Ventitre Viaggi: Twenty-Three Journeys

By Dominic M. Martin

The two renegade roustabouts from California, long-haired motorcyclists simply in search of adventure, were not initially well liked as they traversed the other states of the West during the summer of 1971. That meant that every new day they had to prove themselves anew to each new boss, as they worked a variety of odd jobs, to buy food, and to survive. All those efforts brought to them resilience, speed, grit, and the ability to pivot quickly when needed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Sep 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9798886932935

Dominic M. Martin

As Dominic M. Martin was born in Los Angeles before the baseball Dodgers arrived, he grew up enjoying body surfing, deep-sea fishing, farming, and yes, baseball. Since his parents planted Valencia oranges, it was natural that for close to 40 years he would grow wine grapes and make wine commercially. After that for 12 years, he taught winemaking and vineyard management at three colleges in Kansas and New York.

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Ojai

So then it was that Russ asked me if I wanted to go on a motorcycle trip. Jill, the waitress, was nearby and I could see that she was Mexican, shapely and also pretty, and too that she was wearing an orange and white uniform that reminded me of a popsicle of my youth, a Creamsicle. Her face was a beautiful color of brown that might be from a high-grade saddle or belt or baseball glove. She then approached us holding an almost empty coffee pot and right away, feeling smarty pants, I asked of her, Do you make good coffee, at least? By the way, where are you from, Hermosillo or Culiacan? Or maybe the earth turtle city, Los Mochis? She smiled at me and I could see that she had lovely teeth, straight and the color of snow: White. Her coffee pot ran out and she returned to the kitchen for more. Russ asked me about all of this, a trip or voyage or journey when we were sipping hot strong black coffee, that is, Joe or mud, o una tazza de nero at Tip’s downtown.

I said to my old friend, Sure. Perche non? Since I thought that he was talking about a little giro or spin around the county, a 25 miler that might take an hour.

He said, No. Let’s do the real thing.

Jill right away returned for more banter and still feeling middlin’ arrogant, I said, My mother used to make coffee this way: hot and strong and good. I could sense that she was a healthy lioness prowling around, surging about our table.

As she filled our cups to the brim, she said, I am not your mother, but I can make good coffee. We stared at each other.

I whispered to her, Tres jolie. Non. Eres muy hermosa.

However, interrupting this reverie, Russ said one more time, Let’s go for a real ride, a true trip, a journey. We sure have over the years talked about it enough. I now grasp that always one has to watch out for the use of the first-person plural—that most powerful short word of ours: Let’s.

Our biggest problem was that he had a big head. Not that he was arrogant; far from it. He just had a much larger than normal cranium and we knew that on a journey of this magnitude, one where we would make a 6000-mile circle around the West, we would assuredly be in states where the wearing of a helmet was mandatory. Are we an incipient dictatorship? Helmet-less, doubtless we would end up in the clink, the Big House, or the hoosegow, thus mispronouncing the Spanish, juzgado, for tribunal, court. So, we, chomping now at the bit like a constrained racehorse at the starting gate, we had to special order the darn thing which set back our departure a week.

We would take, we then agreed, the smer roads whenever we could, to stay away from Eisenhower’s slicing boring interstates. For, who among us wants to smell gasoline’s exhaust, the melted tire fumes, or electrical fires?

Who wants to stress by always having to watch out for some jerk arguing with his wife, or ding dong idiot who likes with glee to slam on the brakes for no tad reason? Instead, we wanted to maybe go a snip or tad slower, to watch the landscape and smell the sea or land, and maybe stop and banter with the locals who will tell to us datively a lancing joke or two so that the funny bone may be occasionally be tickled.

