California Road Trip

Without Rich and Nicole’s wedding as the perfect excuse, I’d probably have never gone to L.A. again. Went there once with Garc a few years back and didn’t think much of it really, no character, too sprawled out and Hollywood a real disappointment - ‘Sidewalk of Stars’? More like ‘Sidewalk of Dog Turds’...

Anyway, Mai and I head out to Santa Monica from Tokyo and hired a little runaround...

Then met up with honeymooners Dan and Tris on the final leg of their romantic Tour of West Coast Hooters in their love wagon, the same colour as school buses and pumpkins.

...and finally Cyrus & Katie and Joe & Holly all busting out the same motors in LGS house colours...

Awesome! LGS Wacky Races was on, with the Garcia/Redpath Love Wagon’s GPS sending them on 200km detours around Beverly Hills to meet up with us on the first day. Actually, I thought Beverly Hills and Melrose Avenue were actually pretty cool areas - lots of unusual shops with gary facades and loaded Hills residents cruising around in their massive cars with chrome rims and 90” woofers.

Speaking of cars, we got two parking tickets in as many days in the space of about ten minutes, with parking attendants on mountain bikes ready to bust tourist ass for not understanding the simple “PARKING 12-3pm EXCEPT LOADING 4-8pm STRICTLY NO STOPPING 7.30-8.15pm RESIDENTS ONLY 12pm PARKING FREE ALL DAY” signs. Speaking of signs, check out the flashing pink neon one on this church - pure LA understated style.

American cuisine gets its fair share of grief for being so uncharacteristic, or just all about burgers, but at least they do them well, and you’ll never go hungry with the mammoth portions that had Redpath setting the world poo record, with 4 in two hours, much to his partner Tristan’s delight. All the homeless are absolute porkers, and it’s easy to see why, with the trash cans overflowing with everyone’s left-overs. The sheer quantity of wasted food is actually a bit depressing, but at least the tramps are happy. I remember when Tarrant came back from 6 months in America and a diet of beef jerky, milk shakes and battered lard, then tried to get into his sixth form suit for an LGS reunion meal and made it look like a wet-suit, with his ass literally busting out of his trousers.

The day before the wedding, we met up with Ben and the groom in a bar in Santa Monica for his last night of freedom. I couldn’t make it to his stag do, but heard that Tarrant was absolutely unbreakable, an alcoholic sponge, so none of us even bothered to try to get him drunk enough to tie him naked to a lamppost so a fat tramp could rape him. All the tramps were too full-up anyway. Check out Dr Jensen and his two forms of ID (which must be shown to enter all LA nightspots, even if the names and photos on the ID are different, just as an anti-terrorist/anti-black measure). Incidentally, all Dr Jensen’s operations require at least 6 forms of ID and 2 forms of insurance.

After the wedding, it was time to hit the road, with everyone else heading south back to Santa Monica in convoy and us heading north up Highway 1 to San Francisco - allegedly one of the most beautiful car journeys in the world...ever. Well, I don’t know about that, but it beats the M25 and the engine noises you can get out of a 3 litre V6 fuel guzzling American beast make you feel like you’re in Dukes of Hazard.

Our first stop was in a place called Kings City, a place so fit for royalty it wasn’t even written on our map, and woke up the next day to find a freshly soiled nappy next to our car - bed and breakfast for trailer-trash. It was after a slight detour through Santa Cruz that the Condon human GPS really started to show its colours, with a full 60 minutes of driving leading us back to precisely the same junction that we’d left - a feat unheard of in coastal navigation history, and a sure winner with the bird.

The tour book of places to stay on Highway 1 went out the window as San Fran was much closer than expected, and we were eating clam chowder in Fisherman’s Wharf by midday.

San Francisco has got to be one of my favourite American cities. It’s a good size, has ample greenery and those ridiculous hills that make you realise why it’s illegal not to park your car with the front wheels facing the curb, and why all ex-skateboarders are now on crutches - the ones who went for wheelchairs are now in neck braces. It’s hard to gauge the steepness of the streets in photos, but I reckon the average taxi ride is under 500m - the walk home after a few would be murder and you can understand the evolution of the San Fransisco tramp - they all got fat from over eating from the trash cans at the top of the city thousands of years ago, and gradually rolled to the bottom to live by the sea, feasting on left-over clam chowder and dead pigeons.

We didn’t bother riding the famous trams as you can actually drive on the rails behind them. All the buses run off electricity supplied from cables above the town a bit like a huge bumper car alley.

Back to the tramPs. They’re some of the most polite I’ve ever come across. Out driving one night, tramps kept shouting at us and pointing at the car - I thought they were waiting for me to stop at the lights to steal the wheels like in Birmingham, but infact they were trying to remind me to turn my headlights on! Another time when we were looking for free parking in an alleyway, a tramp came up to the car to inform us politely that all the meters were free after 6pm. After eating in the nearby Italian, I gave him some left over pizza and he was well chuffed. Apparently the street price of pizza in the hood is out of control, and can easily be exchanged for crack cocaine. No wonder he was so happy.

Tip for travelers driving in San Francisco - both the Golden Gate and the Bay Bridge have tolls, and failing to have money when crossing will result in a $30 fine and a queue of beeping traffic ready to ram you into the sea.

On the final day, we drove to Napa valley so that Mai could gobble down all the free wine possible a la Sideways. I didn’t realize but Napa sprawls for a good hour’s of driving with wineries running across the whole stretch. We stopped halfway for lunch at some posh ranch type restaurant for the best chicken salad I’ve ever had, only spoiled by the 2 million calorie Key Lime Pie, made from half a lime and a bag of sugar. As you can see from the photo, the clientele at the ranch was outstanding.

Designated driver Condon was steady at the wheel but wino Maimai was seeing double by dessert...

Alright, enough of the panoramic photos. We went to the furthest winery along the strip, a place called Sterling, famous for its views. My wine knowledge ranges from sharing a bottle of a delightful 10 franc “Fruits de Mer” number with Garcia and Tarrant in Paris every week, to a 2 quid bottle of “Mon Frere” with... Garcia and Tarrant in London when we felt like splashing out. I don’t even like wine! I was violently ill off it last month and had the worst hangover of my life - the ones where you can’t even walk, and vowed never to touch another drop of the stuff, especially not the exotic Tesco Express numbers Garcia’s fond of. I love the way the tasters are so into it, slurping it down and announcing it has rich cedar tones and quiffs of celery. My one tasted of lead.