We left Pismo heading south vaguely aware that there was supposed to be bad weather coming. We didn't think much of it though and were kinda optimistic until we stopped in a little diner in some small town (Los Alamos? Something like that) for some lunch and almost as soon as we sat down it started raining. I put my wet weather gear on when we left, thinking that if I wore that shit the rain wouldn't happen... as is usually the case. It did however continue to rain and then started getting harder. We pulled over and Joe put his wet weathers on while Malcolm made a rain suit out of a rubbish bag he'd picked up from the diner.
Of course now we were ALL suited up, it stopped raining! We rode into Santa Barbara and took all that shit off. Then we had a look around the downtown area of Santa Barbara when it REALLY started to piss down. It was like tropical torrential rain this time. We sat around for ages and then eventually rode in the rain to a motel Malcolm had found on the innernet. It was amazing how wet we got in only 10 minutes riding.
Next day we left, having waited out the rain (or so we hoped), riding through the back hills of Santa Barbara. Money! Real beautiful twisty roads, but surrounded by some pretty serious wealth. We eventually headed back down to the coast and headed towards Malibu thinking we'd find beach camping somewhere before Malibu. We ended up at a campground almost IN Malibu, paying $45 + $16 for each bike for a campsite! We were all pretty pissed about that, so we got some cheap booze and went and drank it on the beach... which I'm pretty sure is illegal here??? Was pretty cool though. Hung out on a lifeguard tower watching dolphins, seals, and surfers as the sun went down. The campground sucked. It had been flooded by the previous few days rain, so it was muddy, but worse than that it was packed full of people. We had some weird christian bunch next to us – a bunch of dads and kids, but the kids were being indoctrinated with prayer sessions etc. I think we were all pretty happy to get up and piss off the next day...
We'd hardly started riding it seemed and we hit Santa Monica. We'd definitely left ourselves waaaay too much time to do the Pacific Highway. Anyway we took a look at Santa Monica beach and then went down to Venice beach. Both were bizarre... kinda icky feeling for all sorts of reasons. I did dig watching the skaters at Venice though. They were pretty amazing, especially this dude in the red. I didn't catch any of his top shit on camera unfortunately.
Having spent a bunch of cash to simply park at Venice, we didn't stick around long, and headed into the city a little aiming for the the Hollywood Hills to ride Mulholland Drive.
The plan was to carry on out of LA and head to back to the desert to Pappy and Harriet's for one last hurrah. The trip down the coast hadn't been what I thought it'd be, and we were all nostalgic for the earlier parts of this trip – the deserts and the forests and the empty roads.
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