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penfieldClick here for Part One.
Click here for Part Two.
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 8
J. had thoughtfully made the arrangements for the romantic portion of our trip: a two-day, two-night retreat, just the two of us. I always wondered why people called their minivacations "retreats" or "getaways," as if the vacationers were being pursued by armed servicemen or something. Especially since retreat from law enforcement is typically more frantic than leisurely, and rarely involves golf (unless you are O.J. Simpson).
I suppose people look at "retreats" as getaways from the idiocy and bureaucracy of their everyday lives. What they don't consider is that, perhaps even more so than law enforcement, idiocy and bureaucracy are <1>everywhere.
Personally, I think you have to be aggressive and doggedly pursue relaxation. Order people around; get your way. Don't let anyone stand between you and a good time. Step on someone's toes? Who gives a shit? You're on vacation. That's why I like to consider my weekend vacations "attacks" instead of "retreats." That also explains my driving style.
This particular attack was to take place by sea. Our destination was Catalina Island, located approximately 30 miles (54 Starbucks) off the southern California coast. It therefore required a trip on the Catalina Express shuttle (motto: "The Fastest Fleet Afloat, Fine for Ferrying Families, Fishermen and Fat Fucks Flaunting Fanny-Packs").
Our port of call was Dana Point, a mere hour-long drive up the coast from San Diego. Even behind the wheel at the yawn-inducing hour of 8 a.m., I was excited at the prospect of trekking up the coast with the ocean just over my left shoulder. However, Interstate-5 is not as close to the water as it seems on a map, so there was not much to look at on my left other than the steady flow of irate motorists in the passing lane.
We had built so much travel time into our morning agenda that we arrived at the marina an hour early. We wandered around for a while until the Catalina Express booth opened up and they told us where to park, where to board, what that smell is, etc. They directed us to a dockside diner for bathrooms and breakfast and penicillin.
While we waited for our ship to board, J. and I split a breakfast burrito and biscuits-and-gravy. I always like the idea of biscuits-and-gravy when I see it listed on a menu, but it never occurs to me until after I am served that the"gravy" is sausage gravy – which is just a slightly nicer way of saying "spiced fat." And these particular biscuits were absolutely smothered in it, as if the gravy had been used to extinguish some sort of biscuit fire. J. and I were hungry enough to finish those biscuits, but we clearly felt a little ashamed about it, avoiding eye contact with each other as well as the gravy.
It was a worse omen when we had loaded our luggage and boarded the small two-level skiff, when J. realized she had left her purse in the diner. The Catalina Express People, operating under the premise that she was some sort of terrorist plotting to blow up 25 tourists, four swarthy crew members and her boyfriend, first refused to let her leave. Then they agreed to escort her back to the diner so she could retrieve it. Once she returned, we claimed seats in the rear uncovered portion of the upper deck. From there we could see the great Pacific Ocean unraveling mysteriously, endlessly, like an Oliver Stone movie.
The captain's disembodied voice crackled over the P.A. system in a low monotone, welcoming us to the boat and giving us the standard spiel about lifejackets and waves and swells and whatever. Soon the vessel sputtered away from the dock, pushing out slowly into the water. We bobbed to-and-fro for a while, and gradually the boat accelerated toward the island.
But even as the boat reached a cruising speed, she never really stopped bobbing to-and-fro. Out of panicky curiosity, I started wishing I had listened to the captain talking about his waves and swells. The ocean was starting to feel uncomfortably swollen, like a big maritime goiter. With one hand I gripped the McDonald's-style molded plastic seat to brace myself against the boat's violent hops and yaws, and with my other hand I clamped my baseball cap to my head in the throes of a seabreeze so stiff, it felt like being slapped across the face with a yardstick.
The conditions became so unbearable that J. and I gingerly climbed into the second deck's forward cabin. For a moment I felt warm and peaceful. Only for a moment, though. Because moving forward only amplified the boat's jerks and movements, and that's about the time I felt an ugliness worming from the nape of my neck down to my stomach. I can remember having this feeling twice before: That time I watched Indecent Proposal, and the time I got seasick on a snorkeling boat in Puerto Rico.
I tried to massage it away by rubbing my temples. I tried to drown it out by listening to my mp3 player. I tried focusing on the horizon. I tried focusing on the boat. I tried closing my eyes. I tried drinking some water. I tried focusing on the water. I tried rubbing the water. I tried drinking my mp3 player. Nothing worked.
The only thing that sort of worked was trying to soothe J., who was feeling a similar discomfort, despite the motion sickness pills she had taken during breakfast. I looked around the cabin and didn't notice anyone else feeling it. But there were the two of us, sweating profusely, turning green, and everyone else was idly chatting about whales, flip-flops and paddleboats.
Meanwhile, J. was trying to soothe me, fetching a few low-grade plastic sickness bags from the aisle. She was the first to crack, though, and I tried my best to be there for her. But I couldn't stop thinking about the rocking. Then I started thinking about the sausage gravy, and I cracked, myself. I am trying not go into too much detail about the severity of my illness here, but I ought to note that my sickness bag actually broke, spilling its contents on the floor and necessitating a very humiliating conversation with one of the ship's already surly deckhands - who was at that point probably wishing that J. had been a terrorist.
