My Trip to Long Beach

Dear Lucy,

Yesterday, after my day of beer drinking and Guitar Hero playing with Hobie on the day before, I had...well...a bit of a hangover you might say. Hangover you say? After 12 beers? Shocking.

Anyway, I got this silly idea that it would be a good thing to drive to Long Beach and see the gay pride festival there. Who knows, I thought in my stupor, the future Mrs. Kathy Ferguson might be there just waiting to meet me!

So I took a fist full of Ibuprofen, drank some coffee, "shit, showered, and shaved" As Anne used to put it, (she had a way with a phrase I tell ya), and headed out to Long Beach.

Well, as luck would have it, it took me forever to even get to Long Beach, without directions or a map, simply relying on my memory of how to get there from 25 years ago (OK, a bad idea, but I was mentally compromised), and when I finally got to the 710 freeway (one of FIVE I had to take), they had several exits blocked off as they re-tarred the road, one of which, of course, was the exit I needed.

Now, you must understand that I didn't bring coffee with me because I didn't want to have to pee while in the middle of Long Beach and get lost. And I had more Ibuprofen in my pocket, but nothing to drink it down with.

So, the inevitable happened. Everything started to wear off! My head started pounding, my eyes started blurring and my tongue felt like I had spent the weekend at a stamp licker's convention!

Before I knew it, I was driving over some bridge and spotted the Queen Mary, (a famous ship, not a gay man with fabulous clothes) and was closing in on the shipping yards.

This unnerved me. So I got off the freeway, hopped back on going the other direction past the Queen, to which I waved properly, and ended up--you guessed it--back at Huntington Beach.

Whew, it was like landing in Mother's arms. I walked to a Jamba Juice stand, got a strawberry-banana smoothie, downed another fist full of Ibuprofen, got my tongue unstuck from the roof of my mouth, and took a walk along the Huntington Pier.

Of course, it was crowded at the beach and a hot day, and there was enough naked, tanned skin walking around to make anyone drool. I thanked God I had bought a pair of REALLY dark sunglasses a week ago so I could ogle incognito.

At the end of the pier there were dozens of people fishing. On one side they were pretty steamed because there was the cutest little seal out there having the time of his life swimming around and eating the bait off of all their hooks!

I wanted to cheer the little guy on but surrounded by fishermen who carry sharp knives, I thought this might not be, "prudent at this juncture".

I walked back to the car noting that there was a surfing competition going on hosted by the National Scholastic Surfing Association. Scholastic surfing???? Don't their books get wet?

Anyway, I did manage to take a picture of myself on the pier in all my hungover glory. It should be used in a, "don't drink or you could end up looking like this", ad campaign.

--Kathy