Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Ferry Samaritans and a Mini-Death March

Earlier this week we had a rainy day and so decided to head to Pensacola to visit the impressive Naval Aviation Museum on the grounds of the Naval Air Station there. Men like stuff that flies, especially stuff that shoots and flies, especially in massive quantities (over a hundred planes from the early 1900s to present day) that you can walk right up to and touch. To get to Pensacola we could either drive up to Mobile and take the interstate (booooooo-ring) or take the Mobile Bay Ferry three miles to Fort Morgan and then take the scenic route along the beach to Pensacola (woo hoo!).

The answer here is obvious, and we pulled on to the small ferry at about 9:15 in a cold, windy downpour. As we sat in the warm comfort of our car, we saw a guy with a touring bike standing by the bridge of the ferry trying to get some shelter from the rain. There was no place inside the ferry for the traveling public to get out of the weather, so he was suffering a little. Dad, whose compulsion for safety does not extend to being concerned that random bicycling members of the general public might be ax murderers, offered the backseat of our car for the trip across the bay, and that's how we met Mike, a extremely kind, adventurous, non-ax-murdering gentleman on a solo bicycle trip from San Diego to St. Augustine, Florida. Yes, I know, holy cow, that's a long way. More on this in a minute.

As Mike shivered in the back seat, the ferry operator came by and told us that the weather was too dangerous to make the crossing (again, this is a small ferry). This left us with the clear choice of option B, but Mike was a little out of luck because they were probably closing the ferry for the day. Let's consider the geography here. The ferry covers in three miles what would otherwise be a 103 mile trip:

This is why God invented ferries, obviously. Continuing down his path of faith in humanity in general and Mike in particular, Dad invited the soaked biker back to our beach lodgings where we let him use our shower, dry his clothes, and eat some soup and hot chocolate. Mike was thankful and kind and continued to not ax-murder us. He also shared with us a number of the tales that one must collect when riding from the Pacific to the Atlantic alone, including a harrowing account of going downhill at forty-five miles an hour in a construction zone with a line of cars behind him. At night. Yikes. For a detailed run-down of the entire forty-five day trip (nearing its completion), see Mike's blog, which he has been keeping up on quite well despite the often remote locations in which he stops. We're day thirty-eight, but I also recommend days twenty-seven and thirty-five in particular.

So we had a clean biker, a rainy day, and a closed ferry. What to do? We piled Mike and his bike (a Trek 520, sweet ride) in the car and drove him around Mobile Bay. You'll note on the map above that the route turns back West at Gulf Shores to go all the way out to the ferry landing at point B. This was twenty-two miles that Mike could have skipped, but being the conscientious fellow that he is, he had us take him right to where the ferry would have dropped him off. By that time it was mid-afternoon and the rain had given way to sunshine and some serious wind. As he pedaled east down that narrow spit of land, a view of the bay to the left and the Gulf to the right, I think he was pretty psyched. I'll bet coastal biking is a nice change from, say, Central Texas.

So: forty-five days, 3131 miles, all but five days (when a friend joined him) alone. It's the sort of trip that when you hear about it, you can't help but immediately ask yourself whether or not you could do it. I've had a couple of days to think about it, and here's what I think:

Physically, yes, I could manage it. I could get in the kind of shape necessary to do seventy to a hundred miles a day for six or seven weeks straight. Administratively, I could definitely do it. I could manage the mapping and planning and routing and cell-phone coverage and bike repair and problem-solving and crisis escape that has to be done both beforehand and on the fly. Mentally, however, I don't think I'm cut out for that kind of isolation and persistence. That is just a long damn way to ride a bike all by yourself, and making that journey in chunks of two to three percent per day would wear me out no matter how many audiobooks I had on my iPod (For the record, Mike had about two hundred songs on an iPod shuffle and that was it). Round about Dallas I'd be ready to pull a Rosie Ruiz using any means of motorized transport. So Mike, as your trip winds down, take a heck of a lot of pride in what you've done. Your mom may think it was a little bit crazy, but explain to her that it was clearly the amazing and inspiring kind of crazy. Nice work.

As for the rest of the day, the museum was as awesome as expected. For instance, did you know that the F4-U4 Corsair was responsible for shooting down 2,140 Japanese aircraft in World War II, racking up an 11:1 kill ratio? Or that the F-14 Tomcat, the badass fighter of Top Gun fame, went into service way back in 1972? I'll bet you didn't. See? Military aircraft are awesome. For those of you who disagree, I have only one retort: "Negative, Ghostrider, the pattern is full."

