San Diego

Little brothers have this tendency to not be little 10 years after you graduate high school. He's only 2 years younger than me so he's been out himself for 8. This past weekend he celebrated his 26Th birthday and in a flash of... something... my dad, Bruce, Mat and I decided to drive the 15 hours to Bass Pro Shop, and since we were down there, go visit Kevin for his birthday. It was a reasonable uneventful drive down and we sat in a little Mexican cantina to wait for him.

Several pitchers of Margarita later, Kevin finally got off work and came down to join us. Bruce, Mat, and I hung out in the bar while my dad and him got a table. One by one we walked out of the restaurant and joined them. Kevin was surprised and very excited that his family would make the trip. After dinner, we went back to his place where the exhausted went to sleep, and I took Kevin bowling with his roommate. Among some other dorky endeavors, we sang some karaoke, and by "we", I mean Kevin.

After bowling we weren't quite ready to head home so we went to an Irish Pub nearby and had a couple of pints to wind down the night. At midnight we realized it was Kevin's birthday and we decided we had to make a fool of him. We got a bunch of the bar to sing to him and the band that was playing gave him a request, which they weren't going to actually play because it was about a 10 minute song. Other's started buying him drinks, and after singing and laughing and generally making a scene, we went home.

Saturday started like most Saturday's around me, we went to breakfast, drank some coffee, and got out of the house. I like to hike around here, but down in San Diego we went to Balboa Park and walked around all the old buildings. It was pretty interesting, but not that exciting, so we decided to go surfing instead. I thought I would try and surf, which I did manage to get to my feet once, but after swallowing my body weight in salt water, I wasn't feeling so great. I managed to make it back to Kevin's apartment before I let the salt water make a return. After that little episode, I felt pretty good and was ready to eat again. We went to this little steak house that had really good fries and had burgers.

The night ended with a bonfire on some beach near Sea World. This is a firework display that happens every night and we got to see a little bit of it. They burnt wood until sometime around 1, but we travellers had to jump in the car to make the long trip home. We did finally pull into the driveway around 1 o'clock Sunday. We were only gone for all of about 62 hours and driving for over 30 of them. Next year, I'm going to fly down if it gets in my head to go visit.