It’s been a busy month in hobo land, and in the next few days, I’ll catch you up.

Towards the beginning of November, Big John Stone paid his first solo visit to California.

Two men, being men, fishing, camping, cooking outdoors. Lake Cachuma, just north of Santa Barbara.

This trip started off with the perfect meal…the Hobo Breakfast from Rae’s Diner in Santa Monica. How long have I lived on this side of town…and never once visited this little oasis of breakfast goodness? Not only did they serve the perfect meal, but piping hot coffee for my dad, friendly service and old, classic furniture.

Try their biscuits and gravy also…delicious.

As we set out Friday night, I made sure that my Dad knew that we were going to have a true hobo/man weekend. This meant no showering, sleeping wherever the van ended up (purposely or broken down), eating poorly and cooking everything either outdoors or from inside the van. No shaving, washing, or brushing anything.

We arrived in the Santa Barbara/Goleta area about 11p Friday night, ready to sleep. With no Wal-Marts or Home Depot parking lots that looked appealing, we pulled behind an Albertson’s between two delivery trucks and popped the top. Dad on bottom, me up in the loft. We pulled the shades and hit the sack. I popped in some ear plugs to drown out my dad’s snoring…but they weren’t sound canceling enough to keep me asleep when he tapped my feet at about 3am to tell me he had to poo real bad.

Dang. It’s 3am, I’m dead asleep, and want to stay that way. I tell him to just go into the Albertson’s…but he won’t. So we take everything down, fire up the van, and drive around. Albertson’s is closed. It’s the middle of the night. We don’t know where we are. He’s gotta go. BAD. Luckily, a nearby gas station is open and has restrooms. We decide that since we’re up, we might as well go grocery shopping for the day. We’re making hobo stew in the evening, and we know that 1) we’re fishing early in the morning and 2) once we head towards the lake, it’s not an easy trek back into town (in my van). Apparently, there is only one 24 supermarket anywhere in Santa Barbara. We were directed by many gas station attendants to CVS…but they have no hobo stew worthy ingredients. Long story short, we find the Ralph’s in downtown, park underneath, do our shopping and return to the van. We’re both pooped still, so we lie down on the lower bunk of the van, feet to head (he doesn’t know this until I kick him in the head while snoring). We didn’t close the curtains or anything this time around so as to not draw attention to two sleeping guys in the garage.

When we wake a few hours later, we’ve got cars parked all around us. Either no one bothered to look in or no one cared (this has opened up new worlds of possibility for me and have since slept this way in many places with no worry. Really, who bothers to look into a car, just to see if someone is in there sleeping? Other than, I guess, other Westy owners?)

It’s now 7am. We start up the van again and make our way up to Cachuma. It’s slow going thru the mountains, but beautiful.

As soon as we rise above the cloud cover, skies are blue and the sun is shining. We’re both blown away.

We fished just about all day long, hiking around the lake attempting to find a hot spot. Even though we find other fisherman with 26″ catfish and big trout, we’re not getting any bites…at all.

This is the posture of a fisherman who can tell he’s not catching something today.

We turned to climbing trees, more walking around, and making dinner.

John’s head…after only a day and a half of not showering. His hat did a good number on it…and it was a greasy fest. This is one hobo in training.

The next morning…I learned something about my van. While cooking breakfast, the fire on my stove went way down. I hadn’t been able to get the fridge going at all either, and was quite frustrated. It’s worked in the past, and I just could not figure out what was wrong. Well…since the fire was low, I figured I’d let it burn all the propane out, to make sure that it was completely empty. It burned for almost 45 minutes, and I knew that something was wrong. Apparently, you have to have your propane turned on on the outside of the van as well as inside. The last guy who filled it must have turned it off…and thus…no solid flow of propane into my appliances. Once I turned that dial, the fire flared strong and the fridge went on with no problems…just in time for us to eat the rest of our food that had been in there all night.

For the afternoon, we went into Solvang (after failing fishing in the morning). Wine tasting and pea soup in Buellton. Overeating pea soup is understating it. We rolled out of the place and headed home.

Male bonding complete. We spent close to 4 hours driving back to LA, most of it my dad spent sleeping. Remember the no brushing rule? It took about 15 minutes to get the knots out of my hair…

Finally, we had dinner at our favorite Italian restaurant in town, C&O Trattoria on Washington Blvd in Venice. Good friends the Weissmans were along, as was DeAndra, a future Stone. More news/announcements on that later.