It Wasn't a Vacation

Three times in the last week I've had almost an identical conversation with three different friends:

"Hey, how was your vacation?"

"I wasn't on vacation. It was a conference."

"Really? Because it didn't look like a conference."

"It was! I was at a conference!"

"You didn't post any pictures of a conference. All of your pictures looked like vacation."

You want to know why I didn't post any pictures of the inside of the conference? Because it was a conference. It looked like a bunch of training sessions in a bunch of identical meeting rooms in the basement of a hotel. I only took one picture of the inside of the conference:



The moment when the keynote speaker put on a Halloween wig and screamed Taylor Swift lyrics at us.

Other than that fifty-five minute break with reality (seriously, I think for a minute he was openly weeping, and there was also a story about the porter at the hotel that I was sure would end with one of them naked), the conference was great. I took a bunch of notes, co-presented two sessions, saw a bunch of friends, and also visited the beach a little bit.

OK, I visited the beach a lot.

St. Pete's Beach, on the gulf coast of Florida. In case you haven't been there, it's nice:





Really nice:



The night we arrived I was a little confused because I couldn't quite see the beach from my room:



but we managed to locate it the next day:



That was also the first morning that I walked on the beach. Last year, when I went to a conference in California, the beach had a paved pathway all along it, for miles in both directions. This beach didn't seem to have any such path, but to be sure I asked at the desk.

"No, but you can walk on the sand."

"Really?"

"Lots of people do."

Yeah, well, lots of people get in the water with the sharks



and the hypodermic needles and the jellyfish and that fish that Brooke Shields stepped on in "The Blue Lagoon" and the sting rays



and everything else in there, but that doesn't mean it's ok. Still, I've seen people run on the beach in movies and stuff, so I guessed it was possible.

"Is there any way to tell distance?"

"If you go left when you hit the beach, there's a big pink hotel two miles away. You can't miss it."

This turned out to be partially true. You really couldn't miss that pink hotel:



but it was only about a mile and three quarters down the beach. Still, it was a nice walk, and I made an interesting discovery about the beach.

See, I'm not a beach person. I don't like the water, and I kind of don't like sand. I don't like being barefoot, which is why all of my beach photos look like this:



As such, I rarely actually go down to the water, so I never realized that the sand just above the tide line in the mornings is hard packed like concrete. It's not wet enough for your shoes to sink into, but it's actually great for walking, so I did. There are long stretches where there's a layer of shells along that line, too:



so I walked it every day:











but I wasn't on vacation.

I was at a conference.

A Chat with Myself on the Beach

Yesterday morning I had a brief chat with myself on the beach, spurred by this statue that I saw:



As is usually the case when I'm not in a hurry and come across a piece of art, I began to walk around it, snapping pictures, while I tried to decide what the best angle and lighting would be.

Oh, that's interesting. Let me get a little closer.



He doesn't have any shorts on. Is he naked?

No, he's not naked. You've seen like 500 surfers in the past three days. They wear wetsuits. He's wearing a wetsuit.

Oh, yeah, that makes sense.



That's a nipple. Why does his wetsuit have nipples?

Are you sure? Oh, wait, yeah, that's totally a nipple.

Maybe it's like in that Batman movie? The one where the Batsuit had nipples?

Jesus, that movie was awful.

Yeah. Hey, wait...



I can see his junk.

Yeah, that's not a wetsuit. He's naked.

...

Better get a photo.

The OC

After leaving Kansas City a few of us went home and a few of us flew onward, into the golden west. We have a second conference this week in California, and rather than fly back to Tennessee and then fly out again we flew straight here, and are paying for our own hotel rooms for the couple of nights in between. It's like a little mini vacation, and boy, has it been vacation-ish so far. Even though I've woken up at 4 AM local time for the second day in a row I feel totally relaxed, and I'm impatiently waiting for the sun to come up so that I can go walk again. Yesterday I walked over 20,000 steps, a personal best for me. That's 10 miles of walking in one day, and rather than laying around and moaning in pain like I did in March when I walked a similar distance I'm watching the sky out of my hotel room window for the first sign that I can walk some more.

Why?

Because of the beach.



Oh, God, the beach.



I don't even really like beaches that much. You get sand in your shoes and there's glass and trash and dirty needles and sometimes feet washing up on them all the time and there's no way in hell I'm getting in that slimy salty shark-infested water, especially if it means I have to take my shirt off in public or zip into a form-fitting wetsuit. Nope. Not a fan of the beach.

Except that here, I suddenly like it.

I walked down to the beach on our first night here, just as the sun was setting.



Our hotel has a bridge that crosses the Pacific Coast Highway, and then there's a paved walking path all along the beach down to a pier:



The first night it all seemed nice, but I hadn't really formed any impressions beyond that. There are a lot of people, but they're mostly polite (no one bumped into me or picked my pocket; I guess my standards for "polite" are pretty low), and there's a constant breeze off of the water. I thought it was kind of hilarious that I was walking around in a t-shirt thinking about how great the weather here is while the locals were bundling up in jackets, hats, and gloves and the hotel was putting warmers out on the patio, but I guess it's relative to what you're used to.

Yesterday morning is when I started to really like it here. I woke up, got my walking clothes on, and waited for daylight. And waited. And waited some more.

Stupid time zones.

When it was finally light, I headed toward our bridge, where the hotel's "Beach Amenities" stand was setting up. It was closed the night before, but yesterday morning it was open to hand out towels, chairs, umbrellas, and whatever other amenities are behind the desk that I couldn't see. The kid working it looks straight out of "Orange County Central Casting": tall, tan, lanky, deep-voiced, with long, naturally-streaked blond hair. He looked exactly like the kind of person you'd expect to see working a beach stand, and I wondered if the hotel assigned him there on purpose, but didn't want to ask. Instead, I wanted to get to the beach.