We would travel light. We would not bother with a tent since it is now summer in the west and in that time of year and place it rarely rains. If it does, we will search for and find a large tree for shelter. Each of us had a sissy bar to which we would strap our gear: A rugged sleeping bag that would never tear nor abrade, an Italian army wool camp blanket, one for each of us and mouse brown with cream stripes, a rough out leather jacket, one short waisted but long-armed, a wool knit cap, two pairs of gloves, one light and one heavy, a heavy sweatshirt in a dark color that would double as a pillow, one dark colored wool shirt, a medium size plastic bucket so we could wash socks only (we would use only hand soap to scrub them to save on mass and volume.), cooking stuff including a twelve inch cast iron skillet, a decent spatula and something to hold butter that would not leak, a dependable flashlight if, in fact, we make one in this country anymore, 50 feet of thick hemp rope, no deodorant for obvious reasons, tough cutlery including sharp knives for the occasional flank or flatiron steak, a few common tools for the bikes, three dark tee shirts, lots of heavy socks and underwear, camp matches inside a tight plastic container so they never get wet or soggy or moist, a Swedish hatchet made of hickory to make firewood, only one pair of heavy leather boots with fresh laces and soles on them, and one pair of pants, 501 Levi’s before they thinned out the fabric, and something to clean the teeth with after meals. We would do so assiduously, since, after tall, as long as one’s teeth are pristine and sparkling then all is right with the world. Forget the bills and forget the ills. When feeling poorly, go brush your teeth, making the disease-causing bacteria become dislodged from their homes along the gums, thus going down the drain. To spat the loogie, hock it some distance, around the campfire and environs, we will soon do. Any luggage beyond that, we knew, would only slow us down, like all heavy baggage routinely does and become thereby an impediment, as the old Romans liked to say; too, extra weighty stuff will only hurt the mileage. We left the day after Russ’s double extra-large helmet arrived.

The town we were departing was named by the Chumash Indians whom we mostly in all ways ignored. I only lived there four years. In the beginning it was a hard living farming town, and then after Hollywood types in black linen and large new expensive black automobiles with foreign badging learned how close it was to the city, they descended upon it, demanding sushi and vegetarian fare, and jacking up land prices so that the locals had to move to dreary Maricopa or Bakersfield. Nonetheless, it remained a beautiful place, despite the fact that there were all of a sudden 26 silversmith shouting or, alternatively, speaking demurely the magic word ‘Turquoise’ to whomever would listen, and you could no longer buy a shovel or a box of nails. Yet, happily, the mountains still flanked it hard especially on the north and up there the hills were full of a spaghetti of trails and rivers and plentiful small game and hidden beautiful places where people rarely go.

We set out, heading south down the old road toward the sea. We were driving on Ventura Avenue that snaked next to the Ventura River that, in turn, had emerged out of the high mountains de los pinos where she had begun her life a few moments before with another name: Matilija Creek. The river once had steelhead trout abounding before somebody thoughtlessly built Matilija Dam in 1947, thus flooding a Chumash rancheria. I used to go hiking up there and knew about how Old Man Canyon and Murietta Canyon would join together as part of Matilija Creek, and all the other indescribable intricacies of the wilderness. Game abounded: Foxes, beaver, rabbits or los conejos, and others were rarer: Bobcats, raccoons, linx, los lobos and small mountain deer the size of some dogs. There was plenty of white sage up there and purple owl’s clover, and lavender lupine, and coastal live oaks that are healthy only when they are near but not on top of some kind of fresh water. Dark green leaves always signal botanical health. If you stood next to the waters up there, especially after a storm or always in the Fall, the creek or river would often smell like herbed sausage casing or salsiccia del bosco. Starting in 1920 and for the next 40 years, the bright bulbs built many dams in these mountains, making many reservoirs besides Matilija out of the scarce clear blue waters: The Gibralter in 1920, Jameson in 1930, Cachuma in 1953, all three impounding the dwindling Santa Ynez, Twitchell in 1958 damning the mighty Cuyama, and Casitas in 1959 trapping niggardly Coyote and Santa Ana Creeks, and who knows, mark it, how many more in this Cadillac desert?

