Leave Northern California Before You Get Soft

For a brief moment I'm actually back in my home town, where, like anywhere else, I had to deal with the usual debacle of the airport shuttle and finding somewhere to eat.

Tonight, for some cruel and unusual reason, I was stuck with a bunch of guys who were just so clueless it was actually surprising. They were returning from some sort of Astrophysics seminar and I should have recognised the smell of 'Absent Minded Professor' much sooner and just waited for the next ride.

We were somewhere close to this guys destination when he suddenly realised what was happening and just blurted out,

"Hey, take this intersection, here, the one you just passed,
that's my turn! Sorry, I wasn't paying attention..."

He then proceed to navigate us the rest of the way by saying things like "I think it is around here somewhere..." and giving instructions a few seconds too late to actually make any use of them. And this guy was giving directions to his house.

I've never met an astrophysicist who knew which way was North.

Suitably frustrated and still in need of a feed. I did what I normally do anywhere else. I heades for the local bar and spent time chatting with the staff while watching the world go by.

I ended up at a Cuban/South American watering hole that actually had a kitchen open after 9pm, and was settling into some late night tapas when the band arrived. I asked Renaldo, the waiter, about tonight's entertainment and he said,

"Well, He's a flamenco guitarist, that tall guy with the pony tail, he's really good"

'Ponytail', eh ? That set off my alarm bells.

Fortunately, He didn't wear the pony tail. Instead he let his hair out and was sporting the requisite goatee and scruffy shoes that just had 'Hippy Street Performer' written all over him. (If you ever saw the movie "Real Genius" He looked just like Laslo) He had also brought with him half of the West African Hand Drum Ensemble and proceed to play songs with drum solos that ran way too long.

To make things even worse, he also added some guy blowing his nut on the jazz flute ( I wish I'd had my camera ), occasionally swapped out the guitar for a 5 string bass to 'accompany' the rhythm guitarist, oh, and there was some 50 year-old in a tie-dye skirt shaking her booty to the whole thing. It was like some time-warp back to the Montreaux Festival. It was so bizzare it was actually interesting.

So I just kept drinking Mojitos.

Later on that night I got to meet the booty shaker, who, like everyone else in Nor-Cal, turned out to be a graphic designer by day, Multi-Dimensional Channeler by night and went by the name of "The Rev. Roxanne"

Welcome Home.