September 6, 1998
Saint John, New Brunswick, CanadaIt is 2:15 in the afternoon. I just got up an hour ago. I’ve been really tired lately. A few nights ago, a plane crashed into the ocean off the coast of Nova Scotia, 150 miles from here. My parents stayed up until 3am watching the events unfold on TV and I could not get to sleep until they turned it off. Since then, I’ve been up every night until 2am renovating my web site and getting my slide show ready.
I was going to stay home all weekend and just work on the projects until they are finished, but instead, I began suffering from an attack of ADD and decided to take two clients rock climbing. The only remedy that I have found for my ADD is fresh air and frightening myself. Oh yeah, by the way... my form of ADD is "Adventure Deficiency Disorder". Without adventure for an extended period of time, I find it difficult to enjoy the other things in life... like work. I don’t mind working... as long as I am able to spend an equal or greater amount of time playing. It’s called balance. My life needs to be balanced for it to be enjoyable. Over the past year, I spent six months working: writing, and building a new website, and spent the other six months playing: having adventures and meeting people. It has been the best year of my life.
Unfortunately, most of the population doesn’t follow this philosophy. Five days on... and two days off... is obviously not balanced. It doesn’t surprise me why most people are so stressed out. They’re suffering from ADD. "I can’t afford it!", they say. Well... spend less money... sell your fancy car... or simply create a job doing what you love. I was playing yesterday... but, my clients paid me $75. It doesn’t matter how much money you make. What matters... is how much time you spend doing what you want to do. Thoreau said it best, when he stated, "The man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest." Sure... $75 isn’t a lot of money, but it could easily buy two weeks worth of food. So... I could pack up my bike or kayak or back pack and take off for two weeks. Or, just imagine what I could do if I had $750... or $7500. I could travel several years on $7500! Don’t buy that car you’ve had you’re eye’s on. Save the $7500 and go see what else the planet has to offer. The memories will last far longer than the car. Enough ranting for now. It just annoys me to see people sleep-walking through life.
It has been a month since I put a new journal on my website, so I better get this finished before my regular visitors start to think I’m slack and lazy for not updating. Let’s go back to San Diego and I’ll finish the story.
After I got out of Julie’s shower, she told me she had a meeting to attend down town and then had another meeting at her church. If I was to go with her, I had to know where I was going to spend the night, so I called Patrick’s house, but he wasn’t home. I asked Julie(the lawyer chick) and Sean(Julie’s gay room mate) if I could sleep on the couch if I couldn’t find any place else to sleep. They said I could, so I left my belongings in their apartment and headed downtown with Julie.
Before going into her meeting at the California law commission building, I asked Julie what she recommend I do in the mean time. "Go to Radisson hotel and walk around like you own the place.", she answered.
"What?! Are you kidding?" I responded. She didn’t say anything more, then turned and walked into her meeting.
I had two hours to go explore the downtown before I was to return when Julie’s meeting was finished. My wandering took me to city hall, where I found nearly a hundred homeless people gathered together in protest. They were the same people I had seen two days earlier while passing on the trolley. They had been camped out there for over a month, protesting the proposed closure of the city’s only homeless shelter and soup kitchen. It appeared as though the city council was trying to make San Diego an unattractive place to be homeless, which would be a difficult thing to do, because if I was homeless, San Diego would definitely be at the top of the list of the places I’d like to live. The climate is perfect all year round, with less than 8 days of rain per year.
I spent over an hour at city hall talking with the people and photographing them. One guy I spoke with, Gerald T. Clown, made me a motorcycle from a balloon. I told them that I have been homeless for the past year as well. I don’t think they believed me. They said that the city was planning to spray them with fire hoses if they were not gone by the following day. I never heard if they got sprayed or if the shelter was saved from being torn down.
When I met Julie after her meeting, she told me that she was no longer comfortable with me staying on her couch. I didn’t try to change her decision in any way, I just said "Okay...", and we continued on to her church.
Julie attends the Church of Religious Science. The church’s mission statement reads: "Pacific Church of Religious Science is here to inspire people to awaken to the truth of their divine wholeness and unity with God. We embrace diversity and acknowledge and celebrate the strength and power that come from oneness. We support each individuals full and unique self-expression. We practice and teach universal principles as expressed in the Science of Mind philosophy to support people in their spiritual awakening. We increase the experience of God’s love through loving care and service to each other, our community, and the world. We make a positive difference in the lives of all whom we touch."
Yada... yada... yada... What a bunch of new-age nonsense. It is totally misleading to call it the Church of Religious Science; there is nothing religious about it. The mission statement clearly describes the church as being totally non-religious. Webster’s dictionary defines Religion as being "A system of faith and worship." They don’t even need to have faith in anything... because they have nothing to believe in. They tell their followers "What ever spiritual path you’re on... that’s okay with us." I’d call it a cult... but even cults have core beliefs, which the Church of Religious Science doesn’t.
