-stories will play out in our lives, we generally stay close to what we know and our preconceptions, and therefore our identities, are reinforced.

And none of that means we miss Ernie any less.