In Search of Captain Zero : A Surfer's Road Trip Beyond the End of the Road
by Allan C. Weisbecker
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Book Summary Information
Author: Allan C. WeisbeckerEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Published)
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2001-03
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 328
Publisher: Tarcher
Book Reviews of In Search of Captain Zero : A Surfer's Road Trip Beyond the End of the Road
Book Review: I don't even surf
Summary: 4 Stars
I picked up this book after having read the fictional "Cosmic Banditos". It's the mind-boggling road diary of Weisbecker's trip off the grid. He sells off his life, grabs his dog and surfboards, and heads out with no real direction other than 'south'. His funny, relaxed writing evokes a storytelling session around a campfire on the beach.
This is the kind of audacious drop-out from society that most of us will only dream about. After cringing at some of Weisbecker's more harrowing adventures, some of us will be glad we never took the leap. The story takes an uncomfortable turn when Captain zero is finally found, a turn which may cement your commitment to staying safely on the grid.
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Summary of In Search of Captain Zero : A Surfer's Road Trip Beyond the End of the Road
A chronicle of surfer and photojournalist Weisbecker's two-year journey south from the Mexican border to solve the mystery of a friend's disappearance.In 1996, Allan Weisbecker sold his home and his possessions, loaded his dog and surfboards into his truck, and set off in search of his lifelong surfing companion, Christopher, who had vanished into the wilds of Central America. Weisbecker traveled south from Mexico through seven countries before discovering his friend in a primeval rain forest, living a shockingly corrupt antithesis of their mutual dream of an Endless Summer perfect-wave paradise.
Intimately describing the people he befriended, the bandits he evaded, the waves he caught and lost en route to finding Christopher, In Search of Captain Zero is the story of Weisbecker's quest. This rollicking memoir of friendship and adventure is one part Road Fever and one part Heart of Darkness: a nonstop tale of territorial local surf-gang wars and all-gear-and-no-skill European dilettantes, of daring sea rescues, twentieth-century piracy, and a jungle road trip to the place that lies beyond the end of the road.
In 1966, Allan Weisbecker "made a Manhattan run from the landlocked suburbs" to take in a siren-song movie called The Endless Summer, a documentary that depicted the carefree life of two beach bums who roamed the world in quest of the perfect wave. Weisbecker was hooked, and he became a hardcore wave rider, a fixture on the Long Island surf scene. With a friend, Christopher, he also undertook illegal ways to finance his passion, transporting drugs from exotic countries, a business only briefly interrupted when Christopher went off to Vietnam. There he took fire and came home scarred; something in him changed, and one day he simply vanished.
Weisbecker's book, a sort of gonzo detective story blended with travelogue and peppered with hang-10 jargon, does many things, all of them very well indeed. It offers up a vision of innocent times brought to ruin by war and drugs; it recounts his search for his lost friend, whose life had gone from bad to worse far away from home; and it affords a look inside the strange culture of surfing, whose masters "understood, in a visceral and soulful and inexpressible way, the machinations of the sea, and, by subtle inference, the universe at large."
Full of regret and exhilaration, Weisbecker's memoir is a fine chronicle of a dream gone sour and a friendship redeemed. --Gregory McNamee
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