Memories of Baja Part 3

…continued

For some reason when we went to Baja our capacity to drink would seem to double or triple. Even those of our friends who weren’t heavy drinkers would indulge themselves. I guess it was due to the low price of alcohol. We were able to buy so much and we could only take limited amounts back with us over the border so basically whatever we bought we had to drink before going back. Yeah we could have just left stuff for the next visit but that would be going against our live for the moment attitude. Any trip down could be the last. We always drank at the beach house because it was stockpiled with booze and we didn’t have to worry about driving back to the house obliterated. Back in the States at parties there would always be drinking games like Tops, Quarters, or Up and Down the River. We weren’t into that, we just drank although we did have a few simple rules. In the evening after dinner those who were going to drink would gather at the kitchen table and those who weren’t would sit on the couch in the adjacent living room and spectate and serve as the peanut gallery. On the table would sit a bottle of tequila, some sliced limes, and a shot glass. We didn’t bother with salt, that was too touristy for us. To stay at the table you had to drink a shot when your turn came up. The glass went around clockwise and you had about 5 minutes to down your shot. The longer you took to drink your shot the more razzing you got from the audience which included the non drinkers on the couch. Everybody had a bottle, glass, or can of beer to sip on while waiting their turn. It always started out casual. Wes always played the MC since it was his beach house and he loved getting people drunk. Wes would pour the shot and set it down right in front of you. It was not too much unlike King Arthur’s Roundtable. We sat around and celebrated our lives telling embellished stories of our youthful conquests and gossiping about recent events and people we knew. As the night wore on the booze would take effect adding even more embellishment and color to our stories. Usually around round 5 people would start dropping off. If you couldn’t drink your shot you had to leave the table and join the peanut gallery which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Once you were off the table you had license to ill and you could really get into razzing the people who were still at the table drinking. It was all in fun so it never got too personal or vindictive.

Like I said before, Wes loved to get people drunk, especially the lite drinkers. He would start working on people early in the day and by the time evening rolled around he would have a few recruits at the table who probably shouldn’t be there. At the time Wes was dating a nice young woman who lived up the block named Debbie Shair. Debbie was away attending college at UC Davis so she was only able to attend Baja trips on her breaks from school. She had an older brother named Pete who used hang out with us. Pete was a super nice guy who was a rocker. He was a bass player who had classic rock long hair and wore Iggy Pop tight Levi jeans, tight t-shirts, and Chuck Taylor’s which was the standard uniform for rockers. Pete wasn’t a drinker or a toker. Every now and then he would partake but most of the time he was the only sober one amongst us. Wes had been giving Pete the business all day and when evening came Pete joined us at the table. He did ok for about the first 5 rounds but somewhere around round 8 or 9 his eyes became glazed over and his speech started to slur. His body language signaled to us that Pete was about to let go with a major geyser so we ushered him to the couch. We grabbed a white Hefty trash bag and stuck it under Pete’s chin just in time to catch the first wave of barf. He expelled quite a bit and then fell back on the couch and passed out. We callously returned to the table to continue our drinking. About 10 minutes later we could hear Pete moaning and gurgling. He was still a wreck. He put his hand up motioning to us. It took a while but we realized he needed the Hefty bag again so we rushed it over and he stuck his head in the bag and let loose. We couldn’t see the stuff but we could hear it hitting the bottom of the bag. We could emphasize because we had all been in this situation at one time or another. I remember one incident that I had where I was running down the hallway to the bathroom with my hand over my mouth with barf spewing through the cracks of my fingers splattering the walls like a Jackson Pollack painting. We went back to the table to continue our drinking and kept an eye on Pete. Speech was beyond his capabilities so we had to rely on his hand motions and body language. Whenever he started gurgling and his shoulders started heaving we would run over and put the Hefty bag under his chin. As we became more drunk we became less aware of Pete’s needs. We could hear him mumbling trying to tell us something. The mumbling became louder and louder and finally Pete yelled out “Baaaaaaaag!”. We started laughing our heads off because of the way he yelled “Baaaaaag”. We felt bad for Pete but we couldn’t stop ourselves from laughing. Even Pete started to chuckle. For the next hour or so, about every 10 minutes Pete would yell out “Baaaaaag!” and we would frantically rush over to him and stick the bag under his face, laughing the whole time. For some reason we had a roll of yellow CAUTION tape, the kind of tape that is put up at crime scenes. In our delirious state we roped off the living room from the kitchen with the tape and started calling the living room area the “Splatter Zone”. For those of us still drinking we began boasting about who was going to be sent to the Splatter Zone next. At one point our friend Jon Alcorn reached his tequila saturation point and went outside. He came back about an hour later. We were so far gone we didn’t even know he had left so we were surprised when he came walking in the door. He had scrapes on his arms and his shorts were scraped and torn with green grass stains. “Dude what happened?” With a big grin on his face Jon said, “I think I fell down the cliff.” We all started howling and laughing. Jon couldn’t remember exactly what had happened and to us that was funny because how could you not remember falling down a cliff? Jon was slightly bloodied but he was intact so we were able to laugh about it. At this point anything that didn’t kill us only made us laugh harder. Pete was still yelling for the bag but the yellow CAUTION tape made it difficult to get to him in the living room so we got a roll of duct tape and taped the bag to his chest. It was a genius move and we wondered why we hadn’t thought of it earlier. Pete was happy because he didn’t have to yell “Baaaaaaag!” anymore. He was actually smiling now and laughing at everything going on like the rest of us. We survived the night and the next day we were at it again. We kept the CAUTION tape up. From here on anyone who could not hold their liquor was banished to the Splatter Zone with a Hefty bag duct taped to the chest. So now you had double incentive to stay at the drinking table as nobody wanted to be the first person sent to the Splatter Zone. This is how traditions are born.

