El Salvador: August 2006

Page 1 - Departure Day, A Drive to the Airport in Miami

Well here we go again!

Yet another trip to yet another country.

This time it’s El Salvador, but this time it’s not going to be wholly concerned with surfing.

I’m on a little something that’s called a “FAM” trip, organized by Taca airlines and the host country in the interests of cluing in travel professionals (that would be me, believe it or not) to the wonders and attractions that may be found there, the better to share those insights with potential clients.

So most of what I’m going to be doing this time is not all that directly related to the business of surfing. In fact, I’m only going to be having two days down at a proper surf destination, K-59 surf camp. Worse still, the models are not looking any too good for waves on the days I’ll be there, August 19 and 20.

So ok.

Whatever.

I’ve already caught so many damned waves this summer that if it finds a way to go dead flat, I’m not going to care in the slightest.

This one’s gonna be about coastal resorts (for non surfers), volcanoes, ancient ruins, indigenous culture, and all the kinds of things that “normal” tourists might be considered to have an interest in. A lot of surfers combine surf trips with family vacations, and lots of times the rest of the family don’t surf, so if I can help plan somebody’s trip and tip them off to some neato things that the non-surfing members of the family can do, then all’s the better.

Suits the hell out of me.

I’m gonna get to romp around, see a zillion cool things, meet a zillion cool people, and generally just enjoy the living piss out of myself, and then maybe ride a wave or two at a couple of world-class right points.

I’ve been going left all summer, so any kind of frontside at all will be a treat.

Tra la la.

Now let’s back up a little bit, ok?

For those who may have forgotten by the time these words swim before their eyes, the Bad Guys got busted in England a few days ago, attempting to blow ten or so airliners out of the sky.

Needless to say, all hell broke loose in airports around the world, and this time the main culprits were going to use liquids walked on to the airplane to effect their nefarious deed, and so carry-ons in general and any kind of fluid items in particular, were on the list of Highly Suspicious Items. Ditto cell phones, ipods, and a host of other potentially lethal items that might serve as home-brew detonators.

Well fuck me, that’s gonna make things a little pesty, now ain’t it?

Yup.

On top of all that, since my trip is going to be in interior El Salvador for the most part, and since surfing is most manifestly NOT a part of the “organized” trip, I’m not bringing a surfboard with me.

This one’s gonna be a little different than all the others.

The FAM is going to end, and all the FAMsters are gonna go home on the morning of the nineteenth, and I’m gonna get picked up by Edgar, who owns K-59 surf camp, which is where I’m going immediately following the wrap-up of the FAM. Edgar is supposed to be loaning me a longboard out of the goodness of his heart, since there’s no accommodation for a surfboard as part of the FAM arrangements. Edgar will keep me at his place till the morning of the 21st, at which point I depart, hopefully after catching a Few Good Waves.

Kind of a twisty turny way to get to a wave and ride it, but I’m game for damn near anything.

Bring it on!

In the last couple of days, there’s been various bans on carry-on items at the departures gate, up to and including EVERYTHING.

My old reliable laptop would appear as if it’s not gonna be allowed on board with me.

That said, I NEED the damned thing, both to write with and also as a repository the gillions of pictures I’m gonna be taking. My little camera only has a 128meg memory, and that will fill up in a hurry.

Not good.

So my plan was to stash the laptop inside my checked bag, cross my fingers, pray to the little baby jesus up in the sky, and hope the baggage handlers did not succeed in smashing it to bits.

An inelegant solution to the problem, to say the least.

Which, in the end, was not required.

A close googling of the subject matter last night revealed that on my particular flight, the word was that carry-on laptops were fine and dandy.

So I slung it over my shoulder this morning, and set out in my little rental car at 9:25am, southbound on I-95, destination: Miami International Airport.

How ‘bout we digress into the world of rental cars for a bit?

Why not?

I’m starting to get the hang of the over-engineered things at last.

I’ve been driving beat up VW Vans for about twenty-five years now, and my experience with the latest alleged developments in occupant creature comforts in the newer cars has been ZERO.

I’m a guy who don’t know how the damned cruise control works, nevermind anything more modern than that.

I don’t like gizmos, despite my comfort level with computers.

Computers, for myself anyway, actually do something. Gizmos, on the other hand, seem to exist for no sensible reason other than to allow Joe Gizmo to wave it around and say, “Lookit this really cool thing I’ve got. Bet you wish you had one too, don’t you?”

No Joe, actually I do not.

Your gizmo is retarded, pointless, and annoying. And so are you.

The headlights on my rental car had everything EXCEPT an off switch. I kid you not.

And what the fuck is up with the windshield wipers on cars now? The damn things have forty-seven settings. This is not necessary, folks.

Ditto the radio. On the one in the car I drove this morning, I found THREE distinct and separate physical objects I could push or turn to cause the radio to move down the dial to a different station.

Do we need this? I think not.

Couple that with the fact that the very selfsame radio didn’t seem to have ANY way to adjust the bass to turn it down from it’s completely useless-for-listening WHUMPADUMPA setting, and I’m beginning to think that we’ve kind of lost sight of the original purpose of a radio.

It’s not for listening anymore, it’s for diddling with. Joe Gizmo, smirk frozen in place, works the fucking radio like it was mission control for a moonshot or something, all the while thinking how cool he is while he does it.

Wouldn’t it be easier just to go home and jerk off, Joe?

Not that any of the foregoing matters anyway, ‘cause despite my being able to tune in about three dozen different radio stations, NONE of them had anything playing that was even remotely worth listening to.

The cruise control took me all the way to Indian River County to finally figure out.

