San Diego via Big Sur

yesterday we gandered through the Big Sur region on the Pacific Coast Highway stopping at the town of Solvang over night. Its a coast hugging road that dips up and down, in and out of the forests.

Today we drove to San Diego, on route we stopped at Yoshis Garage Company motorsickle shop full of vintage bikes from all nations and loads of bike bits in a hideously unorganised fashion with everything being seriously overpriced, but then selling things is not what his shop is about. Yoshi simply had too many bikes around his house and his wife had had enough of them being around so she sorted him out a industrial unit. So many people stopped by that he decided to start selling some parts, most things are not for sale but everything is there to look through.

Tonight we ended up in a perfect dingy little bar which had a blues band playing, they were pretty damn good aswell. All good fun. Tomorrow we remain here in San Diego.

Sacramento motorsickle swapmeet & Monterey Jazz Festival

We left San Francisco at 5:30am to head out 2 hours in the opposite direction of the Monterey jazz festival we were meant to be at just after midday to 'pop' to Sancramento for a motorcycle swapmeet. It turned out to be an excellent decision as I scored some super sweet bits for the trumpet. Firstly, a set of narrow pullback handlebars, 2 rectangular yellow lensed headlamps, 3 original new 1950's bubble goggles - thats right, none of that bubble screen shinaz here! - and 2 new pistons and rings for the trumpet for spares. super stoked!

We then raced our asses down to Monterey to catch the jazz festival which had some pretty awesome bands, the weather was great and the UK festivals could learn more than a thing or two about organisation from these folks. It was all so easy and made the whole thing really enjoyable.

Tommorow we drive down the Pacific Coast Highway to Solvang. The weather looks good and hopefully there'll be no snags on the road as they say!

some more of San Francisco

Before you start reading this rambling of mine, load this track up in a seperate tab on your browser by clicking HERE and then it'll be appropiate to continue.

San Francisco is a strange city. It is a city not because of size but because of attitude. There are alot of homeless folk here and to be honest the workers are barely one step behind them. I've never known even a village shop which starts its working day at 11 am but its hard to find a place here that'll do it, including the cafes that open for 'breakfast'.

To drive around the city at night listening to the local jazz radio station is just perfect, its a populated place but everyone still cruises so calmly.

We've walked ALOT since arriving here some days ago and although it may not be miles upon miles the gradient certainly makes up for it, I just stand up in the morning and my calfs are telling me about it.

This evening we popped down to a 'off the grid' meetup which is where all the mobile food vendors meet in one place so everyone can choose some cheap but seriously excellent takeaway and just eat in the hustle of other people. This works, I mean like there were hundreds of people coming in and out of that area for the food. There was about 35 different vendors there in total serving seriously good food.

This happens twice a day in different locations across the city but remains the same each week. simply brilliant.

We've also been spending our time on Alcatraz, within Chinatown, in the parks etc etc. Alot has been going on. Tomorrow we'll head out to the surrounding Bay Area before our departure to Sacremento early sunday morning for the motorcycle swap meet and then onto Monterey Jazz festival.

Be cool people.

San Francisco

Well, been in San Francisco for a couple of days now staying less than 30 seconds from Haight Street. On the way into the city we stopped off at Arlen Ness's place and I don't know why I was so dissapointed with it, I guess I should have known it would just be a large bland metal building with no soul but I was kinda hoping there would be something more. Sure all his historic bikes are cool - and they are the only ones - but maybe its just cause they're not my kind of bikes. Even his new digger bikes should have been good but when someone who worked their said 'they look awesome don't they' I just couldn't lie. No Arlen, stop throwing things together and think about what your doing. STOP BOLTING BOLLOCKS TOGETHER.

Anyways, enough of my ranting, across the street was a way cooler joint which housed some super sweet cars, now this place helped me alot. It helped me put a single name to the american car that I could happily drive around in everyday. And the name of beauty is? Camero. Good lord I want one so bad.

Anyways, so we found our digs for a few days and its a cool house in Haight Ashbury, when we got here we were pretty damn hungry so headed for food, this is the first place in America so far that the only options were it to be fried or in a sandwich and it tastes good! Their chicken here is amazing.

So far we've walked all through the farmers markets on Market street, through the Mission district and naturally through Haight and its a cool city, the main areas could be pretty much any city though with the standard shops dominating the streets apart from the fact the city embraces street art which makes it a colourful change to other citys.

Later today (as its 7:18am now compared to the UK 15:18) we're heading off to Alcatraz then heading into chinatown for foodage.

Yosemite National Park

Yesterday saw a complete change of scenery, driving from the desert into the deep forests of the national park with epic waterfalls and rivers. We swung by another ghost town called Bodie which was originally the same size as the last one but had many more surviving structures.

The roads through the park just swung repeatedly left to right whilst rolling up and down. Pretty cool driving if you enjoy this kind of thing with serious sheer drops off the side of the road.

Also, I may have found myself another fix-me-up job.....

Death Valley, Nevada

Today saw approx 300 miles of road taking 8 hours of solid driving across Death Valley, from the heights looking into the basin and then straight through the main valley and up to Bishop where we currently sit.

The main valley was hot at 103F but not as hot as it does get so this was enough to get an idea. To give some statistics on the salt bottomed basin the annual rainfall averages 42mm but the annual evaporation average equals 3800mm, so whatever lands there doesn't last long. The salt looks awesome but tastes like crap, especially when your already hot and thirsty, believe me.

The deserts roads were long and straight and I just love hitting long roads like these, tomorrow we're driving through Yosemite National Park so its gonna become a little bit greener on the eyes as we head towards Mariposa, CA.

leaving Las Vegas...

So I know that the last post was about us on our way from LA to Las Vegas but as the city of sin was so mental I decided to run a post now we've left and are currently in a old mining town called Beatty, Nevada. Las Vegas is as mental as is expected, constant lights outside and a perpetual state of dusk in.

Basically Vegas for us meant shopping, gambling, alot of walking and flying over the Grand Canyon.

Beatty is full of trailer parks with awesome old vehicles collecting dust on their driveways. Bastards.

Tomorrow we're driving our way through Death Valley. Rock on the mental scenery.

Hollywood, CA

So we arrived yesterday into LAX and picked up an embarrisingly lime green rental car. Still have not seen another one this coloured on the road yet its great for spotting it in parking lots. Occasionally I'm regretting not hiring a Mustang but once the long miles kick in I'll be thankful for the fuel economy. We gandered around Hollywood Blvd last night in our slightly dazed, time adjusting way but as it was Labor Day it was pretty damn busy so a great way to experience the main drag of Hollywood.

Today after getting up stupidly early thanks to more time adjusting body clock-ness we walked down Sunset Blvd checking out all the sweet architecture and then wondered down to the new Dice store called Tri Co, this was their first official day of opening and we were their first official customers but it sounds like they've been hella busy since their opening party on saturday night which is great. After more gandering we went to the Peterson Automobile Museum which was pretty sweet.

Tonight we're off to eat at the Hard Rock and then seeing a gig there afterwards, I'm sure it won't be a too late one tonight as we're cruising to Las Vegas tomorrow, rock on!

this is the beast that'll get us there. an a380 if im not wrong?

in little venice, london, eating.

geek squad cash carrier!

come fly with me, lets fly, lets fly away.

just pulling everything together to fly to cali monday morning. flying into Los Angeles and the first port of call is Hollywood. this is going to be too awesome. Londons calling first.