Tijuana, San Diego, and Highway 1

    I enjoy the whole process of traveling because it inspires self-confidence.  While planning my California trip, I took care to schedule my trip well and enjoyed the challenge of making my flights, trains, and buses on time.  I love staying in hotel rooms, talking to the Uber drivers, taking the tours, and eating on the fly.  Further, I am proud to have taken on the long, hard days where I have travelled and toured by myself.  For some reason I look to Robert Kennedy Jr. as a role model.  Kennedy is rich and handsome and could have satisfied himself by being the scion of a martyred politician but instead he dedicated himself to environmentalism.  Similarly, I have inherited a fortune and I have decided to dedicate myself to self-improvement through travel.  Kennedy would probably say that the rich life was vapid, vacuous, and unrewarding.  There must be a job, or an idea, that is worth transcending to and that is why I like to spend time on the road.  

   Another role model for me is Aragorn, the once and future king, and hero of the “Lord of the Rings” novels.  When we first meet Aragorn he is sitting in the corner of a tavern, the dust covered man made weary by his travels.  No one knows that he is all powerful.  Like Aragorn, I like to disguise myself.  With my scraggy beard, backpack, and cargo pants, my affectation is that of a cool old guy; road weary and knowledgeable and potentially all powerful.  For example, I got a big kick out of being stopped by security in the foyer of the Hilton in San Francisco.  The officer said, “Excuse me sir, but do you have a room key?”  What security meant was that he wanted to stop stragglers from entering the premises to use the bathroom.  Clearly he thought that I did not belong in his high priced hotel.  “I’m checking in,” was my curt reply.  Or, there was the maitre’d at the Hilton San Diego who tried to dissuade me from using his restaurant by suggesting that I might be more comfortable eating at their patio grill.  After eating a lot of McDonald’s and Subway Foot-Longs during the week, I was ready for a salmon dinner with brown rice on the side.  I took no offense, because I knew that I looked like a bum, but I wasn’t going to be dissuaded either.
    I boarded a plane destined for San Francisco on an early Sunday morning 6:00 am flight.  I landed at 9:30 am, PacificCoast Time and called for an Uber.  My driver was Rita and we chatted amicably on the way to the pier where she dropped me off at the first stop of the bus tour.  I was determined to not repeat my previous trip to San Francisco, so I did not go to Pier 39, but instead rode the bus around town.  The idea was to run the whole circuit once and then stop off during the second loop to visit anything that interested me, but the only location that I thought was worth stopping for was Chinatown.  I had never been there before so I took my time window shopping and took selfies next to the Buddha statues that the shops had to offer.  It was fun but I walked to my hotel early and checked in, knowing that I had to get up at 4:00 am to meet my bus the next day.
    I had booked a tour down Highway One and had expected to meet a huge bus with a big, fat, and  old man for a driver.  I had been instructed to wait outside of my hotel at 6:00 am and, since these things rarely go on time, I sat down on the floor in the doorway to write down some notes and wait for my driver.  That was when Lisa first approached me.  Initially, I thought that she was a woman who had been clubbing because, in the dark, she looked like a party girl.  Suddenly, she was standing over me, and she asked, “Are you Jeff?”  I couldn’t have been more surprised to hear my name come out of her mouth.  It soon became clear that Lisa was going to be my driver for our two day tour.  I couldn’t believe my luck.  She was young and beautiful and, being back lit with the street light shining behind her, she looked like an angel.  Instead of having a fat old man to drive me in a school bus, I got someone much closer to a supermodel who got behind the wheel of a Rav 4.
   Lisa was not the type of person whom I would ordinarily know.  If this were the 1960s, an apt description of her would have been a hippy.  She had an unusual past, growing up in Buffalo but spending  her summers in Aruba because her grandparents lived there.  Meanwhile, to release her unlimited supply of  energy, Lisa had been a ballerina from throughout high school.  When she was eighteen she was involved in a bad car accident and was put into a medically induced coma.  Everything turned out fine but, feeling isolated and vulnerable, Lisa almost joined a cult at twenty two.  She made the mistake of showing interest to a group from “The Children of God” who tried to recruit her, and only through the intervention of a neighbor did she repel the cultists.  It was a close call but, needing a change, Lisa escaped Buffalo by becoming a surfer girl in Hawaii and a tour guide in California.