In our Last Man Standing drinking bouts I was usually the winner. I had a pretty good constitution and was able to do 20 or more rounds of tequila shots in a night of drinking. Usually by round 10 it would just be Wes and me and maybe one other brave soul who was on a roll still at the table. We would continue until we were all sloshed to the point of no return or the booze ran out. When the tequila ran out we’d start taking straight shots of Kahlua and after that we’d start on the fire water which we kept hidden in a cabinet above the refrigerator. Fire water was for emergencies only and we had to be really really drunk just to even talk about it let alone drink it. Looking back now I can’t believe I didn’t kill myself. With tequila you might win a few rounds but eventually it was going to get you. After one night of epic tequila drinking where I did 25 shots and even drank some fire water I woke up in the Lazy Boy chair. I got up and gingerly stepped over the passed out bodies on the living room floor to go to the bathroom. When I got to the bathroom and looked in the mirror I let out a blood curdling scream. I didn’t recognize the face in the mirror. The face in the mirror had a massively fat upper lip that was split in half but what really alarmed me was that I was missing my upper front tooth. I have upper front teeth like Bugs Bunny so the gap where my tooth used to be looked big enough to drive a truck through it. On closer examination I could see that the tooth had broke off right at the gum line. I began to panic because I had no memory of what had happened. My scream woke some people up and they explained to me what happened. Apparently I left the table to go to the bathroom, or so I said, and instead went out the back door. They didn’t know I went outside but heard a loud “thud”. When they went to investigate the cause of the thud sound they found me lying down face first on the cobblestone driveway in a pool of blood. They took me outside to show the spot where I crashed landed and I could see the dried up pool of blood. It was disturbing to me that I could not remember this happening. Miraculously I was feeling no pain as I was still numb from the previous night of drinking. We didn’t know what to do. We still had a few days left in Baja so going back to the States was out of the question, plus I was broke at the time and had no dental insurance so I just had to man up and deal with it. I swore over and over to anyone that would listen I would never drink tequila again but after a few hours my upper lip and gums began to throb with pain. The booze was wearing off. Wes offered to drive me to Tijuana to see a dentist but I refused. That was my mentality at the time as someone without medical insurance. If I had to suffer then I would suffer. A few years earlier all four of my wisdom teeth simultaneously decided it was time to join the mouth party. Over the course of a month the teeth split through my gums like plant life springing from a seed and breaking the soil. For a month my gums were swollen and tender and I was constantly spitting out mouths full of blood. Eating solid food was so painful I had to go on a liquid diet. I lost 20 pounds during that episode. Everybody was feeling bad about my tooth and it brought a downer feeling to the group. They were sympathetic but nobody was trying to talk me into going back. By midday I was completely sober and could feel every iota of pain emanating from my mouth. I needed some relief so after swearing off tequila for good I found myself drinking some of the hair of the dog that took a chunk out of me. I couldn’t believe I was actually drinking tequila again but it actually helped. A tiny sip here and a tiny sip there made the pain bearable and I was able to soldier on for the few remaining days of the trip. Drinking tequila lightened the mood of the group considerably, enough to enable the group to start making jokes about my condition. Like I said before, that which does not kill you only makes you laugh harder.

On visits to Baja it was impossible not to notice the poverty. Even though we were good friends with One Legged Joe we didn’t interact much with the locals. We tried our best not to notice how poor people were. We didn’t want to feel guilty while acting like lunatics with our tequila binges. Many well to do Americans made trips to Rosarito on the weekends to go shopping or eat lobsters and many young college students from San Diego came down to hit the 18 and over bars. Out of respect to the poor locals we kept our shenanigans confined to the beach house. We never walked around Rosarito drunk or out of control.

Some days instead of going to the beach we would set our table up in front of the beach house and watch people pull up in their expensive BMW’s and Mercedes Benz’s to have a bite to eat at Francisco’s. Even though it was right there in our lap we rarely went to Francisco’s as it was out of our price range but it was fun to people watch and that’s what we would do. One day a young Mexican kid came wandering in to the parking lot area. He saw us and headed over to our table. I guess we looked approachable because he just started hanging out with us. Out of our group of 5 there were two girls and they took a liking to the kid. We found out his name was Jose and he was 12 years old. He didn’t speak English very well but he could understand it no problem so we were able to carry on a conversation with him. He was a funny kid and after awhile he had us all laughing. He started waiting on us, voluntarily fetching beers or food from the kitchen and pouring our tequila shots. At one point he motioned to the tequila, he wanted to take a shot. We all hesitated and looked at each other not sure what to do. He gave us a pleading look and Wes handed him the bottle. Wes didn’t think he was going to do it but Jose calmly poured himself a shot and downed it like a seasoned vet. We were all amazed and gave him a big cheer which brought a big smile to Jose’s face. Before Jose wandered over to our table we had been smoking a joint but we hadn’t lit it up since Jose joined us for obvious reasons. Jose eyed the joint then made a smoking gesture to Wes, he wanted to take a toke. Since he handled the tequila shot so smoothly we let him take a hit off the joint. He took a deep drag, held it in, and exhaled like a pro. Again we cheered him on which prompted him to give us all high fives as he was feeling very proud of himself. It never crossed our minds that we were being irresponsible adults by allowing this 12 year old kid to party with us. At the time I was working at the YMCA with kids of the same age and I would never allow this to happen in the States but in Baja it was a different world with a different set of rules. The kid was happy and that’s all that mattered to us because we had seen so many scrappy, malnutritioned, long faced kids that it felt good to have this local kid enjoying himself with us. He was having a great time, who were we to rain on his parade? When sundown came we thought Jose would leave but as we brought everything back into the house he made no motions that he was leaving. He helped us clean everything up and came inside and made himself at home taking a seat on the couch. The girls thought he was cute and adorable so he really played up to them. When it came time to make dinner he offered to help out in any way he could. He was very grateful to sit down and eat with us and afterwards without prompting started clean up and doing the dishes. We all chipped in and had the place squared away in a jiffy so we could get on to our nightly ritual of tequila drinking. We didn’t let Jose come to the table so he watched from the couch and joined in with us when the razzing started. Every now and then he would help himself to a beer or a shot of tequila. We didn’t try to stop him, we figured he knew his limits. At about 10pm when we were well into our drinking session Jose had fallen asleep on the couch so we carried him to one of the bedrooms and tucked him in for the night.

