CHEYNE HORAN’S RAINBOW BRIDGE

Surfer Magazine, USA, 1986

Coolangatta Airport, Queensland, Australia

I could smell Cheyne before I could see him. I turned from the baggage carousel and there he stood at 5’10”. Barefoot, sweatpants, no shirt, carrying a burn¬ing stick of cherrywood incense. We laughed and embraced. And I am no weakling, but the physical power and girth of the muscle on Cheyne’s upper body was staggering. Had I not held my breath, he would have sprung three of my ribs. We loaded my boards into his car and took off, headed south out of the Gold Coast of Queensland toward a place called Goonengerry in New South Wales. We caught up on some memories, some glory days. South Africa, Brazil, early Stubbies contests at Burleigh Heads, Bells Beach, and an odd little excursion that straight-edge Dave Parmenter once took us on out to

Rottnest Island, off West¬ern Australia. I think Cheyne was on acid for that one. That or mushrooms. I do remember Cheyne brought a box of organic carrots for lunch. Headed for Goonengerry now, I was jet lagged from the thirteenhour flight from San Francisco. Cheyne offered me some rainwater he had collected in an old bicycle bottle. He said the water was filled with energy from falling through the atmosphere. He said it would help my jet lag. I drank deeply. It was warm and tasted like water from an old bike bottle, but at that point, I was a believer.

Slowly, carefully, Cheyne drove his souped-up Holden coupe through the south end of the Queensland’s Gold Coast, notorious for cops seeking scofflaws fleeing across the border into New South Wales. Cheyne seemed at peace with everything, not talking much, passing the cherrywood incense under his nose now and then. It wasn’t until we crossed the border into New South Wales that Dr. Jekyll showed up. Cheyne threw the incense out the window. He had some room to move now as the roads became rural once over Tweed river bridge. He told me we would take the back way to Byron Bay, it was faster. Cheyne floored it, driving like a jailbreak parolee. Hunched over the wheel, he buried the needle. Gravel roads, mind you. Where when it comes to a bend in the road the emergency break becomes more important than the steering wheel. Things got real quiet between us. He was intent as the back roads spun below us on ball bearings. On one long straightaway, I had the white-knuck¬led composure to ask what he felt about the public’s opinion that his time as a world champ contender was over. I had to shout the question. Trying to slow him down.

He sped up.

“Mate, like, I’m twenty-six, right? Twenty-six! A lot of people put me in that era with MR and Shaun Tomson and Rabbit Bartholomew. But when those guys were actually happening, I was still a grommet reading about them at school! I’ve never felt a part of that era, but I feel like I got dragged into it. When everyone saw MR fading out, they figured I had to go with him, since I dueled with him for so long. And I’ve had to handle that. I mean, I can see why MR has faded out; he drinks Coca-Cola and hangs out in a coal mine called Newcastle. I’m into health and fitness and yoga, mate. I reckon I’m in the Tommy Carroll era. TC and I have been competing against each other since day one. I’m not through.”

At that moment, like a bounding boulder about to go over the edge, I was sure Cheyne and I were through. The curve up ahead was too much at this speed. And even if we pulled it, I was convinced the panel van tottering toward us in the opposite direction would finish the job. Cheyne downshifted, threw it into a slide half off the road, arms at ten and two, fought the pull of the boggy shoulder, threw up a six-foot rooster tail of mud and grass, knocked a fence post out of whack, rock¬eted by the van close enough to see the horror on the other driver’s face, and swung it back on track just before the drainage ditch that would have answered any questions I might have about eternity. My heart hadn’t resumed beating before Cheyne shifted up and floored it. “That was heavy, mate, but you always gotta accelerate out of turns or you lose.” This was the Cheyne I remembered. The boy wonder with the heavy moves.

Goonengerry, New South Wales, Australia

The first night had passed. I had woken up with the dogs. Cheyne’s four bedroom lodge out behind Byron bay was silent and sparse. Big zen pillows, no chairs, no tables. This was a ground living affair. No one was up yet. Cheyne lived here with the friends most of us on the outside had heard so much about. I’d met two of them the night before here on arrival at what Cheyne described as a “four-man commune.” Kerry, early forties, tall, leonine, shirtless, colorful Bali sarong tied daringly low around his slim hips. He told me he didn’t own a shirt. With baleful eyes and curly-haired, graying temples, he resembled a Greek God on a carrot juice diet. He didn’t really fit the description of the evil Svengali he’d been painted as. Next was Brad, said nineteen but probably sixteen. A runaway. A dark, beautiful boy with piercing blue eyes and full, sensuous, henna-outlined lips. The third, whom I hadn’t yet met, Paul, was down in Sydney, doing, well, that was all I was told. That Paul was down in Sydney. It had all been explained to me by Kerry, the languid spokesman of this commune, a place they’d all voted was to be named “Solarfarm.” Where they all four lived together in a “human possibilities stasis.” And that their latest interest lay in the possibilities of ¬manufacturing futuristic, solar habitats. And that the four of them and their six vegetarian dogs, Matilda, Jock, Matey, Astro, Cindy, and Cocker, were a “group of the sun” commit¬ted to changing the world through Kundalini yoga, macrobiotic food, and “global enchantment.” Where they were going to get all the money for this was anyone’s guess. Aside from Cheyne Horan’s dwindling sponsorships and endorsement monies, Brad was too young for welfare checks so Paul “supplemented things around the property” with his. Kerry just took care of the organic gardening and was the “overseer of the political ramifications”.

I was still too jetlagged to ask. I figured we’d get into all that in the morning. So, after a garden meal of organic tofu and wheatgrass cud, I collapsed on the floor, where Cheyne had very thoughtfully made up a place for me. He had actually tucked me in with Bali sarongs. I undressed beneath them after I was encouraged by Kerry to sleep in the nude. That way, he noted, my dreaming Kundalini points would be easier to pierce. So I took everything off and placed them in a bundle next to me. It seemed the courteous thing to do. Kerry really was a charmer. And then the dogs had gathered around me, the stranger with the capitalist’s scent. I hadn’t showered since America. I screwed my eyes shut, as if I was sleepy, letting Cheyne say goodnight. Through my slitted eyes as I feigned sleep, I saw him pause on the porch and look back at me for long moment. Then he looked out into the night’s insect symphony for a full minute. Then he half smiled at the night and moved off into the house.

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