They only stopped or abated because of the war, or the H’s: Hitler and Hirohito. Most of the dams silted up before they were ever filled; plus, you cannot swim in them, for Charley’s sake! Even today! Couldn’t somebody have had the tiddling thought that, given this friable and fractured and sandy-ass soil, that any reservoir built would naturally tend in a flat second toward sedimentation and siltation, thus immediately and forever lowering the practical capacity? Anyway, I remember once hiking up to the top of Monte Arido, dry as a dead goat’s bone next to the highway, close to Jameson Lake after crossing the boundary into Santa Barbara territory, and one could see the Channel Islands of Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa and tiny Anacapa starkly clear from there without even trying. If you looked hard enough, you see could see what kind of sandwich that guy on the pier at Santa Cruz was eating. Too, I remember prowling around bleak, moon-like Billiard Flats on the edge of the dank Santa Ynez River before she becomes the Jameson to give to succulent wealthy mamacitas of Montecito their water. Once, O Lord, this was God’s country before we screwed it up. Most of these dams were built to sell real estate, though they were sold, justified as flood control. Horseshit.

By now, we were close to the sea. We would take the old road to Five Points and then at El Rio, not far from Colonia where the best food in the county could be eaten if you do not mind the bad part of town, and there we leave behind for the last time Fiume Santa Clara which just flowed past my Desert Mother of Santa Paula not so long ago to head toward sea: We would see on our journey the backside of Los Posas, the desolate strands and beaches of McGrath, Hueneme, Nicholas Canyon, and El Pescador where we would not stop to fish, then always freezing ass cold Zuma would loom and where once I had trained as a lifeguard, Point Dume (always misspelled) and then the sign on the left for the terminus of Mulholland’s Drive right after the Los Angeles county line (And, yes, I can still imagine the guilty brilliant Belfast native saying to anyone willing to hear him, listen, he saying loudly, Take it! Take it, as he opens the sluice gates from yet another new reservoir so that the thirsty Angelinos could have something, always more and wet and fresher to drink), and then finally the sandy sleepy coastlines of Escondido, Topanga, and Santa Monica. How about a dagwood or hoagie? Who amongst us want to make a pee ball in the sand? Or go bodysurfing with the offshore, left break which is most rare? We would stay in Manhattan at an old friend’s house to take what would be our last long hot shower for weeks. There I must wash the pits, the parts. I will not mention Malibu which used to be a superlative and fun place, the pacific ocean’s veritable park, but now it is not desirable as all good Germans say since it has been fully and irretrievably conquered by money. And Trancas is a word nearly forgotten now which happens to many places and times, and especially people. Poor man’s Malibu, it was for half an hour in the late Fifties, the cheapest spot on the most expensive street as my smart brother used to say, in the scant jocular years before real estate speculation became an ersatz religion. I think, Harper, Lew, it is right before Zuma as one heads southward along the coast road, but, golly gee, I could be wrong. I used to snorkel there studying coral, bodysurf in the always chilly water, and look at the girls, as an unpaid scab and non-union volunteer, as one does.

Heck, what do I know? Those real estate speculators and those itinerant damn builders probably thought they were doing the right thing—trying to keep the wolf away from the door, get the folks their water, and with what is left over, pay the always rising insurance premiums that seem to be the purpose of our once great nation. Did they grease some palms? Did they do some dirty backroom deals? Probably, but I was not there, and never once strode in their moccasins. God, not I, will adjudicate all the individual cases in His good time, not mine.

