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073113

It was everything I could do to crawl out of bed in time for the full breakfast that comes included with the room. With ten minutes to get downstairs I started clamouring for the room key. Through blurry eyes I searched and only my inabilty to feel anything kept me from weeping with frustration.

I finally found the stupid key and booted it downstairs just in time to see them wheel away the final food tray. Of course now that I was up there was no going back down for the sleep I probably desperately needed so I made a peanut butter sandwich, puttered around, grabbed a newspaper, tried to type things on the computer and just generally did what I could to not feel like I should be dead, somewhat unsuccessfully.

M'lady woke up before noon and decided she was as hungry as I was. It was her birthday so we called down for room service, a first for me. After waiting for an hour I called back and was told that not only had no order been placed, because we called before noon there was no way someone would have answered the phone and taken our order.

I weakly asked how long it would be if we re-ordered. “We could have your soup and sandwich up there in about an hour, or you could just visit our restaurant.†Little did I know he was setting a trap.

As we approached the hostess we ran into some friends, so the five of us waited for a table together. When we were finally seated we waited even longer to be served. I noticed the next table over speaking to the manager. Something about waiting forever for the food. Strange, the place wasn't that busy.

Then our waiter came out. I can't help thinking now that perhaps he had never been in a restaurant before, maybe he was raised by wolves? “I'll bring water,†he says. No, he didn't. “Oh, let me grab ketchup for you,†and he's gone forever.

“Friends, our waiter is a pathological liar.â€

When the food finally came the guy says, “Who ordered the Mexican club sandwich?†“That's close enough,†I say, ecstatic that there is now a plate of food in front of me.

“Oh, did you order the regular club?†he asks, reaching to take the plate away. “I can change that for you.â€

Wild-eyed with hunger I literally threw my body over the plate like a hero jumping on a hand grenade. “No! No! Go away. You are not taking away this food!†I wail.

We still tipped. I so, so don't understand tipping.

After lunch m'lady and I strolled down to the beach area for a bit of a sit-around. We ran ino friends that we had meant to find anyway to engage in a prearranged ticket trade. At the same time a couple offered us a place to stay for an upcoming top in San Francisco. We stayed as long as I could stand the sun and went up the road to our hotel for some pre-show chillin'.

I hit the free-drinks happy hour but I didn't hit it very hard. Dramatically more sober than the previous night we crossed the street for another night of Phish.

The venue was a temporary stage thrown up in the back parking lot of Harvey's Casino. The asphalt square measured about 120 feet wide and maybe 75 feet deep and was surrounded on three sides with seven rows of bleachers. Basically it felt like we were seeing the band at the mall with a few thousand people. It's no iconic venue but I thought it was a great place to see the band.

The first set was great but it's the second set that will likely stand out in Phish lore. They opened set two with the riff-fiesta Tweezer and just kept at it. The song turned into the standard jam and the standard jam turned into an exploration and the exploration turned into a really-listening-to-each-other game of follow the leader. Back in '95 I saw them do an extended Tweezer jam but haven't seen much like it since; they were gleefully going out on a limb and it was great.

Locked into a groove and all eyes on each other, at one point the band hit a shot and dropped out for a bar. Somewhere, someone yelled “wooâ€. Eight bars later another break came up and a few dozen people added their own “wooâ€. That's all it took, we were all on board and everyone knew it. The jam now featured four musicians and several thousand vocalists, and it felt good. I suppose there will be at least four hundred people that will claim to be the person that started it, but that doesn't matter, we were all in this jam together and we all had a part to play. It was invigorating, it was exciting, it felt special, and clearly the band was loving it.

So we all woo'd through what turned into the seventh longest Phish song ever and with one big final night-ending “woo†we were all back on the street. M'lady and I went to the party house again where all the talk was on that Tweezer. It was a standout moment in the scene and we were all happy to have played our part.

We left the party around 4am just as a pickup Frisbee tourney was taking shape on the street outside, in much better shape than the night before. The lack of staggering got us back to the hotel in no time, where crisp sheets and soft beds would be the focus of the next handful of hours.

Woo.

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080113

I managed to get up (and find the room key) in time to take advantage of the free breakfast. It was pretty good but paled in comparison to the daily unlimited free-drinks Happy Hour here at the hotel, though at least I checked out poised to actually remember the day ahead.

Before we left on this trip m'lady and I sunk money into new tires and brakes for the car. As we spiraled down the highway from an ear-popping peak elevation of 7,000 feet just outside of Lake Tahoe all the way down to sea level as we neared San Francisco we were happy for our investment. The dashboard has a feature that keeps track of our fuel consumption and when we bottomed out after basically coasting downward all afternoon the car was reading it's best mileage ever, 6.5 litres per 100kms.

In San Rafael we checked in to a Travelodge less than a mile from Terrapin Crossroads around 4pm. We had the cooler full of beer on ice and dug in. Phone calls were made and some friends came by to join us. We had been partying together in Lake Tahoe and here it was Jerry Day and we were all looking forward to the evening ahead.

A few years ago the Grateful Dead's Phil Lesh started looking around for a place he could call his own. Loosely based on Levon Helm's Rambles, Phil sought a permanent venue where he could play music and it would be the fans that did the touring. You can't blame a septuagenarian transplant recipient for wanting to stick a little closer to home.

Terrapin Crossroads is basically a yacht club that has been converted to a restaurant with a separate performance area, with a capacity of perhaps 350 or so. The restaurant is wooden and open, and out back is a large, groomed patio on the water. The restaurant is open daily and there is live music regularly, often hosted by Phil Lesh and his family band.

August 1st is the anniversary of the birth of Jerry Garcia; many of us that miss him and the wonderful world that was the Grateful Dead respectfully refer to August 1st as Jerry Day. We had tickets to share this special day with Phil Lesh and we couldn't be happier.

We were going to walk to the venue but we all somehow squeezed into Sean's car for the quick jaunt. We got popped pounding drinks in the parking lot so we just hopped in line. This was a ticketless event; all attendees had their names on a list and everyone seemed to get in just fine.

As soon as you enter you walk by the merch table where the usual items like t-shirts and posters are augmented by signed and numbered Jerry Garcia prints and more upper class fare. The bar/restaurant area is large and inviting, I grabbed a beer and walked through the open back doors.

The patio is beautiful. A blend of stone and greenery outline a dining area seating perhaps 150 guests, with sails from the adjoining marina bobbing in the water behind a tiny arch that marks the stage. I take all this in peripherally because sitting about twelve feet in front of me are Phil Lesh and Mike Gordon having dinner together. Two of the greatest things that have ever happened to electric bass guitar are sitting right in front of me, chatting and munching on tater tots.

Too much.

I join a large table of friends and get in line for dinner. The food was included in the price of tonight's ticket ($100) but rather than utilise their own restaurant Phil has hired catering. The options were impressive. There were grilled lobster tails and prime rib, crazy potato and vegetable ensembles, things were wrapped in bacon; the sort of fare you'd find at an upper class wedding. It was all-you-can-eat and everything was delicious, and the fact that Phil was getting seconds just a few people ahead of me only added to the experience.

There were a couple of opening bands, both of which were slightly understated and great music to socialise to. Around the side of the patio was a patch of gravel that served as the smoking section, and the smoking was in no way restricted to tobacco. Security didn't care what you smoked, so long as you were standing on the gravel (“You gotta be off the grass to get on the grass!â€)

Inside the busy bar area was a table set up with completely different food, and dessert was later offered here as well, cookies with a little Jerry hand symbol. After giving Mike Gordon a wide berth many times I finally approached him in the bar as he was breaking away from a couple of fans.

I shook his hand and thanked him for all the good times. He seemed a bit confused and was about to ask me something when a couple of guys came up and hijacked the conversation with raves of Tahoe. I couldn't resist asking if the band preplanned playing an extra-long Tweezer and Mike instantly and genuinely assured me that it was not planned.

“But I wasn't going to be the one that stopped it,†he quipped.

After dinner the crowd moved toward the stage, a wooden flowered arch that carried on the wedding analogy by looking conspicuously like where a couple might get married. My crew found a spot about eight feet from stage right.

Phil came out with a four-piece band that included a couple of his children and casually started to play. They opened with Shakedown Street and the dream began. .

I say that because the rest of the night was nothing short of dream-like. You know, you're in someone's backyard only it's not a backyard and your favourite bass player is in the wedding band, only there was no wedding, and he starts playing all of your favourite songs just eight feet away. And then your other favourite bass player gets up and joins him, only instead of playing his normal bass he's playing a four-string Fender Precision, and then you meet a guy who went to your high school about 10,000 kilometres away and someone else says something like, “I rolled 71 joints for Jerry's birthday and you should have one!â€

Oh, and in this dream there is always, always a beer in your hand. And they end they set with Help>Slip>Franklin's.

