2026: Chapter 15

My vacation got pushed back at least a couple days due to complications with having my new washer and dryer delivered. I ordered them thinking they’d get here on a Saturday, thus allowing me to go to Solvang on the subsequent Sunday, but in reality they wouldn’t be delivered until Sunday — thus making Monday the earliest possible date I could leave.

This became a mess even further when Lowe’s gave me a four-hour window for the delivery (on Sunday), when actually they called me about an hour before said window and, since I was asleep — see: the fucked up hours I work/the fucked up hours I sleep — I missed the call entirely and had to wait another day. I suppose that’s on me, but it didn’t feel like it was. In the meantime while I was in the middle of being Bob The goddam Builder and learning on YouTube how to disengage all the hoses and shit from the washer, and unhooking the fat metalic vent thing from the dryer, I turned off the water to my condo and shortly thereafter had a knock on my door from my upstairs neighbor telling me that I turned off his water, too, in the process.

I explained to him the situation and he was cool about it, which was nice. He has lived in the unit above mine for the last two years and this was the first interaction with items such as physical handshake contact, or words being directed at one another voluntarily, that the two of us have shared. We are perfect neighbors, in other words. The following day — on Monday — I sent him a text to let him know that Lowe’s was here and that the water would again be shut off, temporarily, and about an hour later I had my new washer/dryer installed.

As relieved as I was to have that done, and as elated as I was to have my new washer and dryer (because they are objectively really fucking cool, for what they are), I couldn’t help but feel like my vacation had been wasted in some way. I was kind of anticipating being on the road on Sunday and getting back home on Tuesday evening, and the way it worked out was I would be arriving in Solvang on Tuesday evening and theoretically not make it back until Thursday. Two nights seemed like an appropriate stay for a quick-turnaround nostalgia vacation.

I tend to think the coolest thing about me, or best attribute, is that I’m not big on making plans. It’s always been a major juxtaposition of mine: Maybe it’s the sharp haircut or the generally proper and/or pitch-perfect language I use when I speak, but I do come across as quite calculated. I seem responsible and as if most of the time I have it all put together. In spite of that, there has always been a lot of daylight between the perception of who I am and the reality.

Because, honestly, even though I don’t believe in ‘vibes,’ I don’t have a better way to describe who I am and what I’m like in scenarios such as these. I figured once the washer and dryer arrived that I would book a hotel, so that’s what I did. I had absolutely no plans and nothing to do while I was in Solvang — other than being present. I would make the drive, I would park my car, I would check into my room, and then theoretically I would have a couple nights to decide what the deal was. Those were my plans: The absence of them.

And so that’s exactly what happened. I walked around the streets of Solvang around 6:00 P.M. Pacific Standard Time on Tuesday, June 30th, and it was almost entirely what I remembered as a child. There were couples and families taking pictures in front of the old Danish iconography that Solvang CA is known for. Most of the shops had already closed. It seemed like such a huge place when I was a child. But here, some 20 years removed from my most recent visit, I’m pretty sure I walked every street of consequence, that I had memory of, anyway, in like 20 or 25 minutes.

I imagine that was how long it took me to realize that it was going to take on my behalf a herculean undertaking to fill up all the allotted time I had set aside for this trip. What was it about being a kid and having no money to spend that made Solvang’s many shops, filled with all manner of miscellaneous chotchkie’s, so much more fun and interesting? And what is it about being an adult, and having choices with what I want to spend my money on, that somehow makes it less fun?

A bar is where I ended up at. I’m sure you are shocked to read such a sentence on my post-sobriety blog. I watched the World Cup match between Mexico and Ecuador and had a few beers. Once the sun went down I walked about ten minutes to another bar of a similar level of bougie, called The Landsby, which was per the recommendation of one of my coworkers who used to live in the area. I ordered the filet which came with a quite delicious chimichurri sauce, and it was only then that I discovered what chimichurri actually was and tasted like — since I had known of it from watching Hell’s Kitchen and Masterchef with Niña for so many years.

Then I walked back to my hotel. I walked back to my hotel and noted, officially, that every shop in the town was closed, and that every bar in the town would be closed at 9:30. Nine-fucking-thirty. Everywhere I went had somewhere in the vicinity non-smoking signs, so it was a minor chore to find random parking lots to fire up a heater. On top of that there was almost nowhere for me to go. I took a shower and looked up on my phone the night life options in Santa Barbara CA — about a 45-minute drive — but that seemed like a lot of effort to go through simply to drink and potentially get into trouble before inevitably having to make the drive back.

Against all my wishes and impulses I ended up at Chumash Casino in Santa Ynez CA (pronounced Sant-EE-Nezz), because I genuinely did not know what to do with myself during the remainder of my waking hours. My sleep schedule is what is. I am awake until at least 6:00 A.M. I had nothing to do in my room to pass the time other than watching movies or being on YouTube or simply jerking off. But that’s a lot of movies and YouTube and jerking off. It’s frankly more than I have in me at this stage of my life.

So I went to Chumash. I blew through an easy thousand bucks before I’d even finished my first Corona. I ran into a dealer who knew someone from where I work, and he told me to tell him to shine his shoes. That he would know what I was talking about. I had a few more beers and lost another thousand dollars, so I took some more money out even though I told myself I wouldn’t. I had that familiar sinking feeling of having been in that exact position countless times, losing money and trying to get it back, knowing it never comes back. It just doesn’t.

