The Taco Traveler

An Open Letter to the Lady I Perturbed, Somehow, As I Sat at a Sidewalk Café

noreply@blogger.com (The Taco Traveler) — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 15:02:00 +0000

I’m still not sure what I did to set you off. I remember a very loud and angry shout: "The fuck’s your problem, fucker!?" and like everyone else, I looked around. Traffic stopped. Trays of food sat suspended above the crowd as waiters looked for you and the source of your anger. We all had to wonder what hideous thing someone had done to upset someone else to that degree. I wondered all this, too, and when I looked over in your direction I hadn’t even considered the possibility that the fucker could be me.

But there you were, poking your head out the window of your taxi cab, cash in one hand reaching over the seat, distractedly paying the driver while sneering my general direction. I glanced at my friend to see if maybe she had somehow been provoking you, but she seemed just as confused as everyone else at the busy sidewalk café that Saturday afternoon.

To be fair, I’ve just moved here to Washington D.C., and I suppose there could be some odd customs I’m not familiar with yet. I thought I'd been doing pretty much everything by the book, but every big city is a little different; my native land, Seattle, they actually ticket for jaywalking.

I was asked, recently, if I’d rather have good things happen to me, or interesting things. I chose interesting, and maybe you’re just another in a long line of people here in DC, working continuously to fulfill that request. Maybe you even work for some secret government agency set up specifically to create excitement for me here in my new home. If that’s the case, it’s an agency with a very large staff dedicated to me, the pampered client, and I’d just like to say you’re all doing a very nice job.

The other night while watching a soccer game in a pub, a drunk guy kept bumping into my friend. Five or six times he bumped and leaned into her while he was talking with a different girl, and finally, after a particularly hard jolt, I had to say something. I was polite in sort of an ass-holey way, I suppose. "Hey," I might have said, standing up from my stool and putting a hand on his shoulder. "Could you please try to get control of your body and stop bumping into my friend? You just spilled her drink... again."

He was a little guy and he fired up immediately, all Napoleon-like. My face reflected my surprise about his quick and aggressive response, I guess, as he dared me to raise my eyebrows at him one more time. I did (though involuntarily, as I laughed) and then I asked if he was serious. "Dude," I said, "I’m pretty sure I just asked you, politely, to stop bumping my friend."

"Yeah. Politely. Fuck off," he said. I just kept smiling at him, like one smiles in wonder at a problem that's barely fathomable -- something they know they'll never quite figure out. It didn't escalate, luckily (though I had my hands in the Secret Service "ready position" until his friends got him under control). His girl called him an ass. One of his friends apologized and put a twenty on the bar in front of us, offering a round of drinks. And a few minutes later the guy came back over to apologize. He offered his hand.

"No big deal," I said. "Don’t worry about it. It was exciting." He apologized three or four more times and bought me a Guinness and my friend her horrible drink: an un-godly mixture of Bailey’s and tequila, which he even had a little sip of to demonstrate his contrition.

Then there was the afternoon in Georgetown when the muscular shirtless black guy, a poor-man’s Tyrese on the street, swerved from the other side of the sidewalk to try to bump shoulders with me as I walked past. I moved my shoulder out of the way like a matador and continued on, unperturbed.

And the panhandler I confronted about his tiresome shtick: "Can you spare some change so I can buy some water?" As a pan-handling line, I’m sure it’s worked well for him this hot Washington summer, but he wasn’t impressed by my suggestion that maybe he should lower his standards and go with tap water until he gets back on his feet. And my reward for what I thought was a pretty witty quip? Instead of tipping me or offering to buy me a drink so he could be entertained with more hilarity, he stood up from his park bench and yelled mean things at me as I continued down the sidewalk.

So, anyway, despite all my interesting experiences, lately, I hope you can understand my surprise (my raised eyebrows again accidentally forcing my Zoolander-esque "for serious?" face) when you exited the taxi and walked directly for me, your brown skirt and fall-colored blouse rippling in the warm, pre-thunderstorm breeze, your curly, tangled hair partially obscuring your scowl as you cursed some more, walking purposefully towards my table, evoking a middle-school art teacher who’d forgotten all her peaceful messages from the sixties but none of the agitation.

"What the fucking hell is your problem?!" you demanded, again, as you got closer.

"Are you talking to me?" I asked. I still wasn’t sure. Your glasses were reflective.

You swerved away from my table and towards the restaurant door. "Yes, I’m fucking talking to you, fucking asshole!"

"Ma'am, I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about."

You mumbled some more words and went into the restaurant. As the door shut behind you, I imagined how cool it would be if I were famous enough to get punked. I looked around for Ashton, just in case.

You exited the restaurant just a minute later (after causing more trouble inside, we learned later from the waiter), and you sneered at me again as you walked by my table: "Well, I suppose you picked the right city." If it was a game to see how badly you could confuse me, you won it right there.

You jaywalked across the street and into the Whole Foods, and like the rest of the patrons at the café, my friend and I were left with something interesting to talk about and rehash. We attempted, in vain, to figure out exactly what I did. The best we could come up with -- my friend's suggestions -- was: "obviously something very, very bad."

So, believe it or not, I’d like to avoid offending you in the future. To that end, I’ve made a list of possible offenses, and I hope you can help me out and select (or prioritize, if more than one) the things I may have done that day to make you so upset:

a) Sitting at a sidewalk café on a warm, breezy late afternoon with a girl who was much too pretty, while drinking a beer and eating a blackened steak Caesar salad that was way too tasty.

b) Something else very, very bad.

c) Other.

... and that's all I can come up with.

I’ll be looking forward to your reply.

D.C. Impressions

noreply@blogger.com (The Taco Traveler) — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 02:45:00 +0000

Everyplace in Washington, D.C. is “city.” There’s no downtown or slum that I’ve seen. It’s just miles and miles of eight to thirteen-story buildings (and the thirteenth is usually called a “Penthouse” even though it’s usually just another floor). And everywhere the sidewalks are wide and clean and there are bars and pubs and restaurants and panhandlers because no one block seems much better than another for any of that. The topography has something to do with this being a swamp, originally, so they can’t go deep enough to build real skyscrapers – or so I was told by a blind date quite a while ago, on my first visit to the place.

I walked again, today, as I do almost every day – seeking out a place to settle, investigating neighborhoods or specific apartments found on Craigslist or Hotpads or via a friend’s forwards from her work’s bulletin board system. Today, I walked from Penn Quarter nearly to Georgetown, to the West End, where I looked at one place and made many phone calls without success. I spent most of the day in one coffee shop or another. After browsing Craigslist some more and working on my side project for a few hours at a Starbucks, I walked to Dupont Circle. There was a happy-hour feeling around the entire place that I think I could get used to. Once I was there, I found I couldn’t leave. I tried to leave as I wasn’t quite sure I was ready for happy hour, but then as I got farther from the epicenter of Dupont and the streets grew less exciting I had to turn around. I was drawn back to the circle.

I do a lot of that here – turning around in the middle of a block and doing other things I’d usually feel self-conscious about but doing them now, anyway, just because. I read in a bar. I write in a bar. I stop in the middle of my run on the lawn near the reflecting pool or I climb the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in a t-shirt that’s so thin and wet with sweat it’s transparent. This is a city that’s (usually) exceptionally un-disturbed by anything anyone does. I think I just feel this way because of all the tourists. Whenever you can pretend you’re a tourist or a businessman in the city on travel, you can get away with things like reading in a bar. Or so it seems to me; someone observing me may have a completely different perspective. But one thing is clear – I’ve never found it easier to talk to strangers as I do now, here in D.C.. Very few nights have gone by where I didn’t end up talking to someone interesting or even exchanging cards (my cards being self-printed from a Sam’s Club business card kit where the paper felt heavy on first inspection but now I’m almost too embarrassed to hand them out).

This may be the right place to point out that my only friend here (a pretty girl, as it happens), has acknowledged that the ratio of single women to single men in DC is about (feels about) 3-1. I don’t think I’d dispute that, though the married politicians seem to skew the ratio more to 3-2 (plus, they screw up the rent availability by getting their girlfriends nice apartments in the city). But I may be generalizing, a bit.

So anyway… there was free yoga happening on the lawn in the center of Dupont Circle. There were legs and heads and bare feet flying into the air and downward-facing dogs, with an inner circle and an outer circle of spectators and others just enjoying the evening on a bench. There were hundreds of people all coalescing in the circle; those not doing yoga or watching yoga seemed to be considering which restaurant or bar they’d like start with.

I stopped at a restaurant that had sidewalk seating and I thought I’d like to sit there and people-watch, but as I got closer I realized I didn’t want to consume a big patio table all by myself, so instead I sat inside at a smaller table and read. I’m re-reading If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler…, by Italo Calvino. Incredible book and the voice and his words just make me want to write and keep writing regardless of how I sound and just to trust that something decent may come of these words, whether they’re read or not.

Microsoft Word underlines the previous word “read” and suggests that maybe I meant to say “ready.” Ready or not?” No, Word. Read. Read as in the past tense of read. Our language is hard.

While walking back to my temporary Penn Quarter apartment from Dupont Circle, I detoured father down than usual, and took myself to Lexington Square – the large park just north of the White House. I was blown away by the awesomeness of the place at night. Sure, there were still crazy guys talking to themselves about how many times they’ve been in the hospital and probably some characters who’re better avoided, but there were also women jogging and skinny businessmen walking alone, talking on their phones as if this weren’t a big-city park at night.

In the two weeks I’ve been here I haven’t yet been scared. This isn’t a scary city. Or maybe it’s that I’m not a scared person, anymore. I suppose it’s a little of both. I’ve had conflicts here – several conflicts, in fact: with other bar patrons and vagrants and panhandlers and punks on the street, but I’ve never felt that there was a situation I couldn’t handle – and I haven’t yet been pushed to any sort of real confrontation. I wrote something about that a couple days ago – about the aggressive panhandling and a crazy woman yelling at me as I sat at a sidewalk café with a friend, but I’ve sent it into McSweeney’s for possible publication in a section that’s not all that prestigious anyway, so maybe I’ll publish it here soon (if they don’t publish it soon). But anyway, it’s not the sort of city that makes you run away from anything or sneak paranoid glances behind you.

I get closer to Penn Quarter and still, at ten o’clock at night there are pretty girls walking all alone, and I realize I’m not the only one who’s fearless. Behind me is the sound of flip-flops on concrete and I dismiss them as a threat and continue on without even turning around. Only at the light do I notice the flip-flops carry a pretty girl in a black dress who’s heading somewhere purposefully as she doesn’t stop at the light at all – she does the big-city jaywalking of a local. I usually jaywalk, too, but I’m distracted by an email that’s come into my iPhone with a ding. I stop for a second or two to read the title and instantly delete. I look ahead and evaluate the light, still twenty-six seconds before I can walk legally. With no cars in sight, I stride forward and continue on against the light, the girl in the black dress and flip flops leading the way to my next cocktail.

A Brief Vegas Encounter I Neglected to Mention

noreply@blogger.com (The Taco Traveler) — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 00:51:00 +0000

I just posted this on reddit in reply to a thread about interesting Vegas hooker stories, and realized I'd forgotten to mention it here. It's not a beautiful story. Do with it what you will...

__________

A few weeks ago I'd just finished winning a small poker tourney at the Venetian and had a pocket full of $100 bills. A hooker followed me into my elevator at Harrah's (yes, dump, but I just slept there and went elsewhere to gamble). She(?) strolled into the elevator then just stood there, smoking her cigarette. She didn't hit a floor button. She got off at my floor. As I put my key in the door I heard from behind me: "What do you think would happen if I came into your room with you?"

My thoughts came pretty rapid-fire: You'd charge me a bunch of money for sex, then when I went to pay you, you'd see my wad of cash and you'd hit me over the head with a lamp and the maid would find me naked and poor in a pool of blood in a few hours. Then they'd charge me an extra cleaning fee because it's a non-smoking room.

But instead I just said "Uh... no thanks" and shut the door in her face.

Flirt Dynamics

noreply@blogger.com (The Taco Traveler) — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 20:32:00 +0000

She's massaging my scalp. She was cute when I walked in, and now, with a warm towel over my eyes, another with a light menthol scent covering my chin, her strong fingers rubbing my hair, mussing, tangling and then pulling those tangles smooth as she brings my hair to a point of concentration at the back of my neck where the water drips into the bowl, her wrists abrading on my two-day beard, she is more beautiful than ever.

She pulls off the eye-towel and leans me up in my chair, and I come groggily back to reality. "Wow. You should have a deal with InSpa," I say. "Like crack, you know... the first little bit is included with your haircut but walk on down to our partner for a full hour of bliss." She smiles, says something awkward about there being an InSpa right down the street (which is why I mentioned it in the first place), and I'm brought back to an idea I've wondered about for a while now -- whether my conversation/flirting creates an awkwardness more often for good reasons or for bad.

It's a little of both, to be sure -- I just wish I were better able to tell when I should shut up and when they want me to continue. There are women I talk to who seem to be attracted, and the awkwardness there is a shyness, maybe something they're unable or unprepared to deal with for whatever reason, or maybe their shyness is their way of dealing with it (works for me), yet they apparently enjoy the things I say or the way I look at them. Then there are the women who are clearly thinking "As if!" and the awkwardness comes from their inability to tell me off because they're in a position where they're supposed to be nice, which makes conversing with waitresses and hair stylists tricky.

I'm a smiler, an observer, a conversationalist and a flirt. I love making a day brighter with a smile, and a beautiful smile returned can make my whole week. But I hate those occasional times when I seem to make a girl uncomfortable with my flirting eyes or some other sort of apparently unwanted sentiment. I'm not a big fan of boundaries, but not a day goes by that I don't wish someone would invent a pair of super-infrared (or super-something) glasses, like the spray that reveals a laser beam alarm tripline, that would help me figure out where the invisible boundaries lie before I cross them. I'd pay thousands for those glasses.

The Brutal River

noreply@blogger.com (The Taco Traveler) — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 00:11:00 +0000

My two weeks here in Vegas have been an up & down affair, with a big win, a smaller win, and several poker losses. The smaller win was one that just ended a few minutes ago, and I sit here on my hotel room bed feeling an odd sort of malaise over the cards that almost were, and the huge win that could have been, but won't be.