The part that unquestionably launched the evening into one of my all-time most amazing live music experiences was the encore. Phil announced that the encore would be all-acoustic and would take place at the campfire on the venue's side lawn. I suspect the lack of amplification was due to this being the first outdoor show here, and what a blessing it was. I parked by the glowing fire and overheard someone tell another that stones from Red Rocks were brought here tonight and added to the firepit.

Soon Phil Lesh came out and stood by the campfire, flanked by three musicians. They led us all into a four-song singalong starting with Friend Of The devil. Deep Elem Blues really got the crowd involved trading off verses. This was a bona-fide campfire jam with Phil smiling and pushing us all to join in. By the time they got to Brokedown Palace people around me were literally weeping.

It was so wonderfully surreal.

When's the last time you went to a show where joy and sorrow mixed so beautifully that people were openly crying their eyes out?

And We Bid You Goodnight was the last straw, and couldn't be followed.

I don't remember how the crowd dissipated, but like most dreams they seemed to just fade away into the night. There was a crowded ride back to the hotel after many assurances of sobriety were made, and a short party later me and m'lady were alone, staring at one another. Nothing more could be said.

I slept but I did not dream. I didn't need to.

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080213

When we woke up this morning m'lady and I managed to convince ourselves that last night did indeed happen, though just to be sure we drove back to Terrapin Crossroads after we checked out of the motel.

Yep, there it was, just like we had dreamt it. Unfortunately it only opens for lunch on weekends, so we got in the car and left San Rafeal.

It was a very short driving day to get to San Francisco though we took longer than most would have. This was my first time in San Francisco so we drove up the impossibly steep roads and waited our turn to wind the car down the world famous windy boulevard, Lombard Street. The roads are crazy in this town; I was genuinely nervous driving sometimes. M'lady asked me more than once, “What is wrong with you? I've never seen you drive so slow.â€

We had somehow arranged an unbelievable deal at the Fisherman's Wharf Hyatt that included full breakfast and very valuable valet parking. We checked in and had a drink or two to celebrate the luxury and set out to find food.

The Fisherman's Wharf area is uber-touristy, with souvenir t-shirt shops and restaurants, sightseeing booths, buskers, and bike rentals. We stopped into a penny arcade museum that boasted an astonishing array of coin-operated delights, all in working order. There were fortune telling machines and juke boxes, pinball machines and video games, horse racing machines and strongman challenges, but most fascinating were the coin-op marionette scenarios. We dropped a coin into one and the curtains opened to reveal a mob cheering on a hangman. The trapdoor drops, a little puppet dangles from it's little puppet neck, and the curtains close.

Amazing what people did with their spare time before the iphone.

I had a burger at a Vietnamese restaurant (those paying attention may notice I've had little else to eat on this trip) and soon we hopped the bus to Bill Graham Civic Center for the first of a three-night stand. Phish, Phish, Phish.

We had to meet someone for a ticket trade so we drifted around the park outside until all parties arrived. There was a very small amateur Shakedown that kept people distracted while they busied themselves self-administering medical marijuana. A bystander would certainly think that pot was legal in San Francisco but aside from card-carrying medical patients the stuff is still not allowed, unlike Colorado and Washington.

We made our connection and headed in to the venue a bit later than we meant to, but we found some friends we had made in Tahoe that had some extra seats saved so we joined them just as the lights were set to dim.

Bill Graham Civic Center is a heck of a venue. Smallish, it holds about 8,000 fans, about half on the expansive square floor while the rest sit in bleachers that ring three sides of the box-like room. We were lucky to get seats arriving as late as we did and happily we were treated to a great view of a great show for the whole night.

Drink trips were frequent and simple, as were the corresponding bathroom jaunts. The show was awesome, the band and the crowd got their “woo's†on in either a continuation of or a tribute to the last show in Lake Tahoe. I have a feeling that the “woo†is going to get real old real fast.

Outside we missed the bus by mere seconds and waited twenty-eight minutes for the next one. I love how the bus stops give you a real-time rundown on what's coming and what's going. The Twenty-First Century gets closer to reality all the time.

Back at the hotel we nightcapped and slept in king-size luxury. I remember when I used to do this sort of thing and sleep in the car. Crazy.

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080313

I don't know how or why it started, but when I was a kid I read every book about Alcatraz that I could get my hands on. There was a time, somewhere between my obsessions with Happy Days and UFO's that I was absolutely fascinated by San Francisco's island prison.

We had the foresight to book our tickets for Alcatraz months before, and with our hotel smack-dab in the middle of Touristland it proved to be only a short walk to the pier.

Alcatraz isn't as far away from land as I had pictured. It sure looks swimmable; indeed there is an annual swimming competition through these very waters, though I believe a shark net is involved.

The boat ride over was busy, I bought a coffee and made note that beer would be for sale on the way back only. While Alcatraz is an entirely self-guided affair that is narrated by a controllable headset, there was an employee waiting to herd us together as we disembarked. She yelled some obvious rules and unremarkable comments, cracked a few jokes and asked if there were any foreigners in the crowd, the usual tour guide banter. A family stepped forward and said they were from Denmark, and we all stood and listened as the guide made asinine small talk with them.

Okay, let's get self-guided. M'lady and I booked it up the hill to the looming prison. Inside we donned our headphones and were led around the dungeon-like jail with commentary from former guards and prisoners alike. We could pause, fast-forward or rewind our headsets which freed us up to stop and linger wherever we liked.

At one point I turned a corner and there was the Danish family decked out head-to-toe in striped prison uniforms. Had they bought these outfits at the gift shop or brought them for the occasion? The mom and daughter in striped skirts and blouses, son and dad in matching shorts and tees, and all with striped caps on. It was just so...absurd. People were surreptitiously taking pictures and the family was oblivious, and clearly very happy.

We saw the cells where the famous prison break occurred, complete with papier-mache heads. We stepped into the tortuous “hole†where prisoners were held in unimaginably tiny squares for weeks on end, and around every corner we would run into that Danish family again and they would trump everything I was seeing.

Alone in the yard I ran the bases of the old baseball diamond and imagined what would happen to the poor soul who hit one out of the park. We visited areas that the prisoners never saw, the guard's headquarters and the areas where the guards lived with their families. It's odd to think that children lived here but they did, lots of them. One panel mentioned how the kids would sing carols outside of the prison walls on Christmas Eve, a joyous occasion for the children and a time of unthinkable sadness for those listening in their cells.

Having visited Robben Island in South Africa last year it was inevitable that I would compare the two. Mandela's former prison is presented with reverence, humility, even regret, while Alcatraz has a touch of Hollywood to it (dare I say Disneyland? Maybe that was just the Danes). There were no jokes on the Robben Island tour, and nobody needed a tissue to wipe away tears at Alcatraz.

Back on land we hit the hotel for a quick drink and m'lady scoured the tourist strip for some seafood while I opted to eat something later at the venue.

This was the thirtieth anniversary of my first show, The Headpins opening for Loverboy at the Moncton Coliseum. I spent that night pressed into the rail at the front of the stage and had my life changed. I walked out of that show drenched in sweat, clutching a drumstick and a setlist peeled from Paul Dean's monitor and I swore I was going to attend every concert I possibly could for the rest of my life.

And here we were chasing down the bus headed to Bill Graham Center for my sixtieth Phish show. Thank-you very much Mike Reno.

We arrived too late to find any bleacher seats – they go fast and we realised just how lucky we had been to find friends with extras last night. We found another friend on the floor not too far back from the stage, a guy named Todd who I had first met at a Phish show in Massachusetts. He had brought a friend with him who was wholly unfamiliar with Phish beyond their reputation as a Dead-like hippie band, so it was fun to get his impressions throughout the evening.

The show got drunker and drunker as me and m'lady threw caution entirely to the wind when it came to overspending on pricey in-show drinks, a skill we are getting more and more adept at. At one point we ended up pretty close to the stage on Page side (after I got lost in the crowd for a while), drinks were unusually easy to keep attaining even at that proximity and we whooped it up good.

After the show we ran into our new friend from the Gorge and his date and the four of us went to a party that raged hard and late. The party was so good that m'lady wanted to stay even when I pointed out that she was dancing alone in the livingroom facing the wall with her eyes closed.

Around 4:30am someone changed the music in the middle of a Neil Young song to horrible dance music and that was it for me. I flagged a cab and got us out of there. I think someone roofied one of my drinks. They certainly would have had a lot of opportunities because I certainly had a lot of drinks.

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080413

When last night bleeds into tomorrow it tends to eat into your morning pretty good. I somehow managed to get down to the restaurant for our free breakfast and brought back a box for m'lady. Besides that the day was a write-off. This log now continues starting at approximately 6pm:

Though neither of us had an appetite we knew there was a need to feed to get us through tonight's show. This marks day six in a seven-day run of shows and we require energy. My hair is grayer than it's ever been; we have to at least present a semblance of pacing.

