2005-07-31 - 3:37 p.m.
My summer vacation (but not the summer!) comes to an end today, and I realize that so far I hadn�t posted one entry. I had, however, started one, this one, about going to San Diego to take the Notary Public exam that has to be retaken every four years in order to keep ones commission current (the school wanted me to be a notary). I had planned to make the entry into a two-parter, but then got involved in the actual vacation itself, which consisted of (1) going to Outfest, the L.A. Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, which I go to every year, (2) a four day Carnival �faux cruise� with my sister and her two kids (I say �faux� cruise because the ports of call are Catalina, a 45-minute ferry boat ride from here, and Ensenada, Mexico, a three-hour drive from here�the huge ship really �fakes� going on an ocean voyage), and (3) a 1,400-mile road trip (not very far compared with going across country, but I hadn�t gone on one in a while and I didn�t have very much time).
So now that I am having to ease back into a more normal routine, I thought I�d at least start with what I had written at the beginning of July, which follows:
It was good to get away for a couple of days, even though my trip to San Diego to do the notary stuff was all business. There wasn�t even really much bad traffic except for the usual nightmare of eastern L.A. from downtown all the way to the Orange County border and then through Buena Park. After Anaheim, it was smooth and rapid driving all the way to San Diego. I got there in two and a half hours and it made me wonder why I don�t go down there more often. Well, many times it isn�t two and a half hours, often it�s a creeping parking lot that just gets too much and many has been the time I have said �to heck with this� and took the nearest exit so that I could turn around and go back home. I know many people who won�t go to San Diego except by train, believing that driving the distance is next to impossible for any sane individual. Well, I did that once, took the train to San Diego, but it was a worse nightmare than even driving in glacial traffic. Going by train, you are trapped in their schedule, which is something you can�t fully count on.
The time I went to San Diego by train, it was the day before Thanksgiving about five years ago. According to the train schedule, the last train north was around 10:30 P.M. that night, so I spent my time in San Diego accordingly and then presented myself to the San Diego train station around 10:00. After 10:30, 10:45 came and went, I went to the ticket agent to check on it.
�The last train north left here at 8:30,� he said.
�Eight-thirty!� I shouted, �but the schedule says 10:30.� I pointed out with my finger the tiny number on the unfolded piece of paper.
�You�re looking at the regular schedule,� the ticket agent explained, �not the holiday schedule.�
�Well, yes,� I said, getting angrier, �today is not a holiday.�
�Of course it is,� the agent responded, �it�s the day before Thanksgiving.�
�The DAY before Thanksgiving is a holiday?� I said.
�To Amtrak it is,� the agent shrugged.
I didn�t want to stay in San Diego that night, so ended up taking a Greyhound Bus that left at 11:00. I got to downtown L.A. by 2:30 in the morning. The downtown L.A. Greyhound Bus station is out on the edge of an abandoned industrial area on the other side of Skid Row, through which I had to walk if I wanted to catch a Metro bus to take me the rest of the way home. The other option was to pay $80 for a taxi. Somehow I just didn�t want to pay four times the amount I had in order to get from San Diego to L.A. only to go from downtown to Hollywood, so with a �fuck you attitude� at the Mexican cab driver, I made way the six or eight long blocks past all the homeless and the crazies and the winos just as the seedy Skid Row bars were letting out. Fortunately I was angry enough that even the swaying, shouting, swearing, roaring drunk people kept a wide berth from me. Still, it�s not an experience I ever want to repeat.
But that was then and this was now.
I was staying at a Motel 6, because I still haven�t yet gotten a mental grip on inflation. It might have made more sense to stay in the actual hotel where the course and exam were going to be given the next morning, the Marriott La Jolla, but $230 a night for a room just didn�t jibe with the way my mind thinks things should be. Even the Motel 6 was nearly $80 a night, and I actually remember when Motel 6 cost $6.00 a night, which is where its name came from.
In the limited financial world of my mind, paying $100 or more for a hotel room is beyond my ken, so I travel in the world of low-market chain motels or else East-Indian- run Mom & Pop motels out in the middle of nowhere. By the way, I actually like East- Indian-run Mom & Pop motels out in the middle of nowhere, and for several reasons. I like the way it smells in the office when I check in�they always seem to have something delicious smelling of ghee and cardamom, tumeric, coriander, and so on, cooking somewhere in their private living quarters off beyond the sign-in counter. Also, for some reason, the sheets in these motels, having been slept on by about 183,906,732 people by now, are softer and more comforting than a cloud in heaven. Another asset, these old motels are all unique, aren�t exactly the same inside like every single Motel 6 from San Ysidro, California to Bangor, Maine. It�s actually fun to open the door and go inside and see what they look like. And they always have that very clean �motel� smell, I don�t know what it is or where it comes from, but I sure do love it. (The cleaning soap they use, or something to do with the smell of the air that comes out of the air conditioner? If I could find out exactly what it was, I�d try to have that at home.)
And, finally, the look of them, particularly if they still have a cool 40�s or 50�s moving neon sign (such as of a cowboy twirling a lariat)--they bring back fond memories of when I was eight years old and the family took our big cross-country move from North Carolina to California, getting onto Route 66 in Tulsa, Oklahoma in our brand-new Mercury Montclair convertible that we bought in Fort Smith, Arkansas, where my aunt and two cousins, Meredith and Jennifer lived (that car became mine when I turned 21). We stopped at all the sights along the way, whether that be an old Indian battle ground or Carlsbad Caverns or a place to see a rattlesnake or the Grand Canyon, and we�d always stop at a 50s motel (this being 1956, of course) with a flashing neon sign. If the motel had a pool, for sure we kids would all slip our silken bodies into the cool, refreshing water and have a ball after a long day of riding in the car. If we were lucky, Dad and Mom would join us, too, and then it would be a party in the pool.