I originally came to Vegas for the World Series of Poker, but quickly tired of the huge buyins and minimal chance of success given the ridiculous number of players (and many really really good players) entered in those events. One of my dealers in a $1000 event there told me about the less expensive, more fun events at The Venetian, and I gave one a try about ten days ago. Since then, I've played probably seven or eight events with either $350, $560 entry fees, or the $120 nightly "Second Chance" tourney. About six nights ago I ended up essentially winning a Second Chance tourney when we did a "chip chop" when I was the biggest stack. A chip chop divides the remaining purse money by percentage according to the amount of chips held. So my stack earned me more money than the others.

But yesterday's tourney (which finished for me a bit ago) was special in that there was the potential for a $60,000 first prize. After fourteen hours of poker yesterday, I found myself with an average-sized chip stack at the resumption of play today -- right in the middle of the pack with 34 people still standing out of 450+ who all paid $560 to enter the tournament, a Deep Stack Extravaganza at The Venetian.

I played well all day long, with no major errors I can think of offhand and one very nice call when I held a pair of fours and a big stack tried to push me around when he held pocket twos. He bet big on the river with a board of 5-8-K-K-J, and I considered everything carefully for a couple minutes and eventually called with my pocket fours. "Two pair," he said, no doubt expecting me to muck. I nodded, waiting patiently for him to flip over his hand, and feeling ecstatic with my call when I showed the table my fours, earning a round of "Wow"s and "Nice call"s for a huge pot that kept me going late into the night. Those fours were about the best hand I'd seen for two hours, as I was almost card dead for most of the night. I finally picked up some hands and knocked a couple players out to chip up, then doubled up a couple short stacks when I held mediocre hands (A-6 offsuit, J-8 suited) in an effort to knock them out, too. But I survived to the money. Then I prospered until the end of the night when we bagged up the chips for storage until the next day.

Today, after we resumed, I made a couple of moves early, picking up some blinds and antes when I raised in late position, and I also made two mistakes, giving up some chips when my suited A-2 hit only a deuce and I was raised by someone who, I believe, clearly had better cards after the flop. I also gave up a lot of chips to a chip leader when I tried to steal his raise from the small blind when I called with mediocre connecting cards (7-6 off-suit, I think) and the flop brought a king, which he check-raised me on.

But the reason for this post -- the bummer feeling of opportunity snatched away -- was when I raised with 1/5 of my stack and was re-raised all-in by the big blind. I called with KQ offsuit because we'd sparred a couple times before and I thought I might be ahead and he might do that with any king or maybe even a suited queen, since his stack wasn't much larger than mine. I was crushed when he turned over his AK. Then I was elated when the flop came K-Q-6 and I had two pair to his pair of kings. The turn brought a jack, which gave him a straight draw. At that point, there were seven cards in the deck that could make his hand. Any ten would give him a straight, and an ace would give him a higher two pair. He got an ace, and I was out of the tournament with only a modest win: barely three times more than I paid to enter.

Poker -- particularly Texas Hold'em -- is a roller-coaster game, and one that sees way too much obnoxious celebrating or whiny bitching about other players' poor play or lucky breaks, but my psyche is very well-suited for poker. My resting heart rate is 50 beats per minute. I can be as stoic, silent and calm as many of the best players you see on TV who care much less about the money than I do. And when I lose, I can shrug it off as well as anyone, remembering the many times that river has helped and brought me quiet elation while crushing someone else's tournament dreams. But this time, at the close of a long two weeks in Vegas, as close as I've ever been to a very large payday with a very well-played tournament, the unveiling of that last card, the river ace, just stung -- still stings -- in a way that's kind of hard to describe.

"Nice hand," I said to the guy. "Good game." I stood up from the table and wandered numbly up to the podium to claim my 24th place winnings, looking back just once to see my chips being pushed to the AK guy, hearing him say something about how he has enough chips to really do some damage now, and although he was best when the money went in, it's difficult after that great flop to not start planning, already, what I'd do with my newfound aggression when those chips were shipped over. I was already considering the chore of stacking those 240k chips and how I'd be amongst the chip leaders. I started wondering what the tournament LCD monitor's scrolling payouts said about the final table's minimum prize. I held my breath and waited for one more card. And then the brutal river took my tournament away.

TT

A Timing Thing

noreply@blogger.com (The Taco Traveler) — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 07:27:00 +0000

It always happens like this… I win a bunch of money playing poker, then I lose that same bunch of money playing poker at a level I’m not comfortable with, then I re-commit to my writing and my projects because, as it turns out, in the end I’m just barely a profitable poker player.

After two wasted WSOP entries and a nice comeback with a tournament win at the Venetian, I’m back down 2k again today after a suck-out gave some Italian guy a flush to my AK. I read him right, and knew I was ahead with just AK after the flop, but he called $900 on a draw and beat me on the river. Oh well… it’s a call I want that will usually win money.

So here I am having a bottle of wine and a cheese plate for one at a very cool café on The Grand Canal in The Venetian in Vegas. Still in a very good mood despite the day’s lost dollars, and ready to go home (wherever that is), soon, to my boys.

I really ought to have gone to Europe instead of pseudo-Euro Vegas. It occurs to me that it would have been cheaper. Still, I’m barely out any real money as this is still poker winnings from another poker tournament win from a few weeks ago.

I could do an “I Saw You” eposide/essay/vignette here. There are so many people out and about, like myself, having dinner or just drinks at 10:45 on a Monday night in the false vanilla sky of a manufactured indoor Venice. There’s a pharmaceutical supplies conference in town (or maybe just limited to the Venetian – I’m not sure) and last night I ran into a crazy group of women leaving the restroom and making noise, blocking the walkway. Once I’d passed them I realized I must have had a scowl on my face, because one of them, the cute one, apologized for her group and said “Give us a sign to let us know it’s okay?”

I turned around and failed at flirting by just giving a thumbs-up.

“I’m sorry,” she said again, as I slowed to let them catch up to me while on my way to the poker room. “We’re just a bunch of boring professionals who don’t get out very much.”

“No problem at all,” I said. “What are you in town for? Bachelorette party?”

“No,” she laughed. “It’s a pharmaceutical sales convention.”

At that point I got lost, realizing she was indeed very pretty, and of course every pharmaceutical sales woman in the world is beautiful. After all, they need those doctors to be totally psyched to see them when they walk in with their samples.

And though she was clearly flirting or interested to some degree, I forgot to flirt back as flashes of a previous infatuation that may have been love (but was probably just lust) burst through my brain and over-rode the smile and wittily flirtatious space I reserve nowadays mostly for waitresses and women at the poker table.

I drifted back in time to 2000, where I met another pharmaceutical sales rep at a downtown Seattle bar. I was wearing my leather jacket even though it was about a hundred degrees in the bar. Lights flashing, music blaring and people so crowded together that the sweat and beer and liquor blended together on the sticky floor and actually smelled pretty good.

I saw M_ standing there, just next to the dance floor, and I’d had just enough to drink to be able to walk up to her, pull out my wallet and say “Hey. Look at my awesome nephew!” I flashed my picture folio like a badge. A badge that said: “Look at what my sister made. I have within me the ability to make things just as beautiful, and don’t you ever forget it.”

She admired my one-year-old nephew and we talked for a few minutes, and she showed me photos of her gorgeous family, too. She wanted to dance so we danced and sweated together on the dance floor. It was so crowded that dancing wasn’t really feasible so pretty soon we were just there, pushed together by the crowd, hopping to the beat and feeling everything and the moment required that we kiss. We made out on the dance floor amongst the masses in the thumping beats.

We closed the bar and because at the time I thought myself a very good drunk driver and her friend was in bad shape, I drove them to my car, which was parked at my friend’s office a few miles away. She asked me to come home with her. “Just more kissing,” she said. “I want lots more kissing because that’s really fun with you but you have to be good.” She said this while holding up a finger as if to warn me in a pre-scolding way. She was recently divorced – still waiting for the final papers, actually – and just needed to kiss, be touched and appreciated. She needed to feel, again, how awesome it was to hold or be held all night.

I considered the coolness of being so close to something so beautiful for a while longer, and agreed to her terms. After driving us all to my Jeep I then led them to her house because she was new to town and said, basically, "If you get me to XXXth street, then I can find it from there." I nearly missed her turn-off, but responded to her urgent bright-light-flashing and turn signal from behind me that said, “Hey – don’t forget to exit here.” It felt good knowing she was anxious, too, to spend more time with me. Where so often you expect to be ditched in that scenario, as she re-considers and thinks better of the whole thing, turning off suddenly and running away, she instead was concerned about me going the wrong way.

We kissed all night and I held her while she slept (I’m not sure I ever really slept), and when the light came through her window and ignited her smile, creating a shadow in her deep left dimple, she turned a bit and said to me, a little embarrassed and shy, “Hey there.” And me, the big spoon, one arm under her neck stretched out underneath the pillow and the other laying on her slim waist, cupping a breast outside her t-shirt: “Hey.”

I fell for her almost immediately, and was there to be the soft landing she needed to recover from her divorce and just to be a friend – someone to cuddle and eventually to make love with. “Timing is everything,” we always said, often in frustration as things slipped backward and she needed more space or I happened to call at just the right time to offer a Neil Diamond show after she’d had a difficult phone call with her soon-to-be ex. We went to Teatro ZinZanni, once – a Seattle cabaret / entertainment that includes the audience in the show, and they put us right up front where the little French bus-girl fell in love with me and gave M_ dirty looks. The performer stuck out her tongue at M_ as she and jumped into my arms to claim me, and we laughed along with everyone and that night we were a couple.

After the show she said rather urgently that I’d better find somewhere to park or there was going to be trouble, and we found the darkest spot we could as close the theater as we could, and we made love (or something like making love, considering I had a rather cramped Jeep) there in the shadow of the Space Needle at what used to be a Tower Records store, because something had to be done with that sort of awesomeness – with the night and happiness, emotions and an excitement that that could not wait for a long drive home.

So interesting and amazing the little things we do – whether based on timing or pure choice or chance – that determine a lifetime or multiple lifetimes. The children we made and the worlds we changed by the things we did. Here in Vegas I basically forgot how to flirt as I escaped into my memories and told the pharmaceutical sales girl to have a great night as I walked away to the poker room. Maybe she was destined to be something more in my life than the spark of a memory, but I’ll never know. The girl from Zazu, M_, circa 2000, not quite ready or divorce-recovered until she was finally ready and divorce-recovered and I’d already moved on, telling her not to come over during her last, tearful two-A.M. call when she’d finally changed her mind and wanted me for more than just her recovery, her bounce – her friend already driving her to my house. “No,” I said, painfully, already essentially committed to the woman who would eventually become my wife and the mother of my two beautiful boys. “I’m sorry,” I said to her that night. “It’s too late.”

“Timing,” she said, finally. “It's always has been about timing.”

Thoughts While Running Along the Beach

noreply@blogger.com (The Taco Traveler) — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 16:03:00 +0000

I write while I run. And I’m literally thinking that, while I run: “I write while I run.”

I don’t construct complete sentences (usually), but there are thoughts that drift in and out – some worthy of keeping and some that should be let go. I haven’t written much lately, though, because I’ve been too busy building a Content Management System and a web site for a client. It’s been draining. I forgot how draining a flat-rate project can be when it gets down to the end and the details never quite reach a point of completion. We’re there now, the back and forth of “well what about this?” and significant pieces of functionality that, upon deployment, we find still need to be built to make the thing complete.

It was just a run to the jetty. I figured it would be about a mile and a half each way. I put on my new shoes to break them in on the beach, because they’re lighter, faster, less-supportive shoes and I’m not sure my stride is worthy of them but I really wanted them because they’re orange and I had a credit at zappos anyway.

All down the beach I zig-zag back and forth between the soft sand higher up and the harder wet sand when it's not too steep to be comfortable. It's early for the beach, as I've just returned from dropping the boys off at school, so there are only the ultra-committed vacationers who want to suck out every minute of beach time they can.

As I approach the jetty, there’s a woman. She’s standing on the jetty taking a picture or something. I feel something in my toe and worry that my new shoes are going to give me a blister my first time out, so I stop and sit on a jetty rock to check on my toes. She climbs down off the jetty. Gorgeous, and not a tourist taking a photo but a jogger taking a rest. She steps off the jetty twenty feet away, stretches her arms and smiles at me. She takes a deep breath and strides off.

And there's me: checking my toes for blisters.

When I started today’s run, I was planning on running along the beach to the jetty, then from the jetty through the state park back to my condo. I just didn’t feel like quite so much soft sand today. So I put my sock and shoe back on and start towards the barbeque cabanas that will lead me to the parking lot that will take me to the road back through the park. And my brain says to me: “What if she’s waiting for you? What if she “gets tired” and stops at one of the hundreds of resort chaise lounges along the beach for a few minutes rest, and maybe looks down the beach to see if you’ve turned around yet and if you’re coming?”

I go through the first cabana, turn left in the parking lot, then turn left again through a second cabana and hit the trail back to the beach.

As I reach the beach again, an appropriate song comes on my iPod. It’s Yeves Laroc and the song is an electronic / house-beat called “Nomadic Knights”:

As we all walk through life
As a nomad. A lone child.
Walking. Running. Going 'cross the desert sands.
Nomad.

Up near the parking lot the sand here in Panama City Beach is so deep and soft you can lose your shoes. You sink six inches with each stride. This makes for a horrendously difficult workout, but while “Nomadic Knights” plays I think of Lawrence of Arabia. I’m striding through the desert sand on this quest to see if maybe, just maybe, this girl is waiting.

I write the last sentence of an essay: “And I ran off after her, chasing in her the ideal I was not sure I wanted to attain.”

It’s been three years this month that my ex and I filed for divorce. I then spent two years fixing myself while sailing down the Pacific coast into Mexico, and another year fixing my body – coming out of the malaise, the carelessness and complacency of a relationship where physical fitness becomes less important than sleep and work and re-bonding every weekend over steaks and wine and warm chocolate cake.

Three years later and I'm back in shape. I haven’t bench-pressed more since grad school during the workout commitment just after a different relationship ended. Today, after some water and a banana, I will start on sport bottle #1 of today’s gallon of green tea. Yes, I consider that I may appear vain if I share these things. Yes, I consider how I look if I post a status to all my friends saying I got a honk while running. Ultimately, I think people who live their lives alone (for the most part) must compliment themselves because it’s too important to feel good about themselves and the things they do well. People don’t give each other nearly enough compliments. I resolve to tell my friends how great they are when they are great.

