Why do I ride? Long story short: because Vic Ferrari asked me. Long story in 990 words: it began on a fine spring day sometime in the early ‘70’s. Vic and I were sitting on his front porch overlooking Stewart Street in Sonora, California. We had met at San Francisco State in 1969. The campus was in turmoil, virtually shut down by student strikes and demonstrations. The theatre department, however, remained active. One of our professors, David Purdy, enlisted us in a production called “Requiem,” a play about the soldiers who had participated in the 1968 My Lai massacre. Vic was doing the lighting; his brother Steve and I were playing two of the G.I.’s.  The production was powerful; it had been our way of protesting the war. After graduating from the insanity of SF State I followed Purdy up to the peace of the Sierra Nevadas where Vic and I helped establish Pinecrest Summer Theatre at an old ski chalet in the Stanislaus National Forest. After the summer we had settled in Sonora, a former gold rush town along Highway 49.

Which brings us back to Vic’s porch. Vic was Huckleberry Finn to my Tom Sawyer. He was, in Twain’s words “…the only really independent person, boy or man, in the community, and for this reason I suppose, he was continually happy. We liked him. We admired him. We enjoyed his society; and since his society was forbidden by our parents, we enjoyed it all the more!” I enjoyed Vic’s society immensely. I was enthralled by the stories of his exploits:  his fleet of airplanes, the psychedelic light shows he produced and his near death adventures. One story, in particular sticks in my head. Vic had been riding his custom chopper and had been forced to “lay the bike down on its side” to avoid an on coming car.  The image of Vic standing atop that beautiful machine, his long hair flying as he slid down the highway in a shower of sparks still plays like an old video behind my eyes. Now I have no ideas how many of his tales were a bit too tall but I wanted to believe them all. By the time we ended up on that porch Vic had put his wilder days behind him but he still needed the buzz of those days of yore. So we had a code phrase: “Crime and violence,” as in, “We need to do some crime and violence.” It didn’t mean we were going to rob a bank; it meant we need to do something EXCITING! That spring morning Vic’s idea of crime and violence was to run the Stanislaus River. “Uh Vic,” I said, “A, the river is at flood stage and B, we don’t have a raft.” I actually still talk like that, listing my ideas in alphabetical order. Vic’s answer, ”That’s not a problem. We’ll get a couple of big truck tire inner tubes.”  “C, ” I said,” we don’t have any wet suits. We’ll freeze our asses!”  Again, no problem. “We’ll bring some matches and when we get cold we’ll go ashore, start a fire and warm up.” And that is exactly what we did. Curiously, I have no memory of the river trip but the daring of it all was sweet.

I remained in Sonora for seven years. Vic moved on and we lost touch. I can’t say I continued in a life of “Crime and Violence,” but I did dare to live the life of an actor and occasionally ventured out into the wilderness alone to hike and remind myself of that day on the Stanislaus. Graduate school, New York, Boston, Denver and countless theatre roles followed. In 1984 I ended up in Los Angeles with a bunch of my theatre friends. We established a theatre company and began to look for work in film and television. Blessed with a character face and the ability to say my lines and not bump into the furniture, I began to carve out a modest living in “the industry.”

It was now the mid ‘80’s. I was closing in on 40 and longing for a family of my own. One summer night, I was walking around Echo Park Lake. The place was crowded with Latino families enjoying the cool breezes and the warmth of family. Right there, in the park, I had an epiphany. “Look at these families. They aren’t rich in money but they have each other. What am I waiting for?!”  Perhaps it was the lesson I learned that day on the porch in Sonora that dared me to take the leap. Within a year or so I was married and over the next seven years, as my career grew, we were blessed with three beautiful children.

Children need stability so we moved to the stable suburbs as I continued to work as an actor. Occasionally people would stop me on the street to ask what they had seen me in.  As a series regular on “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman” my face appeared in front of millions every Sunday night for six years. There was little “Crime and violence” in our lives unless you count our annual trips to Kings Canyon where the kids learned to be brave by leaping off Muir Rock into the frigid river.

As children will, they grew into wonderful young adults, went off to college and left our nest empty. Cue Steve Ferrari. He calls from Caracas, Venezuela to tell me his brother Vic is still alive and kicking in Gilroy after a protracted battle with Hepatitis C.  He gives me Vic’s number. I don’t call right away. I feared Huckleberry Finn might have died. Fear not. Within a phone call or two Vic had proposed “Crime and violence” on a scale I had never even imagined. “I’m going to ride the entire Pacific Crest Trail on horseback. All 2,650 miles. You wanna ride with me?”  In an instant I was back on the porch in Sonora. What could I say but “YES!”