Day 23 - Highway 1 is #1 -or- BBQ’ed in Atascadero

We felt pretty good waking up. This was because we had slept an hour longer than planned and were late for breakfast with Lindsay. AHHH! We left as fast as we could, then rode the highway into Venice. The neighborhood is beautiful. It’s like taking everything nice out of Brooklyn, and putting it in the sun and next to the beach, and adding lots of green landscaping and palm trees.

Talking to Lindsay is always easy. We chatted about how busy Ryan is, his new project, her experience teaching Karate to VERY young kids, and the story of them moving out to LA. She made us a lovely breakfast and we ate and talked too long. When we looked up, it was time for her to go to work, and time for us to book it up to Atascadero.

With a little research we discovered that with a little extra time we could take highway 1 for a good distance. This was the right choice. In minutes we were cruising through Malibu with green mountains studded with palms and cactus on one side, and the surging blue Pacific on the other.

The highway twisted along the coast and flew up and down mountains, each curve delivering a new landscape of desert hills or emerald green mountains. Enormous mansions clung to the rocks, reaching out to the sea with balconies and shining windows. Blythe drove fast, eyeing the radar detector and blasting past leisurely paced European luxury cars.

(the cops had stopped traffic to let a movie crew leave their location, which we sadly didn't get a pic of)

A departure from the highway brought us to a country road, speeding us through grassy mountains and offering views of enormous green valleys. The road was cut into cliff sides, and it twisted into the small town of Atascadero.

We almost blew right by Last Stage West. It’s tucked between hills that are heavily forested. We stepped inside and met Tom and Aaron. Tom set us up fast with food while we loaded in. This set was broadcast on LastStageWest.net, and recorded for all of you fine folks to watch again and again. We played for 3 hours. Tom stepped up to play drums with us for a few tunes. It was pretty nice. Unfortunately the place was mostly empty all night. But we had a good time playing into the vast reaches of cyber space.

At the end we sat with Lia, our bartender for the evening, and chatted over beers. She told us all about her experience living in small town CA and about collecting band t-shirts and about a whole valley of people in Italy with her last name.

We stepped out into the mild night, forest mist hanging all around, and quietly set up our tent on a muddy piece of ground. We crawled in and Blythe dozed off while I read Craig Ferguson’s book, which Blythe got for a dollar at a thrift store in NM.

Thanks to Tom at Last Stage West for the show, the food, and the place to sleep. Thanks to Aaron, Lia, and Zach for the fine conversation, and of course, Lindsay for breakfast.

Tomorrow… Waking up in a pool, Homestead Motel, and The Frog and Peach Pub.