A friend recently told me she and her husband of a few years were separating and filing for divorce, and one of his status posts yesterday was from a gym. Taking care of ourselves is just what we do when separation happens. It was a shock to me, this beautiful couple and their outdoorsiness together -- and what I’d always assumed was their shared passion for motorcycles and off-roading in their trucks. But I knew her better than I knew him, and never really thought she was meant for the suburbs and commuting and then the sand dunes on the weekends.

Who really knows who we’re meant for, or if we’re really meant to be with anyone forever. I’m growing more cynical, and the woman running ahead is not waiting. In fact, she’s farther away – a better runner than me or just on a different schedule. I slog at a pace of 13:00/mile through the heavy sand, leaning forward as the sand gets heavier. I think of a friend who just achieved a million miles in the air, a friend much like Clooney and Ryan Bingham (since Clooney is Ryan Bingham and Ryan Bingham is Clooney): handsome, single, 40s, hip, friendly. There should be a club for us, with Clooney as our figurehead. We are men at peace with ourselves and the world, handsome and experienced, in no hurry for anything but to enjoy being with someone, occasionally, until something amazing happens and we stand there at her door on a cold Chicago night and realize she’s not who we thought she was. We nod our head. We shrug, relieved, we suppose, that it didn’t take too long, this time.

But then there is the twinge of something else. This feeling that makes nature happen. This idea that if the timing were right and the woman were right and there was adequate money to do that and still live this life adventurously… there’s just maybe that bit of hope for just one more – I mean… I make such beautiful babies and Charlie Chaplin had kids at sixty (or something like that – so said Billy Crystal in “When Harry Met Sally”).

At nearly four miles and back in front of my condo the lady jogger is nowhere to be seen. The watch/heart-rate monitor/GPS reads 3.8 miles and I think “That’s close enough. I’m still sore from Wednesday’s run.” I slow to a walk, stretch, and something fires in my brain. I determine that I will not quit before four miles, and to punish myself for even considering it I run in only the heaviest sand. I loop around a trash barrel and check the GPS: “3.89” – a little further and I can turn around. “3.91” and I turn around the second barrel and run back. I’m Herschel Walker working out in the off-season, my shoes sinking nine, ten inches each stride and my knees almost to my chest until I find a track from the Beach Patrol ‘s pickup and it gets easier. “Get out of the tire tread, you pussy!” I think. “Would Hershel Walker run in a fucking tire tread?” I breathe deeply each stride, grunting and “pshaw”-ing rather than the in/nose-in/nose-in/nose-exhale/mouth of my normal pace.

I reach my stairs at 4.01 miles. My shirt – an Ex Officio undershirt meant for the tropics, paper thin when dry, is now soaked through and looks like toilet paper clinging to my chest. I breathe, hands clasped behind my head, I take out my headphones. I walk up the stairs, kicking the sand off my shoes. I ride the elevator up to the eighth floor. I open my door and walk down the hallway to the balcony where I sit and sip my water, the families assembling below, the jet-ski and beach chair rental company preparing for their day. The Gulf of Mexico stretching off forever, and my mind beginning to come back to this world.

One of These Days, I'm Gonna Get Organezized

noreply@blogger.com (The Taco Traveler) — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 17:46:00 +0000

I have no idea if I'm spectacularly disorganized or spectacularly ambitious. It's probably both. On the ambition side, there are the two primary web sites at varying levels of completion, the two or three nonfiction books partially outlined and mostly thought through, the foundering novel and its even less considered screenplay both nearly abandoned due to higher priorities. And then there are the things I want to read. These are the things outside of paying work, parenting, exercise and social life.

I've detailed (as much as I care to) the writings before, but the readings are interesting: I've just set down Proust's Swann's Way (volume 1 of In Search of Lost Time which is better known as Remembrance of Things Past). In my backpack sits another book I'd planned on enjoying today at the coffee shop mid-way through a bike ride (the bike ride having been abandoned due to continuing cold and wind): Proust Was a Neuroscientist.

So I was sitting here on my sofa this morning reading in the quiet -- just the dryer working and muffled voices of snowbirds four floors down on the cold, windy beach, and somewhere in the first chapter of Swann's Way I had a thought I wanted to write down. Maybe Proust spawned an essay topic or the first few ideas in a longer piece. So what I did is I meta-bookmarked Swann's Way, holding my page open with the weight of a bookmarked book entitled Meditation Made Easy.

You see... I'd bought a couple of books on meditation thinking I'd use mediation to get myself more organized and structure my time so I'd be able to actually get one or two of these projects finished. And if you consider bookmarking to be an organizational quality, then they've helped out a lot.

TT

I Pronate, But I'm Not a Bad Person

noreply@blogger.com (The Taco Traveler) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 22:28:00 +0000

I was talking to a friend yesterday, telling her my plan to go to this running specialty shop today to get fitted for some shoes. My new running kick (heh) has finally pushed me to invest in some better shoes than the four-year-old cross-trainers I've been wearing for the past few months as I've ramped up my fitness. But I wanted to get an expert fitting because I'd never had my stride analyzed to see if I'm a heel-striker, a mid-foot runner, etc.... My friend said: "Remember, if you pronate it doesn't mean you're a bad person."

I'd heard the term "pronate" but didn't know what it meant. I guess I thought it was bad technique that could be repaired with practice, but as soon as she said that I really started hoping I don't pronate -- again, without knowing exactly why I needed to hope that. But after a short twenty-foot walk from a shelf to a window, Marshal at Freedom Sports, Panama City Beach, took me to the more cushiony section of the wall for flatfeet like me, and showed me a few different pairs having extra support. Without any prompting from me at all, he said something to the effect of "It's not a big deal -- a lot of people over-pronate." I'm sure that's true, and I'm very happy with my new ultra-cushiony scoots. But I still can't help feeling like the victim of a tragic accident that's left me somehow disfigured. An accident that's left me... a pronater.*

So... after all that: Behold my new running shoes. If you can't see (or have never felt) the awesomeness inherent in these shoes, you're obviously a lame-o. I have a few Pearl Izumi things from cycling, but they're just starting to make a name for themselves in running. I can't wait to hit the treadmill tonight on my new Pearl Izumi Synchro Infinitis. Bring it, arch-havers, non-pronators.

* And, technically, an over-pronater. After further research I understand I've way over-dramatized the issue of being an over-pronator. But this post would be even more boring if I hadn't.

Communication Issues

noreply@blogger.com (The Taco Traveler) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 17:41:00 +0000

I wrote a lot in college, but that was way before blogs so I have notebooks somewhere crammed full of ink. I worked at the downtown San Diego Marriott Hotel & Marina, and I'd head down to work early and sit at The Upstart Crow Bookstore & Coffeehouse, next door at the touristy shopping village, and amongst the books, at a table between the poetry and the philosophy, I'd write about everything. I'd describe people and the things they were doing as practice in observation and detail. I'd pull a Bukowski off the shelf and read and then I'd scribble my own odd and over-caffeinated poetic ramblings. Then I'd go to work and serve expensive wine and nice meals to tourists and business travelers in crystal goblets and on bone china plates.

After graduate school when I got all technical and started making money from being all technical, I quit writing for the most part, and only really took it up again after my divorce a few years ago. In recognition of this return to something that really makes me happy, my ex-wife bought me a divorce gift: an onyx and silver Mont Blanc pen. When she gave me this pen she said: "Someday you'll be sitting in a coffee shop or something and this pen will be a conversation starter. A pretty girl will see it in your hand or in your shirt pocket. She'll see that little white peak and she'll know it's a Mont Blanc." Sure, it's a little bit pretentious to assume that a $200 pen would make a significant difference, but it's just a simple fact that I like more sophisticated, more wordly girls. Maybe it's not a key indicator of worldliness and sophistication, but it's an indicator nonetheless.

I've used that pen for three years now, both sailing and ashore. My notebook and my pen are my loneliness crutches -- they're what I did while alone on my boat or now when I'm alone in a cafe or a restaurant and want to keep myself busy and not just stare at my phone or a bar's television. I've filled notebooks, ships logs and travel journals with roughed-out blog entries, sailing adventures, poems, screenplay ideas and even some novel outlines. I've done a lot of writing practice and when offshore I've even pre-written emails I'd transcribe later when I felt like turning on my computer. I've gone through six or seven refills.

This re-immersion in writing and creativity has made me an exceptional online date. I have a great story that includes lots of travel, passion, adventure and the pursuit of a better sort of life. I can write and talk about almost anything; I said in a dating profile once I can talk "from huntin' to Hemingway, Joseph Campbell to nanoscience, which makes me great arm candy at holiday parties. Plus, I own my own tux!" I photograph fairly well (from some angles better than others). I'm kind and generally friendly, and when I'm intrigued I can talk on the phone for hours like a teen-aged girl.

So what's the problem? The problem is I'm actually too good at online dating - at sharing my cool story and listening to cool stories, becoming too interested too soon in someone I've yet to meet, and twice now in the last few years I've flown to different corners of the country to meet girls I've been fascinated by in email, IM, text, phone... only to find at the very first glance (or smell, or touch) that there was absolutely no chance of anything working out longer-term. And in the end, the in-person failure of this deep virtual connection always hurts one or both of us.

I was in San Diego, November of 2007, when I saw S_'s online profile at Match.com. She looked amazing -- cute and sassy with her perfectly-formed sentences and textual wit. She appeared on my screen as a suggested match after I'd written someone else ("Here are some other users you might like..."). But she was all the way back in Seattle. I read her profile and was intrigued but bummed that I hadn't seen her profile before I'd left Seattle. But I emailed her anyway, something to the effect of: "I'm out of your range, both age-wise and distance (I just left Seattle a month ago on my way down the coast), but I just wanted to let you know your profile made me smile. You sound amazing and cool and sweet. Best of luck to you. Take care." And she wrote me back, her tone almost arms-crossed-pouty, harumph (which is the perfect way to get to me) about how it wasn't fair to write her something so nice but to be so far away and on my way farther.

But we didn't let it go. We emailed a few times, and email led to instant messaging, which led to texting (drunk-texting, even), and finally, while IM-ing and wondering what we'd think of each others' voices, I just called her. For the next few weeks we talked nightly, sometimes for hours, or sometimes she'd not talk at all and just listen as I rattled off anything -- I'd make up a story about nothing or I'd recount a sailing adventure as she drifted off to sleep. She loved my voice and wouldn't let me stop. She'd sigh contentedly and I'd lay there on my boat and enjoy the sound of her contentedness.

I was visiting my boys in Florida when S_ and I decided we'd had enough -- we absolutely had to meet. It had been five or six weeks of... yes, really, falling in love without even ever having seen the other person. I wrote her a poem because she'd never had one written for her, which I thought an injustice; every girl, by the age of 29, deserves at least one poem. This was hers:

Fog

One day maybe we'll recall
How it was unpredicted,
How suddenly it settled in,
How thick, how heavily it lay,
Debilitated us for days...

But for now we sail along,
Carefully with radar on.
Stay warm and peek out now and then
To see it lift, or maybe fade,
But hope that it will always stay.

And another, an untitled, never-delivered haiku:

Spring thoughts in Winter.
Breaths rise with expectations.
And us, still unmet.

I re-routed my return trip to San Diego to make a three-night stop in Seattle to meet S_ and also get into the office. Because we had a meeting with investors my company even picked up the hotel room.

When I first saw her at the airport, she was amazing -- everything I'd hoped. She was wearing white jeans and a light blue shirt. She had big gorgeous brown eyes and amazing hair to match. She was just as fit and as glowingly beautiful as she appeared in her photos. I could go on and describe every detail, but the only detail that mattered, ultimately, was this: upon the first kiss and the follow-up first hug, I knew immediately that I didn't like her smell. And it wasn't her fault -- she wasn't dirty or neglectful. It wasn't her perfume, shampoo or soap. It was pheromones, body. It was smell you can't wash off or cover.

There was some research done that I'm too lazy to look up right now, but basically there were ten women and ten men. The men worked out in these t-shirts and when the shirts were good and sweaty, they handed them over and the researchers had the women smell them one-by-one and rate the attractiveness of the man who'd worn it. There were some likes, some loves, some ho-hums and some turn ons, but one result was surprising because of how utterly distasteful this smell was to the woman. It turns out the woman and the man were related.

I'm positive I wasn't related to S_. I didn't recoil and I wasn't even offended, but there was something about that most key of senses that wasn't working for me. I tried my best to work through it because I so wanted her to be as perfect there as she was in every other way, but in the end I had to end it because it felt somehow like nature was trying to tell me something. How do you tell someone "I don't like your smell"? Well... you don't. You spoil the night and the weekend at 11:45 on a drunken New Year's Eve, after she'd taken the train down from her family's visit to LA to see your boat, your home. You tell her that you've decided for certain that you don't want to have any more kids.

Since I've been here in Panama City, Florida, I haven't met a single girl I've been interested in dating. This is an exceptionally churchy town in a county that voted 70% for McCain this past presidential election. Those are two fairly significant impediments to finding a girl who won't despise me and my beliefs, let alone be a soul mate. So I set up a profile online and set my location to Washington D.C. (which is where I'll be, starting sometime around mid-June).

Less than a week after I set up that profile, I started talking with E_. Smart and artistic, we hit it off right away, and in less than a week we'd already exchanged enough emails to believe that there was something good there. We talked for hours on the phone, and after just two weeks I cashed in some miles and flew to D.C. to see the city I'll be moving to soon and to meet a girl. It was almost like I'd completely forgotten about S_ and the whole idea that you simply cannot fall for someone until you explore way more than what you can share in text or voice. This first meeting, too, in the metro station outside the airport, was much less than expected, and this time without even a hint of physical attraction.

So after all of this, once again I've got mixed feelings about the whole idea of connection-creation via remote communication. It would be great if someday those over-blown expectations would be met, but I've taken a significant step backward and modified my approach (if you can call it an "approach" at all). I hid my D.C. profile and have decided to just stick it out here in Florida, solo and content until the actual move. But if nothing else, my trip to D.C. for that date showed me what a great city and what amazing and beautiful people await me. After the failed date I spent two days walking around the National Mall, seeing the sights and museums like a tourist but feeling like that city -- if it were a bit warmer -- would be just the place for me.

