Introduction
Back in 1994, as chronicled here, here, here, here, and here, my wife and I did a 9-month bike tour across the US. We’d quit our jobs and moved out of our apartments beforehand, got married along the way, and then returned to San Francisco to resume our regularly scheduled lives. But before we could find an apartment and a job or two, we had some unfinished business: a (second) honeymoon in Hawaii, which was a wedding present from my then-stepdad. We’d had to delay this initially, since post-wedding we had five more months of bike touring ahead. Thus, we took the Hawaii trip in December before settling back down; it was a bit like Extended Play in a car-race video game. This mini-memoir from my archives details the re-entry.
March 20, 1995
Hawaii was great, though honestly staying in hotels would have been pretty welcome after all the camping on the bike tour. We were also a little disappointed in our guidebook, which erroneously said all public beaches were legal for camping in Hawaii. I think the writer meant to say no beaches are legal, because as we toured around the islands we kept getting kicked out by a ranger, sometimes in the middle of the night. One exit was so hasty, I managed to lose one of our backpacks and all its contents.
Oddly, this led to the highlight of the entire trip. We’d gotten up just before dawn to sneak away from the public beach where we’d camped when a native Hawaiian family down the beach from us called us over. They gave us a hot tip: giant turtles come in every morning with the high tide to feed on the seaweed and stuff on the rocks. The family offered to let us use their snorkels and fins, and urged us to go right away, though the sun wasn’t up yet, to go swim with the turtles! No joke!
So we borrowed fins and headed down the black sand beach. My fins were too small, and gravel lodged in them, scratching up my feet, and I walked like a klutz through the sand, and the water was bracing (even in Hawaii) at that hour, and the whole thing seemed pretty iffy … but as soon as we swam out a bit it was all worth it. About a dozen giant turtles, with shells about four feet across, were swimming all around us, and barely seemed to notice us! I had this disconcerting feeling that if they wanted to, they could eat me alive. They’re such good swimmers there’s no way I could’ve escaped. (The locals had said these weren’t snapping turtles, but still.) They’re really graceful creatures, and I discovered I could just drift along, about five feet from a turtle, in and out with the tide. At one point one turned his head to look at me, and then swam towards me. I almost freaked out; I know it doesn’t sound that scary, and really I was more fascinated than anything, but how often do you cavort with actual wild animals, of any kind? Not that turtles are “wild” in the sense of “Wild Thing” or “Born to be Wild,” but you know what I mean. Animals, in their natural state, on their turf, with me in silly swim trunks, a leaky mask, and stumpy little fins. And no upper body strength. Man, when a turtle swims, it’s like he’s flying through the water, flapping his fins like wings, and totally hauling ass. Fortunately they weren’t aggressive at all. They seemed more like dignified old men. (And/or women. How do you tell the sex of a turtle?)
The least touristy island, Molokai, really felt like another country. You’re not allowed to just head over, not that I have any idea how you’d get there anyway. Instead, once a day there’s a chartered boat for tourists, and to board it you have to pre-purchase the guided island tour. The reason is, Molokai is a former leper colony, and in recompense for marooning lepers there, the US government has agreed to give them their privacy and support them on the island until the last of them has died off. (Meanwhile, they’re finally allowed to leave if they want.) The island is largely undeveloped and overgrown, not manicured like the more touristy islands. Mongooses were running around everywhere. The guy giving our tour was really cool. His handshake felt odd because two fingers were permanently curled in.
The Landlord [my then-stepdad] had insisted that we use his tent for the trip, even though the one my wife and I used throughout our bike tour was totally great (and after all those months I could set it up in five minutes flat in the dark). Still, the Landlo’s fancy-pants tent might have been just the thing—had the poles been included. It turns out that for some reason he stored the poles separately, and forgot to give us the second bag, so they didn’t make the trip with us. If you’ve never tried to use a tent without poles, well, let me tell you, you’d be better off with nothing at all. The tent was utterly useless. Like a giant straightjacket. Not waterproof in the slightest, of course. When it rained (which seemed like half the time), it was just a total joke, as if Paul Bunyan saw us getting rained on and just dropped a giant Kleenex over us.
So yeah, Hawaii was great but we were honestly pretty stoked to get back into a home. We missed little things like an address, a roof over our heads, electric lights, a real bed, and an income. I suppose the trip had been just what we needed, because before we left we’d despised the pressures and responsibilities of full-time jobs. But so far, we’re still glad to be back—but only because we did have the experience of escaping for a while. During the tour, we were routinely struck by how many people we met who lamented, “I could never afford to do that! What about your jobs? What about the car payments? The mortgage? The kids?” We also met several people who had actually done the same thing, and who were ecstatic to see that other people had also found an opportunity to travel before it was too late.
I’ve been pulling some weekend shifts at the bike shop in Berkeley (where I worked as a college kid), to get some money rolling in and more importantly the psychological boost of feeling like we’re not just burning through what’s left of our savings. Beyond that, our first order of business was been finding an apartment (our first one together!) so during the first week back we threw ourselves headlong into an intense housing search. It wasn’t long before we found a really great apartment. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t take us as tenants, even though we both have spotless credit ratings and a pile of cash, because we weren’t gainfully employed. Seems like a catch-22; how do you get a job without a home? Camp in the park and put a suit on in the morning? So we bailed on that place and found another, which we liked even better and had cheaper rent. This time we knew what we were doing, and “informed” them of my highly lucrative managerial job at the bike shop. I’d checked with my old boss there, to make sure it was okay to tell this little white lie, and to my surprise he actually offered me the very job I’d pretended to have. So my application was almost honest, the only fiction being that I pretended I’d accepted the job and was actually working. Can I still sleep at night, having fibbed like this? Well, what about the fully employed guy who’s about to lose his job, whether he knows it or not? What’s the difference? The property management company’s insecurity is not my problem.
