Not to long ago a good buddy of mine, a purple heat U.S. Marine and I were living in Santa Cruz, CA when we decided to take a trip. It was our goal to camp the State Beaches and travel slowly across the U.S. My friend had done 3 tours in IRAQ and myself, I just wanted to be with family for a bit so we loaded up our bikes and all of our gear into an old model Toyota pickup with a camper top and we set off.
Our journey started with us heading to San Jose where my pal was going to say goodbye to his mother, she sent us off with fresh tacos for breakfast and we were off. As we rolled out of San Jose, we began our journey back to Highway 1. The coast. No sooner did we begin to go up the hill, did the elderly Toyota begin to make a ton of strange ass noises. as we reached the top a balloon of smoke filled our cab. I hada feeling we weren't going anywhere in this truck and boy was I right.
As my buddy proceed to beat the mechanisms of the truck like they killed his firstborn, I began to plot and plan, cuz that's what I do.
Now Jim (my friend) was starting to freak out, he had been through Iraq 3 times and survived, but he had never really wandered around America the way I do, so my Marine friend turned to me for the decision making process. HAHA.
It was my decision for us to back the truck into the woods and prepare to camp out for the night. I thought maybe we could salvage the truck with the right help. So we pushed the truck back into the woods and began to set up the truck for camping (we were not gonna set up tents by the side of the HWY)
Pretty soon a big truck came by, in it was a real nice Mexican family, the dad happened to be a mechanic and this was his work truck. The man checked out our truck and informed us that we blew the engine...I knew it. We made arrangements with the man to come back tomorrow and pick up the truck while we figured out what we were going to do next. (That means while we smoked some POT) LoL
So my friend picked up his guitar, we sat on crates by the highway and just decided that there was nothing wrong, this was our adventure.
After some conversation we decided that nothing was going to stop us from taking our trip, but we were going to have to seriously lighten our load. We had bikes and tents and all kinds of stuff. My friend had a plan...since we were in camo type clothing, my friend made a sign and put it on the truck, on the sign it read "STRANDED U.S. MILITARY BIKES FOR SALE" Now I wasn't military, but I had the look and my pal, well he didn't necessarily have the look these days, but he had the knowledge...so we went with it. Pretty soon we had sold our stuff and not long after that, our Mexican buddy came back and asked us if we wanted a ride somewhere. "TAKE US TO THE NEAREST STATE BEACH" we shouted at once. And that's what he did.
On our way to the State Beach we realized we still had to many things, but we took it all and decided to sort it out at the camp site. When we arrived at the campground we realized that we had almost made full circle back to Santa Cruz. Although the beach was not Santa Cruz, it was considered an area attraction. WOW. We decided to give the guy who helped us the title of the destroyed truck for helping us. He could eventually fix it and resell it or scrap it and we were headed to the east coast....somehow.
That even we talked about what our plans would be, we decided our plan was to not make a plan at all, if all else failed we would just hop on a bus or a plane, but for now we were gonna adventure...this is what life had dealt us, so this is what we would do.
All evening we began going through our things and decided what we didn't need. We still had one bike and suitcases and such. During the evening while sitting by our site on the ocean a tiny little man of about 20 came out the woods. The young man approached us and stated that he had just gotten finished riding the rails in Mexico and he was headed home, funny, he had nothing except a bunch of marijuana in various forms, candy, hash, buds...you named it he had it in a lunch box. As we hung out with the guy we realized that he was a little of nutty, but he could probably use some of our stuff, so we allowed him to search through our discard pile and take what he wanted...needless to say he got some really nice things for free.
Eventually we went to bed, my friend sleeping by the fire and myself in my tent. We had no idea where tomorrow was going to take us and we didn't care one bit.
In the morning we woke up early and went down to the beach. We made some friends who were travelling down to Monterey and we told them we would pay for their campsite if they took us to Monterey, they were happy to oblige and after a breakfast of eggs and toast cooked over the fire we packed up.
When we arrived in Monterey we realized that we had only a certain amount of time to get where we could legally camp, but my pack was extremely heavy. Inside of my pack were a big giant book of photos that my mother had given me and a few electronics that I needed to keep, but didn't need for the trip. So I went over to the post office mailed those items off and then grabbed a couple of cups of coffee and some tobacco.
I returned to my friend who was waiting by the bus depot PERFECT!!! There was a city bus that headed to BIG SUR. Now the adventure really was going to begin....as we road the tiny bus up into the fastest growing mountains in the world and crossed over Bixby Bridge I thought about Jack Kerouac and realized that one more time I was "On The Road".
I WAS GRATEFUL and FREE
*****Check Back I will be continuing this story to the completion of my California Coast adventures
~tilly
