Wine and Moonshine with Angels

The message left on my cell phone was an address and vague directions to a house in Santa Cruz. Considering that the exit I took to get gas and check my phone was the exit needed to get to the house, the coincidence was too strange to ignore the invitation.

No one answered the front door so I walked through the backdoor trying to remember what he looked like in the group of bikers. "Sean," he says. "You found it." The scent of steak hung in the windless air and the clang of a horseshoe around a stake was followed by the jeers of the appropriate team.

The house is owned by a man I met last year in northern California and all I had was a number so I called but only got an answering machine and said I was in the area. San Francisco, for all its wonder and mystery, was beginning to tire me and I left town on a whim. Leaden skies pooled overhead as I fled the Mission District south.

Lady friend
The point of visiting San Francisco was to interview and photograph someone for an article and to visit with a woman I met earlier this year at Los Angeles grill cheese event. After photographs were shot and questions asked I called my friend to meet her for a drink. Her roommate's father just committed suicide and she was busy for the next few days. "Oh well," I thought. I could always travel south to a friends house or sleep on some partition of sand on a windswept beach.

As I was preparing to flee town, a friend of my San Francisco friend called me and offered her place to stay. I said alright ad followed her directions to the Mission District. I walked up and down the street, unsure of what she looked like but she found me and helped bring my luggage up to her flat. She was attractive in the way great women are; slowly at first but as time passes you find a depth and dimension to her that makes you want to know so much more.

Her bed was high off the floor and I held her for two nights, even as her best friend and boyfriend walked back to their homes. After listening to the San Francisco Symphony play a concert in Delores Park, I felt ready to leave and walked back to pickup my things before leaving for Santa Cruz.

As the grey skies turned to showers I motored out of town towards Cupertino with nothing but a vague idea of where I'd go or where I'd stop tonight. Once in Santa Cruz the message on my cell was an address and vague directions to a house in Santa Cruz. Once at the house the party was in full swing, people eating, drinking and laughing. My attention was directed towards the two men where Hells Angels colors. I knew few of these people and the Angels reputation proceeds them.

We ate halibut and steak and drank wine and moonshine until long after the moon rose and all the angeles flew off into the night.

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