I heard the sounds and smelled the smells of a city, my good shoes clomping past drum-beat buskers on the Chinatown sidewalk and Rodin busts at the Hirshhorn. I felt the echoes and marble-slab vibrations at the Lincoln Memorial.

And yes, of course, while out at dinner one night I even met a real-live girl. Beautiful and brilliant and even more world-aware than myself, she was there with a friend as I sat down a couple seats away at the sushi bar. I pulled out my journal and my pen and began working on something -- maybe it was the beginning of this entry, which started as simple frustration over yet again unfulfilled expectations. At one point her friend went to the restroom and I said something about the fact that they'd been speaking Spanish. Maybe I said something about Mexico. We talked for a couple of minutes and I told her I was in town for a failed blind date but happily looking around anyway as I'd be moving there soon. Her friend returned and they got back to their food and their conversation; I got back to my writing.

A little while later, as she and her friend were trying to sign their checks, rushing to make a late-night movie, the waiter's pen failed them. "May I borrow your Mont Blanc?" she asked, saying Mont Blanc with a perfect French accent.

She signed her check, pulled out a business card and wrote her number on the back. "That's my non-work number, if you have any questions about the neighborhood...."

I smiled, thanked her, and remembered how nice it is to meet a real person as the first step towards connection -- to know right away that the attraction part is there. Most of all, it's nice to know that no matter how meaningful the words may be later, how sweet the voice on the phone if that happens, how pretty the two-dimensional photo, how perfect the giggle, there's a real, physical frame of reference that your nose, your eyes and your body have already pre-approved.

TT

Stupid Perfection

noreply@blogger.com (The Taco Traveler) — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 22:14:00 +0000

So, just to jump back into it here... my latest blogging hiatus has been due to not wanting to just post crap or unfinished / unpolished thoughts. But I'm frustrated with myself that I try a bit too hard to post "essays" here rather than just what could be "interesting thoughts" which may or may not provoke comment, create traffic, etc....

I'm moving past that (again), and I've decided to post a couple things that have been on my mind lately. In a nutshell, there's the thing about creating a great connection without ever having met someone in-person, and having that real-life meeting totally bomb but having it somehow turn out okay anyway. And then there's the thing about Taylor Swift's videos bumming me out and launching a sad internal analysis about whether or not true love is only for those crazy teenagers -- no longer for those of us who consider ourselves post-procreative.

So anyway, I'm about to start doing more of that off-the-cuff stuff, if you'd like to check back soon. Sorry to those who have found my blog over the last few years and were hoping for more writing (especially if you're hoping for more writing about sailing); there's some interesting stuff coming, but you can also expect it to be way more random, not quite as long, and definitely not as focused. I should save that polishing for actual publication, someday, anyway.

TT

2010: The Year We Make Contact

noreply@blogger.com (The Taco Traveler) — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 01:00:00 +0000

I'm not much for New Years resolutions, but I've stumbled upon one I need to make. I was walking into Starbucks for my first coffee of 2010, and I just wasn't ready for the pretty girl's smile. I looked away immediately upon eye contact - you know... how you do when you're hung over and not feeling terribly social, and in the process of looking away saw her begin to smile at me. I looked back half a second later and she was still smiling but already turning back down to her book. It was an opportunity lost--not necessarily for a shared coffee, a date or the love of a lifetime--but I missed my chance to share a smile.

So I've resolved to be more ready this year, for both the giving and receiving of smiles and hellos. And, let's not forget: more eye contact and less iPhone.

TT

The Love Steam

noreply@blogger.com (The Taco Traveler) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:10:00 +0000

In reply to: @sarahprout RT @ZnaTrainer »(¯`v´¯)»Love from one side hurts, but love from two sides heals.William Shakespeare»(¯`v´¯)» (beautiful)

An excerpt from a story I wrote years ago (a short story with some valid research):

In the Middle Ages there was a theory that unrequited love caused death. When a person felt love, the heat from that love produced a steam in the body. This steam contained chemicals vital to the body's health, and when a lover looked at his beloved it was thought that this steam escaped through his eyes and was absorbed by hers. If she shared the love then her eyes emitted steam as well and there was an equal exchange of those life-giving chemicals. If the exchange was unequal then the more fervent lover grew pale, weak, and eventually he died.

Blogging Absence

noreply@blogger.com (The Taco Traveler) — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 03:12:00 +0000

I'm not really sure how much I have to say, and how much I'll say here on Taco Traveler or what I'll reserve for later (maybe a book - non-fiction idea #4). But the bottom line is that work-wise and money-wise, things slid way downhill from November 2008 to May 2009, and the last trip I took in late June was my last with Chemistry. I brought her back from San Carlos, Sonora, Mexico, and delivered her to San Diego. Said goodbye.

So again... I think I've got some significant things to say about the whole experience. I just haven't felt like saying them yet.

And the other writing? The "I Saw You" or the general blogging on life sorta stuff? Well, I'm a "feel" writer. There's a reason I've never finished a book: I can't treat it like a job, can't crank out 1,000 words a day every day, can't polish and trim and polish some more. I have to feel like writing and I have to have an experience and feel a certain way about what I'm saying before I want to share it. And really (and I think understandably), I haven't felt that way lately.

TT

Guitar Hero Lessons

noreply@blogger.com (The Taco Traveler) — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 03:00:00 +0000

Guitar Hero is teaching me a lot about rock stars. I understand them and their "eccentricities" so much more now than I did before playing this game. I mean, when my supposed "fans" boo me off the stage for being drunk and missing several dozen chords, they deserve to be flipped off. And that guitar deserves to be smashed into bits.

Political Personae

noreply@blogger.com (The Taco Traveler) — Sat, 30 May 2009 21:57:00 +0000

I was washing my yankee sheets (ropes to control the head sail, land-lubbers), rinsing the lines of their crusty salt to try to soften them for a long summer’s storage in the middle of San Carlos Bay, Sonora, Mexico, and I couldn’t get it out of my head – this uncomfortable feeling like I’d wronged someone, like somehow I’d done something bad. I was remorseful. It’s not the sort of feeling you want to leave Mexico with – they’ll see it at the border and might not let you back into the States without a back-room interview or two.

I’d posted a casual tweet, a #followfriday post to recommend a couple guys with way more followers than me who certainly don’t need my recommendation…. But for some reason I felt like saying something. Like a really stupid scientist throwing an acid and a base into the same tweet and being surprised when there’s a reaction, I took two guys I follow on Twitter, @shoq and @stephenkruiser, and doled out a rare #followfriday:

A #followfriday of contrasts: @Shoq and @stephenkruiser (though a Right-ish figure, however, SK is more personable than political)

It was innocent enough, and I wasn’t expecting any issues with it (who doesn’t like a mention here & there, no matter how many followers they have?), but @Shoq didn’t care much for the mashup:

@tacotraveler Kruiser is about as personable as a roadside I.E.D. Did that crank pay you to tweet my name with his?

There was a back-and-forth w/r/t what “personable” means, and I suppose I gave in and didn’t want to just come out and say, “dude, stop being a dick,” but I let it go. So there I sat, churning my headsail sheets with a winch handle in a five-gallon bucket of warm fresh water and laundry soap, watching yet another amazing sunset and sipping on what may be my last margarita in Mexico for a long time (okay, I’ve since poured one more and am considering a third), but just feeling emotionally shitty, generally. And I figured out what was bothering me so much about it: I felt like the guy with whom I share a side (or at least several posts) of the political fence, as it were, was just plain wrong about how he goes about it – how he navigates the political landscape. Our new president would agree, I'm sure, that making a vitriolic attack against a political opposite was no better than, say, Cheney, who (let’s face it) is a major dick.

I have no idea what Stephen Kruiser’s radio show is like. Does he stir things up, Rush-style, and make an ass of himself to appease an audience that might demand a bit of lefty hatred or they’ll stop tuning in? I don’t know, but I don’t intend to check, either. I've belonged to a country club and seen enough narrow-mindedness to satisfy me for all time - people like slot cars on a track with no criss-cross: they simply won't change lanes - not on an idea or opinion, no matter how small or large or how unreasonable their position. But when it comes to Stephen Kruiser, the only persona I care about – the only one I interact with (as much as you can interact, as one of 80k followers) – is the one on Twitter. That persona seems like a nice guy, and I can't say I'd really like to discuss politics in 140 character snippets. Politics, for me, requires many more words (and usually a lot of alcohol) if feelings and friendships are to be preserved.

Shortly before my #followfriday post, I was introduced on Twitter (accidentally, via a @Shoq post criticizing a different guy on Twitter) to an entirely different sort of conservative. Someone who, when I looked through his posts, referred once to Obama as “Barry” and in many other posts was just a jerk. “Barry,” I suppose is no more disrespectful than calling our previous president “George,” but the way he said it made him sound like an asshole – like someone seeking the tiniest edge, like someone looking for anything that will annoy the left and ingratiate themselves to the right. I don’t have anything against conservatives unless they get preachy or personal, and I guess it’s fair to say that I have nothing against liberals, either, unless they get personal. Why hate someone for what they believe? My seven and six-year-old know better.

My politics? I’ve been all over the place. After high-school and early in college I suppose I was in a sort of “be like my dad” state of being, where finally getting to live with and spend a lot of time with a father who I'd seen only on holidays and summer trips for much of my adolescence was reason enough for me to adopt his politics and be as much like him as possible. I don’t know – I’m probably stretching, but it’s fair to say that I really looked up to Michael J. Fox as Alex P. Keaton, and like most of those guys I went to a lot of frat parties (never pledged) and started college as a Business major.

Then, in 1989 or so, I discovered a bit of a reader and writer in me and fell into the English crowd at San Diego State. I started hanging with hipsters (hipster-esque as they could be well past the Kero-wacky fifties). I edited a literary magazine. I may or may not have smoked a lot of pot and I may or may not have smoked some of that pot with a professor or two. Basically, influenced by the crowd I liked being with, I adopted the politics of that crowd. That continued into graduate school, where, as a grad TA and English master’s student I became, um... the professor.

In 1996 my grades and my ambition turned me from the scholar route (I’m a pseudo-scholar), and I started working as a contractor at Microsoft. I think I steadily moved more towards the political center as my income rose and the cool-factor of English-major liberalism started to wear off. I started my own consulting business and saw more than six figures (pre-Y2K, when six figures was still pretty sweet), but even then I didn’t have a problem sharing with my government as long as the money seemed well-spent. I drove a red Jeep. I snowboarded. I climbed a couple times a week at a rock-climbing gym. And I dated a lot. I was a well-monied single guy and life was good.

And where am I now? Well, after marriage, two brilliant and beautiful kids, divorce, unemployment... transience, I’m not much different than I was after grad school. I love “This American Life” and “Radio Lab” on NPR. I believe that art, music and writing should be required at every level of school, and that no life could possibly be full without some sort of self-examination in an artistic context. I listen to pop, hip-hop, electronica, the occasional metal, world music, “Adult Alternative,” and I have five versions of Bach’s “Cello Suites” played by five different cellists (if musical eclecticity (eclectic-ness?) says anything about politics). I voted for Obama and I teared up several times on election night (mostly when overt and uncontrollable happiness was displayed on screen, like a Malia / Sasha grin, but if you know me you know that I tear up easily). I don’t believe – either actually or conceptually – in a knowing, caring or vengeful God, but I believe that if there’s a force in the universe that gives a rat’s ass, it would care more that you’re nice than that you worshiped it every week. So yeah, I’m still a liberal. But the most important feature of “Where I Am Now,” as far as I'm concerned, would be my knowing I’m a part of the process – part of the community of ideas – and not the one and only solution. For me it’s about being a good person and letting other good people be good in their own way. And if they're not good, not friendly, not reasonable in their arguments or respectful while conducting their arguments, then move on. Maybe even unfollow. I guess what it comes down to is this: I just wish people wouldn't be dicks.

TT

Worst. Fisherman. Ever.

noreply@blogger.com (The Taco Traveler) — Sat, 23 May 2009 02:05:00 +0000

Well, at least I know my problem: I just don’t care enough to get up early enough, or trek far enough, to get the good stuff. I have come out pretty far today – 15 miles out of San Carlos – but I didn’t even leave San Carlos until 11:30, which was after all the yellowtail and dorado were biting, surely, and when only the disgusting black skipjack were interested enough to take my lure. I followed birds and drove through the bait balls they were dive-bombing, and got three strikes doing so, but every time there was a black skipjack on the end of the line.

For someone who loves good tuna as much as I do, this is an issue, but it’s probably not something I’ll ever solve with a sailboat, because I’m someone who doesn’t like short day-sails our “out and back” days, which is what a five-hour long fishing expedition ends up looking like (since I have the sails up, but am motorsailing in less than 5 knots of wind). I see having a nice fishing boat someday, where 15 or 20 miles out is nothing but twenty minutes and gas money. Another part of the problem today wasn’t the time I got up (7:30) but rather the need to take care of some things on the Internet / via email and a couple Skype calls before I could go fishing. Yes, I do still have responsibilities, to a degree. Pro-bono responsibilities for a company in which I’m now, for better or worse, fully-vested. The old VC line / investment impetus goes: “Do you want to own 12% [or whatever percent] of nothing, or 2% of a 20, 30, 50 million dollar company?” Well, I own 12% of….

So this first fish was damn big. I saw right away that he was a black skipjack so I started making plans to let him go, but I had to use the gaff to gently pull him up so I could unhook the hook. But when I “gently” put the gaff through his gill opening, I apparently sliced something wide open and he started bleeding like crazy (it might have been the hook too). I’ve seen fish blood before (heh), so no big deal. I pulled him up higher and started working on the hook with the pliers, but before I could start, he went into like convulsions – crazy blood-loss convulsions so quick and furious that they couldn’t have been voluntary, and with as much as he was bleeding, my entire back “fishing area” (including my legs and probably my face, too) turned into a gruesome bloody Jackson Pollack painting. I finally had to knock him on the head just to get the hook out, so I feel bad but that’s nature. We used to do that with undesirable fish in Puget Sound, too – the little bottom-dwelling sharks (I can’t remember their name) that would take our mooches when we were going after the king salmon. That big black skipjack will still go to good use for something down there. Already has.

