The Run Up…

I had been dreaming of taking a freighter trip for years.. it was first suggested to me by a friend from College whom I spent a lot of time with in Nashville where he became a professional musician. Back in the day, when I was hitch hiking around America, there was this feeling that I would hop a freighter like the days of old.. I used to actively think about it, ways to flee CONUS (Continental United States) in my currently broke state.. it had all this vintage magic associated with it, time to think, the challenges of a salty adopted family to egg one into manhood, and the exotic.. sailors who lived by their own rules, who gave up conventional life for rewards unimagined… it’s a dream so often repeated in film and literature, but still not a cliché somehow, because really is out there, if we just know how to get to it, let ourselves get to it.. if Riding the rails, which I had tried, was the grand daddy of Vagabond Adventures… this is the Great Grandaddy…This is Lord Jim.. taka me to paradise or let me die…. In my hitching days I never was able to make it happen.. in my conversations, it became clear that a brave new world of regulations and security, heightened by September 11, had made things like that harder than ever.. it would make me a criminal, unless I joined some union and became a professional.. while you might be able to jump on with the boat people of Thailand, or Indonesia, or India, it’s not quite how it worked in the US. When I lived in Key West, among a group considered by many to possess these traits relative to American Culture, there was a lot of rule bending, but no breaking quite like that.. rarely did people just sail off to Cuba without checking out from customs first…  it’s just not how the world works anymore unless you are making a lot of money somehow, and people don’t talk about that. It’s sad how old dreams of adventure now fade to being on your face with flex cuffs on with some ICE agent who went to community college in Grand Rapids talking to you like you are a bad five year old who should be ashamed, and wait till Judge Daddy finds out… rebellions romance is somehow not the same in action in these days of the American Empire.. But there were these memories of my Nashville Buddy showing me these freighter travel web pages… it’s the kind of thing that ‘those Europeans and Australians’ do with their 6 week of vacation, whirl with our two, us Americans don’t waste time getting there.. we fly to the beach and Pedro hands us a Margarita within 45 minutes of arrival while we text back to our sister to remember to tun down the heat since we left so quick… it’s undignified, and it’s the American Way to Travel… we have an empire to build..we can’t just sit around. It’s why we never have context for where we go, because we get to just where we planed to be… he seemed to know that if he couldn’t do it, I needed to… I worked up to it in a way in my years of travel. I did long ferry trips up to Alaska, as far out as Dutch Harbor, I lived on a boat in the keys for months, I hung out with a friend who went to a Merchant Marine Academy, and tried to learn from him, I dreamed of being Commerce St. Croix, the ship Captain in the Lords of Discipline, and I finally even took the Queen Mary 2 across the Atlantic to see if I would get bored.. multi day trips on the Mekong and Magdalena would follow, and I had had my Captains Courageous trip, a wooden cargo ship had once taken me down the wild coast of Colombia, a trip that will live in my emotions for ever, as if I had discovered a lost place and time, gone in search of Captain Kurtz and found him. Nuqui to Buenaventura, with all the intrigues of Jungle and the Pacific, snakes and sharks, Guerilla armies and smugglers, Banana loads and buckets of fish, and people with time… it had been a magical trip… a freighter and some white mans regulations would not now be a let down.. I had seen the wild side. When I knew I had 3 months to get to a wedding in Thailand, and that there was the possibility of crossing the largest body of water on earth, the largest ‘Thing’ on earth, I jumped at it… I had been in Latin America for months, and was more than over the shifting morality of that place, cool jungle or not, and pining for Alaska, but it had to be done.. I parked myself in a buddies basement garage in Venice Beach and went to work, hoping he would give me enough time to make the plan happen without me having to shuffle around from hotel to hotel, which he thankfully did (just don’t spread your crap everywhere.. I gotta live here too!)… I had a million reasons to want to, which I will detail later.. one is Oedipal. My father had been commissioned a Naval Officer with orders that would likely take him to an Invasion of Japan just as the bomb dropped. HE spent the active portion of his service bringing ships home to america for Mothballing and repair, cleaning up the pacific from the 4 year conflagration… and he would talk endlessly about how good the time had been, just cruising back and forth to america, I’m not sure how many times, but over about a year and a half I was left with the impression.. reading books and interacting with the crew and the world, peeking at paradise and the results of such a complex set of acts of man. No son doesn’t want to equal or outdo the acts of their fathers, nor reap the same benefits of similar actions. Living in Alaska, and having loved the pacific for years, I wanted to see it through… I wanted to know what was south of Alaska, and out there from where America seems to end on Ocean Beach in San Francisco… what is past Seal Rock and where my buddies surf.. what is that space between… what defines it.. what is it? I jumped on the internet and tried to find a booking