September 9, 2005

and now back to our story

Left SF at around 8AM, a little late, and rode highway 1 right through Golden Gate Park and onto the coast. I didn’t realise just how sprawling SF was. It continues quite far south with residential areas. I don’t know where San Franciscans work – it’s all residential space.

The drive is terribly boring and slow going now. The longer I’m on the road, the more jaded I become. I stop less and less frequently to take pictures, and when I do stop I am uninspired. It doesn’t help that the weather is persistently overcast now. Clouds rule. I cruise through Santa Cruz. Monterey seems nice, but you can’t really see it from the highway and I’m not in the mood to venture onto city streets.

I was once told that Big Sur was a state of mind, not a geographical location. I have to say that the sheer number of signs pointing to “Big Sur Campgrounds” and “Redwoods Big Sur: Camping” would lead me to believe that it exists and is somewhere near SR 1, in the little redwood patch here. Just as I’m about to leave what I have assumed to be Big Sur, I see a short dreadlocked man hitching. Do I pick him up? Normally, no, but I’m so bored I decide to stop. He’s harmless I think, a happy hippy. As he approaches I notice that he’s carrying a rather large walking stick. The shaft is painted with a leopard print and on the top is an exotic sort of plumage I don’t recognise. At the bottom is a red Converse All Stars shoe that the stick has punched a hole through (presumably from all the walking it has done). He is holding it at mid height and he can’t be higher than five and a half feet. The pole must be eight feet tall (including feathers) to his five foot nothing. He opens my big heavy door and says in a very authentic Jamaican accent that he’d like to go to L.A. He is Caucasian. I am going to ask him why exactly he wants to go to such a horrible place (with no luggage and a big stick) as soon as he has finished trying to shove the stick in my two-door BMW. It will clearly not fit, a fact I tell him straightaway since he’s poking my window not at all gingerly. He tries for a further second to fit his staff in, but cannot. He says thanks anyway, closes my door, and keeps walking south. I open and close the door properly and continue driving south.

There is a little more nice driving to be had, but not much. Even 1 turns mostly to freeway now. For a while I am stuck behind a transport truck and decide to pass on a sort of short dashed line. Knocking back to third I take off and he, naturally, speeds up to match. So we are racing for the end of the passing zone and finally I overtake at nearly one hundred and sixty kph. As soon as I slow back down two state troopers pass. Wouldn’t you know, the one time I let it run out. But I am not caught and all is well.

In San Luis Obispo SR 1 vanishes into the city streets and you need to find 101 to keep going. There is no sign for 101 south when you are travelling south on 1. I dead end at the Amtrack station and assume that I’ve gone wrong. Backtracking, I finally come across the sign and make for the entrance to the freeway...

{Just a moment, commotion next door.} Down the hall from where I am writing this there is some kind of raid occurring on the second floor of the hotel. It has outdoor corridors. I poke my head out my door to see a swat team trying to coax someone out of their room. What’s more, I’m fairly certain that there was a camera pointing down the hall. If you are watching Cops sometime and you see a person peek their head out of a room down the hall of the Best Western in Ventura, it was me. Things quiet down a bit and a car roars off with sirens on. I look out again and quickly check on my car. It looks fine. I close the door and lock it with the handy extra-door-handle-cable-thingy they have provided.

I guess people are often having the police barge in on them, and have complained to management.

{And now back to our story.} ...but the freeway entrance is nowhere to be found. A sign for SR 1 points to someone’s driveway. No, wait, that’s the freeway onramp. It may as well be the poor saps driveway. I wonder how many trucks roar over his lawn every day. Following the path leads me to 101, not 1, but I guess there is an exit for 1 later. There is.

Pismo Beach is the first place that has caught my eye on the coast in quite some time. The town seems very nice and the buildings are lovely and kitsch. The beach, which I can sort of make out from the highway is lined with palm trees (palm trees!) and seems to be lovely white sand. I shall have to come back here sometime. But not now, today is for driving.

I push on through Santa Barbara and into Ventura. I was hoping that there would be a hotel on the highway here (thinking it was a smaller city, like all the ones before it) but there isn’t. I have to dive into the city. I do and quickly find a Best Western, thank goodness. It turns out Ventura is practically a suburb of L.A. and is rather larger than I expected. The hotel is cheap thankfully. Unfortunately, as soon as I enter my room I find out why. The back side of the hotel parallels not only highway 101, but also a busy railway line. Several trains have passed now and the whole place shakes when they do. It’s already late, I must try and sleep now. An eventful day.

Sleeping pill? No. Oh come on, the trains! No? Okay fine.

Oh, P.S., I now have a blood blister on my thumb too! Don’t ask...