Current Location: San Diego, CA
Current Song: Homegrown by Zac Brown Band
Current Beer: Salty Crew by Coronado Brewing

We left southeastern California and headed west to southwestern California because that’s just kinda how it works when you do that.

From where we were it was 2 hours to San Diego where all I wanted to do was get them to the dog beach there. Seriously, it’s just straight up called Dog Beach, and it’s amazing.

I also wanted to get them there early so there were fewer people… specifically, fewer people with balls and ball launchers. As previously mentioned, she’s had a bad recent history with balls and other dogs, so I wanted to minimize any risk.

Instead of doing the full two hours early in the morning (when she’s energized and ready to party) I figured I’d drive an hour, stay overnight somewhere about halfway, and then only have an hour drive this morning. That halfway mark ended up being a casino up in the mountains. Golden Acorn Casino to be exact.

Once there I decided to a) get a good beer buzz going, and b) lose money at the slot machines. Clearly not a place with table games, so fuck it. I absolutely zero fucking percent understand the appeal of slot machines, but what the hell, I’m game to light some money on fire. When in Rome.

First though, I needed food. So I went to their little deli counter and ordered a “CARNE ASADA BURRITO”. You’ll understand why I just yelled that in a second.

It’s one of those setups where you order and pay in one spot, then walk about 20 feet to a counter where you pick up the food. Pretty standard.

I go and sit down, and I watch as this poor girl cooking the food is making about 20 cheeseburgers. Seriously. Like someone ordered 20 cheeseburgers from the grill at a casino in the middle of fucking nowhere. But watching this one girl having to make all of these stupid cheeseburgers I went “okay, might take a bit for my burrito, no problem.”

Fast forward like 20 minutes, still no burrito. By this point another lady has walked up asking where HER burrito is. The cook girl goes, “oh, it’s coming, lo siento, one burrito or two?”

Confused, the lady goes, “just one.”

I pop up and go, “I have the order for the second burrito” and the cook girl smiles and nods and goes back to packing up her ridiculous cheeseburger order.

Finally the poor girl gets to making the burritos. I have no idea if the other burrito lady was before or after me, and honestly, I don’t really care. Like I’m gonna get into a battle with some idiot over my burrito, your burrito… I have absolutely nothing to do for the rest of the night except get drunk and hit buttons, your stupid mouth can have the first burrito.

The fry cook girl finishes the first burrito and goes “CArnfuqlfioraye BURRITO?” and the other lady jumps up immediately and grabs the burrito and runs off into the night. At this point I realize the poor girl barely speaks English, and I have absolutely no idea what type of burrito she just called out. But it’s gone, into the wilds, and I just have to deal with it.

She makes the second burrito and again calls out, “CArnfuqlfioraye BURRITO?” To be sure I go, “CARNE ASADA BURRITO?”

“CArnfuqlfioraye BURRITO?” she says again.

“CARNE ASADA BURRITO?” I say again.

FINALLY, I realize she’s saying “CALIFORNIA BURRITO.”

So very politely I go, “no, sorry I ordered a CARNE ASADA BURRITO.”

She just stares at me for like 30 seconds, and goes…

“CALIFORNIA BURRITO”

At this point, I whip out my receipt and point to the order and go, “NO. I ordered a CARNE ASADA BURRITO.”

She puts up her finger in a “un momento” gesture and grabs the attention of another guy who seems to speak a little better English.

She says to him, “California burrito”.

He turns to me, and I SWEAR TO FUCKING GOD says, “this is a California burrito.”

“I know that. I ordered a Carne Asada burrito though” as I waved my receipt again.

He goes, “well it’s basically the same thing, it just has potatoes.”

No. NO NO NO NO NO. That’s not how this works, THAT’S NOT HOW ANY OF THIS WORKS!!!

Again politely, I said, “that’s great, but I’d like to have what I actually ordered.”

So he turns around and grabs ANOTHER PERSON to deal with this. He explains to her, and she just goes, “she (the original fry cook girl) accidentally switched the burrito orders. You can take the California burrito or we can make you the Carne Asada burrito.”

So… the first lady ordered a California burrito and because CALIFORNIA and CARNE ASADA can sound at least a little alike when spoken by someone who doesn’t speak English, she just grabbed it. Which is fair, I’d probably have done the same thing if I was first.