Before I saw the birds, in a fit of goofiness caused probably by the heat and some cockpit exercise (stretches, standing crunches, “Karate Kid” crane technique, etc…), I had come up with some killer song lyrics that no doubt Jimmy Buffet will steal from this blog:

I don't see no sign of schoolin' tuna
No leapin' mahi mahi anywhere
There's no look of billfish in these waters
But I got my icebox and it is filled with beeeeeeeer.

Sing that in a totally over-blown twang (especially “beer” which should sound like “bear” so that it rhymes with “anywhere”) and you’ll have us a hit (Lyrics copyright 2009 The Taco Traveler – all rights reserved). Of course, all I’m drinking is water, but I do have a few Corona Lights down there chilling nicely, which is one of the reasons for coming out today, too – to get my icebox cold again. I carried the same 20lb bag of ice from San Diego all the way here to San Carlos, with the occasional motoring I did. That icebox chills nicely (below 0 degrees Fahrenheit, if necessary) when there’s enough engine-time at high enough RPM. But since I’ve been here I’ve pretty much let everything get warm, but there wasn’t anything left to lose, really. I’ve still got a few pounds of butter I’ll need to give away since I’m not getting any dorado to sizzle.

TT

Just Great Shit

noreply@blogger.com (The Taco Traveler) — Fri, 22 May 2009 05:35:00 +0000

Sometimes your music just won’t let you sleep. You need to sleep but you can’t stop listening and you think “okay, next bad song…” and that bad song never comes because you had friends over and when you have company of course bad songs aren’t acceptable, so what you have on right now is a mix called “Just Great Shit” that won’t let you leave. Fifty eight songs that you’d smuggle onto a desert island somehow even if they said you could only have ten. You lay there on the salon settee and spin from tequila and maybe the boat’s spinning on the anchor but it can’t be doing it quite that fast – first one way in a 360 and then the other way a 360 as Muse’s “Stockholm Syndrome” hits its changes and curves of guitar oblivion and then straightens out with White Stripes “Just Don’t Know What to Do” – a song that clings tenuously to JGS status but is still up there and short enough that you just can’t … quite … see yourself getting up to go to bed. You are paralyzed by contentedness.

P.M. Dawn’s “Looking Through Patient Eyes” (live) – hip-hop bordering on just beautiful lyricism that is almost spiritual: I left reality early / due to the lack of love, y’all.

Built to Spill’s “Cortez the Killer” with its amazing, consistent and slow but brilliant drumming – fifteen minutes of guitar and cacophony that tells the story of the man who, in Built to Spill terms “came dancing across the water with his stallions and guns” (though I prefer the original Neil Young’s more assonant and comfortable “galleons and guns”).

It’s a make-out mix, a drunk mix, a just feel groovy mix and everything else that matters in a collection of best songs, though Cake’s cover of the Sesame Street “Mahna Mahna” can suddenly and hilariously interrupt what may have been some excellent and serious kissing because you have to – both of you – stop to giggle at the monsters.

Wilco’s “At Least That’s What You Said” for more guitar excellence in just the right ascension, from its a-cappella opening to the machine-gun battle with the drums, piano as mediator. Into Massive Attack’s “Protection” that stops the boat’s spinning and sets it down in a quiet, still anchorage and surrounds it in a mist of warm, dry fog: I’ll stand in front of you / take the force of the blow / protection. / I’m a boy and you’re a girl / but you know you can lean on me / and I don’t have no fear / I’ll take on any man here / who says that’s not the way it should be.

Into “Oi Va Voi Feat. Ben Hassan” – the first of several Buddha Bar rhythmic and world-esque beats with something about Charlie Chan but just sounds cool. John Legend’s “Save Room” though you can’t really be sure how the song first entered your life; who planted it there and why. De-Phazz Feat. Pat Appleton in another Buddha Bar loungey thing that wouldn’t have been out of place at the “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” party and urges us to “check the scene outside of Medellin.”

More Wilco because it’s all random and let’s face it, Wilco deserves several spots in any top-60 (or so) list (4, for mine), this time with “Impossible Germany.” Yo La Tengo sings a perky little ditty called “My Little Corner of the World” and the tequila or maybe something someone slipped into the tequila carries you up and onto some sort of agave rainbow and sets you down in a pot of happiness. Femi Kuti sings “Do Your Best,” another Buddha Bar selection in there for its melodic touchstone that won’t leave your head until the next one enters, and it enters right away with King Britt Pres. Oba Funke’s amazing “Uzoamaka”: Free to… free to… free to… free to… free to… free to… free to….

Steve Earle comes next with a live version of “Copperhead Road” and by now you’re realizing that fifty-eight songs will take about five hours and there’s no way to get to sleep because a bad song won’t come, so you turn the music down just a bit – enough to allow it to invade or maybe even create your drunken dreams – and shuffle off to bed.

LCD Soundsystem’s “Someone Great” with its 80’s psychedelic backbeat and stereophonic scratching creates arcs of light - your eyeballs tracking the sound behind your closed lids. Texas’ “Say What You Want” you can never get enough of and makes you miss her through everything, first hearing the song on BBC’s Radio One while falling in love. You held hands and walked through Oxford, to the cheese shop with its massive wheels and the quiet square speckled with sunlight and tree-leaf-shade, restaurants all around and not a bit of plastic furniture in sight.

Cut Chemist kills the romance when his “What’s The Altitude (Feat. Hymnal)” tells the story of a quick and easy seduction and evening / morning. She gave me head...phones / said 'Have you heard this sound?'.

Mahala Rai Banda vs. Shantel “Mahalageasca” is like a vision of Melaque mariachi-fest last St. Patrick’s Day mixed with a beat that just makes you bounce your head idiotically but totally uncontrollably, at the mercy of its rum-pums. The Roots’ “The Seed (2.0) feat. Cody Chestnutt” a great song that doesn’t go to great lengths to hide its purpose: the guy is anxious to create more copies of himself, to procreate and create a legacy – something to leave behind.

Rescued by the romance again with Counting Crows’ “Long December,” a song that means more to you than almost any other, ever, with a line that stuns and has become the centerpiece for so many thoughts, entire essays, even: The smell of hospitals in winter / and the feeling that it’s all a lot of oysters, but no pearls / all at once you look across a crowded room to see the way that light attaches to a girl.

“Mundian To Bach Ke” by Panjabi MC – another Buddha Bar song, this one Arabic and beat-worthy to the degree that an understanding of Arabic is completely unnecessary. You’ll shimmy and your shoulders will rock back and forth. If you’re standing up you’ll stomp your foot at the important places once you figure it all out. Keane’s “Somewhere Only We Know (live)” – a song that just is, with little to say now but room for memories.

Daft Punk’s “Robot Rock” gets its own paragraph because it’s just fucking awesome, and let’s face it: if it had to share a paragraph it would totally annihilate the other unfortunate song(s).

… especially if that next song happened to be Neutral Milk Hotel’s “The King of Carrot Flowers, Pt. 1” with its sinking into your soul and stuff like that. Somewhere in your dream, then, John Turturro licks his bowling ball as Jesús in “The Big Lebowski,” and as The Gypsy Kings start their version of “Hotel California” he slides and releases, following through for spin, watches his strike and shimmies and glides, rumbas back to the scorer’s table.

Fiona Apple’s “Across the Universe” is next, and plays a never-ending cycle of awesomeness as the song evokes the amazing movie “Pleasantville,” and “Pleasantville” in turn evokes “Across the Universe.”

More Buddha Bar with Howard Maple’s “Springtime” and James Brown funks you up with “Mind Power” and his crucial and critical time, the pruh-nunce-ee-a-tion and the realization, and frankly, just what it is and what it is. And again, not to put too fine a point on it: what it is and what it is.

Sufjan Stevens’ “Chicago” resonates with I made a lot of mistakes / I made a lot of mistakes / I made a lot of mistakes / I made a lot of mistakes / I made a lot of mistakes but forgives with all things grow. Bright Eyes’ “You Will. You? Will, You? Will.” More LCD Soundsystem: “Get Innocuous.” Matisyahu despite the middling quality of his Hasidic reggae and the self-righteousness like only a crazy God-maniac can deliver, “King Without a Crown” is still pretty cool – probably more for its catchy guitar riff but I’m not sure because my brain has a switch that turns words off when people get God-preachy and can only hear those words somewhere behind the rhythms. Still more LCD Soundsystem (shuffle-magic) with “New York I Love You, But You’re Bringing Me Down.”

Tomatito rocks the acoustic guitar with incredible background handclapping like you’ve never heard before in “Mi Nina Rosa Alba” from the “Vengo” soundtrack. Groove Armada’s “Superstylin’” was a girlfriend’s ring tone for a while, when I was messing around with iPhone ring tones. She never said anything, but I could tell she didn’t like that it was “Superstylin’” and not something more like romantic or something. I thought it was rather complimentary. “Rose Rouge” by St. Germain you’d think would be another Buddha Bar pick, but no; I’d found it way before I found Buddha Bar. Oakenfold’s “Starry-Eyed Surprise” since way before it was a Volkswagen commercial. Wilco’s “Either Way” for its unabashed hopefulness. “Gypsy Woman 2006” by Sami Dee & Freddy Jones vs. Crystal Waters for some reason – not quite sure – maybe it’s the fake stadium full of screaming fans.

Built To Spill’s “Car” and yes you can see I’m getting a little bored with this – it’s not at all that these songs are less awesome or I have less to say about them. And Jeff Buckley’s “Hallelujah” is just incredible. Try listening to it at anchor sometime, with nobody else in the world around or even awake and ten billion stars visible in the sky. Again contrasted beautifully by Sean Paul’s “Temperature” which is about as spiritual and romantic as a bean burrito. James Brown’s “The Payback.” “Santa Maria (Del Buen Ayre)” I first heard on a friend’s MySpace page and had to track it down.

Though I’m not a huge Beatles fan, I’m a fan of Beatles covers. The second one on my list (the first was Fiona Apple, of course) is PM Dawn’s “Norwegian Wood.” Sandi Thom’s “I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker (With Flowers in Her Hair).” Steve Earle’s “Galway Girl” ‘cause her hair was black and her eyes were blue. What’s a fella to do?

Elvis Costello’s “Little Palaces” but let’s face it, I’ve probably lost at least one valuable TacoTraveler reader because I only have one Elvis Costello song on this list.

Carl Cox’ “Ain’t It Funky Now” for boogyin’ down. Coltrane’s “Blue Train” for occasional sulking and Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song.” Pavement’s “Cut Your Hair.” Radiohead’s “Idioteque.” “Arabian Song (Da Ghetto Fuckiro Club)” by Jayti Ravin - another cool Buddha Bar song, of course.

There’s “Antichrist Television Blues” by Arcade Fire - a hold-over from the “Superstylin’” girlfriend that’s probably destined for the JGS archive soon as I’m getting tired of it, and let's face it, Arcade Fire, you're just not that interesting. “She’s A Jar” by Wilco. And the last song on the Just Great Shit list is one of my favorites, and one with just an incredible story if you really listen to it: “Casimir Pulaski Day” by Sufjan Stevens.

TT

Cabo to San Carlos - Mega-Post

noreply@blogger.com (The Taco Traveler) — Thu, 14 May 2009 16:47:00 +0000

Well, I passed on my chance for an easy day, bypassing Los Frailles about 5pm and deciding to continue on to Muertos or possibly even through the night to Isla Espiritu Santo, the place I’ve been dreaming of since I left last December. I spoke to the boys this morning before leaving Cabo, and I just couldn’t miss them more. It hurts so much being so far away, being so unsettled and financially screwed up, and all I want now is to just be closer, no matter what happens. When I went to San Diego in January, the intention was to try to find a job. And I did try, but for five months there was nothing, not in San Diego or anywhere else in the world I tried. So I guess I proved that location doesn’t matter at the moment as far as a job goes, but what does matter is how far I am from my boys. They’re growing up without me and I’m missing so much. So despite the fact that my plane reservation is set for June 1 out of Phoenix (after a Tufesa bus ride), I feel in a hurry to get to San Carlos and get ready to go. Plus, I guess, there’s the familiarity of San Carlos.
Partially, I suppose, I feel like I’m rushing because I want so badly to just anchor in a quiet, empty cove and have time to enjoy it. When I came down in December, my best memory was my day spent at anchor in Calelero Cove on Isla Espiritu Santo. Amazing diving, beautiful all around, and crystal clear water.

It’s 7:30 and the sun is getting low, and I see fog or haziness on the horizon. I’m already a little tired, so I’ve decided to just head into Muertos (I’ll get there about midnight) and then get up early to make my way to Isla Espiritu Santo. It will be a nighttime anchoring, which is always a joy, but it will also get me some rest and keep me out of the Cerralvo Channel on an unfavorable tide.

Well, Muertos is a no-go. It’s blowing from the south – not bad, but bad enough to make it lumpy in there. I didn’t get close enough to look closely but based on my conditions five miles out, it wasn’t worth poking my head in. I’m motorsailing towards Cerralvo Channel at 7.7 – 8.5 knots. I’ve got 5-10 knots apparent on my starboard quarter right now, but it’s a little flukey. I’m under full sail with the motor at 2k RPM. I could be content to just sail at 5-6 knots, but the longer I wait to get into the channel, the worse the current is going to be on the outgoing tide. And 2k RPM is really taking it easy on the engine anyway.

So I guess I’ll be tired, and get into a quiet cove on Isla Espiritu Santo and sleep as much as I can given the heat, but I don’t like anchoring in unknown places at night in the first place, let alone if I don’t expect it to be a comfortable anchorage. I’ve just made some coffee and turned on the wifi (and wifi scanner, “Network Stumbler.” I expect to run into a wifi connection here near Muertos - either the Giggling Marlin or a development.

Well, weather changes everything. I was really looking forward to Espiritu Santo (as you can probably tell) but about half way up Cerralvo Channel it started to howl: 20-30 knots right on my nose. I gather this is a famous La Paz “Corumel” wind, which often picks up at night and goes until the morning. I decided that as nice as the days would be, I didn’t want to put up with that at night, so I bypassed Espiritu Santo and am now approaching Bahia San Everisto, which is a gorgeous place I anchored on my way down in December but didn’t spend enough time in. So I made 160+ nautical miles in 24 hours, on not much fuel since I had decent wind most of the way. I’ll enjoy a few smaller anchorages up this way that I haven’t been to before, or I’ll just get to San Carlos earlier.

