To Shake the Sleeping Self

by Jedidiah Jenkins

  I had been posting about the trip every day on Instagram, and it was fun to have people follow along virtually. “Oh my gosh, you’re really doing it?” “How do you charge your phone?” “How is your phone working?” But the feedback added an element of performance to the trip. I had an audience. So many people were worried about how I charged my phone. This amused me. I would charge it in coffee shops and cafés, of course. It wasn’t so hard. But people imagined me in the woods.

  We camped with our friends above the waterfall, and over beers that night concocted a plan.

  “We should wake up at dawn and shower in the waterfall!” my friend said.

  “We’re doing that,” Weston said.

  But Jed the Rule Follower panicked.

  “Oh my gosh,” I protested. “Y’all, there is no way down. And won’t rangers check in the morning?” I asked. “That’s probably like a thousand-dollar ticket.”

  “Don’t be a baby,” my friend said. “You’re biking to Patagonia, you gotta be bold. We’ll go at first light, no chubby ranger is up and checking then. We’ll be fine. I’ll wake you up.”

  “Okay, we’ll be up,” Weston said.

  I was nervous about the idea but fine with being pressured. If we got a ticket, it wouldn’t be my fault, and I could say “I told you so.”

  I awoke to my friend leaning over me. “Wake up, it’s time.” Weston and I sprung out of our sleeping bags and headed to the overlook. We climbed down the flaky cliff, sliding and hanging on the ice plants and shrubs. With scrapes and scratches and big rocks giving way, tumbling down and breaking into pieces, we made it down the waterfall. Up close, it looked huge. The water fell in clumps and looked heavy. We stripped naked and got under the water. The illegality of it felt liberating. The naughtiness added to the fun. The water was fresh and cold and clean. It was the best shower you could imagine.

  Back at the campsite, and feeling refreshed and scandalous, we started packing up.

  I checked my phone and saw that I had 10,000 new followers on Instagram. What?! What was going on? I refreshed, in one second I’d grown another 100. What happened? Wait, did they? I checked my feed and there it was, a photo I had taken of my bicycle by the ocean…featured on Instagram’s official account. “Follow this guy,” the message said. “He’s riding his bike from Oregon to Patagonia and Instagramming the whole thing.” Posted two hours ago. It had 20,000 likes. Oh my god. Josh and Matt had posted us to 60 million people. Oh my god. They didn’t hate us.

  “Weston! They posted!”

  “They did!? Show me.” I showed him the post. By then it was 21,000 likes.

  “Hell, yeah! This is brilliant. I always knew they’d post,” he said.

  “You did not. Wow, this is crazy. Like, thousands of people we don’t know are going to watch us bike. Is that good?”

  “Absolutely, Jed! Think about it. If we have followers from all over, we can ask Instagram for people to stay with in Mexico and South America! People will let us stay with them,” Weston said.

  “Oh wow, that’s a great idea.”

  Now that we were going to be watched by thousands of strangers, I felt the affectation of having an audience. I felt that I would speak differently. See things differently. So many people. I began to worry. Would I care more about the post than the actual experience? Would I have to be fake or sanitize my posts?

  No. My mom already followed me, so I was already censoring myself a bit. Which I think is okay. Saying everything you think or do in public isn’t appropriate at a dinner party or online. So that shouldn’t be an issue. No, I’m just going to post what I would post if I were talking to my friends in mixed company. That’s effortless and still me.

  Everything is okay and good, I thought.

  Then, Fuck. I guess I can’t get hurt and quit now.

  * * *

  —

  THE SOUTHERN PART of Big Sur served up wind and dense mist. I had never really feared for my safety on the road, but on the tight turns, chubby-faced white retirees in RVs carved the road up with sharp turns and new rigs. They would slide by so close, my depth perception failed, and I was certain I had passed through them like a ghost.

