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In any case, Reagan flew to an air base near Santa Barbara and by helicopter to the local airport, then made the tricky drive up the mountain. Next day he went back down Refugio Road in a caravan of four-wheel-drive vehicles (airlifted from Washington) to meet the Queen, who had taken a Navy bus to Long Beach airport and caught Air Force Two to Santa Barbara. Warned that the Queen's plane was late, the presidential motorcade stopped in its tracks for 19 minutes under a highway overpass. The President's advisers reckoned this was preferable to hanging about an airplane hangar. Reagan got out to stretch.
At last it was on to the Santa Barbara hangar to welcome the Queen on another red carpet, and back up Refugio Road, past somebody's hand-lettered WELCOME LIZ AND PHIL sign, to the Ranch in the Sky. En route Her Majesty put on rubber boots and a Burberry mackintosh; the President changed into cowboy boots, denim jacket and Western string tie. The hours of tough (and maybe gratuitously risky) travel were all for the sake of a Tex-Mex feast: tacos, enchiladas, stuffed chilies, guacamole, refried beans. Just after the Queen and Philip took off back down the mountain, the fog lifted and the splendid views were suddenly unshrouded. "Damn it," the President said, "I told them it was going to clear." Like other Golden State boosters, Reagan was rankled that the royal visitors had not been able to see California as it is supposed to be: bright and languid, metaphysically sunny. An aide was ordered,in vain, to radio the royals and bring them back.
On Wednesday Britannia finally left Long Beach without its passengers. The royals and their household, 30 servants and aides in all, went ahead to San Francisco by jet and checked into the Westin St. Francis Hotel's $1,200-a-night Presidential Suite. (The U.S. Government picked up the tab.) Nancy Reagan, in turn, got the London Suite (the irony was accidental). The trio and their courtiers later hooked up at the Trafalgar Room (also happenstance) in Trader Vic's restaurant.
Next day in Silicon Valley, there was a 45-minute royal tour of a Hewlett Packard microchip factory. The Queen is to get, courtesy of the Government, the company's $24,000 HP 250 business computer system. It will be installed at Buckingham Palace, presumably to help manage the breeding and feeding of her dozens of Thoroughbreds.
In San Francisco's big homosexual community, GOD SAVE THIS QUEEN buttons were popular, and on Thursday night at Kimo's Bar, a gang of happy transvestites held a Queen Elizabeth II look-alike contest. "It's a tribute to her," said Lee Raymond, whose dress, pearls and handbag were well chosen.
Not a bit lighthearted, however, were the pamphlets and broadsides delivered by the local Irish Republican Committee encouraging anti-British protesters to confront the Queen. At the Davies Symphony Hall's morning entertainment (which included, à la campy Carmen Miranda, two women with hats bearing huge models of downtown London and San Francisco), an Ulster émigré named Seamus Gibney screamed, "Stop the torture!" He was hauled out, Mary Martin calmly finished singing Getting to Know You, and the Queen's press secretary said he thought Gibney had only coughed.