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COMPLETE HANDSOMEST MAN IN CUBA USA TOUR CHRONICLES
Movie Clip: Beach ride with the BF Club of Inland Empire (3.8 Mb)
AFTER LANGUISHING Long Beachside for 3 days it was time to head to the scorched interior, also known as the Inland Empire (San Bernadino, Riverside and Rancho Cucamonga) - and to the final talk in my 6-week coast-to-coast odyssey. I took one last walk along that beach path with my cousin Leslie, who drove up from Newport wearing the Bike Friday polo shirt we'd given him on a previous work trip to SoCal - nonetheless he made it quite clear: 'I ride BIG wheels!' Despite all his years in the USA, he still retains his laconic North Queensland accent (that's the hot, tropical part of Australia where people say 'ay?').
Brian Zupke, the Bike Friday Club of Inland Empire leader, drove up and whisked me off to his home in the hills of Rancho Cuca. The San Gabriel Mountains are a magnificent and stark backdrop to this semi-deserty urban expanse serviced by those big LA freeways.
Cycling Connection Bicycle Club talk. The evening's talk for the Cycling Connection Bicycle Club took place at the Jolly Farms Restaurant in Fontana, a no-frills chophouse favored by hoary locals judging from the clientele beyond the vinyl concertina'd doors of our private meeting annex. Surprisingly, the menu included those soy turkey slices you can buy in the deli section of Safeway, a nod to the isolated vegetarian who might stumble by if their VW took a 50-mile accidental detour.
To Brian's obvious disappointment the turnout was small, especially given his efforts to promote it widely. Having been thwarted by the election for some of my tour I was getting use to the odd intimate group of 15 folks. If 7 of those 15 folk read my book and each tell another 5, that's 35 people, and if each of those folks told ... (did I sell Amway once or what?).
The group, however, were attentive and enthusiastic, and I have discovered that makes for a very enjoyable evening. When a group laugh at your jokes it's gratifying, and as a reward they get even more dirt out of me - before we know it I am revealing all kinds of things I would normally divulge only on my LiveJournal.
Homeless hope. THE NEXT DAY I hung out with Brian's wife Cassie, who took me to visit the innovative Foothill Family Shelter. No, I hadn't outstayed my welcome (it's 3 days before guests and fish start to smell), but the notion of situational vs generational homelessness segues perfectly with my Cuba talk.
'Here In 'merica it's not too hard to become homeless,' said Sharon, the director. 'With no socialized medicine and high rents, if you don't have savings, friends or family you can fall back on, all you have to do is lose your job, get sick ...". At Foothill people and their families are given a small apartment each rent free, child care, and a 4-month job search and counseling program to get themselves on their feet again. There are no signs on the outside to give the facility any kind street identification. A stigma still exists around the world 'homeless' and 'shelter'. Having worked in advertising, I mentioned that facility could change their moniker to Foothill Family Community - A Transitioning Facility' or something.
While there, someone came in with bags of excess food, and in the land where I first saw the notion of 'storage unit', there should be no need for Foothill to ever have to foot the bill for toys or clothes.
In my talk I explain how Cuba seemed to there are few genuinely homeless ... everyone is expected at the dinner table. In The Handsomest Man in Cuba I talk about a facility called casa de los desemperados, literally 'places for the discarded', where the elderly without family are fed three square meals a day, get all expenses paid beach holidays, get gifts at Christmas etc. I write how an offer like that would probably send a goodly number of westerners packing their seniors off at the first available opening. In Cuba, however, it is seen as a tragic place to come to in life; people shudder at the thought of spending old age without any family. Despite the poverty, no-one looks overly hungry, no one is on the street, everyone is expected at the dinner table. And it blows me away that when I got back to Eugene, Oregon, there is Safeway stacked to the roof with food and under the bridge at the back of Bike Friday are homeless people. As I said previously, as a foreigner with a modestly paid day job and no family, property or savings here in the USA, I often reflect on the proximity of my spinning front tire to the gutter.
Side note: a friend told me was outside his local chain bookstore and saw a ton of very decent shelves being taken out of the store and systematically smashed to pieces. "A school or disadvantaged family could have had those." He alerted the newspaper and radio. The store manager denied knowledge of the incident.