Staying in this kind of motel takes me back to a much earlier era, but usually you won�t find something like this off of the Interstates; there, along the main stream of cross-country travel, they�ve long since been replaced by the Holiday Inns, Ramadas, Hampton Inns, and so on. You have to go off the beaten track such as along the Federal Highways (U.S. route something-or-other), which used to be the main routes until the Interstates were built. Not only do the motels bring back old memories, but so do the towns along these routes. I always say �to really see America, you have to drive across country on the federal routes.� Then it�s Normal Rockwell and Fourth of July parades and county fairs and Diary Queen on hot summer nights; stalwart river towns, prim prairie towns, and dusty, romantic western towns. And if you have an out of state license plate, they are so happy to see you, you�re almost more interesting than an alien from Mars!
But the motel this time was simply a Motel 6, standing right in the crook of the freeway exit�a parking lot, a two-story motel strip, an ice and coke machine, and no pool.
And yet to me, it felt like a vacation. Of sorts.
I don�t thumb my nose at Motel 6, although I would have been happier with a pool and a balcony to sit on while I read my two notary books. But for that, I guess I would have had to cross my $100 price threshhold.
After I checked in, I decided it was a good time to go have lunch. Right next to the Motel 6 (sharing the same parking lot) was what I had assumed out of the corner of my eye to be a Denny�s. However, oddly enough, it was some kind of Korean Barbecue place. (It ended up that this was apparently a heavily Asian area of north San Diego.)
I neglected to say that at the beginning of the summer, I vowed to lose 20 pounds this summer. This weight loss was just to be an appetizer to the remaining weight loss that I intended to complete throughout the upcoming school year, but to have this particular beginning success would be what I would need to stick with it until the successful conclusion. Already, I�ve lost half of what I vowed to lose (eleven pounds, actually), so I�m really into it now and not at all interested in sabotaging my eating plan. Eating out is practically impossible�way too many carbs on tap�so what I am on the look-out for is a place where I can pretty much get something like a lot of meat and a salad, but avoid all the rest.
Well, I figured a Korean Barbecue might be the trick, since the dishes would probably be a-la-carte, and since it was a barbecue, they had to have lots of meat dishes.
The place was elegant and beautiful inside, and the large granite-looking tables had some kind of rectangular, flat heating surfaces in the middle of the tables, like a Japanese teppan yaki. Well, although I really wasn�t interested in cooking my own food, this was intriguing.
I opened up the leather-bound menu and found (a) a long list of dishes I had never even begun to have heard of, and (b) prices that were astronomical. Two or three dish choices and I would have paid more for a lunch (of unknown, bizarre ingredients that I�d have to cook myself) than I did for the motel room! So I excused myself and went looking for someplace else.
I ended up at a Coco�s (thus I understand the magnetic pull of chain restaurants when you are traveling�you lose the adventure, but at least you know what you are getting into) and had a delicious Cobb Salad. The waiter was a cool �Fonzie� type, full of guy-to-guy hand motions and other accentuating gestures, a bit over the top to the point of possibly being artificial, but nevertheless I liked him and somehow he must have read my mind, because he never brought me the �fresh baked bread� which I didn�t really want (it�s not on my diet), yet didn�t want to ask him to not bring me.
After lunch, I went back to the motel, propped myself up in bed, and read from cover to cover the first notary book I brought. Then it was time for dinner.
While I had been studying, two different guys, from two different food delivery places, stuffed fliers under the door. One of them had something that appealed to me, half a baked chicken, a salad, and a soft drink (i.e., Diet Coke). But when I dialed the number to order a delivery, I quickly discovered that they (both restaurants) were in a different area code and the Motel 6 phone only worked for local calls, otherwise you have to have a telephone credit card (which I don�t have because I have a cell phone). However, Cingular had neglected to automatically recharge my cell phone, which was supposed to happen on July 2, but they didn�t do it and my existing cache of minutes promptly disappeared on July 4, so on my trip to San Diego, my cell phone was a dead instrument. Since my new T-Mobile phone was to arrive July 8, I thought to hell with it, I don�t want to fight with Cingular anymore. (Of course, after I got home, I found out that the damn company THEN went ahead and recharged my phone yesterday, on July 6, now that I really didn�t NEED to spend the $15.00. Again, I could fight this, but it just isn�t worth it. New phone tomorrow.)
So I got back in the car and went in search of a restaurant. I found one, �Spice� something that was in an obvious former Bob�s Big Boy. It ended up being a Greek restaurant and I ordered �George�s Greek Sample Platter,� which was mostly different kinds of meat, but with also some stuffed grape leaves, a dish based on spinach, and another dish based on eggplant. So, once again, it was a meal close to what I needed in order to conform as well as possible to my eating plan (which is 30% of the calories come from protein, 20% from carbohydrates, and 50% from fat).
The best part of the meal was the waitress who was telling everybody that in a few days she was moving to Ventura County to go to Moorpark College to study exotic animal breeding and training. This was unique enough that I had to ask her about it and she was happy to explain to me that her hobby has been raising exotic birds and snakes and other unusual animals, and after she started to wonder if she could actually make a career of it, someone turned her on to this unusual program at Moorpark College. She applied, was accepted, and so that�s what she is off to, now. Sounds pretty amazing to me.
I went back home and took the practice test at the back of the book I had read earlier and got a perfect score, so I felt pretty ready. Still, I did study for a few more hours in the other book I brought, and then went to bed early so that I would be fresh and brilliant for the next day.
One not so good thing about Motel 6: their mattresses seem to consist of the cardboard box that OTHER mattresses come in, a box covered with a mattress pad and a contour sheet. However, I was tired enough that I did sleep.
�
 |
 |
�
