A Perfect Day At The Hair Farm (A Dorm Daze Prequel)

One of the things that drives me in life is the quest for "the perfect day." Now that means something different to everybody. For me it means a day so goddamn good, if you could bottle it up and relive it over and over again, you would. I can think of maybe three of those off the top of my head. Days where you are actually kinda sad when your head hits the pillow at night. 

There was a day last Fall where after sort of knowing somebody online for over a decade and texting or talking to her every day for four months solid, I took five days off of work, blew out of town, drove nine hours and a state away and we finally met in person. Let's call her Katie. Katie and I spent a Friday (and eventually the whole weekend, where unfortunately we made one bad decision after another, not the least of which was spend entirely too much money on club seats to attend the atrocity that was my beloved Chicago Bears taking on her Denver Broncos while unbelievably hungover) together. DIAGRAM THAT SENTENCE! But that Friday, I'm telling you, that Friday was a perfect day. We met for breakfast, had our first actual golf lesson for the first time in person after several years of virtual online sessions, played eighteen holes, got dressed up (GOOD LORD, SHE'S A KNOCKOUT), shared a fancy dinner and drinks, talked about what we wanted out of life and capped it off with a warm embrace and kiss to cap the evening. I never felt more alive in my goddamn life. Now, somehow, despite my best attempts at screwing things up royally in the ensuing month and change, Katie is still as good a friend as I have, I love her to death and always will, and we at the very least message daily if not talk. I'm sure I'll write about her again some day. Things didn't turn out quite the way I pictured it in the future with her when I drove back to my hotel that Friday night. As always, I massively over-read the situation like I do the majority of putts these days. My dumb brain going places it shouldn't have and seeing things that weren't there. That tends to happen more often than I'd like. But that Friday was as perfect a day as I'd had in two decades. If I could bottle up that day and sell it, it'd fetch more on the streets than cocaine.

Halfway through a perfect day!

Most recently, I had a day a few weeks ago where I got up, watered my garden, taught an awesome golf lesson, fired a red-number on my old golf course and spent the afternoon with a pretty special gal, let’s call her Carly, who took me shopping at one of those high-end clothing stores that I wouldn't have ever pictured myself wandering into in a million years. I could’ve never fit in their clothes! She outfitted me with a whole new wardrobe. Stuff I never thought I'd wear, but you know what? They look fucking fantastic on the new bod! We capped the day again, with a lovely dinner and drinks at a swanky restaurant talking about how we got to where we were at. Unfortunately, I was actually successful at torpedoing that friendship royally and I still don't know if Carly and I are really friends anymore. I suspect probably not, and that really fucking bums me out. Sometimes the perfect day doesn't result in better things down the road. In fact, by definition, it's really all downhill from there. But sometimes, when you can just live in the moment of the perfect day, those things stick with you and burn a memory so vivid in your head you couldn't shake it if you try. 

This entry covers the events of one of those days, and we're going to turn on the wayback machine. Just a little over twenty-one years ago to one perfect June day that I spent with one of my best friends before I moved away to go to Westminster. I call this one "The Perfect Day at the Hair Farm."

It was June 19th, 1999. My alarm clock blew off at 5:30 AM with my favorite Keith Richards Stones' song, "You Got The Silver." I had to catch my pops before he left for work so he could sign my financial aid paperwork. My whole application to college came in pretty late. I'll tell that story another day, but I was behind the eight-ball and couldn't afford to wait for the mail to deliver it, and the money was starting to run out. So my buddy Skwez and I were going to drive it up to Salt Lake and hand-deliver it ourselves to the school. Plus, I wanted him to see how good this situation was going to be. He wasn't only one of my best friends, but he was also my golf coach in Junior College at Eastern Utah. He wasn't just going to send me off into the wild without seeing the lay of the land first. And I at least wanted to introduce him to my new coach. 

The old man and I sat at our ancient-ass 70's era kitchen table (yellow veneer? TACKY), hammered down some bacon, eggs and coffee and went over the paperwork for my pell grants and work-study. I think it was finally setting in for both of us, the clock was ticking on my leaving Price for good. Less than two months to go. I still miss those breakfasts. Pops Nickas was a hell of a breakfast cook. I swear it's the paprika on the hash browns. Goddamn fantastic. "You guys staying up there tonight?" he grumbled. 

"I don't know pop. We're flying by the seat of our pants today. The only real item on the agenda is dropping off these papers and checking out the dorms."

"Didn't you do that three weeks ago?"

"Yeah, but this time I'm taking a camera so I can see what I've got to work with as far as space goes." I obviously needed to figure our a way to fit all of my worldly possessions into an 11'x9' space. "Have a good day at work, pop. I'll find a pay phone and let you know what we do."

Nickas and Skwez, lookin' like a couple preppy
assholes, circa 1999.

Skwez pulled up an hour later at 6:30 in his pimp-gold 1996 Jeep Cherokee. I tossed my golf clubs and overnight bag into the back. He tossed me the keys as he filled up his CD changer with our road-trip standards. GNR's "Appetite for Destruction," Ozzy Osbourne's "No More Tears," Metallica's "Master of Puppets," and Rob Zombie's "Hellbilly Deluxe," among others.  "You're driving." He hated driving that canyon. 

"What's the plan?" I asked.

"I had TK call in a favor and we're teeing off at South Mountain in two hours. Fucking step on it dude." The course was roughly two hours away.

South Mountain Golf Club was at the time (before Salt Lake County bought it) was one of the two high-end golf courses in Northern Utah in the latter part of the 90's. Carved into the hillside in Draper, it opened up in 1998 and immediately got a reputation as one of the best tests of golf in one of the best conditions in the state. And for $90.00 at the time, it sure as hell better have been. That was pretty much unheard of for a public course green fee in Utah back then. 

We blasted through the canyon. Just a college dipshit and his slightly older than college buddy screaming metal tunes and power ballads at the top of our lungs. Not being my own vehicle, I drove extra carefully and we pulled into the South Mountain parking lot in an hour and twenty nine minutes. We popped the hatch on the Cherokee and started unloading our gear and changing our shoes when a bag attendant pulled up and loaded our clubs onto a cart. I damn near pulled the Happy Gilmore and tackled him when he grabbed my bag, until I remembered that yeah, nice courses have those guys. We tipped the dude and checked in where the guy informed me that I wouldn't be allowed to tee off unless I wore a collared shirt. Free golf at a swanky track though. Blew my mind, but I saw a decent looking one in a fat-kid size (MORE X'S THAN A PORNO THEATER) on the rack and bought it so we could tee off. Only $70! I couldn't believe how much of a rube I was back then. I'd like to say I still have that shirt, but no. It was in that giant tub of giant clothes I donated to the shelter last Winter. 

