Other People Having Fun While You Are Not

I've been told by old people (and that's anyone over the age of 37) that it used to be a form of torture to have to look at someone else's vacation pictures. Out comes the slide projector. Out go the lights and here comes the "look how much better my life is than yours" speech. So if you are here, willingly reading a blog entitled "Do Not Read This!", keep in mind that you brought this on yourself and you probably deserve it.

My end of the deal would be to at least make this entertaining, unless of course I want you to be tortured. My recommendation to avoid seeing this as a form of torture would be to just imagine yourself on the beach. Unless of course seeing beach photos of someone else having the time of their life is your idea of bliss, in which case (and remember, these photos include me), please feel free to bliss out.

Here's the premise:

Rob and I seek "adventure" road tripping to the coast and "catching some waves" (this is, and I now feel quite qualified to say so, surfer lingo for successful surfing. This lingo must be spoken at a very moderate pace, preferably uttered while under the influence of inhaleable herbs while wearing a woven poncho, hood up or down is fine).

Public service announcement: Please don't stereo type surfers, they are all individuals.

Stocked with trail mix, beef jerky, chex mix, gatorade and water (yes mom, lots and lots of water unless we became stranded in the desert and were forced to survive by eating people that had crossed the border illegally -- you know, the ones sneaking right past John McCain who stands on a tower peering through a sniper scope saying "My friends I see no aliens, just a bunch of thirsty Mexican people. The fence is working. Oh look, an endangered jaguar." BANG) Rob and I made the trek to San Diego, which is a word of German origin, with a definition made famous by Ron Burgandy and Pinocchio, okay maybe not exactly Pinocchio. I also want to point out that I did not take the "wrong" freeway, just a "different" freeway. Roben is a VERY GOOD navigator.

We traveled to Encinitas, actually north of San Diego, and got a room at the Portofino Inn. Here is a picture along with a picture of Rob coming out of the hotel room.













It was quaint, cheep, and less than a mile from the beach. I highly recommend you do not stay there because then it will become popular and not cheap. Find your own bargain.

Here is a picture of the trailer park right next to our hotel where I do not currently live. Feel free to buy me a trailer in this trailer park and stay at the Portofino Inn all you want.Austin drove down from LA (THANKS AUSTIN!), and we walked across the whole town in search of Swami's - a semi hipster, mostly republican vegetarian joint. Then we walked to the "No dogs allowed beach" with Austin's dog Dexter, who likes to bark at skaters almost as much as Roben. With the soothing sounds of waves cresting below, we considered disguising Dexter with a hat, but without a hooded skater poncho, he might have stood out a bit much. After some "fro-yo" (*punches own face*), Austin took Dexter home to LA where he is more appreciated by Leif Garrett, who does not wear skater ponchos but does do drugs.

Rob and I biked to the beach that night. There were bonfires.

The next morning, Roben slept in and I went to the beach again. Here is a picture I took.

I, unlike most people, really like the beach.

As proof that most people do not like the beach, here is a picture from the last time Roben went to the beach a few weeks ago.Please note how unhappy these people are. See how many people are unlike me? This second picture is from Pacific Beach so we drove there to surf.

So I have this weird fear of sharks. Especially like the one looking at you in this picture, because to them a surfer looks like a seal when you are a shark looking up from below.

I know this is completely unreasonable, so please feel free to shut up about it. As luck would have it, the hotel had cable and it was shark week. My compliments to the Discovery Channel. Nevertheless, assured by statistics and reason, Rob and I rented surfboards and wetsuits and headed out to the water. Now I had this top notch reality TV show crew following us around, expecting that they would take all the video of us surfing, but while we were out "catching waves", the TV crew heard that the Situation and Snooki were on a west coast tour where they were both flashing people out on the pier. I know what a Situation is, but I am still a little baffled considering I am pretty sure that a Snooki is either a robe you wear backwards or it's what you call it when you are dumpster diving behind a restaurant and find someone has dumped ice cream and a pie-sized chocolate chip cookie in the garbage. When I tried to give the film crew a hard time about this, they said, "Cuz (and the guy was not my cousin), even if that's what a Snooki was, it would still be more interesting to film than you surfing." This is what surfers call "Trash talking".

Public service announcement: Even my s*#&&@ puns are better than Jersey Shore. This is also what the surfers call "trash talking".

So here are some pictures Rob and I took when we dropped off our boards and wet suits.

Surfing is really hard, no matter how easy Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves make it look. "Nobody puts Ted in a corner." You have to paddle a lot, wait for a wave, turn your fat a%& around and pull your doughy white suburban body up onto a teetering, floating piece of fiberglass. I managed to achieve this about four times for sure. Two times I was still on my left knee and the other two times I fell off right away. Mostly I just paddled around. Roben said that's his favorite part. He would have enjoyed himself way more if he were me. If you still think you can do better, remember that the surfing you are doing right now consists of moving your mouse and clicking.

We pool hopped at a coast hotel, lunched at Ralph's grocery and stopped at a store called Pangea, where they had these. Lot's and lot's of these. We bought a monkey one for Heather.

Then we headed to Harbor Village for fresh fish tacos. You don't know it, but you are very jealous. We considered renting a boat because, as Roben said, we could say "I'm on a boat." There was also an unfortunately ugly lady there that Roben couldn't stand to look at. There was also a scrawny little gal that could easily lift a bucket full of ice over her head. We ordered deep fried OREOs. My arteries swelled up like Snooki after botox.

Next morning was the beach again. It is habit forming. We took pictures. I tried to get pictures of Sand Pipers, but they kept flying away. Here are some that stayed.









I found a pair of sunglasses that likely belonged to someone who was carried off by the tide. It seemed to me that whoever it was lived their life like a candle in the wind. I put them on and was not carried out to sea.



We also took pictures of each other looking contemplative as the waves went about their business of never stopping.











Waves make a soothing noise. They actually sell machines that attempt to replicate it but these will ultimately pale in comparison to the real thing. I believe the surfer term for this noise is "Whoah."

We toured the town on our bikes and found the oddly random little girl statue right below the rail station and the boss mural of whales and other sea life. This would be a terrible time to call to mind the German definition of San Diego.


You can easily see how much fun Roben was having in these pictures. What could be more fun than taking pictures by sea murals and a statue of a little girl?


We headed down to Swami beach to check out the tidepools. There were crabs, anemones, sea slugs and Roben's shoes got soaked. I took pictures but they all sucked. Trust me, it was cool.

I swam and took one last picture. We went to Juanita's tacos, got hunormous sodas and basically peed the whole way home. El Centro. Yuma. A rest stop. A special thanks to Manchester Orchestra, Muse, Tom Petty and R.E.M. for the soundtrack of our trip. If you would like to hear a sample or own the soundtrack, buy the songs off of iTunes yourself or something. Feel free to create a playlist called Roben and Joel's West Coast Adventure.


Please note no actual Snooki's were injured in the making of this blog. All the damage done to Snooki she did on her own. Also, here is a picture of a Snooki in the wild. A surfer word for Snooki would be "Skank".