In the summer of 78 I went on a long summer trip north with Kris, which proved to be our last one together, but it was memorable too.  After my summary sacking from Eureka Valley Grocery Store, I filed for unfair dismissal and was awarded unemployment benefit and so we took off for Northern California and all points north. The first stop was at Calistoga Springs resort, where the water comes from. A dip in a hot spring was very relaxing. We cadged a lift with a couple we knew who were very straight and a bit uptight, the names have gone but the memory lingers on. The lift continued up through Northern California and we gawked at the gothic houses found in Eureka. Up into Oregon, through to Portland where the lift came to an end but we were confident enough to hitch hike to Seattle to meet up with a couple we’d met on a plane to the UK the previous summer, Laura and Mike. 

   Unfortunately they were away but they had let us stay in their room in a shared house in a leafy student type house. We had instant housemates, who were great. I loved Seattle and its vibe, even then quite cool. I enjoyed the scenery around, the snow capped peaks, the markets, the sight of whales in Puget Sound and the alternative feel. This was also the place where I finally caught up with the film ‘The Harder They Come’ and was introduced to the Bob Marley album Kaya. I saw that the band Television were playing in the city, so we bought tickets for that show and thoroughly enjoyed the experience of Tom Verlaine’s guitar playing.

     After at least 10 days we moved on and were directed towards the San Juan Islands that lie between the USA and Canada. Short ferry rides and some wild camping is what we did. Hitch hiking all the way. One time with an older couple who treated us like their children, almost to the point of alarm, we felt like characters in a strange road movie, but they dropped us off before anything weird happened. This was also the time when for the first and to date only time in my life I started to grow a moustache deliberately. This has significance further on. At another time we camped out somewhere and struck up a conversations with the family camped next to us. They invited us over for a beer or two, but the conversation started to turn strange when the husband, who later reminded me of a young Kevin Bacon, in looks, but not in character,  began to make references to ‘them’, in other words people of a different skin colour to his, which was white, and he assumed we felt the same. It wasn’t long before the racist slurs came out. This was a proto Trump man. The conversation became awkward and it could have turned nasty, if we hadn’t made our excuses and left.

      The San Juan Islands were really beautiful, no doubt populated by some very rich people these days, but we enjoyed our couple of days floating around. I ask myself why I didn’t take more photographs back then, probably saving on film or perhaps I had a black and white film in the camera.  We eventually arrived in Victoria at the southern tip of British Colombia, it had an old colonial feel about it, unsurprisingly with a name like that. Soon we moved onto Vancouver, the Big City, and celebrated Canada Day in a park with a load of punk bands. The city was too busy for me and so we headed up the west coast of Vancouver Island. The scenery was stunning, snow capped mountains in summer, whales in the sea and eagles flying in the air. The people we met were friendly, but I did notice the toll that alcohol appeared to have taken on the indigenous people of that region. One man gave us a lift to a beach at what was then a remote piece of paradise, Tofino. At the end of the ride he went to his car trunk, which was refrigerated and gave us a whole salmon, that was a kind gesture. The place is now described as Canada’s bohemian backwater. We stared at the Pacific Ocean thinking we had reached the end of the road. We had, we stayed a day or two and sadly turned back towards Vancouver and the USA with a wrench in our hearts. Money was getting scarce.

  The journey home involved a few more days in Seattle with Mike and Laura and then we headed back as fast as possible to San Francisco. But before that on the journey home, somewhere in Oregon, we almost encountered a lot of trouble from a ride. Waiting for a lift, I went for a pee in the hinterland, in the meantime a man stopped and was encouraging Kris to get in on her own. She hesitated until I returned and he pulled quite a face when I jumped in too. The man, overweight and sleazy, was definitely up to no good and he had in mind something not very pleasant, but my presence stopped that fortunately. But he refused to stop and let us out for what seemed quite a long scary time. We were getting uncomfortable, this situation felt dangerous, but eventually he had to stop and eat at a fast food joint, probably a Macdonalds.  This was our chance to escape and we hopped it. Eventually we got back to our apartment in 3rd Avenue in the Inner Sunset unaware that things were about to undergo a big change.