Should I Stay or Should I Go

It was the summer of ninety-nine, and it was the last summer before I went off to college. So that meant it was the last summer to spend with my best friends from high school. We all wanted to do something special before we parted ways, so my friends Joe, T.J., Pete, Matt, and I decided we were going to fly to California together in August. The reason we picked California is because Matt has a House in San Diego and we planned on staying there for ten days, or so we thought.

San Diego started off like it was going to be the best vacation of our lives. We arrived at Matt’s house at about midnight, and we took one look at the house and our jaws dropped to the ground. It sat a top the side of a mountain overlooking another mountain and some San Diego neighborhoods. It had a heated pool, it had a gate at the front of his driveway, and it even had a front door that was about fifteen feet tall. While unpacking Matt informed us that we were all sleeping in the same room, but there was not a bed in the room so we all had to sleep on the floor. Sleeping on the floor really did not bother me, but it was just the fact that we had to be on the floor for ten days. We also found out that the only way we could go somewhere was for Scott, who is Matt’s brother, to drive us there. The thing we wanted to do most was go to the beach, but it was going to be a pain, since Matt lived about twenty minutes away from the nearest beach. Although these were somewhat big obstacles, we knew we were still going to have a ton of fun.

Some of the highlights of our trip include going to the beach. We went to two different beaches. One was called Torrey-Pines, which was on the quiet side and there were not many people there at all. The second beach we went to was Pacific Beach. That was the beach that was the typical “California” beach. It had the sidewalk, where people would roller blade, they had the Baywatch looking lifeguards, and they even had the hot girls in the real skimpy bikinis. The only bad thing about the beach was the waves. Compared to the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean’s waves were choppy and small. I was looking forward to riding some waves on my boogie board, but they were so bad that I might have only rode on one wave the whole entire time we were there.

When we did not feel like driving up to the beach, but felt like swimming, we relaxed in Matt’s heated pool. It’s in his backyard and since his backyard is built on top of a cliff it looks amazing. One night we were swimming until the sun went down, and we just floated around and watched the sunset. It was probably the most beautiful sky I had ever seen. It turned from yellow to orange to red to purple in a matter of twenty minutes. It felt like I was looking at a live postcard.

Another highlight was going to the malls. We took my video camera everywhere we went, including the malls, so we could meet new people and talk to the store clerks where we were buying things. The funniest mall moment was when we went into Lids, which is a store that sells hats. The two guys working there insisted on taking video of us picking out our hats. They ended up being really cool, and they even wanted to take us to Tijuana, but Matt’s parents were no way going to let us leave the country while we were there.

Some of our other highlights included going out to eat, hitting the local nudie bars, and wasting all our money at Smoothie King, which is a health drink store that is better than any drink store I have ever been to. In the middle of our exciting vacation we were informed of a little problem. We found out that Matt forgot to tell his parents that our flight was leaving on the twenty-fifth. That was critical, because Matt’s Dad and Scott were leaving to go back home the twenty-fourth, and Matt and his Mom were leaving that same day to go to Portland. That left us with no house to stay at for an entire day. Since Matt’s Dad and Scott’s flight left at one o’clock that day, we planned on going stand-by on that flight or on any flight going to Pittsburgh that day. Matt’s Dad assured us there wouldn’t be a problem and we would definitely be able to go home that day with out paying any extra money and not get stranded in San Diego.

The four of us arrived at the San Diego International Airport with luggage in hand and the notion that we were going to go to the U.S. Airways counter and get our tickets, no problem. That didn’t exactly happen though. What we were told was that the policy was that no passenger could try to go stand-by on a flight unless your original flight was on that same day. That’s where the conflict began.

Even though Scott and his Dad tried so hard to talk the employees at the counter into letting us leave on their flight, it was to no avail. So we were faced with a difficult decision. We could either pay seventy dollars each to go on that flight, second we could stay overnight at the airport and try to go stand-by on the one o’clock flight the next day, or finally we could get a hotel for the night and go stand-by the next day. These all were tough decisions, and all of us could not seem to agree on one of them.