When we saw the bus sail by it went without saying that there was no chasing it today. We slumbered into a pizza joint and somehow put back a couple of slices before catching the next ride.

At the show we ran into some friends. I watched as the one guy (who is from out-of-state and thus doesn't have his medical marijuana exemption) purchased a quantity of pot off a guy in the park, perhaps seven grams or so. It was presented in an officially stamped pill bottle, stuffed full of sticky buds. The guy bought some pre-rolled hash joints as well, just like the ones that are sold in the coffeeshops in Amsterdam.

Together we got in the long line into the venue, and once again m'lady and I were entering much later than we expected – that makes $150 I grudgingly didn't spend on posters over the weekend. At the door was an extensive frisk – there was no getting anything past this crew. In front of me the lady frisked my friend and pulled out his pill bottle full of weed. She looked to her supervisor, a very officer-looking frowning gentleman.

“It's too much,†he said, finally. “You can't bring this much inside.â€

I see my friend is stuck somewhere between a panic and a brainstorm. He doesn't have his 2-1-5 card but he does have even more pot and joints in his pockets; this could technically come out very badly for him.

“Can I just split it up between me and my girlfriend?†he asked. The guard just sort of shrugged, making it very unclear if he thought this was an acceptable option or not, and in doing so he summed up how California seems to be approaching the issue; lots of vague shrugs all around.

Though the show had already started I waited to see how the issue was going to unfold. The guy went about eight people back in line and split up his stash into two bundles. Again the same girl frisked the bottle free, again she showed it to her boss and he, seeing it now half empty, waved the couple through. The guy finally showed his nerves when he almost bolted past the scanner-girl without showing his ticket.

This was the third in a trio of late entries but the first time we were actually late for the music. M'lady and I were still not quite right from last night so we hung to the outer fringe of the floor for the first set and even spent some time sitting on couches in the red-carpeted ballroom that served as a bar.

Because of our hangovers we saved mounds of money by not drinking in the venue but we were having a hard time enjoying the show. For the second set we found space with a friend in the bleachers Page-side. Our life caught up with us and we sat placidly watching the rest of the show. It turned out being a great set and we were very happy for the seats we had found.

Needless to say there was no raging it after this Sunday night show. We opted to enjoy the last dozen hours we were booked into the comfort of the Hyatt so we hopped the bus back to Fisherman's Wharf, arranged for a wake up call and flopped down on our king-size marshmallow.

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080513

Getting up early in hotels ain't our thing, but with a substantial drive ahead we were up and enjoying made-to-order omelets in the hotel restaurant by 9am. Unheard of.

Our car is packed to the gills and sorely in need of a carwash, so when the valet delivered our ride it stood out in stark contrast to the shiny cars that also awaited their drivers on the cobbled hotel driveway. We piled our luggage, cooler, guitar, mandolin, beach bag, etc. in with everything else in a vaguely organised manner and set off towards the freeway.

We had one more Phish show on this run so we had to get to Los Angeles and through it's notorious traffic in time to get to the Hollywood Bowl.

The drive was fast and pleasant. Long, wide roads arced through endless tracts of semi-desert that is constantly reminiscent of the opening segment of M*A*S*H.

We had the advantage of using the carpool lane and scooted through traffic pretty quickly because of it. We found our exit and ended up right in front of Hollywood Bowl. M'lady had made two different reservations and a few nights ago on a whim we opted for the Magic Castle Hotel over the slightly closer Best Western.

Time was getting on as we pulled up to the hotel; we weren't going to be late for the show but we didn't have a whole lot of time to lollygag either. The hotel entrance was confusing, m'lady checked in and instructed me to drive up the hill behind the Magic Castle. Up up up we went along a constantly curving narrow road, finally depositing us in front of what looked like a small apartment building.

As I lugged our suitcase up an old staircase and down a dark, dingy hall I was thinking we booked the wrong place. Inside I was please to see our room was huge with a full kitchen, and our balcony was about twenty feet long. Not bad. I read the brochure in the room and found out that the Magic castle down at the base of the hill isn't some tourist restaurant. Rather, it's the meeting place of the international card-carrying magicians, a castle in the middle of Hollywood that has hosted the world's greatest illusionists for decades and continues o do so. Okay, pretty cool.

I pounded a quick beer or two and called down to the desk. Upon check in we were told there was a free shuttle bus to get us up and down the hill. In no time the guy was there, opening doors for us limo-style and welcoming us into his beautiful SUV. As we wound down the hill I asked how long it would take to walk to Hollywood Bowl.

“I'd be happy to drive you there sir!â€

Turns out the hotel offers a free shuttle to and from anywhere, and the driver was a-okay with me enjoying a cold beer on the drive. He zipped up and over the hill alongside our hotel and dropped us next to the venue. “Just call this number whenever you're ready and we'll drive you home,†he smiled, handing us his card.

I had purchased our tickets through Phish tickets and was happy to have pulled fifth row for the tour closer. Unfortunately, as I only scored tickets for the final show the tickets were sent out very late. The fact that I went to the last three weeks of tour meant it was impossible for me to get my tickets in time. It's a stupid quirk in an otherwise good system, but I just called and got the tickets changed to Will Call.

Of course things got wonky and Will Call only had one ticket for us. Getting things worked out happened, but it wasn't as easy as it could have been, nor was anybody at all apologetic for the mini heart attack I almost had due to their error. In the end our ticket was merely a piece of paper that looked like an old-school diner receipt, though I was happy to find it was honoured by every employee we encountered throughout the evening.

I had never been to the Hollywood Bowl and I have wanted to see a show here since I first saw that famous Bugs Bunny cartoon that has the wascally wabbit conducting an opera singer in the iconic venue. The concession stands are top-rate and there's even a wine shop. We bought some drinks and semi-upscale grub and sat along the perimeter of the walkway to eat.

In the venue itself much of the seating is in boxes, each with four moveable director's chair-style seats and two fold up tables, and there is wait service. Lots of people were enjoying dinner before the show comfortable in their seats. How civilised. The cheap seats to the side and behind the boxes are hard wooden pews. How quaint

Down in the very front there are no boxes, just regular folding chairs but there is still wait service. The gentleman in front of me ordered a bottle of wine to his seat while the guy beside me ordered one of the largest hamburgers I've ever seen. White-cloth-on-arm, yes sir no sir service, and all the while in front of you is that shell, that bandstand to define bandstands, the world famous Hollywood Bowl.

Of course seating doesn't always matter that much, when the show started the 20,000+ in attendance were on their feet and stayed there throughout. The first set was rolling along well when I noticed roadies setting up two extra amps beside Trey – there was going to be a sit-in! Here in LA in could be anybody! I was pretty excited at the possibilities.

In the end there was no guest-star. Rather, Trey's amp was on the fritz and these two amps were set up on the fly to get him through the night. While the roadies were busy plugging things in and setting dials the band had gathered together on Fishman's drum riser and holding down an impromptu and very rare drum jam that included the drummer using mallets on Mike Gordon's bass while Gordon continued outlining chord changes on his fretboard.

Aficionados might notice that for the rest of the show Trey's tone suffered slightly and his sustain was nonexistent. That's okay because the real star of the second set was Chris Kuroda, Phish's master light man. He lit up that bowl with a constant morph of unreal. The eye candy was just over-the-top, there's no question that the lights were going to steal the show no matter what the band did. Rainbows, pulsating tunnels, Olympic rings, at times I felt like I was standing on the lip of a cosmic psychedelic wormhole to the future. The guy's work is absolutely unparalleled in the lighting business and the stuff he does when faced with a unique space to work with is always incredible. (For further examples see the the suspended balloons at the comeback shows in Hampton and what he did with the treeline at Festival 8 in Palm Springs.)

We walked about halfway back for the encore so we could get more of an overview of the scene, and I'm convinced the visuals would've looked amazing from anywhere in the venue.

After the show we weaved through a forest of Mexican women selling mouth-watering hot dogs wrapped in bacon and topped with fried onions and peppers. M'lady was anxious to find something to eat, and as she pulled my hand past the crowd of ladies chanting “hotdogotdogotdog...†I had to stop. “I'll eat wherever you want, but only if you'll wait while I have one of these hot dogs!â€

It was the second greatest hot dog I ever ate, so I ordered another which turned out being number one.

My joyous moaning and groaning convinced m'lady to have a dog which took care of the food issue quite easily, and soon we were at our friends hotel room just steps away from the venue.

The hotel was Phishhead ground zero, snake charmers in every second room and no one daring to be quiet. We visited for a while but soon found it difficult to follow the conversation. As we left our friend's room a lady across the hall appeared. She was clearly an accidental booking; one of those unfortunate souls who innocently books into a hotel that is playing host to something she doesn't understand.

