Day 20- June 8, 2006 - San Clemente to San Diego

I get completely dressed and ready to go, hurrying Doug along, slightly panicked that we won't make it out in time, before I realize that somehow in setting the alarm the night before, I set the clock ahead an hour, and this is something I would do at home, but have not done away, and Doug uses this extra time as justification for staying in bed longer and I let it comfort me because for the first time on the trip, I've woken up tired, been unwilling to get up, and now I know why.

The hotel leaves a free newspaper on our doormat, and we take one last look around the room, sad to move on, wondering if this place is as good as it gets. I check out while Doug smokes outside. The night before, while pulling our massive car into the overhang parking lot, it scrapes against a pole and I do not see damage in the dark, but in daylight, the scratch is noticeable, chipped paint on the panel and door handle, and I don't know how much I will be charged for this, but I'm sure that I will be, and I try not to thing too much about it because when I do, my stomach churns preparing to expel its contents to make room for the taste of defeat.

We leave the hotel heading South, for San Diego, and Doug has his heart set on stopping for breakfast in Oceanside since we didn't stay the night there, and he pulls off the highway just as I've forgotten his announcement of these plans. We stop at an authentic roadside diner along the old route 101. The people in these parts are big on patriotism, with signs that announce their support for "our president and our troops". They are in the windows in the diner, in the back windows of cars on the main road. We count naval and marine bases on the way, figuring that they are the cause of this attitude, because from where we stand, there must be reasons.

The food is good enough and on the way out we grab a map of Southern California, which I say would have been helpful the day before but ends up not being all that helpful at all. We get back on Route 5, and take it straight South toward Tijuana and I think of all the old joking about running away to Mexico and sometimes Doug suggests this and sometimes I am tempted to give the okay.

We follow the signs for the San Diego Zoo, which Doug decides will be our first order of business in town. We'd avoided other zoos along the trip, figuring that we would get more than our fair share of animals once we got down here. It was overcast, and we hoped this would deter families from visiting the zoo, but once we pulled into the parking lot, our hopes evaporated. It was packed; the entrance lined with half a dozen school buses and I tell Doug that when I was little we used to take trips to the Bronx zoo every three weeks and he stops me midsentence to say that he knows, I've told him before, say it every time we are at any zoo. I feel like my mother.

We spend a few hours there, and I'm not sure that the details are worth going into since Doug captured them so extensively in photographs. Maybe I expected more from the place, the reputation, but there wasn't anything particularly thrilling about being there. I left feeling like I had seem most everything there before scattered somewhere along the East Coast and I do not know if this is actually true or if it is just a feeling.

When Doug started driving through downtown, I called our hotel for directions and it wasn't far, and we got there, checked in. The hotel is nothing special, no TV channels, no charm, no comforter on the bed (until the maid brought it a couple hours later) and I wondered if we'd gotten spoiled, if we would be disappointed with anything that wasn't San Clemente.

Once we were settled, we went out to eat, and Doug and I argue most when we are both hungry, stubborn but playing indecisive and finally we pull into a chain restaurant we spot off the highway. We eat, and get drinks and it never sits well with me just how well versed Doug is with alcohol- reminds me that he has lived many lives before me and we talked about this in San Clemente, I think, briefly, me trying in vain to express my resentment that my future cannot contain the sort of exploration that's found in his past. And it's not that I want it particularly, except that I worry that having a boyfriend so constantly has me missing out on some of the more ridiculous points of being young- something I barely feel anymore.

I fall asleep almost immediately after we get back to the room. It's because of the travelling, but Doug blames the alcohol. Halfway through the night, I get up, stumble through the darkness towards the thin light at the window where the curtains don't come together completely and, my morning breath hanging in the air, lean down to turn off the air conditioning, not remembering how it got switched on in the first place.