We teed off and this track was better than advertised. Super long from the tips, tight, with trouble everywhere. The greens were slick and the wind was whipping. Birdies were hard to come by, but we both made a few. Our scoring was pretty unspectacular, we both shot 75, but we had a damn blast and took a hundred bucks off the suckers we got paired with in a best ball match. We thanked the Director of Golf for being an awesome host and said hello for TK. "Come back anytime," he said. I don't think he lasted more than a year in the job.

DJ for a Day!

We dropped our gear off at Skwez's sister's place, got cleaned up and I got my paperwork together. We still had to make my meeting with Financial Aid at 2:00. We jumped back in the car and headed for downtown, switching this time to the radio. It was no secret, radio in Price Utah in the 90's was liquid shit. Radio in Price is STILL liquid shit. We had three country stations, two right-wing talk stations, a pop station, and an oldies station that I probably listened to more than anything. In fact, I can still sing along to almost any 60's song on Sirius Channel 6. I heard them all a thousand times. Liked them, but we were hurting for variety. But Salt Lake had the mighty KBER 101.1. Still, for my money the greatest radio station in the history of this state. We flipped it on just as the last refrain of Tesla's "Modern Day Cowboy" blasted out and the DJ, Hammer (who I got to actually host a show for an afternoon a few years later) came on. "Let's check in with Helmut over at Rocky Mountain Raceway getting warmed up for the big Poison/Ratt/Great White/LA Guns show tonight!" 

We looked at each other, "Dude, no way we're driving home tonight. We've gotta go to this. There won't be twenty people there, they might let us play in the band." Don't get me wrong, we still loved those bands. We grew up in the timewarp that was Carbon County, where it was still 1988, but we both knew most of those acts hadn't been heard from in years. Thankfully, the legendary Heavy Metal Shop was in the Sugarhouse neighborhood within walking distance to Westminster so we popped in and managed to snag their last two tickets. We were gonna rock our dumb asses off that night. 

Formerly known as Res.3

The college visit was every bit as good as my initial one, if not better because one of my best pals was there with me this time. We met with my new coach, DP, briefly and it was like a passing of the torch. We took another dorm tour. And this time I got to see my actual room. Res. 3, Room 302. The Penthouse of the new building. And I didn't know it at the time, but I also met one of my future roommates, Jerry Flynt. I took a few photos of my bedroom to get some idea of what I had to work with space-wise. Not much, but at least I got my own room. I was going to have to stack some furniture, or do some "Step-Brothers" shit. Skwez was impressed. "This dorm is nicer than Harvard!" he said. I have no idea if that's true. We stopped over to the Campus Patrol office so I could pick up my residential parking permit, made one more trip by admissions to say goodbye to DP and my admissions counselors Kenny and Clint and booked it over to Tres Hombres for some dinner before the show. 

Over giant smothered burritos and for him a margarita, for me a Sprite (I was still 20 years old and the DD for the trip), we talked a bit about what I was about to dive into. He asked me, "What do you think about your coach?"

"Seems like a nice guy. And this is the chance to get in on the ground floor of something. Yeah, we're probably gonna get our asses kicked, but at least this is a chance to play. I mean, I won our Conference last year and I couldn't get a look from any of the big schools. I just want to play man. I know I'm not D1 talent. But I think I can hang in the NAIA."

"I think you're making the right move man.That campus is awesome." he said

"Yeah, and not a ton of rules when you live there. Just enough rules. And I kinda like the idea of living in the dorms. I kinda need rules and structure to bend and push!"

We finished eating, paid the bill, I hit up a pay phone (REMEMBER THOSE?) to call Pops Nickas to let him know I was staying up there that night, and we lit on out of there towards Rocky Mountain Raceway. After driving for what felt like a goddamn eternity we approached the 5600 West exit off of the 201 freeway. Felt like we were basically in Wendover, kind of funny to think that’s pretty much where Casa de Nickas is now. But about a half mile from that exit we ran into bumper to bumper traffic. “Shit, maybe there’s more people that remember this stuff than we thought.” 

It was a half hour before we reached the venue to find an absolutely jam-packed parking lot. We got out of the car just as the opening bars of LA Guns' (Jizzy Pearl Version) "Ballad of Jayne" echoed across the property. Bummer, we'd missed most of their set while stuck in traffic, but managed to clear security just in time to see them blast through "Never Enough" and "Rip and Tear" to close out their set. The infield of the racetrack was packed wall to wall with people. There might've been 13,000 people there. Which considering it had been nearly a decade since any of those bands have had a hit, really said a lot. 

This dude was put in charge
of reviving the unrevivable

Next up was Great White. I know, I know, but this is pre-Station fire. We were at the same time both struck by how good they sounded and how awful they looked. This was a weird era for rock music, Sony had created a label called Portrait that summer and tabbed producer John Kalodner to revive the careers of these old glam rock and blues metal acts. I bought a couple of those albums that year and while they sound pretty good, don't exactly hold up to the older material. But there's a couple gems on each. Great White recorded one of those albums in which they pretty much re-recorded most of their old hits along with a new song or two. It was pretty stereotypical, when the new songs came out, that crowd made a mass exodus for the john or the beer line. It was uncanny. 

Their set wrapped up, and I was really most excited to see Ratt. So Skwez hit the beer line, and I hit the restroom. When I came out he was talking to these two fairly attractive women who immediately ran up to me and asked if I'd buy them a drink. I'm an idiot, so dumbfounded, I obliged and they planted a kiss on each side of my face like to freaking Doublemint Twins and disappeared into the crowd. Skwez was ten feet away laughing his ass off. "The fuck was that all about?" I asked.

"Oh, I told them you were one of the promoters and loaded. But you 'don't like to make a big deal out of it.'" 

"Thanks pal, I've barely got a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of. Especially now that I'm going to that school!" Still, at the time, that was pretty damn funny.

Utah! Get me two!