I got on a small heater in the high-limit room, betting anywhere between $50 per hand and $300, but never, like, pushing it, and suddenly I looked down and saw that I had $3,000 worth of chips in front of me. Don’t ask me how I did it. I know there was this crucial split-7’s hand I had against a dealer 6 where I had two double-downs and like $800 on the layout, and I won it. I was in close to $3,000, though, so I colored up to $500 chips and cashed out and considered myself extremely fortunate. I left and went back to my hotel and absolutely housed nearly an entire bag of Old Trapper beef jerky (original).

The following afternoon I woke up a handful of times feeling empty and alone. Each moment I had the hankering of lugging my ass up out of bed I felt the dread of knowing only that I was destined to repeat the night before, so I remained lying there. I dreaded repeating the process of finding a bar and drinking. I dreaded that I would eat some food and trudge my way through the streets of Solvang CA, realizing again in a Groundhog Day sort of way that everything was closed, and that even the things that weren’t closed — the places I would inevitably arrive at — would soon be closed. At 9:30 P.M. And that the only game in town would be to go to Chumash, or travel some 45 minutes in one direction to Santa Barbara. The same predicament I was in the night before.

I had these high hopes for that particular Wednesday, July 1st, of driving to Pismo Beach CA and exploring and watching at 5:00 P.M. the World Cup match between the United States and Bosnia. It was a loose plan, but it was a plan nonetheless. Standing there in my incredibly and like unnecessarily opulent restroom I decided that there would be no decision on that night. Groundhog Day would not be happening. I wanted to go home. I did not want to end up at the casino for a second straight night, and I did not want to travel to some seedy establishment — my favorites, of course — in Santa Barbara.

So what I did was this: I got dressed and walked the streets of Solvang CA for what might be the last time. I bought something like $150 worth of chocolate from the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. I then went to Mortensen’s Bakery and got another $80 worth of danishes and cookies and things of the like. I took those two bags with me to my hotel room. Then I went to the nearby bar — the one I was at the night before, before I went to The Landsby — and I watched the soccer match between the U.S. and Bosnia.

It was there in the parking lot while I fired down a couple American Spirit’s that I texted my mom, who was obviously excited for me and my trip, and I told her that I was coming home that night, that Solvang was not a place for a bachelor in my position, and that whenever, or if-ever, I come back, or return, I will be with my family — whether it’s my mom and two brothers or my own wife (or girlfriend) and children. That was what my great realization for the trip.

I left around 8:30 P.M. Pacific Standard Time and got home at roughly 1:00 in the morning. I don’t regret it at all. Never did I really think of myself as the guy who could drop as much money as I did on two nights at a hotel and just decide on impulse to come home before ever fully appreciating it, but that’s me now, I guess. It’s like I dumped $500 into the gutter. I did the math, and I came to the same conclusion I always come to whenever money is involved: My well-being is worth way more. My comfort and happiness is worth way more. Money really doesn’t matter, in other words.

So I figured I could throw $500 into the gutter by leaving and thus not staying for a second night in my hotel room, or I could pump a helluva lot more than that into the casino, or into some bar or strip club in Santa Barbara. I’d argue I made a good investment. The absolute worst thing I can get involved in, especially on a solo vacation, is having time on my hands and nothing to do with it. When there is nothing to do, I will find something to do. That ‘something’ comes in many forms, but always it is me operating and making the choices. That is the only constant.

So when I say that my best attribute is vibes, and simply existing and figuring things out on the go, what I am really saying is that it is also the worst thing about me. Your greatest strength is your greatest weakness, etc. That’s the platitude, anyway. It likely would have done me some good to actually plan out the trip, to give myself some sort of itinerary and go wine tasting, or whatever, and tire myself out with all the activities that, by the end of the night, I would have had no need to go off looking for the same old stuff that I could simply do where I live.

But that’s also sort of why I blame the washer and dryer situation. I have to blame something, do I not? I have to tell myself that my vacation to Solvang kept getting pushed back, and therefore it was a rushed journey from the very get-go, and that my hands were ultimately tied, and so on. I can’t possibly admit that I was doomed from the start to end up at bars and casinos and that in every which way I was going to use my vacation as a means to do whatever it is I would have been doing otherwise.

Which is a pretty lame, but I at least admit it. In the abstract I think a bulk of my vacation, or at least what I consider to be my vacation, was the drive to Solvang, and from Solvang, which accounted for a not-so-insignificant eight or nine hours out of a very humble 36-hour turnaround. I wanted to see the ocean, and so the ocean is what I saw during the daylight on Tuesday. I saw lots of green. I saw an area of my home state that I do not often see. And: I really like to drive. Driving is something that has always made me happy.

Now I am home. I envisioned at the outset that my nine days off would be something I either loved or hated, something I wished would continue or that I’d be begging to get back to work. As I sit here, however, I don’t feel either of those sentiments. The time moved very slowly at the start, and then very quickly at the end. I wondered at the start if I could actually occupy the time, and then suddenly I found myself doing laundry and cleaning up my condo and preparing myself for another week… on my way to eternity.

So the impression I have is that my vacation was incomplete. That is how I would describe it. I can take from it the necessary ascertainment of a new washer and dryer. I can take with me the knowledge that vacation is not really something I want or need unless I have more clear of a purpose. And I learned, and now know, wholeheartedly, that the next time I visit Solvang CA, the vacation destination of my youth, I will have children of my own — or at the very minimum a significant other whom I can share the experience with.

It is officially the summertime. As if it were some kind of yearly tradition, I am now reading again my favorite book: The Good Earth. It meant something to me, once, in 2024, and then last year, in 2025, it seemed to mean something entirely different. The story hasn’t changed, so that can mean only one thing as I consume it once more.