People were walking, running, jogging, rollerblading, and biking all along the path and, in some cases, in the sand. I passed a sunrise prayer service and a morning yoga session, and down by the pier there was some kind of awful training session going on where people were sprinting up and down the steps while a trainer yelled at them to do it faster. It seemed kind of awful, so I hung out on the pier for a while to watch the surfers instead.

Huntington Beach is home to the Surfing Walk of Fame, a collection of sidewalk plaques in the general area of the statue of Duke Kahanamoku:



Olympic swimming gold medalist and, according to the plaque at the base of the statue, the father of modern surfing.

The surfers swim out from the shore:





and when they get a little ways from shore they wait:



for the ways to come in. When they do, the surfers surf:









When I got tired of watching them, I watched the pelicans, which are completely unafraid of people and walk up and down the pier while the people fishing throw them scraps of bait:







Beyond that, I did the kinds of things I always do when I have free time in a strange place. I walked around and looked at things:













had some food (in this case, oatmeal at the hotel):



and I went to a little tent market down by the pier. I bought one of the reusable tote bags in this photo, for taking to the Farmer's Market and carrying books to and from McKay's, and because I wanted a souvenir that wasn't from a souvenir store:



I watched some beach volleyball for a while:



or, more technically correct, I watched some guys play beach volleyball for a while, which was like watching "Top Gun" with all of the boring airplane parts cut out. Later, even though I was already at 7 miles for the day, I walked down to the pier again:



to watch the sunset on the beach:



and to think about how many steps I can get in before the conference starts.

I'm dressed and ready to go, and I'll be out there as soon as the sun comes up.

This doesn't look anything like it does on "Revenge"

Yesterday I got to visit four different airports, which is a one day record for me. My ticket said that I was only going to three, but for some reason my Knoxville to Philadelphia flight made a brief stop in Washington, DC, to let some people off of the plane.

That's when it got a little strange.

"Passengers continuing to Philadelphia will also need to leave the plane. Please take all belongings with you."

"Are we getting on a different plane?"

"Please get on the airport shuttle."

I don't argue at the airport, even when it doesn't make any sense. Arguing gets you kicked off the plane or put on a list or renditioned to a cheerless solitary cell in a prison that doesn't exist on any maps, so I just got off the plane and got on the shuttle. The shuttle drove around the tarmac at Reagan National, then reached the terminal, where we got off and were directed to get onto another shuttle. This shuttle also drove around the tarmac, and then we got off of it and back on the same plane.

"Please consult your boarding pass to locate your original seat number."

All that was missing was a cheery rendition of "The Merry Go Round Broke Down" on a circus organ.

Things got a little more absurd when I reached Philadelphia. You know what kind of planes fly from Philadelphia into Islip, New York?

Tiny ones:



That is the smallest plane I've ever flown on. It has propellers. The plane that my dad flew into the bush in Alaska to hunt caribou might have been bigger than that, and that plane landed on grass, in a field. Not only that, but it was filled with people from the city and Long Island with their heavy Brooklyn and Long Island accents, so for the duration of the flight it sounded like I was at Thanksgiving with Dad's family. The resemblance was so strong that later, when the flight crew and I were out at the curb waiting for our rights and the flight attendant loudly asked, "Whay-uh the fuck is the God damn ayuh-port shuttle?" I thought, "Nanny? Is that you? Do you need another can of Meister Brau?"

The resemblance was uncanny.

Sean arrived moments later, and after we exchanged pleasantries he presented me with what I can only describe as Sophie's Choice:

"Do you want to go get something to eat?" Yes. I have eaten a scone today. "Or do you want to go see the Big Duck?"

Or? As in "not both"?

"We can only do one?"

I must have looked stricken, because Sean immediately clarified:

"No, no. We can eat and then go see the Big Duck, or go see the Big Duck and then go eat. They're both right near each other."

Thank God, otherwise I would have been really, really hungry, because there was no way we were skipping the Big Duck:



Originally constructed as a marketing gimmick to sell ducks and duck eggs:



it is now, as advertised on the sign, a museum and gift shop. It is also awesome:









The lady inside and I got to talking about other buildings shaped like things (the architectural term for this is a "duck", in honor of the Big Duck, which is on the National Register of Historic Places) and I noticed that she didn't have any examples from Tennessee even though she had pictures of all sorts of other ducks from around the country.

"You've never heard of the Flying Saucer House by Chattanooga? Or the gas station shaped like an airplane in Powell?"

"No! Send me photos!"

She ended up writing out her address for me, so that I can send her pictures of our odd shaped buildings in Tennessee. I am a cultural ambassador for the Volunteer State, people.

After the Big Duck (which may be how I refer to all experiences from now on; "Well, I was born in 38, BBD" or "I flew back to Tennessee on Day 5, ABD") Sean drove me through South Hampton, the setting for the TV show "Revenge" and the rumored geographical area for Ina Garten sightings. This is where I discovered, once again, that television has lied to me.

"This doesn't look anything like it does on TV."

"That's because they film in Malibu. But look, they used that Pottery Barn as city hall."

There are about three blocks of South Hampton that look like "Revenge", and the entire rest of the town looks like the slightly seedy suburban sprawl outside of any large metropolitan area, except for the beach:



Endless horizon and crashing waves? Yup:





Big houses right up against the water? Yup:



Peaceful solitude during which you can look for shells and plot the destruction of your enemies? Yup:





That looks just like it does on Sunday nights.

Now, I have to go get showered, so that we can get a New York bagel.

And then see a haunted windmill.