“Where is Solana Beach, exactly?”
I got asked that question by a handful of night owls when I dropped into the Today Café at around ten pee em this evening to do a little Purple Samovar testing. Yes, I finally made it back from the wedding. Or was it the movable feast? Or both? Whatever. More importantly, THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to Dana Scanlon for carrying on so well during my extended absence.
Why was I testing coffee when I should be recovering from driving a gazillion miles? To finalize this post, of course. Or could it be that a delightful new coffee flavor sensation is its own reward? Down around Solana Beach somewhere I’d bought a couple triple espressos and a pound of Purple Samovar Roast from a little drive up coffee place called The Fast Drop. I never go into coffee drive-ups unless I’m desperate.
I was desperate. We were desperate, actually. The other half of “we” was my brother Scott. Or Brother Scott, or Reverend Scott; take your pick. It was nearly midnight Friday night and the program booklets for Saturday's wedding weren’t printed yet on account of yours truly only having wrapped up the final edit and design a few minutes prior. We figured a nice triple espresso might keep our eyes open long enough to find an all-night Kinko’s with the wherewithall to get it done in the nick of time, or sooner. Unfortunately, Kinko's is Kinko's. But fortunately -- or unfortunately if you're the driver -- there are a lot of Kinko’s.
That triple espresso was way better than an eye-opener. It was lucky. It was like having a pound of fresh rabbits’ feet and a pound of four-leaf clovers compressed into a tiny cube hiding under the cinnamon-colored foam on that little paper cup. Not a pretty picture, but I’m giving that triple espresso full credit for making the impossible happen: the first Kinko’s we found handled the project. The father of the bride and the uncle of the bride were heroes.
Actually, the uncle was the hero. The father-of-the-bride was only required to avoid slipping on the golf course grass while walking the beautiful Tosha to the altar. Well, and propose a toast to Peter and Tosha’s future, with a little help from Ben Franklin. It was the uncle who wrote the ceremony from scratch and delivered it. No doubt about it; Brother Scott handled the reverending with humor and twinkly-eyed wisdom. But don't take a brother's word for it. In the aftermath I overheard such 3rd party kudos as “that was the best wedding service I’ve ever heard,” and “where is your church, Reverend Ellison?”
I’m not the only one telling him he ought go pro in the reverending business.
But back to our question of the day: Where is Solana Beach, exactly?
First answer: By the ocean, of course. The Pacific Ocean. And it’s not too far from Oceanside and Carlsbad. And Leucadia and Encinitas and Cardiff-by-the-Sea. Just up the hill is Rancho Santa Fe and just down the hill is Del Mar, famous for its race track. Unfortunately for Solana Beach, it’s also just around the corner from everywhere else in San Diego County, which is looking more and more like today’s clone of yesterday’s Orange County. In other words, mushrooming suburbia.
Got road rage? I saw road rage on I-5 and I-15 that makes our local road ragers look about as nasty as a milk mustache.
Makes me truly thankful for Licketyville. No ocean and no Purple Samovar Roast, but we’ve got Lake Bigollie, which is plenty wet and large enough to drown in. And we’ve got Midnight Thunder Roast, which is strong enough to keep your eyes peeled almost as long as that gadget they used on Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange. It’s enough.
QUOTE OF THE DAY: “Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.” – Christopher Hampton
Enjoy whatever truth you can find today. ;-)
