Montecito Lad Odyssey

The next day there was a phone call from the dean of admissions at Robert Louis Stevenson. He wanted Page to come up for an interview. Page and his mother drove up from Santa Barbara to Monterey that weekend. The school is located on the exclusive 17 Mile Drive where all the famous golf courses are. If you went to school at RLS you could play on one of the most prestigious of the golf courses for free, but Page couldn’t care less about that. Page’s father was a big golfer and Page had grown up around the country club scene. He hated it. It was fake. All he saw were a bunch of rich people who thought they were better than everyone else, who were taken up with materialism, who judged other people less fortunate than themselves, who couldn’t care less about helping others, and who he had to dress up before interacting with. Page’s mother was a grand duchess of the country club scene. She always made sure Page would know how to carry himself properly in that setting and as a result he felt very confident within it, but it repulsed him.

He should have guess what the culture of a school surrounded by mansions and five world famous golf courses would be like, but he didn’t think about it. All he cared about was that it was near the ocean and that the waves there were good. Page had read a couple of stories by Robert Louis Stevenson, the author whom the school was named after, and he even knew a quote of his: “If a man dies having five real friends in this world, he is a success.” The quote goes something like that, and had Page made the connection at the time, he would latter see why the name was so fitting for the school, for at RLS, real friends would be harder to come by than anywhere he had been before.

The interview with the dean of admissions, Mr. Dolittle, went well. Mr. Dolittle asked Page and his mother why Page wanted to change schools so late in the game. Page responded with the rehearsed answer that he needed the structure of boarding life to be successful and that Cate didn’t have room for him as a boarder and that his parents were traveling a lot and really wanted him to be a boarder since they weren’t around to supervise him. Nothing was said about the police incident, and Page was confident that Cate was not going mention anything about it. He had Mr. Mcloud’s word on that point.

Mr. Dolittle showed Page and his mother the campus. It was a beautiful area, surrounded by pine trees and golf fairways, and less than a mile from the ocean. The student body was about five hundred. Half were day students and half boarders. All the students came from affluence. Page would be entering as a Junior with about fifteen other transfers. This would put him at a disadvantage socially since most relationships are created in the first year and people are less open to new relationships once they have their core of friends, but Page had always been the outsider and felt he could make new friends easily. Beside, Pat was going to be coming in as a transfer and together, they would rule the place.

Page and his mother drove around the 17 Mile peninsula. There were deer all over the fairways grazing on the grass. The surf was huge. It roared as they drove by the coast. Page had only seen waves that size in Hawaii, ten to fifteen foot faces rolling into a big bay that was only a few minutes drive from the school. The waves were breaking perfect from a left point break on the south side of the bay and also breaking right on the north point of the bay. Page was creaming his pants, but he had to try to hide his enthusiasm from his mother. She had been freaking on him all the ride up the coast how she wasn’t going to let him bring his board or wetsuit if he went to school there. She wanted him to play the respectable sports that would help him get into a good college and not be a surf bum. “I should have never let you start surfing… that’s why you got into drugs… all surfers are losers, and I’m not going to allow any son of mine to damn idiot surfer… etc…”

“What a stupid bitch she can be,” Page thought. “I better keep quite about why I want to go to school here around her and play the obedient dumb ass son bit for a while… man, she stresses me out!!! I wish I had some weed to fade out with, then her whining wouldn’t bother me as much.”

They drove back down to Santa Barbara Sunday. Tuesday, Mr. Dolittle called to tell Page he was accepted and that he needed to get back up there by Saturday for orientation. Friday, Page’s father drove him up the coast with all his luggage, but the surfboard stayed in SB. His mother made sure of that. Page was able to smuggle his wetsuit, however. His mother had insisted that it stay, but at the last minute, Page threw it into the car trunk from where he kept it in the garage. He was on the road before his mother noticed it was missing. Page knew his dad didn’t care if he brought it. His dad just wanted to keep things cool with mom or else he had no peace either. Page and his dad were on the same wavelength. They knew the main problem was keeping mom from freaking. She was a real bitch from hell when she did.

When driving up to Monterey from Santa Barbara, there are two ways you can go once you hit San Louis Obispo: 101, which is a two lane freeway and goes north on an inland path, or the 1 also know as PCH, Pacific Coast Highway, which is one lane and follows the winding coast through Big Sur.