Gays, like Sean, go to PCRS because it "embraces diversity" and he doesn’t have to deal with the fact that he is a sinner... because they don’t talk about sin. They just talk about "wholeness" and "oneness" ... whatever that is suppose to mean!?! I thought the whole thing was a big joke. The class that I sat in on was called "Sharing the Journey". The attendees sat in a circle and talk to each other about "their place in the universe". [For the record: I do not dislike gays. The Bible says... "Hate the sin... love the sinner.", and thats the philosophy I follow. As a cross reference, read my journal from Olympia, Washington if you have not done so; it’s a funny story.]
When Sean, Julie and I got back to their apartment, Julie suggested I sleep in Sean’s car, which was just a little two door compact. I laughed and told her I’d rather sleep outside on the lawn. It was 11pm - too late to call Patrick. I asked Julie if she would mind holding my computer and camera in her apartment until morning, so I wouldn’t risk getting robbed during the night. "Okay", she replied, "But... I’ll be leaving early, so I’ll just put them outside the door when I go." "Forget it..." I responded, "I’ll just take them with me now". With my rucksack on my back, she gave me a hug and told me that she was sorry. I walked out into the cool night air - afraid... and yet strangely exhilarated.
I didn’t want to be exposed in plain view on the lawn, so when I found that the apartment complex laundry room was open, I went inside, locked the door, laid my air mattress and sleeping bag on the floor and went to sleep.
The next morning, after getting some breakfast, I went into a costume shop, got my email and called PM Chemical to see if someone was available to move my kayak from Southwest Kayaks to their warehouse. John’s brother, Jim, said that he could be there at around noon, so I hoped on a bus and headed off to meet him. I had been at Southwest Kayaks for an hour or so, when I got a call from Jim, saying that his truck had broken down on the way, and the police had the truck towed to the pound because it wasn’t registered. "I have another truck", he said "I’ll be there soon." Within an hour, I had all my belongings safely stored in the warehouse.
Five months earlier, Seaward Kayaks shipped me a new kayak to another warehouse in San Diego. When the warehouse manager got angry that I didn’t pick up the kayak after four months, Jim kindly brought it to the PM Chemical Warehouse. I was kinda disappointed when I saw the new kayak for the first time. Seaward had gotten the colors I requested backwards - painting the top yellow and the bottom orange. Oh well... it’s a four thousand dollar boat... that didn’t cost me a cent. How can I complain!?!
I didn’t have any place to spend the night, so I called Patrick again and he said it was cool to hang there. The following day, Deanna gave me a free ticket to the zoo, so after spending the morning washing my clothes and answering email, I spent the afternoon exploring one of the world’s greatest zoos. The next day, Patrick and Deanna took me with them to the beach at Mission Bay, then I treated them to dinner at a nice restaurant to thank them for their hospitality.
The following four days, I helped out at PM Chemical, to return the favor for letting me store my equipment in the warehouse. PM Chemical specializes in making soaps and detergents. I did lots of different jobs. I made boxes, washed containers, helped mix the chemicals and filled bottles with liquid detergent. Each night, John, the owner of PM Chemical, took me back to his house in Ramona, 30 miles north-east of San Diego. Ramona is a small town with lots of horse ranches and surrounded by rolling hills speckled with massive boulders. I liked it out there. It had a down-home country feel. John even has a pet Pot-belly pig. The pig’s name is K9. Is that ironic or what? I found Ramona very peaceful in contrast to San Diego. Except each morning, when the roosters would wake me up at 5am. Damn they were annoying!
On my fifth and last day at PM Chemical, John gave me a cheque for $50. I insisted that I was only helping him to return the generosity he had shown me, but he insisted he wanted to give it to me, so I gratefully excepted. Eric, John’s employee, also had a present for me. Eric’s cousin works at a skateboard manufacturing plant in La Jolla and had given Eric and his wife each skateboards, but since Eric’s wife wasn’t using hers, he gave it to me. It isn’t just any normal skate either - it’s a five foot long sidewalk surfer. I love it! It is sooo smooth and fast. I’ve never had a toy that was so much fun to play with.
The X Games were taking place that evening in Mission Bay, so I skated over to check out the scene. The X Games are very much like the Olympics of "extreme sports". Some of the events include: street luge, skysurfing, barefoot water-ski jumping, skateboarding, in-line skating and sport climbing. I slept at the same spot in the park where I had spent the night a week earlier. I went back to the X Games the next day and watched several events, and met a bunch of super cool people, including Bobbi Bensmen, a professional female climber who I have seen in many climbing videos. She was ranked best female climber in the USA at one time, but came in nearly last place at the X Games. "That was my last comp." she told me, "I’m not into competing anymore." I must have been the new boob job...
