Frenchy's Rant

Election day. Again. And I’m watching the results trickle in from deep within the bowels of a TV truck. Again.

My thought on the election so far? CNN has really cool maps. But, how they can call a state red or blue when one percent of the votes have been counted is beyond me.

I’ve been struggling all day to write something about the elections, but all I’ve managed to do is send a bunch of brain vomit, including a not-quite-good election day haiku and several witty but useless post titles to Blogger.com’s virtual “Bad Blog’ dumpster.

Why?

I don’t care about the election.

Why not?

The Kingdom of Rhode Island, a hotly contested battleground state, has an enormous and extremely valuable four Electoral College votes up for grabs. Four. Seriously. For comparison sake, California, my adopted second home, has fifty-five. My ballot, an absentee sheet that looked more like a menu for Chinese take out than an official document, had to be cast two weeks ago, because the Kingdom of Rhode Island isn’t yet advanced enough to have early voting. Where is that ballot/menu now? Most likely in the bottom of a dumpster behind a Chinese restaurant. As a state, we just don’t matter, even though I did my best to bolster our tiny Kingdom’s population all summer long.

But at least I voted. Might not have anything interesting or enlightening to write about it, but Frenchy’s die has officially been cast. Somebody will win, and inherit the second worst job in the world, and a big mess. Good luck with all that.

In less interesting news, November is the start of ‘Stupid Season’, the season of super-ridiculous travel. That’s probably another reason for my distinct lack of blogging verve. This travel is mostly work related, though I will try and fit in some malted beverage time too. In the next four weeks I’ll cover at least half the planet, and enjoy toasting the ‘Best Day Ever’ in five distinct time zones in four weeks.

Then the holidays will grind to a merciful end, and riding season will begin again.

At least there’s light at the end of the tunnel. Hopefully there are some inspired posts there too.

There’s a rock out in Morro Bay, and it’s pretty famous. Fiona and I arrived in the tiny seaside town just in time to watch the fog completely envelop the top of that famous rock, and watched as it rapidly encompassed the surrounding harbor.

Though it was a Friday night, we had little problem finding a room at the Breaker’s Motel, and while it was a bit on the pricey side for what can only be termed ‘a dump’, at least the room had a fireplace and a small balcony.

The balcony view promised to be impressive, assuming the fog lifted by morning.

Fiona and I went out on the town that night. After a fantastic meal we stopped off at The Otter Rock cafe to hear some good live music. The drinks started flowing, and the night started getting a bit… shall we say… foggy. I know I was in bad shape because at one point I got up and danced, something that I only do when I don’t know better anymore. I know I stunned everyone with my awesome repertoire of moves, including “Shakin’ The Dice”, “Stirrin’ The Pot” and my latest “The Bouncin’ Frenchy” – a move best described as mimicking (poorly) a toddler learning to walk. I remember slurring away at the guitarist, a nice guy who turned out to be a fellow New Englander, I remember walking in on a girl in a red shirt washing her hands in the men’s room, I remember noise and colors, lots of laughing, settling a big bar tab, and very few other specific details.

One other detail I do remember is a few people ending up on our balcony at the Breakers, including Little Miss Red Shirt and her strange, silent boyfriend that drove six hours from San Diego to meet her. I tried to take a picture of Rain Cloud Follows from three stories up:

I recall at some point, much later in the night, our merry band of revelers being threatened by a gigantic, overweight Swedish woman in a fuzzy white robe that the manager would be called if we didn’t ‘Shooot The Fooock Oooop Right Now!‘ Then, I sorta remember being called ‘assholes’ by this rotund mound of foreign flesh, but by then then my world view was getting pretty dim.

One thing I do know for certain. It was the Best Night Ever. I know this because I toasted and toasted and toasted away until the Macallan flask was empty.

The next morning I woke up feeling fuzzy. “Uhh… What happened?’ I wasn’t too sure. At least I was in a hotel room. So was Fiona. OK. So far, so good. A quick headcount brought immediate relief. While we may have made some new friends the night before, they didn’t become CLOSE friends. I don’t know where the others ended up, but thankfully it was somewhere else.

I looked out the window, and saw that the sun was up, and it was a bright, clear and beautiful day.

Then, snippets of the previous night started percolating in my head. I grabbed my camera and immediately deleted any and all evidence of the previous night. No sense in saving incriminating evidence, is there? No. Then, noticing my previous night’s attempted Rain Cloud picture, I decided to test my ‘morning after’ photographic ability.

Not bad. If my hands were steady enough to take this picture, I felt like I’d be able to make it through the day.

The fog free view from the balcony was stunning. After a quick breakfast of Advil and water, Sleeping Beauty and I decided to head over and explore The Rock.

Pretty cool. For some reason, we didn’t feel too much like exploring that day, and decided to jump on the 101 and head straight home.

We stopped in the little town of Los Alamos for food and fuel, and had another bizarre road encounter. I pulled up to the middle pump, and before I even got off the bike, a guy pulled up next to me in a little black Mini Cooper clown car. “Hey! I was in line and you cut in front of me!”

