San Diego-ness

These pictures go with the story below. I'm to stupid to figure out how to weave the photos within the written word.

Hi. Yes, it’s been a while. I don’t care.

I was emailing my partner, Ad-man, the other day while arranging a time to get together and climb the mountain. I briefly shared with him that I had been on vacation the past couple weeks. I said, “I ought to post my travels on the blog”

Here it is.

I was basically gone the last 2 weeks of May. I flew over to San Diego for a fellow volleyball player douchebags wedding, then off to NY and Indianapolis (More on those later). Other fellow volleyball douchebags also flew in from Texas, Minnesota and Arizona. It was good to catch up with them having not seen some of them in years.

The bride and groom exchanged vows on a fat 40’ yacht out of the San Diego harbor then headed out for a 3-hour cruise. Everyone made the Gilligan’s Island reference with the “3 hour tour” thing. The obviousness of the joke never made me laugh. I remember I would just shake my head and look down at my beer. I probably sighed a little to loudly. And then I’d take an extra-long pull on the beer hoping to end the bottle so I had an excuse to go get another one. In reality I think it happened 3 times.

The boat was a great idea. I love being on the water. When does a boat stop being a boat and become a yacht?

The wedding party, friends, family, etc., all stayed at this place near the harbor called Humphrey’s Hotel and Suites. I shared a suite with a couple guys. We’ll call them Mr. X & Mr. Y. Honestly, I wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of sharing a room with 2 other dudes. This isn’t Volleyball Nationals any more. We’re all adults with jobs and should be able to afford our own rooms. After 3 nights, I was pleasantly surprised by how much fun we had laughing. The running joke of the weekend was a game the others came up with called, “Find something that Todd likes”. One night a random guy in the group blurted out, “Kevin Spacey!” It was the closest anyone came and I applauded him for his originality. This is also the guy that drunkenly said to me at the wedding when he initially saw me in my black pants and white dress shirt, “heeeeyyy buddy….when’s the magic show?” Awesome.

The hotel supplied its guests with these beach cruiser bicycles. So one day me and Mr. Y took advantage and started pedaling around Pointe Loma. If you ever saw the Muppet Movie, there was a scene where Kermit the Frog was riding a bike. That’s what my friend looked like. Man, he’s a heck of an athlete but looked dumb on a bike. Some people just don’t work on bicycles. It was like the bike was riding him and he was trying to crash to get the bike off of him.

During our ride, we grabbed lunch, chatted about his wife and kids, talked little league baseball and how his son is (I think) 8 and is a lousy stinking baseball player. I semi-jokingly asked, “Is he retarded?” He said no, but I could see the doubt and concern behind his eyes. Later that day his wife sent him a text message that his son had struck out at the game – again. I looked at him and said, “You ought to reply that he’s a loser”.

He replied with “Fuckin’ loser!”
His wife didn’t think it was very funny. But we did.

None of us guys had really gotten the groom anything for a gift. Typical guy move. We all just thought we’d throw some c-notes in a card and call it good. What’s better than the green when you’re leaving for a honeymoon cruise? In the back of my mind I wanted to get them something tangible. A personal touch. And -Wha-Pow! – art festival. I looked at Mr. Y and said, “what about a local artists painting of the harbor or something for them to take home?” He agreed it was a sweet touch, followed by contempt for me because he didn’t think of it first.

We stopped at the art walk thingy and checked out the paintings. Local artists. Small original prints. Going for a svelte $300 and up. Bride/Groom – I love you, but not that much. As I was walking around I came across these canes this guy carves out of juniper and oak and whatever. I thought, “mom uses a walking stick and this one’s really cool”. The artist that was selling was some guy, probably in his 50’s, with this really big-brimmed straw hat on. He started telling me about the wood he collects for his canes and the particular cane I was looking at was some Juniper or Cypress wood he got from Payson, Arizona. I said, “Hey, that’s where my folks live”. He said, “well why don’t you take this one home to them?”, to which I replied, “why should I pay a hundred bucks for this when I can get it free from my parents front yard?” And then I just stared at him.

I ended up taking a bunch of pictures, a couple of which you see here, and I’m going to get one of those multiple picture frames, add a caption to the pictures in Photoshop and send it to the bride and groom. Hopefully they’ll enjoy it. If not, they can pull it out and hang it the one time I go visit them every 8 years. What’s that going to be, like 4 more times in life if I’m lucky?

Thus; life.