April 15, 2009, Crescent City, California. Here it is, tax day and I haven’t sent in my taxes. I’ll see if I can get ‘em done after breakfast. Yesterday as I was heading down the road, the wind was howling again. This has been the one consistent thing throughout this journey. No matter what direction I am going in, there is a 40mph wind in my face. I’m just glad I am not a land sailor, all of that tacking and ticking and toeing into the wind. I think I have a new title for my musings: Jon Krakauer has his “Into Thin Air” and “Into The Wild”, now I have “Into The Wind” or “How I Broke Wind” or “Rode The Wild Wind”. I guess that one has been done. Maybe I can be the new Jack London, I’ll call it “How I Broke Into The Wild Wind”. It will be the story of a boy who is Shangheied into the military and spends his time as a trailblazer running across rice paddies and aircraft carriers on the Turkish border while listening to the Viet Cong in their MIG jets as they strafe the Miller family who are testing Saturn V rockets. I can’t wait to write the exciting part about standing on a deserted beach being sandblasted by the howling wind trying to photograph secret documents that will soon be picked up by trained hawks who are gliding above me, just waiting for the deed to be done or to pick at my carcass should the wind get the best of me, whichever happens first. It is a story that MUST be told.
I come back from breakfast after hearing a man’s story. He is 76 years old and has survived cancer, quintuple bypass surgery, two wives, a girlfriend, numerous jobs and many other encounters with death (including one on dead mans curve) to reach a point in life where he is starting a new job on Monday as a census taker because his two disabled sons have moved in with him. He says “what do you do”? Keep moving, which is what I plan to do soon, those hawks are looking very ominous.Before I leave I hear another story about a guy who escapes from the high tech, maximum security prison in Pelican Bay, just outside Crescent City. It is poring rain as he hides out in the redwoods but he runs across a work detail from the prison. He sneaks up to the prisoners to bum a smoke and gets caught. The lesson: even if you are an escaped convict, smoking is bad for you. Jon