he might actually break. But no cause for concern right now, because the good doctor isn't smiling. His face is set in fierce concentration as he heads for his Mercedes.
“You're actually smarter than you look,” Petra says to Boone.
“Low bar to jump,” Boone says. He waits for Teddy to pull out of the lot, then starts the van and follows.
“Can you tail him without him seeing us?” Petra asks.
“‘Tail’ him?”
“Well, can you?”
“If I don't screw it up,” Boone says.
“Well, don't.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
It's one of your slower chases, as chases go. Lots of brake lights and waits at traffic signals as they follow Teddy up Prospect Avenue and then north on Torrey Pines Road. Teddy takes a left onto La Jolla Shores Road and they follow him through the beach community, then up the steep hill onto the campus of the University of California at San Diego, where they meander through the narrow, winding road past classroom buildings, dorms, and graduate-student apartments.
Boone drops a couple of cars back and follows Teddy up to Torrey Pines, past the Salk Institute and the whole complex of medical research buildings that define the area. Then it's through Torrey Pines State Reserve, up to the top of the hill, where there's this great, sudden view of the ocean stretching out in front of them, from Torrey Pines Beach all the way up to the bluffs at Del Mar.
Highway 101.
45
U.S. Highway 101.
The Pacific Coast Highway.
The PCH.
The Boulevard of Unbroken Dreams.
The Yellow Brick Road.
You may get your kicks on Route 66, but you get your fun on Highway 101. You may take 66 to find America, but you won't find The American Dream until you hit the PCH. Sixty-six is the route, but 101 is the destination. You travel 66, you arrive at 101. It's the end of the road, the beginning of the ride.
Back in the back-in-the, those early surfers lugged their heavy wooden boards up and down what was then a virtually empty highway. They had the joint pretty much to themselves, a small wandering band of George Freeth disciples searching for the promised wave. And they found it, breaking all up and down 101. They could just pull off the road and hit the beach, and they did, from Ocean Beach to Santa Cruz.
Then World War II came along, and America discovered the California coast. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers, sailors, and marines were stationed in San Diego and Los Angeles on their way to the Pacific, and when they came back, if they came back, a lot of them settled in the sun and the fun. Like, how are you going to keep them down on the farm after they've seen Laguna?
While their counterparts were reengaging with American society by creating suburbia and making a religion of conformity, these cats wanted to get away from all that.
They wanted the beach.
They wanted to surf.
This was the genesis of the “surf bum,” the image of surfing as not only a culture but as a counter culture. For the first time, surfers defined themselves in contrast to the dominant culture. Not for them the nine-to-five job, the gray flannel suit, the tract home, two kids, manicured lawn, swing set, and driveway. Surfing was freedom from all of that. Surfing was sun, sand, and water; it was beer and maybe a little grass. It was timeless time, because surfing obeys the rhythms of nature, not the corporate time clock.
It was the antithesis of mainstream America at the time, and there came into existence little surfing communities-call them “colonies” or even “communes” if you have to-up and down Highway 101.
And a lot of these surfers were beat, man; they were the West Coast beatniks, Southern California Division, who, instead of hitting the streets of San Francisco-North Beach coffeehouses and poetry readings-took their bongos to the real beach and found their dharma in a wave. These guys had seen “civilization” on the battlefields and in the bombed-out cities of Europe and Asia and didn't like it, and they came to Pacific Beach, San Onofre, Doheny, and Malibu to create their own culture. They camped on the beaches, collected cans to buy food for the cookouts, played guitars and ukuleles, drank beer and wine, screwed beach bunnies, and surfed.
The little surf towns that sat on the 101 like knots on a string grew up around them. Fast-food stands sold quick, cheap burgers and tacos to surfers with didn't have a lot of jangle in their pockets and were in a hurry to get back and catch the next set. Beachside bars served guys in huaraches and damp board trunks, and it was no shirt, no shoes, no problem in those joints. Movie theaters in those little towns on the 101 started to show the first, primitive surfing movies to packed houses, party to follow.
The surf bums were so far out of mainstream America and yet so very American at the same time in their belief in technology, because some of these boys were your Tom Edison, Wright brothers, gee-whiz, can-do Americans, who just couldn't help but try to build a better surfboard. They took all that technology that came out of World War II-aerodynamics, hydraulics, and especially the new materials that had emerged and revolutionized the sport. Bob Simmons in La Jolla and Hobie Alter in Dana Point invented the first practical, lightweight board out of a new material- polyurethane. With the advent of the foam board, anyone could surf. You didn't need to be a Greek god like George Freeth. Anyone could now carry a board down the beach and into the water.
And these lightweight boards could do maneuvers that the heavy old wood boards just couldn't do. Instead of riding straight down the face of the wave, now the surfer could cut across its face, change directions, cut back…
It was the golden age of surfing, the 1950s, there along the 101.
So many goddamn legends were out there challenging the waves, testing the limits, cruising that highway with their classic woodies, looking for the next great break, the sweet new ride, the secret spot that the new- comers hadn't found. Miki Dora-aka “Da Cat”-and Greg Noll-aka “Da Bull”-and Phil Edwards-aka “the Guayule Kid”- they rode waves nobody had ridden and in ways nobody had ridden them. Edwards was fifteen, fifteen freaking years old, when he paddled out into the wave known as Killer Dana and rode it. Then he stayed on the beach all summer with his girlfriend, cooking potatoes over an open fire.
Living to surf, surfing to live.
Along the 101.
It must have been heaven then, Boone thinks as the road plunges down toward the ocean like some kind of water slide, like it's going to dump you right into the water, but then at the last second it veers right and hugs the coastline. Paradise, Boone thinks-long, lonely stretches of beach with legends walking on water. He knows his surf history; he knows all the stories, knows about Da Cat, Da Bull, the Guayule Kid, and dozens of others. You can't not know them and be a real surfer; you can't not see their stories every time you drive this road, because that history is all around you.
You drive right past Hobie's old shop, right past the break where Bob Simmons died in a wave back in '54, past San O, where Dora and Edwards went out together and combined their styles and created modern surfing.
In that golden age.
Like all golden ages, Boone thinks as he veers right again, crosses the railroad track, and climbs up to the famous old beach town of Del Mar, it had to end.
The golden age was done in by its own success.
As the culture of Highway 101 became the culture of America itself.
Gidgethit the screens in 1959, creating a new kind of sex symbol-the “California girl.” Fresh-faced, sun- tanned, bikini-clad, sassy, healthy, and happy, Gidget (“It's a girl.” “No, it's a midget.” “It's a gidget. ”) became a
