It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. There was also a gravity hill involved. I’d tell you all the juicy details surrounding today’s day-trip to San Diego (starring Ken, Katie, Nicci and I), but you wouldn’t fully appreciate it. Although, to be honest, if I don’t tell you the story of what I did today, I have nothing left to talk about and I’ll probably end up writing about some album that nobody cares about who isn’t in their mid-thirties, balding, and living in the parents’ basement. You know, like some obscure psych band that wasn’t even relevant to more than twenty five people in the early ’70s. Yeah, it’d be one of those days. Okay, fine. I’ll tell you about my day.
Actually, before I begin…a brief anecdote. For a long time — that is, before my 2005 book-writing roadtrip stop-over — I always thought San Diego was a little queer. This might be because I had a cousin (past tense, he’s dead) who used to really freak my sister and I out with his general demeanor and all that embodied his existence. For my Bar Mitzvah, he sent me a VHS tape he made of men in short-shorts rollerskating down a pier. I wasn’t sure what to make of it. I just knew that my cousin was from San Diego, and he liked to videotape men in cut-off jeans rollerskating. Due to the transitive property of mathematics, this meant that San Diego was queer. So when the opportunity arose to travel down the Interstate for a day-trip, I decided I would give the city a second chance.
Ken and Katie arrived in their white hybrid rent-a-car sometime between 10:30 and 11am this morning. Without so much as a “hello,” the pair of east-coasters grabbed their wave boards from the trunk of their holier-than-thou MPGs-are-everything vehicle and transported them across the street into the trunk of the red Volvo. And then, with high aspirations and tummies filled with…I don’t know, dreams? We departed.
We sailed — sorry, drove — relatively smoothly. Our first stop came at something o’clock. There was a vista point maybe sixty miles outside of San Diego, near a military base. The last time I drove to San Diego, there were crazy-huge battleships (at least they looked like battleships, or the tiny plastic ones that come with the board game) cutting through the water. Not today. Today must have been a series of helicopter tests, because a helicopter continually took off and landed from the same area maybe 200 yards away from the vista, flew along the coastline right in front of us, turned around right above us, and returned to the helipad. On the last two or three trips, Nicci waved to the helicopter and received waves in return from the personnel aboard the copter. Pretty cool stuff. It was like Airwolf.
Our next adventure occurred at the Sorrento Valley Road exit off I-805. An issue of Weird California described this exit ramp as a “gravity spot.” What that means is, if your car is parked at the bottom of the hill, and you put the car in neutral, it is supposed to roll backwards up the hill. Sounds spooky, right? We figured we would try it out. Of course, we (and by “we” I mean “I”) missed the exit, and I accidentally continued driving on I-5 South. I turned around at the next exit and returned to I-5 North, and found the Sorrento Valley Road exit. Unfortunately, we were on the wrong side of the road. It took maybe fifteen minutes to find our way back to the Interstate. After maybe twenty minutes, we were back on track, and found the correct Sorrento Valley Road exit. At the bottom of the hill, I moved into the right turn only lane, figuring the closer I was to the shoulder the less people would get pissed with our rolling backwards up the hill. Nicci informed me that I had to be in the left turn lane in order for it to work, so I reversed a few yards and switched lanes. It didn’t work. Then she said that I had to be at the very bottom of the hill, at the stop line. Wouldn’t you know it, it worked! We started rolling backwards — almost right into the car that was stopped behind us! It was just about the coolest thing I’ve experienced all year. Cooler than Airwolf.
From the gravity spot, it was maybe a twenty mile drive to Mission Bay. We found parking at a lot two blocks from the beach. After that, it was a shit-ton of walking as we wound our way down the tiny stretch of gravel that separated sand from vacation rental homes. Ken and Katie raced ahead on their wave boards, as did Nicci for a short while, and I walked behind everybody, holding a purse and a hoodie. How emasculating. The east coast thrill-seekers seemed genuinely bummed when Ken wondered if maybe the roller coaster he saw four years ago during a trip to San Diego no longer existed. And then he found it. And then I was suckered into riding it. Called The Giant Dipper, the 2600-foot-long, wooden coaster featured a 73-foot drop and a top speed of 45 miles per hour. In this modern era of thrill rides that probably doesn’t seem bad, but for someone who absolutely despises such rides, it was pretty terrifying. Luckily, an old woman sat in the car directly in front of Nicci and I, and when I told her I hated roller coasters she laughed and told me that the tick to surviving was to scream. I screamed a lot, I think, but they sounded more like grunts of frustration and sustained “FUUUUUUCK”s and “SHIIIIIIIIIT”s. I’m not going to lie, I was pretty satisfied afterwards. Ken and Katie even bought me a congratulatory soda! It was awesome, more so than Airwolf or the gravity spot.
We continued walking and soon reached the spot where the bay empties into the Pacific. We hung out for a while taking pictures and chatting, then began our walk back to the car.
The sun was slowly setting. All manner of humans and creatures were walking, running, biking, rollerskating, rollerblading, skateboarding, longboarding, and crawling along the beach. There was a chocolate labrador retriever digging a giant hole in the sand. It was adorable. It made me miss my dog. The four of us sat and watched a beautiful sunset, then hoofed it the remaining dozen-or-so blocks.
By now we were all starving. But we knew that sustenance was only twenty miles away in the form of grub and grog at the Solana Beach Pizza Port. We gorged ourselves on personal pizzas, “buddies” (garlic bread cut into bite-sized pieces), and Pizza Port brews. I drank a pint of the Stunna Shade Stout and a pint of the Shark Attack Imperial Red Ale. I also sampled the Dawn Patrol Dark Mild, but it wasn’t worthy of an entire pint. Both of my selections were rather delicious in their own ways. The rest of the table consumed pints of the Cardiff Cream Ale, the Sharkebite Red Ale, and Nicci had some kind of Pear-flavored hard cider.
The drive home was quiet. We listened to a bunch of Scharpling & Wurster routines. Ken and Katie went to sleep. Here I am, back in Los Angeles. I’m tired from all the walking. Maybe I’m out of shape. No, wait. Maybe you’re out of shape. Either way, we waved to helicopters, rode a roller coaster, watched a dog dig a hole, and had great food and beer. What do you have to say for yourself this Monday? Nothing? Exactly.
