Palizado and Mariposa

I’m here now. I’ve made it to where I am supposed to be. “Oh.  You drove down?  The ride’s nice, if you don’t take The Five."  We took The Five and it was still nice.  Coming from two weeks in New York it is warm here.  And driving along Five blends in to what the coastal highway was anyway.  There is the ocean and the waves in January and they crash and crash.

We listen to “Tommy” and we listen to Iggy and we settle upon some Horace Silver: Cape Verdean Blues.  We’ve blown right through the southern L.A. communities we were looking to pull off in.  "Should we visit Newport Beach?"  "Weren’t we going to go to Laguna Beach?"  "What’s that thing?"  "That’s the nuclear reactor at San Onofre."  "Oh.  When was that built?  Sixties?"   "Must have been. You know how I know that name?"  "How?"  “Surfin’ U.S.A.” 

We end up pulling off the highway at Oceanside.  This would seem to be the northern most commuter community to San Diego.  I think we’ve completely missed our chance to find a quaint beachside community.  Oceanside seems pleasant enough.  There are streets names “Palizado” and “Mariposa.”  We plod about like idiots randomly trying to find a Starbucks for coffee.  My friend asks Siri to find a “Starbucks” and now we’re parking at a lot, getting into a very long line there at the Starbucks.

Later we’re a little further down the road and ready for lunch.  We stop in town.  I have it in my mind to find a good Mexican place.  We’re awfully close to the country itself. We can’t find anywhere to park.  Let’s keep going.  Soon we’re on top of Dini’s.  I should have stuck with salad.  Instead I got a big heaping plate of huevos rancheros that was notably mediocre.  Next to us a group of people in their sixties were talking about Fox News.  They seemed so painfully honest and mid western with their “gosh's” and their “golly’s”.  I did my best not to listen to their conversation.  The bald gent was also apparently named after the Baptist and his his wife kept saying “John” over and over, pricking my ears making it impossible to ignore them.