Southbound Route 5, below the Grapevine, where the truck lane is a washboard cataract of rippling asphalt. Frozen drools of oil patches vein the humped and tortured tarmack. Through red-rimmed eyes clogged with sleepdirt...with aching muscles - short te mpers and cannabalistic personal grooming habits - The cast & crew of The Mermen arrive in San Diego, only TEN HOURS into their tour! It's an auspicious beginning.

Did a videotaped interview at KSDT-FM at UC San Diego for a cable access show where they offered us imported beer from New Zealand and France. We did the entire thing lying down on the floor. A vernal, idyllic setting for a college makes us all long for the days when our main concerns were grades and sex.

Planes howling four hundred feet overhead, screaming in to a landing at San Diego International Airport. People hang back against the wall...do we remind them of jet aircraft? Club employees said we were the loudest band since installation of the new PA . It hadn't rained all season and tonight, it poured. We spent the night at a surfer's house five blocks from the beach. Good coffee and secure parking, the two main criterion of sleep-overs are met. When we wake the weather is balmy, sunny and breezy. A person could stay here forever and one day wake up sixty-five years old. Regretfully we go north to the dreaded land of Some Angles.

I hate the pretentious hair-styled attitudes of the people who work in this supper club. If I hear one more "you can't..." regarding the bands' ability to do what it came to do I am going to sit in every flower-print, custom-built, designer-certified cha ir, opening up my Swiss Army Climber, and carve pentagrams in the seat cushions. They booked SIX bands tonight! We get to be last. This club sucks.

I heard that the "Jane" in the Jane's Addiction song: "Jane Says" was there. Too many Janes in that sentence.

To top it all off my amp fails just as were set up to start. I end up using one of Jim's Fender Dual-Showmans. Only a hundred watts so I'm completely drowned out. As soon as we start, people sitting in front of Jim bail. Reminds me of the Air Force gi g in "Spinal Tap". But, a couple die-hards stay and they appreciate the noise. We make friends with the Blue Hawaiians, who played just before us. We like them. They're a great surf band.

At the invitation of "Guitar World" Magazine we perform for several hundred NAMM (National Association of Music Merchandisers) show attendees in a giant square meeting room, opening for the semi-legendary Dick Dale. A photographer from the magazine poses Jim and me in ridiculous positions until we finally start to push him around. I balance the bass on my head and Jim wants the photo to show that he doesn't care about guitars. So he stands on his. Huge PA, big stage, tons of lights, laminates, lots o f hair. The ultimate expression of the business of rock and roll. Audience is very complimentary. The truly legendary Nokie Edwards of The Ventures sits right in the front row center for our entire set(!!!) and later is quoted as saying that he "likes our shit". We stay at a hotel right across the street from Disneyland, the "happiest place on earth." Leslie, our merchandiser, keeps her happiest childhood memories here. I can't wait to leave this place.

On the road by 9AM headed east, finally, out route 10. The Angles slip away and with the coastal range tailwind we make fast time as the country opens up. We're the middle slot between Nero's Rome (opening) and Gwen Mars (headlining) and the club is ful l of modern rock kids who pack right up front to the stage. We get in and get out like a swat team. One member of the audience endears himself by repeatedly yelling for a bass solo. I tell him it's not gonna happen. We spend most of our time spent out side the back door of the club, sandwiched between two sets of van/trailer rigs and a giant tour bus. We experience vehicular envy. Cast & crew stay at the home of the Roz's sister who, with her roomates, are all involved in a corporation that freezes y our body for you after your death - in the hopes of reviving you when medical technology improves. But they don't call it death, they call it "suspension." And they don't call it corpse collecting, they call it "life extension". The ground floor of th e house is dominated by a 35" Mitsubishi Diamond-Vision. There is a huge, alphabetically indexed sci-fi paperback collection featuring the complete works of L. Ron Hubbard. Four cats urinate everywhere... Traveling on the cheap means you depend on the kindness of strangers. How can the homeless say no when a hand is offered?

Zooming east, sporting 10 mpg, we cross the Continental Divide at 5pm Mountain Standard Time. 7796 feet. We pull on warm clothing. We are travelling on famous Route 60 through the high plains. A long, empty, magical road, full of stories of UFO's and unexplainable occurences. At sunset we pass the the VLA (Very Large Array) of radio telescope dishes arranged along two axes for deep space study. We are living in fear of becoming like Jim. After what feels like months we get to Albuquerque. I greet our extended family with releif. Everyone knows everybody and they all know us...the show is completely packed. The manager says the last time there were this many people in the club was when Eddy Vedder played here with Mike Watt. We all get drunk.

Matt Kora, who has taped almost 100 of our shows, says that after this, the 2nd show of a two night stay, he doesn't need to see another for the rest of the tour. We redo Black Mountain Rag at half-speed. We do Latia and Hawaii 5-O. Girls fight for dancing space in front of the stage. At the party afterwords in the bar we get drunk. Again. They tell us that other bands don't stick around The Dingo to drink after the show. We tell them that at no other club do we stick. We convince one of the owners to quit an 8 dollar an hour job at the omimously titled Citicorp on what was to be her first day. At 7:30AM she was crumpled against the wall of her bedroom, pulling off a bottle of Jack Daniels saying: "i don't know what to do...i gotta be at my new job in thirty minutes..." She never made it. We're so proud of her.

Monday is spent saying goodbye. It takes forever to leave Albuquerque.