But honestly, why would I take the wrong burrito? So I just said, “thank you, but I’d just like the burrito I ordered.” And to her credit she was fine with it and made me my burrito.

[BURRITO STORY OVER]

Oh, one more thing, as she’s handing me my burrito she goes, “would you like some salsa?” I go “yeah I’ll take some salsa.” Then she pauses, looks around, and goes “oh actually we don’t have any salsa.”

And I actually bust out laughing out loud. So does she, a little, and she apologizes a bunch. I just thank her, tell her that I appreciate her help and wish her a good evening.

All said, the burrito was actually fucking delicious and I stand by my actions.

After that, I sat down at one slot machine that was lumberjack themed. I hit the button a bunch of times and somehow won $20. I have no idea what happened, the woodchucks got enough planks of wood to… let the… lumberjack… chop the bonuses and then I… hit the 10x pine tree and… honestly, this shit is ridiculous. I couldn’t tell you if I basically hit the jackpot or what because slot machines are pure fucking nonsense. With my duly earned $20 I went and bought another beer, and then I found one of those games that replicate table games and sat down.

I started with blackjack and then realized I ZERO percent remember the basic strategy. So I bailed on that and switched to roulette.

One good outcome of all of this, I know what I do next time I find myself in a casino like this with money to burn. Electronic roulette game, I put bets on 1, 16, 6, and 15 (me and Jenny’s birthdays) and I hit the button until I either bust or get 4 hits within 10 spins. It’s a good 8-to-1 payout which feels good when one of them hit, and the variance isn’t as bad as picking just one number.

No, obviously I won’t win money long term. It was actually a double zero game so, REALLY absolutely no chance. But at least the house edge is relatively small, I can burn some time at a casino, and I can understand what the fuck is going on and why my money just disappeared. It’s like playing Bingo at that point. And guess what, I ended up winning another $20 by the end of it, so clearly I’ve got this figured out. After that I headed back to the van and passed out.

This morning was the quick drive over to the dog beach. Long story short, it was successful, albeit stressful. We walked in far enough to where I felt safe letting them off the leash (i.e. they wouldn’t run back into the parking lot) and she… VANISHED.

I’ve never seen her run away from me that quickly in our short life together. I literally looked down to grab the end of the leash, looked up, and she was GONE. So the entire morning turned into me running after her as she tormented some poor person with a ball launcher until I caught up, grabbed her, apologized, and pulled her away. Goose, thankfully, always stayed in my general area, so I didn’t have to focus on him too much.

With running around like a crazy person yelling her name every three seconds, this is all I could get as far as photo or video, in which she’s just running away by the end. I swear to God this dog…

At one point, I was talking to some guy and mentioned I’m from Maryland and on a road trip out here. He goes, “oh man, something like this must make you want to move out to California!” and I was “haha, oh man, no fucking chance, this state fucking sucks, but definitely worth a road trip!” And then he gave me a dirty look and shielded his dog from me.

Okay, I didn’t say his state fucking sucks (it does), but I did go “ehhhh I don’t know about that.”

I thought it though. I shoulda said it. Seriously, fuck this absolutely gorgeous state with (some) horrible people and even worse drivers.

Anyways, once they were thoroughly exhausted and filthy, we trekked back to the van, I rinsed them off, dried them off as best I could and we hung out a bit.

As I was sitting there, a big van pulls in next to us. No big deal until there are about 10-20 people all hovered around it with phones and video cameras all pointed at this van as they slap some magnetic decals on the side.

Turns out, Judy is walking across America. I won’t try to explain the whole thing, I’ll just put the link below. I donated some money, made sure to let them know “I was the guy in the van next to you, looking at you super confused!” I got to see the absolute start of it, which is decently cool. I even had to swerve around them leaving because she had started walking already and the crowd of people around her were blocking the edge of the exit. All good, though. Good luck Judy.

Right now I’m sitting in a Walmart parking lot to kill some time before I can check into the campsite I booked for tonight. It was fine until some guy outside our window started yelling in Spanish about how we’re all going to hell, so it’s time to bounce.

To his credit, he’s putting the effort in to actually yell it. Most of the ones I’ve seen back east use a super underpowered loudspeaker that just sounds like clipped distortion and you can’t understand a word they’re saying anyways. So, props I guess.