Shakedown at K93
On most of my adventures, I'm not campaigning for a peace hero.
This time, Dave and I brought another high school buddy along on our expedition to Mexico,
Mike Land. We had a VW Van with no windows in the back, like a panel truck. We told him about the surf and the girls, both in abundance, at a little beach camp south of Ensenada, Campo Todos Santos, so named for the bay and the little islands 8 miles off the coast there.
And sure enough, just like we promised, by the evening of our first day at the camp we had each paired up with a young lady from Orange County, vacationing with one of their sets of parents. It was the same demographic formula as beach campers in Carpinteria; girls away from hometowns and their school-year boyfriends; with time to kill on the beach, looking to have some new boy to play around with for a few days; the mutual catch and release of summer romances. Life has been so good to me.
The first day, we horsed around on the beach, surfed the little shorebreak near the camp, met some girls, had some tacos. So by the second day, we had met their parents/chaperones and since we seemed to be responsible enough companions, we were allowed to take them on an excursion to find some bigger surf about 15 miles north of Ensenada at one of the reef breaks of Salsipuedes Bay. I forget exactly where but we referred to the various surf spots by the nearest kilometer marker, which counts the distance from the border. Could have been K-93 or something like that.
The highway was a 2-lane road and 2 or 3 cars stopped behind us as we waited to turn left onto a dirt road to the ocean. Finally there was a break in the traffic and we were starting to cross the southbound lane when we were sideswiped by a 3/4 ton flatbed truck that had come roaring around the stopped cars behind us. We all bounced to a stop on the dirt side road.
The plot was obvious when we looked over the situation. The long driver's side of the VW van was stove in slightly, the driver's door crunched so it wouldn't latch. We could drive it, with a belt holding the door closed, and nobody was hurt.
The flatbed truck looked brand new. The cab and the interior were immaculate. From the looks of the unscratched bed, this working truck had never done a day's work. The deck was clean shiny black painted steel and oak. It never had a pallet slide across it; never had a pile of gravel, shovels and wheelbarrows on it; never had had side rails on it. It didn't have a scratch. The truck was showroom new, except for the front fenders. They were all beat up, both sides. This work truck had been put to only one use: To run people off the road.
The situation at that time in Mexico, well known to us, was that when there was an automobile "accident", and the police got involved, they would arrest everybody, no matter if the cause of it, and the person responsible was obvious. Drivers and passengers alike would be taken into custody until the police could sort matters out. This is to maximize the virtual ransom of payoffs it took to resolve police matters in Mexico.
The truck driver and his passengers knew this too. That was their whole plan; that we would realize that paying them off was a better option than getting the police involved and having to pay them off too. I will refer to them as the "banditos" from here on. They were argumentative and playing up a fiction that they were the victims and their beautiful truck now had a bashed fender and it was our fault. It was clear that the damage to its fender must have been caused by multiple impacts with different colored vehicles, on both sides. Shaking down tourists was the banditos' regular day job.
We had a huddle about our course of action. We could beat up the banditos and race for the border, that could go badly, and we had three girls we were responsible for to return to their parents back at Campo Todos Santos 15 miles in the other direction. We couldn't take them on this risky fight and flight. We could wait for the police, which would ruin everybody's vacation and then some. Or we could pay the banditos off with what we could scrape together, and go surfing with these girls; which is what we did. Between us we came up with $90, and the banditos went on their way.
The surf spot sat below the low bluff at the coastline that is a common condition of the Pacific coastline all the way into Northern California. There were many places where you could turn off the road and cross the bluff and access the surf. You could park in some places and spend the night if you wanted to, there were no facilities, and sometimes someone would come along and ask for a camping fee, often not. We preferred the Todos Santos Camp because it had bathrooms, a little store, and girls.
This day we were at reef break that was known to us, where the swell rises up gradually and gives you a right slide that can go on for 100 yards and before it peters out as it passes the reef into deep water again. It was expected to be an easy spot for the girls to try. At first the boys went out and caught a few rides but then there was a long lull between sets when we were just sitting there. Suzy came swimming out. She came to my board and pulled me off.
She wanted to go down, she led me down pulling my hand until I got the message. Surfboards had no leashes, and we swam to the bottom, about 20 feet, among the rocks, fish, urchins and seaweed; free-diving with no gear at all. What a dream. I don't remember anything about the waves that day, just flying through a crystal underwater garden with this vision of a girl.
