Adventure #25 - Day Three - Atascadero to Ventura, CA

Adventure #25 - Road Trip to LA and Martin Wheeler Systema Seminar
Planned By - Both Heather and Marty

DAY THREE - From Atascadero to Ventura, CA

Description:  Wherein Heather and Marty continue their VERY LONG road trip to LA (it takes 6 hours to drive LA, they are going to do it in 5 days!)  Leaving their most recent tiny RV AirBnB stop and heading down the rest of the coast on SR-1, stopping by to eat at La Torita in the heavy rain (say wha?! Rain?!), before heading over to Ventura and somewhat inland above Ventura for our next AirBnB experience.  Plus the movie “Everest".



(Marty's Report):

I set the alarm on the Phone of Wonder, so we got the circulation going around 9am, and rolled out of our vintage RV about 10a to keep heading down the road.  We stopped at a Starbucks off the highway for morning ablutions, and a rail-but-not-methy young man served the drive-in, with a tattoo on his forearm that is the sign of the Deathly Hollows, from Harry Potter.  Other than him, it was all women working the joint, and a lot of them, all under 25.  (Another Starbucks down the road, also had all young women working there, who, as I sat there waiting for my next tea, looked like all variations on a theme.)

Morro Rock & old power plant.

There was some mist going on as we went back to the coast, coming to Hwy 1 at Morrow Bay again, with the massive Morrow Rock just placidly plunked down in the water.  A power plant (which I learned was closed in 2014) sticks its three stacks into the air, its human geography juxtaposed with nature’s.  We drove from there down into San Luis Obispo, which somehow magically landed us right where we were yesterday, on the collegiate high street.  We found our way back to the highway, heading south on what felt like backroads, rather than a main highway.  The towns were slightly rough, with a heavy Mexican feel.  Coming through the town of Guadalupe, firefighters were collecting for muscular dystrophy, and Heather dropped a $10 in one cute guy’s boot.  Later she said, “Stop, turn around, turn around!”  A dog was dead in the weeds and she wanted to photograph the assembled vultures, each sitting on its own fence post.



There’s a lot of RVs in this area of the world.  We don’t know why.  But Pismo Beach, which I know as a golf town, had enough to supply the rest of the state, certainly the Bay Area.  It was one of those beach towns you find down here, teetering between cute and seedy.



Then Heather wanted to take us to a back route, to get back to Hwy 1 after it ended, sort of, in Hwy 101.  It was a beautiful scrubby hill land, and we opened the windows and turned on the heat, so our legs were warmed but our top halves were cool, a sweet sensation.

Today we drive according to the dictates of the blue dot, and the GPS voice, and it just failed us this time.  Maybe.  We drove towards the Marshallia Ranch Golf Course, and found a road closure.  Well, it looked like the road might have gone through the golf course, so we drove into the parking area, then back through the maintenance area, then down a dirt road, then across the golf cart path, and I called it as Heather was saying that the seemingly unmaintained dirt road-ish thing heading up an incline, or the golf cart path going the other way, seemed to lead, according to the lines and blue dot, to a road that gets us to another road that gets us to the highway.  “We’re turning around.”  She relented, we drove out, and back a little ways was the proper turnoff.  Weirdly, no one who was connected to the golf course shooed us off.

We passed by Vandenberg Air Force Base, which is connected with the space shuttle, and the shorn callow looking young man marked Lompoc as a military town.



Heather and I continued to get along, enjoying each other, not biting.  This apparently was a music day, so she DJ’ed the trip with music we both more or less agreed on.  Which carried us down the coast, into definitively SoCal architecture, with its neo-Spainish flavor, and then into Santa Barbara.  We drove along the water, stopping at an El Torito for lunch, she letting me push her into eating Mexican food.  We sat near a table of two young couples, one with a baby, and as is often our wont, analyzed them through the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy character system.  The mother's need to bully the weaker father, who had given up on his own power very early and so drew from her a sense of strength, while she benefited from not having her power challenged.  He got a relationship, against all beliefs, and she got hegemony.

From there, we drove to our next AirBnB, at Love House Farm in Ventura, up Hwy 33 towards Ojai.  It’s a big RV parked off to a side of the flower farm, and as with the other two, feels like some Harry Potter tent that magically has more space inside than should be allowed for by its outside size.  We were both beat, so I lay down while Heather wrote, and I was attacked and harassed by a single fly the whole time.  I tried to swat it while not killing it, but honestly, my Buddhist no-kill policy was a little weak.  Nonetheless, it survived and continues to harass me as I write.



We drove into downtown Ventura for a 7:15p showing of “Everest”, and both of us were charmed by the high street, strung up with lights (for no reason, as Heather pointed out) and the relaxed and cute vibe.  The movie itself was essentially a disaster biopic, well made but more like a procedural or fictionalized documentary, with some wrenching scenes but not a grand sense of meaning.  We both left a little rattled.  The worst for me was the wife of the expedition leader talking to him right before he died.  As a married man quite attached to his wife, that one is a knife between the ribs.

We got on 101 instead of 33 on the way out, so ended up doing a loop around Cassitas Lake, and got back to the RV around 11p.  Heather took a shower after several days (she holds her stank well), and I’m about to go do the same.