For just the briefest moment she looked at me with eyes searching for a kindred spirit, like “Dear lord, can you believe what's going on here? Let's put up a united front with the hotel manager!†But in an instant she realised that I too, even with white beard of long and graying hair of short, yes I too was one of them.

Aside from the subtly different styles of raging that could be heard as we passed the different floors on the way down to the lobby, it was a very quiet elevator ride.

We called our hotel and in no time our personal shuttle arrived. This is turning out to be one of the best hotel stays ever, certainly the best staff I've encountered. Back at the hotel I found myself in the next room at a wookstack dog party. An hour of that was all I needed before I went back to our spacious abode for the night and shared a last drink with m'lady on our balcony overlooking the diamonds of Hollywood glinting below.

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080613

We got a pretty good night's sleep last night in our big, comfy room. We woke up and called for a late checkout and hit the pool. Just above our room is the beautiful pool area alongside a 600 year-old pagoda. The pool offers great views of Hollywood and is nestled just below the famous Yamashiro Japanese restaurant. We had the pool to ourselves and it was a great way to spent the morning.

So great in fact that we didn't want to leave. The hotel location was great, the rooms were huge with enormous balconies, the staff was really, really top-notch and as mentioned, the pool area was a big plus. I called down to extend the stay but found they were booked up. We extended our checkout a bit longer, I found a senior staff member to compliment and by 1pm we were booked in and had made dinner reservations at Yamashiro.

That called for a frosty beer so we had one before trekking down the hill to our hotel office. Armed with free soft drinks and snacks (the hotel offers guests unlimited access to an extensive list of non-alcoholic drinks and snacks) we strolled around the corner and found ourselves on Hollywood Boulevard, stomping the stars beneath our shoes. Our snacks were proving too lite so we carried on up to Sunset for our first In & Out burger experience.

One of the oldest if not the oldest burger chains in the world, it's odd that I've never eaten at one, but they are primarily in the western US. That said they are everywhere out here.

The menu only has four items on it aside from drinks. The double double, the hamburger, cheeseburger and fries. What isn't on the menu is “Animal-styleâ€, a common In & out variation that marinates the patties in sauce and includes fried onions.

M'lady and I each ordered a double double, hers was Animal Style while mine was straight-up. We each got fries and a shake.

The place was busy, as they all seem to be, and there was a fairly long wait for our food. When it came it was big, hot, delicious, and well-presented. Tasting somewhat like a home-made Big Mac, the burger looked like it was prepared by someone who remembers they are dealing with food that someone will actually be eating, a level of care I find sadly lacking at most fast food joints.

I tried a bite of the Animal Style and loved it, though it's a bit messier than the regular burger. I will definitely order my burgers that way in the future unless it's at the drive-thru. I found the fries were exceptionally tasty and the shake was good too. Definitely a better feeling after eating than at most chains, and the whole order was less than $15 for both of us.

Two thumbs up for In & Out.

Back on Hollywood Boulevard we joined the throngs of tourists wandering the strip staring down at the thousands of stars embedded in the sidewalk. Famous names from a myriad of categories, one can walk both sides of the street for blocks on end passing by names like Gene Autrey, Tom Cruise, Larry King, Bud Abbott, Jim Henson, Hugh Hefner, Big Bird, etc. Just when you thought being famous was a rarity.

While I gasped again and again at the sight of almost every name I recognised I only stopped and got my picture taken with the star dedicated to the Muppets and another honoring Rush. Faced with such a wealth of celebrity lesser names must fall by the wayside.

The real stuff is found directly in front of the Chinese Theatre, where Hollywood icons have left their handprints in cement, a tradition going back for almost a century. Contrary to the endless conformity of the Hollywood stars that quickly gets passe, the blocks of cement at the Chinese Theatre are misshapen and unique. Marilyn Monroe signed her name with a large flourish and added her high heels beside her handprints while Michael Jackson added several handprints including an imprint of his single glove.

. .

As a geeky Star Wars fan I remember watching a clip on the news back in 1977 wherein C3PO, R2D2, and Darth Vader each added their prints to the sidewalk, and there they were. Only C3PO added his real name (Anthony Daniels) to the stone that is bordered by prints from George Lucas and Harrison Ford.

We did some more wandering, stopped into a shop for a coffee and saw them setting up for a location shoot with Jimmy Kimmel, strolled a bit along Sunset and finally went back to our hotel for some more pool side lounging in sight of the famous HOLLYWOOD sign. Later we climbed a single stairway from our hotel and found ourselves at the entrance to Yamashiro's.

It's swank and we got a good table. The valet parked one shiny expensive car after another while we enjoyed the hazy sunset over a great meal. M'lady had the sushi while I opted for the chicken. I was hoping to save room for dessert to see what the $12 donuts were all about, but that will have to wait for next time.

The views of the city from the terrace surrounding the restaurant are just spectacular. This building has sat here atop the Hollywood Hills for nearly 100 years, the centrepiece of a nine-acre Japanese estate. It's been here since before the iconic Hollywood sign visible off to the left, and was the very inspiration for the famous Chinese Theatre which lies below. And just thirty feet or so beneath the restaurant our hotel pool sat calm, empty, and glowing blue. The sight of the pool was too inviting.

We lazed with comforted tummies around the pool for about an hour, m'lady lounging on a deck chair whilst I paced the view with a whiskey in hand. Drawn by the sound and lights coming from below we went down for a night-time walkabout on the strip, which proved to be exactly the same at night as it is during the day, only with half as many people.

On the way back I noticed MI, formerly known as GIT, a famous-amongst-young-guitarists thrasher guitar university that charges outrageous amounts for kids to take classes like Advanced Sweep Picking and Stage Presence 101. They have a cool looking compound right there beside the star for Bryan Adams.

Certainly Hollywood Boulevard is strictly a tourist spot regardless of the time of day, so we decided to call it a night. Back at the room with endured a questionable Bruce Willis movie or two until sleep became unavoidable.

In short: Hooray for Hollywood.

Hooray! .

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080713

We got up and requested a late checkout again, though we somehow managed to resist booking in for a third night even after relaxing around the pool for another luxurious hour this morning.

Packed up, we snaked our car down the hill to the office, grabbed some free snacks for the road and took a drive up to Sunset Boulevard. We made a quick stop along the way so I could marvel at the Kermit statue atop Charlie Chaplin Studios (now owned by Jim Henson Co.) and headed up the Strip.

The traffic moves slow on the Sunset Strip, affording long glances at such iconic venues as the Roxy and the Whiskey A Go-Go. We almost pulled around back to the parking lot so we could see where The Doors got signed.

We found ourselves in Beverly Hills and pulled up a side street. The decadence that can be gleaned beyond the ten-foot high walls and shrubbery is really, really off the hook. These places look like hotels but they are single-dwelling homes. This is what a money pit looks like when it's full.

We veered up through Beverly Glen to Mulholland Drive and were surprised to pass some deer casually munching on the side of the road. Up here in the hills the palatial residences are open for the viewing; nobody wants to spoil these towering views with protective walls and landscaping. We wind through the hills with jaws agape at the astounding bouts of architecture that must cost millions upon millions. I hope these people are as happy living in these places as I am looking at them!

Back through Hollywood we get on the highway south, passing through the rest of LA and it's notorious traffic. It was abut three hours and one double Junkie Burger later (like larger, sloppier homemade In & Out burger) that we pulled into San Diego, down to Ocean Beach (OB to the locals) to stay with a local.

Jess bent over backwards to be a great host. We relaxed with a few drinks at his place, walked a block down to the beach and stopped at Shades to watch the sunset over dinner and drinks. Our friend Mike met us there; he's lives in San Diego and we stayed together in Chicago a few weeks back, so we had a nice little crew.

San Diego had just that day been named “Best City For Pizza In America†by tripadvisor so that helped me shun the burger and I gotta tell ya, I enjoyed one fine, fine pizza. Served on an elongated flatbread, doused with blue cheese sauce in place of regular pizza sauce and topped with tender steak strips, it was a treat.

We walked up the main drag to Harps, a drinking hole with live music every night. We had a few more beers staring down a young bluegrass band before moving on. We lost Mike at the next bar (it was a Wednesday night after all), hit a late nite beer store that looking like an ale museum with all it's choices and headed back to Jess' place with a bag 'o beers and a box of more yummy San Diego pizza. Things got late pretty fast.

In characteristic fashion Jess gave us his room and opted to sleep on the couch. We protested only mildly and headed off to bed. I remember closing the door and hearing Jess say something about 6-31, but he says a lot strange things, like “shamwow†and “woopwoopâ€, so I just closed the door and slept soundly.

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080813

It turns out the first plane leaves the nearby San Diego airport at 6:30, flying past Jess' bedroom window punctually at 6:31 every morning. It's deafeningly loud and absolutely unavoidable. And busy. Another came by at 6:34, another at 6:37 and then a nice lull before the next departure which pierced the morning overhead at 6:51.

