![]() ![]() It’s the only relatively close place I know with long dirt roads connecting quality, quiet waves. They park their motley of vans on the cliffs above and surf until the waves or the water runs out, returning with a dusty hangover to their old crowded beaches back home.Īfter a few trips there, I’d wondered what riding to the place would be like, then connecting back with the Baja Divide route and pushing south into another town, maybe even further, with a few more waves to surf along the way. A small fishing village in Baja sits quietly over a rocky point break, a wave far from anything else, 45 kilometers from pavement, from any market with cold, pre-wrapped tortillas. My eyes glaze over, and I dream of bikepacking out to this little place stuck firmly in the front of my mind. So, I’ve gladly let myself return to this familiar cave, this gentle darkness, the land of shut eyes and strong rum in my ethereal, calloused hands. I even dream about sailing around the world, despite the small fact that I’ve never even sailed. I dream of riding around the world, hitching freighters from continent to continent, a pannier of exposed film, leather-bound journals crammed with witty one-liners, and a book on the other side. I dream of what I’ll say in my acceptance speech when I win big awards. I dream of a softly lit cabin in the Alps with a vegetable garden, slate counters and wood paneling, a reading room, a spiral staircase, and a view. I’ll waste so much of today’s valuable daylight dreaming of tomorrow’s. I’ve long had the problem of dreaming too much. Our lips would be chapped and our faces sore from smiling.īut the thing about dreams-beyond the fact that they often never come true-is that sometimes they just don’t make any sense. The professor would ramble, my eyes would glaze over, and I would imagine myself there, peering over the edge, legs thrown over my bike, my tent in front and my surfboard in back, with my best friend, good swell, freshly caught fish, a light on-shore breeze, a striking sunset, a small metal flask, and dark, strong rum. Scheming surfpacking routes was my escape. ![]() I thought of how we would finally be free and everything would be perfect. How to carry the boards? What swells? When could we try this? Where would it even make sense? In college, I would sit under cold fluorescent lights and stare out from the frosted windows at the distant soft blue and think about this pairing, this bottomless daydream, and how someday Ben and I would finally get to the end of the world on our bikes, so far from the classroom that the integrals and proofs couldn’t find us. ![]() It’s a fool’s nightmare with its silly logistics and my incessant hashing. I’ve thought of this moment for years, and with it finally materializing, that longtime dream prods us along.įor however long I’ve surfed and bikepacked, the endless desire to combine these two things has haunted me. But we push further on into the dry, rolling hills of northern Baja California. “We can still turn around,” I chuckle and groan, asking for help picking up the trailer and bike after it all slips out from under me. From the road, I can see my truck disappear down below. The two of us leave the pavement and set out, immediately pushing the bikes up a steep and loose climb, dusty and rocky, with the blistering sun pounding overhead, buzzards soaring on the accelerating currents, the canyon walls arching overhead. Leaving this truck behind, this perfectly good base-our old home with our signatures still smudged under the bed-behind for a surf trip feels absurd as we start rolling. We ferry things out of the truck, handing them off, laying them all out, unsure of what we’ll all need, having never really done this before. I need help holding mine as I lash the board to the trailer. Ben can barely pick his up off the ground. All in, with wetsuits and towels and food and chairs and books and a tent, the bikes are easily pushing a hundred pounds. We load up six gallons and tie down the boards for the first time. The bikes squeal and groan under the weight of the boards, the trailer, and all the water we need to haul out to the wave. The wetsuits are gross, and the wet sand is forever, infuriatingly, utterly, inescapable. The boards are clunky and heavy, the bikes are slow and dramatic, hard to load and harder to move. And the money we save on gas, we’ll just spend on extra tortillas, sunscreen, and ding repair. The truck is just down the road, and whether it’s here or there, it’ll rust anyway. ![]()
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