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Team Misfits California Road Trip 2005 - Part 5 The Other Activities and How We Entertained Ourselves Beaches: Many tourists go to California to bask in the delicious sunshine. Sun? What is this "sun" you speak of? Team Misfits Super Supreme Tourists did not experience the sun shining aspect of the Sunshine State, not that we let a minor thing like that get in our way! In spite of the cloudy and chilly weather, we managed to pay our respects to various beaches and do a number of non-sun-requiring activities. Hermosa & Redondo: Watched people fish. Why were there so many people fishing? How come they were all Asian? Was anyone actually catching anything? There wasn't much to do at these two adjoining beaches aside from pondering the mysteries of the fishing people, although Team Girl did tip-toe onto the beach trying not to get sand in our shoes. Team Guy chickened out and stayed back on the boardwalk. Team Girl: 1, Team Guy: 0 Venice Beach: Evilo began the day's beach adventures without her bathing suit on, but soon decided she wanted to change into more beach-friendly wear. There were no change rooms in sight, so Eyebrows and I fashioned a towel "tent" in which Evilo could change. Our tent was a sad two-dimensional structure that didn't leave Evilo much room to maneuver in, so we commissioned Ron the Happy Bishop to hold up a third towel. Three-dimensional tent? Two thumbs up. Photo of Ron the Happy Bishop's sheepish expression? Priceless! It was too chilly to lounge or swim much, so we attempted to teach Rob the Travel Nazi how to throw a frisbee. This didn't work out very well. What did work out well, however, was the sun burn of epic proportions that Rob the Travel Nazi developed on the back of his legs. It was truly a king of all sun burns and we marveled at the vibrancy of its redness. Muscle Beach Venice: Borough the Speedy Gonzales Gazelle demonstrated his super human strength on the rings at Muscle Beach. He will be henceforth referred to as Herculean Borough the Speedy Gonzales Gazelle. Santa Barbara: We played some more frisbee and admired the sand displays that people had created as a form of panhandling. Then we got in touch with our inner children at a nearby playground where Evilo won the rope balance endurance contest (Team Girl: 2, Team Guy: 0). We also had a huge photo op with...a plastic whale. Carmel: The beach at Carmel is known for its white sands and gorgeous sunsets, but we were too cold and windblown to properly appreciate the beauty as we jogged up and down the shoreline. The sunset would have been blocked by the thick layer of clouds anyway. For some unknown reason, it was decreed that we could not leave the beach until the tide came in high enough to touch our toes, so we did not leave the beach until the tide came in high enough to touch our toes. October, 2009 Update: It's been four years since our trip and two years since I last touched this document (it has been happily hibernating in the Draft folder of my Gmail account), but I have finally gotten my procrastinating butt back into gear and hope to finish this epic recap of Team Misfits Super Supreme Tourists' Californian Road Trip 2005! Sadly, a lot of the trip details I was carrying around in my head have since been replaced by random useless stuff, but better late than never. On with the show! Not strictly beaches: We did so many things around Monterey that we never saw Monterey itself properly in daylight. And San Francisco, beautiful San Francisco, who has time for beaches when there is chocolate to be eaten? Monterey: Waterproof gear? Check. Lifejackets? Check. Paddle? Check. Neon-colored kayak? Check. Camera? Do you even need to ask that? As soon as we got comfortable in our rented sea kayaks, we found that paddling about aimlessly was kind of, well, boring. So we played a rousing round of sea kayak tag and lined our kayaks up side-by-side for yet another photo op. A few of us braved the choppy waters to paddle out to a distant buoy too. "...sea kayaking out to the buoy, secretly terrified." - Rob the Travel Nazi We followed the kayaking up with a trip to the laundromat. I don't recall the exact circumstances, but for some reason, Evilo and I remained behind, which meant Eyebrows got the dubious honor of washing our unmentionables. Thank you, Eyebrows! Then there was the factory tour at Monterey Bay Chocolates where we were given stylish shower cap hairnets to wear so we wouldn't contaminate the huge basins of melted chocolate, the conveyer belts of honeycombed sugar or the trays upon trays of delectable truffles...*drool* Nevermind the hairnet, I need a saliva catcher! On our last morning in Monterey, Eyebrows and I decided to get up at the ridiculously early hour of 6am to have some sand mural fun. That is, we used a coat hanger and scavenged beach tools to create a stick figure interpretation of our vacation thus far. It was a masterpiece, if I do say so myself, and it depicted each Team Misfits Super Supreme Tourist in a memorable way: Evilo sitting on the Egg Rock, GEORGE kayaking, Ron the Happy Bishop frolicking over a flower, Rob the Travel Nazi standing on the minivan and Herculean Borough the Speedy Gonzales Gazelle climbing a tree (which is something he did whenever we came across a climbable or not-so-climbable tree). Eyebrows and I put our stick figure selves on top of a floating cloud and the sun, respectively, because you can only expect so much creativity at 6am. The tide soon washed our heads off though. San Francisco: We did a surprising amount of cardio in San Francisco - early morning jogging on the Golden Gate Bridge (3.4 miles!), hiking up and down the super steep hills, and shopping the sprawling Napa Premium Outlets. What do you mean shopping doesn't count as cardio?! Exercising while on vacation is just wrong, so we had to find ways to undo the healthy side effects of our vigorous workouts. So we ate chocolate. We had flipped our itinerary in order to be in San Francisco for the 10th Annual Chocolate Festival and it was well worth it. Eight dollars for five samples resulted in some damn fine chocolate. We also convinced Rob the Travel Nazi to allow a revision to The Non Plan to fit in a mid-afternoon nap at Fisherman�s Wharf. "Only 30 minutes allowed." - Rob the Travel Nazi Best 30 minutes ever! As a whole, Team Misfits Super Supreme Tourists isn't especially interested in the arts, so we didn't visit any museums or attend any concerts. We did, however, visit the Robert Mondavi winery, where Evilo managed to get tipsy on the wine samples. We also stopped at the CIA (Culinary Institute of Arts) - the herb garden there was deliciously fragrant. And we spent a lot of time admiring the Golden Gate Bridge (in the dark and in high wind because that's how Team Misfits Super Supreme Tourists roll!). You can't visit San Francisco and call yourself a Super Supreme Tourist without taking a ride on the cable car. I couldn't help but wonder what would happen if the grip lever broke, but we all had a memorable ride. "...being inches away from oncoming traffic on the SF street car and wanting to high-five oncoming passengers." - GEORGE "Cable car ride through San Francisco at night - everyone hanging off the side! Perfect way to end the trip." - Rob the Travel Nazi What a fabulous photo - maybe Walmart can turn it into a t-shirt we can all wear on our next action-packed Team Misfits Super Supreme Tourists vacation! Sept. 15, 2019 - Test2 Sept. 15, 2019 - test Nov. 03, 2009 - Team Misfits California Road Trip 2005 - Part 6 Oct. 26, 2009 - Team Misfits California Road Trip 2005 - Part 5 May. 29, 2007 - Team Misfits California Road Trip 2005 - Part 4