San Diego

     I remember on Christmas 2013, I opened a card from my dad, and inside were two plane tickets to California. My whole life shifted when I knew I could get out of this place. We landed in smoggy LAX, I would love nothing more than to never go there again, and took a connecting flight to San Diego. The smallest plane, I'd ever been on, fitting no more than 40 people, with only 25-30 actually on board. I was 17, my hands were sweating, I had never experienced a damn good thing. I had never known anything but my hometown. You couldn't tell me that then. I hadn't experienced much good, but I felt everything. I still do.

    My dad was recently divorced and I had him all to myself for the first time in my entire life. We both naively visited universities like I would somehow end up on the other side of the country after I graduated high school and my dad would somehow have the money to send me somewhere out of state. It was an excuse to spend 10 days in California. We found ourslves on the cliffs of La Jolla, winding roads up steep hills, where houses looked mere inches away from falling down into the thundering waves. We passed sleepy towns that went along rickety railroads and stopped for coffees. We were headed North to Huntington Beach. 

    We stopped in Encinitas, and San Clemente. I remember sitting passenger as we left San Clemente and worked our way up the terrain. Everything was steep and everywhere you could see the ocean. We passed through Dana Point to get to Laguna, and as we switched highways, we are on the highway to heaven. Dana Point was like a cove, the way I remember it, surrounded by boats and rocks. We were driving on one gigantic boulder, the town of Dana Point behind and below us, ready for Laguna. We worked our way back down the boulder and there we were. Laguna Beach. We made our way to the beach to watch the waves crash. There wasn't a surfer in-sight. The waves were over my head and crashing directly onto the sand with no remorse. You could smell and feel the sea spray from the angry ocean. 

    We stayed in Laguna for the night. Before we settled into a hotel we walked the streets, even the bathrooms out in the sand had beautiful murals on them. There were gardens, sculptures and windows to peer through at every corner. Something I remember from Laguna Beach is the way my dad suggested I had gained weight. He did so in a joking manner that didn't seem so jokingly to me. Just enough for it to stick in my brain and not enough that it hurt his conscious at all. He got the silent treatment for the rest of the night. We even went to sushi, I don't eat sushi. At some point or another he noticed my being short with him and gave me one of his half hearted apologies. Meaning, in his eyes, I shouldn't have been upset in the first place. I look back now and think, Wow I was in the best shape of my life! Young, with a fast metabolism.

    We made it to Huntington Beach finally. Surf capitol of the world. It was booming with young surfer and skater types. Everyone was tan and had bleached blonde hair, not the kind you get by going to the tanning or hair salon. They were beach bums. They skated up and down the shopping strip and onto the pier where they could watch the surf. Or they snuck down under the pier where they were smoking doobies and ripping swigs of some type of liquor. Everyone looked like teenagers and everyone was acting like it was summer vacation. Mind you, it was January or February and for all I know it could've been right smack in the middle of the week. We carried on, buying overpriced surfwear because they were the popular brands. I know now that these brands are never true to size and are the cheapest fabric possible. Get yourself a nice Roxy tank top, it's only kind of see through, and there will be a hole in it before you get the chance to wear it! 

    From there, we made our way back down South. We had colleges to visit. Colleges including Full Sail University. At the time I thought I could get into photography. But, again, without a scholarship and being across the country from where I currently resided, what was the point? It was nice to daydream about the possibilites that weren't really possibilities. It was more like playing pretend. We went to the San Diego Zoo before we left for home. I saw a tiger that was merely 3 inches of glass away from me. A hippo, bobbing up and down underwater, so elegantly, while he stared at us. And a polar bear, who was much larger than I had ever imagined, and he played sillily, swimming to a rock and then pushing himself off the rock on his back into the water, and back and forth he went. We watched him for what seemed like the whole time. I loved it.

    We took a shuttle bus to the airport. I can't remember much of any coversation we had the entire trip besides the comment about my weight. But, what I rememeber most vividly, was the silence on the shuttle as "Gypsy" by Fleetwood Mac played. I teared up because of what I stated earlier, I was feeling everything the way that I tend to do. As we filled our hands with our bags, Stevie sang "And her memory is all that is left for you now", and off we went. Back to Florida with a travel bug that would never be cured.