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In the sixth grade Ben and I had magic pens. The pens were a gift from someone to me on or around Christmas time and though I don’t recall what made them magical I do recall that they had pictures of my favorite basketball teams on them and that they were very cool. I shared these magic pens with Ben because what good is a magical gift if not shared among friends? We used the pens to cast a spell on our favorite desk that would ward off evil spirits — namely, our teacher and the girl Ben liked for a day.

We didn’t actually consider our teacher to be evil, in all fairness, but we did realize that her motivation for coming to school every day was different than ours and we respected that our differences would probably never be reconciled. Ben and I came to school to play sports at recess; I am still not sure why she was there. Anyhow, we can be territorial and when we were forced to move from one desk to another we went about the necessary reverse-spell-casting measures in order to free the charmed spirits from the desk we were leaving.

When we woke up in McKinlyville, Ben was still so full of food he refused to even consider the notion of going to breakfast and, instead, we went to Clam Bake Beach and lay on a log that — although we had no magic pens — did warrant a spell or two, for old times sake. It was there, with the newly reborn sun, that we found the California we had been looking for and bragging about for months prior: the sensual coastline; days in the sunshine; laying down supine; having the best time; walking the Congo line.

We had finally made it. The sun was out. We had hours to ourselves with our Frisbee, our books, and our companionship. This is what we had been hoping for all along: relaxed days of riding followed by numerous post-prandial naps on the beach. What is more: we were in organic, vegetarian, vegan fare heaven and, much to our amusement, we were even meeting other bike tourists. Though we spoke various incantations, there was usually little threat that we couldn’t have shook off any extended offers of friendship and conversation from these riders. From what we did encounter, however, we learned that, apparently, the sensible way to tour the West Coast is to do just that: tour the coast. Every biker we met raised an eyebrow when we mentioned our path past Mount Rainier, Mount Saint Helens, Mount Hood, and Crater Lake. Sheepishly, the response was most often:

“Oh, well, we just rode down the coast — but that’s hilly too.”

There is a fairly common understanding that California is a “blue state.” It’s practically its own country, as a matter of fact, considering it has a voting constituency and a gross national product that rivals other countries (including the United States), and it can be said that it has liberal tendencies. Organic food and car emissions are just the beginning of its insane foray in the field of liberal politics and Hollywood propaganda. But, dear reader, there exists a place on the Californian coastline where CNN liberals are lynched in the street and the word Fox News has never graced anyone lips because the feed is scrambled. There exists a place left of communism and pinker than red. Even Ben was embarrassed and he is a libertarian commu-nazi.

Whereas Crescent City, the first town we came to inside the Californian border, still held traces of rural conservatism, the further south we rode (and the closer we came to San Francisco), the more we saw less of what existed in the desert of Oregon and the plains of Washington. It was only a short ride, in terms of distance (not in terms of philosophy) from McKinleyville to Arcata, which was our destination on our relaxed day of pedaling and home to leftist guerrillas and granola munching hippies transported from the 60s and thrown into the streets with their signs and protests still in tact. Ben was enraged by his very brethren who were sullying the fine name of democratic politics and felt required to start a protest of his own.

BEN: Arcata is actually pretty nice, got a Whole Foods store, a nice little square, lots of leftist protesters protesting — side note: okay, protesters, this is the thing about protesters in towns that are totally one way or another: who are they talking to? In Arcata, literally, the only reason a democrat might ever be threatened is because the entire vote either goes to communists, socialists, or green party, and the three republicans who have not really lived there but are kind of going through and happen to get in and cast a vote, vote for the same person like Mickey Mouse. That is the only threat the leftist hegemony in Arcata.

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