We waded back into the crowd just as the opening riff of "Lack of Communication" brought Ratt out onto the stage. They sounded great, and unlike about 2/3 of the times that I've seen them live since (6 or 7 times in various clubs and bowling alleys) actually put some effort into the performance. They blasted through all the songs you recognize and a few only us heshers recognized. For us, the highlight was easily "Nobody Rides For Free," just because it was the closing credits song on one of the two movies (the other being Top Gun) that we'd watched over and over again that summer, Point Break. Bottom line though, Ratt sounded fucking awesome that night. That tour might've been the last time they were really at their best and the crowd was shit hot. I had no clue this many people even still liked this music, but this crowd was genuinely into it!

And now Tan Mom plays the hits!

Poison was Poison. Even if you're the type that thought of them as "metal for chicks," you still couldn't help but have a great time jumping around to their songs. They basically blasted through their entire greatest hits record, which for a nostalgia tour, should be an actual law. Played pretty much every recognizable song they had. About halfway through the set, I got bumped into by a guy absolutely flying on grass, hobbling around on crutches. "Dude, you look sturdy, I need a favor!"

"Uhhh, whatcha need?"

"Put my lady up on your shoulders man!"

Hey, who am I to say no to a man in need. Up she went for "Something To Believe In." I managed to catch a glimpse of Skwez's face. He had a mixture of bemusement and a bizarre pride when she handed me her tube top. It was funny at the time, but there's a good reason you don't see that too often at shows anymore. And that's definitely for the best. 

They wrapped up the show with "Rock and Roll All Nite" from the legendary Less Than Zero soundtrack. A hell of a good time was had, and as we filtered our way out of the racetrack and back to the car, Skwez and I just looked at each other like, "did that day just happen?" We ran pretty much nonstop from 6:30 that morning until now at 12:30 at night. And everything we did tangentially hit on just about every aspect of our friendship. From playing golf (where we first started hanging out), to touring the halls of academia, to blowing our eardrums out with a bunch of obnoxious hard rock tuneage. It was a the fullest of days with one of my best friends, dare I say "perfect." Because while life has moved on for us both, and we're still pals and have had many good times since, that day was pretty much our apex mountain. And I'll remember that forever.

Epilogue:

Two months later, I left Price for the last time as a full-time resident. In fact, outside of the summer after my first junior year, I've only popped in for a few days here and there to visit the family and a few friends. Skwez got married, moved to Colorado, divorced and married again, adopted a couple kids and now is a domesticated family guy. Neither one of us are fat kids anymore. My history in the years since has been pretty well documented here on the 'Monster. But that perfect day will stand out as a real turning-point in my life. That day, moving to the city became real.

Into The Great Wide Open Part Three: The Saint of Los Angeles

Apologize for the delay, had to work out a few things in my mind on how to approach things here, then got busy! Moving on! Check out part one of this stupid one-man odyssey right here and part two right here! In this installment, I leave the scenic stretches and California kitsch of the central coast and trade it for the ultimate concrete jungle. Along the way, I get to reconnect with some old friends that I hadn't seen in over a decade, get irrationally bummed out from a message from back home, get tailored, visit every Real Rock n' Rolla's spiritual home and start to put it all together while meditating on a beach. Let's get back on the road...

The alignment on that car had to have been pretty great

After a quick stop back in San Luis Obispo at the Firestone Grill for one of their famous Tri-Tip sandwiches, I was back on Highway 1 heading south. The road weaves in and out of its ocean view and I made one more stop in Pismo Beach, just to see what Bugs Bunny was making such a fuss about. It was kinda nice, well worth taking that right turn in Albuquerque. I blasted through Santa Maria and found myself nearing Lompoc, where Mia, O'Conner and the fellas once sprung Toretto by wrecking his prison bus and somehow didn't kill everybody aboard. There were no prison buses on the road, but traffic was starting to build, and by the time I hit Santa Barbara, it was stop-and-go time. For the next two hours I probably averaged about five miles an hour as we crawled along the 101 through Ventura. It kinda blows my mind that the beautiful vistas of the chaparral that I was "forced" to look at (along with about ten thousand tail lights) pretty much went up in smoke last Winter. Eventually, I got through whatever it was that was throttling down traffic to two lanes, split from the 1 and managed to hit the Valley just as it was getting dusky and the famous LA rush hour traffic was starting to build up. The Waze app is a godsend in places like this, and even though game 6 of the World Series was going on just adjacent to my route, I was able to find my hotel downtown without a crazy amount of trouble.

My tongue is LAVA!

After stowing my gear and a quick freshening up, I took a walk to find some dinner, stopping off for some tacos at a little place down the street. It was Halloween night and pretty busy, but there was an open seat at the bar in the rear of the place and I struck up a conversation with the bartender while he was pouring. He'd come to LA from the midwest to try and get into the film business and figured out he had it a lot easier slinging drinks and living in an apartment the size of a closet downtown. NOT STEREOTYPICAL WHATSOEVER. Still, there's something to be said about actually taking the leap when you've got nothing to lose. Now, I can't eat quite what I used to these days, so I settled on just three small tacos, (carnitas, chicken and shrimp) as well as one of the better margaritas I've had in quite some time. The carnitas and chicken were both outstanding, the shrimp had to have been one of the top-ten hottest things I've ever eaten. Just blew my already-fried palate all to hell. I'm glad I saved it for last. Just as the Dodgers were putting the finishing touches on forcing a game 7 in the World Series, I paid for my meal and walked back to the hotel. The streets were a lot more crowded both with people in costumes heading to the bars for a wild night and ecstatic local Dodger fans, with visions of a possible championship dancing in their eyes.

We're practically the same guy.

The margaritas had my brain in a fog and as my head hit the pillow just after midnight, a messenger alert snapped me back to reality. Hey! It's the mysterious girl from back home! She got my "just thinkin' about you" message! I opened the app aaaaand her blunt response made it abundantly clear that whatever feelings I had for her, weren't exactly reciprocated. Not exactly what I wanted to read on my first night in The City of Angels, or ever really. But thinking about it, shit, it's totally okay. We were in completely different places in our lives. And relationships are definitely a two-way street. I was an idiot for thinking I could rekindle something that probably wasn't really there from twenty years ago. Not the first time I've made that kind of mistake and it probably won't be the last. God knows, I'm terrible at catching a hint. But hell yeah, it hurt. But just like everybody's favorite animated doormat Butters once said on the legendary "Raisins" episode of South Park, "but at the same time I'm really happy that something could make me feel that sad. It's like, it makes me feel alive, you know? It makes me feel human. And the only way I could feel this sad now is if I felt somethin' really good before. So I have to take the bad with the good, so I guess what I'm feelin' is like a, beautiful sadness. I guess that sounds stupid." Still, at the time, it felt like the many highs of the past few days had just been mashed with a pair of size fifteen waffle-stompers. I hammered down a hot shot of NyQuil and I'm not sure how long it took to fall asleep, but it was a while.

