Am I cut out for the California Lifestyle?

The jury's still out on that one. I did have one heck of a time on my first trip to California though. I finally made it out to the West Coast for Hilary's wedding and tacked a trip to San Francisco onto the end. In typical fashion, the trip was not without incident. Jessie and I were off to an auspicious start after being upgraded to a convertible for free by our new friend Alex at the Oakland airport National. After picking up Molly T. at the airport we even made it all the way up to Dunsmuir, CA without help. For those of you who aren't familiar, Dunsmuir is 5 hours north of Oakland. It's near Mt. Shasta and the city of Weed but those landmarks don't mean much...even to people who are from California.

All was well until we began the trek up to Pine-gri-la (yes, that was the name of the place that Hilary was having her wedding...hippie) for the rehearsal dinner. To get there, we departed from the Dunsmuir Lodge (read motor lodge from Psycho) and began the 40 minute drive up a treacherous mountain road. The top was down, hair was blowing, pictures were being taken, and suddenly, a tire was popping. Some say it was one of the shards of fallen rock littering the side of the road. Some say it was a disgruntled mountain pygmie armed with a blowgun. Either way, we had a large hole in the side wall of our front right tire.

Luckily, Alan, an unsuspecting wedding guest, was driving behind and pulled over to rescue us.


The wedding ended up being really beautiful and we didn't plummet off the side of the mountain. It was obviously a little crunchy but it was perfect for Hilary and the location was gorgeous.




I spent the next week in San Francisco as the guest of Molly W. who was an excellent host. I explored the city by bus and it's safe to say that it's THE perfect way to get to know the local crazies. They were so crazy that I didn't dare try to capture them on film. I also finally got to see the Churchills and meet their brand new twins, Arlo and Felix. It was wonderful to meet the boys and catch up with Alex and Jessie after such a long time.



I think I'm still going to call New England home for a while longer. The City is great but I prefer all the sarcastic bastards that live on the East Coast and appreciate my jokes.