Radio tour of the North-Central Coast

San Rafael, California - I'm at the quaint country cottage of two of my best friends, Jon and Jen, in San Rafael - about 15 miles north of San Francisco. Stopped in yesterday at KGO, the big SF talk station where I worked for five years before moving back to L.A., and had the pleasure of telling most of the people there what I'm doing. It's fun to see the look on their faces, which ranges from "That is so fucking cool" to "You're fucking crazy."

On my way up here from Big Sur, I also stopped in Santa Cruz, where I lived for four years while attending college. It was there I got my start in radio, at KSCO, and I popped in to say hi. KSCO is a locally owned semi-small town station, which has to be one of my favorite kind. The people in big market radio are freaks, so when you get down to the smaller markets, the freak-quotient is off the charts. When I start my journey, I'll be doing a weekly segment about my travels on the KSCO morning show (Good Morning Monterey Bay, hosted by Rosemary Chalmers and Scott Free, with Doug "No relation to Oprah" Winfrey on sports and traffic and Susan.........Simon doing news). Right now we're thinking 6:45am every Thursday, and if it actually happens, I'll post a link to their stream. I say "if" because I left KSCO 6.5 years ago under what can charitably be described as not the best circumstances, so I predict one of two things happening: 1) The owners pull the plug before I start, or 2) I get kicked off after the first segment. Not that I want either of those two things to happen, but if past history is an indicator of future performance, it's very possible.

Night one camping in Big Sur was an eye-opening experience. The romantic aspect of what I'm doing was quickly shattered by the hard, cold hook of reality. It was cold and I didn't sleep particularly well, waking up every couple of hours or so. And to be quite honest, I was a little scared. I've gone camping about a billion times in my life, but this was the first time I'd done so by myself, and as I was trying to fall asleep I kept waiting for a guy with a hook to pop up at one of the windows with a bolt of lightning flashing behind him illuminating his face and hook in a split second of pure terror. Of course that never happened (I mean, with all the advancements in prosthetics these days, who would still have a hook?), but it didn't stop me from feeling a little exposed. The uneasiness was fleeting, though, and I'm sure with time will come comfort, but it definitely sunk in that I'm going to be SLEEPING IN A VAN for the next four months.

I'll be leaving San Rafael in just a little bit to head down to Morro Bay for tonight's pit stop. Tomorrow morning I take Trudel to the world renowned VW van mechanic in Los Osos to make sure she's ready to embark on a journey of this magnitude. If I get time tonight and I can find Wi-Fi, I'll post the story of the work party that followed my last day as a radio producer, which was inadvertently attended by stars of the hit '90s sitcoms Saved By The Bell and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. For now I'll leave you with this: It involved Karaoke.