Working Beach Bum: True stories, random facts and useful nonsense

By John Rarity

Ever dreamt of letting it all go to take the trip of a lifetime? Yes? So why haven't you??

Alright, alright... I know. Easier said than done. Trust me - I know.

With barely $1,000 to my name and a one-way ticket to Maui, I took-off on a six-month journey that would teach me how to land jobs, put a roof over my head and discover tons of ways to make it all worthwhile in places like Miami Beach, Puerto Rico, Maui, Oahu and San Diego.

Let me show you what I did. Avoid my mistakes and learn some of the secrets I discovered to help with letting go and having fun doing it.

So relax and get ready for some true stories, random facts and useful non-sense about following the shoreline – where every day is a day that counts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Rarity
• Release date: Oct 21, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465844965

John Rarity

John Rarity has covered beach destinations all over the U.S., Thailand, Australia and beyond, developing his knowledge and skills in budget travel. He is also founder and currently heads GoStayPlay.com, a social travel deals and events website.

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Preface

The publication of this book, much like that trip you keep putting off because it’s just not practical, too ambitious or – the more common excuse – too expensive, simply waited and brooded somewhere near the bottom of my to-do list. What was my excuse? Find another agent. You see, I’d lost my first one – the person that had inspired me to take off on this adventure and do something as crazy as: withdraw whatever money I had saved in the bank ($1,000) and cash in my frequent flyer miles on a one-way ticket to Maui. Why? you might ask. To see what happens, then write about it. Genius!

So, the first agent went missing having never managed to find a publisher for my manuscript: On the Beach. Our contract expired soon after I left town, so I guess he figured, Good luck! So here I am, in a similar spot as I was when the subject of writing this book was first conceived and with a similar question running through my mind. Should I go for it?

I am. I’m cutting it loose to the world and, more importantly, letting it be what it was always destined to be: in your hands.

I was originally going to make Working Beach Bum a guidebook on how to find work, a place to stay and a gazillion different things to do for fun in the process. That didn’t quite work out. A Rick Steve’s approach to finding temporary employment and housing that may or may not exist a year later was, well, not very realistic. How would I attach contact information and ways to land a job as a photographer at Ruth Chris Steak House in Maui, if the guy that ran the operation changed hats every season and may or may not return the following year? I should know, I worked for him and others like him.

So what you are now holding is my travel narrative of the people, places and events that ensued during my sojourn from San Diego to Hawaii to Florida and finally, to Puerto Rico. It is my attempt at providing an uncensored, direct, honest and, most importantly, true account of the events as experienced by a somewhat naïve, totally fearless and completely committed lover of everything related to beach travel.

I wrote Working Beach Bum for people like myself, who are inclined to one-day, maybe someday, put aside the fears of the unknown and the excuses for waiting.  

Introduction: A Quick Stop in Texas

Don’t think about it, I kept telling myself. Just go!

It was the only thing left to do. Makes sense... your best option. Head home. Where? The place where warm, cooked meals are the staple. Why? You might ask, Go back after I’d just flown in and made my parting goodbyes a month earlier? Go back to Texas.

The stretch of road was vast, but I couldn't think about it. Sipping on a 24 ounce can of some American brew, I tried to summon the courage, numb the anxiety, or hell, celebrate this last minute road trip.

I was going back home because I couldn’t sell the car, and I couldn’t sell the car, well, because the proverbial shit happened. My buyer backed out at the last minute, and every prospective buyer since has been like chasing a mirage – they just weren’t real!

Going home meant restoring my savings so I could finally put to the test a crucial theory: can I travel, live and work my way from Hawaii to Florida and Puerto Rico.

I cleaned out the post office box, phoned a few goodbyes and by early afternoon, I was heading east on Interstate Highway 8.

Piles of rock transitioned to a valley of sands and desert. Up ahead, an oasis, in the middle of nowhere. Snap. The moment captured.

More ranges of piled rocks, reaching to the sky: Vallecito Mountains, Chocolate Mountain range. Arizona: Castle Dome Mountains, Gila Mountains, Mohawk Mountains; my eyes were getting tired and back was cramping. I leaned the seat back further. Palomas Mountains, Painted Rock Mountains, Saucedea Mountains. I was out of water. Santa Rosa Mountains, Sierrita Mountains. It was dark.

Soon I could hardly see but the flash of my headlights against pavement. New Mexico. I was almost out of gas, there might have been thirty miles left in the tank. A sign up ahead read gas in ten. Music was good. I wondered what my friends were up to. Maybe a few pints at the local bar and grill; the nights were cool and pleasant back in coastal San Diego…

When was this useless phone going to find a cell and stop roaming? My eyes were tired and – oh shit! Was that the gas station? Close call. Up ahead, my only stop in a wasteland of darkened deserts. I fueled up and carried on.

I took it 'til my mind couldn’t keep up with each blink couldn’t keep up with the speeding road. Thirty miles from El Paso, I pulled into a rest area and was asleep in seconds.