Later in the week we successfully journeyed to the end of Pelican Island-Peninsula without suffering sunburn, dehydration, toe-algae, or seagull bites. It was a mighty walk, and it took just over four hours to complete the ten-mile round trip. Standing at land's end looking back over almost two miles of water at the place where we had started from was quite satisfying, although the smell right at that moment was not. There is a reason for the name, and about a hundred pelicans took off from the tip of the island as we approached, leaving a nose-wounding stench in their wake. I think they'd all had fish for lunch. Nonetheless, the isolation of the journey (not a lot of people venture all the way out there) was pleasing, the views were great, and the beach-walk-writ-large was the perfect way to spend a sunny day.

And tomorrow morning we head back north. I will not, as you can imagine, be waxing so sentimentally poetic about the peaceful joys of driving back to the land of cold rain. But: it was a great week. Hooray for the beach.

Beach Beach Beach

Four quick things after the first full day on the beach:

1. Cloudy, windy, and sixty degrees is a disorienting way to start your week on the beach. The weather expectations will make that sixty feel like fifty, and you'll forget how cold it is where you came from. Don't be ungrateful. "Bundle" up (long pants, long sleeves) and go out there.

2. But maybe don't pick that day to play the first round of golf you've played in four months. Or at least go to the driving range first. We lost six balls on the 18th hole alone. Not good. On a larger note, golf days like these (in terms of my performance, not the location, which, being a pitching wedge away from the Gulf, was pretty fantastic) continue to suggest to me that my skills at this particular game might have a relatively low ceiling. I do well at hustle-sprint-read-react-improvise sports, not stand-very-still-and-do-basically-the-same-thing-every-
time-while-thinking-carefully-about-it sports.

3. If you're stressed out or depressed or just having a bad day and the deep Zen peace of the beach at about five o'clock in the evening doesn't calm you down or chill you out, seek professional help. As I've mentioned, daytime on the beach is the big shiny headliner star of the show, and rightly so, what with all of the brilliant sunlight, balmy breezes and the like. But early evening, which I'm generally obsessed with, is about as relaxing as life gets. The wind dies down, the waves settle down, the crowds depart. Delightful.

4. Later in the week, there will be hiking! Packing of lunches! Checking of tide tables! Applying of suntan lotion! Thanks to the wonders of Google, I can show you our planned route. We are going to start at the house (X) and hope to get to the end of Pelican Island (Y).

I have no idea how far this is. I guess I could measure, but what fun would that be? The great thing about a beach hike is that when you decide you're halfway done, you just turn around and come back. You may have noticed a small problem with the proposed route, namely the stretch of non-beach (Z) preventing us from getting to Pelican Island. As we discovered on a scouting walk yesterday, however, that gap is no longer there. The friendly gentleman at the golf course told us that in just the last thirty days, Pelican Island has finally consummated its long flirtation with the bigger, main island. So at all times other than high tide, you can walk right onto Pelican Island (married name: Pelican Island-Peninsula). These are the wonders of coastal geography, wonders that would scare the willies out of me if I were a local businessman or home owner. From a business standpoint, you never know when the third hole of your golf course might fall into the Gulf, or, and this has actually happened, when your pay-per-access fishing pier will find itself embarrassingly surrounded by the sandy stretch resulting from Pelican Island-Peninsula's nuptials. Oops. As a homeowner, you never know when the fifty yards of beach out your front door will decide to gradually become negative-one yards of beach, necessitating that your house be expensively lifted off its stilts and moved back from impending disaster. (I wonder how much that costs. Dig new pilings, relocate utilities, detach house from current pilings, move it with cranes, jacks, trucks, etc., stick it on new pilings, re-attach utilities, repair damage from the move. I'm thinking between 20k and 50k). Oh, and beach erosion is really one of the more minor concerns, all things considered.

It should be a good hike. It will be interesting to see the beach from a thousand yards offshore. Also, it might be interesting to learn how to signal a Coast Guard rescue vessel if we judge the tides wrong. I'm sure dad will bring a flashlight.

Southward Bound

So I've escaped to a beach for a week. There is a small (large) amount of work that has managed to come along with me in the car, but that’s just fine. Working at the beach is better than working not at the beach. Not working at the beach is the best permutation I can come up with, but isn’t really an option here. This is okay.

Dad is along for this journey as well, and while some of you have probably assumed that I left him for dead at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, no, he’s actually here. Speaking of which, I’m hoping that proximity to a horizon-topped body of water will actually focus and relax me enough to finish that story. There is a reasonable chance of this, but I’m all done making promises to the small fraction of human readers still out there.

