The PCH - Chapter 4

Saturday July 10, 2004
Arroyo Grande, CA

Last night, I fell to sleep while writing in my journal. My handwriting just sort of trailed off into a worse scribble than my normal bad handwriting. I finished the entry when I woke up in the morning. I guess a day riding 555 miles on a motorcycle is somewhat exhausting. Who would have thought?
It is cold here in Arroyo Grande. Last night it was absolutely freezing when we returned to the hotel after dinner. This morning it is still freezing. The July ocean breeze cuts right through you.

The Pink Flamingos are dragging a little this morning. We did not get up at 4:00a.m., but we are up and showered, packed and checked out the Arroyo Grande Econo Lodge by 8:00. I pull the door to room 117 closed behind me and mount up.

The hotel desk clerk tells us that there is a cafe just down around the corner...Francisco's!

From the outside, it looks just like an old Country Kitchen, though Country Kitchen has long since abandoned this property. Francisco has taken over.

Oddly enough Francisco's also looks like an abandoned Country Kitchen on the inside. It has a counter with stainless steel stools covered in pock-marked red vinyl. You can peer into the kitchen through a window behind the counter. The standard stainless steel ticket wheel stands proudly in the window with orders hanging. One of the cooks tosses some plates into the window, pulls a ticket and spins it around to the next ticket. As a waitress darts through the door, the swinging door at the end of the counter whips open and closed, open and closed several times before it comes back to rest in its closed position. Saturday breakfast at Francisco's is an active place!

As the glass door of the restaurant closes behind us, many heads turn and stare at Smitty's assless chaps. I don't know why I refer to them as assless chaps, since all chaps are assless. If they had an ass, they would be pants. It is the assless feature that makes them chaps. They are certainly assless and they have certainly drawn a few glances from the local patrons of Francisco's.

I would kill for a cup of coffee.

Fortunately I don't have to. The waitress you would expect at a place called Francisco's brings us steaming cups of coffee and eventually sausage, eggs and pancakes. The first real breakfast of the trip is road-trip, greasy spoon perfection and it causes me to blurt out to Smitty, "That Francisco cooks a damn fine breakfast."

His retort is, "Do you think Francisco is cooking this morning?"

And it is at precisely that instant, that I glance through the swinging tavern-style door into the kitchen and see a very large hispanic man scratching his back with a spatula.

Mmmm, I love the local flavor.

Leaving Francisco and his multi-flavored and multi-textured spatula behind, we hit the road with stomachs full and our sites set squarely on Big Sur.