Little buttons on the steering wheel (where some of the extraneous radio buttons had also escaped to), with inscrutable symbols and pinhead-sized green lights, were supposed to permit me to drive with the astounding comfort level of “right foot off the gas pedal.”

Like my right foot would otherwise migrate into the trunk or someplace equivalent, if only it was freed of its onerous task of telling the car how fast to go.

And of course the thing had at least three separate buttons, to do its vital job of keeping my right foot living in the style in which it had become accustomed to. There might have been even more buttons, but I soon discovered that the attention required to discover all this arcane shit was sufficient to cause me to overturn into a ditch at high speed, and so I wisely decided to give it a rest.

The buttons toggled on and off, and interacted with each other in a most satisfying blizzard of permutations. No labels anywhere. Just incomprehensible symbols to guide me.

Eventually I discovered most of the hidden settings, and then immediately thereafter discovered that all of them were as useless as tits on a boar hog when it comes to actually causing the car do much at all by way of useful behavior.

Note to automobile engineers: Motorists on an interstate highway will NOT drive in anything resembling a smooth or efficient manner.

You’re either bunched up behind a swarm of semis and motor homes doing ten mph below the posted limit, or you’re getting crowded from behind by some idiot in a BMW who’s close enough to your back bumper to polish it with his front bumper. Many times this happens simultaneously, and the poor cruise control doesn’t stand a chance while you turn it on and off, and reset it constantly, as you futilely attempt to flow with the traffic well enough to avoid becoming a part of the evening eyewitless local news broadcast in a seventy-three car smashup.

I prudently left my right foot resting atop the gas pedal, where god in her infinite wisdom intended right feet to go when you’re driving.

Feh.

Among the other wonderful things I discovered on the road today is that the ridiculous ribbon thing has finally gone around the bend.

Before I’d even managed to hit the interstate, working my way through the Yuppieville that is Viera, I saw a shiny black SUV ahead of me with yet another ribbon on its rear end and curiosity got the better of me as I pulled up behind it at a red light.

Was it POW’s? Was it supporting our troops? Was it some damned kind of chest-thumping patriotic blather?

No, it wasn’t any of those things.

It was a SOCCER ribbon.

Soccer.

Ribbon.

Does this make ANY sense?

Sigh.

Eventually, I made it all the way to Miami.

But not before encountering the longest traffic jam I’ve ever seen in my life.

In Palm Beach County, natcherly.

Somebody needs to just come along and excise Palm Beach County.

The place is completely hopeless. I’m quite certain that it has more than just a little to do with the nucleus of moneyed evil that squats eponymously out on the Atlantic coast.

I drove happily southbound with not a care in the world, until I hit Palm Beach County.

At which point the drivers around me went more than just a little crazy, and I was forced to start paying really close attention to what was going on around me on the roadway.

Who ARE these guys?

None of ‘em are actually from Florida, that’s for sure.

But that leaves the question of where they come from glaringly unanswered.

Fucking Neptune from the looks of things.

Luckily for me, the longest traffic jam I’ve ever seen in my life was going down in the northbound lanes, leaving me completely unscathed as I dodged and weaved my way to the south.

Twenty miles of cars and trucks, four to six lanes in expanse, either stopped dead or moving at a walking pace, is quite a sobering sight.

I hope it goes away before I come back next week.

Finally the exit to 112 presented itself, and I’m off the interstate, on the last leg of my trip to the airport.

Dropped the car off at Budget, and hopped in the courtesy bus to airplaneville. Along the way, I got to talking with the driver and she revealed that she’s from Costa Rica in general, and Puntarenas in particular. Small world. We had fun batting the subject of surfing back and forth, and she was aware that there’s a very good wave between Puntarenas and Caldera. But I’m guessing that she’s never gonna try it for herself. After all, there’s SHARKS in the water. That spoken, even as we ducked and covered our way through that crown of Western Civilization: Miami traffic. Oh well, she was driving a goddamned bus, wasn’t she?

Out of the bus with a cheery “Goodbye,” and into the terminal.

Taca airlnes was delightfully uncrowded, and I was exactly on my personal time-line, four hours ahead of departure time. Ok then, now’s when we discover if we can bring our laptop into the secure areas with us.

If I have to sit here for four hours without it, I’m gonna be less than thrilled. What a perfect opportunity to write! I hope it doesn’t get wasted.

Up to the counter, and the nice people at Taca are just as friendly and helpful as they can be. Efficient, too. I’m done and outta there in less than ten minutes. Bing bang boom! And even better is the fact that they assure me that it’s ok to take my laptop with me as I go, not having to cram it inside my checked bag. Tra la fucking la!

Waltz down to the checkpoint for the departure gates, and get myself and my gear inspected.

Directly in front of me in line, a very pretty girl was required to remove more and more of her personal effects and outer layers of her clothing, for some reason, but they stopped making her take things off before it got really interesting.

I was next and had my own little incident. Musta been something about the laptop CASE, weirdly enough, ‘cause they shut the damned line down after letting the machine come through by itself. And then, just to make sure, they ran the case all the way through the x-ray machine and then grabbed it before I could, and ran it through AGAIN. What’s up with that?

Dunno.

Anyhoo, they eventually let me have my case, and I put the machine inside of it, gathered up all my other things, and off I step to gate A-19.

Which is where I’m sitting right this second, typing merrily away at it on the laptop I was kindly permitted to keep with me.

Thanks guys.

It’s now twenty after three and I’m inside of two hours till departure time, and outside a good old fashioned Florida thunderstorm is just now wrapping up. Lotta serious rain and lightning there, a little while ago.

For myself, I’m rested and ready.

Next stop: El Salvador.