July 28, 2023
I will have posts about other trips soon, but this is the post I didn’t get done before those trips! And yes, there will be Lollie the frog updates soon!
In the film version of The World According to Garp, and I don’t think it is in the book, but I could be wrong, there is a day when viewers follow Garp in playing with his children and making dinner (and I even remember the recipe), and sitting down at the table Garp, so memorably portrayed by Robin Williams, says something like “Sometimes you can have a whole lifetime in a day,” and even as a young person, I knew what that meant. On the last Thursday in July, my friend Christina the Awesome called to ask me if I wanted to go to the beach on Friday, and of course I said yes. This is the beauty of summer vacation. And we did go to the beach, with little dogs and not Harold, but Squishy the Sea Turtle came along, and in that one day I had a whole vacation in an afternoon.
When you have only known someone through work, walks, occasional parties, you don’t know how they travel. We were only heading for Oxnard, close to LA, but still, I have had some terrible traveling companions. Christina warned me that she might be grouchy, but in fact she was a dream to travel with. Christina brought her little dog and boon companion Iggy, and also Newton, another small dog, and so we set forth.
Christina knew a beach in Oxnard that I didn’t know, and it was in the middle of a housing tract but surprisingly lovely. We spent some time pondering one of those American flags with red and blue stripes on black, wondering about what it all meant, and I felt like we might be in the camp of those I disagree with until we ran into a man walking purposefully and sporting a “Treason 45” t-shirt, and then I relaxed.
The beach was as beaches are—amazing—and the inland heat managed to penetrate the flimsy fog, but we found rocks and watched Iggy rejoicing in the glory of beach day. Newton was less enthusiastic, however. After we had our beach full, we headed to the Ventura Harbor Village for lunch and capitalism, and we had some nice fish tacos (links for all business below) and a great time in this a crazy cool pottery store that is a collective and features multiple artists. I told Christina we should return for Christmas shopping, and I bought a sweet little vase with a magnet for the Bus.
We decided to take the farm roads home, but first Christina wanted to stop by a farm stand to get some produce, and that’s where we saw the Strawberry Man—or Woman? We had been discussing gender and both of us thought it was weird to assign a gender to the Strawberry Person, but we agreed it was just plain weird. “Demented looking,” I think I said. Then we drove back by Underwood Farms and through the Simi Valley rocks and Santa Susanna pass and talked about many things. Sometimes you can have a whole vacation in a day, and that is a lesson I need to remember.
I came home sun kissed and sandy and happy, and I knew I wanted to write about my little trip before my bigger trip, but then today I got a postcard from Christina, out on her own adventures to the Nor Cal Coast, and it made me remember to write this right now. Thank you to Christina for driving, Iggy for being Iggy, and Newton, you sure peed on that park!
Links:
Cool Pottery Place with a kinda terrible link:
Fish Taco place
This Bus Could Be Our Life 