DAY ZERO
Sam and I left a little before noon. The straightest route to San Diego from the Santa Clarita area is due south on I-5 through downtown LA. We always leave a little early so we won't encounter heavy LA traffic that might cause us to be late for San Diego's afternoon traffic. Even without traffic, the trip takes a little while, because by the time we hit the Orange County line, Sam's ready for lunch, and I'm feeling the effects of the 2 or 3 cans of Diet Dr. Pepper that I've killed so far.
As we approached Fullerton, we couldn't see any obvious food joints off the freeway, but that's no problem, thanks to the miracle of GPS. Sam punched "fast food" into the onboard navigator, and it immediately pinpointed 70 places all located directly behind us... and one Jack-In-The-Box about 3 miles ahead. We're big fans of JIB's international cuisine, so we locked onto that signal.
It's understood in California that when we say "close" we mean "freeway-close". But my GPS unit apparently wasn't built by Californians, because after traveling only about a quarter of a mile, it told us to take the next exit. We didn't have an onboard calculator, but in our best estimate that meant that the JIB was 2.75 miles off the freeway. Sure enough, we traveled several blocks out of our way on Orangethorpe Avenue before hitting our target intersection. We didn't encounter any other restaurants along the way... our theory is that Orange County has wide "no food service" zones paralleling either side of the freeways, possibly to free up space for more car dealerships.
We finally spotted the JIB on the right, but across the street was a Shakey's Pizza Parlor, which transforms into a magical place every weekday between 11:30 and 2:00. That's when they serve their Bunch O' Lunch buffet. Sam and I looked at the Shakey's; looked at each other; looked at our watches (12:00!) and I quickly cut across 3 lanes of traffic and skidded into the Shakey's parking lot. (It's this kind of flexibility and quick thinking that allows us to survive the Comic-Con every year).
There's not a Shakey's near my home, so I rarely get a chance to enjoy Bunch O' Lunch. It's basically a buffet where they serve pizza, salad, pasta, fried chicken, and some other stuff that, frankly, I don't notice because I'm shoveling about a bushel of mojo potatoes onto my plate. I'm not exactly sure what mojo potatoes are... I think they're sliced potatoes coated in some sort of seasoned crust and then fried. It's as if someone saw what Colonel Sanders did to a chicken and decided to try it on a potato. At any rate, I'm a big fan, and the lunch was worth the unexpected detour and the couple of months it took away from my life span.
Somewhere between Shakey's and San Diego, I realized that I had forgotten to bring something for Ben to sleep on.
As I've mentioned in past journals, my sons, who have over 20 years of life-lessons that I've apparently missed, have informed me that young men their age do NOT share a bed... no matter how big that bed may be. Even conjoined twins are obligated to figure out a way to attach one brother to the underside of an upper bunk rather than allow simultaneous contact with the same mattress. Since I'm not going to spring for an extra room, or a suite (going to CCI doesn't completely rob me of my senses), we usually bring a cot or floor pad or extra straw to spread on the floor for Sam or Ben to sleep on. Somehow, this year, I had totally forgotten... probably because the third guy wasn't there with us to watch out for his best interests.
We weren't about to turn back. And it was risky to have Ben bring along sleeping gear with him on Amtrak, where he might decide to use it and be thrown off the train by the railroad bulls. So we decided we'd pick up an air mattress somewhere before Ben arrived on Friday night.
All material copyright 2009 Chuck Thornton