Don't Start the Revolution Without Me! - Jesse Ventura [130]
I have seen and touched and experienced so many things that I knew existed but never thought I would have a chance at trying. I wake up every day thinking, “What do I want to do today?” I go to sleep each night thinking, “How lucky I am to have this happen to me when I am still able physically and mentally to try it all.”
The orange, yellow, and purple dawns inspire me, and the pink and sapphire blue evenings calm me. All the while the sea is the continuous background music that ranges from heavy metal to Bach to Sinatra playing twenty-four hours a day.
I have made friends with the local ranch families and enjoy buying fresh eggs from them that carry the remnants of the mother’s body still on the shells and sometimes the remnants of the father’s in the yolks. I also buy the cheese from their milk cows that is rich, creamy, and tastes of desert sage, sea salt, the earth, and the cow. The families are close, and often the grandparents are still on the property living with them. Children, there are always children. A combination of cousins and friends. The families are strong and the love runs deep and the loyalty is forever. They have family fights and sometimes do not speak but, in the end, the ties that bind are made of metal and silk and will never be broken forever.
I have a feeling of peace here that is absent in my homeland. I am not fearful here as I was there. Here we pick up families or women with children and their luggage looking for a ride, or old men from their broken-down cars, or young men get pulled out of the ditch, all of which we find on the roads into town. They open the doors to our vehicles and we find new experiences through our discussions in broken English and Español as we take them along and drop them off.
Our remote location makes neighbors stop by to let you know the propane truck is in the area or that their generator is broken down and they need help. We share trips into town for supplies or to the airport. We watch out for each other.
It is a life I remember from my childhood, seldom felt as I became an adult.
I am dreaming while I am awake, imagining while I am walking and feeling my senses expand as I go about my business of living life to the fullest in a place that allows and encourages it.
I met Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., through a mutual friend. I knew him by reputation only, as one of the leading advocates for the environment and a dynamic speaker, the second oldest son of the late senator. He and his family were coming to Cabo San Lucas for a quick vacation. We shared a mutual passion—diving—and the waters off Cabo were said to be some of the best in Baja for it. It was only a ninety-minute drive from my house to where the Kennedys were staying, and we made a date to meet around lunchtime in a gated community called the Pedregal.
I parked outside a Moorish-style house, built right into the cliffs about sixty feet above the Pacific, a house that seemed to hang in the air with views of the ocean from all sides. When Robert came out to greet us, I looked at him for a long moment. “Yeah, I can sure see the resemblance,” I said. “We’re about the same age, and I grew up with your father and your uncle.” It was actually uncanny how much Robert looked like his father.
He called down to his wife, Mary, who was in the swimming pool with their four kids: “Honey, come up and meet the governor.” We sat down at a round dining table. The twelve-year-old and nine-year-old boys especially had a lot of questions for me about wrestling. “Did you ever wrestle André the Giant?” Robert asked. I had, and told them