Day 14, Part B -- Lost!

Fri, Aug 24, 2007

I vow that from now on, I will never try to find something in a large and unknown city without first purchasing a detailed road map for that city.

My mom had lived in a house near El Cajon between about 1975 and 1987. I decided it might be fun to find it and take a few pictures.

This house was out in the desert mountains off by itself. I called my 91-year-old mom but she couldn't remember exactly how to get there. I'd visited a few times, and remembered that it was on a dirt road off of either Dehesa Rd. or Harbison Canyon Rd.

I mapquested Dehesa before the library closed at 5 PM, but I didn't have paper and pencil with me (and I didn't want to leave the computer to go get some in the car). So I memorized the route that I'd take. Here is the mapquest map I worked with in the library (click it to be able to see the street names):

So, you can see that all that I had to do was find Main street, drive east to Jamacha (pronounced "Hamasha"), and turn left on Dehesa. Piece of cake, right? Wrong. I now know why. Take a look at what the map would have looked like had I zoomed in a little more:

You can now see that Dehesa Road doesn't intersect Jamacha. Instead it turns into E. Washington Ave which intersects Jamacha. That is, the planners of the streets in El Cajon decided to give two names to the same street. Great idea, assholes! I've seen this in many cities. Is it really so hard for planners to realize that giving two ends of a street two different names will cause problems for hundreds of people?

So, not knowing this, I got to Jamacha, but failed to find Dehesa. I drove a mile or two, then backtracked, waiting in traffic for long traffic lights [longest traffic light of the trip, 4.5 minutes in Malibu], and dealing with NUTS (see earlier posts). Same thing in the other direction.

So I moved to the plan of last resort: asking for directions. This involves stopping at a gas station or convenience store. Note that people who are good at giving directions, and have a good mind for streets and locations generally don't work at gas stations and convenience stores. This does not stop them from sounding extremely confident.

The hit rate for finding someone who gives clear and accurate directions is about one in five. To give you an idea, at a gas station in El Cajon, the man behind the counter came out onto the street with me. He pointed to a traffic light. "You see that light? That's Bradley street. Turn right there, and go all the way to the airport. No, left." So I get back in the car, and go to that traffic light, and it is not Bradley street. Neither is the next street. Should I turn anyway or find Bradley? It didn't matter anyway because I couldn't remember whether he'd said "left" or "right."

You say to me, "Hey, Al, you're on a trip, you're retired, you'll find it eventually. What's the big deal?" But there's another aspect to this: the gate for the campground (in Santee, another town) gets closed at 9:00 PM. If I don't get back by then, I'll have to hike in, grab the tent, and find a hotel, or pack in my sleeping bag and thermarest, and leave the car on some dark, deserted road.

After asking for directions three times, I decide to buy a map, but am unable to find one. Finally, someone gives me good directions, and I find Dehesa. There are some more twists and turns that I won't bore you with, and at 6:30 I give myself a time limit. If I don't find the house by 7 PM, I'll give up and head back to the campground.

I finally locate the road on which the house was located -- now paved. But there are so many new houses, I can't find my mom's house. None of the houses looks like hers. I go to a likely prospect and take a few photos. At 6:57, on my way down that house's driveway, I see a man working in his yard. I stop and tell him what I'm looking for. "What's your mom's name," he asks, and when I tell him, he says "This is it. This is the house!"

This house was a prefab. My mom moved it into place in two pieces. Wondering why I didn't recognize it? Here's the house in approximately 1975:


and here it is today, taken from almost the same angle:

Joe, the man who bought it from Mom has, for 20 years, been busy adding to it, and making major changes to the landscaping. He hopes to be all done in a year or two.

Here's another series to show you the change in the view, 1975 versus 2007 (I realize this may be a little boring to most of you -- sorry). Those pointy trees in the background helped me find the general location of the house.



The changes in the "inside" of the house are more dramatic. I put "inside" in quotes, since the walls have changed such that some things that used to be outside are now inside. Again, 1975 versus 2007:




Here's a picture of Joe and his lovely wife.


He invited me to stay for a drink, and I would have enjoyed that, but there was the matter of the campground gate, and I'd already stayed longer than I should have. So after a few more pictures, I headed "home."

