I had made my escape on a bicycle, a one-speed with fat tires. My father was no longer a minister, having been not quite defrocked. But he was still a dangerous king from my perspective. I had, in my entire lifetime of twelve years, heard continuously of God, had heard countless ceremonial prayers, (indeed, I never heard my father pray once from the heart, even on his deathbed when I was a half century old) but I had never heard a compelling reason to believe, which did not evaporate when thought caught up with turbulent emotions.

I certainly had no thought of God as I pedaled up and down the seemingly endless hills of Pacific Coast Highway heading to Mexico, more than a hundred miles distant. It took a few more attempts and two more years before I made it into Mexico.

But this first attempt affected me quite profoundly. Isolation had never been strange to me, but this sense of solitude and lonliness was of an almost unbearable intensity, even with passersby in clear view in all the cars that traveled by me on that highway.

So I conversed with Chuckie almost continuously. Chuckie was my friend. He was quite a help. He may have been invisible, but I knew in my mind’s eye what he looked like. And even his voice was very much like mine. I knew that he would stay with me.

So it was quite a surprise, when I was arrested two days later, during a predawn visit to a donut shop in Oceanside, with Mexico tantalizingly close, that Chuckie abandoned me. I missed him but I couldn’t really blame him. He just couldn’t be around my dad. I sort of thought maybe when I escaped again, I’d run into him, but I never did.

Note: The word “bible” is a noun “the sacred writings of any religion”, and in this context is not capitalized.

*shiver* I didn’t need that thought in my head.

Besides that, DI! Something new every update.

Ted Rickard

I thought Pedro Cerrano was a guy that played for the Cleveland Indians…he could hit fastballs a mile but could never connect with those pesky curve balls, even with Joeboo’s help.

I think something like this would be fun and you could probably charge people to do it. It didn’t sound like there was much for predators on the island, if you could re-create a shorter experience like this I am sure people would pay to do it. Here’s an island….here are some limited supplies…..now go survive for a week or two. Of course, you would need a distress signal if the participant wanted out. I thought about this idea when watching ‘Unknown’, all of these challenges and things that need to be done just to try to stay alive, you’d completely forget about the typical stresses of the daily grind…..you wouldn’t be worrying about the price of gas, or the new boss at work, or the credit card bill. It’d be all consuming and challenging, I’d pay to do it. It might take me a bit to be able to catch and slaughter a goat though. As for the goat romance…I think I could go a week or two without resorting to that. If I did though…I’d make sure to do it on the edge of a cliff, you know….so the goat will push back to avoid falling to it’s death.

It’s a joke people….I didn’t honestly think about how or where I’d de-flower an innocent goat. I wonder if Selkirk’s marriages were so short lived because he’d continually bring up “Ya know….I’ve done goats that were better.”

According to Wikipedia, about 633.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Fern%C3%A1ndez_Islands

P.S. When referring to the religious text, the word “Bible” is a proper noun and should be capitalized. It’s English, not religion.

Excellent article by the way. It’s a shame that many people will probably never know the truth behind this amazing story.