The last two days couldn't have been a lot more different from the first two if I had planned it out that way.

When we last left our intrepid hero, he had hunkered down in the town of San Luis Obispo. Let me tell you a thing or two about SLO, as the locals bemusedly call it. It's a small town. I don't know how small, but the "downtown" is about 6 blocks by 6 blocks. It's a college town, with one of the 9743 different Cal/Cal State/Cal Tech/Cal whatever university branches. It's also quite lively and I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed it. Nice restaurants, nice bars with live music, and friendly people. If you happen to ever pass by this way, I recommend it very highly.

But on the road I had to get, so I left the fine town behind me headed to Ventura county and my next friend stopover. Along the way I passed through the town of Santa Barbara. I didn't stop for long, but did manage to finally see a Mission, an endeavor at which I had been thwarted in Carmel-by-the-Sea.

I'm told this is the only mission to have 2 bell towers. I feel honored. I read up on the history of missions while I was here; it's quite interesting. Evidently most of them were founded in the 1700s. Spain, which had an established colonial frontier in Mexico, was worried about encroachment by the Russians from the north. So they cooked up a scheme that involved the government, the army, and the church. And just like Hart to Hart, when they got together, it was murder. The army and the government would set up military bases (Presidios) up the coast from Mexico. At each one there would be some government services available, and the church would set up a mission. In this way, Spain sought to set up a 'buffer zone' of Spanish culture that would keep the Russians at bay. The missionaries were charged with the usual missionary responsibilities, but were also deemed to be "protectors of the Indians." From time to time, evidently, this brought them into conflict with the military, who sometimes saw the Indians as simple nuisances. How Spanish culture was going to take root without these nuisances evidently was not thought through all that carefully.

I'm not a religious man. In fact, sometimes its all I can manage to not be sacrilegious. But I have to admire the missionaries after a fashion. Here are people who give up everything to spend their lives on a foreign frontier because they are pursuing a vision. A twisted vision sometimes, to be sure. They were able to figure out what they needed to do, and pursued it no doubt with zeal. Now there are statues of them, and nifty old buildings they built. All in all, I think that's worth something.

Anyway, the plan worked in that no towns in California have Russian names. While the battle may have been won, the war was lost. Spain couldn't deal with the independence movement of her Mexican colony, and the independent state of Mexico couldn't deal with it's grabby northern neighbor. One treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo later, and California was born. Fifty years later, one of the most corrupt politicians of all time, Porfirio Diaz, president of Mexico issued one of my favorite quotes, "Poor Mexico...so far from God, so close to the United States."

But enough history appreciation day. I had to move onto the real object of the day, my friend Vicky Chia. Vicky is a friend of mine from Seattle. I met her a few years through a mutual friend when she was still in her doctoral program at UW. Since meeting her, she has finished her doctoral degree to become an epidemiologist, moved to Maryland to do her post-doc work, and now moved to Thousand Oaks to work for Amgen. Everything you hear about the healthcare debate will impinge on her somehow. So think about that.

I really wanted to see the beaches of Southern California, so Vicky and I spent the day cruising around Malibu. I had thought the crush of humans in Carmel on Sunday was impressive. I hadn't seen anything yet. Armies were clustered on the beaches on Labor Day itself. In southern California, there are miles-long stretches of highway where people pull their cars off to the side of the highway and abandon them to go down to the beach. I can think of nowhere else that I have seen this kind of behavior. Then again, I can think of nowhere else where one would want to.



Vicky has just bought a new townhouse in Thousand Oaks. It's very nice. And it's a good time to be a buyer in SoCal.


The next day bright and early I headed down to Orange County to visit my long time friend and business associate, Gerry Rubin, along with his wife Sofia and his new boy Teddy.

Rubin is one of the owners of Sitelines productions. He's a great events guy, and a huge WWII history buff. A few years back I went on a tour of the Normandy beaches with him, just because. So what do Gerry and I do? We go out into the California desert to shoot his collection of WWII era and WWII replica guns!

Gerry has an M1 .30 carbine, a model 1911 .45 colt automatic, and a Lee-Enfield .303 bolt action. The former two are modern replicas built to specs. The latter is actual WWII vintage, 70 years old, and well used. The Lee-Enfield packs quite a kick, trust me. Persoanlly I had the most fun with the carbine. It was lighter weight and I found I was more accurate with it, hitting 7 out of 10 targets on one mag. Go me!



































Driving out to the desert we passed up a few houses out there. I mean way out there. Every time I go by isolated outposts of habitation like this, it makes me wonder who these folks are. What do they do? What do they want? Why are they here? And how did they decide that living 2 hours from other humans was they way to achieve their desires? Mind you, I'm not judgmental about this in the slightest. I'm merely curious. Somehow though I managed to resist the urge to ring one of their doorbells and ask them. Most of them have gates, so that might not be a good idea anyway.

Later in the evening we drove around in Gerry's rebuilt WWII Ford jeep. I'm not kidding.















I could pretty much hang out here for days, but my own kind of duty calls. Next up, I head east for the first really isolated stretch of the trip. Target: the Grand Canyon.