I now had to find my way to the campground in an hour and a half. When I got to downtown El Cajon, it was dark and poorly lit. My sense of direction had completely abandoned me. I criss-crossed the city, stopping for directions five times. Since seconds counted, I'd have to make a snap decision as to which person at the convenience store (not the one behind the counter) would give the best directions. One stop was necessary because the road "Woodside" turned into "Mission Trails." Same problem again. Hell on wheels, huh?

Believe it or not, the breakthrough came with a scholarly-looking toothless gentleman on a bicycle, and I finally got back to the gate with 35 minutes to spare.

Time to unwind and go to sleep. The plan was to wake up early the next morning and drive the 9 hours to the Bay Area. Looking for a good way to induce insomnia? Here's one: tell yourself "If you don't fall asleep right now, you'll fall asleep behind the wheel tomorrow, and crash into a tomato truck."

Despite that, I fell asleep before too long.

It helped to have a dry sleeping bag. A few nights earlier, I'd hung the sleeping bag on the line, but because of some weird dew-point phenomenon, it was wet at 8 PM even though the skies were clear. It was somewhere between damp and sopping, and even "wearing" it inside out did not help. I dreamt that I was on a trans-Atlantic solo sea voyage, and a wave had come into the cabin (I made that up).


Here's a picture of the El Cajon city planners:

Day 14 -- San Diego to Santee

Friday, Aug 24, 2007

I've been weighing the options of staying or leaving. I might have started home today, but that would put me in L.A. rush hour on a Friday, so I decided to surf and camp one more day.

This is the thirteenth day in a row surfing. That may be a record that, for me, is never broken.

After a leisurely breakfast of yogurt and toast dipped in hot chocolate, and some shopping for ice, milk and other supplies, I headed back to the same beach for some more surfing. The waves weren't quite as good today, and there was a little territorial vibe from the shortboarders, but it was still nice. A little sad to take that last ride of the trip.

Time to find a campsite for the night. I wasn't easy at all. Lake Jennings in El Cajon was full up. I decided it was quicker to just drive to another campground rather than wait on hold for the reservation system, but that one (Santee Lakes) was also full, despite having 300 campsites (only 9 of which are allowed to have tents).

But the third one was the charm (Mission Trails) because this one, despite having only 42 spaces is dry as a desert (actually it is in a desert).

Here's my campsite:

It may look desolate to you, but when you've been driving around for hours trying to find an available campsite, it looks like a dream spot.

Day 13 -- Oceanside to San Diego

Thurs, Aug 23, 2007

My Internet buddy had recommended waking up at 4:30 to beat the traffic into San Diego, but I slept in until 5:30, broke camp and was off by 5:40. I found that I could get a single breakfast burrito at McDonald's for only $1. The place was actually closed, but they'd forgotten to lock the door, so they let me have my breakfast.

Traffic on Hi-5 was actually not that bad, but I turned off to check out the surf on the way.

This was the point in the trip where the car and I started to wear out. The A/C in the car broke, but luckily it broke so that it was always on -- that won't need fixing til I get back home. On my side, my shoulder was sore, my ankle was sore, my feet had lots of cuts. I'd see places to surf, but it just seemed too cold and too far to walk, so I kept driving. For example, the waves looked pretty good at Cardiff-by-the Sea. But Al-by-the-highway would have had to walk down a big set of stairs to become Al-in-the-Sea.


Another driving problem was buzzing. The soft rack that I have is great, and it's been well-behaved so far. But on this day it started buzzing. That is, the wind makes some strap vibrate against the roof -- loudly. When it happens it's as loud as a trombone in your ear.

Usually, when this happens I just stop and twist some straps, and it stops. This time I just couldn't locate the source of the problem. I made more than 20 stops (not making this up) trying to fix it. That is, find someplace to stop, twist strap or tie towel around some part of the rack, then start again. It wouldn't happen until 50 MPH, so there was no way to test without driving. Finally a combination of ripped up towel, moving the board, and putting some part of the rack upside down did the trick.

This was a day on which I had no camping reservations, so I also checked out campgrounds.

Here's the line that formed at 6:30 AM for finding out whether there were any sites at St. Elijo state park. Even though the site was fully reserved, these people were waiting until8 AM to see if there was anything available. I decided not to wait.

So I continued on, and soon arrived at the goal of this entire trip: Mission Beach. It was the goal because this was the beach at which I first surfed. I spent a summer in San Diego in 1970 visiting my sister, and surfed at this beach using my brother-in-law's board.