Joe was determined to pay seventy dollars and go home that night. As soon as this option was presented, Joe jumped on it and was set on going home no matter what. The only thing Joe could come up with for wanting to go home so bad was that he missed his dogs. We all thought that that was a very lame excuse, and that there was something more to it than that. Throughout the whole vacation Joe was getting teased by everyone maybe a little too much. Joe is always the one in our group of friends that gets picked on the most. It’s not that we don’t like him, he just does certain things that are stupid and we can’t help but laugh and make a big deal out of it. One night we were at the Hard Rock Café and everyone was arguing with everyone else. We all were kind of getting sick of being together for so long that it finally got to us. I was fighting with T.J. about him stealing my food, then Joe was yelling at Pete because he wouldn’t stop bothering him, and Matt was yelling at all of us, because he was just so frustrated with the whole vacation. Matt was also frustrated that his Mom was being really picky about everything we did, and would always blame it on Matt. All of a sudden Joe just slammed the table and we figured out then, that he was getting sick of the vacation. For Joe to stay one more day, on a vacation he dreaded, would be hell for him. It was obvious he wanted to go home, sleep in his own bed, and see his family and his girlfriend, but to the rest of us that wasn’t worth seventy dollars.

Pete wanted to stay in the airport overnight and just leave the next day. He did not want to spend any more money, because he was running low on cash. The only problem with that was we didn’t have anywhere to put our luggage. In the Pittsburgh Airport they have huge lockers where you could put all of your luggage. So we asked around to find out if they had anything like that in San Diego, but they didn’t. So we were not taking the risk of leaving our luggage somewhere while we roamed around the airport. Pete’s main reason for wanting to stay in the airport was to pick up chicks. Even though he had a girlfriend that was still his main objective. At the Pittsburgh airport we would always see these really fine chicks walking around. We always wanted to go up to the airport and just spend the day there, because it was exactly like a mall, but it had hotter chicks and even more stores to hang out at. Since there was nowhere to put ten days worth of luggage, his plan was not taken serious at all.

T.J. really did not care what we did. Stay or leave, it just didn’t matter, he just wanted to do what the majority wanted to do. I could tell he wanted to get a hotel a little bit more than he wanted to leave. He too did not want to pay the extra seventy dollars, but if the majority was going to pay then he would have paid. One big reason he wanted to get a hotel was because he would get to sleep in a bed and not on Matt’s floor. So a hotel bed was looking mighty fine right about now.

I, myself, was set on getting a hotel room. Deep inside I did feel like going home, because I really missed my girlfriend and I missed being at home, but I didn’t want to be forced to pay seventy dollars, because Matt forgot to tell his parents the exact day our flight left. I knew that the hotel was going to be cheaper, and I knew we were going to have one more night of fun, because we were going to be on our own.

After T.J. realized my idea was the best, and Pete came to his senses, the three of us decided that the hotel was the best idea. Joe, being as stubborn as he is, still wanted to go home. He didn’t care that the rest of us didn’t, he was just so set on getting his way. So we decided to vote on it. Joe was out-voted three to one, so it was final; we were getting a hotel room and staying overnight.

We thought we were going to be able to call the Holiday Inn, which was located right next to the airport, stay there the night and go back the next day, but that’s where another conflict arose. It was Pete’s job to call different hotels and check on some prices. One of the U.S. Air employees at the counter told us the Holiday Inn was going to be the cheapest and that they should have a decent amount of rooms available. We were still going to call around just to make sure. It was a good thing we did call around, because we found out not only was the Holiday Inn the most expensive, but they didn’t have any rooms left. We had a list of all the hotels in a one-mile radius of the airport and every single one but two had no vacancy. The two that had rooms still available were so expensive that it would have been cheaper to leave that day while we had the chance. This put us in a tough situation.

