Trip to Del Mar III: The Journey Home

Before the concert started, I sauntered over to the merchandise booth to get my Knitters T-shirt. I had only brought the shirt I was wearing because it was just an overnight trip and I thought that, worst case scenario, I would have to wear the same shirt an extra half-day for the trip home or, best case scenario, I would have a brand new Knitters T-shirt to wear at every rest stop on the way home. Complete strangers would look at me and think about how cool I was for a middle-aged man. I even told this to Billy C, who by the way had brought a whole freaking wardrobe.

When I came back to our table, I showed him my shirt. He got up, saying that he wanted to get shirts for his whole family. When he got back, he asked me if I wanted him to take my shirt to the car and leave it with his. Knowing that when I drink I forget things, I said yes.

After the concert, we drove back to the hotel room and put our stuff in our room and then walked up to a pub whose name I forget for a last beer of the evening. We drank and discussed the concert, which we both agreed may have been the best concert ever in the universe, except for maybe the premiere of Beethoven's 9th or any Snake Suspenderz show.

Our motel was practically on the beach, so, on both the walk to the pub and our walk back, we could hear the crashing of the waves. We saw a lot of bunnies around the landscaped nature trail. We saw a drunken couple, he sitting on a bicycle and she trying to climb on the back in her mini-skirt. Once she got on, they coasted down the dark street, hopefully not to their doom, but it could have happened-their doom, that is.

Once back inside our hotel room, I decided to try on my T-shirt before I went to bed. I looked through the bundle of shirts and found that BC had gotten one exactly like mine.

That didn't bother me, but the next morning, after he had showered and went for his dailey walk, I also showered and got dressed, putting on my brand-new Knitters T-shirt.

Moments later, BC walked in and he was wearing the duplicate shirt.

How tacky.

So, pretty much everywhere we go, people look at us. We look enough alike in our matching shirts that people thought we were a couple of cute, aging twins. We were also both wearing straw hats that were different enough, but given the T's, made us look even more twinish.

It got to the point that, wherever we went, one of us just said "We're not twins, okay?" to whomever stared at us.

Our plan for the trip back was to stop at this Japanese restaurant for lunch, but we found, since it was labor day, the place was closed-as were most of the places we had planned on stopping. Even Giacoletti's in Carlsbad, where they have a variety of ukuleles in stock, was closed.

So we stopped at a roadside Mexican fast food place-not a chain, but a one-of-a-kind place- and had breakfast burriti, which were very tasty.

The trip home after that was pretty uneventful. I may have fallen asleep. BC snored the night before. Actually, we both snore, but he fell asleep first. So I was more tired than he.