Contrasts

The point of a road trip, aside from the “buddy movie” bonding moments, is seeing cool stuff. Yesterday’s cool stuff was the Pacific Coast Highway Northbound from Pismo Beach to San Francisco. As a bonus, albeit destructive, was seeing the Santa Cruz forest fire and its huge dark beige cloud, now trailing in the Pacific down below the Mexican border. Navigating the PCH along some of its narrow mountain passages was like riding a long, twisted “Slinky” up, down and all around an M.C. Escher painting.

Contrasting that, and in hindsight also a bonus was being selected as extras in a remake of “The Road Warrior,” aka, “I280 North” where Kyle and I enjoyed a flat tire and got to change it in a narrow breakdown lane as crazed California drivers whizzed their array of deadly weapons past us at well above the speed limit. As the car teetered on the flimsy jack, I had dueling thoughts of it collapsing and of a Hummer adorned with a mohawked meth addict for a hood ornament smashing us from behind in a glorious, slow-motion roadside slaughter. Kyle encouraged me from behind the guardrail above a trash strewn steep hill by saying, “this really sucks” about every 30 seconds…

I was shaking and dirty when we arrived at the San Francisco Marriott, but quickly realized we had survived when the Valet informed me overnight parking was $50. Less than an hour from playing breakdown lane bingo, we were seated at San Francisco’s oldest restaurant, the Tadich Grill dining on grilled Pacific salmon and Chilean Sea Bass in a curry reduction. Oh, and we were drinking. Kyle knocked back tres 7-Up’s while the tire changer applied the soul salve of a Bombay Martini, up with olives.

Now where the hell can I get this tire fixed?