Morning came and Jose was up in the kitchen making breakfast for everybody of bacon and eggs. He even hand squeezed some oranges to make fresh juice for us. The little guy was making quite an impression on us, especially the girls. He had awoken their maternal instincts and he was playing it for all it was worth. They washed his clothes and encouraged him to take a shower like any good mother would. It became clear that Jose was going to stay with us as long as we let him so we just went with it. We had two more days before we had to get back to the States and we were out of weed which for us was always a bummer. Jose caught wind of our situation and made it known he could knew where to get some mota. He said he could get some from his brother who grew it up in the hills east of Rosarito. We thought about it awhile and decided we could go without. It was one thing to let a 12 year old have a few shots of tequila and a few tokes off a joint but to have him get weed for us was going to far, even for us. He wanted to please us so he kept offering but we stuck to our guns. This prompted us to start asking about his family because we were wondering if he was going to be in trouble for being away from home for so long. He said his parents didn’t care too much about him. He told us his father beat him and he was treated badly at home. This almost brought the girls to tears because Jose was such a likeable kid. It was hard to imagine him being the victim of abuse. After that he was in like Flint. I don’t think the girls would have let him go home even if he wanted to. They wanted to protect him. Jose stayed with us for the next two days like he was one of the family. He was enjoying himself immensely and we enjoyed having him around. We toned down the drinking for the remainder of the trip since now we felt like we were actually looking after him.

On departure day we packed up all of our gear for the ride home. Jose knew we were leaving so he was overcome by sadness as were the girls. We were all feeling a little down because we didn’t want to say goodbye to Jose. Finally one of the girls said, “Let’s take him with us.” Jose perked up when he heard this. I think all along he had been waiting for this moment. It was a crazy idea but the girls insisted and we all wanted to do good by the little fella. Our emotions got the better of us and we all decided to take Jose back with us to the States. We had no plan whatsoever. We just knew we wanted to take him back the decision was made and everybody was temporarily happy. We jumped in the van and started heading for the border. Everybody was quiet. We were all independently trying to digest and justify the magnitude of what we were attempting to do. We passed through Rosarito and we all looked at each other in silence. Wes pulled the van over to the side of the road and vocalized what most of us were thinking. As much as we wanted to we couldn’t take Jose back with us. How would we get him past the border agents? How would we explain our actions to the border agents? Would we be charged with smuggling if we were caught? What would we do with Jose if we did manage to sneak him across the border? We argued and debated these questions for about 10 minutes with Jose begging us to take him along. In the end reason and common sense won out. We told Jose we thought he was a great kid but we couldn’t take him with us. We all started crying. Jose wouldn’t budge but when he realized we were not going to change our minds he slowly got out of the van. We all took turns hugging him and the girls kissed his cheeks and wiped away his tears vowing they were going to come back for him. We drove off and looking back we could see Jose standing there watching us with his hand in the air waving goodbye to us. We watched him until he was just a speck on the horizon. When we could no longer see him we sat face forward in our seats. Nobody spoke. We were all thinking about Jose.

About a month later on our next trip to the beach house as we drove through Rosarito we kept an eye out for Jose but we didn’t see him. Dismayed we headed for the beach house. Just before we arrived at Calafia we saw a kid riding his bike on the dirt road next to the highway. We passed by him and to our delight we saw it was Jose. He saw us too and frantically started waving to us. We stopped the van and he rode his bike to us as fast as he could. We greeted Jose with big hugs. We were happy to find our little amigo. He met up with us at the beach house and we picked up right where we left off although we weren’t offering Jose any booze or smoke and he wasn’t asking. Jose confessed to us that he had lied about his parents. They were good people who took good care him and didn’t beat him. He only told us that because he wanted so very badly to see the United States because he had never been there before and he also said we were the nicest people he ever met and being with us was some of the best times he ever had. He didn’t want it to end. Jose stayed with us like before but he went home instead of spending the night with us and he didn’t drink or smoke anything. We all stayed sober for Jose, we just felt like it was the right thing to do. We had as much fun with him as before because it was never about the booze and the partying, it was more about connecting with a child from another culture and enjoying the unconditional love that he gave to us which in turn gave us the opportunity to step up and be better human beings.

Baja is a different place now. Even in the last few years I was hanging out there Rosarito was transforming itself. The two lane main drag with no sidewalks had been expanded to a four lane road with sidewalks. New construction was happening everywhere. One Legged Joe finally made enough money to open up a restaurant on the main drag and he moved back to Sonora Mexico. His family took over the business and ran the restaurant. We were happy for Joe because we really liked him but we felt some sadness because the new restaurant didn’t offer the unique experience that Joe’s taco shack did. We didn’t know it at the time but for all of us life was about to change. We were getting older, into our latter 20’s and one by one we started to become more focused on our individual lives and one by one we took off to new places like San Francisco and New York to continue our discovery of life. As friends we looked out for each other and we never left anyone behind. We pooled our money and shared everything. It was a lifestyle of necessity and survival. We were young with an abundance of energy and imagination, lacking resources and learning about life through trial and error. It was all to prepare us for going out into the world to face it on our own terms. You only get to be young once in your life. I struggled and had some hard times but I have no regrets about my life as a young man coming of age. I look back on the last 10 years of my life when I am supposedly more mature and wiser and I have plenty of regrets. Go figure.

