Trip Highlights

The Beach

Although I put a lot of time and effort in putting together my beach outfit (I had to actually go and buy a bathing suit for the first time in years), I clearly am not a beach girl after all.

• I put out my towel on the sand beside Switchback's. Hers was easily twice the size of mine. I had assumed that because my towel had blue stripes, it was a beach towel. My towel was not a beach towel.
  
• I was smearing sun screen on Switchback's back and she started yelling at me for standing on her towel, telling me that not standing on someone else's towel is the number one rule of beach etiquette.
  
• I brought a book that Redras had lent me and left it spine-open in the sun when I went into the water. When I came back, the glue had melted and the pages from the first part of the book had come completely loose.
• I brought way too much stuff to the beach. I didn't use half of it.
  

Tijuana

One of the advantages of an unplanned trip is that you get to make it up as you go along. After the beach on Saturday we were discussing what we could do. I mentioned that I'd never been to Mexico. So we drove to the border, parked the car, and walked to Mexico. I loved the fact that there was no checking of documents on one's way INTO Mexico, but there was a big line to get OUT of Mexico. Tijuana was dirty, just as I expected. But the dirty men who solicit you are strangely good for the self esteem. When I'm feeling down, I'll always remember that dirty old men in Mexico will always want me. The number one priority in Mexico was to get a gift for a friend of mine who asked me to pick him up something expensive in Mexico. I got him a Mexican wrestling mask like Strong Bad wears.

Seals

There's this beach in San Diego that was made for humans but that seals found and claimed for themselves. So now, there's a beach in San Diego where humans can go to stare at seals. There's a line drawn in the sand that you're not supposed to cross. Switchback tells me that sometimes old men drag their barbecues across the line to protest the seal's claim on the beach. Then the PETA people get angry. The old men believe that humans, not seals, should have the beach.

Mirage

I rode back to Utah with Captains Fabuloso and Mom. On our way through Nevada, we stopped at Primm, an outlet shopping center. Immediately before you reach Primm, there is a stretch of desert that is sand only. We could see the area as we were driving towards it because we were coming from a higher elevation---we could see the sandy area and Primm very clearly. But as we got closer and lower in elevation, I saw that there was a giant lake in front of Primm. I thought that was funny because I hadn't seen a lake when we were looking down on the area, but the lake was clearly there. You could even see the reflections of the buildings in the water. And at this point, I started to recall something about mirages being an actual physical phenomenon. I suppose I had always assumed that they were more a mental delusion than a physical phenomenon. Only I knew that I wasn't delusional and I wasn't even thirsty. Captains Fabuloso and Mom discussed the "lake" with me and we all determined that as real as it looked to all of us, it must be a mirage. And sure enough, the closer we drove to Primm, the smaller the lake got until it eventually turned to dust. Which was so cool but would have been so depressing if we had actually been thirsty, dying wanderers.