It's like Ocean Beach has it's own community-wide snooze alarm. I knew there had to be a catch. I managed to stay down a bit longer before getting up for a walkabout.

San Diego (or the OB area at least) looks and acts like a huge seaside cottage town. Every street is lined with small curious houses leading to the beach. The main street is utterly devoid of any recognisable chain save the one Starbucks, which brought out picketers upon opening. People laze on their hoods in shorts and sunglasses, probably sleepy for their own 6:31am wakeup. Dudes and dudettes stroll by with surfboards under their arms and half the cars on the road are Jeeps.

In the small, hip coffeeshop the servers are bouncy and friendly. When I ask where I can buy a newspaper one of them tells me to take the one off the table, “But you'll have to ask Wendy if you want to know your horoscope, she clipped it out already,†she says with a smile.

“That's okay,†I assure her. “I like surprises.â€

Back at Jess' place we while away a bit of morning until we're finally hungry enough for lunch. Jess led us to South Beach Cafe where I watched him and m'lady munch on fish tacos while I tore through another in a seemingly endless series of juicy cheeseburgers. Outside we can see the beach revelers slowly stroll around like they're auditioning to star in a Jimmy Buffett song.

After visiting San Francisco, Los Angeles, and now San Diego for the first time I am shocked at how different each city is. In my mind they were all fairly interchangeable. No longer. Glitzy, hippy, and beachy, that's my take on the tri-Cali metropoli.

Back at Jess' we packed up and hugged. Backing out of the shared driveway to the alley I heard some crunching. There was glass under the tire and I wedged a small chunk out of the rubber. I didn't think it was in enough to do any damage so I was surprised when the car's computer told me a tire was low. We found a tire spot right in the heart of OB and soon discovered the tire was fine. The other front tire, however, had a nail in it. Seems like someone had sabotaged our wheels.

No biggie, we needed an oil change anyway, and the tire plug cost $25. We spent 45 minutes wandering the cool streets and having a coffee at another coffeeshop.

It did back us up time-wise though, so we didn't actually get on the road until about 5pm. We drove north cruising past Hollywood at sunset. With a dearth of campgounds and no moon to speak of to light the night we shunned tenting for a cheap (and I mean cheap) motel near Bakersfield. The place had formerly been a Rodeway Inn but had lost their status, if that's any indication.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you, the internet and the cable, she is not working too good today sir.â€

They had an ice machine in good working order, so I made out okay.

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080913

We awoke to the sound of a junior bowling/polo team practicing in the room upstairs. They must have a big tourney this weekend because the were going through their drills with great gusto. Consequently I was up early enough for the continental breakfast but I really didn't have very high expectations so I laid in bed and listened with wonder at the goings-on above me instead.

We got on the road early enough – this route back to San Francisco is the first backtrack of our journey so I was happy to give up the driver's seat in favour of buckling down for some typing time. Typing these logs really makes the miles go by, so the five hour drive was gone in no time at all.

Driving across the Bay Bridge we pondered our options: the friends we were staying with had already gone to the festival but we were free to park in their area and take transit to Golden Gate Park, another friend told us he lives next to the park so maybe we could park near his place or hell, we could just drive straight to the festival and search for parking. Our main concern was leaving a car clearly full of stuff parked on the street all evening.

“What festival?†you might be wondering. Why, Outside Lands of course, a three-day multi-stage event held every summer in the largest urban park in America. Now in it's sixth year, the fest pulls out the heavyweights. Phish, Metallica, Tom Petty, Neil Young, and Radiohead are all past OL alumni; this is no small affair.

We called our friend-close-to-the-park and he assured us our stuff would likely be safe. He also told us he'd be at work for several more hours so parking at his place was an option eliminated. We figured the car would be just as (more?) vulnerable in the area we'd be staying as it would be at Golden Gate park so the decision was made. We weaved through the hilly streets and found the park which truly is massive, and found a spot right under a sign that read, “Tow Away Zoneâ€.

Now, that would seem like a clear indication that there was no parking, but let me assure you that the instructions were in fact quite vague. While the text of the sign itself indicated that we should move on, the rows of cars all around us suggested that the tow away zone began at the sign and continued forward, whilst we were unquestionably parked behind the sign and potentially in the safety zone.

We literally sat there for fifteen minutes figuring it out before grabbing a significantly less vague parking spot that opened up across the street. We battened down the hatches and did a quick repack to make the car look as inconspicuous as possible and strolled an easy block to the entrance.

The festival runs for three days beginning on Friday at noon. We walked through the park towards the festival entrance around 5pm and the place was already swarming. Lots of people must have Friday afternoons off here in SF. I know if I lived here I'd lobby for the privilege.

Walking along a road in the heavily-treed park the crowd gets funneled into a gated walkway tickets-in-hand, where we pass three or four spots where the tickets are given a rudimentary glance. At the gate itself there is a very quick and reasonable bag search (no pat-down), our ticket is scanned and we gain admittance without any wristbands or other mucky-muck. The same single ticket is good to be scanned for all three days.

It was fast, reasonable, efficient, and again, no mucky-muck. It's nice not to get frisked like a criminal just to go to a concert. In other words, my first impressions of Outside Lands were good.

As we stroll through the park towards the staging area it's clear that the festival focuses their security on the perimeter. There is an outer fence and an inner fence with a no-man's land between. The inner fences all seem to be very visible – if someone hopped over it would be unmissable to thousands of people in a hundred-foot radius.

Through a little tunnel we are thrust onto the main stage area. It's a polo field so it's big and flat. At one end Band Of Horses are clearing their gear after welcoming us with their set-ending hit, The Funeral. Both sides of the field are lined with ample beer tents and just the most interesting conglomeration of festival food stalls you could imagine. Pork bacon chili, griddled French toast, fried plantain and fajita burritos, Asian chicken wings, bbq shrimp, fried chicken & waffles, Hawaiian poke, they really have everything you could hope for.

The booths actually form another perimeter for the main field, and the rows of bathrooms above and behind the food stalls act as yet another barrier. In the middle are a myriad of stalls either selling interesting wares or offering up corporate swag.

While there is a pair of large enclosures offering up a smorgasbord of quality microbrews I opt for the proletariat Heineken line and get a $9 draft. It was so much fun I did it again and all beered up me and m'lady met up with friends and staked out a spot at the main stage.

We passed the time idly watching The National while our group steadfastly tried to cling to our blanketed real estate. There's not a lawnchair to be seen, but the crowded grass is a patchwork of blankets and tarps. People sit or stand on their rug and own it.

The National's set was made vastly more interesting by the inclusion of Kronos Quartet. The world's leading small string ensemble, Kronos is currently based out of San Francisco and have forty albums to their credit. These guys have played with everyone and I suspect they don't come cheap. They were onstage for at least half the set and were joined by a couple of brass players for a few tunes.

When Bob Weir ambled onstage for the last number my attention was piqued, but his unsmiling handlebar mustache was his most noticeable addition on this day; Bobby just hung on the sidelines and added mostly redundant and barely audible chordwork. It was still nice to see, and it's indicative of how special it is to attend shows here in San Francisco. I was happy to notice that Bobby went straight to the Kronos Quartet after the set and walked offstage deep in conversation with the violinist. It's nice to see that he knows quality when he hears it.

And then it occurred to me: I just saw a member of The Grateful Dead open up for a member of The Beatles. Whoa.

Soon the screens lit up with Paul McCartney's elongated introductory video montage and the crowded area up front started to get serious. We had a pretty good spot; closer to the stage than the soundboard and a bit to the left. It got increasingly difficult to secure our area, which was okay by me, and I got crowded by a very spun dude named Brian who obliviously and consistently banged into me. Thud, thud, thud, over and over. “Hey man, you wanna keep it down a bit?†“Oh, sorrysorrysorry, please tell me if I do it again...â€

“Oh, sorrysorrysorry.â€

“Oh, sorrysorrysorry.†Dude, if you were so sorry you wouldn't take drugs that cause you to lose control of your ability to not constantly bump into other people. Ah, well. In the end I tucked my sturdy poster tube under my arm to create a little barrier and he soon decided to move up to a better spot. Better for both of us.

Then out He came. Sir Paul McCartney. Still looking, sounding, and obviously feeling great. He ran his stellar band through 200 minutes of some of the finest music in pop history before a crowd of perhaps 40,000 adoring fans. The older kids were singing every word while the younger kids awed at the inclusion of a Guns 'N Roses song in his set (m'lady actually overheard a girl tell her friend that Live and Let Die was a G'n'R song), while pyros and fireworks burst through the air.

Looking up at the display I actually caught what I thought was an ember in my right eye. Blinking, rubbing and tearing up for the next few songs I was worried that I was going to have to sue Sir Paul (“We award you 1% of the royalties that Sir Paul has received in the course of me speaking this sentence. You and your injured eye can now retire for life.â€).