Memories of Baja Part 2

…continued

The itinerary for Baja trips was very simple. It was all about food, drink, laughter, rest and relaxation. A typical day involved sitting on the beach for hours with a iced case of Corona at the side. I’m sure you all have seen the Corona tv commercials. As much as I hate advertising they get it right as those commercials capture the timeless, motionless afternoons on the beach where anything happening beyond the shores was irrelevant. Every hour or so you would take a dip in the ocean to cool off but otherwise you reclined in your beach chair in a half conscious state somewhere between daydreaming and sleep. Unlike beaches in California which were crowded and regulated the beaches in Baja were wild, open, and free. You could do anything you wanted and nobody cared. The locals weren’t into laying on the beach, they had more important things to do like make a living or playing soccer on the weed strewn dirt fields. The beaches were relatively clean once you got to the actual beach. Technically Mexico is a third world country so some things are different south of the border, like sanitation. There aren’t a fleet of trucks that come around for curbside garbage pick up every week. Mexicans burned their garbage or hauled it to whatever unofficial place served as a garbage dump which was usually the closest unoccupied field. The playa was a popular place to dump garbage especially if there was a cliff leading down to the beach. Calafia where we stayed was on a bluff and we had to hike about 100 feet down a cliff to get to the beach. At the bottom of the cliff we had to negotiate mounds and mounds of garbage. There’d be all kinds of trash like raw food, food containers, milk bottles, beer bottles, old shoes, old worn out electrical appliances, even rusted out car chassis. Just about everything but dead bodies. Once past the rubbish it was pristine and empty beach. We respected the beach as it felt like it was our own so we always made sure we cleaned up after ourselves. I hope the beaches in Baja are still untamed. It seems the older I get the more rules there are to follow when it comes to public spaces.

My buddy Wes moved to Hawaii in 1987 so for the next 4 years just about all my trips to Baja were spent on the beach since the beach house was no longer available. We’d show up with a gang of people and pitch our tents and stay on the beach for 3 or 4 days. My first trip to Baja without the beach house was Memorial Day weekend 1988. The crew consisted of my best friend in the world and top notch photographer Jon Alcorn, our mutual good friend and all around great guy Sean McCarthy, and a few females who were good friends of ours. We set up camp on the beach near Calafia since it was an area we knew very well. Jon was the lightning rod of our group. He was a passionate young man with very liberal beliefs about the world which he wore on both his sleeves. Jon and I could go all night drinking and smoking dope but it didn’t fuel our juvenile tendencies as much as it fueled our need to express our beliefs about what we could do to make a difference in the world. We were idealistic young men who really wanted to change things, he through photography and me through political activism. Sean on the other hand was a teatotaller by comparison. He was more academic and philosophical. He was an English major at UCLA and he knew a lot about writers and over the years he has hipped me to many good books like Wiseblood by Flannery O’Connor and Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey. On the surface we were serious young men but on the beach in Baja after copious amounts of beer, tequila, and weed, it was inevitable that we would move from the sublime to the ridiculous. Jon could hold his liquor better than any of us but he didn’t bother pacing himself and he is one of those people that can rage but as soon as he runs out of juice it’s lights out. It was rarely gradual. It was like he had an “off” button and went the button was pushed he would be dead to the world. On our second night on the beach we did our usual thing, we had some shrimp on the barbie, drank lots of booze, shot off our fireworks, and as the night wore on laughed our heads off at stupid jokes and humorous stories, mostly about the shrimp disaster that had taken place earlier in the evening. We had been in Ensenada earlier in the day and Jon and Sean purchased about 2 pounds of shrimp which they planned on cooking on the bbq grill. I abstained since I am allergic to shellfish. While they were getting ready to bbq the shrimp I drove into Rosarito and went to One Legged Joe’s. When I returned to the campsite with a full stomach the guys were trying to grill the pinky sized shrimp. Since they bought them from the fish market they didn’t realize they had to shell and clean the shrimp before they could eat them. They shelled and cleaned about 20 shrimp and realized it would take all night to eat all the shrimp this way so they started throwing them on the grill as is. That didn’t work out to well and they grew frustrated because they had been looking forward to the shrimp fest all day. After awhile they just gave up and drove into Rosarito to get some tacos from One Legged Joe’s. Jon as usual had put down quite a few beers and had that look of madness on his face. After a lot of boozing you never knew what Jon was going to do, he was unpredictable in that way so sometimes we just had to put him down before he went “crazy” on us. Sean and I managed to get him in his tent and he fell out and took a trip lala land. His day was done or so we thought. Sean and I stayed up and sat around the campfire just talking like good friends do. About 2am when our campsite had just gotten very quiet and most people had called it a night Jon came bursting out of his tent like Superman dressed only in a pair of fire engine red bikini briefs. He ran up to us and started giving us big man hugs all the while yelling, “I love you guys!”. Sean and I were completely surprised and we tried to fight him off but in his drunken and love filled state we were no match for him. We all ended up on the sand busting up with laughter. I couldn’t believe he resurrected himself and I had no idea that Jon fancied bikini briefs, he just didn’t seem like the type.

Another memorable trip involved my good travel buddy Evan Reid. Evan and I had done many road trips together from skiing in Big Bear to fishing and mountain biking in the Eastern Sierra. Evan had an old yellow Toyota Celica with a hatchback that we would throw all of our gear in. Back in our time we all drove beaters, cars that were made for adventure not for traveling in style. When Evans Corolla finally died he upgraded (or downgraded, depending on your perspective) to a Ford Fairmont, or something close to it. We called it the Stealth mobile because it looked like a car that could only be loved by undercover agents. On this trip to Baja we were in the Celica loaded up with our mountain bikes and our gear. We had a momentary crisis one the drive down. We had been smoking the entire way down and were quite stoned going into Baja. We had a good buzz going and when you have a good buzz going you aren’t really thinking too far forward. We came to a toll both and noticed that the Federales were checking all the vehicles. It was very similar to that scene in the film Salvador when James Woods and Jim Belushi drive up to the checkpoint in Guatemala throwing out all their booze, pills, and weed and trying to sober up. We couldn’t stop and pull of the road, we were to close and it would have looked suspicious. On road trips we kept our weed on a big Frisbee so we are driving up to the machine gun toting Federales with a giant Frisbee full of weed in my lap. What to do what to do. I’m starting to panic because I’m imaging myself trying to explain to the Federales why I have a massive amount of weed in my lap and all I could think of was Sean Penn being tortured in the Mexican jail in the movie Falcon and the Snowman. Evan grabbed the Frisbee and stuck it under his car seat. We stopped at the toll both and a Federale walked up on each side. They peered into the car and saw our bikes and gear. My high was already blown so I just tried to act natural. Evan is a born actor so he put on his happy face and made small talk with the iron visaged Federales and it must have worked because they waved us on. We were lucky because up to then they had physically searched every vehicle.

