Entries this day: Dream Early Grape_country Hearst_Castle Piedras_Blancas beach_pebbles finding_Wende riding_bike_San_Fran

Dream

6:42am PST Tuesday 17 December 2002

I had a million dreams last night, some of which featured Jason Fricke, Maia Cudhea, Sean Murray, Erick Morrow, Bryan Beck. Fun to get back to old school YRUU.

I was in an auto parts store and Jason called me from the beach somewhere on the auto parts store phone. He tried to pretend he was someone else, "hey my car is broken down because of parts you sold me."

I could tell it was him. "Yeah, well, y'all just get your car workin' again, drive it on down here and we'll take a look."

"You drive your store up here and bring me the right parts."

"We're sending a helicopter now to come take a look. Just sit tight."

"No, I dont want a helicopter. Send a train or a tricked out school bus with 50 inch speakers kicking Frank Black and Madonna duet of Marilyn Mason and 2 Pac songs."

"Okay; it's on its way."

Early

6:48am PST Tuesday 17 December 2002

Dawn coming up around me. Windows foggy a lot on the inside. Going back to check out the area I saw last night.

7:20am

Definitely higher tide than last night.

I took a couple pics and two .MOVies of the waves. Maybe they'll come out enough to slightly get across how incredible are these waves.

Leaving El Capitan now. 2761 miles driven since Dallas. 151262 miles on Scott.

Grape country

8:18am PST Tuesday 17 December 2002

Lots of grape vineyards on either side of the 101 now. Smooth immaculate green grassy hills otherwise. Overcast with occassional drizzles.

Previously I gawked at large oak trees dripping with moss coating a hill in mottled grays and greens. A rainbow began to arc from behind them, not quite finding enough moisture to climb over the hill. Cattle on terraced slopes eating lazily.

40 miles to San Luis Obispo, which is where the 101 and the 1 separate for a while. I'll take the 1 along the coast. Somewhere along there is Piedras Blancas, which apparently features elephant seals fighting to mate.

9:11am

On the 1 just north of San Luis Obispo, and saw a sign for California Mens Colony. I wonder what that is? Anything like my men's group?

Hearst Castle

Saw a sign for Hearst Castle. I wonder if it's the castle that the guy built out of coral and that I saw on TV many years ago?

10:10am PST Tuesday 17 December 2002

Hearst Castle, upon first glance, looks nothing like a Castle. But I'm going in anyway.

- - - -

Oh, this is the visitor's center.

10:22am

Boring. (sour grapes)

Or so I presume. I talked to one of the cats in the visitor center who said the tours just take a bus up to this castle and let people look at different rooms. Blah. Bunch of warning signs "Tour 1 requires climbing over 150 steps, no refunds after boarding the bus") blech.

And only $8.75 for a hot dog and drink at the fast food restaurant thing. Gag.

Piedras Blancas

11:24am PST Tuesday 17 December 2002

I'm chillin' by a dog named Java, apparently owned by a cat (and by cat I mean docent) named Dick who is paid or maybe volunteers for an elephant seal protetion foundation or some such.

Anyway, While poopooing Hearst Castle, driving north on the 1, I saw an incredible blast of ocean crashing up and over a rock 75 feet tall about 100 meters out from shore. "I gotta see that" so I pulled into the nearby "vista" like any other vista the 1 sports periodically for ocean viewing.

Parked, walked toward the end of the parking lot closer to this mammoth rock, and lo, a man standing in the area said, "walk slowly, there is a female seal wandering around."

?? "Sure, no problem."

Without conscious awareness of my location, I had come to Piedras Blancas.

He invited/allowed me to take pictures of the seals from the other side of the fence. Big monster four-fucking-thousand pound elephant seals, whose "get away from me or I'll kill you" bray sounds like a motorcycle trying to start and drown at the same time.

I took a couple of .MOVies of them braying and harassing one another, but since no females are yet ready to mate, the bloody battles are not yet being waged.

- - - -

Several other visitors have come to visit, and Dick is not able to give them all the quality tour that I got, nor able to tell them to chill the hell out and not walk like excited tourists so close to the seals.

Ample signage tells people to be cool, but none have read it that I've seen.

Out of battery power. Gotta get charged soon.

(written later:)

I took a brief nap by Java, a beautiful dark chocolate brown (maybe coffee color, eh?) medium hair labrador(?) who was very excited for a human visitor. She got more excited when a rotweiller visitor came nearby. The owner didn't let them directly talk to one another.

Gave Dick my adventure card; thanked him for his time. Learned Java's name.

beach pebbles

1:47pm PST Tuesday 17 December 2002

I don't know where I am, but I've had a lot of fun. Small river pouring into the ocean, as the ocean crashes into rocks and river.

After taking several pictures, I carefully stepped from rock to rock until I was basically in the middle of the river on top of a tall rock farthest out into the ocean but still not getting flooded by the ocean waves.

Muwhahahahahaaaa!!! I'm untouchable as the mighty ocean tried to wave up the river and get me wet. Each time, the river water pushed the waves back before they got me too wet. A couple of waves out of like 10 attempts got my shoes barely wet. My rock is invincible!!

Almost.

Just as I felt it was time to go, I turned around to head back toward shore. Looked behind me at the ocean just as it had gathered enough momentum to bowl me off the rock with about a foot of water gushing over top of it. Maybe 6 inches of water splashing a foot high above the rock.

Whoooo that water is cold and what an adventure! as I splooshed down into the river up to my waist. Climbed out. Camera was wet, but okay. (I love my camera.) Wallet wasn't even wet. (how'd that happen?)