An hour and twenty minutes after our departure, our long seafaring nightmare was over. Upon leaving the boat and the dock, J. and I would have kissed the ground, but the ground seemed to be taunting us with its best Pacific Ocean impression. We mustered just enough strength to drag our luggage aboard the hotel shuttle for the five minute ride to our island accommodations.
The Glenmore Plaza Hotel (pictured fully here) is practically collapsing under the weight of its olde-worlde charm. At least 100 years olde, by my reckoning. Over the years, either the building's foundation or support beams had begun to sink, subtly warping the stairwells and floor boards and making the three-flight walk-up feel like a tour of an M.C. Escher painting.
But the rooms were nothing if not comfortable; the bed was supple and bosomy, and the pillows were stuffed with feathers from the wings of angels. Almost in unison, J. and I dropped our luggage and collapsed finally able to drown our nausea in the shallow pool of midday slumber.
We woke up several hours later, feeling sturdier, if hungrier, and freshened ourselves up for our first tour of the island. Our first stop: The Cold Stone Creamery just outside the hotel. Our second stop: The Miniature Golf Gardens, for 18 holes of total obliteration by my girlfriend:
This scorecard makes the game seem closer than it really was. Sometime around the seventh hole, I think J. started to feel sorry for me and began putting with her eyes closed.
After golf, we walked around the island for a while and plotted our activities for the rest of the weekend. We considered taking in a 7 p.m. movie at the Casino (more on that later), but at the same time we were becoming aware that the area restaurants keep very limited hours in the off-season; in fact, by 7 p.m. many places were already closing. It was as if the remote island was the subject of strict food and energy rations, or was calibrating its meal schedules to the habits of Palm Springs natives.
J. and I ultimately ducked into Antonio's Pizzeria & Cabaret, whose evening hours, relaxed atmosphere and comprehensive menu made it ideal for tourists with few options or objections. Antonio's has a folksy practice of providing complimentary unshelled peanuts at every table. Patrons are welcome to husk the peanuts and drop the shells right there on the floor; any shells (or napkins, or silverware) remaining on the table are summarily whisked onto the floor by the eager wait staff. By the evening shift, the whole floor of the establishment had a thin topsoil of peanut shells, cleverly devised to draw attention away from the likely crunch of cockroaches.
But our meal was delicious and satisfying, and our server was chummy enough to share trade secrets on makeshift ginger ale substitutes. (Sprite, plus a splash of Coke. This revelation totally spoiled my innocence, like when I first learned about breast implants.) After a relatively uneventful (but somehow still exhausting) afternoon, we went back to our comfy hotel room and thanked the heavens that it didn't include a waterbed.
THURSDAY, MARCH 9
Our hotel package came with two tickets for a glass bottom boat tour, but the closest J. and I wanted to get to the water was watching Love Boat. Instead, we exchanged our passes and spent the following day getting to know the island through guided tours and other explorations. Let me introduce you:
Santa Catalina is 21 miles long and 71 miles square, or about the size of Baltimore, Maryland (Not counting Boog Powell). However, only about 12 percent of that land is actually inhabited, with development concentrated mostly within the city of Avalon, a hamlet occupying about three square miles on the island's northeastern ridge. Avalon is technically considered part of Los Angeles County, but thankfully Paris Hilton has thus far been unable to locate it on a map.
The island was discovered by Spanish explorer Sebastian "Big Tapas" Viscaino and named after St. Catherine, the patron saint of scuba divers. Eventually, territorial ownership passed from Spain to Mexico to the United States and run by a series of utterly clueless businessmen and land prospectors. In 1919, much of the land was purchased by chewing gum enthusiast and major league baseball magnate William Wrigley, Jr., who initially thought he was purchasing a luxury yacht.
Upon their arrival, however, Wrigley and his wife Ada apparently fell in love with the beautiful island and made it into their own little love nest. They enlarged the fleet of cross-channel ferries powered by steam and good-old-fashioned American know-how. Wrigley constructed a power plant, improved the sewer system, and provided the island with fresh water and all the Juicy Fruit they could chew. Catalina also became the spring training home for his Chicago Cubs from 1921 to 1951, during which time the Cubs won 5 pennants and consistently led the league in rich golden tans.
The city of Avalon was developed as a first-class tourist destination under Wrigley's stewardship. In 1920 he built the Hotel Atwater and in 1928 built the country's largest aviary, with thousands of exotic birds on display to the public and a profoundly demoralized janitorial crew. In 1929, the quaint but ramshackle Sugarloaf dance pavilion was replaced by the majestic Casino building, constructed over 14 months at the then-staggering cost of $2 million dollars, which contractors then promptly blew at the blackjack tables.
