Big Sur, CA

Me and Beyoncé (the rental car) took a slow ride down the legendary Pacific Coast Highway, from Monterey through Big Sur to San Luis Obispo. The weather was bright and breezy so B went topless the whole way.

Regular readers of my blog will know that I can waffle with the best of them, when the mood takes me. But with some places & experiences, as with great works of art, words are not adequate to the task of description. If they were, then we wouldn't need the places or the experiences, or the art. Big Sur is one of those places: all I can do is point you below to my feeble attempts at capturing the drive in photographs. No need even for captions.

I think I will remember this day for the whole of the rest of my life.

Monterey, CA

That last blog (the one about American football) was a bit out of sequence. I just needed to get a few things off my chest, as you could probably tell.

I've decided to christen my rental car Beyoncé, because she's black and she has a wide rear end, ha ha. Anyway, after leaving Chico, me and Mrs Z headed south and visited Sacramento, Petaluma and the Napa Valley (where the wines come from). I ended up in Pleasanton, a smallish town just east of Oakland, and that was my base for the NFL match. NFL may not be my cup of cocoa, but Pleasanton itself is aptly named. It was also my inaugural AirBnB experience, and a very positive one. I'll certainly give this a try again soon.

Now I'm in Monterey, which is *spoiler alert* a very prominent stop on the Pacific Coast Highway. Beyoncé has to go back to LA before too long, and I might as well make the most of getting there...

Monterey

California State Capitol building in Sacramento, at sundown.

Beyoncé (see explanation above), parked outside another cheap motel, this time in Sacramento.
You can just make out the photographer's hairy shins reflected below the car's left headlight.

Note the detailed address on the sign. Wacky.
Lagunitas IPA is one of the more distinctive beers of its kind.
But otherwise, these guys don't really compare with Sierra Nevada or Brooklyn.
Nonetheless a photo is a photo, and a souvenir T-shirt is a souvenir T-shirt.

Vineyards in the Napa Valley, plus car.
Baby Got Back.

Denver Broncos 16 - 10 Oakland Raiders

Contrary to what the title of this blog might suggest, I'm still in California, and not in Denver. In American football scorelines, the away ("visiting") team is listed first.

I tried baseball in 2008 and hated it with a passion, but I have since remained open-minded about American football, and I've always wanted to give it a try. Today I did so, at a cost of about $90, and it took me less than half an hour to ascertain beyond all doubt that I hate American football even more than I hate baseball.

Good God, it's awful. The matches last over three hours, and they only contain 60 minutes of sport; but even that doesn't tell the whole story, because the clock ticks between plays. The average amount of actual play in an NFL match is literally just eleven minutes. People run into each other, then other people run into other people, and an egg is briefly chased before being dropped and then all the people who were previously running into each other stop running into each other, and jump on top of each other instead. Then a man in a stripey top blows a whistle and everyone goes woop woop. There is plenty of whooping and hollering, but no singing, other than yodels of 'Rai-ders! Rai-ders!' and - in a rare moment of lyrical inspiration - 'F*** the Broncos!' I turned up twenty minutes early but I still missed the start of the match, because I had to queue for airport-style security and turn out the entire contents of my pockets - along with 56,000 other people, most of whom were morons and/or obese. (When the camera went round the ground for fans to get their moment on the big screen, one woman waved a big fat arm with bingo wings so pronounced that they were still wobbling long after she stopped waving.)

The only reason I stayed as long as I did (one hour out of the three) was that I kept thinking miserably to myself: "Well, I've got nothing better to do". But then I remembered that I had plenty of California left to explore, and a V8 convertible to do it in...That's when I cheered up. And left.

The one positive from today's game was that it involved Peyton Manning, who is in some corners regarded as the best quarterback in NFL history. He's a bit past his prime now, but the important thing is that in decades to come I can impress younger Americans by telling them I saw him play.

Anyway, this is just a brief sporting interlude. My next blog will be a lot cheerier. In the meantime I remain open-minded about basketball and ice hockey; but I think they can wait a few years yet.

Between plays, the teams mill around aimlessly on the pitch.
This is of course totally different to what happens during the plays.

Another angle. (This time during a play. I think.)

Eleven dollars for a Bud Light. OMMFG.
Never, in the field of human drinking, was so much paid, by so many, for such piss.

Cameras going round the crowd for random fans to wave at...
I don't think this one was random.
James Hetfield out of Metallica.
\m/