The sun came out, the water was warm and clear, I got some good rides so all the aches and pains were forgotten. I surfed until I was exhausted, and then got a Subway sandwich and ate it on the beach.

After lunch: Butterfingers Cream Pie. I recommend a trip to McDonalds (or was it Burger King) to get one of these. Fortunately, they neglected to include this dessert on the chart showing fat and calories.

I also took a quick trip past my Sister's old house, so, for her benefit, this is what it looks like now:
Next, it was time to find a campsite. I knew that Sweetwater Regional Campground had a few spaces, but I was too cheap to pay the $5 reservation fee, and drove directly there.

Now mapquest is great when you can print out the map, but I don't have a printer with me. Without going into details, it took a long time to find it, but they had a number of sites available!

This actually turned out to be the nicest campground on the trip. It was on the edge of a steep hill and shady with a wonderful breeze. Since one's not allowed to tie things to trees, it took a bit of figuring to get my hammock installed.


Here's the view from my site.

The campground was exceptionally quiet and peaceful. Unfortunately, that will change soon since they are building a new freeway right next to it.


I spent some time talking to another lone camper who I will call "Crazy Steve." Crazy Steve was sitting in the cab of his truck which had no fewer than three six packs of Coors on the dashboard. He asked if I wanted an ear of corn and I said "Sure." When it was done boiling, he said "This is how we fix our corn in South Carolina." He opened a brand new tub of margarine, and submerged the half ear of corn into it. He then twisted it around until most of the margarine had melted. It actually didn't taste that different from corn on the cob that only had a little butter on it.

Steve had a TV plugged into the campsite hookup and sitting on the picnic table bench. But it was so light out that you couldn't really see the picture.

Crazy Steve was apparently smart, but something was a little off. He had been an architect, and had designed 143 banks around the state of California. He's been getting $1,000/month disability checks from Farmer's Insurance for 20 years for arthritis. Although he does indeed have arthritis, he says that the checks continue because Farmers has so much money and they don't bother to check.

He stays at campgrounds exclusively, and does house painting during the day.

Back at my campsite, I read in the sleeping bag in my hammock (it had actually gotten pretty cool) into the night. I've had good luck with books this trip, finding some that I've really enjoyed. So far I've read:

How to Win Friends and Influence People (Dale Carnegie). This book, originally published in 1936, isn't quite what you'd expect. Highly recommended.

Cold Paradise, Stuart Woods. Pure entertainment reading, but totally engrossing. You an always count on a satisfying ending with this author.

L.A. Dead, Stuart Woods. Fun to read this book, since a number of things happened in Malibu and other places I've been on this trip.

Gone Baby Gone, Dennis Lehane. Leahane is the author who wrote Mystic River. I just started this one last night, and it's great so far.

One other note about this campsite, to qualify the "peaceful" comment. It is right under the final approach pattern for San Diego airport. I dreamt about airplanes all night long (not making that up) bu slept well.

So ends Day 13.

Day 12 -- San Onofre to Oceanside

Wed, Aug 22, 2007

Getting behind in posts again.

Pretty early start again today, with some morning surfing at San O before continuing on. It was a grey morning, the water was a little choppy, and the waves were meaner. That is, I got beat up a bit paddling out between rides. Plus I forgot sunscreen, so had to paddle in and walk on rocks to rectify that. Really wore myself out. A few "I'm getting too old for this" moments.

Here's a nice old VW at the parking lot which has changed little since this car was manufactured:

Got set up at Guajome (pronounced "You my homie") county park. This turned out to be quietest campground on the trip so far.

I then headed down to the beach at Oceanside to look around. This is the general feel of the beach.
I checked out the waves, to see if I wanted to surf there in the morning.



Then at five, I drove to the house of another Early Retirement buddy, and we had a beer before setting off for a great dinner. We split a dozen fantastic oysters, and then each had salmon. He had cedar-plank grilled salmon and I had hazelnut-encrusted salmon. Best meal I've had in a long time. We had fun talking, and I would have liked to hang out some more and get drunk, but I had to drive back to the campground and get an early start into San Diego.

As it was, I got back to the campsite late enough that the gate was locked. What do I do now? But it turned out that there is a back way in just for campers.

It was quite -- no parties. The only sounds were from the TVs in the RVs.

Day 11 -- San Onofre

Tuesday, Aug 21, 2007

Ankle recovering well. Time for another sausage and egg meal at 6 AM, then off to the beach.

