San Diego is an existence lacking flannel

Written By: ryan on July 24, 2009 62 Comments

Another drinking weekend to Oceanside

Well like clock work we headed back to Oceanside for our fourth weekend in a row drinking with Josh and Jessica. This weekend however we had more plans than just shots in the appartament and possible rambling. It was time to see some nature in the SD area and head inland about 45miles to what is known as La Jolla Indian Reservation Campground. What promised to be a simple day of some boozing and hanging out in the river turned out to be a bit more than we bargained for, in a good way.

First of all I have camped many of times. I have camped by myself in the middle of the woods. I have car camped at campgrounds big and small alike. Never in my life though had I witnessed a campground like this. Not even in the biggest most RV haven of a national park. The Indians who run this place have it figured out. Why bother spending a ton of money on a casino when so many people are in the business. You have to hire staff, make a huge investment, and run a very large complicated business. Plus you need to some how figure out what your swagger or theme is that is going to set you out. Instead this tribe decides, hey we have a river. Lets just pave a 5 mile road, throw a couple shitty bathrooms out there, and rake in these suburban fools dough. There easily had to be 1000 cars here. Some orderly packed away and others chaotic. At $25 a car you do the math, thats $25,000 and they had what looked to be about 3 people working the gate and a few guys emptying trash cans / cleaning the restrooms. Then to add the revenue stream, they rented tubes for $10 a day. Had a gas station with some expensive ass goods and gas at the entrance, and charged $5 per person over 4 in a car. Smart natives these are.

So now that you know all about the economics of this camping trip, let me say it was very fun. Its rare to have a natural, fresh water source like the river at the campground, this definitely attributed to the masses as most camping opportunities in the SD area revolve around sitting in the desert. George and I managed to down 3 bottles of wine by 2pm. We created a ridiculous game where anyone saying the word shot, had to take a shot. Needless to say this is one of Josh’s catch phrases, so he lost the game. We were graciously accepted into some of our neighbors camps. After drinking in the river for a while and helping to launch tubers down past our bend we slithered our way down stream eventually meeting an overtly Mexican fellow by the name of Jerry. Jerry was very amused by our company and continued to give us Vodka, which no one should shoot and he seemed to have his niece trained to give us cold beers as soon as the one ran out. Jerry then said it was food time and cooked us huge steaks. After consuming all this delight I promptly passed out for a couple hours when the rest of the gang ran a muck. As I awoke, Josh went down and tapped me in and I continued the party with George. We had met a couple of Mom’s who husbands passed out and were happy to find people awake to drink with. We played some cards and killed another 3 bottles of wine. George set his hammock up and I cowboy camped. We were both enthralled with the experience of being out of the city which definitely came into play with our future decisions.

Not of having the healthiest day before we headed back into Oceanside we had a very lazy day. George napped some as he head managed to procure the heftiest of hangovers. Josh napped, and I chatted online with Maggie for a long time. It was nice to be back in the ocean breeze as the rising desert heat drove us out to start with. The following day we did the library dance, in between 2 various Oceanside libraries, then I went and held up in a Coffee house and got some work on my Cornell project done. Throughout the day and previous we had been discussing what to do with the week and the future. The plan forever had been to go to ComicCon on Thursday and try to sneak, trick, con, dance, ninja our way into it. After doing some web crawling it became apparent this may have been a bit of a fools errand. Couple this with the nature charged fire from the weekend of camping and a decision seemed to be looming on the horizon. Largely coffee drive, in a swift and characterful momment of decisiveness I declared that we would be leaving San Diego that night and heading toward San Bernardino and the National Forrest of the same namesake.

The only dilemma weighing on my conscious were the SD Public Library books in my possession. Oceanside being in the North County was out of the same system as the normal library. What could we do? Possibly con Josh into taking them down at a later date? Mail them? Renew them online for all eternity? George decided renewing into oblivion was right for him, but I knew I wasn’t going to read either of these books and I wanted the monkey off my back. I decided to pit the love of knowledge and literature against the system that said it wouldn’t work. I returned the books to the wrong library with an overtly passionate note, wrapped in a lie. Apparently it worked because it shows I have no books checked out on my account. Woot! Thank you to all the libraries we have visited for they have been very good to us. A plastic bag, a note, and my two books were deposited into the libraries slot. I felt almost as if I was giving away a baby to hopefully what would be a good home. After this we hit up the gym for work out and a delayed post camping shower, and drove off into the night.

See the note I left and the screen cap from the SDPL library showing it worked!

Hasta la vista San Diego. You have been a good home for the month we spent together. You are pretty. You have wonderful beaches. But baby, you just aren’t right for me.