Straight West Coastin Pt. 2

Note: We double posted again. Nick's is below.

Rewinding to about a week and a half ago, we left Santa Cruz with our new travelling companion, one Shannon Raison, and headed down the pacific coast highway through the area known as Big Sur. Now, all through California, everyone we talked to told us about how spectacular Big Sur was and how we had to see it. But noone really explained to us what it was. I mean Big Sur kind of sounds like an object not an area don't ya think? Turns out it's just the most magnificent coastline ever, anywhere. You know all those car commercials with the rolling hills and the winding road and the ocean and the gigantic rock outcrops? That's big sur. We found a great campsite on a cliff overlooking the ocean that was totally empty and Shannon gave us a bit of a crash course in camp cooking with her hand dandy backpack sized gas stove. The next day we continued on our drive to Los Angeles seeing slightly less magnificent coastline. We also had another fantastic wildlife encounter. As we were driving Shannon spotted this beach full of grey blobs and we stumbled onto about 100 elephant seals lieing around in the sun, belly flopping out of the water and onto shore and even getting into tussles with each other. Yes hormones were running high among the bulls as it was mating season. Probably the most otherworldly creatures I've ever seen. Just these big ole fat things being lazy and scratching themselves with their half fin half hands and yawning. Hilarious, and spectacularly ugly.

We dropped off Shannon in Santa Barbera so that she could catch a bus back up the coast and made our way through malibu and into Santa Monica where we were staying. The next day we woke up bright and early and headed over to universal studios in order to get tickets for the tonight show. Turned out the backstreet boys were performing and most of the other people in line were girls about our age behaving like hysterical teenagers. The two girls in front of us sporting matching BSB track jackets were quite proud to inform us of every Backstreet Boys event they'd ever attended. Anyways, the tonight show itself was amazing. Conan is twice as funny live. He does a great job of roping in his audience and making them laugh at even his least funny jokes. Christian Slater was his main guest and was a bit of a bore but NASCAR champion Jimmy Johnson seemed like a great dude and got some good banter going. He then raced Conan around the lot in golf carts. The backstreet Boys were actually kind of really good live. I've never seen a boy band perform in person before but I've got to say there's something really entertaining about the choreographed dancing, the male vocal harmonies and the impassioned solos. Is it too late for me to start my own??? We headed down to the Santa Monica Pier that night, which unfortunately was a little bit dead but it was cool to see the Ferris wheel and the coastal view of Los Angeles at night.

The next morning we had a culinary experience like nothing else. Chicken and Waffles. Roscoe's house thereof, to be exact. Fried chicken accompanied by waffles is mindblowing and belly filling. It's one of those ungodly seeming combinations that comes together for pure bliss in your mouth. You kind of sit there and go back and forth between the two, each being so good you can't choose which you prefer. You eat the chicken for a bit and totally forget about the waffles and then you're all like "O YA! there's waffles!" and you go back to shoving those fluffy cinnamon treats into your mouth until its strikes you that the chicken on your plate is being neglected. And don't even get me started on what happens when you "accidentally" get some syrup on the chicken. We went on the warner bros lot tour that afternoon saw a bunch of really cool sets, including the coffee shop from friends and the stock city street used in EVERY movie. Oddly enough the only celebrity we saw was Christian Slater who we saw the day before on Conan. I feel drawn to him.

The next morning we picked up Nick's cousin Courtney and her friend Lindsay at the airport and headed down to Venice beach, perhaps the people watching capitol of the world. Just the strangest people selling everything from t-shirts to freak shows to magic wands (no joke). A basketball court (made famous by White Men can't Jump) where they do more arguing than playing and a skate park so packed you can barely move. There was a dude in an american flag speedo two sizes to small and another who could ride his bike standing on his handle bars. There were hippie vans covered in pigeons, and lawn furniture and children's slides. There were drum circles and boardwalk food and tourists and locals all mingling in the coolest strangest human hodge podge I've ever been a part of. A big thank you to Nick's aunt Gina for her hospitality in Santa Monica. We are in Tuscon right now and were in San Diego before but I'll leave that to our "mystery" guest blogger next week.

Don't keep it too real,

Chris