  Big Sur ends abruptly in the south. The mountains that guard the land from the sea fall away, and softer green hills make room for cow fields and farmland. We stopped at a pullout where elephant seals congregated on the beach, and a parking lot had been erected for tourists to stop and stare at these obese wonders. I leaned on the wooden fence to stare at the massive seals below. Most of them were sleeping, and a few were hump-flopping their way across the beach. None seemed to be in the water. A huge male, with his disgusting spongy nose, was chasing a smaller male across the beach. Back on the bikes, evening came on faster than it seemed it should have. We passed Hearst Castle, high on the golden hills to our left, and grabbed dinner at an overpriced diner. I ate chicken chimichangas (which will be important to know later) and was miserably full. We stopped at a gas station to buy some water and toilet paper for our imminent camping.

  Parked just outside was another touring bike, with a trailer hitched to the back. When I looked at it more closely, I realized it wasn’t actually a trailer, but a kid’s seat that gets pulled behind. The seat held a big, overflowing backpack and was so overfilled that bungee cords strained to hold the contents together. Weston had already found the rider and was talking to him.

  His name was Johnny Jones. He was very tan and overweight and had bad teeth and a huge smile. He had no hair but wore a bandana on his head. He looked almost Samoan, like a giant baby. I went inside and bought some supplies. I returned to my bike and passed Weston and Johnny, chatting away, entering the gas station. I packed my panniers with snacks and water and toilet paper.

  After some time, Weston came up to me holding a lunch bag.

  “Where’d you get that? Is that food?” I said.

  “Johnny gave it to me!” He opened it up and it was absolutely full of weed.

  “Whoa!” I said.

  “He is traveling the country by bicycle as a way to deal with his depression. He said, ‘Who can be sad on a bike?’ He talks to offices and construction sites and asks for one-dollar donations. He used to be on all kinds of meds and prescription shit and gave it all up for the bike. After he told me his story, I offered to buy him a Gatorade…I don’t even really have money for Gatorade, but I just felt like doing something nice for this guy. His story is amazing. Let whatever money I have flow through me. So I bought it for him…and he said he wanted to repay me, and dug this out of his bag, and gave it all to me. He said weed is real medicine. Not that man-made crap. Holy shit.”

  It was so much weed.

  “You’re going to die from that,” I said.

  “I know. I’m so excited. Feels like a sign from the universe. From God. I think Johnny Jones was an angel. And he has your same initials. Wow.”

  * * *

  —

  JUST SOUTH OF the gas station we found a campground in the small tourist outpost that exists only to serve Hearst Castle. The campground wasn’t full and there was no one at the entrance, so we rode in and set up shop in a far corner spot, hoping we could wake at sunrise and be out of there without paying.

  As the sun set, we threw our bikes down, hung our hammocks, and walked out at twilight to the beach. We sat on the sand and listened to the waves. Weston pulled out his rolling papers and an enormous handful of weed.

  “Jed, you don’t like weed, right?”

  “No. It makes me sick.”

  “Come on. Tonight, on this beach, in this place, it’s worth giving it another try. You always say you’re waiting for the right moment. What if tonight is the right moment?” Weston said.

  I’ll admit, I believe in giving things multiple tries, and not holding a person or an experience or a thing to one bad memory, or three. Especially things t
hat people love. And the trip itself had an exploratory spirit about it. What was a bike trip like this for if not trying things? Saying yes to anything.

  “Okay,” I said finally, “but I’m not going to smoke much. Just enough to feel something.” Weston seemed to inflate with triumph. Smiling, he rolled a very fat joint, lit it, and took a long drag. He passed it to me. “Wait, so what is the proper way?” I asked.

  “Pull in the smoke, and hold it for as long as you can, deep in your lungs, let it go all the way to the bottom, you’ll probably cough but that’s okay,” Weston said. I inhaled deep, held it, and coughed.

  “Good. Okay, puff puff pass.” Weston reached for it and took another long toke. “Johnny said this weed was given to him in Humboldt County, and was grown outdoors. So it’s more harsh than the candy-looking, medical-grade stuff you see in dispensaries. But it’s good, you’ll be good.” He would speak with that flattened stoner voice that comes from holding your palate closed as you let the smoke sit in your lungs. I didn’t feel anything.

