winning the cactus cup: part 1/3
by Graham
I prefer the red-eye all-night flights on united when I fly from Maui to the mainland because I normally can sleep quite easily, making the trip seem instant (and with my frequent flier status, I always get upgraded so its not too cramped). However, dream full flight was NOT the reality on from OGG Maui to LAX California. And to make matters worse, I had a very strange non-direct routing– I had to stop off in both SFO San Francisco and LAS Las Vegas for just under an hour each. This meant that as I got more and more tired as the journey progressed, I still had to stay awake to get off one plane and get on another.
The most shocking part of that sleepless ordeal was LAS airport. I’d never been to Las Vegas before and didn’t know that gambling was allowed in the airport. Less than 20ft from the gate stood machines for slots, computer poker, and all sorts of electronic devices created to eat money. I really don’t like the concept of gambling– the poor and unfortunate greedily hoping for a quick fix all while ironically giving their money away and becoming poorer in the process– but it was still incredibly interesting to see the flashing lights above the screens that mesmerized the players’ eyes.
Once in LA, I had about 8 hours before my friend Ruben Lemmens arrived for us both to drive to San Diego. I originally thought that staying in LAX would be fine, but I’d forgotten that LAX resembles a truck stop in a third world country. In the dirty area outside of the baggage claim I could find no where to sit, no where to eat, and no (this was the deal breaker) internet. I had to leave the airport then.
Leaving the airport would have been fine if I did not have two massive bags full of my heavy windsurfing gear (weighing over 70 pounds each). I was not exactly what one could call mobile. I schemed with the overly helpful airport information man and we finally found an airport bag storage company. Yes! I was free from the chains of my coffin bags! Free at last!
With my bags stored, the question was: Where should I go? I asked this to basically everyone around me (this group included the airport info man as well as the bag storage people). They all unanimously thought that I should head to the beach. My only thought? Hell no! I spend my life on the beach, I don’t want to go sit in the sand for nothing. I’m in a city and given that this doesn’t happen often, I want to visit! Plus, a trip to San Carlos, Baja is a trip of weeklong beach 24/7… with no escape. The Santa Monica Promenade then was my destination.
Once in Santa Monica, I strolled the busy promenade. I walked for quite a while before I got a call from Kevin Pritchard who informed me that he too was in Santa Monica. We decided to meet at the Barnes & Nobles that he was currently in. I checked my map and thought, “oh! that’s just around the corner. I’ll be right there.”
It was NOT just around the corner. After walking for about half an hour at a brisk caffeinated pace, I finally found the B&N with my Ezzy Sails windsurfing teammate. We talked about windsurfing films and joked about the breadth of magazine topics available and then he left to go meet his girlfriend (pro skier Resi Stiegler) for lunch. This left me to myself.
I browsed the book store and took the opportunity to purchase a book on drama writing (my latest little obsession– though I know nothing about it) and a copy of Montaigne’s complete essays. With these books in hand, I walked to the store’s Starbucks. With a fresh coffee (remember, I didn’t sleep the night before) I sat down with my books.
My lack of sleep plus caffeine caused an in-and-out focus on the fundamentals of script writing, so instead I took to folding swans out of my plane tickets. I used every little bit of each of my 3 tickets, so in the end I had a whole gaggle of swans. I took these swans and walked around the bookstore to my favorite books. And at each book, I hid a swan (I also hid some random ones just for fun). The books included (ordered in the order that I placed the swans): Lermontov, Bukowski, Simic, Nietzsche, Merwin, Wilde.
Then my phone buzzed and Ruben was ready for us to make the drive to San Diego. I left my birds and began the drive south.
