A little after I landed, my friend Brittany picks me up from the airport. As usual I love seeing the skyline of San Diego when we drive from the airport to her house. We catch up for a while and she mentions how sometimes your body can travel really fast by airplane, but your mind is still where you came from. I find that an interesting idea and during the night I find out what she meant. When I dream I’m still in the Netherlands and thinking in Dutch, but when I wake up during the night I remember I’m in San Diego. I go back and forth a few times until I get up around 6am. I’m thankful I had a long night of sleep and feel well rested.
In the morning Brittany surprises me by making pancakes for breakfast, what a great start of the day. She then has to go to work and I go for a walk to the car rental place. I still have quite some time before they open and so I take it easy. I checked my email this morning and since there wasn’t anything urgent, I decided not to take my laptop with me today and just have a relaxed vacation day.
At Hertz I meet Melisa again who has helped me greatly in the past years. She tells me that she was happily surprised to see my reservation coming in again a while ago and asks me where I plan to drive this time. I tell her that I have no idea yet and hope to plan that a bit this weekend. Like previous years she got a nice minivan for me again and tells me that the seats in the back can go down ‘like I usually do’. I’m thankful for the excellent customer service here and that I have a beautiful car again for the roadtrip of the coming weeks.
Melisa tells me that the car needs an oil change in about 2000 miles, because she knows I usually drive a lot more than that. I drive to the local garage she pointed out, but they’re very busy today and tell me that it would take several hours of waiting for my car. I don’t feel like that and decide I can go to a different garage between here and the first thousand miles.
Today I want to take it easy and have some thinking and writing time at a coffee place. So my first stop is at a Barnes and Noble where I get a notebook and some interesting books to read in the vacation. Then I drive to my favorite coffee place Pannikin where I enjoy a few cappuccinos and a delicious cinnamon roll. I’m always happy to be at this yellow coffee place where there is fresh ocean air and the smell of coffee that they roast here themselves. I’m realizing today that I really enjoy not having to do anything. In my normal life I’m almost always busy and pushing myself, now I can just take it slower and release the pressure.
After a relaxing time at the coffee place I drive to a nearby Walmart to buy my camping gear. As usual I get an air mattress and sleeping bag for in the back of the minivan and also a tent for when I have an opportunity to camp in nature. Some plates, cutlery and a cooler and I’m all set up. I drive back to my friend’s house and in the evening we have dinner at a Mexican restaurant. We go to bed early, because we plan to go on a hike tomorrow morning.