   I have never met anyone like Lisa before in my life.  She had led this tour many times before but she was still so enthusiastic that I think that she enjoyed our excursion down the Pacific Coast Highway more than I did.  She was like a breath of fresh air; wild and free with the demeanor of a big kid.  All of her energy was bundled into a really small package; thin, tone, and coiled as if she was ready to spring at the least sign of excitement.  Lisa’s eyes were on high beam; always fully aware and sparkling with fun.  She constantly played with her hair when we were between activities and, if we had to wait for anything, like standing in line to get out room keys, she couldn’t stand still and bounced in place.  I kidded her that “I’ll bet you were a pain in the ass to have in the classroom” because she was in constant motion.  She smiled, but I couldn’t tell if she took my comment as a compliment or an insult.  It was intended as a compliment.
   The great thing about being my age and happily married is that I am not looking for a girlfriend and cannot imagine dating someone like Lisa.  At 28 years of age, she is really into mental health and discovering her “Spiritual Journey.”  Mindfulness, and trying to figure out how to center herself, took up most of her attention.  On her finger, she wore a ring in the shape of a wave, and that reminded her to “go with the flow.”  Given the opportunity, Lisa told me that she would like to visit Northern California to hike Mount Shasta, which is a root chakra.  Since I have always been more into history than philosophy, I had never heard of Mount Shasta, but apparently it is one of the roots of the Earth’s energy; it regulates the earth’s life and acts as a geyser of upward energy.  Mount Shasta is one of earth’s seven energetic chakras, which parallels the seven chakras of the body.  Instead of going to Shasta, however, Lisa found herself called to fly to Bangkok because she liked the energy there, and she supported herself by becoming a teacher.  Unfortunately, the pandemic isolated Thailand, and Lisa was almost stuck permanently in that foreign country but flew out before everything closed down.  Before becoming a tour guide for our trip, Lisa had been a bartender, preschool teacher, and had earned a real estate license from the state of New York.  She also has her commercial driver’s license to become a tour guide whenever her friend’s company needed her, and that is how I came to meet her on an early Monday morning.
   The first order of business was to pick up the other people who had signed up for the tour.  Since the pandemic, few people are taking trips and what should have been a tour for twenty five people turned into a tour for four.  The other people on our tour were Linda, who is 70 years old.  She lives in Pittsburgh and is married to Al, who has established a career in coding software, and her son, Jeremy, who is severely mentally handicapped.  Linda’s other son is Dan, a mattress salesman who is married to Emily, the fourth person on our tour.  Emily and Dan share a twelve year old daughter and a common interest in the paranormal.  I know all of this because I spent two full days with Emily, Linda, and Lisa, and they shared everything with me.  That was fine but but I found Emily’s belief in the paranormal, and Linda’s constantly interrupting our conversations to ask questions, a little annoying.  However, since I am trying to become a better person, I did my best not to argue or criticize, but instead became quiet when Emily or Linda said something controversial.
   The four of us made an unlikely group as we drove the scenic route down the west coast of California.  Our first stop was at Moss Landing to watch the seals.  There were kayak excursions available here, but since no one signed up for them, Lisa drove us around a seventeen mile loop to see Pebble Beach and Carmel.  It was all so beautiful but we needed to break up the day so Lisa dropped us off at Cannery Row in Monterey to do some shopping.  When she picked us up, Lisa asked me what I bought.  “Nothing,” I said.  “I have become a minimalist.”  She liked that remark a lot and used her trade phrase of “I love it” in response.  We shared a nice bonding moment when I said that I don’t collect things because objects could weight down your life.  I tried my hand at philosophy by quoting Buddha.  “The root of all suffering is desire,” was the best quote that I could think of but my efforts at talking about a subject that I had no experience in fell flat.
