Monday
The trip started when my good friend Mof asked if I could ride bikes down to Big Sur from our town of Santa Cruz on a weekday to sneak into the sold out show of the band Animal Collective with him. He has a kid and a day job so i knew if he got the time off he meant business. His only suggestion to me for the trip was to somehow find a hammock, because that of course was what he would be sleeping in. As i usually do, i packed hastily as he sat on my porch an hour before our departure on Monday May 25th: Memorial Day. I had been bushwhacking on my property that day and when we walked down to say goodbye to my housemates, they had just finished cooking steak on the BBQ out in a grove on the south side of our property. So Mof and me enjoyed some steak bites and then we were on our way out at 4:30pm to Mof’s house. On the way i spotted a 3 foot long gopher snake on the side of the road sunning itself half under some black plastic.
So we wrangled him up and had a little photoshoot and rolled to Mofs house to grab his gear. I stretched out my muscles as he loaded up his bike. We headed out on the road from his house around 5:30 and stopped at a bike shop to pick up a 27x1/4 tube spare style for my bike. As we were leaving i saw a rearview mirror and i used some electrical tape to secure it to the left bar-end of my bike. Because that’s the side the cars are on! all the better to see you with my deary! So then we headed south and stopped by my buddy Q's house to see if we could grab his topo map on the way out because we really weren't sure exactly where we were gonna camp or how we were gonna sneak in. But he wasn’t home. So we dropped down into sunken ship beach and rolled past all the families having BBQ’s and then warmed up by riding up the steep hill on the other side. Then we crushed through La Selva and stopped a little beyond to pick some strawberries at the endless field. There were some on the ground the size of avocados! I found a somewhat clean bag lying around and we filled it up. And our bellies too! Then we rode down through the Watsonville area and across the fields on San Andres that drops you back off on hwy 1. Then we buzzed down into moss landing and rolled a spliff and ate some snacks on the dunes above the beach. Then we picked up some provisions at the deli on our way out and took Monte to Del Monte through the artichoke fields and frontage roads and only got a little lost before we found the bike path to Pacific Grove. That cruised us right into Monterey. We actually were hoping to sleep under some trees near a hotel on reservation rd. like we did a few years ago but that was miles behind us now. So we got into spot locator mode as we cruised into Monterey on the bike path. Then we saw the little boardwalk going up some stairs towards the beach on some government land. So we lugged our fully loaded bikes up the stairs. We walked out to the end passing a character sitting on a bench on the way out. We immediately broke out the snacks and beers and rolled a spliff. I walked down into a grove of cypress trees to look at our hammock hanging options. When i returned Mof and the character were in conversation. I was weary at first because a character sitting by his lonesome at 11:30pm could bring any sort of trouble with him. But this guy, who introduced himself as Larry turned out to be all right. He went and grabbed his tall can of Mickeys and sat down to partake in a couple of hits off our spliff. I was so excited to be done riding and in Monterey that i sapped off that spliff like it was a chocolate milkshake and ended up getting a fat head rush and stomach ache out of it. We chatted of weather and travels with Larry for a bit and then he headed into the dunes to lay out his sleeping bag. Then Mof checked out some slumber site possibilities on the north side of the boardwalk and we decided after heavy deliberation that we should rock my side, the south side. We set up the sleep spots around 11:30. This was my first time setting up my hammock so moff strung them up under a long strong horizontal branch. It was pretty damn good sleep.
SC -Monterey
5:30-10:30
3hours58minutes
48miles
average speed 11.9mi/hr
max speed 30mph
set up hammocks 11:30pm
woke up 6:45
departed 7:30
Tuesday
We figured that the area that we were camping in could get some morning foot traffic that could consider us a nuisance and we wanted to get an early start anyways. We woke up around 6:45 but didn’t really start packing up until about 7:30. It truly is a splendid thing to wake up snug in a hammock under a cypress tree overlooking the Monterey bay at dawn, Knowing that i was going to pack up my campsite, put it on my bike and ride it all the way into Big Sur. So we got on the road and forged our way through Monterey. We asked directions once and rode on the highway once and then dropped the nice steep hill into Carmel. We arrived at the Carmel Safeway at 9:00am. It’s 4 miles from downtown Monterey. I knew very well that this was the last stop for a wide selection of cheap and affordable food and it really is the last place to buy hard liquor until SLO! So we took turns stocking the rations and since i am only on the safeway AM team i didn’t get hooked up to fatty this time. But i am sure i saved 3 bux with my Safeway card. So we took turns writing and drawing in my journal with India Ink and the bambo pen i made in a campfire at Sykes hot springs on a previous trip. Mof made a cool picture of a hammock
and we both wrote a bit of poetry. 
And then we decided that with our newly purchased beers only getting warmer that it was in our best interest to head down under the Carmel bridge to roll a spliff and sip on a barley sandwich. i took a few pictures 
and did a bit of doodling and even took a 15 minute nap! Then it was time to hustle the muscle down to Big Sur. We stopped 1.5 times and the wind was with us but not blasting. We made it to the top of hurricane point by 1pm.