Sector Nine(a skateboard company), was having a company picnic and demo day in the park out side the entrance to the X Games, so I spent most of the afternoon hanging out with them and bust’n tricks on their boards. They were like’n my funky moves, so I offered them advertising on my web-site in exchange for a complete board. They bit the hook and I became happy dude with two skateboards. I spent the night at the park.
I went back to the X Games again the following morning. I needed to get my email, so I walked into the press tent, where all the media hang-out. Only authorized persons holding a press pass were allowed entrance, but I figured, "What do I have to lose?", and went in anyway. There were several tables, with a couple of phones on each. I quickly pulled out my laptop, sat down and plugged in. After getting my email, I realized that the phones where capable of taking non-800 long distance calls, so I called home. When my mother answered the phone, she asked if I had called to wish my father a Happy Father’s Day. "Ah... yeah... of course I answered..." though I had no idea it was Father’s Day. We talked for about 45 minutes. I guess my best professional face was not good enough. Shortly after hanging up the phone, I was asked to leave the tent.
That evening, after the X Games were finished for the day, I walked to the Mexican restaurant and waited for my buddy Riley to arrive from Los Angeles.
While I was waiting, I met an interesting character who told me his name was Ace A. Whollee. He was a homeless kid and he said that he had been living on the street for over 6 years. He sleeps on the beach every night - with no sleeping bag. He told me he has no belongings. He stunk like rotten socks and badly needed a bath. We discussed poetry and he wrote me a poem. His hand writing was worse than any I have ever seen - much like that of a 4 year old. His poem goes like this: "As I cry, my eyes are nice. My eyes cry like a rose is nice. It is like a rose my eyes." He gave me a demonstration of how he can swallow a burning cigarette. I told him I wanted to get a picture of him doing it, but he swallowed it before I had time to push the shutter, so he bummed another cigarette and did it again. I was amazed. There was no trick involved. The guy was just nuts. I had a good laugh when he told me "Sometimes they are still burning when I poop them out."
When Riley arrived, we cruised around on the skateboards for an hour or so, then hit the sack in the park. The next morning, watching the in-line skating competition at the X Games, then jumped on the skate boards again and cruised the boardwalk. We got back to the X Games in time to watch 17 year old Katie Brown win the female climbing competition, then we got into Riley’s car and headed off to La Jolla to do some snorkeling. The snorkeling was fantastic. We saw a lot of fish. We then drove to Ramona and spent the night at John and Marcy’s house.
The following day, Riley and I spent the morning bouldering on mount Woodson, then we met up with Joe, John’s son, who took us cliff jumping with a bunch of his friends. The trail down into the ravine was well over a mile. We arrived at a place as beautiful as any I have ever been. Surrounding three sides of the large deep pool, were towering orange cliffs with a 200 foot waterfall cascading down. The place is a hidden gem. You’d never find it in a tour guide book. Each of us took several jumps, ranging from 30 to 50 feet. One guy jumped from a height of over a hundred feet and astonished us all.
After a final night at John and Marcy’s home, Riley and I went climbing at a crag near the town of Santee. The climbing wasn’t great and it was way too hot, so we didn’t stay long.
After a three hour drive, Riley dropped me off at LAX. At 10pm, I got on a plane and jetted home with a five hour stop in Toronto. My most memorable moment in the flight was looking straight out the window at the Big Dipper. It felt as through I was flying though space.
My mother, little brother, Toby and sister, Leah, met me at the airport. My little brother and sister were no longer as little as I remembered them to be. They had grown a lot in a year. Other than that, everything at home is just like it was when I left. Now that I have been home for awhile, it seems like the past year has just been one long strange dream. Even though it took me many months to do so, I’m glad I wrote it all down. As a whole, I think it’s a pretty cool story ...if I do say so myself. In fact... this is just the beginning!!!
Two days after arriving home, I went on a week-long canoe trip down the Kedgwick and Restigouche rivers with my father, eight other men and 28 boys. It was the 20th canoe trip that my father has led ...and as always, it was fantastic. A few days after the canoe trip, my little brother and sister flew off to Alberta to spend a few weeks at my older sister’s house and my folks flew to Europe to spend three weeks traveling around Switzerland, Austria and Italy, so I was alone once again.
During the time they were away, I managed my mother’s health food store, operated out of our home. She sells everything from fresh goat’s milk to shark cartilage, but mostly Shaklee food supplements. That’s why my parents get to travel so often. Shaklee pays her in-part by sending them on trips with all expenses paid. My father had so many air miles he was able to fly me home for free, Toby and Leah flew to Alberta for free, my brother, Adam and his wife, Monique flew to Europe for free and Dad still has enough Air Miles left to fly himself to LA with me in October.
