4.5.10 San Francisco, CA

.

Yosemite, one last time. Amazoid.
.

The Most Ridiculous Rumour Involving Mis-Casting I've Ever Heard, #1:
Someone on the internet says that, before Matt Smith was cast as The Doctor, one of the contenders was Catherine Zeta-Jones. I would LITERALLY have killed myself (by Aralditing my teeth to Her Majesty's exhaust pipe) if this had happened.
*insert segue here incorporating CZ-J, Michael Douglas, the movie "Falling Down", the concept of "falling down" due to having a dodgy hip caused by old age, the TV show "The Streets Of San Francisco" - which MD was in - and the fact that that's where I am. San Francisco, I mean.*

.

.

The ride into SF through Oakland and across the Bay Bridge (from which you can see the Golden Gate Bridge) is a glittering highlight of the USA. The weather is blue and perfect and I'm bellowing with joy as we hit the Bay Bridge's peak at a legally-sanctioned and entirely appropriate 50mph. My motorcycling trousers fell to shreds yesterday so it's split-crotch jeans (bought in Chile) and Pacific breezes up the knackers a-plenty.

.

.

SF is so groovy that I may apply to become a homosexual and come and live here. But before I get all excited about Frisco, there are some places I seem to have missed. Fr'example, Beatty, Nevada; Gateway to Death Valley.

.

.

.

In short, Death Valley is amazement (and not too deathy in April), and Beatty, bless it, is not really much of anything at all. I use it as an opportunity to stock up on cheap smokes before hitting California, where they're bound to be twice the price. (Later I discover they're actually cheaper there.)

.

.

It rains a bit in Death Valley before I arrive - and the desert blooms!

.

.

.

.

.

.

Out the other end, and that bastarding wind picks up again. I'm gusted off the highway into Palmdale. The Motel 6 receptionist tells me there are "no bars in Palmdale"; it's "more of a family-friendly town". My family and yours would seem to be fundamentally at odds, I inform her.

.

.

From here it's a short hop to Hollywood - hooray! etc. The Budget Inn on Sunset sits squarely atop the list of America's Filthiest Motels, but it's just close enough to the Rainbow for me to walk there and see if Lemmy's in. He's not, so I have a pile of drinks in his honour anyway, leading to a late-night impulse purchase of Motorhead tickets for Brixton in November.

.

.

BTW: You can't use the aircon in room 209 of the Budget Inn - all it does is blow pigeon-shit dust into the room.

I like Hollywood for a couple of days, but you wouldn't want to live there unless you were already famous, since everyone that isn't is trying to be, which, when you boil it down, means that no-one is remotely interested in anyone else including you. Must be time to get outta town. Well, hello Santa Barbara!

.

.

Her Maj and I roll in on a Sunday afternoon, and something compels me to trot straight down to the Tiburon Bar on State Street at 4.30pm. Call it booze-lust if you want. I'm so glad I did. It's dark, welcoming, peppered with friendly locals; I end up staying for upwards of an aeon. Fantastic spot, lovely folks - I wish I could remember their names.
---

.

.

There's a huge billboard of Katy Perry looking very very attractive outside The Chieftain in San Francisco. So pretty and nice that it makes me want to boil her soil. Sorry - I've just made that expression up, and now it seems probable that I shouldn't have.

---

.

.

.

North of Santa Barbara we're onto the Pacific Coast Highway. Wow! It is absolutely outstanding. Glee-laden motorcycling is eventuated. A thousand bikes (95% Harleys) thunder by on the other side of the road. At one of many, many viewpoints, I meet Mark, and his friend Other Mark.

.

.

Mark has a black 1994 CB1000 - exactly what I had before Her Maj. Bloody great bike, for which he paid $2000 - exactly what I paid in the UK for mine (give or take a few quid for exchange rate fluctuations).

.

---

.

UK General Election tomorrow. It seems unlikely that David Cameron's going to achieve a clear majority, and just possible that El Gordo will end up forming a coalition with the Lib Dems. Facially, Cameron resembles a bar of cheap soap moulded into a death-mask of the Pilsbury Dough-Boy. His party is crammed full of embarrassing toffs, posh twerps, braying haw-haws, nanny's boys, bedwetting, spank-hungry, dull-eyed uglies, autoerotic-accident-victims-in-waiting, gum-diseased homophobes, dribbling, in-bred monstrosities, bankers, air-brushed hatemongers and vile, stale-smelling, syphilitic abominations from right across the spectrum of the massively rich.

.

.

