How our recent San Diego trip nearly killed us.

The whole trip in itself started out innocently enough. Knowing that sometime in the near future that we'd have to visit family out in California, She-Ra found quite the deal for a downtown San Diego hotel on Groupon.

Called the Porto Vista hotel, near the famous stretch of whats known as “Little Italy”, just a hop skip and jump from the ocean, it seemed like the perfect getaway after spending the day with She-Ra's sister, brother in law and their two kids. So she bought the Groupon and we tentatively made arrangements to not only pass through Palm Springs to see my dads but to hit San Diego and check in with Erin, Jay, Nick, and Natty.

Then, a rather bad thing happened. On the eve of the Super Bowl, while doing work on the computer, the phone rang and on the other end was the co-owner and manager of the restaurant I was kitchen managing for. It didn't take long for her to make it clear that my services were no longer needed and my position was made redundant. Since then it has been a daily struggle to find a decent job here in Tucson and plans were put on hold to drive to the Golden State and enjoy the company of our loving, yet completely insane, family.

Then one day She-Ra had made a discovery. The Groupon for that hotel in San Diego was going to expire soon and eating a hundred bucks didn't seem fun or feasible. So after some much delegation we both said “Fxxk it! We need some time away from her job and my job worries. We have some money saved up. My government benefits had finally started kicking in. Let's take off for a few days and bask in the sun and let our toes run deep into beach sand!", a near fetish for my lady if you must know.

Our plan was to leave first thing Monday morning and return late Wednesday night. Boom, boom. Quick and painless. Easy in and easy out. Or...so we had thought.

Monday morning rolled around and our garden was covered in sleet and hail. Flurries were coming in from the west and the winds blew mighty gusts nearly tearing the canopy off our patio, sending hanging plants to their near doom. To say the least, we were delayed. Luckily a break in the weather gave us enough time to load up the car and consider hitting the road. The family wanted us there for dinner at 5:00. It was well past noon. It was going to be close. Very close.

After grabbing a snack and rolling on to the I-10, all was clear and it looked as if our trip was going to be on time and just fine. We hit the mountainous overpass that leads you into the San Diego valley and were delighted to find that it had transformed into a winter wonderland. Snow was everywhere, covering rocky plains and pine trees, enough that you might be tranced into believing a man in a thick red coat was scurrying off in the distance with a pack of reindeer. It was that magical. I tried to take a picture of it, but we were moving much too fast.

Then...we hit the decent.

At first I just thought it was the rough road below us, but the face of She-Ra told a different story. Apparently everytime she applied the brakes, the entire rig would rattle as if to incite complete destruction of the Chevy. It was harrowing. We white knuckled the entirely too long drift downward and when we finally made it to flat territory, She-Ra made the call to her sister.

Luckily Erin and her husband Jay and military so we know we could get a smoking deal on some new brakes if we just dropped the car off on the base's auto lot. Erin assured us that would be no problem. Then asked us if we wanted to go to Sea World.

We said yes.

Finding the hotel was easy enough as it was right off of the I-8, but parking would turn out to be a problem. Apparently the Porto Vista hotel wants to charge $25 a night for parking. That's outrageous, even if I had the cash. Luckily for me, spending over 12 years in San Francisco, it gave me an advantage to seek out and locate street parking. My skills of yore had not faded and we got a tight spot just a half block from the lobby. It's like riding a bike I suppose, except back in SF your bike is a full sized car and you spend endless hours at night circling your neighborhood just to find a spot. Sometimes, they don't come. Sometimes, the city wins and you end up a mile away having to hail a cab to make it safely back to your flat.

Checking in was easy enough, but after getting into the elevator, hitting floor 4, turning right and heading towards the second building as instructed by the desk clerk, we ran into yet another snag.