No, actually, the Santa Catalina Casino is not and never has been home to games of chance. It harkens back to the classical meaning of the word "casino" – a "place of entertainment or gathering" in Italian or "profit center" in Native American Sioux. Things were different back in those days, when "flappers," "doughboys" and "robber barons" would go to the Casino theatre to watch "Buster" Keaton movies or upstairs to the ballroom to do "The Charleston," then get "drunk" on "bathtub gin" and suffer from "rickets." The casino is now the home of the island's official museum and continues to host regular movies and dances, as well as weddings, tours and the occasional divorce.
Current-day Avalon maintains its vintage charm but has clearly been shaped and polished by the tourism industry. The city is now composed almost entirely of:
Other fun facts:
Catalina used to be well-known for its decorative "Catalina Tile," until these collectibles were replaced in the American consciousness by Hummel figurines, and later, Pokemon.
Fortunately for me, there is a strict limitation on automobiles in Avalon. The waiting list for car registration is more than 1,500 people long, and the person at the top of the list signed up sometime during the Reagan administration. Most of the city's residents, therefore, get around by foot, bicycle, or golf cart. Avalon has got to be the golf cart capital of the world, just ahead of Palm Springs. They are everywhere. A full-grown man walking around the island feels a little like Godzilla.
There are actually bison on Catalina, far inland. In 1924 a film company shipped 14 bison to the island to make a movie and the crew, apparently fattened on ice cream and loaded up with Catalina tile, could not fit them back on the boat and left them behind. Today the herd is managed by the Catalina Island Conservancy, which owns the undeveloped 88 percent of the island and is charged with protecting the island's natural wilderness and selling souvenir T-shirts.
The Catalina Country Club is a major presence on the island, perched on a hill overlooking pristine coastline and lush fairways. It is opulent enough to impress, warm enough to comfort, and desperate enough to welcome anyone who wants to eat there. I called to ask about the dress code, and I swear the person responded, "well, you should wear pants."
There were approximately six people in the elegant Country club restaurant where J. and I celebrated our one-year anniversary, and three of those people were members of our wait staff. Thank goodness J. and I got together during the holiday offseason. We thoroughly enjoyed a romantic dinner for two, which included a delicious seafood bisque served under a flaky pastry. Maybe it was the generous dose of sherry in the soup, or the way J's eyes twinkled in the dusky golden glow of that elegant dining room, but even before we toasted our first year together, I felt a little drunk.
Afterward, back at the hotel, I tried to test-drive the Jacuzzi, part of our Romantic Getaway (Attack) Package. But the 20-year old unit sounded like a twin Cessna engine, negating whatever relaxation it was presumed to confer. And evening relaxation was absolutely necessary, since I knew the following day was going to be a dull journey of terror, like a midday weekend trip to Target.
But I had no idea.
FRIDAY, MARCH 10
It was bad enough that we were going to have to travel all the way back to Palm Springs on Friday, so that we could be on our Saturday morning flight back home. This obviously would require a lot of driving, which made me nervous. But it also required a boat trip back to the mainland, which made me nauseated, given my Vesuvian display of illness on the inbound ferry.
Further mucking up matters was an ugly storm front that decided to take its shoes off and settle in for a while, directly between us and Dana Point, California. This meant rougher seas, which meant higher swells, which meant I would be choosing my breakfast food based on its lack of color and chunkiness.
As J. and I checked out of the hotel, the clerk advised us to check on the status of our 11:30 a.m. departure. "Delayed," said the voice from the Catalina Express dispatch office, until 2 p.m. Since we had surrendered our room and our stomachs were too intemperate for an extended brunch, we walked around the island for a while, dodging raindrops and rude wind gusts and trying not to look at the boats in the harbor lolling around like Irish novelists.
At one o'clock-ish, we called the dispatcher again. "The boat hasn't left the dock. We're still waiting for the seas to calm." Ulcer replaced nausea as I considered the possibility that we might be stuck in Catalina another night, setting in motion a chain of events that would assuredly destroy life on earth, or at least our travel plans. Nausea then struck back with furious vengeance as I imagined a return trip on unrelentingly choppy seas, like the Mayflower voyage only with more cursing.
We decided that we should try and find another route to the mainland. If there was a seagull leaving the island, we wanted to be on it. By the time we reached the pier, in a gathering cold drizzle, all of the helicopter transports were booked and all of the existing ferries were either gone or canceled - including ours. I immediately booked us on the next scheduled Catalina Express ferry, leaving at 4:15, assuming it ever left the dock and did not have to pick up two of every animal on the way.
By this point, my stomach was engaged in an epic civil war, with hunger joining the fray between nausea and dyspepsia and threatening the security of neighboring nations. J. and I ducked into a local saloon for a thoroughly unenjoyable lunch; we split a sandwich and an order of fried dumplings, which I pawed nervously like a kitty cat playing with a hand grenade.
