WELCOME!

Now that the blood has been wiped off my car’s dashboard, and the band aid reapplied, I can begin. Wait, wrong story, start over.

The time to begin this self indulgent travel blarg is this INSTANT, thanks to being stranded in Salinas and hunkering in a Starbucks until my computer croaks or my eyes cross, whichever comes first. Congealed blood and epically constipated traffic are an inauspicious start of a travel blog, to be sure. But never mind those pesky details, let’s move forward to the meat and potatoes – or fruit and processed sugar, to be a stickler for accuracy.

This pie-in-the-sky  –  HA! Bad pun, sorry – idea started two years ago, though its genesis dates back to what I call, ‘my overly concerned era.’ No matter what I did, no matter how unrelated to cookery, pie just kept creeping into the picture. Create comics about trauma, what wedges itself into the story? Pie. Lay on the floor during a presentation, shouting into a mike while overhearing a woman say, ” Is she really doing that?!” Yes. Pie was mentioned there too. Years of my life have been spent talking, writing, drawing, and jumping up and down hollering about trauma and healing – and yet throughout all that frippery, THERE WAS ALWAYS PIE. My god, we live in a world of hurt, but no one can disagree on the idea of PIE.

And then upon me dawned the obvious; I have no marketable, professional skills whatsoever. Unless mirror writing counts for something. Realizing that I’ve never been qualified for anything I’ve ever done, that every task and blip on the radar I’ve punted into the universe has been a pure bullshit job, I thought, ” Why stop there. ” Why NOT do what I love: bumming around, and eating. As my grandmother elegantly quipped, ” We all love to do what we do best. ”

I offer to you a travel blog/book about pie, surfing, and The Quest for both. To the table I bring absolutely zero professional baking, surfing, or travel journalism chops by any stretch of the imagination. What I will provide are drawn pictures, essential information, and the assurance that, goddamn, if I can do this, SO CAN YOU.

My eyes are crossing and the computer is imploding. Thank you everyone, for visiting, and please stay tuned for the first in the series; PIES OF THE WEST.

Dignity is overrated,

Madison Clell