There’s a little bar – or used to be some many years ago – down on the beach in San Diego called Sunshine Company.   I was only ever there once, but it has stuck in my mind as the complete definition of what San Diego is all about ever since.  The downstairs of the bar had a lot of windows and a beachy feel that was amazing, but the upstairs was actually even better because it was a rooftop patio completely open to the smells and sounds of the ocean.  As you might imagine, the clientele was mostly tanned collegiates in Reefs.   I was also a tanned collegiate (okay fine,  post-collegiate) in Reefs.  My very first pair, which was purchased in the shop across the street from Sunshine Company earlier that day.

Best footwear purchase of my life, by the way.

When Sunshine Company closed for the night, everyone was forced out onto the streets and the adjacent beach.   There is a little burrito stand perfectly positioned right there on the corner – open at 2am and doing a rock solid business of breakfast burritos probably straight through until morning.  Location location location.  I don’t remember what was in the burrito anymore, but I will tell you it rivaled the best thing I’d ever eaten.  Sitting on the beach.  Debating sleeping on the beach because it was easier than figuring out where else I was supposed to be.

Ah, the memories.  Chances are that even if Sunshine Company is still there serving copious amounts of alcohol to thirsty college kids, and even if that same guy is still there serving up burritos (though I suspect he made bank and is retired by now), there’s no way to ever recreate that moment.  It’s a snapshot in time that is very likely already distorted with age.  Still, I think it’s not uncommon for a particularly vivid experience to take on epic proportions in hindsight and become our mind’s representation of the thing.  If that makes sense.  That moment, or how I remember that moment, defines San Diego for me.

Now, whenever there’s a specific quality to the air, whenever there’s just the right level of uncomplicated circumstances and innocent fun, it puts me back to that time and place.  The stress drops away.  The OCD takes a break.  And I kind of want a breakfast burrito.

Last night evolved into one of those nights.  I found myself riding a skateboard in the parking lot of my old elementary school at dusk in Thousand Oaks, California.  For a few minutes, I was by myself – just me and the memories of Ms. Burger’s kindergarten class.  The newspaper drives.  The lunchboxes.   Bears and Balloons.  I used to roller skate in that parking lot as a kid, though back then there was loose gravel and bumps and potholes.  My brother would be pleased to hear that they’ve repaved it enough times that now it is as smooth as glass – the perfect skating surface.

It was surreal, to say the least.  When the skateboard was first presented after a group dinner at a coworker’s house, I hesitated.  Visions of broken wrists and road rash flashed through my head.   I’m not as spry as I used to be, nor as young.  But something about the evening made me set aside the hesitation and just let go enough to embrace it.  The giddy feeling of freedom riding down the road.  It was beautiful and perfect in its own simple way, even though it only lasted a few minutes.

And as I got up early this morning to catch my flight back home, I recognized that I was still in that San Diego state of mind.  I pulled on a hoodie and my Reefs (yes, I pack them with me almost always) and rolled out the door without any of my usual high intensity.   Totally chillax.  And as I sat waiting for the airport shuttle in the fresh morning air, my feet kicked up on my luggage and eating potato chips for breakfast — because who is going to stop me? — I realized that in the languor of the morning, I had left my phone back in the hotel room.  This realization came on the heels of a similar one last night that I had left the charger in a different hotel room.  After I losing a pair of sunglasses earlier in the week and breaking another.

So it’s possible that being in a San Diego state of mind also results in having your normal baseline levels of organization scattered into disarray.  Means that you will be spending the next hour on the phone trying to track down your missing electronics.  I’m not sure how I feel about that, exactly… but while I figure it out, I may go ahead and order a burrito.