A Slow Motion Drive

When I was a boy, my father wrote a song called "Lip Service". The first verse said: "Pacific highway one, it's a slow motion drive. It takes a tough man ten years. It takes a pretty woman five. You know it ain't no destination, just a place where you arrive. Coast to coast they call it the most, they just love that left coast jive." I always loved the song, but I never really appreciated it until today.

Somewhere around Long Beach we understood exactly what left coast jive was. 

We left Carlsbad around 1 pm after a nice lunch of caesar salad and sliders with Brownie and Isabel. Brownie may have mellowed a bit in recent years, but it didn't keep him from threatening to have our waiter whacked if his soup came cold.

As soon as the opportunity presented itself, we turned off the main highway onto Route 1, following signs to "Beach Towns". The first towns were exactly what you want from a coast road. Laguna Beach and Newport Beach on a Sunday afternoon in August are spectacular.

It's true what they way about Route 1; it is a slow journey. There are just so many stoplights. But we looked past it at first because the view was so nice. It's one thing to be stuck in traffic in paradise. It's something else entirely when it's Long Beach.



We made a go if it through Redondo Beach, past LAX, Venice and into Santa Monica. At this point it was 5 pm and I was losing my cool. Stop. Start. Stop. Start. Stop. Stop. Stop. The iPod provided commentary, sometimes ironic, sometimes bemused, sometimes spot-on. Ella in Laguna, Portishead in Newport, La Mala Rodriguez in San Pedro.

We finally got on the 405 which was miraculously flowing like a mighty river. Jon Brion set the tone perfectly. The 101 was moving all the way to Santa Barbara, and the ribbon of road wedged between the mountains to our right and ocean to our left was absolutely beautiful.





As we pulled into Santa Barbara our GPS decided to take a nap. No matter, we found our way to the Hotel Santa Barbara (where I stayed last year when playing at the ill fated Santa Barbara Jazz Festival with my dad). It became clear as soon as we pulled onto State Street that something was going on in town. When you see one mariachi band on the street, you might think little of it. When you see three, you start to wonder.

As it happens, this weekend was "Fiesta" - a festival celebrating hispanic heritage and culture. I'm not sure, but I think it may have been developed by the Jose Cuervo organization. It is, apparently, the largest equestrian festival in the country. We didn't really participate much in the actual Fiesta, other than having a happy hour drink at a bar serving Tequila specials, and then secretly snapping pics of this police officer through the plants in front of our delicious restaurant (Sea Grass - formerly Sage and Onion).



Amanda said: "Did you see that cop? It's like he just stepped right out of a porno." Apparently the cops were making a killing during Fiesta pulling kids over for turning against the stoplights and other such insignificant offenses.

We ended the night at Blue Agave where Amanda fell in love with the art on the walls. The dude at the bar was nice, very into couch surfing and meeting new people. He did seem to feel that Borat was a real documentary, but we forgave it.



For some reason, when we came back to the hotel I shaved my beard. I threatened to stop halfway:



We're headed up the coast today, through Big Sur all the way to SF. I'm thinking of Jack Kerouac. I wonder how things would have turned out if he had an iPod and a GPS device.