By 2pm i was behind the Big Sur general store lounging in the Big Sur River. Now i have met a few Big Sur Loc's or BSL's in my day and on this very day good old Lee was put in charge of watering the back 20 because if he was going to be hanging out back there he might as well be doing something. This became a bit of a conflict because i was trying to intermittently draw and nap on it while drying out in the sun and i was getting pretty into this drawing of this RV parked in the adjacent lot. I normaly would have shared a bowl with him but i was kind of agitated for being pushed out of the sun. Mof and i made some sandwiches and drank some beers and i finished my drawing
and Mof did some minor bike adjustments and we were back on the highway headed towards Henry Miller Library with uncertainty about what exactly was going to happen except that we were going to have a good time. We got to the Library and to our surprise there seemed to be no one there, there was no sign of the animal collective show, and the front gate was locked. But like most good hippy establishments you could walk right around the side of the front fence. The left side in this case. we deliberated while eating some sandwiches and decided to leave our bikes behind the fence while we hiked out behind the venue in search of camp spot. We hiked a good click up the creek. We had to climb through a fairly newly constructed mud slide deterrent metal cable loop fence. We found some cool mini waterfalls up there. We left our shoulder bags half way up and then hiked further and then we heard people below so Mof said he would go grab them and then after an hour i was really starting to wonder what happened to him. I did a bit of napping and some writing and thinking and even when down to get the bags myself. Then low and behold Mof comes out from the cuts and said he was just looking around or some silly shit. Then we started hiking north up the hill rather than east up the creek and ended up finding a hilltop shpaught right past some melted water tanks, with chopped and stacked wood at it. It appeared to be the end of a dirt road, an access road to the water tanks if you will. We were not sure if it belonged to the Henry Miller Library or not but we were sure that it was prime for our purposes. It was getting to be late afternoon so we decided to go back down and grab our bikes, bring them partway up or rather to the backside of the venue and stash them around the corner of a hillside, then lug our bags up this steepy hill to the camp shpaught. And we did just that. So then we strung the hammock on the horizontal arms of a big oak on the lower hillside of the shpaught. 
Then one by one we carried the rocks from the surrounding area over to create the fire pit. We successfully set ourselves up perched over the venue where animal collective would be playing in 12 hours.We had more than enough food to feast so we were cooking up hotlinks, making up herring and mustard sandwiches, munching chocolate and shwillin brews.
Wednesday
We woke up at 9am the next day, Wednesday the 27th but we didn’t actually get out of our hammocks until 1pm.
Sometimes... we whipped up some brunch and did some stretches and Mof was already getting antsy to get down to the library to check out the scene. We lounged and lagged for a bit and then finally we rolled down the hill to see if we could blend in and kick it during set up or even help. . But when we got to the bikes i could not for the life of me find the key to the lock i had put on my bike in any of my bags. So i went back up the steep ass hill to look for it and Mof we down into the venue. I then proceeded to go through all my gear three times and deduce that the key must be somewhere between the HML and the shpaught. Then as i was walking up the hill a bit to relieve my bowels #2 style i saw a truck roll right up into the shpaught. It appeared to be a shpaught check. I found myself in an interesting position because i found myself behind a tree with good cover when the truck arrived so the driver didn't see me at first, but i decided to give my positions away because the camp location had already been given away and i wanted to find out who this guy was and how much he cared if we camped there one more night. Turns out he was Steve, the maintenance guy for the timeshare house at the bottom of the dirt road that led up. And he was just up there to change the water filter. I screwed up at this point because i said we would break camp and move on when i should have bargained with him about being cool with up staying one more day. So he headed out and i took the hammocks down and stashed everything in these prefect bushed just a little down the hill from the shpaught and then proceeded up the hill to find a prime defecation location. In the process i found a well with a spring in it and what i think is a fox skull. it could also be coyote or raccoon. So that was a pull. Then i gave up on the key and decided that i would have to borrow some sort of tool from the HML to unlock my bike and i started slinkin' down the hill. When i passed the bikes i looked at the lock to figure how hard it would be to break it and low and behold the key was right there in the lock. I could not believe i hadn’t realized that i had left it in there when we first left them there. Felt pretty stupid yet pretty relieved about that one. So i stashed it properly and headed into through the back of the library to find mof. I walked through and saw all your typical roadie and set up folks but no Mof. But then i saw him over on the other side of the front fence. So i went over to talk to him and he said he had been kicked out and that i probably would be soon too because of association. I told him the silly good news about my key and then an older portly fellow came up to me in interrogation/bouncer mode and he said there was nothing i could do to help but stand on the other side of the fence and he ever so rudely showed me the door. So then i found myself in front of the Henry MIller Library with Mof and his bike and the guys from animal collective as well. Their bus was parked right there. I polished the dirt off my newly found skull for a little while 
and then started to get anxious because i really didn’t want to be the groupie kid that sits in front of the venue for six hours before the show. Mof and i had already talked a bit about walking down to the beach from the other side of the highway. It didn’t take much before we found ourselves bounding down the steep redwood duff hillside across from the HML We hit the bottom and found ourselves in a lush creek fed redwood forest. We admired a drainage tunnel going under the road and then continued on our way west following the creek through thick areas and down some more steep stuff and down a few nice waterfalls. At one paint Mof thought we were closed out and wanted to turn around, but i wouldn’t hear it so we forged out way on down the creek towards the Pacific Ocean. We finally came to a clearing and found ourselves perched on top of a 20ft. waterfall dropping down to the beach below.