We had found a campground just outside of Ensenada called San Miguel. It was just past the toll both leading into Ensenada on the north side right before the fish factory. If you have ever driven into Ensenada you know the fish factory because it smells like about a million dead fish sitting out in the hot sun and the odor is so powerful that you either held your breath as long as you could driving by or wrapped your head in a shirt or towel. Unlike the beaches around Calafia, there were always other people camping out on the beach and it had facilities. For about $3 a day you could set up camp and use the ancient shower and bathroom facilities. At night the lights from the nearby toll booths and the highway noise of cars and trucks took away from the feeling of being out there and we couldn’t just drive into town to get tacos from One Legged Joe’s but there were always interesting people to meet camping out on the beach, mostly groups of surfers. There was a nice couple with a cool dog camped on our right side. They were spending their last few days in the States before taking off for Guam. They were going to run a business taking Japanese tourists on submarine rides. I thought that was really cool because I didn’t know people used submarines outside of the military. Behind us there was a young hippy couple from Washington who were on a road trip of unknown destination. They were going to go as far as they could into Latin America. On our left side was a group of about six surfers from Australia who had bought an old VW van and were coming back from traveling to the tip of Baja which is about a 14 hour drive. They basically would drive each day to a new beach, stop, surf it, and move on to the next beach. It was a cool campsite. At night all we would all gather around the fire pit like one large group. There was one misfortune. We exploded some fireworks that ended up scaring the dog off. We searched and searched but could not find it. We thought maybe by morning he would show up but morning came and no dog. It was definitely a bummer for the couple as they were leaving the States soon and the dog was like their child. We just hoped that somebody adopted it and it didn’t get run over on the highway. There is no shortage of road kill on the highways of Baja. Our bicycling destination was La Bufadora, or the Blowhole in gringo speak. I had never traveled south of Ensenada in Baja so I was really looking forward to the ride. La Bufadora was about 30 kilometers south of Ensenada. We had to go through parts of Ensenada I had never seen before, where the real Mexicans lived away from the tourist areas. The streets were bumpy and full of potholes. It was hot and dusty and there was plenty of traffic and the streets were small. I had ridden my bike all over Los Angeles but nothing compared to this. For some reason most of the traffic was freight and delivery trucks and they weren’t used to sharing the road with bikes so it was very dicey getting out of Ensenada. We made it out in one piece and as soon as we broke the city limits everything changed for the better. The traffic died out and we found ourselves on a lightly traveled but rough road. Baja was starting to look tropical as the palm trees multiplied in number, height, and density. It was almost like an oasis but every mile or so we were reminded we were in Mexico when we would ride by an open pit of raw sewage just off the side of the road. There was not much civilization to look at. We passed by a military base about 10 kilometers south of Ensenada and we rode past Estero Beach, a fancy resort that I would come back to visit on another trip but that was all we saw on the ride to the La Bufadora. Beyond that all we saw were fruit and vegetable stands which we were grateful for because a few times we thought we were lost and the Mexicans working the fruit stands were nice enough to confirm we were heading the right way. We finally made it to La Bufadora and it was worth the ride. Its fun to see a bunch of adults oohing and aahing around a hole like a bunch of school kids watching the mighty spouts of water take flight. Like any spot that draws tourist we had to run a gauntlet of fish taco stands and souvenir booths to get to the actual blowhole. No matter where you go in Baja it’s always the same souvenirs; tequila shot glasses, foam and wire reptile pets, wood carved horses, ceramic surfing Ninja Turtles, Jesus figurines and paintings, feathered roach clips, pancho wearing puppets, Chiclets, and of course straw hats and blankets. We never bought anything from the tourist stands but I always wondered what factory was producing all these useful goods.

Before moving to San Francisco in 1991 I spent the last four days of my LA life on the beach in Baja with my good friends Jon, who I mentioned earlier, and our partner in crime Megan Feeny. We camped out on Estero Beach, the resort I spoke of earlier but we weren’t staying at the resort, we pitched tents on the beach adjacent to the resort. Estero Beach is a beautiful white sand beach and because there was a resort nearby there was no trash dumps to navigate through to get to the expansive beach. Just a few blocks from the beach there was a small store which enabled us to easily stay stocked up on firewood, beer, and ice. We spent four days on the sand just kicking back and enjoying the simplicity of sunny days and good friends. We sat around and read books, took long walks on the beach, slept under the midday sun, and rode horses in the surf. It was only three bucks an hour to rent a horse to ride and they were right on the beach. You didn’t even have to go to them. They would walk around the beach with the horses looking for customers. On Estero beach everything came to you. While reclining on the beach, on the hour we would be approached by vendors selling everything from beer and candy bars to batteries and flashlights. Those were four of the most relaxing days in my life and it was the perfect way to say goodbye to my LA life and get myself ready for my new life in San Francisco. On the last night of camping on the beach we bought a lot of fireworks, mostly for nostalgic reasons. It was something we always did so we did it but now I was 28 years old and it didn’t have the same appeal as it did when I was 22. After shooting some off for old times sake we retired the bag of fireworks. Jon and Megan called it a night and climbed into their tents to get some shut eye. I stayed up a little bit longer contemplating my future at the edge of the Pacific Ocean under a full moon. When I returned to our campsite I put one last log on the fire and started cleaning up. As usual any trash that was burnable was thrown into the fire. I picked up a bag which I thought was trash and threw it into the fire. I turned my back to the fire to gather more trash, then…. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!. Holy shit! As I instinctively dove forward into the sand I could see red embers showering the area around me flying as far as 15 feet burning pepper sized holes into the sides of our tents. Jon and Megan came tumbling out of their tents with that “WTF!” look on their faces. I got up perplexed and full of adrenaline. I didn’t know what had happened but in my mind it felt like 5 grenades had just exploded next to me. We looked at the fire and there was no more fire, there was just a hole in the ground full of burning embers. It didn’t take long to figure out what had happened. The bag that I threw in the fire was not garbage it was the leftover fireworks. Other than the damage to the tents we were unscathed so after a few minutes we were able to have a good laugh about it. Even though I consider myself to be a smart person I have often in life done stupid, borderline retarded things so all I could do was laugh at myself. I believe we all have a varying amount of chaos energy surrounding us that results in things going haywire at times. I have a huge amount of chaos energy in my aura and it manifests itself in my life on a daily basis. Some would say I am accident prone but it goes well beyond that. With me it’s not just one accident but a chain reaction of calamitous events. Luckily the simultaneously exploding fireworks didn’t hurt anyone. It was Baja so no police or Federales came around to investigate. We drove back to Pasadena the next day and one day after that I packed my belongings into my Dad’s car and headed for San Francisco.