Wish we had something like this here in Salt Lick.

It was a fairly restless night, but I rolled out of bed bright and early to meet an old college friend for breakfast, Jess. You might remember her from a couple cameos in some of my old Dorm Days stories, specifically when she fell asleep hiding in my closet from campus security during our huge dorm party, and when she totally brightened up my day during one of the shittiest weeks I had during that era. Good friends like her are hard to come by in this world. She suggested we meet up at the Grand Central Market, one of those big food markets that only seem to exist on Travel Network TV shows. Thankfully, the market was only about a twenty-minute walk from my hotel. In LA, driving doesn't cost a lot, PARKING costs a lot. Actually, with the cost of gas these days, driving costs a lot too.

Don't blame me. The rat peed there.

Now, there's a lot to be said for living in a clean, almost sterile city like Salt Lick, but this was an enjoyable stroll to me for a few reasons. First, people actually seemed interested in where they were going and were MOVING. And even if you bumped into somebody accidentally, they didn't give you the side-eye, they just kept on. I actually kind of liked that anonymity. Also, as gross as it sounds, there's something oddly comforting about that familiar scent of urine and pigeon shit in the air. That felt like a city that's lived in. It doesn't pressure you to conform to a certain way of living. You can do what you want, live your life the way you want to as long as it doesn't hurt anybody else, and nobody gives a rat's ass, not even the rats. That being said, it'd be nice if it was a little cheaper though, but I still dig it. Those high prices, and the fact that your house may either burn down in a brush fire or shake itself apart in the event of an earthquake are all a small price to pay for the luxury of 70 degrees and perfect every single day with a beach nearby.


After hanging around the ever-growing line at the counter of the tastefully named breakfast sandwich booth called Eggslut for about twenty minutes, from behind me I just heard a loud, "NICKAS!" and a big hug. It'd been about ten years since I'd seen her but Jess was a vision as always! I'll tell y'all what, if we have any chance whatsoever at cleaning up the literal mess this country has made of itself in terms of litter and pollution, Jess is going to be at the forefront of the solutions. She works for a waste management NPO in Southern California and was one of the main proponents of their recent plastic grocery bag bans, as well as several other major sustainable trash management initiatives. She knows more about garbage than anyone I know, and that's a good thing. She's going to have a positive impact on this earth. It was great to catch up with her, even if for just a little while as we reminisced about the Dorm Days and everything that's happened since then. After a dynamite sausage sandwich for breakfast and about eight cups of coffee, I walked her to her car and said goodbye. As she pulled away into traffic, I remembered one of the dumb goals of this trip that I had in mind when I left Salt Lick, I was going to buy a suit.



I mentioned in the last chapter of this travelogue that one of my favorite podcasts, The After Disaster, was based in Southern California. A couple months before this, they'd mentioned on one of their shows that two of them had recently purchased tailored suits from a small tailor called Al Weiss. They'd mentioned that they were so good, they practically sized you up as you walked in the door, asked you what you were interested in, and had you outfitted literally ten minutes later with something that fit perfectly, and for not a whole lot of dough. I punched in the coordinates on my phone and found that it was located only about fifteen blocks away, so I continued my march through the streets toward the fashion district. I almost walked right past it, it was so small. I walked in and it looked like it was chock-full of stuff that "fell off the back of the truck." A dude named Roman walked over and just like they said on the show, basically sized me up on everything besides neck-size, grabbed a couple things off the shelf and told me to try them on. Holy shit! This stuff looked great! I just needed the pant legs shortened by an inch. "No problem," the guy said, "take it over to Freddy's next door and they'll tailor it for you. I was in and out of Freddy's in about ten minutes and only out about five bucks for the alterations. I stopped back into Al Weiss and bought three more shirts. All told, I was out all of $250 for an Italian suit and four shirts. Insane. I then had another pleasurable walk for about fifteen blocks packing my garment bag back to my hotel. Nobody gave me a second look. Anonymity is awesome and I was already starting to feel a little bit better. Like it was time to turn a corner.

38 Minutes! It's like I run in slow motion or something, still,
it's a pretty nice view! 

After a killer workout in the surprisingly swanky hotel gym in which I set (at the time) a treadmill 5K personal best (gotta love interval training at sea level!), I met up with my television writer buddy MJ and his wife Alexia for dinner and drinks at a brewpub in Burbank. I coached MJ for a season of high school golf at Carbon High during my freshman year of college and I'd worked with his mother for quite a few years when I was first breaking into the golf business. We spent a couple hours catching up and commiserating on the depressing state of our hometown, politics and the joys of legal weed. All the while on the giant TV screen in the bar, the Dodgers were getting thoroughly destroyed in Game 7 of the series by the Astros. We seemed to be the only ones yukking it up in there, as the rest of the crowd in the bar made the place resemble a funeral parlor. Even though I can't stand the Dodgers, I was almost secretly hoping they'd pull it off (don't tell my Giant fan Dad), so I'd have the once in a lifetime opportunity to take part in a good, old fashioned sports riot! Instead, the ride back to the hotel was pretty uneventful. Out of the window of the high-rise, I heard a few sirens and some shouting, but I chalked that up to just a typical Wednesday night in downtown Los Angeles. After the shit night I had before, I slept like a baby.



Thursday, I made my way back north a bit to Ventura County. One of my comedic heroes and radio legend, Phil Hendrie, often waxed poetic about his beloved El Pacifico and the calming shores of Silver Strand beach. It wasn't too difficult to find, the weather was a beautiful 60 degrees and to my surprise, there was all of about four people on the mile wide stretch of beach. I shouldn't have been surprised, it was a Thursday at noon, in November. What kind of crazy asshole would be at the beach right now? Well, that guy and a tourist dipshit like myelf. I plopped my duffel down, laid out a couple towels and waded out into the water. Yep, it was November, JUMPIN' JEEZUS THAT'S COLD! That was okay though, I practically had the beach to myself. 

Working on the bronze, thinking about
the universe and shit.