The two separate buildings that make up the Porto Vista hotel is not connected by mere hallways. Oh no. They align by the thinnest of catwalk bridges that are fully exposed to the elements. I immediately did a double take seeing the vertigo inspiring sight and all She-Ra could muster was a “Oh hell no!” Now, I'm not afraid of heights, I just don't like them, but this, my friends, was like a scene from Temple of Doom when they have to cross that narrow and flimsy rope bridge overlooking a deep chasm below. The only reason I made it across the bridge was because I had to pee really bad. She-Ra on the other hand, completely in tears, made a bee-line to the lobby to try and plead her case for a more non-phobic soliciting room.


(this picture gives the terror no justice but...you get the idea)

After doing my duty and running as fast as I could to avoid hitting a seagull and getting blown off of the catwalk from sturdy ocean breezes, I made it to the lobby where She-Ra was in deep negotiation with the front desk clerk.

“Happens all the time,” he said nonchalant. “This building is kind of weird.”

“Weird?” I said. “The architect is the weird one. Why would anyone design a place that causes panic in people? Who is this maniac?”

The man just shrugged and handed us a room card, one that was right above us and nowhere near those vile gangplanks of death.

The rooms themselves were nothing fancy, but an odd curio of the place is the inclusion of images of thin white people doing activities on the walls in the rooms and elevator. Are they trying to be LA metro? Artsy? It came off as a bad interior design student flaw in a final so after cleaning up we headed out to get that well needed complimentary cocktail.



Included with the room was what was described as a “Welcome Cocktail” in the top floor's bar and bistro. Walking in there, I was immediately struck as a grubby invader of their swank little happy hour soiree. The bartender seemed to disapprove of us as well. No matter though, we handed over a voucher, ordered two vodkas with a Jager back. The ratio to soda and vodka was like 90 to 10 and the Jager shots came in glass thimbles. Just getting the shot to my face was hard enough though. After a harrowing day, heck, a harrowing two months, I seemed to have developed a bit of a shake and I had to handle the small shot glass with both hands to insure it got to my mouth. The trip was off to a rocky start.


(the view from my side of the bed. Ugh...)

That's when She-Ra called her sister to inform them that we just got in and would not make it for dinner. On the other end, I could hear chaos. The kids, staying up long past their bedtimes and not getting a chance to see Auntie Roo (that’s what they call her) and Uncle Mark sent them into a series of shrieks and moans. We felt bad, but, what could we do? So after finishing our “cocktail” we left the Porto Vista to take a well needed calming stroll around Little Italy and the bay.

This part of the trip went right. It was a cool evening, a mellow dining crowd was either over packing one restaurant or completely ignoring another. This was a strange didactic that we really couldn't figure out. We found a good English style pub and had a pint with a sous chef who told us of another “better” bar, a real dive he called it when we made it known we were visiting from Tucson, so after our pints we headed out to find this place.

It wasn't a dive at all. In fact, here in the T-dizzle, it's what we might call a “douchey crap hole”. Sure it had fun stuff on the wall and was kind of dark but the clientele deemed it otherwise. So we quickly downed our drinks and went in search of mixers for the bottle we had packed before we left.

Here's a tip for all you drinkers that want to visit downtown San Diego and enjoy drinks in your room: Come fully prepared! They can't legally sell booze to go for some odd reason the guy at the 7-11 gave us, and mixers are tiny and overpriced. Why I forgot the soda water and 7Up is beyond me, but we made due with what we found and crawled in to call it a day.

The following day we met up with Erin and drove the car out to the base. What might cost us a few hundred dollars out in the real world would only run us a few bucks here. In fact, the original estimate for fixing the brakes was less that $40. Score.

Luckily the kids had a half day so after gathering them up from school, we headed out to Sea World.



Now, I'm not going to bore you with a “We had so much fun at Sea World!” montage of tales (which we did), but here's a few shots of the day with some captions. The only thing missing is the photos and tale of the two kids and myself riding the roaring rapids ride four times in a row. It was that slow at the park and after what we've just been through and what I've been going through, getting absolutely soaking wet and screaming your heads off sounded like a good idea. At the time. It was pretty miserable trying to maneuver throughout the day with clothes that weighed a ton and some indiscreet chafing going on down below.