   On Tuesday, we drove to Big Sur.  A lot of our two days together were spent in the car and, since I shared the front of the vehicle with Lisa, we chatted amicably.  It helped to pass the time, talking about nothing in particular, but what I really wanted to ask Lisa was, “What happened to you?”  Meaning, she must have had a messed up childhood to look for answers to life’s questions at Mt. Shasta.  Deciding to probe gently and tread lightly, I asked her about her parents.  Either she didn’t hear the question or she pretended not to hear; either way, she didn’t answer so I assumed that they are on the outs.  Her face darkened when we talked about her childhood, so I said, to lighten the mood, “Do you know what the Buddha would say?”  Lisa responded, probably fearing a lecture, with, “No, what would the Buddha say?”  This was a set up to a joke, so I told her “The Buddha would say, ‘You gotta let that shit go!”  Lisa liked the comic relief and said, “I love it!”  That was enough honesty for awhile and, to distract me and the other tourists, she connected her iPhone to the Rav 4 and put on her “Highway One Playlist.”  She knew the demographics of her customer base well, so most of the songs were from Motown.  We drove down “The One” while singing Marvin Gaye, The Supremes, and all of the greatest hits from the 1960s.
   One of the items on Lisa’s bucket list is to ride a bicycle across the country and, when we saw a bicyclist on the side of the road, she parked the car and ran over to him.  The man’s bike was loaded down with panniers on the sides and front of his bike and he was grungy from a long ride.  He had been on the road for two months, had started his trip in Key West, and was ending it in Santa Cruz on the very day that we ran into him.  The guy must have felt like rock star because all four of us were making a big deal out of meeting him and were truly impressed with his cross country trek.  I swore that I would buy him a beer if we ran into him in Santa Cruz because that was our final destination as well.
     After spending the morning hiking in the woods at Big Sur, Lisa dropped us off at the boardwalk in Santa Cruz.  This boardwalk is similar to the one at Coney Island, filled with rowdy teenagers and sun burnt parents, and it definitely wasn’t my scene.  Hoping to spend more time with Lisa, I asked her where she was going, intimating that I would like to tag along.  Lisa didn’t like this line of questioning at all and clearly needed to keep some boundaries between her and her customers.  “As a tour guide,” she replied, “I am allowed breaks throughout the day so I am going shopping and then will meditate.”  She probably could guess that I didn’t want to do either of those things, so I took the hint, got out of the Rav 4, and strolled the boardwalk by myself.  After two hours, we met Lisa in the parking lot of a local hotel and said, “Hey Mom!  Thanks for picking us up.”  And she immediately joined the bit by asking, “did you kids have a good day?”  It was funny because all four of us joined in on the joke.
   Our final activity was to go and watch the surfers at the edge of town.  It was getting late and I had an attitude about what I thought was going to be a boring activity but Lisa was so enthusiastic that I couldn’t turn her down.  Watching the guys catch a wave turned out to be one of the nicer moments of the day and I chastised myself for having to learn the same lesson over again, which was “keep it light and loose and keep your mind open.”  
   Our day, and tour, was over and Lisa dropped Linda and Emily off at their hotel first.  She got out of the car and hugged them goodbye and we were on our way.  Once we arrived at my hotel, however, Lisa didn’t get out of the car and I awkwardly handed her the tip by reaching over the seats in the front of the Rav 4.  I didn’t even take offense at this because I am sure that Lisa is used to her customers hitting on her because she is so pretty.  She wanted to make it clear that she wasn’t interested in a tryst with a sixty year old man and I respected her for that.  I wasn’t interested anyway because I love my wife and wouldn’t do anything to hurt her.