Since we really did not know the city that well, we were going to try to just look up hotels in a phonebook and try to take either a shuttle or taxi to them. On our way to the payphones, we noticed something, which at the time seemed like a sign from God. On a billboard of all these different hotels I noticed an ad for a hotel called the Pickwick. The ad said: “Looking for a place to stay? Well look no further. Choose Pickwick: We have a shower and bath, cable television, a game room, and we are located just three miles from the airport. We even have a free shuttle that takes you from the airport directly downtown to where we are located. Rooms start at forty dollars.” Knowing that this hotel was probably not one of the nicest there to choose from didn’t matter to us one bit. Ten bucks each for a room was ten bucks each, and you could not beat that. So we called them, and luckily they had a room with two beds available for fifty-five dollars, which was only about four bucks more a person than the initial ten. So we waited for our shuttle and were on our way to our savior, The Pickwick.

While riding in the shuttle we knew not to expect much, we just didn’t know how bad it was going to be. The shuttle dropped us off on the sidewalk right in front of the Pickwick, and it was the biggest hole I had ever seen. Looking up, we saw that every window was filthy and falling apart. We also noticed all the paint chipping on the building and all the brown stains on the paint that was still there. We checked in at the lobby and proceeded to take our bags to our room. The air was filled with the smell of urine and body odor in the hallway of our floor. As we arrived at our room’s door, we all feared what was going to be behind that door. Pete unlocked it and started opening it very slowly. To our surprise the room looked halfway decent. It had two queen sized beds, a big television with cable, and a relatively big closet. We thought we lucked out, and never thought after seeing the outside and smelling urine throughout the hotel that our room was going to be as nice as it was. That all changed when we opened the bathroom door. Behind the door were a bathtub, a sink, and a toilet that looked like they hadn’t been cleaned for months. Not only that, but also the sink and wall around the bathtub had a nice rust texture and coloring to them. There was no way we were going to be showering that night. That did not ruin the room though; because we had beds, and the idea of sleeping in a bed for the first time in a week and a half made us forget about the bathroom real quick. Since this was the only time during the vacation where the four of us had total control over what we were going to do, we locked up that door and hit the streets.

Our daytime experiences included going to the pawnshops, the used C.D. store, the dollar store, and roaming around the downtown mall. It was all cool and everything, but we thought there was going to be many more things to do. So we went back to the Pickwick to take some naps until it got dark, because we knew that all the excitement in downtown always happened at night.

We all had woken up from our naps and were ready to hit the streets again. Before we did though, Pete had one of his great ideas. What he wanted to do is pay a homeless guy off the streets to get him some alcohol. So he started talking to this black guy who was hanging out at the corner, and told him he needed some kind of alcoholic refreshment. As soon as Pete whipped out a ten-dollar bill, the homeless guy took it and bought Pete a bottle of gin on the spot. I really did not think he was going to do it, but he came through in the clutch and got the alcohol he so deeply wanted.

After we all had some gin in us (Pete having much more than everyone else) we decided to stick to our plan of just walking around downtown San Diego and seeing whatever there was to see. Among some of the craziest things we saw was a transvestite hooker, which Pete and T.J. thought was hot until I informed them she was really a man. We also saw a ton of crazy homeless people and beggars. To keep the crazy people from talking to us or asking us for money, Pete and I acted like we were one of the crazy people. We would just start talking real fast to each other and bursting out in song. It worked, because we were not being bothered by any of the crazy people and we were actually getting scared looks by normal people just walking the streets. The coolest thing we saw that night happened in front of the Wendy’s. Outside Wendy’s there was a bum, lying passed out on the ground with his eye bleeding and cut open, and a puddle of his own urine flowing down the sidewalk. While we were in Wendy’s getting our food the paramedics and police came to take the guy to the hospital. When we first saw him we thought he was dead, but the paramedics gave him some smelling salt and threw him into the ambulance. After that we figured we had enough excitement for one night and decided to end our little downtown adventure.

The next day we said our goodbyes to the Pickwick and set off for the airport. We ended up being able to go stand-by on an earlier flight that day. So our San Diego vacation had come to an end. In all it was a great vacation that we will all be talking about for the rest of our lives. Even though we did have trouble leaving, in the end it all worked out for the best. We all came to the conclusion that if we ever had a problem like that again, to think of our Pickwick experience, and everything would be okay.