Today was the day to drive south. I’ve driven south for vacations of the escape-the-soul-crushing-winter type quite a lot in my life, and there are a number of recurring themes. I’ll get to those in a minute, but first, let me give you, personally, a piece of advice:

Do not travel with me in 2008 until May, especially in a car. You should be safe between May and mid-October, but no promises. This winter, I am a god of snow, and whatever car I am in is the First and Most Glorious Holy Cathedral of the Pilgrimage to the Snow God. I am not, mind you, the cool kind of god who can control the snow, creating avalanches at a whim. Instead, i am the powerless martyred Saint brand of deity with whom snow is so infatuated that it must trek from miles around to worshipfully, joyfully, and massively be with him at all times. In the past five weeks leading up to today, I have been on the road to the tune of three journeys, each of roughly twelve hours round trip. Of the six one-way legs, five were substantially lengthened/made more terrifying due to blizzard-style driving conditions. There was often no snow in the interim, but as soon as I got back on the road, the flakes started falling. I haven’t decided if the worst was the black ice on the way to the job interview (twenty mph for an hour) or the near-total whiteout during the conclusion of the Super Bowl (forty mph for three hours). But you get the point. Snow likes me, especially when I’m in a car.

Dad, it seems, was not aware of my deity and its fervent following. When we jumped in the car at six this morning to head south, he was a little surprised at the size of the congregation filling the streets and surrounding air. An hour later, still moving at forty mph on the interstate and having trouble actually perceiving solid objects ahead of us, he started to get the picture. Two hours after that, still fishtailing along at forty, he began to have faith. When we saw that the northbound lanes were stopped because, no kidding, a snow plow had slid into a ditch and needed to be pulled out, he was ready to preach to the masses on my behalf.

But aside from those first four hours and the twenty-minute delay for a car fire (someone else’s car, not ours), it was a good day’s drive. In fact, the blizzard conditions made the drive south even more rewarding. A few thoughts this trek, which many of us have probably taken at some point in our lives:

First, the negative. The drive south (or any serious road trip, really) is in some small ways a study in the recurring failure of humanity to behave with any level of decorum or courtesy. Exhibit A in this argument: Gas station bathrooms. The less said about this the better, but it is worth noting that culpability here belongs not only to the users, but also to the owners, who know nothing of this new-fangled “mop” device that is sweeping the nation. Exhibit B: Humans piloting automobiles. This, obviously, is a topic for a much longer rant, and one that has been touched on here before, but after a day on the road one is reminded that the staggering number of annual highway deaths is in fact staggering because it is so very very tiny and does not in any way reflect the terrifyingly high ratio of drooling morons to competent drivers.

And now, a few of the positives:

No matter how much you like winter (and I enjoy the flipping heck out of it), it is a damn good force to escape now and then. Simply getting in the car and pointing the thing south is an act of empowerment, and a deeply refreshing turnabout from the passive, teeth-gritted, “Oh yeah? That all you got? I can take it!” defiance that characterizes the exhausted winter-dweller. Hope springs abundant on the southern horizon in March.

And if pointing the car south lifts you up a little bit, then finally breaking into that region where you realize, holy hell, there are actually leaves budding on the trees, is a veritable rocket ride to the moons of Saturn for your astronaut soul. The moment when the grass in the highway median suddenly looks like actual electric living grass rather than week-old fast food shredded lettuce feels like taking off a hairshirt. The sun comes out, the perma-slate cloud cover becomes a vague memory, and a short while later the words “lush” and “Spanish moss” emerge clumsily from your mouth, like dazed spelunkers lost for months below ground. You’re getting Spring in fast forward on the drive south. Prozac’s got nothing on this.

There really is no way to talk about the people in The South without clichés exploding from your brain-holes, but this doesn’t mean they’re not true: Friendly! Delightfully friendly! EVERYONE is friendly! Eye contact! Smiles! Folksy phrases like “you take y’all’s time”! And the accent! Charm my Yankee shorts off, whydoncha?

And last of all, if you’re driving south it probably means you’ll get there after dark. As your day has been filled with visions of the beach at sunset, this may feel disappointing, but don’t let it be. Unpack the car. Throw out the Mountain Dew bottles. Wash your face. Check out your lodgings. Take a deep breath. And then go walk down to the beach. Yes, I know, it’s dark and a crab may pinch your big toe, but go anyway. Standing on the edge of a body of water at night is lovely in an entirely different way than the daytime version, a way that is arguably more rewarding after a long drive. Walk to where the sand starts getting damp. Look up and marvel at the stars. Find the Pleiades. Listen to the waves. Stick your toe in the water. And then just gaze out into that darkness, to the horizon you can’t distinguish, at the invisible expanse of blackness. The visceral presence of that unseen body is strong. It reassures. It will be there in its vivid brilliance and peaceful bliss tomorrow morning, but for now it exists in a state of simple, understood power. This is what you came for.

Now go to bed, it’s been a long day.