By the end of the set I was blissed out with the great music and the happy vibes emitting from the thousands of happy people behind me, and my eye was back to it's regular condition.

And then Sir Paul McCartney encored with Yesterday on acoustic guitar tuned down a full step, accompanied by the Kronos Quartet.

What. A. Treat.

Two beers and a Paul McCartney concert will leave you sober no matter how you slice it, so I was happy to walk out and find the car in the same shape we left it and drive it home. Or at least to Gil and Jen's home, where we will be staying for the weekend. Friends of m'lady's, I met them briefly on the beach in Lake Tahoe and look forward to this opportunity to get to know them better.

On the way home we made a small detour past 710 Ashbury only to find it scaffolded up, the former home of the Grateful Dead is obviously undergoing some sort of renovation. It's fun that we saw Bob Weir play just a walk away from his former digs.

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081013

A nice sleep on a pullout in a room all our own, m'lady and I woke up and whiled away the morning sipping coffees with Gil and Jen in their spectacular apartment. We went for brunch at a small hip spot with a limited menu. I had my first grilled cheese sandwich of tour ($11), made with caramelized onions and homemade bread it was pretty swank.

Gil and Jen are Outside Lands veterans and they were somewhat aghast at my suggestion that there wasn't much to see until later in the evening. So we repacked the car such that we could fold down the seats for passengers and by 2:30 we were on the road, careening up and down the most unlikely of steep, winding streets. There's our new brakes and tires earning their keep.

Driving around the alphabetised streets south of Golden Gate Park our hosts marveled at the luck we had with parking the day before. Indeed we ended up parking a good five blocks farther away than we did yesterday. No matter, it's still a very reasonable walk past endlessly interesting rows of houses.

San Francisco is a very, very cool city. Abhorring anything grid-like, the streets meander like so many rivers through the jungle. It looks like neighborhoods were designed based on the path of least resistance, which is fitting with the city's attitude. San Fran seems like a live-and-let-live kind of place full of fun people. Entering the festival grounds alone is an eye-candy treat; people are in costumes or wearing feathers in their hair, there's a guy walking around openly holding a large bong, smiling sunglassed couples lounge on blankets everywhere.

Arriving a bit behind schedule, I felt bad that we only caught the last song by Gary Clark Jr., an act Gil was excited to see. With the rest of the afternoon free of musical highlights we let the festival itself entertain us.

Walking through the woods to the other stages there is art everywhere, even live painting stations where professional artists create huge murals all weekend that continually get scattered around the grounds. In the forest we encounter Clown Hell, a collection of curious caravans and the clowns that curate them. Not marked on the festival map, this area does have a small stage where the audience sits on large wooden logs. There was a swing jazz band called Beso Negro setting up so we sat down and eventually caught a few tunes. Great music, great players, fantastic setting.

The crew wanted to move on so we did. We happened along to the Sutro Stage where Youth Lagoon was doing their thing, which wasn't really my thing. I glanced at my schedule while my crew stood there idly shaking to the empty vapidity. “Um,†I whispered. “Is it at all possible that we are currently standing at the wrong stage?†Everybody sort of looked around and got a hold of themselves and quickly came to their senses. We marched away.

As we approached the Lands End Stage on the main polo field a couple of girls stopped Gil.

“Were you here last year?†they asked. “Yes,†he replied. “Omg, look at this,†they squeal, holding up their cellphones. Turns out last year he had blatantly photo-bombed their group picture and had grown to monumental status amongst their friends. That's the sort of thing you never think you'll get caught at even though they have your picture, but they caught him! They got him to photo-bomb another pic and off we went.

Gil was inspired and proceeded to become a photo-terrorist, unsubtly seeking out photos to bomb for the rest of the day.

At the Lands End Stage Jurassic 5 was kicking it down with their oversize dj equipment and wearable drum pads. They soon dispensed with the Hip-Prop and got on with a manic game of deep-bass Simon Says that had the whole crowd playing. Put your hands in the aye-yair! Now wave them side-to-side. That's it!

We stopped for a snack of deep friend mac & cheese and found the Panhandle Stage which is completely powered by renewable resources. The Mother Hips were playing but I spent most of the set speaking with a guy manning a booth that raises money for ailing musicians. It's a great cause and they've really got a great fundraising model. But I digress.

We watched most of Grizzly Bear's set at the adjoining Twin Peaks Stage but I was curious to visit something on the map called Chocolands. My ill-led posse snaked through the crowd to the woods and we soon found ourselves surrounded by little hamlets selling their delicious chocolately wares. Liquid chocolate bars, triple-layer chocolate cake, s'mores, chocolate-dipped brownies, milk 'n cookies...I opted for a hot chocolate with homemade marshmallows and a peanut butter cup so big you cold hide behind it.

I gnawed on this several-pound nugget of wonder while my friends imbibed on their own fattening pleasures. I washed it all down with the hot chocolate and when I walked away I actually felt like I was on hallucinogenic drugs such was the chocolate rush.

We killed some time checking out the booths – I tried my legs at a bicycle sprint and bought a few posters at the artist area. There's a Fender booth where you can put on headphones, pick up a guitar and try out their new effects boxes.

Eventually we made it back to the mainstage and soon Nine Inch Nails came on. We found a spot by the soundboard where it wasn't too crowded and proceeded to get lambasted with heavy intensity.

Trent Reznor came out alone with only a white sheet as a backdrop and a single white lamp beside him and grabbed the audience by the balls with nothing but his electric guitar and iron voice. Talk about selling the steak. His band subtly joined in and in a mastery of white light and shadow the minimalist stage setting became monstrous.

The cadence of the show went up with every song. Everything became bigger and blastier, Reznor's uncaged-animal persona grew bigger and bigger until he seemed in danger of exploding, and the audience raged with him every step of the way. It was so heavy that when he played The Warning (Your time is tick tick ticking away...) I couldn't help but to feel my own pulse, counting.

The show climaxed and with only five minutes left Trent re-emerged for the encore. Hurt. The ultimate in intensity, I thought he said he'd never play it again after hearing Johnny Cash do it. I'm glad he played it tonight.

Out on the street after a fantastic day of music I drove the four of us back to Gil and Jen's 'hood and we hit a cool local bar where the whiskeys are poured strong. I struck up a conversation with a girl dressed as Scrooge McDuck and we got out of there just before closing.

San Francisco is cool.

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081113

The third and final day of Outside Lands was packed with stuff I wanted to see so we got up and at 'em as soon as we could this morning and left for the festival a mere half-hour behind schedule.

Parking is brutal all over San Francisco and Outside Lands doesn't help. We ended up parking in the same spot as yesterday, not too close and not too far and made it in to the festival in time to hear Fishbone calling people out from the Lands End Stage.

“Hey, you guys sitting down in the front...git yo asses up befowe I start talking shit 'bout yo momma in front of all these people!â€

Beautiful.

I was in dire need of sustenance so we met up with a friend and booked it into the woods where I found a couple of cups of coffee (both for me) and a big chocolate chip cookie (also for me). You could hear the band playing from where we sat so we kept sitting, building strength for a long day.

After Fishbone our little crew split up, with me and m'lady off to see Kurt Vile and the Violators. This was my first experience with the band and I liked them pretty okay. It sounded somewhat like Lou Reed fronting Crazy Horse without being quite brilliant. I think I would benefit from seeing them in a smaller venue, perhaps with some bourbon in me.

As it stood I was barely getting by with just that one cookie in me gulliver. Bigger things needed to happen food-wise. I had spied a booth at the other end of the festival grounds the previous day that piqued my interest, so I sauntered over to the Twin Peaks Stage for some piping hot split pea soup.

The very thought of festival soup intrigued me, and much like the massive peanut butter cup from the previous day I just wasn't prepared to let the opportunity pass. Of course they had a vegan option and spicy tomato as well, but I opted for a large bowl of pea soup laden with chunks of pork, not ham (another first). It was a wonderful foil against the chilly, foggy weather that defines summer in this area.

Finishing my soup sitting on a log in the woods I noticed I was right next to the Digital Detox zone, something I had been meaning to check out. To enter one must read aloud (or closely overhear) an anti-technology manifesto and sign a waiver swearing you won't text or take digital photos while in the compound. Polaroids were okay though; Luddites tend to hand-pick their enemies.

They had some typewriters up there, a no-phone chill-out area, and inexplicably, face painting. It was so incredibly far from being the cool place I was hoping it would be I decided to not even give it a chance and I got out of there ifast.

We reunited with our little crew at the main stage for The Foals, a band I liked so little I think it would be kindest if I just pretended I hadn't been there.

