Long time friends, Greg Long and Scott Fearnley have just driven down the Pacific Coast from Seattle to La Quinta, California, alpha-testing their new app — You Are Hear — which finds and shares amazing stories hiding in plain sight as you walk, bike and drive along. The app's not ready for prime time yet but we are working hard on it. Stay tuned!
No searching. No planning. No screens.
Come along for the ride with us in our 1948 Tatra T87, a Czech streamliner propelled by a rear-engined, air-cooled, V8.
Seattle → La Quinta
The Pacific Coast, USA
Seattle → La Quinta
01 /
DAY 1
Having recently read Undaunted Courage, the story of the Lewis and Clark expedition, it was great to park at Dismal Nitch — where their party were trapped for six days in intense storms after they finally made it to the Pacific Ocean.
Before that, we hit Aberdeen, Washington, whose only claim to fame, I think, is Kurt Cobain of Nirvana. The best part of the Kurt Cobain park was the sign at the house next to the park... enjoy reading it!
02 /
DAY 2
Gorgeous drive down the coast with the Pacific crashing on our right. Hung out at Haystack Rock at Cannon Beach and ended up for happy hour at the Adobe Inn, where Scott ordered a bucket of beer... not a bucket full of beer bottles, just a bucket full of beer.
They didn’t have such an offering so he capitulated to having a couple of ‘extra-larges’.
Scott continues to fix bugs and add features as I zoom us along. Car is working great, just a small oil leak that we hope doesn’t get larger.
03 /
DAY 3
More gorgeous scenery almost the entire way — the Oregon Coast on 101 is really a ‘must-do’. We’ve done it multiple times but I just keep forgetting how amazing it is. Couple car issues have cropped up: our engine leak seems to be getting worse and the culprit looks to be the Oil Pressure Switch.
We will probably have to find an M10 x 1.5 bolt to plug it up for now (thanks Chris D.) — not a lot of Tatra Parts Departments nearby.
And we got a flat. We pulled over to hangout with the T-Rex and what did he do? Bit our tire I guess. After a bit of struggling with the hubcap with a crowbar (don’t ask) we got it changed and were on our way.
Now to find a tire place this morning in Gold Beach. The App continues to amaze as it triggers its stories down the coast!
04 /
DAY 4
Took awhile to leave Gold Beach... had to get the spare tire fixed (didn’t really), and fix the oil leak (didn’t)... not off till noon after a killa’ breakfast at Double D’s.
Then more tire shenanigans where Scott inadvertently left his knapsack, which we didn’t figure out until tonight when we rolled into Garberville, California. Flat beer at the nearby Cantina and back to work.
Great ‘app conversations’ in the car as we zoomed along at a stoic 52 mph. Yes, we pulled over to let others go by.
More gorgeous scenery and within a couple hours or so of my buddy’s place in wonderful Healdsburg. But I just noticed it’ll be 92F there tomorrow. I bet the Tatra will not like that...
05 /
DAY 5
Bored of the tire issues? Yup, me too. But got to my buddy Juddy’s place in Healdsburg overlooking vineyards and with the added bonus of 2 huge fluffy white Pyrenees dogs to hang out with.
Scott continues to vibe-code with every available minute as I drive and logistically figure out how to get weird-sized tires to Sonoma County.
Saw an amazing singer last night at Little Saints, Cooper Kenward with his steel guitar player. To me a little blend of Bob Dylan and John Prine...
06 /
DAY 6
I said I wouldn’t talk about tires anymore but... new tires flown in overnight and installed, and it has entirely changed how the Tatra drives: almost normal now!
Mostly a hanging-out day in downtown Healdsburg drinking wine and eating pizza. But lots of coding too!
07 /
DAY 7
Fun and frustrating day: zoomed over the Golden Gate bridge (always a hoot!), went to our old house in San Carlos in Silicon Valley and met up with friends at an amazing VW collection that just happens to have a Tatra too. What a place.
After photos we drove down to Santa Cruz over windy, slow, congested Highway 17 which the Tatra did not enjoy, at all. She overheated at the top so we let it cool down until CHP asked us very politely to move on. The engine had cooled down by then and off we went to visit my friend Lon in beautiful Capitola (the coolest California beach-side town to me). After lunch we headed to our friends John and Donna in Pebble Beach for an amazing dinner!
Meanwhile, You Are Hear keeps surprising us. From Lewis and Clark’s miserable six days at Dismal Nitch to the giant redwoods and the origins of Silicon Valley, stories just keep popping up as we drive along. Some are about places we know, but many are things we’d never heard of. The real revelation is how much we’ve been missing all these years. Every road has a history, every town has a story, and suddenly the miles between destinations are just as interesting as the destinations themselves.
