West Coast Tour - SUVs and coffee machines....

So, this is a little belated, but I figured I'd do a little entry on my West Coast Tour too, since I did one for the East Coast :)

So me and my friend and singer-songwriter buddy Aruna headed up the coast of California on the last week of April 2005 to do our very first tour together. It was a lovely experience and one we hope to repeat again sometime later in the year.

I love driving and Aruna hates it, so I was the designated driver and Aruna was the designated navigator. We rented this huge white Ford Explorer, and I don't usually like the idea of driving SUVs, but I must say that I understand, now, why people like their SUVs. It's really nice being head and shoulders above the rest of the pack. I felt like a giant on the road among the rest of the cars. My car is a VW golf hatchback, so driving this SUV felt like driving a bus! However, it was a good thing we got an SUV or we could not have fit in all our equipment.

Between the two of us, we had two 88-key weighted keyboards, 2 keyboard stands, 2 large suitcases, boxes of cds, and various other bits and pieces. Whew....

So off we went......

[25th April - Kava Lounge (Santa Barbara)]
Aruna got happy on two cups of Kava. I had a sip of it. Made my tongue numb and
tasted pretty bitter. It's supposed to be a nice herbal relaxant of a drink, but I prefer my Darjeeling tea, thank you very much :)

[26th April - 2 Dogs Coffee (San Luis Obispo)]
We stayed in Morro Bay that evening after the performance. I had a lovely time walking along the bay, in the drizzly morning....


[27th April - Coho Coffeehouse @ Stanford]
It was great to see my friends Adrian and Nicole again and their 3 year old son Ian, whom I serenaded with "If I kissed you" :)

[28th April - The Cannery (San Francisco)
A lovely day for an outdoor concert and the acoustics were great. We had frozen fingers at the end of the gig though, because of all that wind blowing in from the bay!

[29th April - Barefoot Espresso (Santa Clara)]
We met Alissa who drove 3 hours from Sacramento to see us. Hugs also to Phillip who found us via Ping. thanks Ping! All in all, a lovely coffeehouse with great acoustics and a really fun crowd to sing for.

[30th April - Railroad Cafe and Gallery (San Luis Obispo)]


All in all, we had a wonderful tour, met some really cool people, built up some serious muscles lugging all that heavy equipment and clocked up a lot of mileage.

And it was good having a friend along for the ride. Thanks Aruna :)