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SATURDAY 10:00 a.m. was the Bike Friday Club of Inland Empire ride along 'the concrete river' to the beach at Santa Ana, meeting at Edna Park 10:00 a.m. Brian and I did count on a 1-hour traffic jam on one of those massive concrete autopistas. Sure enough, the radio reported a fatality somewhere over the rainbow.
'Trouble is, instead of driving slower, people will just jam on the accelerator to make up for the lost time,' said Brian.
Amazingly, the group waited for us, and instead of going off muttering 'I'm late, I'm late, for a very important date,' kicked back and got to know each other. For this reason they deserve to be mentioned by name: New World Tourist owner Daniel Milnor, one of the uncharacteristically younger owners (that is, way under the statistical average age of 48) and a award-winning photographer; fixed-gear Friday riding Terry Trickett, a former flight simulation engineer who owns 17 bicycles, 4 of them Fridays; Traveler Q owner and Bike Friday Club of Inland Empire leader Brian Zupke, plus three big-wheelers: George & Ken from Team Velocity bicycle Club, and Kevin from my posting on . And of course, me.
Ken was already eyeing off my Crusoe for the second time. I just know he'll be rolling up on one next time I see him.
We set out down the Santa Ana concrete riverside trail, a surreal experience if trees and grass are more your thing. These canals are like sunken super highways when dry, and apparently prone to flash floods when the relentless blue sky allows a few clouds to gather.
On this day a single rivulet of dank water running down the middle was the only sign of moisture. At the beach we did burgers and fries before turning back. A bunch of new friends on new and future Fridays. What could be more fun?
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At the Ontario Mills megamall I encountered a store specializing solely in the stuffing and customizing of polyester teddybears. Sustainable business? I imagine this fabricated distraction sustained the rugrat's interest for all of 5 minutes ...
BRIAN WAS determined to give me the Meglo-Mall experience.
'I know you'll find it interesting' he said with a toothy smirk.
The destination: Ontario Mills, a sprawling shrine to the religion of shopping, a place that would give the average poor Cuban a brain annurism. It almost gave me one. Despite my world travels it still awes me to see an entire airport-hangar sized outlet devoted to inflatable pumpkins and day-glo skeletons in preparation for a handful of hours each year.
One store, Build-a-Bear, specialized solely in turbo-stuffing a flaccid bear from what looked like a giant clothes dryer full of sofa innards, then dressing it however your child fancies - a fireman bear? A barbie doll bear? A sex in the city bear? I wondered if here, in the land of anorexic starlet style, some little girls would underfill their bear ... The filling attendant did her duty with the countenance and enthusiasm of a gas station attendant manning the diesel pump. Ah, I guess anything can gets old after you've done it a few hundred times. I could see the expressionless polyester bear with its head stuck in a giant toybox not a few hours from now ...
Even subversiveness has become generic. 'Hot Topic' is a 'goth shop' selling black and shredded attire where I am sure the criteria for getting a job would be the careful positioning of one's piercings and tatts AND the ability to say 'and how would you like to pay for that?'
'I'm subversive and I'm gonna buy the t-shirt to say so!' - Jim Haskell
Finally, the tour was over - well, at least the long part. I still have 1 more scheduled talk in San Francisco, at Get Lost Travel Books in Market Street, Monday November 8 at 7 p.m. on the way back from Peru/ Peru? Read on.
I flew back to Eugene to be met at the airport by my neighbor, James Larson, and my ex-beau Tim Link. How sweet it was to not have to set up the bike and trailer and ride home (1 hour) in the dark.
Now, off to ride the highest paved road in the world - the Ticlio pass in the Peruvian Andes. Watch for the story - hopefully in a place like Outside, Adventure Cyclist, and Bicycling. Oh, I am sure Floral Art Monthly will be right into it as well ...
Terry Trickett has 17 bikes, 4 of which are Fridays and this is his favorite - a fixed gear 'Simple Friday' he rode through France with last year ..
Words and pictures copyright 2004 Lynette Chiang, lynchiang at yahoo dot com, All Rights Reserved
COMPLETE HANDSOMEST MAN IN CUBA USA TOUR CHRONICLES
For more information, follow this link http://www.galfromdownunder.com/cuba.