| |
May 29th, 2004.
So many flukey references to death kept coming up in the hours before this trip! On Friday night I helped to set up a memorial of 811 little white crosses with candles and the names, dates, hometowns of the soldiers who have been killed in Operation: Iraqi Freedom. Quite depressing to see so many of them gone in their 20's and to think of the vast number of Iraqis killed. While constructing the memorial with my brother Veterans for Peace, the background was full of cheerful young surfers really living-it-up on some tasty waves--many the same age as these soldiers and marines we were memorializing. Then I ran into a motorcycling friend of mine on Friday afternoon whom I hadn't seen for nearly a year because he took a hiatus from riding after sadly, a good friend of his crashed and died while they were riding together. Even Angel's eyes seemed to be trying to tell me, "Don't go now, bad juju this weekend!" and to prove her point, she got sick and threw up on the carpet a few times.
I launched from a dark and deserted Cabrillo Beach in San Pedro Saturday morning and started paddling almost due-South.
The sea was a little frisky, but I hoped it would settle down once I got a few miles clear of the Palos Verdes Peninsula. No such luck, but at least the wind was moderate, and the solid west-flowing swell didn't seem too malevolent. I'd never gotten sea-sick before, but got pretty queasy when the island eventually became visible, then started ducking up and down from behind the tall swells. At least it must have been a decent Memorial Day weekend for those happy young surfers. I focused at cloud formations directly above my aiming point and concentrated on smooth paddling form and the lecture-on-CD about the effects of Darwin's Origin of Species. For some reason death kept popping up in this lecture too.
So in popped something a little more cheerful: Herb Alpert's Little Spanish Flea and Mexican Taxi was fitting the bill nicely when I noticed a broad gaggle of gulls straight ahead. The gaggle was much too large to go around, so I paddled steadily and hoped that they'd be done pecking whatever it was by the time I reached them. Turns out a large pod of hyperactive little dolphins was feeding on a school of small fish and had them pinned at the surface, which attracted the gulls who were going after the little fish too.
These were only slightly smaller than normal dolphins, but also slightly less hyperactive than silkies which are the hummingbirds of aquatic mammals. A few of them rode up to my prow to surf the pressure wave as they do with larger boats, but I'm afraid my kayak's small size and low speed didn't make much surfing for them (so much for "not-the-size-of-the-boat-but-the-motion-of-the-ocean!"). But just as surely as territorial human surfers will crowd and shove each other for even the littlest ripple at Swami's on a flat day, these dolphins crowded to my prow and bumped and shoved each other and my little boat with good-natured ferocity. They were swarming, porpoising, and moshing so hard around my boat that it quickly changed from delightful to worrisome to terrifying to annoying.
They looked like a cross between common bottlenose dolphins and the smaller, darker silkies, both in size, coloring and hyperactivity. I was whistling along to Herb Alpert (which either excited them greatly or royally pissed them off, I'm not sure), but eventually they finally peeled off and I shouted "Adios moockachos, [my nephew's endearing mispronunciation stuck] long life, much fish and good sex to you!" They'd splashed plenty of water on me and made it hard to keep on course for about half an hour, but watching their synchronized turning, writhing and slam-dancing seemed to rinse the stink of death away.
Until later, about 10-miles out, where there was a large buoy with a solitary female sea lion with cartoonishly femine eyelashes resting on it. She looked at me a little nervously when I asked her, "How'd you get way out here pretty lady?" 10-miles out on the open sea isn't much of a place for a single sea lion--she must have hitched a ride on a boat and jumped off after waiting too long. With 10-miles of open ocean between her and the kelp, shore and shallows, I didn't like her chances. (Ugh, more foreboding.)
Then far off to the west I could make out two large parallel freighters and judging from their smokestacks, chugging at a good clip in my general direction. I picked up the pace a little. One freighter was stacked high with railcars and the other appeared to be some kind of oil tanker, they were moving fast and appeared to be coming right at me. After about 20 minutes of building anxiety about these ships, they'd gotten within about a mile of me and were still headed right at me! On the comfort of dry land, I now realize that the whitewash on their prows appeared larger and louder only because the boats were getting closer, but at the time it seemed as if they were accelerating and intentionally trying to run me down.
I'm paddling at full-gallop now and the two boats are storming along, side-by-side and even appear to be turning gradually toward me. I considered aiming for the 200-300-yards of daylight between these two speeding freighters, but this would be the equivalent of a squirrel running across an interstate who is considering standing on the painted lane-line between two semi-trucks. So I went into full-sprint to get out of the way of the second freighter and made it by roughly 30 yards. This sounds like a lot, but these boats are pretty enormous and move pretty fast.
I kept sprinting to avoid the most violent part of the second boat's wake, and once over it I glared angrily at the helms of these boats.
Glared turned out to be the operative word indeed! As soon as I looked back at them I was blinded by the sun reflecting off the water. My right hand went directly from flipping-the-bird to smacking my own dumb forehead--these captains weren't being reckless or inconsiderate, I was being invisible!
