Sunday April 3, 12:25pm
Heading back up to Arcata on Highway 101 from San Fran, just passing Petaluma now. The gig in at Winter Tavern in Pacifica last night was a touring rock band’s dream venue, ratty dive bar off the beach with a crash pad upstairs for the bands, a shower and laundry facilities included, a fridge for beer, it’s like they knew exactly what they were doing, hahaha. We took full advantage withheld naked sex on the red leather couch, and felt completely like we should’ve been snorting lines of coke off a hooker’s ass. It was fantastic. The flop pad was decked out with the most random esoteric chintz, an Incredibles phone, a Peanuts illustration of Schroeder playing piano for a burlesque stripping Lucy, a guestbook filled with sign-ins from bands filled with references to beer, weed, and pussy. A leftover pizza box from the previous band, still half full of pepperoni pizza on the counter.

The past week has been a little trying with all the van repairs and title registration issues throwing a foggy muddle over the logistics for me. We spent a few nights in Tracy with my brother Aleck and dropped $1400 on repairing the power steering. But in-between all that we managed to take a quick one-hour windshield tour through Yosemite and saw El Capitan with the waterfalls pouring off the tops of the cliffs. A super fun gig at Gypsy Shack in the tiny mountain town of Sonora, and we got to see some friends we haven’t seen in awhile. My friend Lee was in SF this morning after seeing Railroad Earth up in Tahoe last night, so we had coffee together out on the sidewalk at Java Beach Cafe for example, a quick little stop before we hit the road for Arcata. Sarah had coffee with her friend Maren in Oakland yesterday at Blue Bottle Coffee too.

But the van has definitely posed its challenges over the past week as we limped down to Paso Robles and back up to Tracy as the power steering started to slowly give out. A fluid flush and fill in Pismo Beach got us back to Tracy, but then she really needed some work so Aleck lent us his car to get back down to Santa Cruz for the gig at Discretion Brewing Company. Such a beautiful drive down into Sequel down Summit Road off of Hwy 17, curving in and out and around the redwoods down the mountainside, it was great. Super fun gig too as Jacob, Marcia, and Marko all stopped in near the end, and our van repair spiels netted us over $100 in tips which was awesome. The van was “ready” in the next day around noon, but it turned out to be an imperfect repair so we had to have it repaired again at another Firestone in Modesto a day or two later, which required two more trips to the shop there to get the steering back to where it was. Now of course the engine light has come on, the airbag light has come on, and the cruise control no longer appears to be working. Oy. Touring vehicles are never-ending money suckers just like rent, it never goes away, the endless expense, ha, but what do you do, at least we’ve had a place to sleep, and we haven’t gotten stranded anywhere yet, right?