There

San Luis Obispo is a great little town. We were staying with Ginnie and Essie, two girls that Cheryl used to baby-sit way back when she worked at summer camp, who are now young women sharing an apartment in town.

They met us at the station, and walked us back to their place. They caught up for a bit while I held off the kids, then we trekked out for the park.

It is the first city I’ve realize that ALL SMOKING is banned. Perhaps that’s the norm in California, but even outdoors it was strictly prohibited. According to the ladies, the only place it’s legal to smoke is in the house, or in a car with the windows up.

Arkansas passed a law a couple years ago that made it illegal to smoke in a car with the windows up if there were kids in the car. First in the nation protecting children with that one. But California legislates the fog in.

I can only assume that if your kids were in the car it would be straight up child abuse, and if you were caught perpetrating such a crime your car would immediately be impounded, no crushed (Hybrids are shipped to third world countries), and you would be forced to pick up all the cigarette butts on the shoulder of the road from right there all the way back to the county lockup.

So we practiced in the park for a while, then back to the house for a very nice dinner of grilled chicken and veggies. Zephyr passed out at the table, and we put him straight to bed. That was the second night in a row he didn’t make dinner because of sheer exhaustion. That’ll work the baby fat off of him.

Tuesday, we packed up and trekked over to Sally Loo’s Wholesome Cafe. We played for the lunch crowd and had a great time. Good food, good coffee, props, invites, sandwiches for the train. We had a fine time and I whole heartedly recommend the joint if you’re ever in SLO.

SLO is the second town where all our points were within walking distance. We were hoofing it over to the gig, which was only about 300 feet from the train platform, when I noticed some extra friction in one of my rolling bags. Our baggage setup has shaken out into this: I pull the two biggest rolling bags, clipped together along with the food bag and the thermos, wearing the helicon; Zeph pulls the smallest rolling bag, Cheryl pulls the accordion/merch cart wearing the backpack, and Eureka has her art supplies, which is the only case we’ve left somewhere and had to go back for.

So I flip over the big bag and notice that the friction of the wheel on the shaft has caused it to melt right through the little casing. So the wheels are falling off. Quickly. I sort of push them back into place, but within another block and a half one wheel pops all the way out. Eureka picks it up and throws it into the (conveniently placed) trash, and I keep dragging. I’m now laying down a stripe of black plastic shaved off the bottom, but luckily it’s cheap stuff and floats me along on a layer of sacrificial polyethylene lube. This bag already had a zipper that was ripping out, and the whole thing cost $3, so I’m really just happy I got us this far.

We’ve got a ride from the Oakland Jack London station, but then we’re headed into San Fran on public transport, so maybe tomorrow we can hit up a Bay Area thrift store and upgrade our traveling kit.

For sale: one well used bag. Cheap.