Sacramental

It's hard to believe that Sacramento is the state capital of California. It's not very big, about the same population as Leeds, and it's a bit rubbish. We found a cheap spot to stay in a dodgy trailer park, in an area of town that seemed to consist solely of dodgy trailer parks, and then got a 'light rail' to 'downtown' (a tram to the city centre). It was ever so disappointing. There was a cathedral that was quite nice and the capitol building was fairly grand but everything else was either run down or closed. Or both. There was an ageing Westfield shopping arcade and a large police presence – though they just seemed to be interested in hassling tramps. And where was everybody? It was Saturday and yet there was hardly a soul to be seen. It was all a bit depressing. But then, just as our will to live was fading, we spotted a sign pointing to "Old Sacramento". We followed it through an underpass and emerged into a whole new world, blinking in disbelief, as if entering an urban Narnia. It was a proper old Wild West town with stagecoaches, bustling saloon bars and happy people enjoying themselves. We'd gone from a grey post-apocalyptic ghost town into a brightly coloured storybook about the late 1800s. There were lovely wooden fronted buildings, covered wooden sidewalks, a couple of old trains and a paddle steamer on the river. It was great. One thing struck me as odd though: in amongst the expected souvenir shops and eateries were a puzzlingly high number of candy stores and tattoo parlours. Was 19th century Sacramento just inhabited by tattooed children with bad teeth? Maybe it was like Leeds…

One of the highlights of Sacramento for me was a place called Dive Bar which drew us in with an intriguing sign outside alluding to mermaid sightings. The bar was very dark inside, it took a little while for our eyes to adjust, but the darkness meant that the giant illuminated fish tank that ran above the whole length of the bar really stood out. Then, without warning, a girl wearing a big rubber fish tail plopped into the tank and started swimming around with the fish! She was waving at the punters and blowing kisses – she even had a clam shell bra on, just like a proper mermaid! It was surreal but brilliant. If she didn't have to keep surfacing for air it would have been perfect.

Leaving Sacramento, we headed east to Lake Tahoe. A friend of ours was over there skiing in the mountains there so we dropped in to say hello. And as we were in the area, we thought it would have been a shame to not take advantage of the snow so Claire went online and found a great deal where we got cheap lift passes and free snowboard hire – so we went snowboarding. The guy at the hire shop was a brilliantly mad chap called Dave who, upon finding out we were from England, started to tell us about the time he was at Knebworth while on tour with The Steve Miller Band.
"Yeah, we supported Pink Floyd. Must've been around '75…" he reminisced.
"Wow, really? What did you play?" I asked.
"Well, I didn't so much play anything as sort of help out. You know, make things happen and make sure everything ran smoothly."
"So you were tour manager? A technician? A roadie?"
Nope. It turns out he was Steve Miller's personal psychic and was employed for his ability to foresee events before they occurred. He told us, as examples of his gift, that he would be on hand to warn the band that a guitar string would snap during the third song of a gig or that the drummer would put his foot through the bass drum or that a certain record wouldn't do so well in the charts. These things would then transpire as he'd predicted them but the band could be prepared with a new guitar string or drum skin or consolation bourbon. He then went on to describe how he'd once foreseen that he was going to win a massive slot machine jackpot if one of his friends was standing next to him in a certain coloured shirt – but because the friend wouldn't accompany him to the casino it never came to pass. Spooky eh? He also predicted the death of his own doctor and the location of a massive untapped gold seam somewhere in California. In the meantime he had to make do with furnishing us with snowboards and boots. We left the shop about an hour after we'd entered, frowning at each other with a mixture of confusion and disbelief. We went on to have a lovely day snowboarding, with amazing views of Lake Tahoe itself, and later that afternoon we headed back to the hire shop to return our equipment.
"Are you guys finished already?" he asked. It was weird that hadn't been expecting us…

Just a quick health and safety update: we spotted this helpful warning label attached to a bottle of sparkling wine this week. Thank goodness we were warned.

BURGER OF THE WEEK
As we were in the Californian state capital, it was only appropriate that I tried the Capitol Burger. A half pound of ground filet mignon and sirloin, topped with lots of avocado, grilled red onions, lettuce, tomato, Monterey Jack cheese and an "espresso chipotle" sauce. Weirdly nice.