I didn’t believe what I just heard. First off, Mr. Clown Car driver pulled in after me, I saw him in my mirror. Secondly, the pump in front of me was available, so why bother saying anything? Third, what the hell are we, in Kindergarten or something?

“What?” I wanted to make sure I heard him correctly.

He whined his same clown complaint at me again.

“What??” Now I knew I’d heard him, but I wanted to make him repeat himself a third time, in hopes he’d realize what a completely unreasonable douchebag he sounded like.

“YOU CUT ME!”

OK. Play time is over. “Are you here to get gas? OK!” I pointed to the vacant pump in front of me. “Then GET YOUR FUCKING GAS, CLOWN!”

He glared at me the whole time he filled his little two gallon tank. Though I don’t suffer stupidity lightly, I’m mostly non-violent. However, I will admit the idea of pulling the nozzle out of my tank, hosing this little shit and his clown car down with fresh hi-test, then asking for a match crossed my mind.

I managed to keep my inner arson in check, but this clown encounter really put a damper on the day. We took exactly three more pictures on the trip.

Three Of My Favorite Things

It took a while, but eventually we were laughing about the guy, and in fact, the experiences of the entire trip. Through the remaining five hour ride, Sleeping Beauty managed to get in an hour nap, but only whacked me with her head twice on the way home.

Our Two Day, 544 Mile Route

With a bunch of non-motorcycle travel coming up for work and the holidays, this most likely will be the last ride of 2008. We’ll take some time to do some holiday motorcycle shopping for Sleeping Beauty, and of course, start planning for the 2009 riding season, which is already shaping up to be the Best Season Ever!

I got away with a ‘Last Ride’ once, and it was a good thing for a number of reasons. But anyone can get away with anything once, blind squirrel and all that. Pulling off yet another ‘Last Ride’ would be a real accomplishment.

I started dropping hints early. It didn’t take Fiona long to figure me out, but then again, it never does. “OK, OK! One more ride. Fine! What do you have in mind?”

“San Francisco?” It’s just a scant four-hundred fifty or so miles away. While I failed to mention that fact, I’m sure she knows the layout of the land, and exactly how far away San Fran is.

“We’ll see.” That’s as good as a yes in my book.

“Cool. Let’s leave early tomorrow, around seven or so.”

Like I said, Fiona has me figured out, and knows when I say seven, I’m shooting for nine, which in reality means we’ll hopefully be almost ready to go sometime after ten.

I was up at seven, looking at various websites to plan the best route. Sleeping Beauty lived up to her name that morning. By eleven it was obvious we weren’t going to have enough time to get all the way to San Francisco, and an alternate plan – just get out there and see what happens – quickly developed.

Our improvised route took us east down the crowded 210 Freeway, and almost immediately, we were immersed in my favorite of adrenaline inducing activities – lane splitting.

This possibly suicidal activity is questionably legal, but definitely allowed in California. Surprisingly enough, most of the people stuck in traffic actually move aside to make a little extra room for a lane splitter, which is contrary to their normal behavior of not paying attention to anything at all when driving. I’m not a huge fan of riding in between rows of slow moving cars, but I am less of a fan of being a sitting duck, so when in California, I do like all good Californian riders do; I keep moving.

The lane splitting paid off, as we weren’t killed, and as an added bonus, we made it to my first fun route, Little Tujunga Canyon Road, affectionately known as ‘Little T’ without wasting the rest of the day stuck in never ending traffic.

It’s not a very long road, but it sure packs a wallop. This little bundle of joy twists and climbs, twists and winds, twists and turns up and down all through the San Gabriel Mountains. There aren’t many houses out there, in fact there isn’t much of anything at all, but people must live around this road somewhere, unless they built it just for me and Fiona to ride on.

This road, so close to my adopted home, is dangerous. Not dangerous to life and limb, dangerous to my bank account, because a nice, new Ducati 1098 would be perfect on this road. Not sure how or even if I could talk my way into that one…

‘Little T’ ended far too soon, dumping us off on The Five, an overly congested superhighway. My plan was to take that highway to another highway, which would eventually lead us to Ojai, and another fun road, Route 33. Feeling like a hotshot after discovering Little T, I decided to try to find another shortcut to Ojai.

What can I say? Some things look better on paper.

One thing that always looks good to me, on paper or in person, is Route 33. My friend Dan introduced me to this excellent road way back in 2003.

A Rented Harley and a Younger Dan, Back in 2003.

Way back then, I had a few days off between jobs on the West Coast, and rather than fly all the way back to the Kingdom of Rhode Island and back, I opted to stay out in California, rent a Harley and ride for a few days. I didn’t know much about the area, just that there were supposed to be some good roads out there. I met Dan at a stop sign in a rainstorm (naturally), and he led me over to one of the best roads, Route 33, where the sun was shining brightly. That evening at his house, we made a plan to ride to Alaska, which we did one year to the day we met. We’ve been friends ever since, though Dan has since moved to Australia – an island that I plan to claim for the Kingdom someday soon.

