Cambria: Because Two People Fell in Love
Off the California coast, sits a small town split by the Pacific Coast Highway and in this town actually stood a salmon colored Victorian home where a not so young couple first learned how to trust.
This was my second marriage. I was in my forties with a divorce under my belt, a job I hated, and then this woman comes into my life making games of my fears. She came from a world I had never known, one that wasn’t so cruel and dangerous.
We married and travelled our little corner of the world together just before the 2008 recession hit, causing a career I thought I had built for myself to crumble just as a dream I had always denied became my only option.
And I think the only thing that held us together, that held me together during that difficult time was trust. Trust isn’t something you see too much of anymore. It’s been replaced by confirmation, notarization, and security codes. But, without trust, I would never have even met Vicky, she and I would never have been wed, and we would never have made it to Cambria.
Worse still, without trust we never would have lived in that big, pink, Victorian home on the California coast, travelled back to the 1960s, sailed a living room east of the Pacific, made friends with a golden retriever, or spoke with a cow.
It was from out of all of this but also for all of this that I recorded my third autobiographical monologue: Cambria.
All because two people fell in love.
“Most people land on their feet. I land on my face.”
And with that Ken La Salle begins his second autobiographical monologue. But while That Olympic Peninsula Layby put two people at odds with each other, Ken is The World’s Worst Backpacker all by himself.
From the encroaching urbanity of Irvine Park in Southern California to the remote thoroughfare that is the Pacific Crest Trail, decades of disastrous treks should have given him a clue. They didn’t. All of those disasters stayed with him. And now, with his tongue planted in a very dry cheek (possibly his own), he shares them with you.
The World’s Worst Backpacker is for anyone who has gone on a day hike, picked up a backpack, or walked for a few days in the middle of nowhere. Ken’s stories are not just cautionary tales; they’re the kind of tales all backpackers (and would-be backpackers) acquire if they don’t stop soon enough. They’re the kind of tales that leave you wondering, “Am I the worst person at this?” when you start and thankful you’re not when the story ends.
With music by Josh Woodward, Ken tears the stigma off being the worst. Now you can be, too!
After all, we can’t all be the best, but we can be the worst.
Nine states. Two control freaks. One steering wheel. What could possibly go wrong?
It may be that a marriage ends not with a whimper but with the slam of a car door on a deserted stretch of highway. Most married couples know better than to put themselves in each other’s way, but in Ken La Salle’s first autobiographical monologue, he tells about how he and his wife of eight years did just that on a road trip that probably should never have happened.
As husband and wife drive each other crazy, they must also contend with Ken’s schizophrenia, the in-laws, Vicky’s homicidal friends, and a cast of characters along the way. Some of this may sound familiar, and the rest will have you thankful you didn’t take the trip yourself. All of it culminates in a single moment on a deserted roadside on the Olympic Peninsula, when all the madness of marriage comes down to one question: Is this how a marriage ends?