Speaking of flying... a few weeks ago, Ross, an old boy-friend of my mother’s, took me flying in his four seater Cessna. We took off from his private air strip in Sussex and flew over my cottage in Cambridge Narrows. I hope to have my pilots license by the age of thirty and my own plane by thirty five.
Some other cool stuff has happened since I returned home also. After pulling out a Net Life magazine out of the mail box and flipping through a few a pages, I though to myself, "I should asked them to write an article about my web site.". On the next page, there I was... starring back at myself. They had already written a very complimentary article and my site was listed as one of the "Best on the Web" - rate 4 out of 5 stars.
I finally got my other 57 rolls of slide film developed. Seventeen of them where Kodakchorme, which had to be sent to California to be developed, but the other 40 were sent to Kodak Canada and they developed them at no charge in exchange advertising on web site and during my slide show presentations. That saved me over $600. Some of the photographs are amazing! I’m psyched to see them on the big screen.
I also went down to Baxter State Park with my friends, Al, Carl and Tom, to climb mount Katahdin - the highest in the state of Maine. I have already hiked the mountain a couple times, so Tom and I took our rock climbing equipment and did a three pitch route called The Diamonds, which started above Chimney Pond and went up the north side of Pamola. The first pitch looked like a lot of fun, so we flipped a rock to see who would lead it. I won the toss, but Tom said that I didn’t flip the rock enough times in the air and insisted I flip it again. I didn’t argue. He won the second toss.
I led the second pitch, which was just as nice as the first. The whole route was only graded 5.7 - so we found it easy. When I got to a roof section that was obviously not part of the route, but looked do-able, I gave it a shot and nearly killed myself. There were no foot holds, just a sloping horizontal crack under the roof and a thin vertical crack on the face. I had a nut (a wedge on a wire which my rope clips into) in the vertical crack six feet below me and another nut in the horizontal crack I was traversing. The rope-drag was terrible and it felt as though there was a bowling ball tied on to the end of my rope pulling me down.
Under the over-hang was a thin dish I smeared my left foot on. It was a struggle, but after a few tries I was able to do the splits and got my right foot on an edge of the tiny vertical crack which was no bigger than the size of my pinkie finger nail. Within the blink of an eye, my feet greased off and I fell. Luckily, the nut in the horizontal crack held and I only fell five feet. I was a little shaken and yelled down to Tom, "I’m going to pull my pro and go the easy way."
"Is it worth risking my life over?" I thought to myself. I took another couple of minutes to look at the route. "What did I come here for... and why do I climb?" I questioned. Rock climbing is a direct metaphor of life. I climb because it challenges me; and after facing my fears, only then, do I truly feel alive. I climb because I want to live - not because I want to cheat death. Everything else in life is merely existence. If I took the easy way, I wouldn’t get to feel the self-gratification that comes from pulling through a difficult situation.
"Tom..." I hollered down the cliff, "I’m going to give it another try." I pulled the same funky moves I tried the first time, but this time my feet stayed in place. The next hand hold was out of my reach from the position I was in. I took a second to focus and visualize the movement, then lunged for it. My feet left the rock. My right hand slapped down on a crumbly, yet positive hold. The rope drag was heinous and the nut in the horizontal crack popped out. The nut in the vertical crack was now 8 feet below me - a 20 foot drop if I was to fall . . . . and the piece held.
The blank granite face was covered with a thin layer of powdery yellowish-green lichen, providing no purchase or friction for my feet, scraping desperately. My right wrist was in an awkward position and hurt like hell - soon to give. Though fatigued and terrified, there were no options. From the sloping horizontal crack, I quickly slap my left hand on to the lip next to my right hand and moved the right hand to a better hold farther down the ledge. Strength dwindling - no time left for thinking, I knew it was do or die. With the nasty rope drag and pumped out and quivering forearms, mantling up onto the ledge was like climbing out of a swimming pool of half hardened wood glue.
Once safely standing on the ledge, I looked down and found a crowd of about 50 people watching my every move from the ranger station below. I let out a big Yahoo that could have been heard for miles around. It was one of the greatest moments of my life - and my most terrifying climbing experience to date.
When Tom met me at the top of the pitch, he said that the nut was half out of the crack and would not have held if I had fallen - allowing me to splatter on the ledge100ft below. Back at the ranger station, we discovered that the route variation was a first ascent. I named it "Twisted Wrist Over-hang", with a graded of 5.10.
My plane ticket back to LA is for October 15th. I have a ton of work to do between now and then. My slide show is booked for five nights at the New Brunswick Museum - from September 21st to the 25th - 7 to 9pm each night and the ABEC on October 6th. I’m also scheduled to do presentations in Fredericton and Moncton. At this time, my slides are still spead out all over the couch and in many tiny boxes on the floor. I have thousands of images to choose from. It’s going to be a tough job.
It feels great to have this journal finally up to date. What an amazing year!
