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Date: 16-Dec-04 @ 12:25 AM Edit: 16-Dec-04 | 02:19 AM -
PCH roadtrip musings
Optofonik (AKA_Mick_Rhyze_etc.)
Posts: 1444
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I've been enjoying my new home by motorcycle camping around Southern California. Riding from the Coachella Valley to the San Joaquin Mountains through Idyllwild, The San Bernardino Mountains, San Gabriel Mountains, and the Southern Sierras through Kernville to the Mojave has been a joy. I'll tell you about those trips another time perhaps because the coast is becoming my favorite (growing up in Florida, there's a surprise). I've ridden the PCH from San Diego to Ventura so far and its quite different from what I imagined in some ways. The southern coast has more cliffs than I thought, one right here at the very end of the Dana Point Harbor just to the northeast of where the sun sets is fabulous because I don't have to ride two hundred miles north to experience it whenever I feel the need. However, a trip north is already in the planning stages. Yipeeee! Then there is the weather which actually does exist here although its more in the form of fog than real precipitation. When I say fog, however, I mean the real deal not some patch of mist you run into while driving through a hollow on a county road or see off to the side obscuring a small herd of cattle as you drive by the family ranch. I mean all encompassing, lifestyle effecting, fog. Foghorn fog.
It rolls in off the Pacific at dusk, a tidal wave of mist slowly making its way to the shore, transforming the smaller, quainter, beach towns into moody and mysterious seaside villages from the pages of some brooding novel about small haunting hamlets on the Scottish moors. An amazing thing to watch, this ephemeral almost sinister looking form growing off the shore. An evolving gray line miles in the distance weds the frigid Pacific of late autumn and the ardent coming of the night's moon and stars. It begins as a thin line then larger and larger it grows, looming, until all around you is finally obscured: ocean, moon, and star lay on the other side of a gray damp quilt of swirling mist. A few blocks inland, less immediate but no less dramatic and almost imperceptibly at first, a few wisps wend their way between buildings and hover above in the premature darkness till, suddenly, spilling from the rooftops onto the streets its upon you and the town is engulfed.
Up and down the coast move vague shapes, surfers making their way up the cliffs from a shadowed Pacific Ocean, still wetsuited, boards at their sides, they head toward the dimmed lights of obscured parking lots and the veiled shoulder of the PCH filled and lined with SUVs, pickups, and minivans, many of them beaters that seem likely to fall apart at the turn of a key - the southern coast is as democratic or as exclusionary as one chooses to see it from Point Loma to Malibu. For those out and about on the streets of town, the holidays being especially busy, damp and chill encourage the location of someplace warm and inviting so the small taverns, pizza joints, taco shops, and cafes fill up with locals and tourists. A mile farther inland on the freeway, the visibility reduces to yards turning taillights in front and headlights behind into a phantasmagoria. Small, ghostly, red and white points of lights fade into and return from the mist rather than maintaining a steady warning of what may lie in wait ahead or be stealing up from behind the inattentive traveler.
The boat is as cozy and inviting to me upon my return as the cafe in Ocean Beach. I'll have another cup of tea, check my e-mail for the day, shower, sit down with a glass of wine and watch a movie. I really do miss my laptop's unhobbled ability as a composing and recording tool and can't think of a better place and time right now, on this sailboat after a great ride, to be able to compose and record but its not to be and its almost ten by the time the movie is over. I retire to the aft cabin v-berth and read until I fall asleep with a book on my chest and the lantern still on. Its been a good day in SoCal and despite the weather it was a good ride. Every ride is a good ride here and with a little luck and skill I'll be riding till my beard is as gray as dusk on the California coast and finally betrays the miles beneath my wheels. With a little luck I'll be riding till the fog rolls in and rolls out no more.