LandfallVoyages

This was supposed to be a picture of pigeon parking. Just up the street from the dinghy dock, we spied a smallish flock of pigeons in various states of repose, scattered liberally amongst the blue lines marking off a handicapped parking space. They were supremely uninterested in us, which of course made them irresistible. It took 80% of my willpower to reign in my inner 5 year old and not run amuck through the middle of the pack, screaming, “Raaaaahhhhhhhhhhh Bwaaaaaahaaaaaaaaahaaa Grunkle Frumpkle Roaaaar!” I inched forward at a glacial pace, stage whispering to Eli, “Your camera is in my section of the backpack…slide it out carefully so I can get a picture of this.” Turns out the reason they were all clustered up there is that a lady comes by every day at exactly that time and feeds them breadcrumbs. Totally screwed my shot up, but the pigeons were so fat and happy about the whole thing it was hard maintain a sulk for very long.

Our expedition to Old Town San Diego was prefaced by a fruitless 10 block hike to the local Post Office, trying to track down a wayward mail packet. I swear, some postal employees have elevated unhelpfulness to an art form. The packet will catch up with us later or even later-er. It’s probably better to be more Zen about postal mishaps but kind of it gets under my skin. A lot. Like an evil, exotic parasite.

We walked a few more blocks, to get the taste of the USPS out of our mouths and caught the Blue Line train out to Old Town. The Blue Line is actually red.

Steve had actually been to Old Town San Diego a bunch of times as a kid, but it was all new for Eli and me. I expected to see a couple of historic buildings wedged here and there in the downtown area; it turned out to be way cooler than that. We wandered hither and yon through several square miles of Old Town San Diego that seemed to have been flash frozen in time some hundred years ago. My favorite part was in the Assayers office, even though they don’t allow you to take pictures. They had all kinds of rocks, ores, gems, fossils, and insects.

Yeah, I know, beautiful, weird and awesome all at the same time. There were exquisitely framed and mounted displays of butterflies and moths hung all about the store, but the real treasure was perched atop the copper ore display case. Two frames of the most stunning beetles you ever saw. I remember summertime afternoons in Altadena, sprawling out on the floor with my brothers, leafing through the pages of an old insect field guide and picking out our favorites. We must have been pretty young, because Shanon wasn’t reading yet. He’d point to his favorite ones Ian and I would take turns reading off the stats to him. They whispered of far off lands, places of adventure and mystery. We scoured the whole backyard, looking for new and amazing specimens, like the ones in our book. Somehow, we never came up with anything to rival what we saw in the pages of that field guide. Might have been a contributing factor in the decision to go ahead with our Dig-a-Hole-to-China project. (Wasn’t real popular with our mom.) The more far flung a location, the better the chance we’d turn up something truly noteworthy. Maybe even discover a new and previously unknown creepycrawly. Naming rights would have been so cool.

 

Nala was a little miffed at being left behind for this adventure and greeted our return with devastatingly cute and reproachful eyes.