Cruising on Grand
I haven’t been out of the house (or at least off the property) all week. The main reason has been that I have lots of work to do, and the secondary reason is that we’re still heavily engaged in several household projects. This week it was all about the inside and outside of the garage. The outside was getting a functional makeover. That included a new cedar shed in the back for yard tools, set on a nice new concrete pad compliments of Handy Brad. In addition, Handy Brad thought the walkway behind the garage needed some sprucing up so we now have the nicest looking back of garage set up in the neighborhood, I bet. The inside was getting a new epoxy floor with a speckled surface. The epoxy is a two-day process, so tomorrow we will see what it feels like. We can’t use the garage for the weekend in order to let the epoxy cure, but Handy Brad will be painting the inside walls in preparation for the new cabinets being installed on Monday and Tuesday. Kim will be getting a combination craft counter and gift wrapping center and I will be getting a tool center. You might even think I was a handy guy, which I am not. But then again, maybe I’ll become one.
We decided that it being Friday night, we needed to go out and celebrate our hard-won week. So, we headed to downtown Escondido, which I have likened to the Modesto of American Graffiti. I doubt here is an elevator in Escondido since I’m not sure there is anything higher than two stories in town (at least in the downtown area). The streets are wide and friendly and they are all set in a perfect grid. The main north/south streets are the Boulevards with Broadway and Escondido Boulevard. The east/west go from Grand Avenue numbered as they head south and with regal names like Mission, Washington and El Norte as they head north. Off to the side, by the tracks where the feed store and other work-a-day businesses reside there is our favorite Mexican restaurant called Mi Guadalajara. We haven’t eaten there once in 2020 and it is otherwise a weekly spot for us. Such is the nature of the pandemic and our and everyone else’s travails of 2020. Today was a warm day, but it cools down by dinner time. Mi Guadalajara has set themselves up with tables a plenty under the solar array that used to provide covered parking for its patrons. These are the same tables the restaurant uses inside and they have set them up with proper social distancing and we had a lovely dinner under the solar array with a blue tarp protecting us from the setting sun and the traffic on Quince Street. I did not come out to Escondido loving Mexican food, but I have increasingly come to appreciate it and that steak fajitas tonight did not disappoint.
We came back up the hill after driving up Grand Avenue and showing our houseguest the wonders that used to be Cruisin’ on Grand. The Avenue is taken up with concrete Jersey barriers that have been placed in one lane of the street so as to allow the restaurants to have some chance of having enough outdoor dining to keep their business alive. This is a scene that can be witnessed in every town and city in America and probably the world (at least the parts of the world that take the pandemic and social distancing and outdoor dining seriously). The activity level on Grand Avenue, while seeming busy, is a shadow of its former self. In summers past on Friday nights, the car culture of Escondido would come alive on Grand Avenue. Tonight, it came alive as well. Except that where there used to be hundreds of wonderful 50’s and 60’s heavy Detroit metal monsters on the Avenue, cruising and bouncing along. Tonight, there were eight of Detroit’s finest on display on a side street. It was no Cruisin’ on Grand, but it was at least enough to remind us of what might come around again if we can subdue the virus monster.
On the hill we had the grandest of sunsets. It is easy up here to get immunized to the wonders of the views. But tonight the sunset was extra special and the red-orange ball of the sun was sending off sunbeams in all directions. As the fireball descended into the Pacific Ocean, the movie screen lights came up and we began our nightly program of finding a movie not known to our guest. I wish I could say that was a challenge, but he has apparently not seen too many of the great movies that pop up first on the Netflix and Prime listings, so it is no trouble to find offerings that please us and amaze him. So far, we are six for six in the win category with three more nights to try to roll a perfect game. Now that is a challenge worth undertaking. Being a lover of fine movies, I am happy to accommodate and introduce him to some of my favorites. Right now we are watching A Knight’s Tale that great Chaucerian legend arranged with music from Queen, which is somehow most fitting for a Medieval jousting match.
The weekend promises to be hot, according to the weather report. That seems to be a condition over much of the country. Reading the national weather forecast makes me wonder how nay-sayers of Climate Change are faring in the heat. What that means is that we will likely be spending the afternoons this weekend indoors where the air conditioning can save us. The mornings should be fine, but the afternoons we will be looking for shade, ceiling fans and some amount of air conditioning, which may occasion added movie watching. There are worse ways to pass a hot day on this mountaintop.
It is too warm to head East into the desert and the beach will likely be very crowed and full of the virus. So, I somehow think we may need to watch Outbreak, Contagion, World War Z or The Painted Veil to remind us of the power of the pandemic for civilized man. We may have to go Cruising on Grand again if things get too boring, but that beats cruising for a bruising by the Coronavirus at the beach.