I pulled into the big dude equivalent of a lotus position on my towel and zoned out for a minute. Now, normally I have a difficult time shutting my brain off, but something about the gentle waves rolling in and crashing ashore, the occasional seagull squeak, the sand shifting under my tucchus made all of the whirlwind of the road, the heartache from back home, the stresses about work fall away like the sand getting pulled back into the water. I learned a lot from the ocean that day. See, those waves roll in, and roll out. They crash on the beach and move back out again. And there's a rhythm to it. Over and over again. Sometimes they roll in long, and sometimes short. Sometimes the time of day rolls them further up the beach, and at certain times of day, the beach gets bigger. But they crash, over and over and over again. Those waves hit that beach eons before I got there and they'll hit that beach long after I'm gone. No outside forces can change that. Over and over again, the waves crash. I'll leave an imprint of my ass in the sand, and by tomorrow it'll be gone. The universe doesn't care, it just does what it does. The only things we can control are what we do. The way we treat others, the way we treat the planet, the way we feel about ourselves, no other person should have the power to change that about you. They can only be a catalyst, a spark, the rest is entirely up to you. We all have that choice to make.

The Strand Jetty

It's like the second noble truth of Buddhism. "Nothing is forever. Everything ends. Except the waves of the ocean. "To live, is to suffer." Suffering is inevitable for all human beings as long as they labor under the delusion that things can be permanent. When in fact, nothing is permanent. Your life is composed of a series of systems. Your culture, your relationships, your physical body, they're all systems and all systems have a few things in common. They all begin, grow, flourish, decay, and die. Everything without exception. You can be a good Christian, a good Jew, a good Muslim, a good Scientologist, make all the right moves, and do all the right things. But your dog is still gonna die, your parents are still gonna die. You're gonna fuck up your marriage. Your girlfriend is still gonna cheat on you. Your kids are gonna grow up and not call you as much. And you can, sit in your nice house and not sleep for three days and cry to the cats and jack off until your dick hurts. Or you can man up, put on your boots and work towards achieving zen. Zen is when you abandon the concept of the past and the future and embrace only the moment. If you can free yourself from the events of the past, which is dead, and your expectations of the future, which is fantasy, and embrace only the moment in which you are alive by freeing yourself from the tyranny of all of those wants that you have, then you can achieve a state of zen consciousness which leads to a state of bliss. 

The golden arcs!

I snapped out of it and looked at my watch. I'd been literally staring at those waves for two and a half hours. I packed up my stuff, snagged a t-shirt at a local surf shop, and hammered down a gyro at a Greek joint adjacent to the beach. After topping off Giselle's fuel tank, I cruised back down the 101 towards the city and my hotel. Fortunately, Waze was acting kind of weird again and had me running through neighborhoods again, but it was fortuitous, and I almost crashed the car when suddenly I drove by a very famous, but very out of place movie landmark, McDowell's from Coming To America! Unfortunately, I'd missed the pop-up restaurant by a couple days, and an apparent appearance by JACKSON HEIGHTS' VERY OWN MR. RANDY WATSON, but still, just the fact that somebody did that to their restaurant was fucking funny and well worth the picture! Somebody get my formerly fat ass a Big Mick!

That night, I ventured into West Hollywood for a stop at the SINGLE GREATEST RECORD STORE IN THE HISTORY OF GODDAMN MANKIND and picked up some vinyl and shopped around a bit. Seriously, if it exists, they probably have a copy of it. After losing myself in there for a couple hours, I drove west down the world famous Sunset Strip to the world famous Rainbow Bar and Grill. I make a pilgrimage to that place every single time I'm in Southern California. There isn't rocker throughout history that hasn't thrown on a massive drunk in that place, and you can almost feel the ghosts echo through the walls. Their food is excellent too, and I went there on this trip for a couple reasons. My friend Susie walked in and sat down in the booth across from me. I hadn't seen her in almost sixteen years and like so many people I know, had somehow managed not to age as time wore on. It was great to see her doing well, she was dating one of my best friends throughout high school, so we'd hang at her house quite often back in the day. Nowadays, she was a doctor for the local department of corrections and had some wild stories to tell. Nothing I care to repeat here, but she's SEEN SOME SHIT! Stuff the makes the "Tossed Salad Man" seem like a walk in the park. But she's weathered through it with a sense of humor, and had also recently started a family. "Having kids changes everything" she said, "it's something I never thought I'd do, but it's been the most rewarding thing ever." I'm sure it really puts things in perspective, especially after dealing with the absolute dregs of society on a daily basis. "Keep that kid outta County!" I quipped. 


I also had to hit up the 'Bow to pay my respects to the late, great Lemmy Kilmister, the mastermind of heavy metal stalwarts Motorhead. I always thought that the only things that would survive our impending doom on the planet would be Keith Richards, cockroaches and Lemmy, but unfortunately seventy years of the hardest living imaginable finally did him in. I was at one of the last shows Motorhead played, here in Salt Lick, when after three songs, he walked off the stage in obviously rough shape. Probably one of the more traumatic concert experiences I've ever had. I literally thought I'd seen the man die onstage that night. His health finally gave out a few months later, and death finally came for the unkillable. 



After the epiphany I'd had earlier in the day on the beach, viewing his Memorial at the Rainbow seemed especially poignant. There weren't too many people over the years that lived "in the moment" as ferociously as Lemmy. That dude attacked life like it was something to be devoured. He toured the world blowing out eardrums, did all the drugs, drank all the booze, bed down with women worldwide and he did it every goddamn day of his life. If he wanted to do something, he made it happen. I think there's something we can all learn from that. Maybe not quite to the destructive ends he went to health-wise, but I think after we all handle our responsibilities, we owe it to ourselves to seek out and experience joy. Whatever that may be. I was never again going to let indecision and fear cloud the direction my life would take. I'm going to tackle life like a linebacker smashing a wide receiver going over the middle. It was time to make some changes, but I had one more lesson to learn on the road before I'd return to life back home...

Coming up soon -  Part Four: The Bridge to Nirvana

"I was born the King of Fools
At any other game I never lose.
But when it comes around to
Love that's when I realize
I was born the king of fools."

Why I Do What I Do (Riding a different kind of white horse)

Okay, I know what you're thinking. "What the hell man! You promised us an insanely personal story about the whole lot of good and that personally crushing thing that happened to you in Los Angeles during that stupid trip you took last fall! Why are you leaving us hanging? What an asshole!" To which I am going to reply, "Hey, it's been a busy year." I'm actually almost done with that story and hope to have it up in a few days. But something happened to me today, and it hit some weird spot in my brain and I just had to reflect on it a little bit. Because it cuts to the absolute core of who I am, what I do and why I do it. So for you guys, and the shockingly strange amount of readers I have from Eastern Europe and behind the Iron Curtain, here's your chance to get inside my head for a second. I'll finish that travelogue soon, and maybe dust off The Dorm Days later this year. 