  “Here, let me try again.” I reached for it and inhaled again. I held it in and only made the smallest chirp of a cough.

  “Okay, I think that’s enough,” I said.

  “Well, maybe one more, then you’re done.”

  I wasn’t feeling anything so I took another long large pull. Then Weston finished it off for several puffs. I studied my feelings to see if anything was happening.

  Weston began doing yoga in the almost darkness. “Just feel your body,” he said. “Every inch, just move slowly.”

  By now, I was definitely feeling something. My head felt like it was filling with water, or jelly, and my eyes would drag the image when I turned my head. My arms began to feel very heavy. This was it. It was happening. Quick, do yoga, I thought. I am remarkably inflexible, so yoga meant waving my arms around repeatedly and bending over ever so slightly. My mouth became very dry, so dry I thought something was wrong. I don’t know how long we sat there, Weston doing yoga, me pretending to be okay while overanalyzing everything happening to me.

  When I stood up, I felt like the connection to my body had a satellite delay. I was sinking. It was like trying to walk on the bottom of a pool. My stomach began to ache. How could this be what everyone loves about being high? I was not relaxed, or giggly, or hungry. I thought my mouth was going to crack off. My whole body felt like cement.

  “I’ll be right back, I have to use the bathroom,” I said. My stomach hurt. It was such an odd feeling—a pressure in my gut, a knot, an ache. If I sit on the toilet, maybe something will happen and it’ll help. I stumbled through the campground to the bathroom, which was a cinder-block structure with six or seven doors all in a row, each stall with its own mirror and a sink. My stomach felt bloated, like maybe I’d swallowed a baby. Maybe the chicken chimichangas I had eaten earlier at the overpriced tourist restaurant near Hearst Castle were bad. Maybe getting high screws with your digestion. I wished Weston had come with me to the bathroom, so I could ask him which one was the culprit.

  I thought if I took a shit, the pressure would go away and maybe the high, too, so I pulled my pants down around my ankles and sat on the toilet. I was breathing heavy and strange, slow, long breaths like a woman giving birth. Nothing was happening. I looked around the room, trying to count how many white-painted cinder blocks were stacked from floor to ceiling. I pushed to try to make something happen. Nothing. Even sitting there, with my pants down, my arms folded in my lap, my body hunched over, my stomach wasn’t improving. It was getting worse. I felt the pressure in my stomach expand, grow, and suddenly my saliva was warm and flowing. Oh God. I lunged forward, still sitting, and threw up on the floor in front of me, into my underwear, all over my shoes and shins and bare knees. The entire chicken chimichanga lunch.

  The shock of this should have sobered me up. It did not. I was still high, still sluggish, sitting with my bare ass on a toilet, a lava field of puke all over the floor. Often when I am alone, and especially when I am drunk, I talk out loud to myself. Apparently I also do this when I am high. “Well, this is tragic,” I said. “You have to clean this up, right now. Can you imagine a poor park ranger coming in here and seeing this? He’d quit.” I was trying to make myself laugh. I think I was smiling.

  I looked around for any kind of help. There was a sink. And a paper towel dispenser. It was empty. I stood up, stepped out of my shorts and underwear, and walked over to the sink. I lifted first one leg into the sink, and washed it off, then the other. I threw my underwear away. I rinsed out my shorts. I scrubbed my shoes. I got massive wads of toilet paper, the thin kind that disintegrates when wet, and began scooping the chimichanga mountain into the toilet, one double-handed scoop at a time. I was still so high. I don’t know how long I was there, on all fours, scrubbing and scooping, ass in the air, soaking my shorts and shoes in the sink. It could have been three hours or twenty minutes. Once the floor was clean, I spent God knows how long wringing out my shorts to get them dry. I put them on. I put my shoes on. I looked around the room, slowly, blurry, proud of my cleaning job, ashamed of my chimichanga. I opened the door and thought, “No one will know what just happened behind this closed door.”

