Day 24: Ferry to Cape May, NJ – Kindred Spirits

Meet Margo Pellegrino, my Spirit Animal. No, she’s not the bird, that little f*%ker attacked me. Margo is the amazing and awesome woman who inspires me to do amazing and awesome things. If you think my solo adventure where I learned to ride a motorcycle, flew off to California, bought a motorcycle then rode across the continent in a span of less than 6 months sounds a bit nutty, then you can look no further than Margo as my inspiration for such solo adventure feats.

In 2007, Margo took her first solo adventure from Maimi to Maine. She didn’t do that on wheels though, she did that on water, along on a 25-foot long fiberglass outrigger canoe. Since 2007, she’s completed solo adventures from Seattle to San Diego, Long Beach Island to Washington, DC, Maimi to New Orleans, Cape May to Montauk, New York to Chicago,  and Chicago to New Orleans.  Next, she will paddle from her backyard dock to DC to lobby congress to protect one of humanity’s most precious resources – clean water.

She has paddled solo on the Pacific, on the Atlantic, up the Intracoastal Waterway, in the Gulf of Mexico, up the Hudson River, up the Erie Canal, across the Great Lakes . She moved alone among vast expanses of water, some polluted, in sweltering heat, and hypothermic cold, over crashing waves, through crushing chop and along raging surf. She’s paddle in downpours, sunshine and everything in-between. Alone. Solo. One Woman.

Along the way, she raises money and awareness about the importance of one of humanity’s most precious resources – water.  Some of her causes include the National Resources Defense Council, Gulf Restoration Network, NJ Clean Ocean Action. Along each of her solo adventures. . . neigh, each of her solo one-woman-on-a-mission missions, Margo spends time with coastal communities giving talks, advocating for action and recruiting communities to take action. For each of her trips, she relies on a network of hosts recruited through the Surfrider Foundation, and The Blue Frontier Campaign to support her along the way and provide places to stay.

In my telling of my own solo adventure crossing the continent, if I told you I encountered a few hairy situations, rest assured, they pale in comparison to what Margo has encountered. There was the landing in Northern California that nearly snapped her tiny craft in half. There was paddling up the Hudson wondering about the rainbow sheen on the surface of the water. There was the encounter with a certain ex-president out on a motorboat in Maine. Shout out to another bad ass lady and solo adventurer, June Bernard (Salty Blue Designs) who drove a van supporting Margo’s whole West Coast Trip and helped with some of those crazy beach landings.

If I sound like I have a bit of a girl crush on this amazing woman, well, it is because I do.

While I met some shady characters with questionable judgement and unguarded not-so-witty commentary who made me feel uncomfortable on the road, I rarely felt the danger that comes with being isolated, on a vast puddle of water and totally vulnerable. Not in the way rendezvousing with your next support host in open water to find out it is a guy on a pontoon boat already several beers in. Then, although everything turns out for the better, your first encounter with said host sets your neck hairs on end as he greets you, who is sitting perched on a tiny fiberglass boat in the vast, vast ocean, from his pontoon with a freak you the fuck out  “Well, you got pretty blue eyes.” Seriously guys, shit like this is not cool.

Given all that, I found it laughable that when I arrived at her doorstep in New Jersey, she proclaims my self-indulgent motorcycle ride of self discovery to be a crazy adventure.

Despite my morning crossing the Cheasepeake Bay into an insane head wind, then cruising the entire Atlantic coastline of Maryland and Deleware and catching the Ferry from Lewes to Cape May where a captive audience queried me on my own adventure, it was really the compliment from a queen of adventure that made my day.

Happy Cooking and Happy Solo Adventure!