(continued at upper-right)
|
|
(Continued from lower left)
Two Harbors was of course a madhouse of wealthy powerboaters. I had to dodge one gargantuan opulent yacht driven by (surprise) a cell-phone driver. I still kissed the shore when I landed and didn't care what the wealthy tourists thought. At the completion of my last crossing I didn't want to appear too theatrical, but I owed the island a big kiss this time, so let the world look on.
The power-boaters were packed like sardines (mmm...sardines) into the only bar, and the restaurant was not open, so I grabbed some Nutter-Butter cookies, a big bottle of beer and another gallon of water from the crowded market. Printed on the underside of the beer's bottle-cap was the phrase: "Go ahead. You've earned it." (YA-DAMN-RIGHT!)
Naturally all campsites were booked-solid, so I whispered to the young lady that she could take my money or not, but that I was probably going to squat somewhere on the island instead of paddling back to California the same day. She was very polite and receptive to my reasoning that:
a) the overflow campsite she was assigning me to was at least half a mile from the shore
b) I could not carry my kayak half a mile up that hill
c) there were dozens of restless youths milling about already and
d) if anything happened to my kayak, I was Gilligan.
So with her giggling, informal authorization to stay at Parson's Landing, I was freed from the hoity-toititude of Two Harbors.
The restaurant in town didn't open until 5:00, and the only non-hardtack available was the little fast-food shack that had burgers, nachos, pizza and other movie-theater fare. While eating my cruddy medium pizza (cruddy because they were out of anchovies--fish, fish everywhere for the last 5 hours, and nary a sardine for me!), I saw this rotten pre-teen kid chasing and throwing rocks at a running seagull with a broken wing. I chased him down and told him to leave the poor thing alone and went back to my fishless pizza, when a young lady from the dive-shack thanked me for stopping the kid from bullying Bruiser, their mascot at the dive-shack. It turns out they've been feeding and keeping this poor flightless gull for nearly a year now.
Parsons Landing is preferable because it has no moorings for large power boats, no touristy crap-shops, no insecure pecking-order posturing and everyone there is likely not to be carrying too much baggage, since the only two ways to get there are by hiking 7 miles from Two Harbors or kayaking there. The granola-set are less likely to bring loud portable stereos or maladjusted seagull-tormenting children, so another four miles of paddling into the freshening 15-knot afternoon breeze even sounded inviting.
Once at Parsons, I quickly got the tent up, gobbled down the last 3 cold, soggy slices of fishless pizza and settled in to my home for the night. There were maybe a dozen tents at Parsons Landing and it's a large campground. My neighbors were utterly quiet and friendly, such a stark contrast to the prison-exercise-yard atmosphere of Two Harbors. They invited me over for hotdogs and beer and were looking forward to two more days of hiking, swimming and relaxing at this wonderful place. After some pleasant conversation I bade them good night and good times and hit the sleeping bag
I learned at 2:30 that next morning that no place is safe from the powerboaters. I was awakened by a light on my tent and a young man who was drunk, cold, scared and quickly sobering demanded, "You gotta help me man!" The moron was staying on his parents' yacht in Emerald Bay and he'd taken the yacht's dinghy to Two Harbors for a little nightlife. And to make finding his way back to Mom-n-Dad's yacht on a dark sea a little more challenging, he drank-himself-stupid at Two Harbors. I got up, helped him free his boat from the kelp and up on shore, then gave him my map and showed him the footpath that would take him the mile of Emerald Bay and Johnsons Landing. "But how am I going to get back on their yacht when I get there?" (This kid was a real winner.) He probably was attracted by my bright yellow tent and got stuck in the kelp on his way in. Next time I come here, I'm going to have a camouflage tent.
Thanks to the dingy dinghy pilot, I got a late-start of 6:30 and it looked like the return crossing was going to be a little tougher, but thankfully the wind was a little milder than yesterday.
I tied my previous crossing record of five hours and fifteen minutes, but from a farther (and more lovely) spot on the island.
At 11:45 on a Memorial-Day Sunday, Cabrillo Beach was no longer dark and no longer deserted. The line of cars waiting just to get into the place was too daunting even to ask if I could park my truck inside the park just long enough to get my kayak loaded. So it took me more than an hour to securely hump my gear and boat up the hill and loaded on my truck. At one point there were a couple of older kids looking at the contents of my clear drybag (the one in the above photo), so I jerked out my bilge-pump (which looks like a cartoonishly-large Swedish penis-pump) gave it a couple of pumps and said in my best Austin Powers voice, "This sort of thing isn't my bag, baby ...Yeaah-baby-hah-haah." It was so good to be alive and to have lived another successful adventure, I didn't mind that they were laughing at me rather than with me.
Long life, much fish, and good sex to you too, gentle reader.
-Calamarichris
|
|