At 3 p.m. we called to confirm that our boat had left Dana Point and was on its way to Catalina. "Yes," the dispatcher said, "and may God be with you." We collected our luggage from the hotel and got in line at the pier, determined to find and claim the least topsy-turvy seats on the boat. (Seafaring folk had suggested to us, back at the hotel, that the best spot is on the bottom level, in the center, toward the back. View, shmiew. I was climbing into the luggage compartment if it was going to keep me from turning into a party favor again.)
The new positioning seemed to do the trick – or maybe it was the ginger gum, or the high levels of Guns N' Roses pumped through my earphones – and we were back on the west coast by 6 p.m. By the time we found our rental car, it was already dark and I was already well-freaked out by the prospect of a four-hour drive back to Palm Springs. In a tsunami, no less. "Never rains in southern California," my ass.
It rained practically the whole way, through the tossed linguini of the California highway
system, through Irvine, Orange and Yorba Linda, through the San Bernardino Mountains and the Riverside Valley and right into Palm Springs. Palm Springs, by the way, if you'll remember, is in the desert.
J and I were walking dead by the time we stumbled into our hotel for the night. It was only because our appearance and attitude were so haggard that we satiated our appetites with a depressing McDonalds dinner in the breakfast nook of a roadside motel that, at some point I'm sure, served as the backdrop for a series of low-budget horror films. While collecting our luggage from the car, a kind young neighborhood teenager was kind enough to ask if I "need anything, man," and gestured to his coat pocket. I regret that I declined without first finding out if he had keys to a nicer hotel.
SATURDAY, MARCH 11
The rain was still sprinkling when we woke up the next morning. Hastily scrubbed and dressed, I was loading the luggage into the car when I saw something I hadn't noticed the previous night. In the middle distance was an enormous mountain, squatting just outside the city and lightly dusted in white powder. The moment would have been breathtaking if it hadn't been so surreal, and if I hadn't been so obsessed about getting to the airport, to return the rental car, dammit.
I had made it this far without yet crashing my automobile into anything or anyone, and I was eager to complete the circuit. Conversely, J. was her usual relaxed self – despite the fact that the shower head came nearly up to her navel, forcing her to wash in a variety of uncomfortable yoga positions - and despite some serious critical mass issues with her luggage. After purchasing various items throughout the trip and on Catalina Island, including flip-flops, books and two boxes of Girl Scout cookies, there was not a single molecule of open space in her bag; it was like a station wagon that had been compressed into a two-by-three foot cube.
With a series of levers and pulleys we loaded it and everything else into the car and started our trek home. At the car rental return I eagerly and proudly handed over the keys for our clearly undamaged vehicle to the return agent, who examined our odometer and asked if we had really driven 10,000 miles in the past week. Evidently, some clown had grossly misinterpreted the starting mileage. Since our rental agreement allowed for unlimited miles, I was coolly unconcerned about any overages, although the mere thought of driving 10,000 miles did cause me to black out briefly.
J. and I were booked on an 11:52 a.m. PST flight to Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, with a 2:55 p.m. MST connection to Washington National. We relaxed with a breakfast at the reliable airport cafe (Motto: "Where you'll never complain about the prices, because you won't see your waitress for another 45 minutes") with daydreams of our own beds dancing in our heads. We were so relaxed – and perhaps numbed by the previous day's pilgrimage – that we took it in stride when the airport official announced that our flight would be delayed and perhaps canceled due to – wait for it – snow in Phoenix.
Luckily, we were able to claim the last two seats on the 9:40 a.m. flight to Phoenix, which took off and landed without incident. And after two and a half hours in the Phoenix airport, slumped in that purgatorial fog between sleep and headache, our flight to Washington got into the air on time. I don't remember much about the flight itself; I'm pretty sure I slept most of the way. That would explain the vague nightmare that was The Family Stone.
Arriving in D.C. at 10:30 p.m. Saturday night felt like arriving my own bathroom at 3 a.m. It was familiar and warm, I was tired and glassy-eyed, and everything smelled vaguely funky. J. was kind enough to keep me from falling over as we waited for our luggage to complete its trip.
Comedian Jerry Seinfeld has joked - and I'm paraphrasing here – that packing for a trip is a measure of your personal fear. What I could not fit into my luggage on the way back, what with my dirty laundry, wedding trinkets, unused road trip snacks, maps, brochures, books, baubles, gifts and other remembrances, were the most valuable souvenirs from a well-spent vacation:
I'll cherish the time I spent with J, including the times she wanted to kill me and the times I wanted her to finish up in the bathroom already. I was honored to accompany her to her brother's wedding and excited to embark on so many adventures with her. It says something when two people can spend every waking moment of ten days together, then get home and decide to sleep in the same bed again.
I'll value the time spent with my brother and his special lady. Whether we wasted time when we were younger or we just weren't ready yet, it's good to be able to appreciate each other now that we're past the noogie phase.
And I'll treasure the lessons imparted to me by the open roads, the rocky seas and the wild kingdom. Much of the fear that I packed for my trip, I left in California. And in returning home, even with all the crap in my suitcase, I felt a little bit lighter.
Click here for Part Two.