Not enough tacklin' fuel.

Anyway, on to the meat of this blog entry. Growing up I was a total Mama’s Boy. Not Waterboy bad, but my momma and I were pretty close. Like it should be, I guess. When I was a little kid, my dad owned a trucking company and worked from 6 AM to 8 PM every day, so he wasn’t around too much. She drove me to various sports practices daily, served as president of my Little League and Babe Ruth leagues, helped me with my homework and did all this while holding down a full time job, and attended college! Total Superwoman growing up, a strong, take-no-bullshit kind of lady. Eventually my dad sold the company, and took another job giving him a little bit more time to be around, but I was always closer to my mother.  

What a bunch of reprobates.

My dad and I butted heads constantly. It seemed like I could never do anything good enough for the guy. My grades were never good enough. I didn’t work hard enough in the yard. Hell, I think I was the only “coach’s kid” in all of youth baseball that didn’t have an easy ride. I’d hit a home run to the opposite field and as I’d be rounding first, all I’d hear is “You were a little late getting around on that one.” One of the reasons I got into golf in the first place was that it was something he’d never done before so he couldn’t criticize me about it. To be honest with you there was a period there where I thought the dude was a total asshole. We just didn’t get along, even threw down a couple of times. Believe me, I'm not proud of this, and I'm glad we're good now. Get along with your parents kids, you'll thank me later.

About a month and a half before high school graduation, my folks split up. I never did see it coming, but at the same time, I wasn't around home very often back then. I pretty much lived over at my buddy Wischer's place back then and the local golf course. In a baseball parlance, I was just "playing out the string" until graduation when I would maybe force myself to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. A wiser person than I (not exactly distinguished company, that's probably 95% of the world) once said "whatever you take for granted, you lose" and you could definitely say that at the time, I took my family for granted. And when it blew up, mentally it threw me into a tailspin. I pretended to hold it together for my Dad and little sister, but even they had to have known I was pretty jacked-up. Sure, the circumstances kind of forced my Dad and I to get along for the first time pretty much ever, but I was still lost, spending what time I wasn't in class or at work crawling into a bottle of Jack Daniels that an older buddy would pick up for me once a week. 

There used to be a lot more weeds to the right.

One day though, the following summer I was out by myself playing golf at good ol' Carbon Country Club. As was typical at the time I was thinking about what a mess I was and probably feeling sorry for myself. It was late in the day, right around dusk, and the course down home seemed completely deserted. I striped my tee shot down  the 18th fairway and walked to my ball. When I reached it, I had a good look around and something weird happened. I noticed the grass was the most beautiful tint of jade that I'd ever seen. The sand in the trap seemed pearl white, even though it was the same shitty sand we'd always had. The clouds in the sky looked to be on fire as the little remaining light cast what seemed to be the air around me in the most surreal shade of blue with streaks of warm orange light almost illuminating a path towards nirvana. The scene gave me pause, and then for the first time a sense of total calmness came over me as all the chaos and strife in my life seemingly lifted away. It was almost like something else was there standing next to me letting me know that everything was going to be all right. Then I stepped up to my ball, and hosel-rocketed it straight into the weeds. But you know what, I didn't care, because I was in a good state of mind. Things were going to be all right.

A monster is chained in all our hearts, waiting to be set free by obsession

Now, I'm not particularly religious. I grew up that way, hell, I was even an altar-boy at my church. I grew out of it and let's just say it's probably not in the cards for me to head down that path again. Nowadays I dabble a little bit in the Tao, and meditation, but that's more for personal enlightenment. I fucking hate rules. But I felt something that day, and I've been chasing it ever since. I competed at a fairly high level in the game for years, and I thought the charge of being in contention in a tournament might've been that feeling. But it's a whole other ballgame entirely. What I've been chasing is that sense of calmness that I can only describe as being one with the vibrations of the universe. I don't mean to come off sounding like a two-bit Rust Cohle but golf happens to be my particular tool for finding that greater sense of being. For the rest of you, it might be (and probably is) something else entirely and I can't tell you what that might be, but I encourage all of you that might be reading this to try and find it. You'll know it when you do. It's better than drugs. It's better than booze. And you'll be chasing it like a junkie taking the spike until you find it again. Hopefully what it is for you, isn't actually heroin. That shit kills people.

Anyway, today, I threw some new irons in the bag, gave them a good shakedown on the range, and blasted through eighteen holes in about two and a half hours, firing the best round I've shot all season. Afterward, I taught my golf for women class (beginning golf session 1 starts in just a month, sign up!). Tonight they learned a very difficult shot, and at the end they all had hit a bunch of shots they could be proud of. Professionally, nothing satisfies me more. Once class wrapped up, I sprinted back out for nine more holes. I work mostly evenings these days, so rarely do I get some dusk golf in, and this is my favorite time of the year to do it. I didn't hit the ball as well as I did earlier today, but that's okay. The great thing about the game is you can still have a great time, even if things are struggling. 

These days I struggle finding a balance between work and life. For the first time ever, I feel like I have my health, and mentally I'm in a pretty good place, but we didn't get much of a break this Winter and it seems like we've been grinding pretty hard since January. I'm down to one day a week off, and I'm filling what free time I've got with lessons. I enjoy being busy, but it's left a bit of a lack of time for other things in life, from relationships, to creative pursuits, to hell, even just keeping up with my yard! My work-life balance is way outta whack, but I guess it's what I signed up for all those years ago when I got into this crazy business in the first place. 

I didn't have a camera all those years ago.
Today, I did, and this still isn't as brilliant as it looked in real life.

I got to the last hole, as the sun was hanging low and found myself with an approach shot out of some heavy rough after shoving my second shot about thirty yards right of the fairway. I pulled the club out of my bag, took a couple practice swings and just before I took a stance, I took a good look around. And for just a second, that sense of balance and calm and brilliant color washed over me like a gentle flood. The only sound I could hear was a couple sprinklers in the distance as I drew my wedge back and fired a smooth dart to about five feet from the pin. The smile and daze I was in didn't leave my face as I walked up to the ball, hearing an imaginary gallery going crazy as I approached the green. I lined up my putt and slid in my eighth birdie in twenty seven holes. Pure bliss, until I remembered that I had taken a cart and left it at the spot from where I hit my approach 120 yards back up the hole. Sometimes getting caught up in the moment can make you feel like an idiot.