Pretty tired now, though, and looking forward to setting the anchor. I hope I can sleep – it’s pretty hot.

Woke up from that nap and had a good dinner and nice relaxing evening, and woke around 2:30 to lots of swell coming into the anchorage, but luckily no wind, so there was no worry about getting blown onto the rocks. Still, I was very rested as I went to bed about 9:30 and probably fell asleep immediately, so I got up and am now sailing with about 16 knots on my starboard quarter doing a fantastic broad reach north into the San Juan Strait, which divides the mainland from Isla San Juan. I was thinking of finding an anchorage on Isla San Juan because it’s unpopulated, used to have deer but now only snakes and supposedly 6” scorpions. I’d love to get a picture or two of some 6” scorpions, but don’t think I want to get that close either on purpose or accidentally. And I’m sort of anxious to get back to San Carlos to Internet and get more job things working.

Such a great boat – we’re doing 6.5 – 7.8 knots under main and yankee (O.V. Jr. steers a slightly imperfect course that gains/loses a lot of speed – if we were racing I’d be hand-steering at 7.8 knots pure), no motor at all as I expect I’ll get to run that later to cool the icebox so for now I’m taking advantage of the free ride. I also expect the wind to straighten out and turn behind me more soon as we get farther into the strait, so that I’ll have to take down the yankee and may need to motorsail as we’re going upcurrent a bit.

This could work out well, actually, though I expect one of these times to find an anchorage that protects from the southerly swell and lets me sleep to the morning, but I sort of enjoy waking up at 3 and getting to sail – taking advantage of the La Paz “Corumel” rather than having to motor all day in the hot and windless day. Not to mention the privilege of getting to see the sunrise and doing a little morning fishing. This may be the only morning I get to leave anchor just because of a bumpy anchorage, actually, now that I think about it, because I’m going to stop today in Agua Verde, which has southern protection. It’s also 48 nautical miles north, so it’s farther from the Corumel and who knows if the wind will happen up there at night. We’ll see. Okay, concentrating now as the wind starts to turn behind – don’t want an accidental gybe.

Wing in wing up San Juan Strait! No, she doesn’t really like it. Tough to keep that yankee full and we’re only doing 6 knots. But the wind had died down to about 10-12 knots, and we’re heading right down the middle – not heading for rocks… so there’s that.

I’m getting pretty frustrated on the fishing front, and have resolved to get a dorado today on my way to Agua Verde. With that goal in mind, I’ve re-routed around Isla Santa Cruz, where the bottom contours come up from 4,000+ feet to 500 or so. This is also where I got my bull dorado last year, and I’d love to get another one like that right now. It’s about 30 minutes after sunrise, and I’m not sure I have the right lure on – it may be too bright. I read a short book this trip that talked about lure selection as it relates to the time of day, sky conditions, temperature of the water, and optimal temperature for a certain species of fish, and it was useful in that respect (though it hasn’t helped yet), but the book was written by an egomaniac who came across as a complete asshole, and he also recommended using scent made of PVC that sloughs off into the water. Yeah, use plastic that adds plastic to our water – great idea. Dickhead. It’s from “The Master Angler” series and called “Using Color Technology to Catch More Fish” by Phil Rabideau. It’s worthless outside of the bit of science regarding color / temperature, and that could have been covered in brief article or blog entry, but this guy wrote a book full of self-congratulatory stories and information about lures his company makes. It really makes me want to throw it overboard and never buy any Mepps™ products, ever, because we see his company (Mepps™) about five hundred times in the book.

Still no fish in this fish-rich area, so I’m going to take my white squid off and try a swimming lure. Sure wish I still had that old cedar plug that caught anything and everything five minutes after you threw it in.

No, no fish on the Mexican flag-colored squid, either. I decided against the swimming lure but now I’m almost convinced it doesn’t matter, like the dorado just aren’t biting down here – maybe the water is too cold? The water is 77 degrees right now here in Agua Verde. Agua Verde means literally “green water,” but in the case of this town it also means the color turquoise, according to the Rains cruising guide.
I just came in from a sunset cocktail and book-reading in the cockpit that was distracted for the most part by a dazzling show of pelicans dive-bombing their dinner. So incredible to watch, these ugly brown pelicans as they soar about thirty feet above the water not looking terribly interested until suddenly they just alter course and nosedive into the water but only seem to go down maybe six inches. And then they just sit there casually on the water for a few minutes and eat what they dove on. Talent.

They distract me from a book that requires intense concentration: David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. It’s a 1000+ page tome (with footnotes, also fiction) that’s so far pretty awesome, though not something you just pick up and progress through as James Brown is singing “Shoot Your Shot” and brown pelicans are reminding me why this is such a special place (The Sea of Cortez) – the nature all around and so incredibly … natural. As I came near Agua Verde from my roundabout voyage around Isla Santa Cruz I came through another gang of dolphins, who happily or aggressively confront the boat and swim all around me like Hells Angels, jumping and surfing, escorting me through their right-of-way towards the anchorable harbor but in just being there telling me, ostensibly, not to bother trying to catch any of their tuna, because even if magically I got one on the line, they’d steal it as soon as it started struggling. And at sunset I was approached by a little duck-like thing – maybe a baby pelican, that couldn’t fly but did a waddly sort of swim up to me, with occasional wing-flapping to try itself and then some head-dips and whole-body shakes. “Hey there,” I said to him. “Did you just come out here to show me how cute you are?”

Last night in Bahia San Evaristo right before I went to bed I went on deck and just watched for a while, and listened. There were waves crashing into the rocks and caves around the anchorage, but the most pronounced sound was the movement of water around the boat. I looked down and watched the spots of luminescence as fish disturbed water at the surface and dove below, their agitated wakes creating “Starry Night” swirls in the water, Van-Gogh’ing all around me. I have no idea how to effectively describe how amazing it is – to watch the millions of sparkles in the water and the streaks and swirls as the fish move around the boat, sometimes casually and sometimes jetting suddenly, creating ever brighter streaks of light. This is why I asked so urgently for friends to join me in this; it wasn’t that I needed companionship or help sailing, but that there are beautiful and amazing things here that are just impossible to describe.

This only goes to drive home the perception that I’m wasting time, that I’m just having fun down here. And it’s true, I am really living, thinking, doing and seeing some incredible things, but at the same time I don’t feel like I’m on vacation. To say (when I was) “I’m at anchor in Cabo” always sounded a lot better than it felt, as I don’t feel like my attitude matches the perception of a cavalier adventurer living the dream – I’m too poor for the dream, and I miss my boys too much. It’s hard to describe but those who know me best will understand that I’m trying to make the best of a horrible situation, and my failed attempt at connectedness in San Diego (full-time Internet / telephone) did nothing to enhance my job prospects in four months, and now in order to keep my boat as cheaply as possible while still feeling something other than desperately broke and unemployed I’ve returned to a place where I can feel quite a bit richer, if only spiritually, while I move closer to another long visit with my boys, and look forward to an ever-improving economy, more complete ventures on my laptop, more book-chapters written every day, and a life’s dream that’s still alive.

Well, I finally landed another fish, but it was yet another bonito, and I’m sorry, though this one was the biggest one yet (probably 15 lbs) I let him go back to the sea to fight another day (hopefully, if his lip didn’t hurt too much). I’m using a swimming lure that shakes and wiggles with a small inclusive diving plane on the front, to get it down 10 feet or so when it’s trailed about 120 ft off the back of the boat. This bonito really hit it hard, and took off like a shot – he actually spooled me and the way he fought I thought it was going to be even bigger, but because he didn’t jump I knew right away it wasn’t a dorado. I’ve never seen yellowtail in the Sea yet, but clearly I need to do some bottom fishing and just drop a line in 100’ for a while and try to get some snapper or flaky whitefish.

I’m on my way to Las Islas Coronados, currently running wing-and-wing with the genny along the west side of Isla Carmen, feeling absolutely beautiful and I’m sure if there were any yachties around they’d say we look spectacular, too. The gennaker is blue, aqua and white with orange trim, and is huge and full, as we are under sail only with about 10-12 knots dead astern for a little while, until I can turn and get the wind of my starboard quarter. It’s been a very nice set of conditions (with the exception of the run through the Canal de San Lorenzo in the Corumel) since leaving Cabo, with generally southerlies – just perfect conditions for getting north, and I’ve bypassed Puerto Escondido because I don’t need (and can’t afford) more fuel. My plans are flexible, but at this point it probably makes sense to cross the Sea early tomorrow morning with an easterly that’s supposed to get up to 21 knots. In an easterly, the farther south I start crossing, the better. That direction will put the wind on my beam or starboard quarter the whole way to San Carlos. If I make more northing, then that easterly will be on my beam or higher – possibly on my nose if I were to leave from up near Santa Rosalia or Bahia Conception as I’d planned. I’d love to see some of those anchorages, but the truth is I’m very anxious to get to Internet and take care of some things. It’s sad to say, but yeah… this isn’t yet time for the relaxing cruising of my future – still too many things require communication right now.

Anyway, I’m going to shut down the computer and give it a break for a while, as it’s quite hot and the charting isn’t really necessary as I know exactly where I’m going for the next couple hours. And besides, sailing at nearly 7 knots wing-and-wing with the gennaker makes me want to crank my “Just Great Shit” iPod playlist and just dance in the cockpit and enjoy.

I didn’t end up dancing, much – instead I used the relaxing sail to start cleaning stainless steel. I just did a fresh water rinse / scrub of the stantions, the cockpit enclosure supports and the radar arch, and will polish it with stainless polish later. For now, the freshwater rub-down did wonders. And I’m working on being less tan, so I tried to stay under the solar panels in the radar arch most of the time, and otherwise I’ve got lots of sunscreen on. Seriously, I saw a photo of myself recently, and I’m frighteningly, oddly dark.

This entry is getting really long. Generally I’d cut this up into several different entries, but whatever – the <hr>s make these chunks bite-sized, usually.
I took some video here at anchor at Islas Las Coronados – of the sunset, the other boats, the scenery, and I’m copying that to my computer now. I’ll get more video tomorrow while sailing. Wish I would have thought to take some video of the gennaker flying today, especially wing-and-wing, but oh well – I’ve got some gennaker sailing video already from when I left San Francisco ages ago. Nothing’s changed about the sailing part but the warmth.

So I’ll be leaving here soon – 3am or 4 or whenever I wake up. It’s about a 12-hour sail to San Carlos, and of course I prefer to arrive anywhere before dark, but I’m familiar enough with San Carlos that it won’t freak me out if I have to approach after sunset. It will be nice to … oh, man – the wind just shifted and is now coming out of the northeast. That could totally suck, and could delay my crossing of the Sea and make me move more north first. Hopefully it’s just a temporary thing. Anchor-wise, I’m in here pretty tight in the corner, so I’m fairly protected from swell from the northeast, but if it shifts much more and keeps up, I may get some swell. There are several other boats who would all be way more uncomfortable than me, however. Gonna watch a movie and see how the wind develops overnight.

The wind is not good – light from the northwest. :( And the worst part of it is that I’m motorsailing through fog, and have had fog pretty much since I left Isla Coronados. I just passed two pangas fishing out here – about 10 miles north of Isla Coronados and 6-7 miles offshore of the Baja peninsula, so I need to keep my eyes open (those pangas don’t show up too well on longer-range radar). Anyway, the southeasterly I was hoping for didn’t show up, so I may alter plans and head to an anchorage up north for a quicker daytime crossing. At this point, since I didn’t leave Isla Coronados until 7:30, I wouldn’t arrive in San Carlos until 10pm or so (very dependent upon the winds / my speed across). I’ll still be fine with fuel – I have probably 50 gallons and burn about a gallon an hour at 1800 RPM and 6.2 knots (1.2 gallons/hour at 2200 and 7.5 knots), but I’d just rather sail anyway. We’ll see – I don’t have to make a decision yet, as I’m heading north generally along the contour of the shoreline and could at any time turn west and go into an anchorage up here.

Well, the winds turned and did indeed start coming from the SSE, so I’m now about half-way across the Sea of Cortez on my way to San Carlos on a very fast but bumpy broad reach, with about 20 knots on my starboard quarter. I was flying the gennaker for most of the way to this point, but recently took it down because it was getting too breezy and that big sail was pulling the boat out of balance and the autopilot couldn’t keep up. I’ve got a post-gennaker-take-down video I recorded which I’ll post eventually, but for now I’ll just say that it was an adventure taking it down, and that’s why singlehanders don’t often use flying sails like spinnakers / gennakers – they’re tough to manage when the wind picks up. In this case, I thought I’d turned the boat enough to get the sail in the mainsail’s wind shadow, but I didn’t and when pulling the sock down over the sail a gust came along and filled the sail which ripped the control lines through my hand and gave me a good burn before I could let go. Ouch. Well, I got it down eventually, and now the yankee is up and we’re still doing 8.5 knots. Flying.

It’s about 3:45pm, and at this rate I’ll be in San Carlos around 10pm. I imagine it will be more like midnight, as it will surely mellow out a little after dark, but we’ll see. I’d take this all the way to San Carlos even though the swells on the quarter make it a pretty uncomfortable ride as they turn the boat all over the place and the autopilot tries to recover. We’re getting there.

I’ve stopped fishing, as going this fast would make reeling in a fish very difficult, no matter the size. And if it were a big dorado… man, way too difficult to be worthwhile. If the wind dies down, I’ll fish again, but it’s not like I’ve had much luck, anyway.

Just three hours out of San Carlos now, with the sun just down and a navy ship dead ahead as well as a shrimper dead ahead and another shrimper on my port beam. I don’t imagine the shrimpers will be dickheads tonight, with the Mexican navy out here. Still, I’ve brushed up on my lingua for certain nautical things if the navy ship wants to board me or whatever. It’s probably the same navy ship that helped out the American sportsfisher yesterday that had hit a whale and needed a tow into San Carlos. I think they just pretty much waited until help came from San Carlos to tow the guy in – I don’t think a 200’ ship is equipped to pull a tiny boat into San Carlos – it’s not that big a harbor – and there were probably liability issues. Anyway, the guy could have benefited by a bit more Spanish. I think I can safely say that I’m conversational, though not fluent since I speak so much better than I understand.