  I did feel better, still high as a satellite, but my stomach didn’t hurt anymore. I floated through the dark toward our campsite. Weston was standing out in the road, away from our hammocks, visibly upset.

  “Where’ve you been!?” he demanded.

  “In the bathroom,” I said. “I didn’t feel well.”

  “There’s something in our campsite!” Weston said, with the truest tone of fear. “There’s a man walking around our hammocks in the dark.” Weston’s knees were bent and he was bobbing, ready to run or fight.

  I was too high and tired for this. “You’re sure it isn’t a raccoon? You think there’s a man crawling around in the bushes around our hammocks? I doubt that.”

  “DUDE, I heard it!” he exclaimed. “It was too big to be a raccoon. Maybe five raccoons. What if it’s a serial killer on the loose, or a homeless guy on meth!?” He was sincerely scared.

  “You are high. So am I. I didn’t hear anything, so I don’t care,” I said. “I hope it kills me.”

  I walked with determination into our campsite and crawled into my hammock. My sleeping bag was crumpled underneath me, and I fought for what felt like forever to get my feet in it. Weston watched for a while, then, seeing that I wasn’t scared, crawled in his hammock and went to sleep.

  I woke up rested and sober and hoping that the chimichanga incident had been a dream. But I saw that I wasn’t wearing underwear, my shorts were still wet, my shoes still soaked.

  Over instant coffee in lukewarm water, I informed Weston that my weed days were over.

  Chapter 4

  THE TEMPTATION OF HOME

  (Southern California)

  13,162 miles to go

  We biked into San Luis Obispo and stayed a day there. The next day, we would ride to Pismo Beach and meet up with Weston’s mom, who’d decided to come out and visit us. I’d never met her before. Weston was excited for the reunion, but apprehensive. He had a charged way of talking about his family and his childhood. A lack of stability. Lack of security. But love, too. We biked into Pismo and along the beach to a narrow house on the sand. Their family friend or some uncle owned it, I can’t remember. As we pulled into the driveway, Weston’s mom and stepdad stood waiting to greet us.

  “Boys! You’ve made it!” his mom shouted. “Jed, it is so nice to meet you. I’m Linda. I’ve heard so much about you. If my boy is going to go off and do something crazy like this, I’m glad it’s with you.”

  “Linda, so nice to meet you! Thank you,” I said. “I’ve heard so much about you, too.” That wasn’t true. But I always say that.

  “Come in, we’ve already cooked up a feast.”

  We chained up our bikes and carried our panniers inside the house. T
here was a guest room on the first floor by the garage. Then upstairs was a big long room with windows facing the ocean and the broad beach.

  She had pizza boxes open on the table. Weston made eyes at me, as if referencing the junk food. We ate ravenously and drank our Cokes with the TV on, and they asked us questions about camping and sleeping and bikes and charging our phones.

  “Has Weston tried any of his theories on you yet?” Linda asked.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Well, he’s always into some new idea. I just quit listening. You can’t take it too seriously. He’ll be on to the next thing in a few days. He’s just so passionate,” she said.

  I already knew this about Weston’s personality, but it was different to hear it from his mother. Weston didn’t protest. She was performing in front of him for me, speaking to me, but effectively speaking to him.

  “In high school he was so Christian, which I didn’t like. Then he was atheist. Now he’s what? What are you, honey, vegan?”

  “No, Mom.”

  She picked up on his frustration. “Oh baby, you know I love you, and I’ll support you whatever you believe. I just get whiplash is all.”

  I thought about Weston in a new way after seeing him with his mom. He wasn’t a caricature, no matter what his antics. He was a whole person, shaped by nature and circumstances.

  Later, while Weston read Siddhartha and his parents watched TV, I tried to get more intentional with my journaling. It hurts to write by hand if I do it for too long, which pushes me to keep my language tight and right. The permanence of pen on paper means something. You say it, and it’s there, and if you change your mind, the scribbled-out words are still there—no pretending you’re perfect. For me, thoughts and emotions stay cloudy until I put them into words, give them bodies to walk around in and be their own thing. That’s when they become knowable.