Hmmm…seems like two parts will not be enough to tell the Baja story so if you are still with me be on the lookout for part 3 which will be posted within the next 24 hours.

To be continued…

Memories of Baja

I have finally reached the age where I can look back and say I remember how things used to be. Not in the sense of longing for childhood but in the sense of maturing and becoming an adult. I became an adult in the 80’s during the Reagan era. I endured the usual trials and tribulations of young adulthood experiencing existential angst and trying to discover who I was and what the world was all about. Now in my 40’s I can definitely say that my 20’s was my most dynamic and unpredictable decade. I lived many lives and had wild times a plenty. The 80’s for young adults were trying times. Even though I was a natural born optimist and idealist the 80’s seemed to me like the end of days with the Cold War in full swing and economic opportunities for young people fleeting I honestly thought I would never reach the age of 30 alive or intact with my sanity. Like many other young people I lived for the day which meant trying anything or doing anything no matter how crazy or absurd. Much of my wild, live for the moment adventures took place in Baja California, Mexico in Rosarito Beach and Ensenada.

It is almost staggering to me to read the news about what goes on in Baja these days. Extreme violence has invaded the peninsula. Mass murders, shoot outs, police killings, kidnappings, and random dead bodies on the street are now the norm in Rosarito Beach. Back in the 80’s the Pablo Escobar drug cartel wars were mostly confined to Colombia and Bolivia. Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala were knee deep in Marxists revolutions. Mainland Mexico had its share of drug violence (half the GNP was Pemex oil the other half was drug trafficking) but Baja was relatively quiet. You could drive down to the tip of the peninsula from Tijuana and all you would encounter were empty beaches, poor but friendly Mexicans, and American surfers. You wouldn’t even see a Federale until you got to Ensenada. I always felt safe in Baja, safer than I did in Los Angeles which at the time was a shooting gallery for the LA street gangs. Last year I went to Rosarito Beach for the Rosarito-Ensenada 50 mile fun ride. Back in the day the fun ride drew 10,000 riders and it was the biggest party on wheels you could ever imagine. Rosarito and Ensenada would be packed with young people partying like there was no tomorrow. The bars would be so packed people would be literally hanging out the windows. Twenty plus years later I was shocked to see how much things had changed. The buzz and the electricity of the event was gone. The pre and post ride partying was non-existent and there were fewer than 5,000 riders. Armed men in uniform were everywhere. The violence that now stalks the streets of Rosarito has sobered the place up. The fun and charm has been ridden out of town. I hadn’t been in Baja since 1995 so I was totally clueless about the transformation. I like to think that progress is linear but I have learned that progress is more like two step forwards and three steps backwards. Baja for me was definitely nowhere near the place it used to be.

Even though I had gone to Tijuana as a kid with my dad and brothers a few times it wasn’t until the mid 1980’s that I really came to know and love Baja. Around 1984 when I was 21 years old I became good friends with a fine chap by the name of Scott Smith. At the time I was doing double duty at the Foothill YMCA in Pasadena working as a camp counselor by day and a front desk receptionist at night. Scott worked the front desk as a receptionist during the day. Scott and I became fast friends as we were both black, young, broke, and always looking for a good time. Scott and I grew up in Altadena but attended different high schools. I attended the mostly white and catholic St. Francis High School in the 99.99% white La Canada Flintridge while Scott attended John Muir High School in Pasadena which was a diverse high school with a significant number of black and latino students. Had I gone to public school I would have attended John Muir. The beauty of John Muir and Pasadena at the time was that it was happily integrated. Just about every social group was mixed and Muir had a reputation for being a party school. I was a student-athlete for my entire high school career and first two years of college. At age 21 I had finally given up playing organized sports and had turned my attention to the life of booze, drugs, women, and music. Well, that wasn’t my whole existence as I was also working two jobs, trying to continue my education, coaching youth basketball and soccer, and fully involved in an ant-racism Marxist activist group.

Scott seemed to know everybody in the John Muir party circuit. Even though they were two and three years removed from high school the Muir social groups remained intact. Scott always knew where the good parties were and he knew plenty of girls. Scott had an impressive collection of vinyl so we would spend hours late at night in his converted garage apartment listening to records and telling stories. Scott was a pretty funny guy and a great storyteller and through him I learned the intimate details of the many girls we would run into at the local house parties. Through Scott I met and became best friends with Wes Wilson and this is when my trips to Baja began. Wes lived with his mother who was already in her seventies. His father had died when he was in the 9th grade so as a young adult living at home he had carte blanche to do whatever he wanted. Wes’s room and backyard with swimming pool became our headquarters. The three things that marked the existence of Wes and Scott were Volkswagens, weed, and women. Wes was an expert on older (60’s) VW’s and he and Scott would spend hours in Wes’s garage working on VW engines. Wes owned a small fleet of VW’s including a notchback with a two litre engine that was strictly used for racing but what he loved most was VW vans and trucks although he rarely ever used those terms. He was a purist so a van was a “tranporter” or a “Type II” as they were known in Germany. Only transporters pre 1967 with the split window interested Wes and Scott and the older the better.