No wind for the past couple hours. I took down the gennaker a while ago and now we’re just motoring at 2k RPM and 6.6 - 6.8 knots in still bumpy seas – but the seas have leveled off quite a bit since the wind died down – this is just residual wind chop. So at 6.6 knots I’ll be into San Carlos right at 11:30. Looking forward to it, and to waking up for the morning net and checking in with the crowd there. Dark now – I could probably use some coffee after I haul in my empty fishing line.

Mag Bay to Cabo San Lucas

noreply@blogger.com (The Taco Traveler) — Wed, 06 May 2009 17:43:00 +0000

(5/5 and 5/6/2009)

Now we’re sailing! There’s not much wind anymore, and the swells are still following and a bit annoying, but there’s about 15 knots on my starboard quarter and I decided to roll out the gennaker, and it is freakin beautiful. I don’t think I’ve used the gennaker since my last time in Mexico, “racing” Shiloh and Sailfisher from San Blas to La Cruz, but I had crew, then. I haven’t flown the gennaker single-handed since I left San Francisco. So it’s staying generally full, and I should turn a bit right and get it a bit more angle as it’s often masked by the main, but we’re okay with a little flapping.

I “fixed” the autopilot again, but instead of trying to be too fine, I just put a *bunch* of tape on it so it stays engaged no matter what. It won’t slip anymore, and has been great for a couple hours now, but the problem is I can’t disengage it without removing it. But I’ve removed it about 20 times in the last 48 hours to make modifications and repair attempts, so I figure having to spend 2 minutes removing it to disengage it isn’t that big of a deal. The only reason to disengage it between here and Cabo should be to let it cool off, but I’ve got an ice pack on it right now to try to accomplish that temporarily – I’m not ready to hand-steer yet and it’s doing a great job now that it has better purchase on the wheel.

So under full main and 150% gennaker we’re doing between 7 and 8 knots. Outstanding and fun. We’ll see if this westerly breeze keeps up. If the wind shifts to the NW then I’ll have to run under main only, probably. So given the direction of the wind and the slightly smaller swells, I’ve decided to cut straight across to Cabo rather than hugging the coastline. It’s about 80 degrees and beautiful – couldn’t ask for better weather right now though I’ve passed many northbounders who could ask for a bit of relief from the wind and swells. They’re having a very difficult uphill slog of it.

Since Mag Bay, the water has gone up in temperature about 5 degrees. It’s now at 64.4 F. My job since I put the gennaker up about 2pm has been to just keep the autopilot cool with an occasional ice bag. That’s a job I can handle, and the autopilot is doing a great job of keeping the boat on course through following seas and the big flying headsail. Just a great sail all around. I just heard a VHF call from Marina Costa Baja, which is in La Paz, so that’s weird. That’s a heck of a transmitter, as La Paz is currently 67 nautical miles away. Well… I guess I’ve received transmissions from farther (AIS uses the VHF band, and I’m picking up a faint, occasional transmission from a boat that’s 282 miles away), but never over land like that (La Paz is on the Sea of Cortez, on the other side of the Baja peninsula).

I’m racing a bit, as I’d like to keep up a pace of 7+ knots so I get to the cape at sunrise. Right now, at 7 knots, I’ll get there about 8am. I definitely would like to be around Cabo Falso before 9:30 or 10am, as the “cape effect” winds can be pretty gnarly, whipping up some big, confused seas and generally making everything very difficult.

I just took about a hundred pictures of dolphins either sprinting towards the boat from afar or playing in the bow wave. There aren’t very many usable ones, of course, but on “Sports” mode I was able to take several shots in a few seconds to try to grab that one great moment. I got several shots of them coming, then a few jumping next to the boat. Then after that got boring, I took the camera up to the bow and held it over the edge, trying for an extreme closeup on a dolphin right on the bow. Not sure yet how it came out, but there were a few shots of like four guys in a row all surfing the wave. They’re still playing, which is surprising to me because I’m only going 6 knots, but there’s no annoying engine, so they probably don’t get that a lot, with so few sailboats going south right now (most are going north for the end of the season, and are generally motoring uphill trying to go as fast as possible if there’s a calm).

Time to put the gennaker away and start motoring… the wind has dropped down to about 5-6 knots and I’m now meandering along at 5.5 knots (probably 1 or 1.5 of that is current). This won’t do to get me past Cabo Falso before the wind picks up late morning.

It’s a beautiful night, though absolutely windless. There’s a big, bright moon, the swells have died down, and I’m just motoring along at 7 knots at an easy 2k RPM (I can do 8+ knots if I want to). The water has warmed up even more, and is now 66.2 degrees, so we’re getting there. And I’m being reminded of a big negative with Mexicans and their radios… the fishermen who use it honestly tend to whistle to get attention and then often scream the name of a boat or a buddy three or four times, and reapeat that ten times before giving up or being answered. Then there are also just assholes who clog up channel 16 with idle chatter and messing around. This is why cruisers switch to channel 22 when we get down to mainland Mexico (maybe even La Paz?). Channel 22 becomes the cruiser’s hailing channel, because 16 is so full of garbage. It’s ridiculous, and it would be nice if the Mexican Navy would get a handle on it – maybe try educating people about the importance of keeping an emergency channel clear. But I guess it’s a small minority that is hurt or potentially harmed by this misuse.

Just after midnight and I’m watching my second movie of the night – “Say Anything.” So funny that I never noticed before that Jeremy Piven was in it. Did ya know that? He’s the drunk aggressive friend of Lloyd Dobler’s at the party who’s wearing the little hat and high-fives his keys into Lloyd the Keymaster’s hand. Then he passes out on the lawn at the end of the party. Oh, and he’s one of the guys at the Gas N’ Sip, too. He says: “Your only mistake is that you didn’t dump her first. Diane Court is a show pony, and you are a stallion, my friend. Walk with us and you walk tall.” He says that right before the kid says “Bitches, man!”

No wind – been motoring for three hours now. I could probably pull 5 knots if I put up the gennaker, but that’s not enough for my goals this leg:
a) Don’t get run over by this big cruise ship called “The World” which is heading north on a really inshore track – probably to keep its guests out of the offshore swell
b) Get through the fishing fleet safely at Golden Gate Bank
c) Get around Cabo Falso before the “cape effect” winds pick up
d) Anchor in the spot where this past December I had good Internet from some hotel on the beach
e) Send a few emails and post a few blog entries
f) Go to sleep

Weird – Golden Gate Bank is completely deserted (of both fishermen and fish, apparently). When I came through here on my way north in January, there were about a hundred boats working this area. They must have moved over to the Sea of Cortez side for dorado or something (I’m pretty sure in January this area was hopping with yellowtail). Oh well… I guess I’m not going to make a living as a fishing charter captain.

Relatively easy night, but the wind never picked up enough to sail once I took down the gennaker around 6pm. Bummer. I hate motoring, as I just count the dollars getting burned up in the cylinders (are they still called cylinders in diesel? Compression chambers?). So each hour costs me about $2.80 on average – my Pactor modem cash drifting away.

So I’ve got land within 4 miles. Cabo Falso is about 18 miles to the southeast and Bahia San Lucas is another 6 miles past that. Should be at anchor by 11am.

Arrived in Cabo safely. G'night. :-)

Elation

noreply@blogger.com (The Taco Traveler) — Mon, 04 May 2009 17:39:00 +0000

(back-dated to 5/4/2009)

My extreme frustration and stress over this trip has turned into elation, as I’ve managed to repair / jury rig the backup autopilot (O.V. Jr.). I’d attempted to fix it sort of casually before, thinking I didn’t want to break it and make it non-reparable by someone who knows what they’re doing, but the last few days have really worn on me, physically and emotionally, spending so much time at the wheel and basically steering a zig-zag course down the coast as I miss a few seconds of concentration and have to correct. I couldn’t read. I couldn’t play chess on my iPhone. I couldn’t really fish because of the trouble caused trying to haul in a fish and steer the boat to ensure there are no dangerous crash gybes…. In short, it was a marathon that was grueling in every aspect – even for shorter hops like yesterday between Isla Cedros and Turtle Bay – and it wasn’t very much fun at all.

But finally about forty minutes ago I decided, “well, it’s not gonna get any more useless, so I might as well be more aggressive in trying to fix it.” So I pulled it apart, and found that the belt inside was still usable but was finding no purchase on the shell that connects to the wheel. Predictable enough, but even simpler was the fix – I just put two wraps of electrical tape around the surface the belt grabs, snapped it back together, mounted it to the wheel again, and … joy.

So we are now motorsailing down the coast, in the lee of the large swells since the land turns to the southeast after Turtle Bay, and will go through the night to get to Mag Bay tomorrow late morning. I’ll still need to steer when we get large following seas, but the in-between times, and the times when I need to make food or coffee, or just take a break and relax in the sun… O.V. Jr. should be able to hold down the fort now.

Well, O.V. Jr. couldn’t handle as much as I’d hoped, but it’s nice knowing that when I get to flat water or non-following seas, I’ll be able to rest and do things (write, read, think) without the boat running off course dramatically. I stopped last night at Abreojos (“open your eyes”), and an approach / anchoring like that is all you need to feel sailorly: darkness, shoals and other hazards all around, 20 knots of wind blowing through the anchorage…. But I got 10:1 scope out in 20’ of water, so the 30 knot gusts were manageable, and I left the Nobeltec on all night and kept a boundary circle on that anchor, so that if the boat slips out of that boundary, an ugly noise would have awoken me and I would have had to run up, start the engine and try to re-set the anchor and 200’ of chain before the shoals about .8 of a mile behind me.

So I had a great night’s sleep, and decided to sleep in (it’s 8:30) and get going again closer to 4 or 5 this evening. The next stop, Mag Bay, is about 140 miles (18-20 hours at 7 – 7.5 knots) away, so an overnight has to happen, so I’ll stage the overnight so I’m fresh. I’ve improved my angle a bit, and should have a very fast sail, though still lots of hand steering because although the seas won’t be following, whenever the wind is behind the beam, this autopilot doesn’t do well.

I’m having some breakfast now, and will be showering and then getting busy taking O.V. (the primary autopilot) apart to try once again to repair that. At this point I believe the problem is the clutch, which isn’t properly pushing the gears into place when it needs to. I doubt there’s anything I can do, but it’s worth a shot. After that, I’ll write and/or work on some other projects until it’s time to hit the road again. I’d hoped to go into town and look for an Internet Café (there are no open Wifi connections here in the anchorage) but there are breakers all around, and I’d need to take the dinghy off the deck in 20 knots of wind, which is a major pain.

Well, I couldn’t wait, so decided if I was arriving at Bahia Santa Maria too early (before sunrise) that I’d just slow down, but I’ve been moseying along and am currently on track to arrive at BSM around 8am. It’s almost 7pm, and it’s been a very nice sail so far, and I’ve only recently had to fire up the engine because the wind started getting shifty / inconsistent. So now we’re cruising along at 6.8 knots and the autopilot is doing a good job in these relatively light seas.

The one thing that concerns me at this point is that the barometer is down to about 1002.5 MB, which could mean a low pressure system is coming down from California, or worse yet, that it’s coming up from the south. That would very seriously suck, but I’m about 1/3 across a huge bight in Baja, the nearest land 26 miles away so there’s nowhere to go but onward. Way back when I left Eureka without adequately checking the weather, I ended up having 45 knots blowing from dead astern, and O.V. handled those winds and seas just great. With only a bit of mainsail up, we were doing 9 knots running towards San Francisco when my friends were rolled, dismasted and helio-rescued well offshore.

So it could be that selling my Pactor modem for the SSB wasn’t the smartest move, as I’d be able to download GRIB weather files to overlay onto my Nobeltec (chart plotter software on my computer), but I figured I wouldn’t be offshore that much this trip, and would generally have connectivity as soon as I get to Cabo (Pacific Coast Baja is pretty desolate and unpopulated). I had decent possibilities last night at Abreojos, but all the connections were secured. No local residents opened up their Internet access to those poor suckers out in the anchorage. But if I get really worried, then I can just radio one of the many ships farther offshore and ask them for a forecast. I’m inside the bight, so I’m protected from some of the swell and am definitely safe from shipping traffic, and I have only seen three or four northbound yachts since Ensenada. And the money from that Pactor modem has been pretty instrumental, as it’s paid for fuel and food the entire trip, and will pay for the first month on a buoy once I get to San Carlos.

No fish yet since the bonito just after Ensenada, but yesterday I screwed up by tightening the drag too much and not checking it, and the first indication that something was interested in my lure was the line – the 60lb Spectra – snapping at the rod tip, so whatever it was, it was damn big and I probably didn’t want it anyway, but now the poor thing is swimming around the ocean with a yellow plastic squid and two big painful hooks hanging out the side of its mouth… not to mention the 100 feet of Spectra fishing line trailing behind him. So this morning I re-spooled the fishing reel and am ready to go again, but no luck today.

One thing I think is worth mentioning as sort of a neat thing, is the failure of my speed gauge – the transducer for the gauge anyway, with a little paddle wheel that spins according to how fast the boat is moving. Well, it’s never worked very well, and it’s always frustrated me because it stops spinning with the slightest bit of gunk or tangle, but I’ve given up on it and have started just using it for its secondary function, which is water temperature. The speed through the water isn’t that important anyway (speed over ground – SOG – is more important and is available through the GPS), and it’s just a lot more fun, romantic and poetic to watch the water get warmer and warmer as I move on south. And yes, it is getting warmer, though it’s still pretty chilly after sunset.

So the sun is down, and it will probably be a long night, but thankfully I’ve got O.V. Jr. back in good condition, so I’ll be able to take little naps here and there as long as the following seas aren’t too bad. It’s a beautiful night, with a great sunset and a very bright, clear ¾ moon directly above me, and we’re moving along now at 8.2 knots, so I need to slow down or I’ll get to Bahia Santa Maria (and the dangerous Cabo San Lazaro) before sunrise.

I’m in an odd sort of racing mood, I guess, and just finished tweaking the sails to get all the speed possible out of the little wind I have. Yeah, sure, I’m motorsailing, but that doesn’t mean I can’t also be under full sail (main, yankee, staysail) and tweak here and there as the wind shifts. I just unfurled the staysail because the wind shifted to the beam – basically out of the southwest, which is odd but hopefully not indicative of a more significant or lasting shift (until I get to Cabo, anyway). It’s always nice to see adjustments gain that extra couple tenths of a knot. There’s not enough wind to kill the engine, but I’m only running at 1500 RPM, so it’s only really serving to help the autopilot stay on track and to bring us from 5.5 knots up to 7.

