And unto each a vacation should come (Day 1)

My Christmas tradition since 2002 has been to go to San Diego to see my Sister, her husband and their three daughters (my only nieces).

Apart from 2006 and 2007 when they were here in West Virginia, I have gone every year and it’s been special part of my life and I tremendously look forward to it.

The trip is normally for a few days prior to Christmas and I generally stay until a couple days before New Years. It’s a great way for me to reconnect with my only family left, to get away from the rigors of life and to have a vacation that doesn’t involve a race track and cars.

After a nice evening with friends and my other Christmas tradition (National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation) I flew out of Charleston at 6:15am, went through Houston and arrived in San Diego around Noon (local time).

In real time, it’s a nine hour trip, but the time change and excitement about the whole thing makes it seem so much shorter. As always, I was out of whack the remainder of the day, didn’t know when to eat and by 9pm west coast time I was a zombie and asleep on the couch in the front room. I missed the festivities with some visitors, missed the rousing games of pool and missed the additional consumption of “Red Trolley”, a San Diego only micro brew that I long ago took a supreme liking to.

We did go to a Saturday evening Christmas church service. It’s kind of hard to explain their Church, but the experience has always been something far different from anything I was used to. Their new church (upon the return to San Diego) is so large that they have to put on multiple services on both Saturday and Sunday in order to accommodate the thousands of attendees. It’s situated in a strip mall and is basically a huge auditorium, now beautifully decorated for Christmas.

We arrived and it looked like Hannah Montana was making an appearance. There were people and kids everywhere. Music, lights, live band, clapping, power point projections on plasma televisions, it was all beautiful and exciting but maybe a bit over powering for someone not accustomed to the experience. The sermon and Christmas message was excellent and that Pastor is one for the ages. If anyone was ever built to run a church and keep a crowd of thousands interested in the message, it was him. It’s www.cvcf.org if anyone want to check out their website, podcasts and what they call the e-church. I am not normally church visitor but seeing what was hundreds of people having such a great time on a Saturday evening in Southern California was enthralling. I might even check out the site and listen to some of the regular sermons.

The remainder of my day 1 (Saturday) involved me sneaking away for a visit to In-N-Out Burger http://www.in-n-out.com . It’s a SoCal must visit and a part of everyone’s life out here. It’s more than a standard burger place. I will go there several times before I leave. The internet is thick with websites proclaiming praise for everything In-N-Out. I discovered nothing new here and am only on the much used bandwagon, but damn, it’s good and I wish I had it at home.

Today, I am not sure what’s on the agenda, but I woke up at 8:00am local time (laptop says it’s 11:55am right now at home). I have walked around on the pool deck, I played with the dogs and I am getting ready to enjoy some kind of morning food treat.

As I finish this, my first entry, I must say something about the process of traveling. It’s such a change from everyone’s daily routine that it’s amazing any of us accomplish the process at all. The bad parts of a human’s personality is exposed when you put them outside of their daily routine and if you are a people watcher (like me) it’s quite an experience to see it all happen.

It started with me walking into the airport yesterday morning. There was a line of about 9 people at the Continental counter and I took my place at the end. The woman that took her place behind me, however thought she was special and asked me I she could move in front of me in line. I politely said no and explained how lines work (subtle note of sarcasm, but it was early and I didn’t want a battle with this woman).

After five or ten minutes the personal space barrier around me was being violated on a continual basis by this woman behind me. You see, I stayed a reasonable distance from the man ahead of me and I expected the same courtesy from this long coat wearing, shaggy haired woman with ugly glasses that was impatiently bumping into me.

I finally turned and asked if there was any reason that while we were standing still that she was bumping into me. Her only response was that she needed to get through this line and that I (and everyone else) was in her way. I told her that I would appreciate the courtesy of at least 12 inches of free air behind me and wondered aloud why she was so interested in spooning me in public.

I had to deal with this woman all through this line, the security line and even when we boarded the plane I found myself immediately beside her as we were squeezing ourselves into the seats. She was across the aisle but made her presence known throughout the entire flight. Special requests to the flight attendant, special requests to her poor seat mate (she needed armrest because of an elbow injury). Such an unpleasant lady that is consumed with the feeling that HER needs and HER desires are on some level HIGHER than that of the the rest of the people who were on the same adventure as her.

People eaten up with their own importance absolutely bleed the life from me. I make every effort to resist, annoy and generally get in the way of people exhibiting such behavior.

Once I affixed an ipod to my head and didn’t have to hear that lady any longer I was then able to focus my mal-adjusted people watching efforts on the lady one row ahead on the other side of the plane. She was wearing flip flops and had taken the liberty to remove one of them so she could cross her legs, one foot exposed to the aisle under her thigh. I was treated to the blackened, nasty sole of her foot hanging out like a treat for everyone behind her on the plane.

I sat there and increased my relationship with God by praying that above all else he planned to do that morning, that make the beverage cart come speeding down the aisle in an attempt to amputate or otherwise mangle that exposed nasty foot. Sadly, my prayers went unanswered and I entered Texas airspace staring at a nasty black foot. (how did she get such a dirty foot at 7am)

Why would anyone CHOOSE to begin a multi state, cross country journey wearing only flip flops? Who wants to see another person’s nasty feet? While on my layover in Houston, I contemplated just this and I counted no less than 25 people shuffling down the airport corridors while wearing only flip flops. Just think of the horrific toe injuries that could happen on those moving sidewalks, escalators and while walking on those jetways. For me, I would rather have some protection for my feet and I am courteous enough to not subject complete strangers to my feet.

There were only two highlights to the Houston/San Diego flight. One was a hugely overweight and tattooed woman who was flying with a young child. It was a boy, maybe 3 to 5 years old and while I assume he was her son, in this world, who knows.

I noticed her because they called her to the counter and as she stood I was presented with what I will call an entirely inappropriate amount of cleavage. Now, I must interject, as a card-carrying member of the heterosexual party, I rarely find that there is inappropriate amounts of cleavage. Even on women of larger carriage, the treat of cleavage is mostly appreciated and rarely a problem.

Sadly, this lady didn’t fit in that category and was showing an easy 9-12 inches of cleavage crack and the triangle shaped area of her actual torso that is the rarely seen real estate UNDER the cleavage. It looked like a small woman’s ass on her chest and as she was reaching down wrangling with the toddler boy it looked like one boob was in danger of escaping the confines of the v-neck black blouse and dropping down and hitting the poor child on the head. Trust me, in that eventuality, an injury would have ensued.

Naturally, once seated on my flight, this woman was 3-4 rows ahead and she chose to spend the waiting time (while everyone was boarding) on her knees on her seat, facing rearward and watching everyone. This put her cleavage on full display for all seated individuals. Once again, I wondered how she chose her clothing this morning. She would be tightly squeezed in a too-narrow airplane seat, she would be in close confines with hundreds of strangers and she chose to display and bring attention to her balloon shaped breasts, I guess believing that all of us wanted to see them. Me?, not so much.

I hope to check in every day (or more often). Let’s see how that works out.

***Everything typed and posted with little or no editing. I may come back later and clean up any spelling, syntax or flow errors, but mostly I just wanted to type in a stream of consciousness fashion and this is how it came out.