We sat down right then and there and popped open some beers and rolled a spliff and absorbed all that there was for a minute.
Then we jumped down to the beach, or really, climbed down carefully. I threw off my duds and jumped into the great big blue. Then i took a walk down the beach looking for some quality tidbits like shells and sea glass. Some time later we were getting a bit hungry and the sun was fast approaching set so we started heading back up stream. Then we saw the high road trail and decided to take it. It lead us through some cow pasture land and then right back into the first redwood forest below the road. That hike took about 20min rather than the 60 it took us to hike down the creek. It also had a lot less poison oak and alot lest steep drop-off cliffs. As we got there Mof had the genius idea of walking up the creek tunnel and check where it came out on the other side. So we did just that and low and behold it popped out right on the backside of the HML back deck. Were it came out had a big wooden structure built over it made out of huge pieces of timber that served as a filter for the water and debris that when the rains roll through there. 
We were able to wiggle right through the bottom of the thing and scurry up the hill to our campsite unseen. There we celebrated out successes with food, drink, and a fire. Then low and behold, through leaving a few voice messages on his phone the day before, Q came walking up the access road and found us! So we gave him a shot of whiskey, grilled up a hotlink and twisted up a spliff as we heard animal collective start playing down below. We spent the first part of the show listening by the campfire while we did freestyle drawings in q's sketch book, but Mof was getting antsy to get down there so finally we packed up and walked down the access rd. to Qs car to throw some gear in there. Then we moseyed down to the front gate to check out the crowd that was slowly but surely getting bigger with a healthy dose of Big Sur locals. Quinn knew some of them. I guess Ben that let us hike Sykes last time was out there. We hung for about 10 minutes and then it was time to bail over the other side of the hill, to roll up through the tunnel and pop up through the back. So we did just that and added a little color to the tunnel on the way. We popped out one at a time with space in between. I went first. Next thing you know we're cheersing beers in front of the crowd for Animal Collective, 
who up close look sort of gothy. So we danced around and shwilled and puffed and puffed tough and all that. The crowd seemed to consist of mostly upper middle class scensters that all decided together that you shouldn't dance until the after party.
But that's cool I guess, I just wish there was crowd surfing at every show. So finally it ended and some sort of somebody announced that the after party was at Fernwood. Right then we ran into Jakob and a few of his buddies. And low and behold, one of his buddies had rented a campsite at Fernwood. So that was tight. So then I had the issue of getting my bike from the back. I started talking up this girl selling merch to get on the back deck, when I realized she didn't care, I preceded to help myself. I grabbed my bike back in the cuts, and grabbed some Gatorades and some waters from a convenient cooler and was out. Then we walked up to Q’s car and were about to drive up when these two guys with bikes asked how far it was. And Quinn informed them that it was about four miles up hill with no bike lane and lots of drunk drivers. So we put their bikes in our car and sardined it on up to Fernwood. We let them out when we got there and we parked it up and went looking for Jakob. We found him on a bridge. So we went back to his buddies’ camp and lost Mof, who found his way straight to the bar where the real after party was goin down. Me and Q met some Oakland kids who had seen animal collective in Oakland as well. Then as we stuck around, we needed more firewood. So this guy found some redwood branches and tried breaking them up by jumping on them at first, and that wasn't working at all. So I cooked up the idea to wedge them between some trees and push until they snapped. That was fun. We hung around and drank beers and ate chips and salsa for a bit and then decided that we should check out the party and find Mof. We rolled up to the back patio of the bar and found one sloshed and happy Mof who apparently had been partying and chattin it up with the guys in Animal Collective. So we kicked around there for a bit, and some guy was playing some pretty awesome covers on the piano. 
So I danced and sung along, and around 3 am they started kickin kids out of the bar. Quinn was not all that drunk and down to drive, so him, Mof and me packed all our gear into his car. And we zipped into Carmel and hit Yankee Point to smoke a jay and the next thing you know, I was in my parking lot back in SC. Mof rode his bike home from there. And that is where that trip came to an end.
little bits off nothing make a whole lot of everything
red tail straight posted
our buddy snakey
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