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 8
J. had thoughtfully made the arrangements for the romantic portion of our trip: a two-day, two-night retreat, just the two of us. I always wondered why people called their minivacations "retreats" or "getaways," as if the vacationers were being pursued by armed servicemen or something. Especially since retreat from law enforcement is typically more frantic than leisurely, and rarely involves golf (unless you are O.J. Simpson).
I suppose people look at "retreats" as getaways from the idiocy and bureaucracy of their everyday lives. What they don't consider is that, perhaps even more so than law enforcement, idiocy and bureaucracy are <1>everywhere.
Personally, I think you have to be aggressive and doggedly pursue relaxation. Order people around; get your way. Don't let anyone stand between you and a good time. Step on someone's toes? Who gives a shit? You're on vacation. That's why I like to consider my weekend vacations "attacks" instead of "retreats." That also explains my driving style.
This particular attack was to take place by sea. Our destination was Catalina Island, located approximately 30 miles (54 Starbucks) off the southern California coast. It therefore required a trip on the Catalina Express shuttle (motto: "The Fastest Fleet Afloat, Fine for Ferrying Families, Fishermen and Fat Fucks Flaunting Fanny-Packs").
Our port of call was Dana Point, a mere hour-long drive up the coast from San Diego. Even behind the wheel at the yawn-inducing hour of 8 a.m., I was excited at the prospect of trekking up the coast with the ocean just over my left shoulder. However, Interstate-5 is not as close to the water as it seems on a map, so there was not much to look at on my left other than the steady flow of irate motorists in the passing lane.
We had built so much travel time into our morning agenda that we arrived at the marina an hour early. We wandered around for a while until the Catalina Express booth opened up and they told us where to park, where to board, what that smell is, etc. They directed us to a dockside diner for bathrooms and breakfast and penicillin.
While we waited for our ship to board, J. and I split a breakfast burrito and biscuits-and-gravy. I always like the idea of biscuits-and-gravy when I see it listed on a menu, but it never occurs to me until after I am served that the"gravy" is sausage gravy – which is just a slightly nicer way of saying "spiced fat." And these particular biscuits were absolutely smothered in it, as if the gravy had been used to extinguish some sort of biscuit fire. J. and I were hungry enough to finish those biscuits, but we clearly felt a little ashamed about it, avoiding eye contact with each other as well as the gravy.
It was a worse omen when we had loaded our luggage and boarded the small two-level skiff, when J. realized she had left her purse in the diner. The Catalina Express People, operating under the premise that she was some sort of terrorist plotting to blow up 25 tourists, four swarthy crew members and her boyfriend, first refused to let her leave. Then they agreed to escort her back to the diner so she could retrieve it. Once she returned, we claimed seats in the rear uncovered portion of the upper deck. From there we could see the great Pacific Ocean unraveling mysteriously, endlessly, like an Oliver Stone movie.
The captain's disembodied voice crackled over the P.A. system in a low monotone, welcoming us to the boat and giving us the standard spiel about lifejackets and waves and swells and whatever. Soon the vessel sputtered away from the dock, pushing out slowly into the water. We bobbed to-and-fro for a while, and gradually the boat accelerated toward the island.
But even as the boat reached a cruising speed, she never really stopped bobbing to-and-fro. Out of panicky curiosity, I started wishing I had listened to the captain talking about his waves and swells. The ocean was starting to feel uncomfortably swollen, like a big maritime goiter. With one hand I gripped the McDonald's-style molded plastic seat to brace myself against the boat's violent hops and yaws, and with my other hand I clamped my baseball cap to my head in the throes of a seabreeze so stiff, it felt like being slapped across the face with a yardstick.
The conditions became so unbearable that J. and I gingerly climbed into the second deck's forward cabin. For a moment I felt warm and peaceful. Only for a moment, though. Because moving forward only amplified the boat's jerks and movements, and that's about the time I felt an ugliness worming from the nape of my neck down to my stomach. I can remember having this feeling twice before: That time I watched Indecent Proposal, and the time I got seasick on a snorkeling boat in Puerto Rico.
I tried to massage it away by rubbing my temples. I tried to drown it out by listening to my mp3 player. I tried focusing on the horizon. I tried focusing on the boat. I tried closing my eyes. I tried drinking some water. I tried focusing on the water. I tried rubbing the water. I tried drinking my mp3 player. Nothing worked.
The only thing that sort of worked was trying to soothe J., who was feeling a similar discomfort, despite the motion sickness pills she had taken during breakfast. I looked around the cabin and didn't notice anyone else feeling it. But there were the two of us, sweating profusely, turning green, and everyone else was idly chatting about whales, flip-flops and paddleboats.
Meanwhile, J. was trying to soothe me, fetching a few low-grade plastic sickness bags from the aisle. She was the first to crack, though, and I tried my best to be there for her. But I couldn't stop thinking about the rocking. Then I started thinking about the sausage gravy, and I cracked, myself. I am trying not go into too much detail about the severity of my illness here, but I ought to note that my sickness bag actually broke, spilling its contents on the floor and necessitating a very humiliating conversation with one of the ship's already surly deckhands - who was at that point probably wishing that J. had been a terrorist.
