25 Thousand Miles

The windshield wipers slashed futily at the northwest's signature rain as the Syncro hummed along at 63 mph up I-5 in southern Oregon.  Due to the limited top speed and my frequent breaks to take photos and refuel,  I had traveled just over 400 miles in 11 hours.    Ken Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion on tape kept me occupied and I was in no rush to make it back to familiar sites.  Kicking off my shoes,  I turned up the heat and prepared myself for another chapter of Kesey's novel.

Dusk faded into night as tales from a logging community somewhere to my west continued on.  I peered down from my blank gaze north. The gas gauge hovered just over 1/8th full, or 7/8ths empty.  Already?  Taking the next exit, I headed towards an Arco.  Filling the tank with premium and grabbing a cup of shitty coffee,  I leaned against the side of the Syncro and read emails on my iPhone.  The nozzle clunked, satisfied with 17 gallons. Locking the gas cap,  I hopped back into the van and reset the trip meter on the odometer.

Accessing the vital signs, oil pressure, coolant temperature..., before hitting the road again, I paused at the total mileage on the odometer.  Subtracting the existing mileage from what was on it when I picked her up nine months ago left me with just over 25,000 miles.  The Chrysler sedan waiting patiently behind me flashed its lights, reminding me that I was taking my sweet ass time.

Pulling back on to I-5, I opted for the best of Dire Straits over an audio book and reminisced over the last 25k miles.

I've filled up the Syncro over a hundred times since July. This was one of most harmful for the her heart.

I could live here.

Cold times surfing on the Oregon Coast.

Capturing the last bit of summer at Elk Lake in central Oregon.

Surfing at County Line near Malibu.

For the first time since moving to Maine in 2006, I saw the seasons change in the Pacific Northwest.

Weeks spent in Northern California.

Last fall, I worked on The Impossible Project for Urban Outfitters.  Check out this post for more info.

Exploring the Gunnison National Forrest.

US 50 cuts through one of the least populated parts of the lower 48.  Dan and I spent a few days exploring the surrounding area in September.

This van started me on my quest to document vans and other vehicles I come across on the road.

An unforgettable backpacking trip on the Lost Coast.

Working on the Burning House book in LA.

In Nevada, I ran into Nate Damn as he was closing in on the final stretch of his walk across America.

I saw and rode some beautiful waves in Santa Cruz.

Basin and Range regions often look similar.  Beautiful.

A baja buggy in Baja Mexico.

Summer run steelhead in the Columbia River Gorge.

A mentor of mine once told me that if you take the most fun, responsible option at every opportunity, you'll live a fulfilling life.  I was back from New York on a long weekend and we had just split a bottle of wine. Although I didn't think much of it at the time, I now look back to that as one of the moments that started me on the path I am now on.

The more I make decisions with this mantra, the easier it gets.  The first 12,000 miles were more hard fought than the last 13,000.   Momentum builds quickly.

Thank you for being a part of my travels.

Here are some more links,

25k Miles (Facebook).

Spring Break Snowboards

Corey Smith marched past, brandishing an exaggerated swallow tail with teal bindings. "How are you doing man?" he asked.

"Good.  Still adjusting to this 9,000 feet elevation shit," I said standing a few feet off to the side of the trail on a pass overlooking Lake Tahoe.

"Is it that high? It's tough alright."

Nodding in agreement,  I took off my gloves and shoved them in my pocket.

"Last time I hiked in the back country was... eight years ago almost to the day with Jarad Hadi and Nick Dirks.  Remember that winter when there was no snow on Hood?"

"That winter was a huge buzz kill.  Nowhere got much snow," Corey recollected.

"We came down here to South Lake and shredded pow and handrails for a week.  So fun."

The wind ripped a blast of loose snow down from around the group of trees on top of the hill.  Corey kicked his snowshoes into the next holes and continued up the grade.  Pulling my board from the snow,  I tightened the ratchets on my snowshoes and awkwardly side-stepped back onto the boot pack trail.

At the summit,  we regrouped and waited for the stragglers.  Despite having snowboarded only a few times in the last two years,  the motion of kicking my heel into the back of my binding and then ratcheting the toe strap brought back memories of countless days spent hiking out of bounds on Mt. Hood and other mountains around the Cascades.  Standing up with both feet strapped in, I shuffled the board into position in the lineup.

The sound of clicking bindings worked to a frenzy and then stopped.  Grabbing my snowshoes, I shoved them into my backpack and clicked the waist strap.

"You guy's ready to rip?"

Everyone nodded in agreement.

Corey cuts out the boards from sheets of plywood, shapes them with a sander and planes and then glasses the top and bottom with polyester resin, all in his studio in downtown LA.  Designed for powder, the boards ride more like a surfboard than a conventional snowboard.  No two boards are the same.  Check out  Spring Break Snowboards for more info.

Surfing doesn't just happen in the water.

Walking on the ridge line.  That's Reno off to the left.

Brendan Gerard hitchhiking.

Powder hoggin' it.

Erick Messier brandishing his sword.

With a hoot, Eric Messier and Ben Rice dropped in, leaning huge turns down the exposed face.  Their carves sent fresh Sierra snow shooting behind them like the wake of a water ski. Grinning with anticipation, I slid forward on my heel edge into position.

Next Corey dropped,  taking a different line towards a small group of trees to our right.  Leaning in,  he let his hand touch the snow, sending a wall of snow towards a filmer and photographer.