Wes’s family owned a beach house just south of Rosarito Beach. It wasn’t one of those bleached white picturesque beach houses you that might come to mind when thinking of Mexican coastal living which dotted the Baja coastline. It was more like a trailer park type house that was more fitting for the locals than well to do Americans. It was located on a bluff above the beach in a small resort known as Calafia where existed a semi famous restaurant called Francisco’s which was known for it’s cliff side patio seating and white painted fence that led down to the beach. A few clicks down at kilometer 38 was a well known surf school. It was an ideal location as we had the beach and the restaurant right at our doorstep and Rosarito was about a 10 minute drive north and Ensenada was about a 45 minute drive to the south. We usually traveled from Pasadena to Baja in Wes’s 1965 Westfalia which most people know as the camper van. The crew usually consisted of Wes, Scott, myself, other friends, and any females we could recruit so normally there would be 4-6 people. Most people would take the 5 freeway to get to the border but the 5 was always crowded so we usually took the lesser traveled inland route; the 210 east to the 57 south to the Corona freeway south, to the 15 which went through Escondido and the Lawrence Welk Ranch, to the 805 in north San Diego county, which took us all the way to the border in San Ysidro.

Along the way we would listen to radio stations KNAC out of Long Beach and 91X out of San Diego. 91X had a similar format to KROQ in Pasadena which was our regular station. We were all heavy into ska and reggae music and these were the only stations that played it. KNAC played everything from avante garde to punk but in the mid 80’s it switched to a metal format except for Sunday nights when Roberto’s Reggae Revolution took over. On our Sunday night drive homes it was always Roberto which was the show to listen to if you wanted to know about the latest reggae music coming out of Jamaica or England. Heavy in the rotation was UB40, Yellowman, Pato Banton, Tippa Irie, Steel Pulse, Aswad, Sly and Robbie, Black Uhuru, and of course Bob Marley. We usually arrived in the dead of night always being waved on across the border by the not to vigilant border patrol agents. Approaching the border at night I was always struck by the random pattern of lights on the Tijuana hillside. In the states city lights are patterned and organized confirming life on the grid. The randomness of the TJ lights reminded me of a Christmas tree welcoming the prospect of surprise and unpredictability. For night arrivals if you were at the wheel you had to be frosty for the last part of the drive from TJ to Calafia. The coastal highway back in those days was a barely lit, one lane each way road with big, swooping curves and no guard rails. The “Curvas Peligrosa” signs that were frequently seen on the side of the road were usually accompanied by crosses bearing flowers and wreaths to honor those who lost their way on the road.

If it wasn’t too late we would stop at one of the many “licor” stores in Rosarito and stock up on beer and tequila. Back in the 80’s the dollar was killing the peso at a rate of about 2000 to 1 so even for an impoverished, working class guy like myself Baja was very affordable. I was able to do weekend trips on $20 if I stuck to the basics (tacos, beer, and petro). A case of Corona was $6 and a litre of Jose Cuervo was $3. You can always tell Mexican Corona from American Corona because the Mexican bottles were scuffed and the labels worn from the constant reuse. The locals actually preferred Tecate so sometimes we would get that or some Sol. We’d also get some Kahlua, some Cusano Rojo Mezcal with the worm and some El Presidente brandy. When we were feeling immortal we would get some “alcohol”…it didn’t even have a name it was just clear liquid in a plastic bottle with “196 proof” on the label in big red letters. We gave it a name, we called it “fire water”. Fire water was a game changer. Nobody messed with it until all the other booze was finished and drunken bravado replaced common sense. Partaking of the fire water meant your night was over because sleep or unconsciousness usually followed imbibing the mighty liquid. After fire water you were lucky to wake up the next morning in one piece. Fire water had no past, the next day you could never remember what you did after drinking fire water. You had to rely on your friends and forensic evidence to retrace the events of the night before. First night arrivals though were very mellow. You didn’t want to cash all your chips in on the first night. Usually we had a few coronas, maybe a few shots of tequila and hit the sack.

In the morning we would roll into Rosarito and go to the Calimax market to stock up on basic food items like huevos, leche, hielo, tortillas, chips, pan, zucharitas, and limons. Calimax market trips for me were always fun because on every visit I would be followed by a gang of giggling small children. Being 6’5” I was a giant in Baja and it brought me instant minor league celebrity status with the Chiclets selling street urchins. It was an experience that would replicate itself when I visited other parts of Mexico and when I visited Peru and China later on in life. I know for a fact I was in the Calimax market on January 28, 1986. The radio was playing on the loudspeakers and I wasn’t really paying attention but something was being said about the space shuttle and I remember the radio announcer saying, “and everyone died.” I asked my friends if they knew what he was talking about but nobody was paying attention so we just went on with our shopping. The next day while shopping in Ensenada we saw the cover of the LA Times with a photo of the exploding Challenger Space Shuttle. We were all stunned. It was shocking. We had no tv or phone at the beach house and mobile phones were still a decade away. Newspapers from the United States were always a day old so we were out of the loop when it came to the news. We didn’t care, we actually preferred it as it leant to the sense that we were living in the moment. It is strange by today’s standards because living in the moment today seems to be defined by constantly checking in with Twitter or Facebook to see what has changed in life in the last two minutes.

