CEDROS ISLAND, Mexico _ It's the trip Jeff Mariani and his father, Nick, never took _ the journey to a remote, 135-square-mile rock anchored off the coast of Baja California to fish until thumbs chafed and noses burned tomato-red.
Fishing became the bridge and bond between a father and son, who rushed to the water nearly every weekend for 15 years along the southern California coast.
The trek only unfolded in adventurous minds, though _ stolen by the prostate cancer that ate at one man, all the while steeling and steering another. Nick never made the trip. His son refused to miss it.
Jeff would go to Cedros Island. He'd finish what they started. Someday.
"I cried many a day on that island," Mariani said, "thinking about him."
The fish and sun waited to greet Mariani at Cedros. This would turn into far more than one visit, though. Something about the place grabbed him. There was a connection.
It started awkwardly _ the empty looks, the whispers. The stranger slowly melted the trepidation with one gesture after another, changing lives in the process.
Ultimately, he changed his own.
"It's crazy what he did," friend Pete Gray said. "Would you do it? Would I do it? Hell, no. An average person would have thrown in the towel long before he did."
