Venturing Before the Adventure

I went to REI today because we're going on a river trip next week. Uh oh is right. REI is a huge danger zone. It has everything to feed my every fantasy of adventure, travel, and sporting challenge. I can be anything I want to be, go anywhere on the planet I want to go and feel totally competent, fit, prepared, mighty. Of course, my credit card turns into a little melted blob when I pay at the checkout counter. It even smokes a little bit as the plastic melts.

The sales staff at REI always grin and crack their knuckles with anticipation as I approach. They see me coming and start dancing around in celebration, knowing they will all get huge fat bonuses for selling me everything in the store. Today the staff was doing a conga line around the display of tents and freeze-dried foods. They stopped when they knew I'd seen them, and they tried to look innocent, punching the button on the boom box for a cool jazz station instead of the salsa they'd been boogieing to before.

I had a long list of items I'd been told to buy in order to be prepared for the river. Sleeping pad, carabiners, dry bag, tent pegs, water bottle. Quick-drying clothes. I didn't need to buy a raft. The river rafting company would supply that, but everything else under the sun seemed to be fair game. The REI staff began drawing numbers so that each of them would have a chance to steer me to further purchases.

I started with sleeping pads. There were inflatable ones you have to blow up yourself before using. There were self-inflating ones as well. I imagine they somehow create a vacuum when a valve is opened and air as well as any living thing in a nearby area is sucked into them as they self-inflate. I decided on a plump non-self-inflating model that is about, oh, 12 inches thick. My mattress on my bed is comfortable and about that thick, so I want to replicate that while bedding down after tough days braving whitewater rapids, right? 12 inches, minimum, would do it. The first salesman who'd shown me the pads tangoed away and another waltzed over to take his place. Sunglasses? Right this way.

Next I found myself looking at a huge display of zillions of sunglasses and selected a sporty pair with a dashing shade of blue for the frames, very French adventurer. "I peese on your stupeede and very seelee Americaine sheds. Theese French sheds are zee best in the uneevairz. C'est vrai!," they seemed to sniff at me. Of course, the sheds, er...shades, needed a keeper so that if or when I get dumped from the raft in some hair-raising rapid, they would not end up at the bottom of the river. I added a light but useful-looking set to my cart. My credit card was beginning to get warm in my wallet.

That done, I bid farewell to salesman Number 2 and was approached by a third. He eagerly showed me beverage cups and all their accessories. I fondled and touched each and every cup and container sold in the store. I admired a $40 titanium double-walled model with a tight-fitting lid. I imagined sipping from a sleek missile-shaped container coated in tough aluminum that cost $30. Pragmatically, I settled on a $4 ordinary cup figuring if I lost it, I would not be very sad at all. Number 3 looked crestfallen and wandered away.

Next, it was over to the clothing area. Now we're getting into a very uncertain territory for most women, certainly for me. Salesman number four waved his arms around pointing out the features and benefits of the high-tech garments in the ladies department. He beamed at me. I looked vaguely confused and asked for time to browse, so he obliged me and walked off to high-five his cohorts nearby. The shirts, shorts and pants as well as skirts were arranged in attractive and even flirty ways to attract maximum desire in the hearts of customers like me. Feeling unusually optimistic, I selected about six items from various carousels and racks and strode confidently into the fitting room to try them on.

Oh my.

Fitting room lighting and mirrors are, at best, confidence crushers. This one today was just devastating. Five out of six garments were so hideously wrong on my body that I nearly burst into tears, swearing to never eat food again in my life. Why did I eat that berry cheese danish at Pavels last week, I wailed. Finally, summoning up my last bit of hope, I tried on a pair of lightweight pants and felt redeemed somewhat. They fit! I slunk out of the fitting room, feeling something akin to post-traumatic stress disorder. I knew I was going to have flashbacks for days if not weeks afterwards. All confidence was totally gone. I knew I was in trouble when, after thinking I'd redressed myself properly, I looked in the mirror for a final check and noticed I'd forgotten to don my pants and had only my shoes and shirt on. I must have entered a fugue state briefly, probably from the horrible shock of seeing myself in the dressing room mirror in that horrible lighting that adds 20 lb to your figure and shows every dimple and sag. I have heard very intelligent and confident women swear never to return to certain dressing rooms again in their lives. It can be just awful.

With a deep sigh of resignation, I went to what I hoped was a much safer area of the store and looked at insect repellent. Then I began to rethink my happy dream of the trip ahead. Hmmm... It will be the height of summer. Five days on a river in the middle of nowhere. Mosquitoes breed and lie in wait knowing that soft and tender-fleshed greenhorns will venture into their midst, defended only by a thin smear of chemical. They laugh heartily, scornfully, smoking their unfiltered French cigarettes. Then the deadly blood-sucking vampires pounce with gnashing teeth and slurping tongues and leave you, a blotchy itching miserable and whimpering lump of jello cowering in your tent, begging to get back to the coast, to the fog, to seagulls for god's sake. Anything but there on the Amazon where your blood is slowly but steadily drained from you, and you cry one last desperate but weakened cry of despair and then gradually lose consciousness and all fades to black....

The staff persons of REI had resumed their conga line after they saw my cart filled to the brim with supplies for the trip, and one man joked about hiring a Sherpa to carry it all, snorting with hilarity.

I walked out into the sunlight, holding my smoking credit card with an insulated glove and imagined myself riding splendidly down the river next week, paddle flashing in the sun, skin smeared with DEET, new pants riding jauntily on my slim hips. I can lose 10 lb in four days, right? Even if I don't, I'll at least have 12 inches of new sleeping pad to cushion my head at night. Ah, the sleep of the damned.

Hiding in the Fog

I've noticed recently that it's August, and we are well beyond the time of solstice at the height of summer. Just about a week ago I went to The City, which we in California call San Francisco. It's up there to the north of us, on the coastline - like we are in Pacific Grove.

Famously, an explorer a few hundred years ago came all the way from Spain and accidentally stumbled on the huge and impressive bay to our north and he was amazed, as he had every right to be. It's complex and far reaching, essentially gathering water from all of Northern California. The ferocious currents swept his ship into the myriad inlets and curving shores, so he, arrogant and proud Spaniard that he was, claimed it for Spain and left. Back in his home country, the explorer recounted his exploits including a glowing and fantastic description of a vast inland waterway and beautiful hillsides abounding with game and plenty.

For two hundred years, no one could find the inlet again. Had it disappeared? Did it ever exist or was the original explorer full of salsa? Truly mystified, king after queen sent shiploads of Spaniards to search and explore. All came home again with sad frowns of defeat and frustration and gazed forlornly into their sangria, unable to account for the missing bay.

Finally, again by accident, another expedition leader woke up from his siesta on the poop deck, rubbed his eyes and there it was! Something like the neck of a bota bag, the narrow strait that is now spanned by our famous bridge was visible and beckoned him to come ashore, which he did, infecting all the native americans with overwhelming pestilence and plague. But, that is another story.

Our lovely summer blanket of fog had precluded further exploration after the first claim of ownership for Spain was made. It had acted as it usually does, blanketing the coastline so effectively that the entire inlet of San Francisco was obscured.

I'm not sure what the Spanish word for fog is - do you? - but I believe the left coast of the continent should have been named after it. No telling how many more years the bay would have gone unsullied by European exploration if the second Spaniard had slept just a little longer.