Beginning

So here I am in San Diego, CA (well, Encinitas, actually), hanging out at the home of one Kevin Doyle, who I haven't seen in... 14 years? We went to St. John's College together, were freshman in Annapolis together and spent many, many hours playing pool in the basement of whatever dorm that was that had the pool table in it in 1992. I went to SJC Santa Fe after freshman year; he spent Junior year there, and we spent many hours playing ping-pong. Oh, and of course, drinking. Funny, on the way here I thought to myself, maybe I should mention to Kevin that I quit drinking, or he might assume that that was the order of the day. Turns out he quit recently, and had been wondering if he should mention that to me, too. So: nobody drinking, nobody mentioning it, but here we are.

The departure from Flag was hectic, as always; someday I'll learn to do things ahead of time. Actually, I had done some stuff ahead of time, but still managed to depart in a frenetic cloud of activity. Gave my car a tune up six days before, and the fuel regulator went out while I was doing that; a fortunate thing to have happen (if an odd coincidence), since having that happen on the road would have been debilitating. Got the car fixed, finished the tune up, and off we go. A busted fuel regulator means that the car continually floods, and can't start; it also means that the gasoline overflows the pistons into the crankcase. The guy drained 9 quarts of fluid out of the crankcase (should be 5 quarts of oil or so; which meant that there were 4 extra quarts, and it was a soupy, oil-gasoline mix). When I was leaving Flagstaff I had a cloud of smoke behind the car for a good 40 minutes, as the heat from highway operation burned off all the oily-gas mixture that had drained into the exhaust system. Finally stopped, and down the road I went.

My first show is tonight, at Hennessey's, in Carlsbad. Now off to prepare stuff for the Song Walk in May (which is something I had planned on getting done before I left... ah well.)