I was born in Lynwood, California, on June 9th, 1965. The same birthday as Cole Porter, Les Paul and Johnny Depp. The same hometown as Snoop Dogg and Weird Al Yankovic. So you can see I was destined for, something....
Family quickly moved out to safety, behind the Orange curtain. Childhood in Orange County. Pretty standard fare. I liked destroying drumsets, writing stories, and boogie boarding. Played a lot of AYSO soccer.
1979: Family moved to Cucamonga, out on the desert edge of the L.A. megalopolis. Out of range of all the radio stations except the gigantic one that played nothing but disco. Quickly started making my own music. No surfing on the slopes of Cucamonga peak, so started hiking by myself a lot. Enjoyed being in actual nature, and lots of it out there to be in. Started my own newsletter, the Cucamonga Courier, and later a literary journal, The Ego. Both produced on my manual typewriter. Both had circulations in single digits and folded quickly.
Escaped from High School by the skin of my teeth and entered Chaffey College, a JC about a mile from my house. Stayed at this two year for 3.5 years. Got my first job (Black Angus - no, really!), my first girlfriend, and my first car. Lost 'em all by and by. Wrote a novel when I was 19. It's astoundingly wretched and will never be let out of the trunk. Finally got okay on the drums.
| May, 1986. Age 21. Outside Cedar City, Utah. Jammin' during a rest stop on the March. | The Chalice Well in Glastonbury. I never made it down from the steps in back. |
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1986: Two weeks before finals that would have graduated me I leave college and join the Great Peace March. Everybody I know is utterly astounded by this. I spend the next 9 months traveling oh so slowly from the L.A. Coliseum to the Lincoln Memorial, via the Brooklyn Bridge. This is major plot point #1 in my life. Everything became BPM or APM (before or after the Peace March).
Get home from doing something impossible and decide to make music with a band of friends. Hey, doing impossible things get addictive after awhile. Moved to Santa Cruz on a whim and a AAA TriptikŪ map. Been here 15 years now and it felt like home from day 1. Start writing columns.
1996: Trip overseas with 5 friends. Unemployed at the time. Piloted a canal barge across Southern England. During an overnight stay in Glastonbury I suffer a visitation at the Chalice Well (see the monograph on the subject HERE.) This is Plot Point #2 in my life. BCW or ACW. I get home to Live Oak and immediately get a job at 13:Real Magick. Suffer 'Retail Trad' and become a witch. Give up car and start bicycling everywhere. Edited the Santa Cruz Cycling Club newsletter for five years.
I work at Cabrillo College. Have an office and a retirement plan now, and am okay with that. I bicycle commute a lot. I serve the community through Community Seed, the source of most of my friends. I am married to a beautiful, awesome woman who accepts me sometimes and challenges me others, and knows when to make that distinction. And we had the greatest wedding ever. Still writing columns, still drumming, still 'cycling.
And I have always been one of the happiest people that I've ever known.
Whew! That's weird to write like that! :-)