El Norte
By Baja Birdman
()
About this ebook
Baja California Birdman is his spiritual name and his pen name. Baja has written this novelette based on his his real life adventures. This would be one hundred percent non-fiction if Baja hadn’t thrown in one Jalapeno pepper to add some spice to his story. For several winter seasons he travelled around Baja California in his camper with his powered paraglider and photography gear.
Baja loves flying over the beautiful shorelines of Baja California. He cherishes the unspoiled land and hates the evil entity he calls progress which is now eating up Baja California and converting it into a cement jungle. He shares his stories while he prepares his flying machine for a flight.
He was once an aerospace engineer. His management wanted him out so they nailed him for stealing time. That gave him an excuse for a much more interesting adventure. He judges the name Human Being as too uppity for humans. He calls them human animals. He thinks they are just intelligent animals and are not divine in any way.
He has invented magical world models to explain the things he sees. His models make life more enjoyable. He analyses everything and never stops thinking. He recognizes that as one of his problems. He has been questioning his recent behavior and come up with a disturbing conclusion.
El Norte is the all powerful wind that blows strong out of the north in the Baja. One time he blew hard and Baja’s paraglider hurled and dragged him across the desert. Baja has had other close calls with el Norte. Baja has created an interesting world model for el Norte the All Powerful Baja Wind God.
Baja had provided a web link to a picture album so the reader can see some of the places. The pictures are arranged in order and follow the story.
Word count: 16,142
Baja Birdman
Welcome to my Bio. I’m writing on January 26, 2013. It’s a Saturday. I have taken on a bike tour across the southern states. I’m about 8 days from San Diego. I’m headed for St Augustine FL then to Connecticut. I’m holed up at a Motel 6 in Scottsdale AZ where it is pouring rain. The good news is that I am dry and warm. The bad news is motels are expensive. I have a respiratory infection but I have been taking my emergency antibiotics and I feel OK. After my years as a Baja California Birdman I finished my transformation. I gave up my photography ambitions. I sold nearly all of my possessions. Now my belongings weigh a little more than my body. As you see I reject the idea of promoting myself on the web. I do have a Facebook account but am not active and am threatening to kill it. After my transformation I have travelled light. Mostly I have backpacked. I mean the kind of backpacking where one walks day after day on a wilderness trail. In 2011 I hiked around Oahu and the Big Island of Hawaii and I thru hiked Appalachian Trail. In 2012 I hiked a good portion of Te Araroa and a few Great Walks in New Zealand, the John Muir Trail and and some of the Pacific Crest Trail. I have finished about half of the PCT now and plan to finish it in sections soon. This year I decided to try a bike tour. Now I’m thinking it was an idiotic idea. I’ll try to persevere. Adventurous life is like this. It has it’s ups and downs. Around four months ago I decided I wanted to try writing. I got the idea for el Norte when I walked into a swarm of Monarch butterflies who were struggling against an offshore wind on Madaket Beach down near Smith’s Point. El Norte is a true story except I added one Jalapeno pepper. I wanted to give it plot. I flew at many, many places. I shared the highlights only. I hope you enjoy it if you decided to make a purchase. That’s enough for me for now. It’s a big world with a bunch of human animals. We each have our stories and our baggage. This big world is mostly not about me. I’m just a tiny little bit of it.
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El Norte - Baja Birdman
The Vacant Lot Near Cabo
My spiritual name is Baja California Birdman.
It was late in the morning. I had just pulled off the Highway One onto a vacant lot between two hotels. I was halfway between the cities of Cabo San Lucas and San José del Cabo, at the southern end of the Baja California Peninsula. The Baja peninsula is about eight hundred miles long. It is the southern half of the land called California. You might say I am a leg man as I prefer the southern half of California.
I create world models to describe the world that surrounds me. I take random occurrences and I pretend they are magical and the creations of gods. Creating my world models has made living much more enjoyable.
In my world model the land called California is a sleeping woman and her legs aim southeast. I call the sleeping woman Lady California. She is in a very deep sleep. Whenever she moves she does so very slowly. I can’t perceive her very slow motion. Right now she’s moving her right leg to the west out into the Pacific Ocean. I’m standing on her right middle toe at the edge of the water. Lady California’s toe is moving at a speed of two inches per year away from the main continent. That’s about 0.0000000036 miles per hour. It’s very slow. Things happen slow in the world of Lady California. Her two legs were together ten million years ago. Now her right foot is two hundred miles distant from her left. By moving her right leg outward Lady California has created a beautiful new sea between her legs and thousands of miles of new coastline. I call that body of water the Sea of Cortez. It is also called the Gulf of California. I believe it was in the Lord’s plan for Lady California to extend her right leg outward and it was a very good thing.
My planet is hurling through space very fast. Relative to the center of the Sun I am moving at a speed of about 67,000 miles per hour. In one-second I move about 18.6 miles. I don’t perceive this motion but I know it is a fact.
The Baja was an extremely beautiful and largely undeveloped land. There I could live a very good life at a low cost. That mattered for me. I had more freedom there than in my nation which is often called The Land of the Free. In Baja California I could park on a remote beach and I wouldn’t be hassled or arrested. I was getting my Baja time in while the good old days of the Baja were still good. The situation was changing quickly. Lots were being flipped. Houses, fences, four-lane highways and no trespassing signs were being put up. In the land where I come from the process of taming the land is complete. The taming process is called Progress. I didn’t like Progress. I was a sworn enemy of Progress. I adored wide open spaces. I loved camping in the middle of nowhere. That was one of the main reasons I was in Baja California. The other reason was I enjoyed flying over the Baja. It was often spectacular when viewed from my flying machine.
Lady California had a belt around her waist. It is what the human animals called a geopolitical border. I came from the nation to the north of Lady California’s belt. They call it the United States of America. It’s real estate spans across the continent called North America. The United States of America is the planet’s most powerful nation.
A spine of chocolate mountains ran down the center of Baja California. The new eastern shoreline was freshly torn, tortured, irregular and dotted with islands. It vanished abruptly into the deep blue Sea of Cortez. The old western shore was surf pounded and sandy. It featured flat coastal plains, dune covered barrier islands, mangroves, lagoons and estuaries. It dissolved gently into that not very pacific and poorly named ocean.
I perpetrated a few minor crimes when I was young, like many kids do. I regret doing them. I was lucky and never got caught. They weren’t serious. As an adult I got caught when I did something which wasn’t very bad at all. I stole time. I don’t regret it. It was nothing. I looked at a website for ultralight airplane kits using the company’s computer that was on my desk. I’d had a jones for flying machines for a long time. The company had surveillance software. They were just looking for a reason to get rid of me. Any stupid reason would do. I was pronounced guilty of stealing time and given my punishment. I no longer had a job or a paycheck or a