THIEVES.
We left the hotel and took a left to head to the main road. A right and we would have headed towards Legoland, I think, literally. It’s been awhile. Memory tells me we only took one left to get out of the neighborhood, but memory is at best, not just fleeting, it deceives, and outright lies. It convinces us of it’s merit, and then, disappoints.
We got to the main road and headed downhill on the left side of the street. It’s always the left side, against traffic so you can at the least sidestep a car who doesn’t see you.
The air here was unbelievably crisp, the temperature perfection, sixty something degrees. “These people get this weather all year round,” we thought. We tried to make some sort of jokes about the cost of living as we accelerated down the hill. Feet seeming to float over the California asphalt, no less black than it’s Louisiana counterpart, but feeling like a million miles away.
Towards the Pacific, that’s where we headed. Down the hill. Towards the ocean, the romance in full effect. The ocean always calls, and man always goes to her. She’s undefeated in this regard. Her destructive power hidden by a revealing blue dress that gives you a hint of skin, seductive, and so we ran to her. To be engulfed by her.
There was a giddiness to our gait, like we were getting away with something. This hour of the day, ours and ours alone. We approached the flatness at the bottom of the hill and made a simple choice to go right until we found an entrance to the beach, the homes, smaller than you’d expect, but no less expensive. A red brick driveway, wet from someone hosing it off. The morning hellos we lobbed reverberating silently with the strangers puzzled faces, our southerness on full display without us knowing it. Hospitality, deadened and suspicious in the Carlsbad sun.
It couldn’t have been more than a quarter mile to the entrance, rocks I think, no fanfare, public in name only. This little stretch seemed private. Ours for the morning. Gentle waves, a beach made from crushed rocks. Not as rocky as the Lake Erie beaches, nor as powdery soft as the silty white of my childhood on the Gulf of Mexico.
Our shoes and socks, quickly removed, no consideration on how we’d remove the sand from our feet when we were done, we ran to the sea and jumped in. We knew it would be cold but the abruptness bordered breath taking. The salinity, immediate. It was refreshing and it was good. We lingered for a moment, then headed back to shore.
The sun had burned through enough to warm us on our exit and we sat there for a moment to take it in once more. A light, cool breeze.
Refreshed, we put on our shoes and ran back up the hill and started our day.
Thieves In the morning, our bounty, a run to the ocean.
#hugsandhi5
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