Stage 1 of 5 Completed

Pretending to be a roadie.

Today I complete the first stage of my California Journey, and I have to tell you that everything is going wonderfully. I really couldn't want for anything better. Spending three days at the Ernie's house in Santa Barbara has been everything I could have dreamed. The guys were so sweet to put me in the master wing of their house and they've been the most excellent of hosts. Falling to sleep two nights while listening to Brian practice his sweet, soft saxophone in another room was a heaven I cannot describe, and going with them to their gig in the Ventura Marina on Friday night was just so much fun...

Getting Down to It

How I wish we still used suitcases like these. Before The Big Dump of 2001, I had a set of three tweed striped cases like the one in this picture, which I used stacked, as an end table. I loved those because they'd belonged to my dad back in the day when he was a Big Band drummer on the road before Uncle Sam hauled him off to WWII. Someone needs to design vintage-looking luggage with modern features such as wheels and retractable pull bars. How cool would that be? I'd be so on top of that...

Back to Basics

For a long time, I've been perplexed about why I no longer enjoy blogging. I used to post every day, sometimes twice a day, but then something happened and I lost my mojo, for want of a better term. This resulted in sporadic posts which were sometimes uninspiring, often uninspired. For a writer, this is an unsettling place in which to find oneself.

Soñando con California*

Planning, arranging and booking my upcoming trip to California (I'll be waking up in Santa Barbara two weeks from today!) has sort of occupied my mind and is dominating my time. Everything is arranged though, and I'm really looking forward to it. As I've said in the past, I haven't been home in 13 years and there are old friends I haven't seen in thrice that.

I'll be leading rather the gypsy life while I'm out there: 3 days in Santa Barbara, 2 days in Solvang, 3 days in Ventura, 3 days in Thousand Oaks, and 2 days between Ventura and Santa Barbara... there's the map to illustrate my trip. Click to embigiate.

I'll be very busy while I'm out there: visiting friends, going to band gigs, revisiting some of my old stomping grounds and attending BandTree IV, so I've arranged to spend my last two nights at my favorite little inn, which is located on a small cliff right on the Pacific. After all the hustle and bustle, it'll be healing and restful to sleep with the sound of the surf outside my window, and to spend a couple of days reading, writing and vegetating only 10 feet from the waves.

The extreme drought, the triple-digit heat, the recent prairie fires, health issues, and a number of interpersonal emergencies have made this trip not only welcome, but also necessary; it's been a literal hell here this summer. I didn't think it could get worse than last year, but I was wrong about that. It's a dangerous place to live, not only physically, but emotionally and psychically, and my nervous system has taken about all it can handle. I look forward to this trip as a way to clear my head and to gain a fresh, new perspective about life, thus springboarding me into the next phase.

I'll be posting lots of stories and pictures here, as well as on my California Dreamin' blog and Facebook. Until then, you probably won't see much of me because I have songs to learn and interviews to write, and only two weeks to do that in.

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* Sorry if that's an incorrect translation. My Spanish isn't what it used to be.