Whoooa, labor day weekend surf was out of control. Not so much the surf, in fact we were down at Scripps and the surf was quite mediocre, however the adventure was outrageous.

Into or beds by 3 AM the day we arrived we were up again by 6. Needless to say once we arrived at the beach in San Diego it was time for our mid morning nap. After a good deal of surfing and Frisbee Pazookies were in order for dinner and adventure ensued. Splitting into two teams we raced to BJ’s where the loosing team would be obligated to buy the winning team their round of Pazookies. Unfortunately, by not having a remarkably simple yet winning team name, my team lost and team Awesome won. Preceding the pazookies was a ride back to the beach via truck bed. Now, I’m aware of truck bed laws in CA, but my company was not familiar with them. But being in the minority and willing to take the risk that we wouldn’t run into a police officer during our 1.5 mile drive we all jumped into the bed and were on our way home. Not even a block later we found ourselves stopped on the side of the road with a genuine San Diego Police Officer, who so very graciously allowed us to exit the bed with a warning and some time to think of an alternate means to get home. Shuttling the rest of the group back to the other car via truck we soon had another ride home. Alas, leave it to genius to not have enough room for all of us in the second ride as well. So, in light of the recent law breakage I took refuge in the trunk as the rest of the crew cinched up in the back seat. Safe and sound we got back to the beach, packed up our things, loaded the car, and moved out to our next destination, the camp site (via one stop for liquor). In all it’s glory, our site was marked as “Property of The Regents of California” “No Fires, No Picnicking, etc. etc. “ though it never said anything about sleeping or camping. We decided to mix our selves some drinks (most of them quite bad curtsey of me) and then took a nice tour of the UCSD campus at 11:00 PM. We stopped to notice some of the local insects, including one scorpion half the size of my pinky fingernail, as well as climb about in some trees and atop buildings – all in good fun. We quickly came to find that some of the restrooms on campus were open, which allowed us to get some hot water on our faces which was a nice touch to the evening. Immediately following our sink showers we came to notices that other doors to this building were also open. Finding a latter leading to a hatch we were above the La Jolla playhouse in the catwalk – remarkable! Exploring further each door seemed to be open and as it turns out the entire playhouse was open for our entertainment! Upon being spooked by a noise we cut our exploration short and moved on, exploring a small hippy garden, some construction sites, and lastly the medical center where we found three rolley chairs and a whole course of ramps awaiting our races. Spending a good hour rolling the course, we were finally stopped by the loss of every single wheel on all the chairs, making them unrollable. Devastated we meandered back across campus to our grove of eucalypts trees, rolled out our bags and hit the sack. In the morning we were abruptly awoken by a dog about a foot away from our faces and a man saying, “you can’t be here, this is public property!” Though we knew what he meant, his words really made him look quite silly. We then jumped back into the car and cruised down to Scripps for another great day of beach, surf, sleep, and the like. The evening brought us again to BJ’s for some pazookie and some nice conversation with the waitress, who was actually from Tucson, where upon we revealed to her that we had slept in the trees the night before. My goal was for her to say “well, why don’t you come crash at my place with my 16 hot roommates.” But really all she said was “Why don’t you get a hotel room!?!” much to my dismay. Though, as it turned out we didn’t do either. After dinner we cruised back onto campus only to find the playhouse still open and ready for business. Exploring much deeper this time, it was clear that someone had goofed and not locked it up after the last show and no one was coming back till the work day, Tuesday. So we ran around the place, played with the piano, found their audio equipment closet – open and ready for business, turned lights on and off and finally found their green room with a fridge full of orange juice and beer and two couches. As sleepiness dawned on us, it was clear where we were sleeping; in the warm cozy security of the theater. We worked out plans to escape if surprised and then crashed till the morning when we casually woke up, used the dressing room bathrooms to clean up (they even had showers, though we didn’t use them) and then we were off north for some surfing at San Onofre. Upon arrival at San Onofre we found a group of surf goers and breakfast makers and managed to score a couple pancakes and eggs and even some passion fruit once we told them that we were essentially bums, sleeping in trees and trespassing. Charged up and ready to go we got one last surf session in for the day, returned the boards back home, had lunch with Mom, stopped by Becker and the Rainbow Factory and high tailed it back to Tucson.

All in all it was a fantastic weekend, full of good stories and confidence in our ability to really hobo it.