FIRST-CLASS FERAL
Bad Odors and Great Rides On the Indonesian Frontier

In less than an hour of bantering and bartering with various captains, they found a boat everybody could agree upon- The S.S. Vagina

But for Micah, Brett, Travis, O.C. running mates Brandon Tipton and Ben Kwight, as well as San Diego’s Brian Conley, Austrian surfer/shaper Daniel Thomson, photographer Brian Nevins and myself, this was where the friendly skies met the dirty road.

We lashed all of the board bags to the roof, ordered what would be our last cheeseburgers from the McDonald’s inside the terminal, and then piled in for the ride. On the highway for the first time, Travis sat tinkering with his cell phone. “I just got this two months ago,” he said, pushing various buttons. “It’s the first one I’ve ever owned. I can’t figure it out.” The phone he was still learning to use would be our only link to the outside world. “My mom called 10 minutes ago,” he casually continued, “she said Bird Flu’s gone human to human in North Sumatra. I guess we shouldn’t eat chicken. But a friend in Bali just texted me and the forecast looks good for the New Moon.”

Bus rides are a funny, painful thing. With Poker faces, you pretend you’re comfortable, as if watching the scenery pass by is simply a delight. And when night falls, you fake a deep sleep, slyly hoping the person in the seat next to you believes the sandman’s done a number on you. It’s all a front though; everybody on the bus is in the exact same predicament.

“Get me off of this evil thing,” complained Micah at a random pit stop in the middle of the first night. “I can’t feel my legs anymore. The engine’s right under where I’m sitting. My seat’s like 100 degrees right now.”

But it’s not all time wasted. You learn things about people. For example, there were three things I came to know about Boss had I not been on the bus: he’s a huge fan of WWE Smackdown, always ties his button-down shirts at the bottom like Daisy Duke, and chain smokes like a minature Keith Richards. All that being said, it’s hard to image we would have gotten very far without him. At midnight on the second day, we pulled into an oceanfront village. Road weary and sleep deprived, the dirt streets appeared as if they’d been