Into The Great Wide Open Part Two: A Mudslide, A Funny Farm and a Shiny House On A Hill

Back for more? Check out part one of this stupid one-man odyssey right here! On to part two, where I check off a couple dumb items from the bucket list, attempt to re-create an underrated bad movie scene, have a romantic dinner by myself surrounded by people in love, and see what really unnecessary opulence looks like! Anyway, here we go!

The Best Road in North America

It was just past one o'clock when I passed the Seventeen-Mile-Drive turn-off just adjacent to Pebble Beach where the road forks and the entrance to the Pacific Coast Highway began. Sweet jeezus, I've only ever seen it on television and in the movies, but I've always imagined this stretch of road as the greatest stretch of highway in the United States. I flashed back to memories of riding with my uncles from Anchorage to Homer, Alaska on the Seward Highway years ago and thinking that was some pretty impressive beauty, as well as multiple trips through Big Sky country in Montana in my playing and coaching days at Westminster, but this was something different. This was me and my car making this drive for the drive's sake. Not with any end goal in mind, but just to see an epic stretch of America and to lose myself in the sheer beauty of it all. Sure, the 101 was a lot quicker way to get to my next overnight stop in San Luis Obispo/Atascadero, but it lacks a certain...majesty.

I think this means something

Once you pop out of Carmel Highlands heading south, it's like the entire world opens up to you. I had mountains to my left, high cliffs and thousands of miles of ocean out to my right. It was like I could see to the end of the earth. Being that there were no real time constraints, the drive was slow and steady as I'd pull over every couple miles just to admire the view. I'd snap a picture here and there, but mostly just stared out and down into the sapphire coves below. Occasionally the road would cross a bridge, such as the Big Creek bridge that I've pictured here, but they do a nice job of blending that into the scenery until you look back on it. I wondered if there was a metaphor there. I'm sure there was but I hadn't figured it out yet.

Bide your time and all becomes clear.
Also, KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!

Eventually I made my way into the place I've been obsessed with for years, Big Sur. As I've mentioned before, Big Sur was the location of the final scenes of one of my favorite films of the the late-90's called The Limey. Starring Terrence Stamp as Wilson, a recently released long-term inmate in an English prison, This underrated Stephen Soderbergh classic features the man once known as General Zod making his way to California to seek revenge after the suspicious death of his daughter at the hands of Hollywood producer and part-time drug lord Terry Valentine, played by Peter Fonda. The cliffs and the coves below were an awesome spectacle to see. I also appreciated that there was virtually zero cell-phone coverage anywhere in the area. This would be an awesome place to disappear to. And if I was a Hollywood mogul and part-time drug lord, this would be an awe inspiring place to retire and eventually meet my terrifyingly violent demise in.

Why would anyone want to
be anywhere else?

I pressed on heading further and further south until I realized, "I think I might be the only car on the road." Followed quickly with, "Oh shit, I forgot about the landslide." A couple years previous there were some pretty massive wildfires in the Big Sur area, followed soon with a massive landslide that wiped out several miles of the Pacific Coast Highway and actually reshaped a good chunk of the California coast. I was the only car on the road because I was getting near the end of the line. I looked for signs of detours south but there were none. Eventually I hit the big orange barrier in the "town" of Gorda By The Sea. I walked into a little gas station there where the first words out of the fella behind the counter were, "you're lost aren't you?"

In more ways than one. "Kinda. I'm on a road-trip, but I forgot about the slide," I sheepishly replied.

Later, I raced the Drift King
down this bastard to win his girlfriend's
freedom, or some shit.

"You're not the first, and you're not gonna be the last. But at least you look good," he said weirdly. "Double back seven miles until you come to the Nacimiento Road and it'll take you over the mountains to the 101." I told him thanks, paid to re-fill my water jug and turned back north. Ten minutes later I hit the turnoff and for the next ten minutes, I was almost driving vertically upwards. WE'RE GOIN' BALLISTIC MAV! That strange dude wasn't shitting me when he said it took you over the mountains, I figured the climb would be a little more gradual. Like many things in life, I was wrong, but eventually it kind of evened out although the climb was still there. And it was easily the most winding 1 1/2 lane road I've ever been on. Reminded me of something out of the European mountains on Top Gear or the climax of The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift!. I'm sure that if I knew that I was the only car on that road, it would've been an absolute blast hooning around those crazy turns, but every couple of minutes a car would pass going the other direction or around a blind turn so it was WHITE KNUCKLE TIME. It took about an hour and a half at 15-25 miles per hour to drop down on the other side and eventually make it to the 101. I often get sick riding in a car, but never driving a car, but this road left me a little queasy. Pretty awesome drive though. The dropoffs were terrifying, but the views were incredible. It was starting to get dusky and I was still an hour or so away from my hotel, but I eventually found it in the little town of Atascadero.

I trust these dude's opinions on fine-dining and haberdashery.

Just a quick aside here. One of my favorite weekly podcasts is The After Disaster. It had its beginnings as sort of a Loveline after-show starring the sound engineer, the phone screener and a buddy of theirs that helps run the Improv comedy club chain. It's kind of like the Seinfeld of podcasts, with no real topic from week to week and is pretty much just three guys shooting the shit. Sounds kind of lousy, especially with my describing it, but it is wildly entertaining and I can't recommend it enough. Anyway, the show originates out of Southern California, and I kinda wanted to see some of the stuff that they describe on the show while I was out here. One of the guys favorite hangouts is a world famous hotel in nearby San Luis Obispo called The Madonna Inn. The place is famous for their themed rooms, outdoor recreation, winery, killer restaurant and bakery. I would've loved to stay a night at this place, but at $300 a night and this late in the year, I was trying to get through this trip fairly lean. So I was stuck with exploiting my kid sister's Marriott friends and family discount. But I had to see the place for myself, so after getting checked in and getting cleaned up, I drove the thirty miles down the road to have some dinner.