An hour and twenty minutes after our departure, our long seafaring nightmare was over. Upon leaving the boat and the dock, J. and I would have kissed the ground, but the ground seemed to be taunting us with its best Pacific Ocean impression. We mustered just enough strength to drag our luggage aboard the hotel shuttle for the five minute ride to our island accommodations.
The Glenmore Plaza Hotel (pictured fully here) is practically collapsing under the weight of its olde-worlde charm. At least 100 years olde, by my reckoning. Over the years, either the building's foundation or support beams had begun to sink, subtly warping the stairwells and floor boards and making the three-flight walk-up feel like a tour of an M.C. Escher painting.
But the rooms were nothing if not comfortable; the bed was supple and bosomy, and the pillows were stuffed with feathers from the wings of angels. Almost in unison, J. and I dropped our luggage and collapsed finally able to drown our nausea in the shallow pool of midday slumber.
We woke up several hours later, feeling sturdier, if hungrier, and freshened ourselves up for our first tour of the island. Our first stop: The Cold Stone Creamery just outside the hotel. Our second stop: The Miniature Golf Gardens, for 18 holes of total obliteration by my girlfriend:
This scorecard makes the game seem closer than it really was. Sometime around the seventh hole, I think J. started to feel sorry for me and began putting with her eyes closed.
After golf, we walked around the island for a while and plotted our activities for the rest of the weekend. We considered taking in a 7 p.m. movie at the Casino (more on that later), but at the same time we were becoming aware that the area restaurants keep very limited hours in the off-season; in fact, by 7 p.m. many places were already closing. It was as if the remote island was the subject of strict food and energy rations, or was calibrating its meal schedules to the habits of Palm Springs natives.
J. and I ultimately ducked into Antonio's Pizzeria & Cabaret, whose evening hours, relaxed atmosphere and comprehensive menu made it ideal for tourists with few options or objections. Antonio's has a folksy practice of providing complimentary unshelled peanuts at every table. Patrons are welcome to husk the peanuts and drop the shells right there on the floor; any shells (or napkins, or silverware) remaining on the table are summarily whisked onto the floor by the eager wait staff. By the evening shift, the whole floor of the establishment had a thin topsoil of peanut shells, cleverly devised to draw attention away from the likely crunch of cockroaches.
But our meal was delicious and satisfying, and our server was chummy enough to share trade secrets on makeshift ginger ale substitutes. (Sprite, plus a splash of Coke. This revelation totally spoiled my innocence, like when I first learned about breast implants.) After a relatively uneventful (but somehow still exhausting) afternoon, we went back to our comfy hotel room and thanked the heavens that it didn't include a waterbed.
THURSDAY, MARCH 9
Our hotel package came with two tickets for a glass bottom boat tour, but the closest J. and I wanted to get to the water was watching Love Boat. Instead, we exchanged our passes and spent the following day getting to know the island through guided tours and other explorations. Let me introduce you:
Santa Catalina is 21 miles long and 71 miles square, or about the size of Baltimore, Maryland (Not counting Boog Powell). However, only about 12 percent of that land is actually inhabited, with development concentrated mostly within the city of Avalon, a hamlet occupying about three square miles on the island's northeastern ridge. Avalon is technically considered part of Los Angeles County, but thankfully Paris Hilton has thus far been unable to locate it on a map.
The island was discovered by Spanish explorer Sebastian "Big Tapas" Viscaino and named after St. Catherine, the patron saint of scuba divers. Eventually, territorial ownership passed from Spain to Mexico to the United States and run by a series of utterly clueless businessmen and land prospectors. In 1919, much of the land was purchased by chewing gum enthusiast and major league baseball magnate William Wrigley, Jr., who initially thought he was purchasing a luxury yacht.
Upon their arrival, however, Wrigley and his wife Ada apparently fell in love with the beautiful island and made it into their own little love nest. They enlarged the fleet of cross-channel ferries powered by steam and good-old-fashioned American know-how. Wrigley constructed a power plant, improved the sewer system, and provided the island with fresh water and all the Juicy Fruit they could chew. Catalina also became the spring training home for his Chicago Cubs from 1921 to 1951, during which time the Cubs won 5 pennants and consistently led the league in rich golden tans.
The city of Avalon was developed as a first-class tourist destination under Wrigley's stewardship. In 1920 he built the Hotel Atwater and in 1928 built the country's largest aviary, with thousands of exotic birds on display to the public and a profoundly demoralized janitorial crew. In 1929, the quaint but ramshackle Sugarloaf dance pavilion was replaced by the majestic Casino building, constructed over 14 months at the then-staggering cost of $2 million dollars, which contractors then promptly blew at the blackjack tables.