agent.. the fist 4 I tried, and the only I could find, literally never returned my calls nor emails.. New York, London, I talked to someone in Brooklyn, thickening my old accent to get respect,and they had a guy, but never heard back from him despite my full old school voice cred…. it stared to feel like some sort of secret society.. I had time, hadn’t given up yet, but I was definitely frustrated.. I asked a friend to help me, and after a couple of days, with me growing more accepted that I would sit around LA for a bit, maybe do another improv class of finally get some hot model/actress girlfriend to show me the sites, then just jump on a lane from nearby LAX, disappointed but accepting, my buddy came through, some guy in New Zealand, and he is communicating.. His name was Hamish, and like most Kiwis he was a straightforward gentleman with a kind but keen sense of humor. I had been near his hometown about 7 yeas before, and we joked rugby for a bit, since his local team is one of the best in the world. The rest of the conversation went something like this: me: I want to cross the pacific… do I need to rush to book, will it sell out? Hamish: laughter… Me: not that popular of a run? Hamish: you’ll be the first one in a few years… me:umm… sweet, so no problem picking my room Hamish: shouldn’t be an issue! he was right.. when I got on board, a few of the guys could remember every passenger they had met on two hands, over long careers.. they tended to be former sailors who missed the sea… old German guys who want to solve engineering puzzles and be alone, occasionally an adventuresome European couple doing the ‘around the world without a plane’ challenge… maybe crossing the Atlantic, Germans off to see New York, might actually book up during the good months, but not this… it’s one of the longest single hauls possible, and most people are intimidated.. I am too dumb for that.. The paperwork came in, and I went at it.. I hate paperwork.. it’s all built on distrust, and who wants to hang out in situations predicated on distrust, but I wanted this trip.. my buddy knew a doctor in the valley for my physical.. lot’s of rings.. Persian.. cash on the barrel head.. get me an appointment! Multiple entry visa to China.. 160 bucks.. fucking crooks… alright.. I fond some cool expiditers on Wilshire.. one had grown up in NYC, and we hung out during his smoke break and talked about life in the Big Apple while we enjoyed the LA sunshine.. they were cool and made me feel like i was getting this lined up right… health form, identity sheet, application, copies of passport, contract, travelers insurance, long cruise survival guide.. statement that I know there is no internet, yellow fever vaccination card… lot’s of Xeroxing and scanning, all at Paul’s office, me making some pretty offensive & loud comments before I realize that someone else was working on a Sunday besides Paul, but it’s LA, and it’s showbiz, no one takes offense.. When I finally get my paperwork in, somehwat down to the wire (backups at the Chinese Mission!), Hamish sends me the all important Voucher.. it’s my golden ticket… estimates are that I have about a week before I have to be in Oakland.. Oakland baby… I had just been visiting a buddy from Alaska who has found sanctuary from a pretty funny social faux paux in Alaska by cooking at an old Hotel in Berkeley.. he bought a sailboat, he’s got balls, and he has been showing me Oakland… I know just where I need to get to, and I got people to say hi to while I wait.. A last 2 nights at the Andaz on the sunset strip to say bye to some east side friends, and experience the former Riot House, the rock and roll hotel that birthed Golden Gods and broken TV sets (the windows no longer open wide enough to get a TV out, although we thought of taking one up to the pool), and Bobby Felckman, the hostess with the mostess… and I was on Amtrak for Jack London Square. Once up there, I was to go stay with a cousin in law of a buddy who I had been put together with by serendipity over a small town theater in the midwest, and headed for his pretty nice digs on the legendary Asbury Street in SF. Some Luxury while I wait. I started calling my shore agent.. wrong number.. he quit a year ago.. calls to the agents in Long Beach… are you in Long Beach, the boat leaves in a day? Holy Crap, do I need to be in Long beach, I’m in Oakland.. oh, no worries, (after a long agonizing tense wait) the boat will be up there in 2 days.. you have like 3 days to go.. 3 became 4, but  I still had time to play with… My Alaskan buddy picked me up next to Fisherman Warf and sailed me back to Emeryville…. couldn’t have been a cooler way to get me ready, on a 26 footer.. we dodged ships like I was going to be getting onto.. we stared at the harbor trying to figure out what it would be like… I checked back into a hotel on Jack London square and waited out my last night.. made a mad dash to Whole Foods Oakland (somehow Oaktown keeps it real, even Whole Foods was cheaper than in LA or SF) to fill up the fridge I had just learned I would have (Cheese and Simple Green Vitamin Juice.. the two things I knew I would want on board… the cab driver wanted to get lunch there, so it worked out perfectly… I’ll get you back to the hotel no problem sir!) . I had all I needed.. a stack of books on everything from Burma to the History of the FBI, and a pair of Flashmans, every 5 dollar movie worth a crap I could get my hands on in the Santa Monica Barnes and Nobles, two pairs of Ray Bans, some puzzles and origami from a games store in Berkley, and three packs of ear plugs… Hopped a cab with an ancient old brother cab driver, probably thought the panthers had been young punks, and even he had never been in the Harbor.. this was gonna be interesting…