"You ready?" Brendan Gerard inquired, in a tone suggesting that I should shit or get off the pot.

"Born ready," I joked, transferring my weight to my right foot and kicking the nose of the board out towards the bottom of the hill.  With a crunch, I slowly slid forward.

Here are some more links,

Spring Break Snowboards (Facebook),

Spring Break Snowboards.

Spring Break Snowboards (Vimeo).

Eastern Sierras

"This whole ocean thing is a relatively new infatuation," I explained to the hitchhiker sitting shotgun, as if rekindling a friendship with a childhood neighbor. "I've spent the better part of the last eight months hunting waves, but now that I'm back near mountains,  I'm realizing how much I missed them."

Pulling an iPod touch from the pocket of his down jacket,  the hitchhiker snapped a photo of the mountain range on our left.  "They sure are...beautiful," he said in a thick Quebecois accent.

"They are hard to beat... How long have you been on the road?"

"I've been in the States for a month and a half.  I caught a ride down from Montreal in late January with a few climbing friends.   I was supposed to head back two weeks ago, but my girlfriend and I ended it and I decided to stay around here."

"Ohh you guys broke up?  I'm sorry to hear that man."  The common bond of the road and knowledge that in a few hours, I would most likely never talk to him again eased normal constraints between strangers.

"Yeah,  she didn't understand the climbing lifestyle.  Each year I take off a few months and go climbing.  She had a hard time relating to that."

"Sounds familiar," I laughed. "Maybe it was for the best.  Some people are travelers,  others aren't.  It's a hard thing to explain to someone that doesn't see the world that way."

"It sure is."

A few hour before,  I had passed a lone hitchhiker on the edge of Mojave, a small town on the foothills of the Sierras.  Judging by his climbing mat, a cardboard "Bishop" sign and a backpack, I figured him a safe guest for the three-hour ride north.

Much to the excitement and relief of the hitchhiker, I pulled a U-ie, backtracked a few hundred yards and honked.  He rushed over with his gear in hand.  We engaged in a brief conversation before he threw his gear in the back and we headed north on 395.

View.

Here's to old signs.

Shred Sticks.

5000 feet.

#vanlife.

"Any place with wifi around here will be good man," he said as we pulled off 395 into downtown Bishop.

"You sure man?  I'm happy to drop you at the campground."

"No, no.  I need to check my email anyway... That place would be great,"  he said motioning to a drive in dinner a block a head.

Pulling into the parking lot,  I turned off the van.

"My name is Foster, by the way," I said as he hopped out of the front seat and opened the sliding door.

"I'm Justin.  Thanks for the ride, Foster."

"No problem,  Good luck out there."

Taking his bag from the back seat,  he slammed the door.

"You too," Justin said through the open window.

Starting the engine I pulled forward out of the parking lot and continued north on 395.  I still had four hours of driving to do before I called it a night.

Here are some more links,

Eastern Sierras (Facebook).

The Last Free Place

"Want to go explore this place?"  I asked Jason as I flicked a piece of gravel from a scrape on my elbow caused by a slam in the deep end of an abandoned pool.

"Yah, I'm over skating this spot."  Jason said leaning against the wall in the shallow end.

"Which way do you want to head?" Looking around in a 180-degree motion,  the occasional satellite dish on an RV punctuated the otherwise unremarkable deserted landscape.   In the distance a two-stroke engine, presumably from a motorcycle, whined.

"That stage looked really cool,"  Jason nodded west towards the main road.

"Yah, 'check that out.  I spotted some pretty neat campers too."

Leaving our skateboards by the van,  we headed back along a dirt road towards the center of an abandoned military base base in the California desert known as Slab City.

Following the road a half mile back towards the pull off, we passed a dozen or so makeshift camps composed of a vehicle and a structure of sorts,  usually an awning or tent. Each winter,  thousands of snowbirds, travelers and vagabonds pass through the Slab City.  These "slabbers" as they are called avoid rent and other obligations known to the majority of society by camping on abandoned building foundations or slabs.  An entire community has developed with a church, a barter-based internet cafe, post office, communal water source and a music venue, the Range.

Bejeweled.

 

Tyler Mummar impersonating a local.

Waiting line.

Haven is trailer in the California desert.

Purple rims.

Sign up.

The Range.

"You guys just get here?"  A kid in his 2o's said sitting next to a Chevy Astro van, some twenty feet from the road.

"Yea, just a few hours ago.  We are just passing through."

"Me too."

"This place is pretty wild,"  I said excitedly.  "How long have you been here?"

"Oh, two or three weeks.  I come through a few times a year,"  He said, kicking a beat-up tennis ball across the road for golden retriever.

"Ever been here in the summer?"

"Hell no. It gets to 120 in the shade.   You're not consider a true "Slabber" around here until you spend at least two summers camped out."

"Yah..No thanks, that sounds miserable."

"When are you hitting the road again?" Jason asked.

"Soon,  real soon.  I'm feeling restless.  Maybe two or three days."

Nodding in agreement, Jason and I continued down the road towards a group of RV's pulled together in a semi circle.  The golden retriever followed for fifty feet or so before being called back to the Astro.

"People lose track of time here."

"They sure do.  Did you hear that guy?  He said he was leaving real soon, '.... two or three days.'  Real soon for me is ten minutes.  Maybe fifteen."

"Haha.  When life's cheap,  things move slowly I guess."

"They do call it, 'the last free place on earth,'" I joked.

Here are some more links,

The Last Free Place (Facebook).