Santa Ana to Pismo Beach

Heading North

The Santa Ana Freeway teetered on being clogged to the point of brake lights for most of the 20 miles north to LA, despite the fact that we got out of the hotel successfully at 5:40am.  We escaped traffic hell, however, by such an early exit strategy, even though it wasn’t the smooth sailing I’d thought we’d have.  Once out to the coast in Santa Monica, fog hovered over the coast.  North of Malibu, we were on our own, it felt.  Traffic was light enough to feel that sensation of freedom once again, and that’s the point when the fog lifted as well.  By 8:15, we were in Santa Barbara, one more of those coastal spots we’d all move if we could.  They’re starting to mount now.  La Jolla, Del Mar, Laguna Beach, Santa Barbara with San Luis Obispo, Carmel, Sausalito, Montecito to come.  Those only cover the southern half of the entire west coast.  Some day, God willing, I’ll be out here.  I’ve always told the kids that they’ll be visiting me on holidays from college in my west coast bungalow overlooking the ocean or nestled in the woods with a gorgeous river running through the property, perhaps further north in Oregon or Washington.  The idea has never been anything but attractive to me, and I don’t feel anything but more confirmed on the idea now.

I had wanted to go to the flagship store of The Territory Ahead, a place from which I’ve bought a lot of my clothes by catalog for the past ten years.  We asked Ivana to take us to the middle of Santa Barbara, and the sweet little computerized woman, like any red-blooded American gal, took us right by the shopping district, the first store of which was to be The Territory Ahead Outlet store.  Since it didn’t open for an hour or so, we had some bagels and waffles at a little café on the main drag, and got a little exercise with a walk up and down the street.  Along the way, as window shopped a bit, Austin pointed out that he just didn’t understand the idea of “shopping for random things”.  He’s just way too practical to fathom that concept, and I could see where he would think it would make absolutely no sense to shop with no particular item in mind.  Just to give us a purpose, Parker had asked if we could find a bookstore, which we did—there was a Borders, of course, just up the street.  Parker was looking for an unidentified book along with the new Harry Potter installment.  When we go into places like bookstores, I usually give the guys a meeting time and place, so we can all go our separate ways and browse to our heart’s content.  In this case, I suggested we’d meet back at the Harry Potter display at 10, which was a little less than a half-hour away.  I found myself  in the audio book section, and thought it would be a good idea to have a few CDs for some of our hours in the car, so I chose a new book by Bill Bryson, one of my favorite authors, and also Huckleberry Finn, which was on Austin’s summer reading list.  In my travels down the aisles, I couldn’t help but find both eyes and any other senses I might be able to put forth toward one of the most beautiful women I’d yet seen on this whole venture.  And it’s not as though I hadn’t seen an extremely high index of beautiful California girls.  This one, however, needed nothing more than her pink top, jeans, and sandals to turn every head in the place—male and female.  She was stunningly gorgeous, with a perfect build and curves, which was only amplified ten times over with her tall 5’11” or so frame.  She also wasn’t made up… just naturally beautiful starring herself.  She was in the periodical section and certainly had no problem exploiting her height to reach up to the top shelf and grab the latest Penthouse magazine, and then head directly to the checkout counter.  I did the same, and upon amusing myself as I watched the librarian-like clerk behind the counter lift her eyes above her half-rimmed glasses to give a judging look to the buyer of this men’s magazine, I told the boys to meet me at the front entrance, and proceeded a few feet away to the periodical section myself to add this issue of Penthouse to my stack of purchases.  I noted to the woman who was checking me out “She’s got to be in here”, to which she nodded “that’s exactly what I was thinking”, and then proceeded to give me the judging look of the pervert who would buy this magazine just to see a woman naked that he’d only seen for a minute or two-tops.  I didn’t care.  What guy wouldn’t throw five bucks at the concept of the ultimate in undressing a woman like that—past the usual mental undressing of using one’s imagination to actual two-dimensional bliss? 

I wasn’t able to check beyond the still-innocent eyes of Austin and Parker till later, after I’d actually forgotten about the whole thing when we got to Pismo Beach.  After unpacking, when I finally did pop open the plastic wrap from the magazine, I wasn’t as shocked to see this golden California blonde featured--as suspected--as I was to see how far Penthouse had stretched the boundaries of publishable material since the last time I’d picked one up.  Upon a mental look back, I’d realized that the last time I’d probably seen a Penthouse was over a dozen years ago, when no erections or insertions were permitted, as I recall.  Suffice it to say that the magazine had gone way beyond that now.  And frankly, I liked her better in her jeans and shirt.  There’s something to be said for mystery.  I tossed the magazine after one quick look.

After procuring a large shopping bagful of Territory Ahead jackets, pants and shirts for about a hundred bucks, we found the Pacific Coast Highway again and enjoyed both mountain and coastal vistas on our way to Pismo Beach. 