Now, at long last, I can smell the salt in the air, the iodine and brine and whiffs of dead fish, dead and therefore forever napping upon the shore: Smelly mackerel and tuna and dorado, star fish and the jelly ones. That means that we are close to the sea, the ocean. There, now, at last I see a sliver of blue, and my Florentine, Nautical, and Madonna shades are all there and others, mixed with the Espresso and Saddle browns of the sandy churning undertow, to make the waves, and the Sea Foam and Celeste greens, and too the Kiwi and Willow and all the others of the more shallow waters. All of which means that freedom is at hand, and, concomitantly a steady diminution of all foolish strictures. Pretty soon the government will charge you to swim in the blue and green and brown, the storm-tossed ocean and dappled waters, and that is because they want, fairly lust over the money, know how to spend it quickly, and we let them take it from us because we are asleep. To awake? The idea of revolt: May it return? She? Have we forgotten how to fight, rebel? I would like to be a child again, Peter. I just do not feel right gliding past il mare, my mother ocean, on my bike, not swimming in her, joining her for a frigid and the briefest ball shrinking time, but we have uncountable miles to make upon the implacable tarmac or macadam and many more places to see. To see: May I and clearly? Yet I wish I could get off this bike and swim in her. It is always hardest, when wading into her, to get the water level from above your knees, to above your waist. Once it is, that is, she is, the cold water, above your waist, you are committed to her incontrovertibly and all the way in. Forget about the head, it is the balls that are the nexus of the gamble. The balls, they shrink and slide up into the body cavity for protection. Of course they do. The seals of Pendleton say so, attest to it, every day, and I wager that they know what they are talking about. Then there is no turning back for you or for anyone else and the only thing that you can do to stay warm is to swim vigorously out toward the horizon and keep moving as fast as you can.

Julian

Looking back upon those faint days now, it was a quick way for us to leave the predictable detritus, the tawdry sprawl, the endless besmirchments of the godless city—all of which only people caused, not smirking antelope, caribou, or elk—that is, to haul ass out the back door at dawn before anyone notices. We would not be departing the sprawling City of the Angels directly; but tangentially. So, we snuck out of town like skilled robbers or thieves might do, with intended stealth. The late May morning sun was garish and blinding as we headed cast toward Julian in the mountains from Escondido, the hidden town surrounded by small hills, so we had to squint keenly to not have our motorcycles drift off the highway onto the shoulder and crash. Can one see properly in this abhorrent glare? We should have brought with us sunglasses, and good ones, for moments like this, but we both forgot. Don’t forget, remember, my dad used to say: Remember! Here, I had let him down again and thus he would be disappointed with me one more time.

There were a lot of steep corkscrews and reverse chambre switchbacks as we climbed the distended and ravaged arroyos, precipitous barrancas empinadas, and lost canyons perdido to Julian, and on one of them we were turned or spun ourselves fully and completely to the opposite, that is, to be facing the sea, mine ocean, the Pacific which was not so pacific after all. Even though I could see that the water was a deep azure blue, una nastra azzuro against the opalescent sky, I knew that the water would be cold there, if you were swimming in her, so cold that without a wetsuit you could not stay in it, her, for long, even though it was nearly June. The sea warms up most slowly in the summer. Also, anything beautiful, a mountain or river or vessel or, as in this case, an ocean, la mer, is female, not male, as a matter of intentional and expected respect. Yet you have the contrary Italians with: Il Mare, the masculine, which is inexplicable. In any case, the next time that we would see her, Miss Pacific, with her fleet of whitecaps like ships assembled and her stinging jellyfish and her surprising undertow and the unseen riptides, then we would be a thousand or more miles to the north at Astoria. There her waters would be ten degrees colder, maybe more than that at 15, maybe more, obviously as measured in Fahrenheit, of course, not Celsius, since we are not Europeans who know nothing at all, I now understand, about victory or wrath.

Earlier, we had crossed Coleman’s Creek but had neither seen gold nor knew her name. I thought that if any of these sandy hills received much rainfall quickly they, it, the soil there would melt like hot butter to the bottom of the barranca: Erosion. As we climbed steadily up the sandy hillside, we began to see lone pines trees scattered about alla collina. They were acting as sentries at the rampart, guarding the castles against all intruders or dangerous men, or los hombres pelligrosos. Soon we would see clumps of them huddled together, as if they were smoking cigarettes and telling jokes, stories. These soldiers would be unflinching and never tire or falter, even in this rare alpine air.

