ROUTE 66 (DAY 15)

Here I am again waking up in a stranger's house. A peak through the mini blinds and I see it's a gloomy morning outside. I heard some rustling in the other room and figured it must be the man who is letting me use his spare room. I hear the front door close and see an older gentleman climbing the stairs to his car parked on the road. All my breakfast stuff is up in the camper parked behind the man's car so I make my first decision of the day to get showered and go into town for some coffee and a breakfast bun. I met up with Daniel at his new internet coffee establishment, Taylor Maid Farms.

Daniel always has something on the go so today was no exception. We made a quick dash back to his place  to pick up something he needed before he met the seller in a real estate transaction he was trying to nail down. I sat in on the meeting but the seller didn't like the buyer's offer so that kind of threw a wrench into the day.
Next we had to deliver a check to someone down in Novado, a town about 30 miles south toward San Francisco. As passenger in his car I took this shot out the window of the acres and acres of vineyards.

The afternoon had slipped away and now the return route was bumber to bumper as it was now the start of rush hour. Fortunately Daniel knows the area well and we found a relatively traffic free way to detour the jam up. Nearly running out of gas we made it back to Sebastopol around 5:30 pm and headed to the French Garden Restaurant where he was MC'ing his weekly Thursday night Science Buzz Cafe meeting where he brings in presenters from all walks of life to speak about their line of work in the sciences.
We hadn't eaten a thing since breakfast so I ordered a nice cold beer and the best burger (menu item: Le Burger) I've ever had. Not to worry I had plenty of water and lemon too because once that marine layer burns off it gets hot fast and the humidy is very low so it dries you out.
Now it was 7:00 pm and a big crowd had gathered for the presentation filling the room and only leaving some standing room. The subject that night was called "The Cedars" and talked about an area not too far from there that has a unique geological feature that NASA is studying because it's on the short list of possible locations for the origin of mankind. It was a big hit and afterwards we retired to the bistro bar and Daniel finally ordered some food. I still had to ride my bike back to his place in the dark so I was just drinking water.
When he was done I followed Daniel home and that was our day. Tomorrow I head back up Hwy. 1 to Eureka, at least that's the plan today. One never knows so I have total flexibility on that score.