Enjoy!


Erin, NIck, Natty and Auntie Roo about to get Shamu splashed.


And....spalsh!



These fish beggars were soooo loud!


Yay!


Even our favorite motorcycle video game was there. Alright!


About to get soaked again...


Toward the end of the day Erin received a phone call that garnered some concerned looks on her face. Thinking that it just might be a problem with the current school the kids are in because, well, apparently there's some kind of teacher/student discrepancy and they might have to relocate the two to a more suitable institution. After hanging up, Erin pulled me aside.

“Mark,” she said in a whisper, “I don't want to freak Roo out but....it's about the car.” She-Ra was a good league away from us walking with the kids so I felt our conversation would be privatized.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Well...it's a lot worse than we thought.”

“How worse?”

“Like...two grand worth.”

My jaw dropped. My heart sank. And I felt the pangs of poverty swipe over me.

“Well,” I tried to muster a sentence, “well...what's wrong with it?”

“Everything,” she assured. “It's not only the brakes but you have two cracked axles and a cracked manifold. Literally, your engine is fxxked.”

I didn't know what to say. What could I say? There was nothing to say? I guess I could go into the robbing of convenience stores but after watching a few episodes of Worlds Dumbest, I know I would get pinched and be featured on a future episode.

“Don't worry about it,” Erin said. “I went ahead and authorized the whole thing. We can work something out.”

The rest of the day was spent in relative shock. Back at the hotel room, we were too dazed to sleep so at 1am, we left the room to find the only bar open was that douchey place that sous chef told us about. It had been a long time since we closed a bar. We did whatever we could to ignore the horror of knowing that the trip coming into San Diego could have been met with much more disastrous results. Luckily we would pick up the car tomorrow and head back home. She has to work on Thursday and I had a big phone interview with the Reid Park Zoo at 3pm. At this point, we just wanted to be back home.

That's when things got more tense.

The next day as we were packing up Erin called to say that the car would not be done until Thursday. So we made frantic phone calls to try and get her shift covered and my phone interview redirected to her cell phone. She got her shift covered rather easily and I called all of the zoo contacts I had to be sure they called the cell. Now, all we could do was wait.

That night we played with the kids and picked at our dinner. This “vacation” was turning into an anxious account of ones own ability to embrace what obstacles life gives you and be thankful for the support and love of family.

The only question was, would we ever make it home?

The following day, Thursday, we checked out and waited at Erin's for not only the garage to call but the zoo as well. The garage closed promptly at 6pm and the zoo said they would call at 3. So we waited. And waited. A minute would become and eternity. Erin's phone would ring and we would spring up thinking it was the garage but, it never was. By 2:30pm, we thought that I might have to stay another night and pick it up on Friday and send her home in a rental car. We tried to read our books but our eyes just glanced over the words, making very little sense of what was really going on.

3pm. No phone call. 3:10. Nothing. That's it I thought, I blew the big interview. But at 3:15 She-Ra's cell rang and on the other end was the zoo. At least one thing went right.

I went into the office and sat down. They asked a series of questions and I thought that I had actually nailed it. In reality, I probably sounded like a warbling gibbon set for dumb. I tried to get the words out as best I could but each syllable was a struggle. At the end I thanked them and exited the office.

That's when it hit. I broke down. Now, I am not afraid to say that I cry in movies and have a good amount of estrogen flowing through my system, so in front of She-Ra's sister and her Marine drill instructor husband, I wept. Was it because of my current job situation? Was it because I really wanted to work at the zoo? Was it the fact that I'd have to stay yet another night in San Diego and drive that long drive home alone? Who knows. Point is I let it all out and in the end I felt a little better.

4pm rolls around and Erin's phone rings.

“Oh it is? Oh great. We'll be there soon!”

The car was done! We could go pick it up! We could go home!

Thing is, we had no way to get out there.

