Strap her in. Black Betty gets hitched.

The alarm was set to get up at 7:30....and so it did...and I hit snooze til my best friend hit me and said "I swear to god, get up! There's free breakfast to steal and we are gonna miss it because of you!" that's probably not what she said but that's what I heard.

Cable car ride.

The plan was to go see SF before we head out to Napa to perform Mission: Black Betty Comes Home. I finally got up at 9 and we managed to enjoy a small free breakfast in the lobby before it was all gone.

10am time to catch the cable car up Powell and into the fishermans wharf to check out the sea side. The cable cars have always been one of my most favorite things to do in SF. It never gets old and you see so much by just going from one end to the other.

After a brief walk down the wharf we caught the trolly bus to the palace of fine arts so we can actually walk around this time and see the inside, as I'd never actually been in this proximity to the palace. The bus ride alone was fun to do as we got to see some areas of SF I'd never driven by car.

Palace of Fine Arts

We walked up to the palace and enjoyed some time sitting by the ducks, watching people walk their dogs and parents playing with their kids. It's amazing to see this kind of beauty in the middle of a city. It absolutely made me serene and took my breath away. Water and architecture...you can never seize to amaze me with that combination. Much to my displeasure we couldn't stay too long. It was time to head back to the hotel to check out, rent a car dolly and get Black Betty home.

Luckily, I know zero Chinese.

On the trolley bus ride home, we managed to hop out right in the middle of Chinatown to revisit my favorite dim sum place and grabbed a ton of food for $3 to enjoy for lunch. With sad faces, pouts and a tiny bit of sobbing, we packed our things from the hotel, visited Lush (an organic bath and cosmetics store that was taunting us with it's yummy smells the entire night as it was our direct neighbor at the hotel), and we were on our way to uHaul.

Smelling like fresh hookers (from sampling everything at Lush) we finally were able to convince the guys at uHaul that we did, in fact, need to tow a car, and were on our way to Napa...1.5 hours after getting to uHaul. 750 lbs heavier and about 100000 decibels louder, we made it to Napa with only 3 wrong turns, thanks to my Mayhem navigation system.

It was time.

My beast of a car had zero charge on the battery, a broken transmission and no will to move on it's own. It was a puzzle only for an engineering mind to get the car out of the car port and on to the dolly hitched to my Acura. It only took 3 people and 3 hours to manually push the car onto a ramp and over the thresholds and secure it. Only after securing Black Betty, did I realize how ridiculous it looked. My poor Acura looked like the little boat that could.

And so it was...5:30pm and 10 hours of driving ahead of us. No grapevine for this little boat, we were to start out on I5 and cut across to Paso Robles and hit the 101 all the way home. An extra 120 miles that surely would save the Acura from certain explosion.

My bitch, riding bitch.

Thank god for my brother and his insane ability of driving for hours without any apparent side effects. We made it to the 41 and all the way across to Paso Robles and a few miles past. Then I heard a dangling chain. Not good news. We pull over at the nearest lit up parking lot only to discover that both tire straps were strapped in incorrectly and one was completely off. The car was one good bump away from sleeping on the 101 freeway while we drove home. With 20 minutes and lots of sweat and brain power, the disaster was averted and we were back on the road...car in tow.

Midnight hit and so did my migraine and exhaustion. Literally peeling my eyelids as I blinked, I decided it was time to surrender and sleep. I woke up 2 hours later in Santa Barbara with heavy fog in front of us. My brother seemed to have it covered so I slumped back into my seat and snoozed some more. Moments later (for me) we were in Thousand Oaks, getting the last fuel for the trip.
30 mins...and we were home...finally. Car and Black Betty safely parked for the night at the curb, it was time to pass out in full clothing...shoes off (I think).