At seven the next morning, I woke up in my sleeping bag, squeezed between the steering wheel and front seat. In front of me was a towering monument to the a road runner. What the- ? It was real, an art sculpture dedicating the scenic overlook of this rest area to the ubiquitous desert bird. One that walks rather than flies and is, for some reason, depicted more like a purple ostrich in cartoons instead of the twelve inches high, brown-feathered species it was in real life.

Road work, more mountains, plains, plateaus and... giant spin wheels! Propeller-powered windmills faced south and spun from the rolling winds of a west Texas plain. They were everywhere.

Eight and a half hours later, past the winding, hilly dark roads beyond Junction, I pulled into a familiar driveway with the porch light on. I set the car in park, stared deep into the starry expanse of a Texas sky and knew my time would come. One way, or another.

Here’s to my parents and to those friends who may not have the porch light waiting. Know that I’m your porch light. You can count on it.

Chapter 1: The Car

A life built upon things, or things built upon a life, whatever the case, leaving without simply letting it all go was the hardest part. There was the storage space, my first ever, plus the constantly nagging questions: Did I plan enough? Do I have what I need? What’s the first thing that can go wrong?

Long rainy nights in a tent, strange hostels, foreign people, meals at odd hours – all of these things I'd managed before. But leaving a life entirely behind (that of a 28 year-old with minimal attachments) in place of another solely out of a backpack turned out to be harder than I thought.

I’d packed the Swiss army knife (a staple piece of equipment dating back to the Cub Scout days), check on the duct tape, the compass, the spare piece of string and Playboy – well, not really, but it was on the list. But preparing for the challenges involved in selling a car a few short weeks post 9-11 was beyond any one of my multiple planning lists.

Not that I hadn’t lined up a buyer before moving out of my apartment in San Diego. I had. But with the country reeling from the biggest attacks on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor, the seller backed out. Spending money seemed to be the last thing on most people’s minds.

So I stayed at a friend’s house and hoped another buyer would come along; but every day I spent waiting was a day I wasn’t in Maui, where I should have been, looking for a place to live and a job. Next stop: Los Angeles, where I prayed there would be better options in terms of buyers, and my cousin Gaby had generously offered her couch for a few days.

Eventually, I found myself in a mall somewhere in West Covina, where I was supposed to meet a woman I’d contacted through the Auto Trader, but she never showed. Struggling with self-pity, I headed to the Barnes and Noble for a little caffeine and a magazine to take my mind off of things. I ended up scouting for a place to sit that wouldn’t result in a sore on my ass – wooden chairs – like I would for a parking space outside of Staples Arena. What corporate mastermind made the deduction: books with leisure, the latest Grisham with a latte? From those who actually buy the books to the financially challenged that read them at the store and stretch a single cup of coffee into a day's worth of refills – they were all welcome and competed for space and a break from the shopping plazas, where most of these caffeinated book emporiums reside.

By this point, the car represented more the mere sale of Japanese steel on American rubber. It was symbolic of the obstacles, pressures and opinions that too often interfered with achieving a worthy objective. One way or another, I was determined, I was going to get this long overdue project off the ground. Or at least off the mainland and toward the more remote island beaches out west, somewhere between here and the Sea of Japan.

Maui

Chapter 2: The Valley Isle

I left for Hawaii on a Friday, a day earlier than planned and not necessarily good news in my case.

Saturday would have been nice for a farewell dinner, my mother reminded me, but having to rely on frequent flyer miles to pay for the trip left me with little choice on my final itinerary. This also explained my current leg to – Minneapolis! The hub for Northwest Airlines, through whom I’d cashed in my miles. So yes, I would be traveling to Hawaii, from Texas, via Minnesota – perfect.

As I stood in line to board the flight, I couldn’t shake off last night’s digital memory loss. A pocket PC I’d acquired for a previous trip had mysteriously lost all reserve battery power and taken with it a months’ worth of phone numbers, notes and other writing! I was in shock when it happened, and as much as I knew better, I panicked.

What a way to start the trip! All because of the fastidiousness of a rectangular plastic box that consisted of silicon boards and electronic components whose function escaped me much like that of the IRS or NATO. A standard-size notebook could easily have contained all of my notes, now magically gone down the toilet of the black-hole computer world, from where nothing returns if battery power runs too low.

I actually thought I was being smart. Smart by getting this techy gadget for purposes of simplifying note taking, phone number-storing and all around mobile computing. Instead, the notes and phone numbers I did save were now irrevocably gone. Not missing. Gone… I finally caught myself from spiraling further into this worsening, no-good tantrum of self-pity.

As I handed my boarding pass to the flight attendant, I was reminded of the simple fact: I was finally leaving on a jet plane. An unexpected sense of calm suddenly surfaced. One I hadn’t consciously conjured up and quite frankly was surprised to find.

I had actually traveled to the acclaimed islands of Hawaii once before. Oh yes. But this first visit, for reasons I’ll explain briefly, didn’t count.

First of all, my previous trip had only involved