Another fine Day !

After a nice lie in we drove a few miles to a wonderful coffee shop with a free newspaper. It had already been read by an earlier patron of the coffee shop ......we picked it up and sat down to enjoy. After about 15 minutes a guy stops by our table and asks (very nicely) if that was the coffee shops paper....we said yes, he asked if we were finished with any of it....we gave him some and promised to drop it off when we were finished. A further conversation ensued, he didn't want the sports as he had read it already. Next a lady comes along and asks, is that the coffee shop paper? Nothing like feeling rushed, fortunately we were almost done and said we would deliver it to her in a few minutes! Long story about a silly paper I know! You probably wonder why we didn't just buy one, well, we didn't have a clue where to do that and neither did anyone else!
After coffee we parked the bike back at our hotel and went for a walk along the San Gabriel river, it is dammed like the one in Idaho Falls but due to really low rainfall it is very shallow. It was a very nice walk, partly treed, and there was an egret fishing in the shallow water and a very unusual type of duck, it had a puff of white ontop of its head which looked like a big pompon. We thought we would continue the walk into the old town but it was much too hot, we turned back and got the bike.
We strolled around the court house and looked in a few shops. This is sort of torture for me as there are so many things I would like to buy but cannot. One shop had a sign in the window that read,
CAUTION Dog Cannot Control it's Licker.  Intriguing! As we entered the store a golden lab slowly walked toward me and started licking my legs!!! He followed me all around the store...licking! Quite funny.
We discovered that we just missed a big art show by one day! And there is another one coming up very soon, including  an auction but we must move on.
For dinner we chose a restaurant called Nancy's Sky Garden ( sounded interesting and reviews were quite good). When we got there we were the only ones there, not a good sign. We decided to sit outside in the patio garden, the garden was not impressive. There was one table of 3 also on the patio so we thought that would be preferable to sitting inside by ourselves. The server asked what we would like to drink, we find out for the second time this trip that they don't have a liquor licence but we could go next door to the Uptown Social Club, buy a drink and bring it back. Jeff had lemonade, I had water. Dinner was also different, we didn't recognize what it was when it came.  My salad was with chicken, it was a scoop in the middle of greens that looked like a tuna ball. Jeff's was tuna sushi style, but it was minced like steak tartare. There was no atmosphere so we ate and left. Upon leaving we cross the hall in the building and we are in the Uptown Social Club and it is open mike night. We sat at the bar and ordered beer. As usually happens at the bar you get into lively conversations with locals. We met a young girl of 23 who was Arabic, her name was Reem. She was very friendly and interesting to chat to, which we did for a good hour.
Open mike was about to start so we took a seat on the couch near the staging area. We stayed to listen to 3 musicians which were all quite good. Only thing, I made a booboo! After the electric piano player finished one of his songs and everyone was clapping I said....(and we were sitting very close) that was better than Elton John played it the last time I heard him......only it was a Billy Joel tune NOT Elton John!!!how embarrassing. In my defence I think they do sound a bit alike ..........!
Time to make our exit. We stayed for one more performance and left.
Tomorrow is another day. We will ride on to Fredricksburg and Luckenbach, the end of the road before we turn west and north to Phoenix.