Standing still on the rocks on shore, I wasn't cold. My wet sweatpants hung around my legs without touching them. The wind didn't touch me so I was fine.

When I moved, though, the cold water touched my legs. But it really wasn't *that* cold, so I stripped off the sweat pants (had on shorts underneath) and twisted the water out of the legs and spread them out on a rock to dry.

Took my shoes off by the sweat pants to keep them company.

Big smooth rocks covered the shore. I lept from rock to rock keeping perfect balance and having a blast. So beautiful.

I ran out of large rocks and found a beach of little black pebbles the perfect size: small enough to run across without feeling a thing, but big enough to be easily scooped and thrown with glee in the air or whatever.

Due to the ease of pebble movement, I couldn't dig a hole big enough that the ocean couldn't completely obliterate in 3 good waves. Quite different than Galveston.

I lay down near the top of the beach on the pebble-sand to dry off and nap a bit, but I didn't sleep. Too excited about the beauty of this place!

On the way out, I saw the sign:

  LOS PADRES 
NATIONAL FOREST 
 PICNIC GROUND

 WILLOW CREEK

So that's where I was.

finding Wende

6:34pm PST Wednesday 17 December 2002

(written after 12:30am 18 Dec)

Around 6pm I arrived in San Francisco area. I had called Jennifer, Sally's friend and left a message on her machine. She called me back with perfect timing, as I was just turning from the 101 to the 280, and needed further directions to her house.

But instead of giving me directions, she told me she would be available after 11pm. Okay. But actually too bad because that's when Wende got off work.

So I got off the highway, consulted a map, determined basically which way to go to find Wende's work. Didn't know what I'd do once I got there.

I gave up on traffic and turned down a side street, hoping to find a parking space. Wende called me.

"HI"

"HI. Where are you?"

"Near your work."

"Like where? What do you see?"

"Um, Nia's Bar and Grill?"

"Wait!" I heard her voice in stereo. In the phone and through my open window.

"Wait! I hear you! Where are you? Get in!"

And she hung up and bang there was Wende and she climbed into Scott, legs all bunched up on top of the food box Janette gave me for my first trip.

Wow!

- - - -

She directed me to park in a garage (one less expensive than $1.25 per each 15 minutes) and then we went for food (Her lunch and my dinner.) in a total mall thing all futuristic and such, including a radio station booth set up and broadcasting from within the public area of the mall with attractive women in santa hats attracting attention.

"Do you think if I flirt with those girls I can get on the radio?"

"Maybe, but you'll have to be done with me first."

I kept that challenge in the back of my head, but never tried to get on the air.

- - - -

We ate at some place; I took Wende back to her work and plugged in my computer to charge the battery in their break room.

Met Lori and Lisa at her work. Lori told me a bit about her road trip. Lisa offered to loan me her museum membership so I can get in free!

riding bike San Fran

12:44am PST Wednesday 18 December 2002

Thanks to Wende's map, I was able to find Lombardi street (that's the curvy one) and ride to the Golden Gate Bridge (though I was not able to cross it) in a few hour period.

Rode down Lombardi, brakes on hard all the way down the curvy red bricks. The next two hills are *steeper* than the curvy one it seems and I was literally all, "holy shit" as I began to go down one of them. Big time brakes, and a bit scary cause the ground was wet; would I slide???

Took Columbus (I think) toward the right, and marveled at the trolley system in this place. Cables run just beneath the street in a hugemongous loop. Trolley cars grab onto the cable when they want to move. The trolleys going down hills help lift the trolleys going up hills, and maybe the trolleys slow down by feeding energy back into the cable. (I don't know if that's correct or not, though)

Rode along Beach, then Bay, then Marina which was dark(!) and scary, as my bike has no lights right now. Made it to the entrance of the Golden Gate Bridge and immediately saw a sign saying No Bikes or Motor-Driven Cycles. I ignored the sign and rode up the sidewalk thing, through some shallow puddles.

As I got about 1/2 a mile up the ramp it started to sprinkle and get really windy. I continued up until I saw another sign, something like, "shoulder lane ends" or some shit that made me think my little sidewalk was about to end.

"Fine."

So I gave a blessing to the bridge, turned around, rode back down, gave a good wolf howl to the night sky. Then I found myself facing oncoming headlights so I could basically not see at all where I was going. Just trusted that no one would be coming up my sidewalk in this weather, and if anyone did, that they would see me.

Made it to the bottom and began my trek back toward Wende's work.

I got back on Lombardi, intending this time to go up the curvy hill instead of down. Imagine my surprise when I got to the curvy part and realized I was heading on it the same direction as before! Somehow I had gotten my brain turned around and thought I was coming from the opposite direction.

I had just come up two pretty steep hills, and decided even though I was at the top of Lombardi, I should roll down it again so I could have the experience of riding up the hill.

A taxi had started down already, and I caught up with it before the final three turns. Maybe four. At the bottom, I simply turned around and headed back up.

Lombardi is a one way street. I ended up stopping once to let a car go past. (That was the only stop on all my uphills the entire night.) Three cars total came down. Maybe four. I didn't stop for any of the others, just veered out of their respective way.

1:38am

I'm tired tired tired.

Um, made it back to Wende's work after getting kicked out of the art musem park where I was simply sitting on a bench, waiting for her to get off work.

Wrote some journal entrikes while waiting for her in her work. Got Scott, drove home, unloaded Scott, time for bed bed bed (well, couch couch couch).