Elephant Seals and Uphill Climbs

Vacation is often thought of as a good way to rejuvenate and energize the soul; an effective way to escape the mundane routine of reality. So I was literally jumping out of my seat the afternoon of July 9^th when the start of my vacation set in. California here I come. The vacation consisted of a reunion of college friends. We started our trip in San Francisco and worked our way down the Pacific Coast before flying back out of Los Angeles.

My only previous trip to California was to Anaheim to visit Disney Land. I was there in January of 1994 during the Northridge earthquake, which happened to be one of the highest instrumentally recorded in an urban area in North America. The hotel bathtub rattled my then-showering mother to the ground, my father’s scalding coffee pouring over his copy of the Los Angeles Times, while my bed marched with the furniture from one side of the hotel room to the other, or so I am told. I don’t remember because I slept peacefully through it all, probably dreaming of Thunder Mountain.

Having returned to the east coast donning cargo shorts, and adopting a diet of avocado and grilled fruit, I can officially say I’ve gone granola.

I’ve used my consulting skills to bucket my California memories into the following four H’s:

Housing: Our trip was founded on a number of pillars, the most important one was frugality. As such, I rented the cheapest hotel I could find in San Francisco, the Hayes Valley Inn. It was marketed as a European hotel. European hotel is defined as one in which you share a common WC with all parties on a given hall. I’ve never heard of a better way to get to know strangers. This was clearly overshadowed by our stay in Carmel. Having called every campground in the yellow pages and been informed that there were no places to pitch a tent west of the Rocky’s, our creative minds led us to call an RV park listed in our TomTom. As it turns out, they had an abundance of camping sites available, no need to reserve them because they would certainly not fill up. That should have been the first clue. The second clue was when the wiry groundskeeper had me sign a waiver indicating we would not feed the bobcats or mountain lions. But with no other options, we pitched our tent and settled in for a comfortable sleep. Comfortable minus the incessant rustling sound, whose origins I could not place as coming from one of my fellow campmates or from an adventurous external visitor.

Hiking: In an attempt to move our muscles and take in some salubrious air, we tried to explore the outdoors. I somehow always ended up as the navigator. Which I would suspect to be a relatively easy task – simply following a trail, how hard could it be? Apparently not my strongest skill. We would arrive at a decision point. I would ask “Do we want to go straight or left?” The group would reply “We want to go right.” Oh. Okay.

Hollywood: I was pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed the atmosphere in Los Angeles. Aside from the traffic, I think I would be able to live there. Actually, I would posit that if Los Angeles built a public transportation network, the decreased emissions would be enough to reverse the melting trends of the polar ice cap. But that’s beside the point. Hollywood presented the group with countless forms of entertainment. We made sure to hit up all of the tourist essentials, and even got a picture next to the Michael Jackson star. We saw the new Harry Potter movie at the famous Grauman Chinese Theater. And immediately afterward, we took a picture with our hands in the hand and wand prints of Daniel Radcliff, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint. Appropriately timed with my arrival back to the East Coast was a news article that declared the Grauman Theater as one of the world’s top five germiest tourist attraction. So when I die of the swine flu, we’ll all know why.

Highlight: Although I’ve been debating this for a while, the highlights of the trip were the seals. I didn’t realize California’s obsession with seals, but it seems that they had a presence in every coastal city. While in Santa Barbara, we went kayaking with the seals, where I nearly soiled myself with excitement. One of their favorite games to play is King of the Mountain in which the seals in the water try to jump on top of the seals resting on the lone buoy in the ocean. The futility of the seals in the water is almost endearing as they waste countless sums of energy trying to leap on top of their beached brothers, only to be nudged back into the water five minutes later. If I were a seal, I would certainly (a) wake up earlier and ensure my royal spot on the buoy, or (b) bag the buoy all together and just go lay out on the beach. But my favorite variety of seal was the elephant seal. These massive tubs of lard would worm their way out of the ocean and try to spoon with some of the other beached elephant seals. Once comfortably situated, they would use their flippers to flip sand onto their backs, perhaps in an attempt to blend in with their surroundings? The only drawback I see to being an elephant seal is that they have pretty low self-esteem. After all, they are named after another animal, the elephant. The only place in all of California I didn’t see a seal was at Seal Beach...which I believe is false advertising.