I can’t possibly do this justice, but it’s 3:17 am and the moon has gone down so that all the stars are as visible as they can possibly be – not a light disturbance within 100 miles (outside of my bright laptop screen). In tha past couple of hours (even with the moon out) I’ve seen several shooting stars (meteorites) and at this moment the mass of stars is so great that I can’t even find the second most recognizable constellation out there. I found the Big Dipper, but I had to look at my Cybersky program to figure out where Orion is, and even given the direction and the altitude, I can’t make out Orion amongst all that brightness. Imagine that – and I’ve seriously been an Orion fan for years.

A girlfriend once called me Flappy McFlapperson, and I thought that was hilarious. I don’t remember what I was doing to earn that (it’s reasonable to assume I was talking too much) but I’ve obviously never forgotten the goofiness of the nickname or the cuteness of her as she said it. Well, that’s what my mainsail is doing right now – just flappin’ back and forth as the swells rock the boat all over the place, with not enough wind from behind to keep it full. So we flap and rock. I keep it up because its flapping – while annoying – also helps stabilize the boat as we motor along; without the flapping we’d be rocking even more.

That girlfriend, by the way, is one of my biggest guilt trips ever, as I ended that relationship by being such a dick that I forced her to break up with me. I know – I suck(ed). She hasn’t spoken to me since (10 years ago), and ignored my friend request on Facebook. Sorry, K.

Craziness

noreply@blogger.com (The Taco Traveler) — Fri, 01 May 2009 17:37:00 +0000

(back-dated to 5/1/2009)

It’s been a very difficult sail so far since I left Ensenada. Well, I guess there has been some good, too, but basically when you’re single-handing and both of your autopilots give out, it’s hard to see the good amongst all the hand-steering for hour upon hour. I’m just now leaving Isla Cedros, about 50 more miles (7 hours) to Turtle Bay where I may be able to get Internet and post this tonight.

The biggest issue so far has been the lack of a reliable autopilot. Theoretically I should be able to balance the boat (adjust the sails so she stays on course), but with the wind coming from dead astern and some fairly large following seas that want to push us off course every ten seconds or so, it’s just not possible. In fact, it’s even difficult hand-steering while *not* standing up, so I spend a lot of time and concentration steering downwind and trying to maintain the right levels of speed and direction, while my arms, shoulders, neck, back, eyes, legs… everything is killing me. I’ve got cuts on both hands, two of them fairly deep and painful but I have no idea where they came from. But I’ve made it across Bahia Viscaino, and that’s one of my larger successes, so far.

Just outside Ensenada on Tuesday morning I caught a nice bonito, but haven’t had time to cook it until last night while finally at anchor off Isla Cedros. This was my first bonito – about 15 pounds, and was a very nice fish. I hauled him in under full sail, so it made the battle extra hard with the boat going 7.5 to 8 knots and having to try to keep the boat going one direction with nobody at the helm. I believe at that point that I was on a beam reach, so the wheel autopilot was able to keep up long enough to allow me to haul the fish in and clean it. Autopilots like a beam reach a lot more than they like going downwind, though my main autopilot (O.V.) could handle anything… it’s just the $1,000 it would take to replace the linear drive that has created the problem.

Crossing Bahia Viscaino was pretty much a nightmare, with the following seas, wind directly at my back, and the last anchorage I’d planned to stop at (Bahia San Quintin) was completely blown out on Thursday night, so I just kept going. The problem with having wind directly at your back, non-sailors, is that it requires a lot of concentration to run dead downwind with just a main, because if a wave turns you too much, or you don’t pay attention, you could have an accidental gybe. I had a preventer rigged the first time it happened, but it wasn’t rigged very well because the boom came crashing over with such force that it just stripped the preventer out of the winch. That accidental crash gybe would have knocked me out (and probably off the boat altogether, 15 miles offshore… at dusk) if I hadn’t been ready, as I was freeing one of the yankee sheets from a turnbuckle and was moving quickly towards the cockpit when I felt it happening, but I was ducking, of course. The preventer line bent one of the stantions and further ripped my house canvas as it smacked it when the boom came over. This, amongst a few other mishaps and bad decisions has frustrated me a lot, but I’m getting better and getting the hang of sailing Chemistry with no help - no help even from an autopilot. I’ve since moved the preventer farther forward, and the preventer has made a couple of saves.
The good news is that with 20-30 knots at my back I’ve been able to get this far using 95% wind power. I only motor to get into & out of anchorages at this point, but we’ll see how that continues.

When I left San Diego I figured I’d be in Cabo by Saturday or Sunday, but that’s looking crazy, and it will probably be more like Wednesday or Thursday because I’m unable to make any progress while I’m resting. And with no autopilot, I need a lot of rest. That’s been another learning curve this trip – I’d never had to “heave-to” before, which is basically a means of standing still at sea. You arrange the sails so that the boat stays pointed to the wind and you just bob there comfortably. I’ve discovered that Chemistry heaves-to fairly well under mainsail only (held out to the side a bit by the track, and with the current and the larger winds I actually make 1 or 1.5 knots backward (south, down the coast as I’m pointed to the north) as I’m hove-to, which is a pretty good deal.

So I’m still just motoring in the lee of Isla Cedros (this is a heck of a big island) and will be stopping at most every rest stop between here and Mag Bay, unless I can find better wind direction (wind at 120 degrees off the bow, pushing me from the aft quarter), in which case I may go offshore farther and just heave-to to sleep again. Can’t wait for Cabo and warmth, a free and nighttime-calm anchorage with parties on the beach, coffee shops with Internet, and jet-ski / parasail craziness out there on the water all day long.

Turtle Bay – 1 May 2009

I’ve made it to Turtle Bay, basically about half way to Cabo. I’ll leave early in the morning for Punta Asuncion or possibly Abreojos (“abre ojos” = “open your eyes”). It will be 14 hours to Abreojos, and then a longer leg down to Mag Bay / Bahia Santa Maria. Then it’s a 24-hour trip from there to Cabo San Lucas.
It’s 7:30 here, and I want to get into town to see if I can get Internet and a couple of fish tacos somewhere. There aren’t many services here, but it’s worth a shot.

Cancel that… I guess the only reason I’d be going into town would be to send this off and catch up on a few emails, but at this point I think it’s more important that I just get going very early in the morning. It’s a pretty big pain to take the dinghy off the deck and an even bigger pain to lower the outboard and attach it to the dinghy, and all of that for one 30-minute trip to town doesn’t make a lot of sense. Hopefully nobody is too worried (Dad) and everyone knows I know what I’m doing despite the occasional bad sailing decisions, and that outside of the occasional crash gybe, I’m doing well and moving forward.

So instead of getting the dingy prepared, I’m going to make some bonito spaghetti, watch a movie on my laptop, and get to bed. I’ll be up and out of here about 4am to ensure I arrive at Abreojos before sunset tomorrow. Is there anyone in the world who likes anchoring in an unfamiliar spot in the dark?

Ensenada

noreply@blogger.com (The Taco Traveler) — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 15:31:00 +0000

Just a quick entry as I'm waiting in Starbucks for a teleconference... It was an easy trip down from Isla Coronado Sur here to Ensenada, but because Rogelio and his crew were likely playing futbol in the yard at their lunchtime break, nobody answered my hail at Baja Naval, so I ended up going into Cruiseport Village Marina, which was more expensive than the $35 at Baja Naval, and they also wanted $50 to fill out all my clearance paperwork for me (which Rogelio does for free for his Baja Naval clients). So... big mistake, and I ended up waiting for about three hours at the ventana unica (single-window check-in place, with the Port Captain, Immigration and Customs all in one building) because of my less-organized paperwork I tried to do myself.

I've decided against trying to get a Mexico Telcel account, as one month just isn't worth it. Instead, I've downloaded Skype for iPhone, so whenever I have wifi I'll be on Skype. So if you want to be in contact with me and you don't have Skype, get it. :-)

Leaving Ensenada in an hour or so, and my next communication will probably be from Cabo San Lucas where I know of an open wifi or two out in the anchorage. There's nothing much between here and there, as Turtle Bay is a technological backwater, and Bahia Santa Maria (a sub-bay off Bahia Magdelena) is just a rest stop without any services at all.

TT

Isla Coronado Sur

noreply@blogger.com (The Taco Traveler) — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 15:29:00 +0000

I left San Diego just after noon yesterday, fueling up at the Harbor Island West fuel dock and then navigating the crowded bay as various class sailboat races and Sunday day-sailors criss-crossed all around. It makes it tricky to manage all the sailing jobs, single-handing and watching out for all the other boats out there (almost all of which have right-of-way on a sailboat under power).

It was about a three-hour sail out here to Isla Coronado Sur, the southernmost of the Coronado islands and the only one with what could even be remotely considered an anchorage – and it’s really more of a “roadstead.” It’s very rolly, horrible for sleeping or even being comfortable, especially with the cold, and it’s only good because I have a relatively short day today to get into Ensenada after a little bit of fishing this morning. As I came in to anchor yesterday, I passed a few boats out there at about 120’ jigging – large charter fishers out of H&M Landing or Fisherman’s Landing (my neighbors on Shelter Island) out for ¾ day or full-day charters.

It’s coming up on 4:30 am, and I’ve been up since 3 – this the product of going to bed at 5:30pm. Partially it’s due to the wind and the movement of the boat at anchor, but mostly it’s due to a severe hangover and lack of sleep Saturday night before my exit from San Diego. I went out with my step-brother Ryan to a few places downtown, then met up with Donna, a friend I’ve met through this blog, and we all went up to Altitude – the cool rooftop bar at the top of the Marriott downtown (the new Marriott, not the hotel/marina where I worked in college). Anyway – it was a long, great night, and the couple of beers and then six or seven Don Julio rocks w/splash of sweet & sour really did a number on me over the course of the night, and that number lasted until… well, still.

I’ll drop a line as soon as it gets light (in about an hour or so) and then start the sail into Ensenada, where I’ll check into Mexico and see what options are out there for communication. I sold my Pactor II modem to friends John & Susan Rabe before I left the dock, as they’re planning a trip to Mexico and then across to the Marquesas and beyond, starting October. And since a sailmail email address (the email you have to use with the SSB radio / Pactor modem system) costs $250/year, I opted to not do that this time, for this one-month trip. It seemed like it would have been overkill to use an offshore modem when I’ll be in mobile service most of the trip and if it really came down to it I could just turn on my iPhone and roam for $0.50/minute. Although I certainly can’t do an annual commitment, I’ll check out what phone & data plans are currently being offered by Telcel, the Mexican cell provider with the best coverage between here and Guaymas / San Carlos. If I could pick up a data modem and get a pre-paid data plan, that might be a good compromise, as I can do everything with data anyway (and Skype).

TT

Back to Mexico

noreply@blogger.com (The Taco Traveler) — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 01:01:00 +0000

When I returned here to San Diego this past January, I came back for the proximity to an airport, the chance at better job opportunities, and the 100% Internet connectivity via my Verizon v-card. And although I've enjoyed my time and have been pretty comfortable here at the Sun Harbor Marina on San Diego Bay - Shelter Island, the job situation hasn't worked out so well, as the Internet search has been nearly worthless and the in-person and local-contact search has netted two interviews in total (in my field), and of course, rather than restaurants hiring (I seriously considered it and even went to my old college employer to check it out), they're actually shutting their doors.

What went wrong with the interviews? I felt I was definitely qualified for both positions - quite a bit overqualified for one of them - but I think given my history these last few years I'm not coming off as much of a long-term committed employee. And with my blabbermouth, even the mention in passing of my boys half a continent away would sorta make me feel emotional about missing them, and I'm sure I didn't hide that too well.... Bottom line: I think they saw my thin level of commitment to San Diego and that I'd have a hard time sticking around for more than a year or much longer than it took to get back on my feet. There are too many other qualified candidates out there for them to go with, I suppose.

So... in the interest of not paying crazy marina + liveaboard fees anymore, and getting the boat somewhere more financially reasonable where I can keep her while I see the boys and then seek work wherever it may be after that, I'm going to sail Chemistry back to San Carlos / Guaymas, lock her down tight, and then go be with my boys.

A good friend, a very reasonable and conservative friend (G), said to me before I bought Chemistry: "Maybe you should rent a boat. Can you just test it out to see if you really like that life and everything?" And he was spot-on with the conservatism (fiscally - we all know he's wrong about his social conservatism), but what happened is that I absolutely loved the "cruising life" and the people I've met so far in it... what didn't pan out so well, and has made his concern almost Nostradamus-esque, was the economic downturn that caused my startup's funding angel to walk away and leave the company to shrivel as we just tried to keep the thing breathing with no salaries, no more passion, and very little hope.

So yeah, it would have been better if I'd never signed on that line to buy this boat, but I probably would have continued to sink my entire 401k into my vacant house anyway, just because of a need to do the right thing - to pay the debt I owed the heartless mortgage company. But more importantly, I wouldn't have experienced the amazing time I've had in Mexico (or the amazing time sailing down from Seattle, for that matter). And as I watch the trash compactor walls close in around me and my boat (I'm Han Solo and Chemistry is my faithful Chewbacca), I keep reaching for the pole that will slow the walls just a bit longer, and right now that helpful pole is getting the boat back where $100 is a month's worth of a mooring ball in a safe harbor. I've had my R2D2 friends and family, tapping into the Death Star's systems to help with life-sustaining loans, but those loans have been helpful for much more than the boat and my "keeping the dream alive" - they've enabled me to stay almost but not quite current on my responsibilities as a dad - the school and child care stability that keeps my boys from feeling the pain of this economy and this situation.

So what next? After getting the boat back to cheaper digs, I'll get almost a whole month with the boys while R goes on travel. I'll get amazing little kid hugs from a two-month absence, and I won't want to let them go. They'll have grown so big since I last saw them in February, but I know also they'll be happy and content, as R & I do our exceptional job of navigating through this process of divorce, relocation, life change.... And at the end of June I'll travel somewhere, anywhere in the world that could use me. Or, maybe lightning will strike, and one of my projects will hit just the right chord with an investor, or my writing will find its way to Oprah's desk.

TT