We did not stop in Julian to refuel or to gossip with the locals, but pressed steadily onwards toward the Southeast since we wanted to see the Bighorn sheep of the Anza Borrego Desert, and there too the ocotillos, the sagebrush and creosote bush, and the stately saguaro cacti also guarding the dispersed settlements. Even though it was not yet mid-summer, it was already blazing hot and furnace like. What sort of deranged ne’er do well would choose to pitch his or her transient tent in this near oven? Indeed: One could bake bread here, sourdough, rye, what you will, or poach an egg to hardness. So far, I have seen only wrinkled and dark brown aramos dazed men, large ambulatory raisins with saggy skin pins really, walking around with their tongues hanging out of their mouths, all magri, skinny, and too they are holding a water bottle like a blessed relic and looking implacably for some shade. This hovel or stove is a good place to live if one is a rabbit or iguana. Mystics understandably and predictably find their home here after a time of self-effacement and mortification. Ice becomes valuable, how to make it and keep it, a jewel or something like that, a talisman, and something doubtless to be treasured.

We were on the very Northern edge of the Sonora Desert, though we did not know it at the time, one which stretches all the way southward toward distant Puerto Penasco and Vizcaino in Mexico. But pray tell to Lazarus or Nicodemus, who decides where the desert begins and ends? Who, I tad wonder, is in charge of making that important decision? Not me, assuredly. I mused how all these plants around these parts knew how to preserve water: The prickly pear, the fishhook, organ pipe, hedgehog, Cholla, beavertail, all of them understood from birth how not to waste water. This place gets no rain, or nearly so. Yes, there were some brightly colored flowers about, crimson, violet, and orange to attract the hovering bees and hummingbirds, for the fertilization on the fly of the desert sand verbena and evening primrose and their many cousins, but most of them are already faded by now, desiccated, senescent, and abscised, falling then, fluttering wingless to the mostly sandy floor of the desert because the paltry spring rains had ceased weeks before, ended. Perhaps a month before they had stopped. In this climate, they would last as long as a short baseball game or lengthy solemn mass. The flowers would be here for only a short time, un tiempo corto, the briefest of times just like all of us in this world since we are nothing but transients, fleeting transients using only always shifting beds for our tangled sleep and forgetting.

On Highway #78, we headed Southeast into the desert. Now and suddenly, I could feel the heat steaming up, wafting in waves, hard from the black macadam. I unsnapped my leather jacket some to get some air moving about me. Santa Isabel, Yaqui Well, and Tamarisk Grove were all behind us now, and on the gradual and steady downslope we gathered speed on the bikes and reached for a moment 80 miles per hour. I looked in my mirror and saw Russ smiling and hightailing it as well. So, as one does, I decided to goose her up some and reach 85 and hold her there for a time. It was a straight as a razor, the road was, and there was no traffic around, no trucks, no cars, no bicyclists, nothing, so why the heck not? The regal California Highway Patrol was not around to pester us and be belligerent and pugnacious and unnecessarily authoritative bigshots, pezzonovanti, unless there were hiding under a rock in an attempt to reach their monthly quota of speeding tickets, they no doubt musing: We must feed the monster all the time since it is ours.

However, just then in my mirror, I saw a puff and then another smaller one of black smoke at the rear of his bike, and then heard the squeal of Russ’s rear tire on the tarmac as it stopped spinning. His chain was stationary, not moving, which meant that his motor had seized. There was an awful noise. Was it: Low oil? Swollen piston in a too small cylinder? Bound rings? Tight valves? Twas no matter now, something of smallest import. The only way he could coast was to put the blasted thing in neutral. We stopped at the side of the road and considered our options, all poor. We quickly figured out that I would have to tow Russ while atop his motorcycle 70 odd miles to Westmoreland, and Brawley, and then south on #86 to El Centro where my dad had an office and we could spend the night sleeping on the floor. It was a good thing I had a long stretch of hemp rope. It was a Sunday so tomorrow morning we could find a bike shop and see what the owner there tomorrow would give Russ for his bike. It would depend on what kind of sour lemon mood that he was in. Probably not much. We had some cash, around $2400, so we could use that to help buy another one, a motorcycle, so we could keep on the road. That was the main thing, to keep on the road, to keep moving and stay on the highway and steer clear of cheesy motel rooms and the people in them at any cost.

It was not easy pulling him. We could not go over