P.S. I once made it from Long Beach to Ojai at rush hour, 104 miles, splitting almost the whole way, in two hours. I used to count how many other splitters I'd pass between Venice and Long Beach. Usually 9-12. When my Ohio girlfriend was driving me crazy, I once split the 101 at well over the ton while traffic was moving at around 75. That was a rush!
Why Long Beach? My buddy, Mike, who turned me on to Seger, lived down there. He was married to a woman who didn't have a clue who he really was, which was a redneck AH. She thought he was some kind of granola-eating, equal-rights-supporting, save-the-whale liberal.
The only time I ever did karaoke was with Mike and some other guy at a bar in Long Beach. We did Born to be Wild. I didn't need any stinkin' screen to tell me the lyrics and I knew when to fire both of my guns. The DJ ended up joining us and we got a standing ovation. And, the reality is, I can't sing worth a damn, I'm pretty sure, and I know Mike can't either.
Mike and I did a thousand-mile day from Paducah, KY to Colorado Springs one summer. The sad thing was that that weekend was the Springfield Mile, which was about 90 miles from Paducah. But Mike wanted to go to some lame BMW rally in Yerba Buena, Colorado. When we got to Colorado Springs, we'd done 1007 miles and Mike wanted to quit. I was jacked up on like 16 cups of coffee and was all about continuing the ride to the rally on a road devoid of traffic. He won the argument by saying he'd pay for the motel room and found us some stinking dive with sagging beds and the smell of unflushed toilets.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UWRypqz5-o