Route 33. As Close As I’ll Get To Heaven.

The sun shone brightly on Route 33. I smiled broadly as Rain Cloud Follows dipped deep into the curves. I love this road.

At the town of Maricopa, we had a decision to make. Continue north and go home the next day, or turn west towards The Five and suffer through the pain of that clogged artery all the way home. It really wasn’t a tough decision at all. We continued north.

The sign a few miles past Maricopa read, ‘Welcome to Taft – The Best of Places.’ It couldn’t be more wrong. Being in Taft is like being backstage at Disneyland, there’s a bunch of stuff that you know is there, and know is probably necessary, but would rather not see. Taft is the Best of Places if you have stock in Nodding Donkeys, more commonly known as pump jacks.

These devices litter the countryside, sucking crude oil out of the ground, forcing it through pipes that further litter the countryside to nearby refineries. Taft is also the home of a federal prison, as well as a gigantic Waste Management garbage dump. According to Wikipedia, the town of Taft is also known as a huge methamphetamine consumer (i.e. “They’re All Fucking Tweaking“). The Best of Places, indeed. We stopped for some cheap gas, and were bombarded by weird signs offering free things. Here is a small sample of what we saw:

Beautiful. We couldn’t get away fast enough.

Fortunately, there was light at the end of the meth lab, and it wasn’t a fire. It was Route 58, another of the Golden State’s great roller coaster roads.

Route 58 is a desolate road. There’s not much out there except farms and more farms. Miles and miles of fences. A few hills. It’s the perfect road to twist the wrist a bit and blow the carbon out of the motor. Not that I would ever do such a thing, as it would be illegal, but it would be the perfect place, should one be so inclined.

After our little high speed stretch, we slowed down to take in the scenery, and made a few new friends.

It’s a good thing we slowed when we did, because there, in the middle of absolutely nothing, was a California Highway Patrol car, sitting and waiting for someone to race by ‘blowing the carbon out of the motor’. As we approached, a few things went through my head.

One: What the hell was the point of this police officer sitting out there on the shoulder of a completely deserted road?

Two: Am I going to get a ticket?

Three: Did I get all the carbon out? Because if I didn’t, the ticket would be pointless.

I must’ve woke the cop up, because just before I passed him, he jammed on the gas, spun the car around and took off at top speed – in the other direction! Score one for the good guys!

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

We wound our way west until we ran out of daylight, and picked the little town of Morro Bay to be our home for the night.

And oh, what a night it was…

Welcome to the first installment of What They Don’t Teach In TV School, an occasional series I’m starting to teach the new crop of TV tadpoles a few of the hard won lessons from a life on the road. Please enjoy the first of Frenchy’s Weapons of Mass Instruction.

Today’s lesson? Tour Buses.

One thing that all television freelancers quickly learn, though TV school doesn’t teach it, is the hard facts of travel. The simple act of getting from here to there and then back home again can often be more time consuming, more soul draining, and more burnout inducing than the actual production of a television show is.

Case in point: The WWE tour often covers three hundred miles or more between shows, which means moving tons of gear and hundreds of humans through the night. This massive feat of logistics is necessary to pull off a one day set-shoot-strike show of this proportion.

And it usually goes off without a hitch. Usually. When something goes wrong, say, a tour bus getting lost in southern Texas on the way to another show many miles distant, in the middle of the night, things can get ugly in a hurry.

And get ugly things did last night as my bus did exactly that, somehow wandering off course on the way from Monday’s show in Corpus Christi to Tuesday’s show in Laredo, which only got worse as the remaining awake TV crew whipped out their iPhones and tried to help, Google Mapping our lost bus deeper and deeper into the heart of Texas.

Here is a line that, when lost deep in the heart of Texas at 1 AM, being guided by iDiots with iPhones, you never want to hear your bus driver say; a line which they also don’t seem to warn you about in TV School: “Shee-it! The San Diego Highway? We’re really screwed up now.”

Worse is when the iDiots start arguing which left is the ‘right left’ to get us off the dreaded San Diego Highway, all the while mystical stop signs suddenly appear in the middle of the unlit, deserted two lane road as if from thin air, forcing the bus air brakes to be tested to their limits, slamming sleeping freelancers around in the bunks on the deserted back roads deep in the heart of Texas, lost on the way to the next show in Laredo.

Best of all is coming to the hundredth unmarked intersection, after seeing nothing but darkness, tumbleweeds, mystical stop signs and check cashing places, suddenly stumbling into one of the many WWE support trucks, possibly as lost as us, and finally making a impromptu convoy to the right highway in the middle of the night while most of the crew on the bus sleep right through the late night adventure.

The one thing they DO teach in TV school is the show must go on, they just don’t teach you how much unglamorous work is involved in ensuring that show does in fact go on.