No, actually, the Santa Catalina Casino is not and never has been home to games of chance. It harkens back to the classical meaning of the word "casino" – a "place of entertainment or gathering" in Italian or "profit center" in Native American Sioux. Things were different back in those days, when "flappers," "doughboys" and "robber barons" would go to the Casino theatre to watch "Buster" Keaton movies or upstairs to the ballroom to do "The Charleston," then get "drunk" on "bathtub gin" and suffer from "rickets." The casino is now the home of the island's official museum and continues to host regular movies and dances, as well as weddings, tours and the occasional divorce.
Current-day Avalon maintains its vintage charm but has clearly been shaped and polished by the tourism industry. The city is now composed almost entirely of:
- bed-and-breakfast establishments
- breakfast establishments
- ice cream stands
- gift shops
Other fun facts:
Catalina used to be well-known for its decorative "Catalina Tile," until these collectibles were replaced in the American consciousness by Hummel figurines, and later, Pokemon.
Fortunately for me, there is a strict limitation on automobiles in Avalon. The waiting list for car registration is more than 1,500 people long, and the person at the top of the list signed up sometime during the Reagan administration. Most of the city's residents, therefore, get around by foot, bicycle, or golf cart. Avalon has got to be the golf cart capital of the world, just ahead of Palm Springs. They are everywhere. A full-grown man walking around the island feels a little like Godzilla.
There are actually bison on Catalina, far inland. In 1924 a film company shipped 14 bison to the island to make a movie and the crew, apparently fattened on ice cream and loaded up with Catalina tile, could not fit them back on the boat and left them behind. Today the herd is managed by the Catalina Island Conservancy, which owns the undeveloped 88 percent of the island and is charged with protecting the island's natural wilderness and selling souvenir T-shirts.
The Catalina Country Club is a major presence on the island, perched on a hill overlooking pristine coastline and lush fairways. It is opulent enough to impress, warm enough to comfort, and desperate enough to welcome anyone who wants to eat there. I called to ask about the dress code, and I swear the person responded, "well, you should wear pants."
There were approximately six people in the elegant Country club restaurant where J. and I celebrated our one-year anniversary, and three of those people were members of our wait staff. Thank goodness J. and I got together during the holiday offseason. We thoroughly enjoyed a romantic dinner for two, which included a delicious seafood bisque served under a flaky pastry. Maybe it was the generous dose of sherry in the soup, or the way J's eyes twinkled in the dusky golden glow of that elegant dining room, but even before we toasted our first year together, I felt a little drunk.
Afterward, back at the hotel, I tried to test-drive the Jacuzzi, part of our Romantic Getaway (Attack) Package. But the 20-year old unit sounded like a twin Cessna engine, negating whatever relaxation it was presumed to confer. And evening relaxation was absolutely necessary, since I knew the following day was going to be a dull journey of terror, like a midday weekend trip to Target.
But I had no idea.
FRIDAY, MARCH 10
It was bad enough that we were going to have to travel all the way back to Palm Springs on Friday, so that we could be on our Saturday morning flight back home. This obviously would require a lot of driving, which made me nervous. But it also required a boat trip back to the mainland, which made me nauseated, given my Vesuvian display of illness on the inbound ferry.
Further mucking up matters was an ugly storm front that decided to take its shoes off and settle in for a while, directly between us and Dana Point, California. This meant rougher seas, which meant higher swells, which meant I would be choosing my breakfast food based on its lack of color and chunkiness.
As J. and I checked out of the hotel, the clerk advised us to check on the status of our 11:30 a.m. departure. "Delayed," said the voice from the Catalina Express dispatch office, until 2 p.m. Since we had surrendered our room and our stomachs were too intemperate for an extended brunch, we walked around the island for a while, dodging raindrops and rude wind gusts and trying not to look at the boats in the harbor lolling around like Irish novelists.
At one o'clock-ish, we called the dispatcher again. "The boat hasn't left the dock. We're still waiting for the seas to calm." Ulcer replaced nausea as I considered the possibility that we might be stuck in Catalina another night, setting in motion a chain of events that would assuredly destroy life on earth, or at least our travel plans. Nausea then struck back with furious vengeance as I imagined a return trip on unrelentingly choppy seas, like the Mayflower voyage only with more cursing.
We decided that we should try and find another route to the mainland. If there was a seagull leaving the island, we wanted to be on it. By the time we reached the pier, in a gathering cold drizzle, all of the helicopter transports were booked and all of the existing ferries were either gone or canceled - including ours. I immediately booked us on the next scheduled Catalina Express ferry, leaving at 4:15, assuming it ever left the dock and did not have to pick up two of every animal on the way.
By this point, my stomach was engaged in an epic civil war, with hunger joining the fray between nausea and dyspepsia and threatening the security of neighboring nations. J. and I ducked into a local saloon for a thoroughly unenjoyable lunch; we split a sandwich and an order of fried dumplings, which I pawed nervously like a kitty cat playing with a hand grenade.
