The Trip part 1

A strange journey it was. Two friends, a demonically possessed car, 4 days, Southern Spain. After so many years I still remember that particular road trip so very well, like a film I replay in my mind, I can remember every detail, every scene. I would like to say it was a formative trip. That I ended up being a different person than how I was when it started, but that would be untrue. I think I remembered it so many years later among all the other adventures is that the trip really did exist in a place out of time. For some reason we never really interacted with anyone else on this journey. I think that if I were to ask Catherine to share her thoughts she would agree. It was a bubble of time and space, and there was so much beauty along the way.

It’s in synchronicity that I find beauty beyond the physical world. Those moments in time where the right elements combine to create more than a feeling, they create a visceral experience of wonder. It’s that wonder that we ran into at so many turns in the road. Don’t get me wrong, I am not talking about some idealic party trip where everyone thing goes great and you get laid in the end. No. In fact more things went wrong on this trip than right, and maybe the fact that we never really cared or feared or worried about controlling the outcome, maybe that’s what made it possible to see the wonder.

It was Semana Santa, Easter Week, and my rock-climbing partner, roommate and sometime drinking-buddy Catherine and I were staring at the road map of Spain laid out on the kitchen table in our apartment in Madrid.

Before I go any further, let me describe Catherine for you. I met Catherine in my senior year at the California University we attended. She was beautiful, eccentric and feline. Besides that she was a good friend and always up for an adventure. After university she left for Bolivia. Not to do Peace Corps work, or to build an international business career, but to hang out and check out the scene. I don’t know if you have ever been to La Paz but it’s not exactly what I would call a tourist-friendly environment. Over 34 different governments in the last 30 years, 12,000 ft. high up on the altiplano, and everything seemed stained by the color of the earth. She stayed for 2 years-a cat.

A mutual friend, in love with Catherine had given us an ancient Simca. This is a Spanish-built automobile which looks something like a Saab but much, much cheaper. The car would have a hard time starting and sometimes it needed to be pushed down the street by one of us, with the other sitting behind the wheel and slipping the clutch into 1st gear to “jump start” the car. We didn’t care, it was a car, it would hold all our climbing gear, a ghetto blaster for tunes and all the jugs of cheap wine we could fit inside.

After packing the car, we plotted our course: Madrid to Jaen to somewhere through the immense olive plantations of Andalusia down to the coast. We would stop in Jaen along the way and climb some routes on the cliffs upon which stood an ancient castle now serving as a very pretty 4 star hotel. It was very much a “thank God we’re off work and getting the heck out of the city” feeling. (to be continued)