Here's the San Onofre parking lot. It extends for about a mile, but on good swell days, people line up two hours before sunrise in order to get a parking space.


This beach is just north of the San Onofre nuclear power plant, making the water a little warm and kind of tingly.




Swell is even bigger today, although there are significant lulls in between sets. Perfect conditions, very little wind. This wide shot, taken during a lull between sets) shows you how many surfers are in the water (click it to count them):


Here's a surfer girl (is it OK to say that?) catching a nice ride on a smaller wave:

This shows a medium set rolling in.

Use this next shot to gauge the size of the waves. The guy riding is probably about six feet, making the wave 5-6 feet. The next wave coming in is larger. There was one guy who would wait for waves much further out than everyone else. He'd have to wait an hour or more for a wave that was big enough to break out there, but when he caught one, it was a great ride, cheered by all.

I surfed for about four hours, then made a PBJ lunch at the car. I violated my rule about never putting things on the roof, because it was either that or the sand.

The contents of that box are now strewn along the San Diego Freeway -- ha ha, just kidding. Note the locked Pelican case holding the laptop in the lower right of this next picture.


There's very little shade here, and it's hot, but I'm getting used to it.

Car was getting pretty dirty at this point in the trip, so I washed it at the self-serve car wash (this is boring, right?).

Before


After

Then it was off to the library, where I'm sitting now. Public libraries are the place to go to access the Internet. No need to buy coffee, and they are are quiet, cool, and many have power outlets for laptops at each table.

Here's where I am now (San Clemente Public Library):


I'll hang around here a while, wait for the air to cool off a bit, then head back to the campsite.

Day 10 -- San Onofre

Monday, Aug 20, 2007

I had a leisurely breakfast at the campground, drove to the surf beach to check out the waves, then went to the library to update the blog. I'd have surfed in the morning, but I wanted to give my ankle some more time to heal.

As I mentioned, I'm on this surf safari because my wife is attending a class reunion, of her grade school, in Luleå, Sweden (pronounced Looly-O). She really enjoyed it, and here's a picture of her grade school classmates, all of whom she remembered (arrow shows wife Lena):

Looks like maybe they're having too much fun:


She won the prize for having traveled the greatest distance (total travel time 42 hours).

Back to me...

Ankle was fine with surfing. It was less fine with walking, so I did a lot of paddling to avoid walking.

Finally some bigger waves (see Day 11 for pictures)! The sets of waves only came in every 20-30 minutes or so, but they were nice 5+ foot swells. It's very different from home. In San-O you'll sit there for 20 minutes with no swell at all, and then a set will roll in. It's much more constant up north.

There are a lot more surfers here -- about 100-200 spread over a wide area -- so frequently, when a good wave comes in there are already three surfers on it. But I got some big rides. I surfed until sunset, with my last ride of the day being the best.

Here are some pictures of the sunset (click to enlarge):





Went back to the campsite and had a late, tasty dinner of hot dogs roasted over a wood fire. I'd eat this meal a lot if it weren't bad for you.

Eating

Speaking of eating -- it's a little harder to eat healthful food on a trip like this than when at home. Luckily, with surfing three or more hours a day I don't think I need to worry about calories. But it's hard to find a picnic table, stop, make a tuna fish sandwich, etc. when it's so quick and cheap to buy a Whopper junior for 99 cents.

The best solution I've found for a cheap, healthful, readily available meal is a Subway Veggie Delite for only $2.89 (price recently reduced). That's my fast food of choice. The sweet onion sauce is recommended. I say "readily available" because every town has at least one Subway.

Note that the "Less than 6 grams of fat" advertisement refers to a sandwich made with no cheese and no condiments. I tried one this way -- I think it was the first time they'd ever made one -- and it wasn't too boring.

Got a good night's sleep.

Day 9 -- Malibu to San Onofre

Sunday, Aug 19, 2007

I haven't had any injuries on the trip so far, but that was about to change.

Another early wake-up day. "Ronin," a surfer from the Early Retirement forum, said he might be able to get away and meet me at Bolsa Chica State park at 9 AM. So I had breakfast on the road, just south of Malibu.


I've talked about traffic, and today I was riding through the belly of the traffic beast, Los Angeles. But, as careful planning *cough* luck *cough* would have it, it was early on a Sunday morning and I breezed along the LA freeways at the speed limit.