At 3 p.m. we called to confirm that our boat had left Dana Point and was on its way to Catalina. "Yes," the dispatcher said, "and may God be with you." We collected our luggage from the hotel and got in line at the pier, determined to find and claim the least topsy-turvy seats on the boat. (Seafaring folk had suggested to us, back at the hotel, that the best spot is on the bottom level, in the center, toward the back. View, shmiew. I was climbing into the luggage compartment if it was going to keep me from turning into a party favor again.)
The new positioning seemed to do the trick – or maybe it was the ginger gum, or the high levels of Guns N' Roses pumped through my earphones – and we were back on the west coast by 6 p.m. By the time we found our rental car, it was already dark and I was already well-freaked out by the prospect of a four-hour drive back to Palm Springs. In a tsunami, no less. "Never rains in southern California," my ass.
It rained practically the whole way, through the tossed linguini of the California highway
system, through Irvine, Orange and Yorba Linda, through the San Bernardino Mountains and the Riverside Valley and right into Palm Springs. Palm Springs, by the way, if you'll remember, is in the desert.
J and I were walking dead by the time we stumbled into our hotel for the night. It was only because our appearance and attitude were so haggard that we satiated our appetites with a depressing McDonalds dinner in the breakfast nook of a roadside motel that, at some point I'm sure, served as the backdrop for a series of low-budget horror films. While collecting our luggage from the car, a kind young neighborhood teenager was kind enough to ask if I "need anything, man," and gestured to his coat pocket. I regret that I declined without first finding out if he had keys to a nicer hotel.
SATURDAY, MARCH 11
The rain was still sprinkling when we woke up the next morning. Hastily scrubbed and dressed, I was loading the luggage into the car when I saw something I hadn't noticed the previous night. In the middle distance was an enormous mountain, squatting just outside the city and lightly dusted in white powder. The moment would have been breathtaking if it hadn't been so surreal, and if I hadn't been so obsessed about getting to the airport, to return the rental car, dammit.
I had made it this far without yet crashing my automobile into anything or anyone, and I was eager to complete the circuit. Conversely, J. was her usual relaxed self – despite the fact that the shower head came nearly up to her navel, forcing her to wash in a variety of uncomfortable yoga positions - and despite some serious critical mass issues with her luggage. After purchasing various items throughout the trip and on Catalina Island, including flip-flops, books and two boxes of Girl Scout cookies, there was not a single molecule of open space in her bag; it was like a station wagon that had been compressed into a two-by-three foot cube.
With a series of levers and pulleys we loaded it and everything else into the car and started our trek home. At the car rental return I eagerly and proudly handed over the keys for our clearly undamaged vehicle to the return agent, who examined our odometer and asked if we had really driven 10,000 miles in the past week. Evidently, some clown had grossly misinterpreted the starting mileage. Since our rental agreement allowed for unlimited miles, I was coolly unconcerned about any overages, although the mere thought of driving 10,000 miles did cause me to black out briefly.
J. and I were booked on an 11:52 a.m. PST flight to Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, with a 2:55 p.m. MST connection to Washington National. We relaxed with a breakfast at the reliable airport cafe (Motto: "Where you'll never complain about the prices, because you won't see your waitress for another 45 minutes") with daydreams of our own beds dancing in our heads. We were so relaxed – and perhaps numbed by the previous day's pilgrimage – that we took it in stride when the airport official announced that our flight would be delayed and perhaps canceled due to – wait for it – snow in Phoenix.
Luckily, we were able to claim the last two seats on the 9:40 a.m. flight to Phoenix, which took off and landed without incident. And after two and a half hours in the Phoenix airport, slumped in that purgatorial fog between sleep and headache, our flight to Washington got into the air on time. I don't remember much about the flight itself; I'm pretty sure I slept most of the way. That would explain the vague nightmare that was The Family Stone.
Arriving in D.C. at 10:30 p.m. Saturday night felt like arriving my own bathroom at 3 a.m. It was familiar and warm, I was tired and glassy-eyed, and everything smelled vaguely funky. J. was kind enough to keep me from falling over as we waited for our luggage to complete its trip.
Comedian Jerry Seinfeld has joked - and I'm paraphrasing here – that packing for a trip is a measure of your personal fear. What I could not fit into my luggage on the way back, what with my dirty laundry, wedding trinkets, unused road trip snacks, maps, brochures, books, baubles, gifts and other remembrances, were the most valuable souvenirs from a well-spent vacation:
I'll cherish the time I spent with J, including the times she wanted to kill me and the times I wanted her to finish up in the bathroom already. I was honored to accompany her to her brother's wedding and excited to embark on so many adventures with her. It says something when two people can spend every waking moment of ten days together, then get home and decide to sleep in the same bed again.
I'll value the time spent with my brother and his special lady. Whether we wasted time when we were younger or we just weren't ready yet, it's good to be able to appreciate each other now that we're past the noogie phase.
And I'll treasure the lessons imparted to me by the open roads, the rocky seas and the wild kingdom. Much of the fear that I packed for my trip, I left in California. And in returning home, even with all the crap in my suitcase, I felt a little bit lighter.
