Today...
We're still in SLO today and will be for the next few days. We finally got the car into the garage and after this evaluation the guy thinks he can fix it for $350, which is a hell of a big difference to $850. So I think Andrea is very happy with that. It should be fixed in a few days. Anyway, today we went motor biking with James' house mate Zac, he's an insane rider and lives out on this ranch in the country side near San Miguel. The ranch is enormous, it has like 9 horses, countless acres and even enough room for 2 dirt bike tracks. Its a pretty sweet set up. I think Rob would be entirely happy there. We didn't really do much biking as it started to rain pretty hard, but we went to see the horses which i thought was pretty cool. One tried to kiss me...
... as for the rest of the day, we're just chilling out and taking it easy.
It was such a relief to arrive here in one piece and actually have a bed to sleep in and be able to shower. I was really happy to arrive with James. Central California is so amazing too. Like nothing I have ever seen, its so beautiful. Its kind of like an over exaggerated England. I guess everything seems a little more refined and more perfected and bigger too. I thought southern California was the place to be. I was so wrong. This is definitely it. It has the best of both worlds, lots of lush green and fantastic sunshine. James is half English, and lived in Yorkshire for a big portion of his early life... arriving at his house was like walking into a traditional English home. It was so bizarre. So being surrounded by these rolling hills, the ocean, lots of green and tress and then arriving at this very English house i felt so at home and to top it off... it RAINED!!!! Mental!! I haven't seen proper rain in almost 6 months. I enjoyed every bit of it. Its all made me a little home sick. They have also been feeding us marmite. Brilliant!
On our first day here James was itching to take us kiting, so thats what we did. He is totally awesome at it, like stupidly fantastic. Its honestly like his life, if something doesn't fit with kiting then it just doesn't get done and that includes work. I didn't end up actually trying kiting but the other did and they really seemed to struggle even though they had put tones of effort in. I guess there is so much to take into consideration.
(James Kite Surfing)
Santa Barbara.
We ended up stuck in Santa Barbara for a couple of days, this was really annoying. Basically on the way there the brake light had appeared on the dash board, and we hadn't really thought anything about it. That was until we arrived back from the gig to the car park and realized that the car no longer had any brakes. This was pretty scary but at least we'd had figure out what the problem was... the brake fluid had been leaking due to rushy old lines, so for the time being we could just top up the brake fluid. I didn't really think this was a massive deal at the time. I was wrong, for several reasons. 1. we'd broken down on a Saturday night, so garages weren't open again until the Monday morning. 2. Santa Barbara is one of the most expensive places on earth so we couldn't afford to get a hotel room and we couldn't really afford the cost of garages there either. So for the next 2 nights I would sleep uncomfortably in the car, scared out of my brain as I didn't know what weirdo was going to brake into the car and steel all our stuff. It wasn't fun. Although we did have a lovely day at the beach, which was dog friendly. It was nice just being able to catch up on sleep and relax. When the garage open on the Monday morning, we immediately sent the car in for an evaluation and repair, the thing is, is that it never got to the repair stage. We had been quoted $850+ to fix the car. This was not good. Andrea certainly could not afford this. In the end we decided just to bite the bullet and drive to SLO (where our friend James lives) and top it up along the way. This was a little sketchy and maybe one of my most least relaxed drives. We got there safe and sound, so all was good.
Atoms for Peace...
Atoms for peace were totally awesome. It was amazing. We saw them at the Santa Barbara Bowl, which is an old open air amphitheater... it was pretty crazy. The acoustics were really great too. It was weird because I don't usually enjoy seeing bands when I don't really know much of their stuff (which i didn't), but this time it didn't seem to really matter. I found myself rocking out regardless. It was a lot of fun and also the band were kind of new and innovative, doing things in ways that I hadn't really seen or heard before. I'm so glad that Robs uncle was able to hook us up with some tickets. To top the night off Robs uncle had also thrown in some after show tickets... I was too excited, and for good reason. It was Epic. I wasn't really sure what to expect. What I found was cool though, we were in this swanky back room that had oodles of wine and beer for the taking and an array of random people whom were probably wondering who the hell we all were. We were scruffy, dirty, un-showered and my hair had definitely not seen a hair brush in a few days. All the same I was really excited to be there. We tucked into the wine straight away. It was good. I was pretty drunk by the end of it to say the least. Half way through the night we realized that we'd been sharing the room with some pretty high profile people... I forget the name of many, but the guy who played Johny Cash in Walk the line was there, Joaquin Phoenix. That was pretty surreal. I also realized that Flea from the chilis and Atoms for Peace was there as well as Thom Yorke himself. I felt a little intimidated. It took me most of the night to pluck up the courage to go over to them and thank them for an awesome performance... once I did, I wished I hadn't. They were honestly some of the rudest people I had ever met. Kind of ruined it a little for me. All the same I met them so I guess thats pretty cool.
(Atoms for Peace)
(thats flea from the chili peppers behind Sophie and I, wearing a hat with blue hair)
(thats Thom Yorke in the hat behind the blonde woman)
San Diego.
It was Good. It was lovely weather and nice and chilled out. Although it wasn't very dog friendly so we were pretty limited to the places we could visit. A short and sweet visit. We also went back to visit Point Loma again. It was much better this time as the weather and visibility was a vast improvement than on our last visit in June. This was the last the day if was all five of us traveling together...
...having a few issues with the layout and order of these events. Sorry.
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