I was eager to have a good spot for Willie Nelson, who was playing against Vampire Weekend, the band in the main stage slot. In my rush I ended up at the Sutro Stage early enough to catch several songs by Dawes, and it turns out I like them very much. One of the best things about festivals is catching bands you're completely unfamiliar with and would otherwise not spend your time and money going to see and Dawes was it for me today.

This stage area has a great natural bowl to it with a nice slope rising to the right. We found a great vantage point square with the soundboard, just as the field begins to rise. As Dawes was ending their set things were starting to get busy, space was getting more precious by the second and the hill to our right was full.

And then a freaky thing happened. From the side of the stage security started erecting barriers, creating a twelve-foot pathway cutting through the grassy field and causing people to calmly scramble. I stood and watched with amazement safe from my perch a mere ten feet off the path as the yellow-jacketed staff calmly and simply built a road through the crowd leading back a hundred yards and growing. And still they kept coming with their gray metal barricades. If they went all the way back to the gate me and my crew would end up fenced in. It was too much. I just had to find out what was going on.

“I'm gonna go get a beer,†I say to no one in particular, drifting off towards the end of the road which gets farther away every minute.

I ask the first yellow jacket I see that doesn't seem busy. “I don't know,†he say, genuinely. “Some important person is gonna come driving through here, but I don't know who.â€

When I get to the end I see that the work is done and the path will go no farther than the 150 or so yards it has gone. I see a lady with a walkie-talkie. “What's going on?†I ask. She pretends not to hear me.

“Hey, who's coming through here?†I continue.

She smiles the smile of someone with a secret. “It's only temporary,†she says. “We'll be taking it down shortly.â€

My charm was no match for her joy of secrets so I went for that beer. Coming back I see a van coming across the field just as I get close to the barricade. “Hey Willie!†I yell as he goes by, his window open just a crack not two feet away from me.

Well, who were you expecting? Some secret.

I saw Willie Nelson earlier this summer and he was great, but this Outside Lands set turned out to be something else altogether. From the first strum it was clear the Willie's guitar was mixed way to loud in the mix. “Please don't fix it, please don't fix it,†I prayed in the direction of the sound booth. I guess I'm on someone's good side because I got my wish. You could literally hear every single touch Willie made on that old workhorse Martin of his, and it was glorious. Once he was good and warmed up he proved that he is equally impressive as a guitarist as he is a songwriter with every riff, every rhythmic flourish.

Incidentally, by the second song the barricade-path was gone. Dozen of workers had imploded it just as casually as you could imagine. I was flabbergasted. If someone had told me you could build a fenced-in road through a festival crowd without an inch of difficulty I would have said they were nuts. The reason for the whole thing, or so I figure, lies in the natural bowl shape of this staging area that I mentioned earlier. From my vantage point I could see the backstage area, which was basically a small cliff with a four-flight stairway leading up up up. I have a feeling Willie's handlers took one look at the stairs and insisted they find another way to get their octogenarian star to the stage.

Anyways, back on the stage Willie tore it up, playing about twenty-five songs in his seventy minute set. I was a bit surprised he didn't mention the passing of his longtime guitarist Jody Payne who died yesterday at age seventy-seven, but then maybe he just didn't want to bring us all down.

Midway through the set Bob Weir came out for On The Bayou. I think he asked for a guitar and was told “noâ€, so he sang one verse and walked off the stage looking bearded and grumpy. He also came out for the encore and again, no guitar.

Willie's set closed out the Sutro Stage for the fest this year, now it was just a short trek over to the Lands End Stage for the Red Hot Chili Peppers for one more set.

It's been quite a while since I've seen these guys, like almost twenty years, and they were huge back then. Which is to say RHCP have been around for a long time and frankly they sounded a bit tired. Don't get me wrong, they're all great players (even if Flea gets a bit sloppy when he thrashes about so), some great guitar playing and deadly solid drumming, the vocals are bang-on and, well, Flea is an icon.

But there's no fire, and they used to absolutely bleed fire. They're still a great band with great songs and they probably have a lot of touring years to come, but they've lost the eye of the tiger.

Still a pretty sweet close-out to a great, great festival though. I highly recommend Outside Lands – they do it right all around and Golden Gate Park is a beautiful setting. There is such a wide variety of music I can't imagine people who tend to go to festivals wouldn't find lots of music to like. There's no in-and-out; once you're in you're in but they make it really easy to be there all day. I would certainly buy a ticket again without even knowing the lineup, just like I did this time.

The only suggestion I would make is to have more garbage/recycle areas, though the ones they did have were manned by volunteers all weekend, pointing patrons to the proper receptacle which is a hell of a lot smarter than getting the volunteers to sift through garbage looking for recyclables.

Back at Gil and Jen's place we had a few nightcaps and mulled over the weekend of music. This would be our last night in San Francisco and we were reluctant to let it end.

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081213

We spent easily a half-hour trying to find a parking spot near Jen and Gil's place last night before finally taking a spot that required I move the car before 9am. The already horrendous parking situation that is endemic to this city was exacerbated by the Monday morning street cleaning in this neighborhood, which basically bans half of the street parking one day a week. I think I could live in San Francisco but I would have to sell my car; I don't have much patience when it comes to (not) parking.

So I was up early to move the car, still had such a hard time finding a spot that when I did I thought it must have been a typo, grabbed a coffee on the corner and enjoyed it in Gil and Jen's lovely backyard patio.

We hit it and quit it by 11am, with many thanks to our fantastic hosts for the weekend. We drove across town the Balboa area, m'lady had made an appointment to visit a glass artisan and we had meant to visit another friend all weekend but hadn't yet found the time.

We spent an hour admiring recycled glass plates and bowls and made our purchases. We still have a lot of miles to go and now with some pretty pricey glasswork in tow I did a little repack of the car, strapped the boxes in and set off for our last San Francisco stop.

We knocked on our friend's door and his roommate answered. Turns out our friend was still asleep. We said we'd have lunch and come back, Mark (the roommate) said he'd join us so off we went for some ubiquitous Mexican food. I had a burrito the size of my thigh. I set it on it's end and ate it freestanding. M'lady ordered one more taco than she needed and ate them all.

Back at buddy's place he mentioned he wasn't used to guests in the morning. I mentioned it was 2pm. It would be good to live here.

We had a rush hour to beat so we got on the road before 4pm. Traffic was pretty good as we cruised over the Golden Gate Bridge one last time, and crossing the bridge we turned onto highway 1 north.

This was the beginning of the vacation I have been looking forward to the most, the legendary California coastal highway. This is the kind of road you take Gravol for, as m'lady was soon to find out. Before long we pulled in to a pull out and sat for a spell so stomachs could settle. I spent some time trying in vain to help a guy who had locked his keys in his pickup truck. I noticed he had solar panels installed on the roof of his truck, so it seems he's sometimes clever.

Back on the road it was twists and turns and bends and curves and trees and cliffs and wow what a drive. It took hours to go 120 kilometres.

We stopped at a campground but it was pricey ($44) and not so beautiful so we carried on. A hundred twists and turns later we found a state park right on the ocean. The ranger at the booth suggested we drive through and check the place out; if we want to stay come back and let her know. The place looked pretty good so we picked a spot, paid the lady and set up camp. It's surprising how long it took us to notice that we were well within earshot of a beacon-horn that blasted every eight seconds. Several rum and cokes in and I couldn't help but to count it off: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight...HOOOOOOOOOOONK! One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight...HOOOOOOOOOOONK! One, two, three, four, five...

We watched the sunset from a picnic table near our campsite and walked over to the adjacent beach and sat staring at the planet.

Sigh.

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081313

We woke up to the sound of the lighthouse horn, but then we did everything at Bodega Bay Park to the sound of the lighthouse horn as it was blowing regularly every eight seconds. We packed up without much ado and got out of there, not so much because of the horn (which wasn't at all annoying in the daytime) but because the daily destination awaited.

The daily destination was the road. It's simply amazing that there is a road built to hug such a rugged coastline, and the road is immaculate besides; pure black asphalt curving up and around the mountains, turning with each bend in the fjord-like fringes of land.

Quite simply, this is the type of drive I've always dreamed of. As a little kid I would sit in the driveway pretending to drive mom's car, turning the wheel this way and that maneuvering endless impossible curves, splitting my time equally between gas and brake, careening up and down hills in my mind – the road is never straight in Imaginationland. And that's exactly what today was like.

Dizzying turns with speed limits that went as low as 10mph, hugging to the side of Road Runner-esque roads carved into cliffs, and all the while splitting the view between endless trees and majestic ocean views. Quite simply the greatest drive of my life. The only thing that comes close is the westernmost section of Taiwan's Tarago Gorge. With apologies to my native land things like the Cabot Trail and the BC interior just can't touch the breathtaking beauty of the California coast drive.

I could not stop gasping aloud.