El Gordo, on the other hand, is an extremely unpopular, accident-prone, arguably unelected PM, dangling at the pizzle-end of a 13 year, 3 term Labour administration. Nick Cleggover seems OK - except the last time anyone with the word "Liberal" attached to their name was in power was about 100 years ago, and we're quite firmly ensconced in Crap Street at the moment, economy-wise. Vince Cable seems nice.

.

.

If Cameron can't win a clear majority under these circumstances, it's tricky to imagine any under which the Tories could ever get in again. If I was a betting man, I'd have a quid (after El Gordo's gut-storming speech on May 3rd) on a Lib-Lab coalition. If Cameron gets in... oh, I guess it's back to "well, I didn't vote for him".

.

.

Obviously, this will all be irrelevant by the time anyone reads it, but - hey ho! - it's the election, and this is what I thunk. S'all.
---
*Note from the future - well done me. Finger on the pulse etc.*
---

.

.

What Ray Ratto doesn't know about baseball isn't worth knowing. What Ray Ratto does know about baseball isn't worth knowing either. Baseball players are fat. Ray Ratto is even fatter. What Ray Ratto knows about Dunkin' Donuts is only worth knowing if you're a baseball player, you fat bastard. (Full disclosure - I am insanely fat after nearly six months of burritos, pizzas and buffalo wings. I look like a pig on stilts.)
---

.

.

10.31pm. A feisty person calls me an "Irish bum" for not giving them either of their top two choices of free gift:
1) A cigarette (mine are inside, on the bar)
2) A dollar (no).
A miracle of self-control allows me simply to smile and nod, rather than respond with "rather an Irish bum than a raddled, homeless tranny!" (I have nothing against trannies, raddled, homeless or otherwise, but this one was just plain rude. Irish! I ask you!)
---

.

.

High Def telly! Now, truly, we inhabit The Future. One might struggle ever to leave the house again. HD football - every blade of grass, every droplet of huffed-out nose-water. HD nature documentaries - every briny droplet arcing from an orca's tailfin, every wrinkle on the surface of every gnu shit.
Where it all falls down, of course, is HD fatty-porn. There are folds that were never - in Christ's name - meant to be illuminated; patches of hair that were banished, aeons ago, into invisible chasms by Yahweh himself; blobs, lumps and wetnesses that cry out across the yawning emptiness of the universe for concealment. Still - BRILLIANT, isn't it?
----

.

.

I nip out of The Chieftain for a well-earned cig. A gentleman in shades and a hooded shell-suit walks towards me - backwards, mind - at 0.01 mph. As he passes, I offer a cheery "How you doing mate?"
Continuing his reverse toddle, he looks me up and down, then lifts the lid of a wheely-bin, gestures at me with ALL TEN fingers, and burbles something in Spanish. "Nice one!" I respond, deflecting his inarguably insulting if wholly abstruse volley of - who knows what?
---

.

.

At this point, E stops me in my pen-centred tracks. I note curly hair, a saucy smile and bosoms.
"What're you writing?" she asks. I KNEW there must be a lady somewhere who found a bloke writing in a book intriguing! I KNEW IT.
She asks for a read, and within seconds looks up from the scribble with a cautious expression.
"What's a Code 55?" Poor, innocent child.
"I can't tell you. Your husband, or perhaps boyfriend, might not like it", I reply.
"Haven't got one" she says. FUCKING BINGO.

.

.

We set to work, drinks-wise. When The Chieftain shuts, we're somehow transported to her office where we steal duck pate, salty crackers, half a gallon of OJ and a litre of Bombay Sapphire. Back to mine - somehow - and it's two tickets for the trolley bus to Lewd Street, stopping at Nudity Square, Boob Alley and Nob Hill. Sorry - but the last one's a real place in San Francisco.

.

---

.

.

.

A new front tyre (Avon Distanzia! Nice...) and an oil and filter change at Golden Gate Cycles, and we're off up the coast (me and Her Maj, that is). Riding across the Golden Gate Bridge is ridiculously good. I start humming the theme tune to "Taxi", although obviously that was set in NYC and the title sequence was a film-loop of Brooklyn Bridge. I think. Great tune though. Doo doo do-do-do, do-do-do-do-do-doo do-do etc.

.

.

North of SF, the Pacific Coast Highway (the "1") is maybe the best motorbikin' road ever. Rollercoaster hairpins, deep green (red)woods, foaming waves, rock-scuttered sea and roadsides quilted with flowers, for - so far - 150 miles.

.

.

.

The hotels are three times normal price, so I pull inland at Russian River looking for something cheaper, and end up at Monte Rio, and the Nicest Place In The World. I plan on one night, and stay four. The Rio Villa Resort - God almighty it's good. Hey Ron - Thanks! Hey everyone else - go there now! It's not a budget motel, but it's worth every cent.

.

.

---