Jay had the van and was picking up the kids from school. 4:30 comes. No Jay, no kids. Maybe you should call him She-Ra suggested. When Erin did, apparently Jay was in an impromptu “meeting” with a teacher. The sweat began to pour off of our palms.

Finally around 5:15 (mind you, the garage closes right at 6pm and we still have to navigate the San Diego freeway to get there) Jay arrives with the kids. We don't think, we pile our stuff into the van and crawl in.

“I forgot I have to get a haircut and pick up my uniform for tomorrow,” Jay says. “remember I have that big interview?”

I begin to shake even more now.

Seeing the gravity of the situation, Jay acclimates and just has us drop him off at a barber nearby and he'll walk the kids back home when he's done. We quickly say our goodbyes and speed off onto the highway.

It's 5:30pm on a central Southern California freeway...so guess what we run into? Wall to wall traffic.

Erin is making rapid calls to the garage, giving credit card information as she drives.

“Just hold the car till we get there!,” she instructs. “We're almost there.”

The traffic begins to move, we round the edge of the residential area, we start to see large helicopters, are those barracks? Yes. It's the base and the clock now reads 5:50pm.

We pull into the base, make a quick right turn and, blammo, we see the garage. At first sight we see all of the repair depots locked up for the night but see that the office is still open. In the distance, beyond the gray surface of a well worn parking lot, is our little Chevy Impala.

What started out as a fun retreat had developed into one of the tensest days of my career as a human. What started off as a $36 fix it, turned into a three page, it took the guy a full ten minutes just to ring up all the repair work that had to be done, over $1,500 worth of parts and labor, epic event. And here all we wanted was to go to the beach.

No time for that now.

We then transferred all of our stuff from the van into our car and fueled up on base. When folks in San Diego found out that we here in Tucson still have gas prices in the late $3 rage, everyone was shocked. In California, it's nearly $5. On the base? Back to Tucson prices. Much thanks to the US military for saving our asses...in more ways than one.

We hugged and thanked Erin and then got in the car, which jumped the minute She-Ra hit the accelerator because of the newly installed power, and was soon on the freeway. We were on our way. I never thought I'd miss the dog so much.

The first length of the drive was in relative silence, seeing as we were still in shock and awe about what just happened. But once we got on that flat, long and dreary stretch towards Arizona, She-Ra made a fun suggestion.

“Since we didn't bring any audiobooks and the DVD player is in the trunk, what don't you read your book out loud?”

I was re-reading The Hunger Games seeing as the movie had just come out and I was about 75% of the way through. Seeing as she has already read the entire series three times, I could just pick up where I was and she'd know exactly where I was.

So I grabbed the book, turned on the little rear view mirror light and glanced out into the speeding darkness to find a sign that indicated Tucson was a good 200 miles away. So I tucked in and began reading.

Now, here is the power of reading and reading a good book. What I thought would take a good three hours to get to Tucson, felt as if it'd taken ten minutes. Before I knew it she was turning off into Miracle Mile and heading towards home. I couldn't believe it. I had completely lost track of time. Thank you Suzanne Collins for the awesome words. And thanks of all be to She-Ra for making the suggestion. And, before I knew it, we were turning into the parking lot for Nancy's Pub where our good friend Tank was bartending and a few random pals were scattered about.

We regaled them with our terse fable of what we just went through and shots were being bought all around. Real ones. Not those hoity pen caps they served it up in back at that dumb hotel. Afterward we had to get She-Ra back home and in bed. She had to be up early the next day. While I just had a ton of laundry and praying to do.

A few days later I found out that I did not get the job at the zoo. Well, to be honest with you, I kinda didn't think I would anyway, but I was honored just as much to have the opportunity to even get an interview. So I must be doing something right.

Oh, and the car runs like a dream. It's like we have a new car only...it's the same car. So thank you She-Ra's family for coming through for us. And thank you Tim for taking care of the place and dog while we were gone. We owe you big.

One last thing. We found this downtown near that douchey bar we closed out. Ah, San Diego. It really does mean a “whale's vagina”.





Thanks for reading.