It was a fabulous day at the beach, if you didn't count the car wreck and the shakedown. Outside of that it was perfect. We returned to Todos Santos in the late afternoon in our beat up VW van with stories to tell.
There was another feature of the Todos Santos Camp that made it the ideal place for our summer adventures. It was less than a mile to downtown Ensenada. You could walk there from the camp along a white sand beach for the nightlife. Our favorite club was the "Molino Rojo", ("Moulin Rouge"). It was a nightclub with about a 20 foot by 20 foot dance floor, outlined with inlaid blue lights, surrounded by booths on three sides, a bar and bandstand on one end. In Mexico, the age for drinking alcoholic beverages was whatever. If you had the money, you could have what you wanted. We were all 18 or 19 at the time and this was a fun thing to do just to go a bar and act like an adult.
We'd get a booth and order up drinks. The band would play imitations of American pop songs and we'd get up and dance. At the time there were different kinds of stylized fast dancing, that were simple to do, like the "Twist". It was easy to do, required no grace or fancy footwork and you could put however much rhythmic energy into it that the music inspired you to. The band's playlist would have 3 or 4 of these faster tunes to twist to, and when everybody had worked up a little body heat, the band would play a couple of "slow dance" tunes, so that we could enjoy the steamy pleasure of being close and moving together rhythmically.
Then back to the booth for another round of drinks, repeat. A few hours later, three healthy
young couples, a little tipsy, smelling of sun tan lotion, very turned on with each other and a mile of sandy beach to walk in the moonlight...I draw the curtain on the rest. That was what it was like on Shakedown Day, I was in love. I still love the memory of her, though I never saw her again.
Years later I attended a picnic in Carpinteria for our 50th High School reunion, 2011. and Mike Land was there. I hadn't seen Mike in 49 years since that trip I've just described. Then he introduced me to his wife. She was the girl he had met in Mexico and was in the back of the VW bus with us that day when we were run off the road. Mike hadn't got the "catch and release" memo. Good for him, it appears to have lasted. Maybe it was me that picked up the wrong memo.
Copyright © 2022 John Oliver
All Rights Reserved
mail@unclejohnsweb.com
This time, Dave and I brought another high school buddy along on our expedition to Mexico, Mike Land. We had a VW Van with no windows in the back, like a panel truck. We told him about the surf and the girls, both in abundance, at a little beach camp south of Ensenada, Campo Todos Santos, so named for the bay and the little islands 8 miles off the coast there.
And sure enough, just like we promised, by the evening of our first day at the camp we had each paired up with a young lady from Orange County, vacationing with one of their sets of parents. It was the same demographic formula as beach campers in Carpinteria; girls away from hometowns and their school-year boyfriends; with time to kill on the beach, looking to have some new boy to play around with for a few days; the mutual catch and release of summer romances. Life has been so good to me.
The first day, we horsed around on the beach, surfed the little shorebreak near the camp, met some girls, had some tacos. So by the second day, we had met their parents/chaperones and since we seemed to be responsible enough companions, we were allowed to take them on an excursion to find some bigger surf about 15 miles north of Ensenada at one of the reef breaks of Salsipuedes Bay. I forget exactly where but we referred to the various surf spots by the nearest kilometer marker, which counts the distance from the border. Could have been K-93 or something like that.
The highway was a 2-lane road and 2 or 3 cars stopped behind us as we waited to turn left onto a dirt road to the ocean. Finally there was a break in the traffic and we were starting to cross the southbound lane when we were sideswiped by a 3/4 ton flatbed truck that had come roaring around the stopped cars behind us. We all bounced to a stop on the dirt side road.
The plot was obvious when we looked over the situation. The long driver's side of the VW van was stove in slightly, the driver's door crunched so it wouldn't latch. We could drive it, with a belt holding the door closed, and nobody was hurt.
The flatbed truck looked brand new. The cab and the interior were immaculate. From the looks of the unscratched bed, this working truck had never done a day's work. The deck was clean shiny black painted steel and oak. It never had a pallet slide across it; never had a pile of gravel, shovels and wheelbarrows on it; never had had side rails on it. It didn't have a scratch. The truck was showroom new, except for the front fenders. They were all beat up, both sides. This work truck had been put to only one use: To run people off the road.
