In search of soul

They come from such a small town that it might as well have 5,000 inhabitants and two street lights.

The winters are cold. Not Southern California, wear-pants-and-a-jacket cold. But Canadian, minus-40 degrees kind of cold.

And now these two guys, who saved up thousands of dollars, took a year off from school and loaded up a 1979 motor home that runs on propane with the bare essentials, are ending their stay in Costa Mesa after a month and heading back home.

“It started as a snowboarding trip. It turned out not being all about snowboarding,” said Oliver Tennant, 18, from Penticton, British Columbia, Canada. “It’s a soul-searching journey to get some clarity in life and just take a deep breath ... to not have any deadlines.”

It’s hard to imagine the curly-haired teenager with a flair for storytelling or his laid back friend Tim Mah, 18, in something other than the old-school RV plastered with stickers and a giant peace sign painted on the side. But by the middle of May, they’ll likely be back in Canada attending the University of Victoria.

A year behind their friends in schooling, they’ll be a year ahead in life experience.

In December, Tennant and Mah were the remaining two of a group of eight friends in British Columbia who planned to travel the Western United States after high school and visit every ski resort possible. Five of them made it on the precursor trip down the “powder highway” a journey through Southern British Columbia and its mom-and-pop ski locations, Tennant said.

By December, he and Mah were left. They’ve snowboarded in Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and most recently in Big Bear.

For the last month, they’ve had their RV parked outside a home on Corsica Place in Costa Mesa, where they’re visiting a friend they met at a snowboarding camp.

Cal State Fullerton sophomore and Costa Mesa resident Taylor West, 19, and her family have been playing host to the Canadian duo who just can’t seem to get enough of the blue skies and warm weather.

“They’ve tried leaving, but they like the weather down here and what Southern California is,” West said. “They’re trying to get away from their whole lives and create new memories.”

One of those memories sounded like one of those you only laugh at after the fact. While they were descending a mountain in Utah, Tennant said, the brakes gave out.

When the brake pedal went down, “my heart went to the floor with it,” Tennant said.

Relying on the low gears and using the emergency brake, the men managed to survive the scare and get the vehicle fixed the next morning. They stopped at an elementary school, where the janitor doubled as a makeshift mechanic for such situations, they said.

Things have been far from perfect. Most of their money goes to keeping the RV running. They have to be frugal and have even boiled snow for drinking water, Mah said.

With about 20 resorts down, the two said they’re going to drive north through California and Oregon back home, and stop at another half dozen resorts on the way.

“It’s a pretty surreal feeling,” Mah said. “I was thinking of going to school [after high school] but wasn’t feeling it. But after this trip, I’m ready to go back.”