In Rosarito we were known by name because we frequented the same shops every time we visited. Fireworks were always high on the agenda. Setting off fireworks at night on the beach was a nightly ritual. We would get the standard stuff like bottle rockets and firecrackers but what we liked best were the waterproof bombs. These were literally miniature sticks of dynamite. They were made by the US Department of Agriculture because they were prominently labeled “USDA”. I always wondered how the Mexicans acquired the bombs and why the USDA needed waterproof explosives. On the edge of the surf we would simultaneously throw three or four of these bombs into the waves and wait for the “womp womp womp” and the greenish flashes in the water. It was a cheap thrill. What can I say, we were young and not all that sophisticated. There were other sundry items that we would get on a regular basis like Aztec pipes carved in stone or marble that cost one to three bucks. We always brought “mota” with us but we had to make sure we finished it all before the border check getting back into the states. We would ditch any paraphernalia we had before arriving at the border so the cheap pipes were disposable. $3 straw hats, $5 tire tread leather sandals, 3 for $10 cerveza logoed t-shirts, and Mexican hoodies were also mainstays. A lot of my wardrobe back then was bought in Baja. Last but not least on the must have list were Mexican blankets which came in small body wrap sizes to queen size bed size. Arthur Dent had his towel and we had our Mexican blanket. There’s about a million ways to make use of a Mexican blanket. You could use it to upholster the seats in your car or the furniture in your house, you could spread it on the ground for a picnic, you could wrap yourself in it at night when sitting around the campfire or wandering aimlessly on the beach, you could wrap your cold case of Corona in it to keep it cold, you could hang it on the wall as decoration, you could use it on your bed or in your tent for sleeping or roll it up to use as a pillow, and they made for nice gifts for the folks back home… it all came down to your imagination and creativity.

Without a doubt our favorite place to visit in Rosarito was a small,wooden, white painted taco stand called Taco’s Erika. Located just off the two lane main drag on a dirt road, Taco’s Erika was more a shack than a stand. It was just big enough to house one person and a large cooler of ice where the carne, cold drinks and condiments were stored. On the fold down wooden counter sat a wooden block for chopping the grilled meat, two bowls filled with fresh cut cilantro and onions, a small bbq grill, and a large metal pot atop a bunsen burner throne that held the legendary stewed barbacoa meat. Taco’s Erika, hand painted in red, was the official moniker of the taco stand but we never called it that. For us it was simply known as One Legged Joe’s. This was in reference and reverence to the stout and tanned smiling man named Joe who owned and operated the joint. The name was fitting as Joe only had one leg. He was a full leg amputee so he would hop on his one good leg around the shack taking orders, cooking the meat, making the tacos, and taking the money. He was a one man show. Joe was always in a good mood and always happy to see us greeting us with a robust “Hola amigos!”. Joe looked like he walked right out of the 1950’s with his pencil thin mustache, short wavy pomaded hair, freshly creased tan slacks with one pant leg safety pinned up at the hip, black loafer, and always ironed white short sleeved collared shirt. Joe could work all day and his white shirt never got dirty or stained which is very impressive if you have ever been to any kind of establishment that serves tacos. Joe had a simple system for customers, you either ordered corn or you ordered flour, we always ordered both with the standard being four of each so all we had to say was “four and four” or hold up our hands with four fingers up on each. The tacos were to die for. The corn tortillas were doubled up and stuffed with just the right combination of grilled carne asada, onions, and cilantro so that every bite from start to finish was a mouthful. Joe never cooked up the meat until you ordered so the corn tacos were always fresh and hot. The larger flour tortillas were filled with the stewed barbacoa and were rolled up like a skinny burrito but it wasn’t a burrito. The chipotle flavored barbacoa slow cooked in the pot all day and was almost black in color. When Joe took the lid off the pot a plume of steam would rise out of it and looking in you could see the molten bubbling stew looking like primordial ooze. Red toxic looking hot sauce was a standard part of the flour experience. It was the kind of sauce that had little habanero seeds that made your lips burn and your head break out in sweat. A bottle of Mexican Coke was the only way to tame the red sauce beast.

There was always a price to pay later on after indulging in the flour experience. We affectionately called it “fire booty”. The hot sauce could be felt all the way through your system and when it came time to expel it your anus felt like a ring of fire. I remember times being on the commode and clenching my teeth so I would not scream and stuffing cold compresses up my butt for relief. The flour tacos were so tasty and satisfying they were worth suffering for. In addition to the superb taste was the bottom basement cost. Corn tortillas were 50 cents and flour was 75 cents so you could eat all you want and not break the bank. Joe knew we were addicts so as we were halfway through our first set he would happily ask us “dos mas?” and we would always nod our stuffed mouth heads up and down in agreement usually upping the ante to quatros mas. Our addiction was so deep that after feasting on two sets of flour and corn we would order two and two or four and four to go which Joe would tightly wrap in foil. On the way back to the states stopping at Joe’s was mandatory to fill our bellies for the ride home and get a plate to go to feast on when we returned to our homes or to give to friends who had gone on previous trips and knew about Joe’s. Often times the tacos never made it out of Baja being consumed as we waited in the hours long line to cross the border to get back into the United States.

There was only one other taco place we would go to and that would be in the morning or late at night when Joe’s was closed. It was an actual walk in and sit down place located on the main drag. The tacos were good but not as good as Joe’s but the guy who made the tacos could make tacos at lightning speed and it was fun to watch him make the tacos. He would grab a small piece of paper in one hand, use it to grab a small corn tortilla, and with the other hand he would use a wooden spoon to splash the carne asada on the tortilla which was immediately followed by dipping the spoon into the green sauce which he would flip into the air and catch with the tortilla like a baseball player and then deposit it on a paper plate. He did this all in one continuous, smooth, flowing motion so he was able to whip up a dozen tacos in about 30 seconds. On Sunday mornings the locals would come in and order 20-30 tacos at a time for their Mexican brunches and he would knock out the orders in no time flat. At 25 cents each it was a real bargain. We were also huge fans of fish tacos which we only ate on our many day trips to Ensenada. We always visited the fish market in Ensenada to get fresh fish and right outside the fish market was the best place to get fish tacos which were deep fried in batter and lathered with shredded cabbage and green sauce. Fish tacos were 50 cents each or four for a dollars so we always opted for four or eight tacos. Whereas an icy Coca Cola was the perfect match for Joe’s tacos a cold Corona was the perfect match for a plate of fish tacos. Los Angeles had some good taco joints and some awesome taco trucks but none came close to matching the taco experience in Baja where everything was tasty, hot, fresh, and cheap. Cheap tacos made $20 weekends in Baja possible. If all I could do was eat tacos on a Baja trip I would be a happy camper.

I’m going to stop here with this entry and tell you about some of the crazy adventures I had in Baja in the next blog entry so stay tuned!

To be continued….