Now on to practical matters:
Miq sez "Don't bother with AAA." Nonsense. Call Cambria
Auto Repair and Towing in Cambria. They will take more
care putting your car on the hook than most dentists will
with your bicuspids, they will haul you 26 miles through
the dark, they will make a reservation at the Cambria Pines
Lodge for you if you don't already have one, they will drive
their own car into Morro Bay and back to get the right
sized alternator for your MG (maybe you should have called
them to get the alternator for your 1275, Miq! :-), and they
will not charge you for the tow. Goodness and mercy should
follow these people all the days of their lives.
(Oh. Miq meant "don't get an inspection there." He's probably
right, but the AAA will Save Your Lucas in a pinch.)
The place in SLO is -- God, I've blotted it from my memory --
The Madonna Inn. I have done my quota of Indescribably
Snide Insults About Cultural Icons this week, so I'll say no more
except that I stopped there once and was already in a crummy mood.
It has a great reputation among the kind of people who put
plaster gnomes in their yards and whose life goals were limited
to getting married the weekend after graduating from high school
so they could honeymoon in the Caveman Room here.
Fun place to stay: Cambria Pines Lodge, in Cambria, which is
about 10 miles from Hearst Castle. Try to get the old suites
instead of the new wing; the new wing is a fairly generic
platerboard two-story, the old stuff are individual cabins.
No phones in the rooms! Some of the old rooms have fireplaces
and I *think* there might still be one or two of the original
cabins left. These were faced with split logs on the outside
and warm lacquered knotty pine on the inside. Talk MGs with
the bartender; if he's the same one that was there five
years ago on my accidental trip (damn, five years ago TODAY),
he used to have a B.
Hearst Castle: Be sure to rent _Citizen Kane_ before you
go there. The bus ride up the mountain to the castle is
best when the memory of Welles' nightmarish, gothic vision
of the dissolution of Kane's Xanadu is fresh in your mind.
Highway 1 shares its route with 101 for part of the way
down south; you'll go inland at Morro bay (a great place to
stay, BTW) and stay with 101 through Atascadero. There's
a Mobil station there that never closes but they won't
jumpstart your car; still, if you're in an MGB that has
an intermittent short that causes your battery to wear down
to the point where you can't start the car after driving
for more than three hours with the headlights on, you can
get it started by rolling it down the hill on the street
next to the Mobil station. Be careful you don't scrape up
your side jumping into the car as it starts rolling.
There's a really, really, really good barbecue restaurant in
Atascadero, off at the south end of town on -- yes -- El
Camino Real. It's in a cute white house with red brick
pathways that's just down below street level. Nice folks,
great food.
Past Atascadero, 101 takes you through one of my
favorite stretches of road into San Luis Obispo; past there
you'll come up on Avila Beach, then Pismo Beach, both
nice places to stop and stretch, look at the scenery,
and have fun. F. McLintock's comes highly recommended;
I've never been there but Kim's father and stepmother
stop there all the time. It's right off 101, you can't
miss it.
thence through Gaviota Pass, another road made for sports
cars. From there you'll go to Santa Barbara, which is the
only place on the coast where 101 has stop lights. South
of there, in Oxnard, watch for the Highway 1 turn off; it's
worth doing. Oxnard is at the edge of the Greater Los Angeles
parkign lot and smog generator; note that there is no good time
to drive in LA, so give it up. Stay on Pacific Coast Highway at
least through Santa Monica. For extra scenic points, take Topanga
Canyon or Las Virgenes roads inland. (Las Virgenes, also
called Malibu Canyon Road, will be familiar to fans of
Doctors Pierce and Hunnicut; it's where the opening credits
of *M*A*S*H* were filmed.) The two best places to stay
in Santa Barbara are The Biltmore, which is $$$ but they
treat you like visiting royalty and there's a private beach;
or the Miramar -- that's the place off to your right with
the lovely blue roofs. Get a beachfront room there, and
your balcony will be right atop the sand. Take along a
bottle of champagne and watch the sunset over the Pacific,
more or less (the California coast runs east-west there).
We went to the 1985 American MGB Association West Coast
Convention at the Miramar.
In San Diego, don't miss La Jolla. If you're still speaking
to Chuck after the clutch incident (:-) and if you have some
money, look up La Valencia hotel there. It's a grand old
1920s hotel, elegant and delightful, right on the water
with views from most rooms. Or there are fun places to
stay in Hotel Circle, which is right across the hill from
Old Town and Balboa Park. Be sure to see the Reuben H. Fleet
Space Theater; I realized Kim and I were meant for each other
there. (She was playing with a machine that read your
pulse when you put your finger in it and beeped out in
time with your heartbeat; I gave her a nibble under the
ear and it sounded like a car alarm. Everyone stared,
but we were married the next summer.) There's also a great
air museum and a *wonderful* model train exhibit in Balboa
Park, as well as the new Old Globe theater.
Before the trip:
Change all your fluids. Lube and inspect the chassis. Check
all your belts, top up your batteries, take a look at the hoses.
Check the tires, be sure to tighten the knock-offs. Dress
in layers; the weather will change from sun to fog to rain to
hot bright August every few minutes.
Allow lots of time. I, uh, well, things were different for
me then. I think I set the under-1300cc class record for
Monterey to Cambria, before the alternator boiled all the
water out of my battery and I had to walk a billion feet
down to the shore to call the AAA from the house next door
to Linus Pauling. Most people figure on six hours from San
Francisco to Cambria, though.
I've driven one MG or another to all these places. Sitting
here, I'm flooded with memories of the things I haven't said,
the things I can never say, the feelings that wrenched me then
and that, now, are a kind of wistful nostalgia, but not
regret, no, not regret. People, places, things, loved and
gone, scattered, the pain in my heart yellowing like old
photographs, but the road remains. Your road can't be my
road, but I hope you can see some of the happiness I spent
there, yes and some of the pain too, because that buys the
happiness dearer than any currency. Enjoy it.
--Scott "And I guess that's why they call it the blues" Fisher
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