   I took a thirteen hour Amtrak bus and train trip from San Francisco to San Diego.  The plan was to have a day of rest after touring for three days and it would be nice to have some solitude after the hours spent with Linda and Emily.  I encountered two surprises; the first was how crowded Amtrak was and the second was how many homeless lived next to the track.  As always, it was the people who made the trip memorable.  Four baseball players, who were taking a break from college, were on their way to watch the Padres but they argued incessantly amongst themselves over who they thought was the best player.  On the bus trip to downtown Los Angeles, a woman across from me gossiped non-stop on her phone and the heavy woman sitting next to men spilled over into my seat after she asked me if she could remove they hand rail that separated our seats.  Mr. Miles worked for a private security company and, since he took the train “four or five times a week,” he personally knew the conductor and the whole staff.  I am glad that I took the train but won’t ride it again because I could have rented a car and driven the distance in less than half the time that it took for Amtrak to get me to San Diego.
   Paul Theroux, the famous travel author, once wrote, “when everyone tells you not to go to a place, that is where you want to go.”  His advice always held some resonance with me, and I remembered Theroux’s words when I signed up for a tour of Tijuana.  Everyone I told about my tour said, “why would you want to go there?” Or, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”  As it turns out, Tijuana was the highlight of my time on the west coast.  My guide was Humberto and, because the pandemic had scared away so many tourists, I was the only one on this excursion.  In effect, I had unwittingly hired my own personal driver for the afternoon.  I said to Humberto, “show me your city,” and I think that he got a kick out of being unleashed.  Humberto took me to places that he would not ordinarily show to tourists.  We drove to the refugee camp where we saw thousands of immigrant from Honduras and El Salvatore who were hoping to gain entry into the United States by waiting next to the border.  We followed the border wall to its terminus in the Pacific Ocean and my guide told me the story of how two young girls drowned a couple of months ago when they tried to swim around the wall.  Our final destination was Tijuana’s “Red Building.”  It engulfed a whole city block and contained “The Hong Kong,” a giant strip club, on the inside.  On the outside, prostitutes leaned against the walls of the “Red Building.”  They were spaced out every ten feet or so but they weren’t like you see in the movies; the hookers were more interested in looking at their iPhones than in me and, if it weren’t for their revealing clothing, they looked like a bunch of women waiting for a bus.  Still, Humberto took off his tour guide badge and instructed me not to take any pictures because the prostitutes might think that we were government officials or something.  The idea behind the “Red Building” was that a man could drive around it, select a hooker, and then take her to a rented room above “The Hong Kong.”  It was all perfectly legal as the local government needed the tax dollars earned in the flesh trade.  Humberto asked me if I wanted to take a look around inside of the strip club and looked disappointed when I said no.  At the end of the day, I tipped my guide well and thanked him for what was, without a doubt, the most interesting part of my trip.
   Friday was a milquetoast day.  I took the trolley tour of San Diego, and then a boat tour of the bay, but it paled by comparison to the previous day’s trip to Tijuana.  I started out early and arrived at “Old Town,” a collection of historical California buildings brought to one place by the state, and had it to myself for an hour.  The trolley tour took me to the boardwalk on the harbor, and then the affluent area of Coronado which includes the hotel from the move “Some Like It Hot,” and finally Balboa Park, which contains the San Diego zoo and an air and space museum.  It really was a good day of tourism, and I am glad that I did it, but the trolly tour and the harbor cruise seemed a little too easy, a canned experience, for my taste.
   I met the airport shuttle bus in the hotel lobby at 4:15 am on Saturday.  San Diego closes its airport from 11:00 pm to 6:00 ambecause it is located right in the middle of the downtown area and the municipal authorities wanted to ensure some quiet time for the locals who might want to have some sleep uninterrupted by the roar of the airplanes passing overhead.  Only when I was safely on the flight home did I realize that I had enough of traveling after a week of being in constant movement.  I missed my wife and was tired of the road.  Apparently, seven days is about all that I am good for on a vigorous trip.  