Along the way we stopped for lunch in Mendocino, a hippie town up the coast. We had a nice walkabout and while jewelry and art shops abound there is a bit of a shortage when it comes to restaurants. We found a sign that read Mendo Burger and walked down the path.

The couple that owned the place were native New Yorkers. Remarking on my Amsterdam baseball hat the couple mentioned they were frequent visitors to The Netherlands and talk turned to coffeeshops and the California medical marijuana laws.

I'm sorry to report that the proprietors were clearly under the weather, as they took turns medicating themselves on the restaurant patio. “You got your two-one-five?†the man asks me, referring to the state medical marijuana card. “No,†I replied. “That's too bad,†he says, “because the best bud in the state is grown locally and sold at the dispensary right around the corner.â€

We ate our burgers in the patio sun and at the urging of the gentleman stopped in for a look-see at the dispensary, which was clean and inviting. The very kind lady at the desk explained that they only sell to card-carrying clientele but she was happy to discuss the shop. They offered almost forty strains of marijuana and almost as many types of hashish, all were locally grown and on display. The shop included a small informative library and just overall exuded nothing but professionalism.

I've not seen anything like it in the more notorious coffeeshop areas in Europe, which tend to be more dive-like in their presentation. California looks like it has a wonderful working model happening, it will be interesting to see how it develops.

As we approached Westport we pulled into a roadside stop that had hundreds of Inukshuk-like rock piles. I met Caleb there, the young man responsible for the balancing acts. After two days of constant work he had just finished the job. “People are really attracted to the area when I pile the rocks, though I'm not sure it's the rocks that the people are interested in,†Caleb told me. “I think it's the energy. It's my gift to the area.â€

Caleb used to be homeless, then he got a bicycle. He has been driving up and down the west coast nonstop for the last three years, and he spends a lot of time balancing rocks on top of one another.

“How do you know when the pile is finished?†I asked.

“God tells me when they're done†he replied. “Everything I do is because God told me to do it.â€

We got some travel suggestion from Caleb and left him to enjoy his work. Up the road we found the campground he had recommended, a small state park on a plateau overlooking the ocean. It was cheap, $25 on the honour system, but we opted against staying there as it had no beach access. Something tells me God instructs Caleb not to pay when he stays there.

The private campground we chose was a bit pricier, but the quick stroll to the sandy beach and the hot showers easily made up for the extra cost. We stood ankle deep in the Pacific Ocean to watch the sun set with beer in hand and retired to our secluded camp spot when the dark got too dark.

As I cooked a little dinner on our Coleman stove I heard a sound nearby. I shrugged it off and then a moment later heard it again. There was a critter and he was right next to us. Picking up the camplight I see that there is a skunk in our unused firepit, literally no more than three feet away. I've never been that close to a skunk before; I didn't think you could be that close without getting sprayed, and I couldn't smell a thing.

I grabbed the lantern and shoo-ed him off down the road. He soon tired of that and turning around he shoo-ed me right back. As I retreated to our site the smell was unmistakeable. Thankfully that was the end of our critter encounters for the night.

Two days of driving and we have barely hit five hundred kilometres, and that's just how we wanted it. This is really a case of the travel being the destination.

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081413

Spoke to a guy while brushing teeth in the bathroom this morning. His dog got into the skunks last night, he was in for a smelly ride home.

We bid our campground adieu and set out for another day of incredible driving. Continuing along California's highway 1 at a snail's pace provided another morning of gasps and gapes at the astounding scenery along the Pacific coast. This is just an amazing chunk of the world, and what a feat that they've maintained such a great road through it.

When highway 1 ended it dumped us right into the giant redwoods, so with eyes turned upward we continued oohing and aahing as the world unfolded before us. Impossibly tall trees with circumferences reaching over sixty feet, the road felt like a tunnel. We had to turn off the satellite radio because it became so spotty under these massive beasts of wood.

We opted for the Avenue Of The Giants for prime redwood viewing. It winds alongside the main highway and offers lots of hiking loops, pullouts, and tourist attractions.

I couldn't bring myself to pay $5 to drive through a tree so instead we stopped and did a couple of walking trails. To walk among these enormous living creatures is quite humbling. At an interpretive centre a cross-section of a tree trunk was on display listing world events among the rings. Near the middle of the seven-foot disc was a note marking Genghis Khan's exploits, further out the Vikings landed in North America, here is when Washington was born and this marks the birth of the modern Olympics. Quite a life.

As sunset neared we were lucky to grab the last campsite at a state park. We pitched the tent next to a future giant redwood and had a nice picnic meal of salad and sandwiches. We were adjacent to a section of the park that was for cyclist camping only, and I'm pleased to report that it too was full for the night.

Each site was provided with a bear-proof box and instructions to put all food in it, even food that was in the car. After dinner and drinks I loaded up our box and turned in for the night, a tiny, happy man sleeping among giants.

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081513

Woke up in the forest amongst the redwoods and made a nice, strong cup of coffee on the Coleman stove. We had stopped for groceries the night before so we had cream. I lingered over a second cup and pulled out the guitar. I played for an hour or so in the dense, quiet redwood forest until my guitar ran out of notes. I turned my attention back to the Coleman and made a small breakfast for me and m'lady. This is vacation.

That said, we aren't lingering anywhere no matter how nice so we packed 'er all up and got out of there. We ascended through the giant forest and soon crossed the state line into Oregon.

The Oregon coast was yet another geographical surprise for me. The rugged coastline is dotted with massive rock islands just offshore, it looks very much like Vietnam. The road had finally opened up to the sort of highway featured in so many car commercials: A fast, windy strip of fresh black asphalt hugs the cliff overlooking a roiling ocean. I Was Made For Loving You by KISS came on at just the right moment: turn it up, open the sunroof, step on the gas and lean back, both hands on the wheel.

Zoom.

The western coastal drive would make a hell of a bike trip (though I was most envious when we stopped next to a Ferrari with Alberta plates), and I think it's safe to say we saw more bicycles than cars on this leg of our trip. There are occasionally bike paths but otherwise the traffic always seems to give a bike the whole lane, passing them like they are cars. The tunnels have cycle lights; the cyclist pushes a button upon entering a tunnel and lights begin to flash warning motorists that there is a bicycle in the tunnel and cutting the speed limit in half. I have a feeling I'll be daydreaming about this potential trip for some time to come.

As we neared the northern end of Oregon we found a lot of fully booked campgrounds, even one designated as tents-only (damn cyclists). We went down a long stretch of road somewhere near Cannon Beach and found a state park with an open spot. It didn't look so hot and was low on facilities so we asked about other options.

“Well, there's a few spots down by the beach that are free, if you don't mind your window getting smashed,†the ranger offered. We minded. She further explained that a rash of break-ins had occurred in the area a few years back and they had just started up again this summer.

“But there's a private campground near the beach that's pretty good.†We took that.

And pretty good it was. Though the signage in the office advertised the owner's strong opinion on the right to bear arms (why oh why do some small business owners insist on this unnecessary, potentially alienating practice?) we found the nicest camp spot of the trip so far, secluded in trees, in the shadow of a pretty rock face and our own short path to a powdery beach. The place even offered free use of crab nets and buckets and the like.

We set up and checked out the ocean, made dinner and had some drinks. I talked to a fella who was returning from the beach with a bucket. Two clams and a couple of small crabs. Hope he had something else back at camp to augment his dinner.

Later, in the light of the moon, m'lady suggested we take a walk on the beach. I grabbed a beer and put on my shoes and down the short path we went.

Despite the loud crashing waves the beach seemed almost silent. We stood in the heavy sea air watching the subtle effects of the moons gravitational dance with Earth's ocean, with only the occasional birdsound to distract us (also silent). I'll admit I'm not much of a beach guy, but they're unquestionable more tolerable at night.

As we stood near the water basking in the moonglow I happened to look down, where I noticed the sand was crawling with thousands of the grossest pulpous critters you can imagine. These writhing stumpy creatures were the stuff of nightmares and they were quite big, perhaps a centimetre or more long. Startled, we jumped back and noticed there were pockets of them all over the place. Our beach time ended pretty quick.

It was clear the creepy little aliens were more abundant closer to the water but we still saw some pretty far up the beach. Our little pathway seemed extra short as we retreated back to camp, a mere stones-throw from Beach Creepy Crawly.

That was enough beer for the night. We switched to strong whiskey and zipped the tent up tightly.

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Cannon Beach is a nice little town. The locals encourage people to drink on the beach as I found out earlier this summer. We camped at Nehalem Bay just south of there, great state park on the spit right on the ocean. Are you going to Astoria (home of the Goonies?)

If you're going as far north as the border I'd highly recommend camping at Deception Pass State Park on the north tip if Whidbey Island in Washington. It's very close to the border, very scenic and by far the nicest campground I've ever stayed in. Huge private sites covered in enormous trees, just steps from the ocean.

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