Calabasas III, Monterey I, Big Sur I, San Francisco I

Okay so finally free internet and free time have collided, and though I am aware I am hopelessly behind, I will try to bring you up to date without missing anything vital.

So Calabasas remained beautiful, and, due to circumstances kind of out of my control, I was unable to leave when I planned to, which meant missing Ani Difranco which was a stab in the leg, but it did mean that I got to stay what felt more like a reasonable amount of time. But eventually and with regret I set off for Monterey.

Train journey (san luis obispo), bus journey (salinas), another bus (monterey), then a final bus (to hostel) and I was there. Monterey, supposedly a quiet pretty coastal town, was absolutely thronged with people, and not just any people - bikers. Motorbikers. With Beards! This crowdedness and everything being booked was what had kept me and calabasas those excellent last two days, and can be explained by the Moto GP race at Laguna Seca just outside monterey - 170 000 motorbike racing fans were in the area.

So much to my suprise Laura and Lindsey- the scots from the Grand Canyon - were at the hostel, and also planning to head down to Big Sur the next day. I hadn't really talked to them at flagstaff but over the course of the evening they proved to be superlative company, and, unlike everyone else I'd spoken to, not obsessed with motor-racing, which improved the conversation considerably.

So the next morning hit, and I got up early to prepare for my time at Big Sur (the hostel had no beds for the coming night, so I was staying down there - somewhere). A nice british girl called Chrissie was renting a car and driving down through Big Sur and kindly offered the three of us a lift down. So our rush to catch the first bus (there were only three a day) was unnecessary, and we hung around cooking pancakes and waiting for her car to be delivered. Chrissie had warned us that she had asked for the smallest car they had, so we might have to squash up. However, the rental company took her excellently at her word and turned up in a tiny two-seater convertible sportscar. Which was pretty funny but meant we'd missed our first bus and three hours until the next stretched out.

But we were opportunistic and took a different bus to picturesque Carmel, half-way to Big Sur, and while there realised we were only 10 minutes from the northermost state park of BigSur (hereafter known as BS) and so took a cab. We burned a happy couple of hours watching cute seals and cuter deers (deer? deers?) and whale-bones (not cute). We arrived at the bus-stop in time for the bus passing in the other direction to stop, and its driver to tell us that the bus (that we would have been on if it wasn't for the sportscar debacle haroo hooray) had broken down and was an hour late. So back on the return bus to Carmel, where we planned to wait in style with Ice-Cream. This led to the discovery that I had no money left on my card, and needed my debit card, back in Monterey, to top it up.

This meant I would undoubtedly starve to death and all kinds of terrible things, from which Laura saved me with $20, which was incredibly kind of her, in case she's reading, and even if not.

Anyway time passed and we finally got the bus, which moved us down to Pfeiffer state park (via Nepenthe where someone had lost his dog joey amongst the posion-oak) which had some lovely trails, such as 'pfeiffer waterfall trail' which led us to a waterfall, and 'valley view', which supplied a gorgeous view of, shockingly, the valley, which carried our eyes out to the beautiful azure sea.

Lindsey and Laura and I took the last bus (we were now pretty good friends with this bus driver) and bid one another a fond farewell when I got off at Andrew Molera, another statepark. [at this point the author becomes bored and the rest of the post is abbreviated] Here I spent a beautiful night beneath the stars and then rose early and walked up the too-pretty-for-words coast all day - one of the happiest days of my trip so far or maybe ever.

However, due to my using a not-to-scale busmap as my guide (long story), I ended up walking 9 hours and being exhausted by the end, as well as not being able to afford anything to eat. So I burned back to monterey, and decided to stay another night due to really not being in any state to travel to San Francisco that night and arrive at 11 o clock and find somewhere to stay.

So I did that the next day instead and it was fine. Then I spent yesterday looking around North Beach (city lights bookstore! Washington Sqare! Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac etc) and Chinatown. I really like this city a lot. I love it's bizarre mixing. I love that on one side of the road a guy is being sick by a postbox and on the other a crowd is watching a film being shot with loads of camaras and massive lights and red sportscars and such. I love that upon entry from Oakland an enormous impressive bridge (not even the golden gate) speeds you into a huge fogbank from which the hugest towers unexpected suddenly loom prettily. There are poetry readings everynight, in alleyways.

So anyway, I'm going to go out at look at it.