The situation at that time in Mexico, well known to us, was that when there was an automobile "accident", and the police got involved, they would arrest everybody, no matter if the cause of it, and the person responsible was obvious. Drivers and passengers alike would be taken into custody until the police could sort matters out. This is to maximize the virtual ransom of payoffs it took to resolve police matters in Mexico.
The truck driver and his passengers knew this too. That was their whole plan; that we would realize that paying them off was a better option than getting the police involved and having to pay them off too. I will refer to them as the "banditos" from here on. They were argumentative and playing up a fiction that they were the victims and their beautiful truck now had a bashed fender and it was our fault. It was clear that the damage to its fender must have been caused by multiple impacts with different colored vehicles, on both sides. Shaking down tourists was the banditos' regular day job.
We had a huddle about our course of action. We could beat up the banditos and race for the border, that could go badly, and we had three girls we were responsible for to return to their parents back at Campo Todos Santos 15 miles in the other direction. We couldn't take them on this risky fight and flight. We could wait for the police, which would ruin everybody's vacation and then some. Or we could pay the banditos off with what we could scrape together, and go surfing with these girls; which is what we did. Between us we came up with $90, and the banditos went on their way.
The surf spot sat below the low bluff at the coastline that is a common condition of the Pacific coastline all the way into Northern California. There were many places where you could turn off the road and cross the bluff and access the surf. You could park in some places and spend the night if you wanted to, there were no facilities, and sometimes someone would come along and ask for a camping fee, often not. We preferred the Todos Santos Camp because it had bathrooms, a little store, and girls.
This day we were at reef break that was known to us, where the swell rises up gradually and gives you a right slide that can go on for 100 yards and before it peters out as it passes the reef into deep water again. It was expected to be an easy spot for the girls to try. At first the boys went out and caught a few rides but then there was a long lull between sets when we were just sitting there. Suzy came swimming out. She came to my board and pulled me off. She wanted to go down, she led me down pulling my hand until I got the message. Surfboards had no leashes, and we swam to the bottom, about 20 feet, among the rocks, fish, urchins and seaweed; free-diving with no gear at all. What a dream. I don't remember anything about the waves that day, just flying through a crystal underwater garden with this vision of a girl.
It was a fabulous day at the beach, if you didn't count the car wreck and the shakedown. Outside of that it was perfect. We returned to Todos Santos in the late afternoon in our beat up VW van with stories to tell.
There was another feature of the Todos Santos Camp that made it the ideal place for our summer adventures. It was less than a mile to downtown Ensenada. You could walk there from the camp along a white sand beach for the nightlife. Our favorite club was the "Molino Rojo", ("Moulin Rouge"). It was a nightclub with about a 20 foot by 20 foot dance floor, outlined with inlaid blue lights, surrounded by booths on three sides, a bar and bandstand on one end. In Mexico, the age for drinking alcoholic beverages was whatever. If you had the money, you could have what you wanted. We were all 18 or 19 at the time and this was a fun thing to do just to go a bar and act like an adult.
We'd get a booth and order up drinks. The band would play imitations of American pop songs and we'd get up and dance. At the time there were different kinds of stylized fast dancing, that were simple to do, like the "Twist". It was easy to do, required no grace or fancy footwork and you could put however much rhythmic energy into it that the music inspired you to. The band's playlist would have 3 or 4 of these faster tunes to twist to, and when everybody had worked up a little body heat, the band would play a couple of "slow dance" tunes, so that we could enjoy the steamy pleasure of being close and moving together rhythmically.
Then back to the booth for another round of drinks, repeat. A few hours later, three healthy young couples, a little tipsy, smelling of sun tan lotion, very turned on with each other and a mile of sandy beach to walk in the moonlight...I draw the curtain on the rest. That was what it was like on Shakedown Day, I was in love. I still love the memory of her, though I never saw her again.
Years later I attended a picnic in Carpinteria for our 50th High School reunion, 2011. and Mike Land was there. I hadn't seen Mike in 49 years since that trip I've just described. Then he introduced me to his wife. She was the girl he had met in Mexico and was in the back of the VW bus with us that day when we were run off the road. Mike hadn't got the "catch and release" memo. Good for him, it appears to have lasted. Maybe it was me that picked up the wrong memo.
Copyright © 2022 John Oliver
All Rights Reserved
mail@unclejohnsweb.com
All Rights Reserved
mail@unclejohnsweb.com