A little memory from California in May
This past May, I hardly did any work. I got no pay at the end of the month either. I had a week in California before flying off to Madeira, the Portuguese island west of Morocco. The month passed by quickly and when I came back to Saint-Malo, I had a renewed vigour to “lock in”, hammer spreadsheets, and produce Instagram reels.
The last time I had been to California before my May trip was in the summer of 2016, right after my GCSE exams. After a year and a half of disciplined revision, going to the West Coast felt like a worthy reward, it showed me a glinting promised land in the adult world beyond. Going around the Stanford campus made me want to do the SATs, and apply for this beautiful university far from my little parish in the Hampshire countryside. We first landed in San Francisco and gradually worked our way south stopping in Santa Barbara and then finally in LA. We also took a few days in Yosemite National Park. In a hotel in Santa Barbara on the 1st of July, I watched Wales beat Belgium 3-1 in the Euros. I remember the bar with its smooth black tables reflecting the overhead lights. Three days ago, exactly 8 years later, I had the pleasure of watching Belgium, along with its traitor Romelu Lukaku, be eliminated from the competition once again in a match against France. Some things never change, life is circular, fish is brain food, the list goes on.
On our recent trip, my parents and I took the road up north into Napa, Sonoma, and Mendocino County. Cruising past redwoods on a pristine single-track road, we came up to the gates of The Bohemian Club, a fairytale environment putting me in the shoes of Bilbo and the dwarves in Mirkwood coming into the kingdom of the woodland elves. I saw a different side to California that week, the northern clime, coastal roads riding the side of grassy cliffs with views onto barren crags with foaming water. Driving along Tomales Bay made me think of the Scottish Highlands, with the clear water covered in mist and the green-brown lumpy hillside suddenly rising up. “Is this Tomales Loch?” I joked to my friend, Finn, as he changed gear in the vintage, red Volvo estate cruising towards our campsite past Point Reyes Station.
The night was spent in tents among dunes in Bodega Bay. In the middle of the night, I heard coyotes screeching outside my tent and was glad that I had decided not to “cowboy it”, like some of the romantic souls I had met earlier in the day. I have always been mortally afraid of b’ars and the aggression they have been known to show towards humans. Late at night, as I lay down next to a stargazing Finn on a picnic blanket, he calmed my fear by telling me that they prefer the inland forests, they don’t like to come this close to the ocean. I felt reassured as I left him and his Stanford friends eating and guitar-playing around the campfire.
The next morning, I was the first up. I strolled towards the sea over sand dunes and lost my way coming back through the sea fog. I chatted with one of Finn’s friends when I returned. His name was Ben, he was a software engineer who had just moved to The Bay Area. He was a surfer as well as a lover of strange and amusing phrases. One of my favourites from that weekend was “I don’t smoke too much weed, man, it goes straight to the DOME”.
An hour after I woke up, Ben, Finn, and I took a quick trip to a surf spot a short drive from the campsite. We had two foamies and three wetsuits between us. A gracious and honourable Englishman, I allowed the two others to bat first while I stood at the shore shivering in a sleeveless wetsuit.
Finn came in on some whitewater and allowed me to head out on the board. He told me to shuffle my feet in the shallows to avoid possible sting rays. While I had been waiting for them, I had spoken to an older surfer whom I had seen arrive in a new white pick-up truck. He had a sleek, freshly carved grey shortboard. He chatted to me as he put his leash on and surveyed the conditions. Apparently, this was the spot where all the shark sightings had happened over the last year. I shrugged it off as tough talk from a bitter yank. It was strange how empty the lineup was, practically just us four with the whole break to ourselves. In fairness, the conditions weren’t ideal. There was a strong crosswind, it was misty and choppy. More like a standard day at Thurso than the Californian bliss I had been sold by watching Endless Summer.
Nevertheless, when it came my turn to take the foamie out, I rushed out into the white water, blissfully confident that I could handle any strong currents with ease. The cold water hit my body but I pushed through it, determined to make it through the whitewater and out onto the lineup. I only held on for so long with the ice-cold waves breaking onto my head. I had seen no sharks and wouldn’t make it out as far as Ben who was getting in position to ride a wave home. I paddled onto a breaking wave badly positioned and watched the board torpedo above my head. When I got back in, I stood next to Finn, a friend I had met seven summers before at an Ancient Greek Camp hosted in the paradise of a Dorset private school.
Friendship really can take you across the globe, I thought to myself.
