After heading out of Huntington Beach, we headed north on the famous Pacific Coast Highway toward San Francisco. This is a road that all road trippers have dreamt of traveling due to its beauty and adventure. The initial length of the trip was rather dull and just offered us glimpses of commercial buildings. However, after getting past Ventura, the road quickly turned into a windy, mountain highway offering unimaginable views of the ocean below. I would say it held up to its reputation.
Since we had no idea just how long the trip was going to take, Jon started out the trip, but unfortunately was only able to drive through the vast lands of industrialized beach towns. I, on the other hand, was left in charge of navigating up and down the road, around 90 degree turns, and past out-of-towners going 15 under the speed limit. This task really was not entirely difficult until the sun started to set. Those 90 degree turns became a guessing game as to where the road continued and our bloody, mangled bodies began on the rocks below. At one point, I turned to him and said, “I can’t guarantee that you will live past tonight if we stay on this road.” It was a joke, but it really put his navigational skills into high gear and he managed to divert us onto the well-lighted and straight 101 North.
While going in search of gas along the PCH, we stumbled across one of the most amazing little gems. The town of San Luis Obispo offers residents an actual downtown with local restaurants, a plethora of shops, and a laid back yet professional feel. The streets were dotted with doctor’s offices but it was as if the people are business 9-5 but fun after. With it being so close to the beach, it was just a short trip with the wet suit to a more laid back life in the water. I thoroughly enjoyed my 15 minutes in this little town, but never fear San Luis Obispo, I will be back.
The rest of the trip up to San Fran left us with an enlightening experience with Jesus at Panda Express, an unguided trip through the downtown streets of San Francisco, and a couple of slightly irritated calls to 411 in search of our hotel. After Jon managed to get in touch with the hotel, we got the most amazing directions from what seemed to be a somewhat short tempered Mexican gentleman. We gave him our cross street and he responded with “8th… 9th… 10th… 11th… Travelodge on your right.” With some jokes and some translation of the directions, we managed to find the hotel and get checked in by what was actually an Asian man. In all fairness to Jon, the Mexican could have been hiding in the back….
Once depositing our luggage in the room and gasping in amazement at the nice bathroom for $47/night, we headed across the street to a little bar called Martuni’s. I don’t normally frequent dark, damp, martini/piano bars, so I figured this would be a new experience. Keep in mind, my experience was completely ruined for awhile after being thanked by the estranged gay man that Jon described. After a few long awkward moments of feeling like an outsider, we then started a conversation with the bartender about our travels thus far. He seemed impressed and grabbed the other bartender to give us some directions to the ticket station for the public transit.
After talking some more with him, he gave us some very valuable information about Oregon, the next state we would be traveling through. I, being the skeptic, thought he was completely bullshitting us because this information seemed so disproportionately different to the image I had of Oregon. The first valuable piece of information was the historical lesson that Oregon was the birthplace of Meth and the usage of it is still very rampant throughout the state. Rrrrright. Then, he told us that we would not be able to pump our own gas. Yeaaah right. Who isn’t able to pump their own gas? We joked with him a bit about the reasons as to why people are not able to pump their gas. “It’s probably because of the Meth addicts.” Imagine if you will a doped up man in his late 20s, driving up to a gas station, and proceeding to spray gas all over himself and his car. It was a good laugh, at least. However, I was not aware that in all of this joke riddled conversation, I managed to grab the attention of a man. He managed to sneak in next to me, go up to the bar and order a drink. No big deal, right? However, all the while, he was looking me up and down waiting for me to turn and make eye contact. In my naivety, I turned and smiled, but then realized what was going on. From that point on, it was all peripheral vision, looking to make sure his tye-dye pink shirt was gone.
The bartender started up a conversation with us again and asked us what we had planned for San Fran. In all honesty, we had not really thought it through and were mostly going to do it on an in-the-moment basis. That, by the way, is a marked difference in my mentality. Some might describe me as the slightly anal-retentive, OCD, planned type… Anyway, he grabbed a girl standing at the bar and told her that we were visiting the city and we were from the east. She immediately got excited and walked toward us, thinking we were from her home state of New York. After the immediate let down with the news that were are actually from Florida, she still managed to keep her level of excitement about the city.
For the next ten minutes, Kasey never stopped speaking about all the amazing sights and sounds in this city by the bay. As she spoke, I just sat back, listened and took in all the awesomeness that was Kasey. She had this classy aura about her. She was incredibly fashionable with a trend-setting image of hippiness. She wore this unique hat that could simply be described as something seen on top of Fidel Castro’s head, but actually it was the most lasting image I had of her. It was military green, form fitting around the head, slightly square, but rounded at the top, with a small bill. She had it slightly turned to the right in a way that said she does not follow the norms. After absorbing her in, I started listening to all the destinations that she spoke about. She even grabbed some paper and gave us a whole day’s itinerary, including stops for lunch, dinner, and cocktails. After completely captivating us with her presence and enthusiasm, she shook our hands and told us to enjoy the city. That we would, Kasey, that we would…
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