Note that "at the speed limit" in LA means about 10 MPH slower than everyone else; it makes you feel like a rock in a stream. I made some poor road choices, based on my map of all California, and spent a lot of time on the PCH, which meant traffic lights and lots of them. Quick note: Gas was only $2.69/gal in Long Beach compared with $3.21/gal at home.

Bolsa Chica beach is three miles wide with tons of parking. I pulled into the rendezvous spot at 8:50, but it turns out Ronin couldn't get away.

This beach is a lot like the ocean beaches I grew up with on Long Island (e.g. Jones' Beach). The people and their belongings have been supersized, however. They bring tables, canopies, big chairs, and fancy Weber gas grills instead of a beach blanket, umbrella and small charcoal grill.

But most importantly, I finally got some bigger waves! Here's a four-foot wave, and I saw some that I estimated at 5-6 feet.


There was a path by the parking lot that was used by tons of cyclists, more than one with a small dog in the front basket.


I surfed for a few hours with my wetsuit on, and I was pretty hot. That is, I was warm in the suit. Had some great fast drops, and a few medium length rides.

I then stopped for a lunch of yogurt and orange soda, and decided to surf another session with no wetsuit. I had to move a few miles down, since there's no mid-day surfing allowed on parts of the beach.

I went out with just my board shorts on, and it was a great feeling. Much easier to paddle than with a wetsuit. Turns out, and this wasn't really a surprise to me, that I can't reach all the areas of my back when applying sunscreen. I'll have to figure out how to do this in the future. I'm guessing that asking a stranger to do it won't work.

One characteristic of this beach on this day was the relatively steep shoreline:


As a result, the waves would roll up the shore, then back down, creating a wave going out to sea. If you've seen The Endless Summer, you might remember a beach called "in and out" at which you could actually surf the waves moving outward, and when meeting an incoming wave, be popped up into the air. Which brings us to...

Injury Number One
I had just stood up on one of the bigger waves, going down the face, when I hit one of these backwash waves. The result was that I instantly found myself five feet above the board, with my butt higher than my head. I had plenty of time to think, and what I thought was "This is not going to end well." Or to quote George of the Jungle "This going to hurt George real bad."

But I don't remember what happened when I came down, other than thinking "That wasn't as bad as I thought it would be." It's not that I hit my head, it was just a kind of amnesia that happens a lot to me when surfing. I have a big wipeout, and I can't remember how it happened. Like waking up from a dream, and not being able to remember it.

Anyway, I didn't notice any pain, and I had a good laugh about it with another surfer that saw the whole thing.

On the very next wave, the same thing happened, but I was thrown up and to the side, so there was no danger of hitting the board. I did a faceplant in the water, however, and it felt like doing a belly flop off the high diving board. At that point I decided "I'm outtahere" and headed to the beach. As I was walking to the car, I heard someone saying "Hey, did you see that guy get pitched up by the wave?"

It wasn't until a few hours later that I noticed that my ankle was sore and it hurt to bend it. This got worse, until it was hard to walk, and I had a lot of swelling down there. I'm guessing that I either bonked it on the board, or hyperflexed it coming down. It felt like some of the sprained ankles that I've had in the past. In any case, that's why I'm here in the library this morning (day 10) instead of surfing.

But I've iced it, it's getting better, and I plan to surf at San Onofre this afternoon. But back to day 9...

Laundry Day

Well I was out of T-shirts, and passing a laundry on the PCH in Dana Point, I zipped in to take care of the washing. This involved mostly waiting around for the washing and drying.


An important thing to note in this photo is Bert and Ernie on the fire engine, calling to me. This brings us to...

Injury Number Two

I know now that "This will make a good picture for the blog" is a dangerous thing to think. It was in getting off this ride that I had a close encounter with the white post that you can see in the bottom of the picture.

Actually, this injury wasn't so bad, just some blood, but it makes for a good story.

Campsite

Got into the San Onofre State Beach San Mateo campground in late afternoon, and the pre-assigned campsite wasn't bad. It had excellent hammock trees, and a good spot to finish the drying of the laundry.



The partying was tamer here, and I got a good night's sleep.

Well, it looks like I'm up to date on the blog, thanks to Injury 1. Standby for San Onofre surfing on day 10. BTW I've surfed every coastal day on this trip so far, which means eight surfing days in a row!