The end is nigh.

On Saturday, we drove into the centre of Santa Barbara to watch the summer solstice procession, a Beltane-type affair with the town's loons and samba dancers watched by the sane inhabitants. We watched, ate a last burrito (tinged with both sadness and blessed relief), and left for Los Angeles.

California is perhaps the only state that I had some preconceptions as to what I expected it to be like, and as we crawled along the last stretch of the 101, it felt authentic. The freeway was four lanes wide in each direction, crowded with cars, and cut through sandy, rocky passes. Winding boulevards lined with bungalows snaked up the hillsides away from the interstate. The sky was dotted with light aircraft and microlights.

We caught up with Brenna in Westwood - UCLA country - and were introduced to our Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority contingent for the evening. They were a smidgen...baked. We left them to get their shit together and Brenna herded us to an In-N-Out Burger, our first fast food of the trip.

I loved it. It was almost a religious experience.

The design of the place, both inside and out, was bold and unfussy. The menu had four things on it: burger, cheeseburger, double burger and fries. Apparently there's a whole vocabulary of 'secret' key words that let the savvy customer customise their burger. In-N-Out Burger is exactly how Apple would do fast food, except without the price gouging.

Fed and watered, we collected our slightly more coherent hosts and got a taxi to a bar called Saddle Ranch, just off Sunset Boulevard.

The evening's entertainment was primarily based around laughing at people falling off a mechanical bull. Dave and I helpfully obliged, but Josh rather unsportingly managed to tame the beast. Disappointingly, no bones were broken and the only casualty was pint of beer kicked over by the bull's operator. I forgot to shout "Rawhide!" and whoop wildly, but there you go. Maybe take more than one evening of riding the mechanical bull (if that's not prison talk, I don't know what is) to turn me into a cowboy.

The next day, our last, was spent looking around LA. We had precious little drive to do anything more strenuous than some light sightseeing, so we climbed into the Impala and headed vaguely in the direction of Hollywood, tooling round Beverly Hills on the way at a kerb-crawling, and probably illegal, pace.

We stopped at a diner on Sunset for some breakfast and were sorting out the bill when the parking valet (who we'd ignored, having become sick of tipping absolutely everyone) dropped off a Merc for another customer. The customer was Breckin Meyer, who played the lead character in Road Trip. I can now die happy.

In the afternoon we walked along Hollywood Boulevard, visited the Bradbury Building and looked around the bustling but manky downtown area. With a couple of hours to kill before catching the plane home, we sat on Santa Monica beach, soaked up some sun and watched a seal play in the choppy ocean.

FIN