We’re learning plenty about the app — what works, what doesn’t, and what needs more attention. But here’s what really excites me: You Are Hear changes the way you experience a road trip. Instead of simply watching the scenery go by, you begin to understand what you’re looking at, who was here before you, and why these places matter. And you don’t have to do a thing. The stories find you.
08 /
DAY 8
No car drama! Ran like a dream!
Made it to the home of my fav Andersen’s Pea Soup only to find, through You Are Hear, that it closed a couple years ago! Ugh, that pea soup was amazing...
But Cathy, our Dispatcher, was on her game and found us an amazing place to stay: Sideways. And, if that rings a bell, it’s because it’s where the movie Sideways was filmed.
We are staying in the room just underneath the now famous Room 234.
The team had a few serious break-thrus today and the app is certainly coming together. Should make Palm Springs... OK, La Quinta tomorrow if all goes well.
09 /
DAY 9
Arrived at our destination after Danish pancakes at Ellen’s and checking out Andersen’s!
A total of 2,498 km or 1,552 miles; or like driving from Paris to Moscow!
Car was great overall with some teething problems from being in the SoCal heat (it lived, probably in Czechoslovakia, then Canada, so this might be the warmest weather it’s had to contend with?)
And I sense the app is getting close!
One last postcard
Scott, myself and the Tatra (to be named) made it the 2,500 kms or about 1,500 miles from Kirkland, Washington to La Quinta, California all in one piece (well, we did kill a hubcap on the way and tossed 4 of her 5 tires).
Leaving Seattle I thought we’d both spell each other behind the wheel but because our driving hours weren’t that long, and Scott was always ‘in the zone’ vibe-coding, I just drove the entire way. It was a very enjoyable adventure and, well, we both just love roadtrips in old cars.
Scott has ‘tightened’ the app, making it slim and trim so it’ll just work faster and better. The Stories You Are Hear tells—we call Pips—have gotten much better as we’ve adjusted the writing rubric and verification protocols.
Did you know?: Those giant dinosaurs beside Interstate 10 were built from salvage. Steel and cement that a flash flood left unfit for state freeway work became Dinny, a Brontosaurus 150 feet long and 45 feet high.
Want to know more about the Cabazon Dinosaurs on the side of Highway 10 in California? Just say: Tell Me More and you’d hear:
The man behind them was Claude K. Bell, a sculptor who dreamed up this novelty roadside attraction. He finished Dinny in 1975, then spent years on a 65-foot Tyrannosaurus called Mr. Rex, completed in 1986, with a channel in its tail meant to hold a slide. Bell planned a woolly mammoth and a prehistoric garden too, but he died in 1988 before he could build them. Fame arrived with the 1985 comedy Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. When its star, Paul Reubens, died in 2023, Mr. Rex was repainted in a grey tuxedo and red bow tie in his honor.
Thousands more Pips to come, or I should say... Millions!
— Greg and Scott
Look a little closer
You can drive through a town a hundred times and never know what happened there.
The hidden shipwreck. The legendary local diner. The abandoned railroad. The inventor next door. Some of the best stories are hiding in plain sight.
Along the coastline
Every tide brings a story.
Among the giants
You Are Hear quietly discovers remarkable stories around you while you walk, bike, or drive.
No searching. No planning. No screens.
A car with stories of its own
Two cars. Three oceans.
And another chapter on the coast.
Long before our Pacific Coast trip, these two Tatras had an adventure of their own. In 2000, my brother John Long and his childhood friend Gary Cullen took their T87s on a journey of more than 10,000 miles: from Boston to Vancouver, then north through the Yukon to Inuvik. Their ambition was to bring John’s car to three oceans—the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic. Along the remote Dempster Highway came grizzly bears, ferry crossings, roadside repairs and a mountain snowstorm. John still owns his T87; I bought Gary’s for this trip with Scott. We’re taking a car with plenty of stories on the road to discover some more.
The Tatra T87 was a Czech vision of the future, born in the 1930s. Hans Ledwinka and Tatra’s engineering team drew on Paul Jaray’s streamlining expertise to create that unmistakable shape: three headlights, flowing bodywork and a rear fin. Beneath it sits a rear-mounted, air-cooled V8—a remarkably advanced combination for its time. Its adventurous reputation grew when Czech explorers Jiří Hanzelka and Miroslav Zikmund drove a T87 through Africa and Latin America between 1947 and 1950, inspiring John and Gary’s own expedition decades later. Our 1948 T87 carries that same spirit: an extraordinary car, still happiest out in the world.
The Arctic trip and T87 history are recounted in Brendan McAleer’s Hagerty feature. Read “Three oceans, two Tatras, one trip of a lifetime”.