(Heather's Report):

So we woke up and packed up for the day.  My body was feeling a little cranky from the bed, which unfortunately wasn’t that great, and everything slumped down to where Marty was laying, so that I was basically on a hill, trying not to end up jammed up against him.  Not that I mind that, just, I’m a restless sleeper and I do move a lot.  But eventually I slept.  We headed out and found a nearby Starbucks before hitting the same road we took inland, back out to the coast and to Highway 1, turning left in Morro Bay and continuing on.  It was misty and seemed like a beachy town.  I was pleased to hear that the power plant, splatted right next to the majestic Morro Rock had been closed down in 2014.  Do they not clean up these things?  Later in Ventura we saw working oil well machines and really abandoned refinery site that did seem like it was being torn down and cleaned up.  So, it IS possible.  Tear that thing down and have a clean coastline.

Somewhere after Morro Bay.

We kept following the coastline down although I saw at one point that it would drop onto 101 again at some and back to Highway 1.  We drove through Pismo Beach and marveled at the seemingly excessive presence of RVs in this town, and truly, down along the coastline.  Some lots seemed to be storage, but a great many more seemed to be active “camping” spaces.  No idea why the prolific use of RVs.  Are they permanent residences or temporary or temporarily permanent?  We couldn't really tell what the whole deal was.  But soon enough we zipped out of RVLand and seemed to be heading back in towards the water (still somewhat inland).  I dropped some money in a fireman boot held by some cute youngish fire dude trying to raise money for muscular dystrophy.  He seemed like fresh out of the box... probies, isn't that what new recruits are called?

So as we were swinging around a curve, I noticed a bunch of turkey vultures sitting on fence posts and bade Marty to turn back so I could take photographs.  Still learning my camera, grrr.  I think Marty was videoing me taking photos.  The one I was taking photos of seem to regard me in return with a some what half "Should I take off now?" to half bewildered "What is that thing doing down there?"  There was a dead dog on the road right below them, but none were actively eating.  They all just seemed to be sitting there on their posts.... waiting.  For what, I'm not sure.  They weren't feeding as we passed by.  Maybe it has to get riper?  I didn't smell anything rank, so perhaps it was a fairly fresh kill and it just needed to, uhm, decompose some more in order to get more tasty?  No idea.  But in any case... turkey vultures or 'buzzards' as I grew up calling them.  I was reminded of a funny comic from Bird & Moon Comics about Turkey Vultures so here it is.  Plus a couple of photos of the one vulture I was photographing.

Turkey vulture!

My bewildered Turkey Vulture buddy.

From Bird & Moon Comics.

Then
























"Deliverance" style, I got us lost on a really remote golf course.  Golf courses raise my ire on any given day (in terms of habitat destruction and such) but in a severe drought, they get my goat really well.  And let's be fair, *I* didn't lose us on a golf course, the stupid phone did.  There were roads on that map that did NOT exist in reality and suddenly we're driving around the back lot of some golf course, maybe here for the military airforce base (Vandenberg)?  Dunno.  But in any case, I was sure we were going to end up in some shack somewhere, never to be heard from again.  Golfers are far nastier creatures than you realize.  Except they weren't.  One set of golfers looked placidly at us as we crept by on what was probably a tiny dirt maintenance road but like Marty said, no one came chasing us away.  Finally he called it, refusing to take any more of my "But, look, there's a road right up there, it shows it right there!!!" and turned around.  We found the somewhat obvious turnoff we missed in the first place and continued on.




By the time we rolled into Santa Barbara, it was raining.  Yes, actual water falling from the sky.  And lots of it as there were almost tiny rivers in the streets of the town.  I directed us along the waterfront and we marveled at a ginormous cruise ship out in the water.  Marty made me get out in the rain to take a photo since the iPhone's great lack is pictures of a normal perspective, maybe depth of field and all that?  I dunno, but things that are close to the eye are always far away to the phone.  So I got out with my new DSLR and took a shot.  Which later I drove myself crazy by trying to get branches out of the photo.....  I'll talk about that later.



Marty managed to convince me to get Mexican food, which I don't like, too heavy and cheesy for me, and THEN accused me of racism!  Some mate he is!  It was okay, I guess.  I got heavily meated items and gave my beans to Marty, ate the rice and felt somewhat heavy.  Starting to realize that a modified Mediterranean diet may be the way to go for me, modified because I would take a lot of the grains out of the picture, more "Paleo", which drives me crazy.  As I said to the olive oil vendor dude in Ventura (who's company had recipes for Mediterranean diets out on the counter), "There was no bacon in the cavemen days."  He got a kick out of that.  Erm, that's tomorrow that we meet that dude (sorry, missed a day and going back in time!!!)

We left Santa Barbara for Ventura and up a little for our next place, a large motorhome on an organic flower farm.  So far this AirBnB thing has been great!  Nice hosts, fun little spaces, cheap and way better than a dinky motel.

Then we went to Ventura to watch a movie, "Everest", and found ourselves a bit charmed by their downtown main street.  We gazed around for a little bit and then went to see the movie.



It was not what I expected, the movie.  "Everest" was exactly what Marty said, a disaster biopic sort of thing, which meant they were basically following an event that occurred.  But I didn't know how that event ended so I was going in blind, thinking this was a movie of (spoilers!!) grand human courage, etc, etc and it really wasn't about that.  No "Love Letter to Humanity" for this movie.  I left kinda depressed and then obsessively looked up all sorts of stuff around Everest that I could find, including watching some old terrible 90's movie about climbing K2.  I tend to get obsessed when hit with these things directly in the nervous system.  I think I'm just trying to work it out of my system by overloading.  Or something.

Some weird random photo of a cool steampunk gun, but I can't remember where this was.... I think in Ventura?