For the second day of my birthday trip to Monterey, my wife announced that she wanted to take a long walk along the coastline and visit a cemetery in Pacific Grove. She had family members that were buried there back in the 1950’s and she wanted to visit the gravesites. I agreed that sounded like a nice use of the day.
There was a paved bike path that we could walk that meandered about five miles along the shoreline to the cemetery. Five miles isn’t that bad when you consider that you have all day to cover that distance. What did not immediately align with my calculations when I agreed to the walk was that after walking five miles west to a cemetery, we would still need to walk another five miles east to get back home.
The five-mile jaunt was actually a ten-mile hike.
The only pair of shoes I brought on this trip were a broken-down pair of tennis shoes that were definitely not up to the task. Knowing this, the previous day while we were perusing shops and stores, I wandered into a shoe store to get some new shoes for the hike.
The first pair I tried on chaffed on the back of my heel. I figured if they were bothering me ten seconds after I put them on, it was likely that blisters, limping, and pathetic whining on my part would follow if I wore them for ten miles.
The designated shoe assistant working the floor advised that the shoes would be just fine if I wore two pairs of socks and tied the laces to the left so that the back arch of the shoe would pull slightly to the side and would not rub against my heel. He was confident that the shoes were the exact ones I needed and with just a few careful tweaks each time I put them on, I would love them as much as he did.
I looked at him like he had begun speaking a foreign language. My response to him was something along the lines of:
“Or… or… here me out now, ‘cuz I’m just spitballing here, but I’m thinking as an alternative, we could just put the crappy pair of shoes back on the rack and find something that doesn’t irritate my feet. You know, something that actually fits in the first place.”
Shoe Guy shrugged his shoulders. He seemed a little miffed that I did not immediately recognize his expertise in the fiddling with shitty shoes arena. I started to remove the shoes and he got up and walked over to help another customer in the store. Perhaps he only got a commission if he could sell that particular pair of shoes. I don’t know. Maybe I’m the dick here. Regardless, I went looking for something that didn’t require extensive modification to prevent pain and suffering.
The next day, we planned to be out and on the trail at ten o’clock in the morning. What actually happened was I sat on my bed wearing my brand new pair of walking shoes while EM1 showered and played with her hair until 1 PM.
Yup. Three hours.
We finally got out the door and grabbed breakfast (lunch?) at a crepe place whose claim to fame was a giant breakfast burrito that was flat, square shaped, and called something French to give customers that authentic Paris café experience. That is if Paris cafes had surfers in flipflops working the cash register and seagulls crapping all over the customers as they left the building. Anyway, the food was actually pretty good.
The next stop was a sunglasses store, because EM1 had found a cute little pair of Prada sunglasses there the day before that were only $400. During the night, she had convinced my wife to buy the damn things for her, so she was eager to purchase them and wear them during our walk.
This was the only stroke of luck I had on our entire trip. When we went into the store, the salesperson told us that she had just sold one pair of sunglasses an hour earlier. Guess what pair.
Yes! It was a cute little pair of Prada sunglasses that only cost four hundred dollars.
With a suitably sad look on my face that did not match my internal emotions, I offered condolences to my oldest daughter, while EM2 went behind my back and used my credit card to purchase glasses for herself for a paltry three hundred dollars.
The word “entitled” comes to mind.
We did eventually make it to the cemetery. The walk was as grueling and painful as you would imagine. It might have gone a little faster if EM2 didn’t stop every ten minutes to ask my wife and I to take her picture standing on one rock or another staring out at the ocean. She would then follow each photo session by looking at the pictures on her phone and repeating, “Nope. Nope. Nope. Delete. Delete. Delete.”
Why bother to take the pictures then?
At one point, she stood on the ledge of a cliff, holding my hand while I took her picture. She started to lean back over the water for a more dramatic pose and I immediately pulled her back toward me. When my heart stopped beating in my throat, I asked her never to do that again. My exact wording of the request had a few four letter words thrown in for emphasis.
Her faith in her father is both touching and terrifying. I could just imagine how jealous all the other fathers in the Coast Guard search party would be as we dredged the waves for her body.
How can a kid that is so smart…? Well, never mind. She’s definitely my kid.
Anyway, the point of the story is we trudged ten miles back and forth from our hotel leaving me in a physical state so battered and fatigued that I was envious of all the dead people we visited sleeping peacefully in their graves. I almost didn’t have the energy to eat my dinner that night.
Almost. I somehow managed to choke it down.
I also managed to drink a bottle of wine while I was at it because a guy has to rehydrate after such a grueling workout.
Back in the room, we planned a short trip south to Carmel for the following day.
EM1 promised that she would get up early and we could leave at a reasonable time.
Did she?
I’ll talk about that next week.
Spoiler alert: she did not.
To be continued…
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