Apple pie

Today, I was determined to have a better day than I had yesterday.

I came up clutch.

Since it's best to go with what you know, I breakfasted in South Park, a funky neighborhood full of crazy leftists. I stopped in at the Big Kitchen, a place owned by a crazy leftist and yet featured on Rachael Ray's "$40 a Day." (I love America.) The Captain and I ate there twice during his short visit, so my breakfast yesterday made it three times I've gone in the week I've been in San Diego. It's a good place. It's the type of place where regulars abound, and if you don't happen to have enough cash on you, no biggie. The owner, Judy Foreman, has been in business more than twenty years, so she seems to know what she's doing. I get the sense she's a sort of patron saint for the neighborhood, someone who makes a ton of money on her business and then puts it all back into the community.

The servers as the Big Kitchen pointed me to a fun coffee shop where I could sit and read for a bit. The place was perfect: large and airy, full of comfy chairs and atmosphere. While sipping my coffee I perused a city guide which told me about Julian, a country town about an hour's drive northeast of San Diego. Originally a gold rush town, Julian's big business today is apples. With nothing to lose, I went to see Southern California's answer to New England.

The drive was beautiful. The weather was beautiful. The mountains were beautiful. I wished I had a convertible.

But as I approached Julian, I saw vestiges of the wildfires which destroyed 750,000 acres of land in 2003. Mile after mile of blackened trees; it was hard to imagine a fire that could burn so much. My guidebook said that many in Julian had lost their homes to the fires, so I kept that in mind when I got there.

Which basically means I spent a lot of money during my visit. The main drag is only about four blocks long, but I managed to 1) eat lunch at the town's nicest restaurant, 2) buy a book I didn't need at the used bookstore, 3) purchase apple butter and other preserves for friends, 4) eat an enormous slice of apple-berry pie, 5) buy an apple cookbook for the Captain, and 6) bring home zucchini bread for my roommate. And I was there only two hours. Imagine what would have happened had I stayed longer. In fact there was more to see, but at that point my wallet, in addition to my heart, was bleeding, so I had to go.

But it was a good day.