The only stretch of this trip that covered the same ground as last year’s was this portion between LA and San Francisco.  Last year we stayed in San Luis Obispo, and this year I preferred to be on the beach for this particular stop.  I found a little place on the internet called the Cottage Inn.  I had Parker confirm that it looked interesting and booked a room.  I though it might be a gamble because my recollection of  last year’s drive through Pismo Beach was that it was RV heaven, and the difference between the pics on the internet site and reality could be rather vast.  What we found for our $134 was a charming little spot with a clean room featuring two king sized beds.  We didn’t have a water view, but the hotel was on the more picturesque end of the beach, the north end, nestled up on an overlook.  There was probably a 200 hundred foot drop, which could be traversed down to the beach by a set of stairs winding up the hill.  They could only be used during low-tide, unless one didn’t mind stepping into waist-high surf.  The boys and I took a quick walk around, and then I decided to finally get some real exercise and grabbed my walkman and headed down the steps into the foggy and cool Pismo Beach air for a three-mile barefoot roundtrip beyond the pier and back.  It was about 65 degrees and I had on shorts and a long sleeve shirt.  My strides were long, so as to stretch out my hamstrings, and I certainly felt that happening.  Given the torture I’d given them on this trip, they’d been really good to me.  The other thing I felt happening was more confirmation of how wonderful this trip is.  I can’t emphasize enough how fortunate I feel to be able to have a business and lifestyle that allows me to stop and smell roses, desert sun, coastal surf, mountain laurels, and every other smell there is to smell along a journey like this.  Best of all, the fact that the boys will have these strong memories of these trips to take with them as they embark on their adulthood is most gratifying to me.  I do hope that they learn more than geography, but about life, worldliness and how precious it is to see beyond the stressful minutiae in which we all get so entangled.

Parker and I decided to trek into San Luis Obispo to hit another bookstore, since he ignored my strong suggestion to ask for the whereabouts of the book he wanted at the Borders in Santa Barbara, and never found what would now be revealed as the latest release of the Garfield series.  I wish Parker would just be a kid and not be embarrassed around me about revealing the fact that he likes to read comics. 

On the way out of town, I stopped to take a picture of a sign used by a mortgage company that happened to use the iconic symbol that Old Kent Mortgage Company, a good client of mine, used before it was bought. 

I wanted to send it to my friend Scott to show him that the look lived on.  While snapping the picture, a preppy guy of about 30 shouted from across the lot and asked how I liked my Touareg.  As it turns out, he had bought the V8 version that weekend to add to the Mercedes CLK320 he was driving, and the Porsche Boxster (with Nav system) he had told me his wife drove.  He said he had an M series Mercedes on order and had looked at the Porsche Cayenne, but when visiting his dealer to pick up the Benz, he saw they had the Touareg and after a quick test drive made the decision hands down to forego the M series Mercedes and buy the first Touareg sold at this particular San Luis Obispo dealer.   I found it an odd coincidence that I happened to pull into that lot for such a strange reason and end up engaged in a discussion about SUVs with the only other current Touareg owner in San Luis Obispo.

I decided to dine at the same place we enjoyed last year when we found ourselves in these parts, a popular place called F. McClintock’s.  We got there early enough this time to be able to order off the early bird menu, which was great cause this place serves up a family style feast with onion rings, salads, beans, oven- sauteed potatoes, sautéed onions, mushrooms, garlic bread and dessert to go along with your entrée.  Austin and I had steaks, and Parker had chopped sirloin, which he ordered medium.  He recently discovered that he liked his meat cooked more well-done than I had been serving him and ordering for him for the past few years.

Later on, Austin and I left Parker to do some writing in the room, and buzzed down to the pier.  I make it a point to find time to spend alone with both kids, not only because the conversation takes on an entirely different character when alone with one son, but because I think it’s mentally healthy for us not to be a threesome all the time.   This way, one gets time to himself, and one gets to talk freely without comments from the respective peanut gallery.  Austin certainly comes out of his shell more when he’s alone with me rather than having Parker around.  I did get a cell phone for the kids specifically with this trip in mind, and yes, Parker called while Austin and I were walking around the pier to see how we were doing.  

We all conked out reading that night.  I woke up at about 1, and got the kids out of their trances long enough to tuck them in and get them back to dreamland in no time.  I followed shortly thereafter.

Odds and Ends:

Lost:  One walkman (charged to be shipped to us, but it never arrived), one camera battery charger, one Edge Shaving Gel, three bags of assorted flavors of the best pistachios ever—from a farm in New Mexico.

Temporarily lost, but found:  One cellphone, after a 15 minute investigation in Oakland, under Parker’s Padre hat.  One set of Royals baseball cards.  One bathing suit.

Highest price paid so far for gas:  $2.49 a gallon in Leggett, California.  First gas station for 50 miles on route 1.  A mile down the road, it went down to $2.09.