Classic California kitsch

I pulled up and this place looked like something out of an old Rat Pack movie. Just a technicolor wash of lights and colors against the stark, inky blackness of the night sky. I found their steakhouse and this place was a sight to behold. Pink and gold everywhere with the centerpiece being a gigantic golden tree with cherubs hanging over it. It looked like that scene at that honeymoon hotel in Superman II. The restaurant was adjacent to a large dance-floor where a ten-piece band was setting up at the far end. I thought they only had the live stuff on the weekends, then I realized it was almost Halloween when a couple college-age gals dressed like Wayne and Garth walked by. I asked the barkeep what was going on, and he explained that once a week the dance classes at Cal-State SLO hold a theme dance out there. So there would be some entertainment later.

That's true love right there.

I sat at a small table underneath the big tree and had one of the better ribeyes I've had the pleasure of hammering down. They grill over red oak wood here and you can taste it. Looking around, I was the only one there that was on my own. It was late, so the restaurant side of things was winding down for the day, but there were three couples dining on adjacent tables. I found it kind of serendipitous. One looked like they were in their mid-twenties, smiling constantly at each other, two giant pieces of pink cake and champagne in front of them. The next couple were in their mid-40''s. Faces long and mostly silent, two large glasses of wine filling almost as quickly as they were emptying. The third were quite elderly, looking like they'd just gotten out of that bed in the middle of Charlie Bucket's house. The old man's quivering hand holding his wife's throughout their entire meal while never taking his eyes off her, grinning from ear to ear. I thought to myself, "this is like seeing the three stages of a lifelong relationship here." Love can do no wrong early on, but eventually life wears on you and you get tired of each other's shit but over a long time you realize that what you have can't be replaced and love seems new again. That ship has probably sailed in my case, I'm almost 40, but that doesn't mean that I can't recognize it when I see it and appreciate it for what it is. It's like Deadpool said, "Love is a beautiful thing. When you find it, the whole world tastes like Daffodil Daydream! So you gotta hold onto love...tight! And never let go! Or else the whole world tastes like Mama June after hot yoga." Wise words from the "Merc With A Mouth." So I sent a text message to the mysterious gal back home letting her know I was thinking about her and hoped she was doing good.

Top O' The World!

College kids in elaborate costume started pouring in, and the standards from the big band started to swell. I took that as my cue to call it a day. I got a piece of that pink champagne cake to go (I really shouldn't be eating this stuff but I was on vacation! It was good, but I was miserable later), paid my bill, wandered the grounds a little bit and moseyed back up the highway to my hotel in Atascadero to retire for the night. I can't remember another day in my recent past where I did so much from sunup to my head hitting the pillow.

Nurse Ratched was actually
pretty nice!

It's kinda nice having the freedom to not have to set an alarm, but the golf business is too entrenched into my DNA, so 7:00 AM hit and I was wide awake and hammering down some hotel room coffee with my protein shake as creamer and my Greek yogurt. Other than a few nice meals, I'd kinda managed to stick to my daily diet and routine on this trip. Today I was going to finish the trip down the PCH to Los Angeles. But I had a couple stops to make on the way. Sounds dumb as hell, but I had to stop by the Atascadero State Hospital, where the Terminator and John Connor busted out Sarah in Terminator 2: Judgement Day. They wouldn't let me in. Also, it's a dude's-only hospital, so that movie was factually incorrect. Still, it was a trip just seeing the big sign up front.

This place probably cost a couple
hundred bucks.

After a fuel stop I backtracked over to Highway 46 which took me back out to the coast where I turned north towards a beautiful little seaside town called San Simeon. I had to see one of California's great treasures, The Hearst Castle. As a long-time movie lover and occupier of various Film History classes in high school and college, the 1941 film, Citizen Kane, has been required viewing in pretty much half of them. The real-life version of Charles Foster Kane, William Randolph Hearst was a pretty awful dude, that did some pretty awful shit, but goddamn did he have him a pretty swell vacation home, now a California State Park and museum. As I pulled up to the visitor center at the bottom of the mountain, the marine-layer parted and the house appeared on top of the peak. Impressive to say the least. I paid twenty five bucks and was the last one on the bus for their first "Grand Tour" of the day.

The California climate is
perfect for preserving 3000
year old statues. No wonder
Bob Hope loved it here.

The drive up the hill was awesome with the house appearing and disappearing from view with the voice of Alex Trebek giving little trivia tidbits as we drove past various landmarks on the windy road. We pulled up to this huge staircase where Sean, our tour guide, met us and immediately launched into a few stories about Hearst's father George as he led us up the stairs to the main courtyard. Unfortunately, the legendary Neptune Pool was entering yet another renovation to fix some leaks that have existed since its original construction, but the Roman temple facade was impressive to say the least, as was the incredibly colorful flowers that adorned virtually everything on the outside of the house. The upkeep on this place must be insane. I've barely been able to keep my rose garden alive during this summer! We passed an actual Egyptian statue of Sekhmet, the Warrior Goddess of Healing and entered the building through a tiny side door. I liked that there was actually a screen door on that entrance.

It's not even heated! What
a cheapskate!

Only a couple rules were given to us by the tour guides, keep up and DON'T FUCKING TOUCH ANYTHING! Literally everything in this house is hundreds of years old, imported from Europe and the Middle East and carefully reconstructed. Every piece of artwork in the place, authentic. In addition to pushing us to war with Spain, opposing Roosevelt's New Deal and giving an open editorial platform to nazis in the US, Hearst had a real appreciation for finery, and thankfully he was able to preserve these priceless works of art for future generations to see. Maybe the one good thing he did was to not just leave all of this to his asshole kids. He loved California so much that he left it all to the state when he died to preserve as a museum. I appreciated Sean's passion for the place, and the artwork and attention to detail was incredible, but as the tour moved through the main rooms of the house and the flat-out insane indoor pool, I found myself growing more and more resentful and pissed off. Sometimes, I think this country never learns. Hearst had the resources and probably could've kept half this country afloat during the Great Depression, but instead he just built a big house on a hill. Typical.

What the hell?

The Dulcet tones of Trebek greeted us as we got back on the bus and we cruised back down that winding hill back to the visitor center. I picked up a couple tchockes from the gift shop. Giselle fired back up on cue and I was back on my way south, having re-joined the Pacific Coast Highway south of the slide. The next phase of the trip was about to begin where the golden mountains and rugged central coast were about to give way to the world's ultimate concrete jungle. As I brought the car back up to speed, I nearly drove it off the side of the road at the sight of a couple strange looking horses in a pasture. WAITAMINUTE, IS THAT A FUCKING ZEBRA? It was.

See you next week for part 3: The Saint of Los Angeles.