    “The reason why I love this so much is because there is always that possibility that something can go wrong.”  That’s what Richard Gere said about a business venture in “Pretty Woman” but I think that the quote also applies to travel.  It all could have gone badly but I have learned some valuable lessons, the most important of which is to take care of all of your physical needs first.  Never pass up a chance to visit the bathroom, for example, and keep your sleep cycle intact as much as possible.  The second thing to do is to keep an open mind.  I tried to relax, enjoy myself, and welcome new experiences.  My final lesson is to take risks by striking up conversations with strangers.  I loved telling people that I am from Kentucky because that makes me unique on the West Coast.  The fact that I married a blind woman and that I participated in eleven Ironman competitions are also good conversation starters.  These three lessons made my trip go well and I patted myself on the back for making solid plans and for keeping a good attitude during the whole week.  My next solo trip will be to Machu Picchu in 2022 and Tracey and I will sail the Danube in October.    

Notes        
• Lisa tried to teach me some Swedish words, like Hej is the Swedish word for hello.  I told her, “You can try to teach me the Swedish words but they are never going to stick because I only have so much RAM in the brain and I choose not to use it for Scandinavian words.
• Lisa said that she meditates a lot during the day.  I compared meditating with writing in that I am always writing in my head.  If I take a long walk, I am writing.  When I am waiting for the bus, I am writing.
• Our group of four discussed dating and I said that smoking is not a deal breaker for me.  What I need is a wife who is smarter than me so that she will challenge me.
• Lisa said that I have a presence.
• When I told her that my scabs were falling off, Lisa said “we will be leaving part of Jeff in the car: and then laughed at her own little joke.
• Lisa kept her energy up for the whole trip.  She always kept some in reserve by taking breaks and meditating.  She wasn’t in to drugs or alcohol but turned on by doing yoga.  She likes the natural vibes and wants to go the the Mount Everest base camp in Nepal for the energy.
• When asked if she had a boyfriend, she demurred.  Lisa said that she had only one long term relationship but, “He couldn’t hang.”
• She would suddenly stop and start doing, deep knee bends, squats and others wise stretching
• Lisa seemed truly happy to see me when she caught up with me on the hiking trail; but, she embarrassed herself.  She had struck up a conversation with a middle age man at the bottom of a hiking trail.  When she asked him what he was doing, Lisa thought that he said that he was waiting for his better half.  I wasn’t in on that conversation but did meet that same man, who was with an old woman, on our way down from the mountain.  Lisa asked the woman, who was much older than the man and clearly not his wife, if she was married because Lisa thought that the old woman was the significant other that the middle aged man was referring to.  “No,” said the woman, who was clearly confused by this line of questioning, “my husband passed years ago.”  Not to be deterred, Lisa asked the man where his wife was and he replied, “she is staying at the lodge.”  It became clear that the old woman and the middle aged man were not married and didn’t like the inference.  As the saying goes, “If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.”  Lisa was embarrassed that she had made such a mistake and said “well, we’ll be leaving now” and all of the people involved were left confused by this altercation.  Cute because she showed us her vulnerable side.
• I don’t want to vacation with people like me.  How boring would that be?  Lisa was the perfect companion for a two day tour but she would drive me crazy in the long run.  I did my best not to screw up our relationship..
• I would like to do a five to seven day camping excursion, where they hang out at the end of a long day and pass the bottle around to swap stories, and I could hang out with twenty Lisa’s.
• Unflappable.  Didn’t let her customers get under her skin and was very patient
• When we had breakfast together, Lisa looked like an ordinary twenty eight year old woman but, but when she was driving down the road with her hair messed up because she had the windows down, and with her aviator glasses on and a nose ring through her right nostril, she looked like a rock star tour guide.
• I told Lisa that I actually cleaned my hotel room a bit before I checked out.  “Of course you did,” she exclaimed.  I said that you can tell a lot about a person by how they treat the staff.
• Emily immediately got on her phone to research me.  I told her, “Just look up Jeff Frazier in Louisville, Kentucky, and I’ll come right up!”
• They really liked hearing me read from my book and were interested in what I wrote.  Linda said that it was cool hearing an author read from his own work
• I think that I lost the other three when I told them stories from my old cheerleading days, or my commentary on how the bums of Las Vegas deserved their fate.