So frantic was our urge to move into the apartment that we hardly checked out the neighborhood beforehand. We moved in at night, and were completely exhausted afterward. Before turning in I had to park the 14-foot U-Haul we’d rented, and in the process got to drive it up one of the very steepest hills in San Francisco—that is to say, one of the steepest hills on planet Earth. That was a bizarre sensation: I felt that any minute the truck could tumble over backwards and I would bounce all the way into the ocean. Only at the top did I see the sign stating “TRUCKS PROHIBITED.” Needless to say, parallel parking that beast was not easy.
The next morning, we strolled around our new neighborhood for the first time. We’d assumed, based on the rather reasonable rent in this notoriously expensive city, that we would be in a sketchy neighborhood. To our surprise and delight, we discovered we’d landed in a very nice area. It’s in Russian Hill, walking distance from North Beach, Chinatown, the Marina, and Pacific Heights. Our street (we’re on the corner of Polk and Filbert, if you happen to know where that is) has cute little shops and restaurants up and down it. We even have an old-fashioned, elegant movie theater, but it’s currently showing “Judge Dredd” (no thanks). Perhaps the best find is a fantastic Italian restaurant within walking distance. It has hideous art on the walls, like a still life of a wine bottle with an actual cork glued to it, which we’re guessing helps disrupt the ambience, thus keeping the prices down. I have a feeling we’ll be eating there a lot, even as we try to save to buy some real estate somewhere someday.
It’s a sunny Sunday morning and we’re sitting in a little bakeshop called Beppie’s Pies. Or maybe it’s Bepple’s. We bought some large, sweet, cakey blueberry muffins, which should pay our rent here for a while. We’re the only ones in the place, perhaps due to godawful music they’re playing; the current song is the dreadful wailing of some woman who is missing her man since he left. She’s somehow injecting little staccato pauses into her wails, kind of like how a TV evangelist drags “Jesus” out into three syllables.
Tonight we’ve been invited to a barbecue, but by people who seldom barbecue. In fact, they had originally planned for me to be in charge of the grill. Fortunately, I was informed of my duties sufficiently far in advance that I could beg the host to reconsider, and explain my total incompetence in such things. Not that I don’t like to eat barbecue; I just don’t crave it often enough to learn how to do it, and buy the gear, etc. My friend P—, over in Berkeley, routinely host barbecues (well, at least he did in the couple years preceding our bike tour; I hope he still does). His parents are from Germany, and are in fact professional barbecuists. He always makes this German-style cole slaw (or “cold slaw” as my brothers and I used to ignorantly call it) that’s as good as anything that comes off the grill. For such events, I usually buy a cut of meat with a name something like “Swiss boot steak.” It looks as impressive as your best cut of expensive meat, so I give the semblance of a true beef aficionado, but this stuff is so dirt-cheap I feel like the butcher would just give it to me if I asked nicely. Needless to say, it’s as tough as leather. I’m reminded of the TV commercials for the Ginsu steak knives. Not that I watch much TV (E—and I don’t have one) but this commercial—perhaps you’ve seen it—has been on for so long it practically has a cult following. I’ll attempt to quote from memory:
These fantastic Ginsu knives never need sharpening! Watch: we’ll cut through this tin can, and then—look!—it still cuts through this leather boot like a hot knife through butter! You get the cleaver, the butcher, the serrated breader, and the 12 steak knives for only $19.95, that’s $19.95, plus shipping and handling. But wait, there’s more: if you act now, you also get the bonus fillet knife and the EZ-matic mandolin! It slices, it dices, and look! Before, you had a potato—now you’ve got curly fries! Call now, operators are standing by at 1-800-228-2200, that’s 1-800-228-2200!
And why does a steak knife need to be able to cut through a boot? Because it might get used on a Swiss steak! Really, this slab of chewy gristle is more of a garnish for me than anything, since I’m really there for the socializing and the cold slaw. Besides, calamari is very chic and it’s as tough as rubber. And since I don’t bother to chew any of my other food, what’s wrong with working my jaws once in a while?
I get to have some fun with the Swiss steak even before I eat it. You see, when you barbecue in Berkeley, you invariably get a few vegans who almost act offended at the sight of meat—never mind that they’re at a barbecue and presumably knew full well what they were getting into. Also never mind that their tempeh patties are only afforded what little flavor they have by the beef fat they’ve managed to absorb from the grill. I typically let my boot-steak snuggle up against the tempeh, maybe even overlap it bit. The vegans get really pissy about this. You’d think the steak was poison. I emphasize the ideological aspect of the situation as I soothe them: “Look, it doesn’t count as animal cruelty of you yourself didn’t select the meat. You’re still innocent. Cruel fate brought the meat into your life, against your will.” This goes over reasonably well, especially if the vegan has had enough beer.
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