Where to Camp

I get up around 6:15 as Nate is getting ready for work, thinking the early start will help me avoid the traffic going into the city. I need to head west to get to 1, which means I need to head toward the city. I don't like traffic at all. 680 leads to 580 which leads to 238. 238 is a short but miserably packed stretch. Fortunately I am in California and on a motorcycle, and I can split lanes, frightening as it is, and avoid a terrible wait. 880 brings me to 92 which eventually brings me west all the way until 1, going across the San Mateo Bridge over the bay. I remember driving this stretch of 1 south two years ago with my family and I greatly anticipate the cliff side curves and hills I recall. I follow the road down to Monterrey, stopping along the way in a tiny roadside town for a vegetable omelet. Tasty. At Monterrey I stop and walk along Cannery Row just as I did the last time I was in this town. It is full of souvenir shops and tourists and I wonder what John Steinbeck would think of this stretch of town if he were alive, and I wonder what happened to all the people he wrote about.
I try to make my way back to 1 a different way than I came, and after getting gently lost I find it. I am now on the stretch of road I remember, heading down towards and through Big Sur. The road is hundreds of feet above the sea, carved into the side of the hills, and often, as I lean into bending right turns, I can see the ground drop away directly beneath me, and I think how one small malfunction or rock in the road could toss me off my bike and down the cliff. It's pretty frightening and pretty exhilarating, and I feel a rush in my stomach every time I'm on one of these turns and take my eyes off the road for a split second to look down. I'm feeling tired from being up so early, so I find a nice pull off next to a gorgeous old bridge and lean against a rock and take a nap for an hour directly above a cliff. I wake up to the same amazing view of sparkling bright blue water smashing against the rocky cliffs to the south that I fell asleep to.
I make it into Big Sur, and am on the lookout for the Henry Miller Memorial Library. I remember seeing the location of it on an outside corner of a sharp right turn, and I see it just in time to stop and park as I'm weaving along the road. Not so much really a library, I walk in the gate to a Jesus made of wires crucified on a cross of computer monitors. There is a stage in a clearing and tents in the shade and a deck outside of a small bookstore selling Henry Miller books, obviously, and other authors of similar styles or dispositions. Out back there are computers and some walking trails among old redwoods of varies stages of life and death. I spend a good amount of time here, trying to get the internet to work on the computers, and browsing the book selections, and reading, and talking with a girl who is just about as excited about my trip as I am, and I almost half-jokingly invite her along. As I am getting resuited up, I see a car pull into the dirt strip that serves as parking with New Hampshire plates, and I strike up a brief conversation with the older couple that gets out to stretch based on our common state.
Back on the road, I finish off the stunning twisty cliffside section and roll past beaches where elephant seals sun themselves and flip sand onto their rippling skin. I go past Hearst Castle way up on a hill. As it is evening I start to look for a campground. I am in Oceano, and I follow the signs to the town campground. Naturally it is RV "camping" only. I don't know at what miserable point in recent history this travesty came about, but it seems like 90 percent of "campgrounds" are now exclusively for RVs. Leave it to Americans to defile the word "camping" to a point where it means driving around in 10mpg fortresses of luxury, hooking up to utility outlets, and watching DVDs in air conditioning in the woods before hitting the hay on a queen-sized bed, or maybe cooking a full meal in a full kitchen after a shower. Who are these people that consider living in a mobile, miniature version of their home camping?
Fuck this, I think, to put it mildly and continue down the road. I don't feel like turning back north to find a tenting campground, where I know there is one in Pismo Beach. Instead, I decide to try my luck further south even though my map does not indicate any in the area. I stop at a small convenience store to ask some locals. The woman behind the counter says Pismo. I ask a squirrely little guy in sweats. He is standing next to a Hyosung 650 so I'm counting on the fact that I too am on a bike to earn me some camaraderie. He is super nice, but confirms, with the help of his two friends, a woman sitting in the shade against the store, and a man with as much grease on his shirt as under his fingernails and a tobacco-stained mustache, that Pismo is indeed the closest tenting site. At this point, the woman offers to let me camp at her place. Ocean view included, she says. These really aren't the sort of people I typically associate with, which is why, after a short internal debate, I graciously accept her offer. I follow the crowd the the last trailer in a cul de sac. Sure enough, just beyond route 1, some power lines, and distant fields, a sliver of ocean is visible. I stand around with Kenny, Freddy, and Julia as they talk about local busts, and who's a liar, and why the ice plant is dying on her slope, and how nice that rig that just drove by was, and what's wrong with her car. Kenny, the guy with the bike, is extremely intelligent, and has an answer for everything, and enough confidence and charisma to make you believe it. He opens up the hood of her car and clearly knows his way around an engine like an artist knows her own painting. Eventually Julia goes in and the rest of the crowd clears out. I set up my tent and make a fire in her fire pit like she offered. It's now around 9:30 and I go into my tent and get ready for bed. I hear someone outside and go back out, thinking it was Julia seeing if I needed anything. Instead an old black guy is sitting by the dying fire, saying he's just waiting for someone. Okay. His name was LRC and we start talking. He tells me about a bicycle trip he took down the coast years ago when I tell him what I'm doing. We talk about my motorcycle. Another genuinely nice person. I get to bed finally.
It's 6:30 and I am just getting up. I pack everything up, wipe the dew from off my seat and hit the road in the chill morning air.