If you don’t become the ocean, you’ll be seasick every day.
–Leonard Cohen

Hours melted as I surfed with two of my heroes and a boy who didn’t understand the difference between the words, “today”, “tomorrow”, and “yesterday”.

On our last night together, before I flew overseas, I held him close, kissed his little nose, and taught him the meaning of the word “bittersweet”. 

That the world is so full of paper, and you have always loved to write.

If I am not, may God so put me there;
 if I am, may God so keep me.

“You write in time then time is gone and in trying to catch up you write a whole new story.” —Patti Smith

Day 12. Halfway into an eight-hour trek on Highway 6 from Salt Lake City to Mammoth Lakes, California—my last stop on a solo road trip across the West before finally settling down in Santa Barbara with the first lease I’ve signed in three years. I promise myself that this is the last time I will ever drive through Nevada alone.

Hot air blows from his mouth down the metallic reed and music comes out the other end. He’s sitting on a wooden bench next to his friend who plucks guitar strings. A group of us surround a fire.

I’m on the other side, bundled up in an old Mexican blanket I found in the trunk of my car, half my ass falling through the dilapidated rubber strips of a stolen lounge pool chair.

Vicente’s F-150 flies over the busted cobblestone streets of northern Baja and lands with a thud.

He accelerates again, navigating every crack and crevice with expert maneuverability and utter nonchalance, like it was any old day, any regular outing to his local break. But it’s not. It’s 4am, pitch black, and eerily empty. We’re headed to the marina before dawn. The harbor master deemed the building swell too dangerous for smaller vessels, but Vicente knows a guy who knows a guy who’s willing to sneak us out early for a couple thousand pesos, as long as we pay upfront— cash only— say nothing to no one, and don’t bitch if he drops a line along the way.

Like most of my experiences in Mexico, the risk to reward ratio is pretty skewed.

You’re still half-asleep by the time you’ve wiggled into your foulies, scarfed down midrats, and made it to the quarterdeck to hear your first night-watch assignment. It’s the top of the hour. And you’re on boat check.

It’s late November but you wouldn’t know it by the way the hot sun shines on the swarms of people descending the cliffs of Praia do Norte. Despite an unrealistically strict confinement, nothing seems to draw out the rule breakers like a little sunshine and picture-perfect waves barreling through a 12th century fishing village.

Cool breeze, cool breeze

Rushing down her spine with both palms squeezed around the wheel of a Mercedes-Benz

Launched into Lisbon at the cool pace of a beating heart, I’m on the train, along the coast, heading west.

Locals are now one week into an unprecedented and controversial surf ban on Praia do Norte amid health concerns from crowds gathered here last week to witness record-breaking swell.

Heavy rain batters thunderously loud against the cabin. Squall after squall after squall comes and goes, comes and goes. Sleep is a distant dream. But laying horizontally in a 6’x4’ space, that’s something– at least.