I just returned from a wonderful weekend in San Diego.
It went something like this:
Friday:
Matt no.1 (Roommate), Matt no.2 (Marine, high school friend of Matt no.1), Evan and I all pile into Matt no.1's little Toyota Matrix. Three and a half hours later we roll into Carlsbad and drop Matt no.2 off. It is about one o'clock and we are hungry, not to mention exhausted from approximately two hundred and ten minutes of hardcore underground rap. Matt no.1 (just Matt from now on), Evan and I grab some "real" Mexican food, because "Santa Barbara has crappy Mexican food," from hole-in-the-wall Filiberto's in Encinitas. We roll from there, down the coast to Matt's house. There we discover photo albums of thug-life, high-schooler MattyG. He has a neck the size of my thigh and shoulders set about as wide as a Voltswagon beetle. He was a star lineman on Torrey Pine's high school football team.
Around three my Dad makes the trek to Solana Beach to retrieve Evan and I. We return to Rancho San Diego for just long enough to say hi to Mom before heading out again. Our next destination is Halcyon Tea in South Park. Friday nights they do a free tea tasting from five to seven p.m. Like wine tasting, they start with the lighter teas first. Beginning with a white tea they move towards the darker, more oxidized teas as the night goes on and the sun goes down. Evan and I arrived shortly after five and sat down with two other customers at the far end of the bar. One, a late-twenties Asian guy wearing a baseball cap and Cal t-shirt. The other, a forty-to-fifty year old woman who had recently been laid off. The former felt the need to constantly remind us he had just come from Hamilton's, a local dive bar. The later felt the need to constantly remind us how pitiable her life is; no, you should not make your tea in the microwave and yes you have mentioned that you are just making tea just for one.
The first half an hour went relatively smoothly. Evan and I were cracking jokes, making everyone laugh. The inebriated asian guy (IAG) was providing adequate entertainment as well:
IAG: I love that poo air.
Me: (snorts tea, chokes) What was that?
IAG: The poo air.
Me: You'll really have to excuse me. What?
IAG: I love the way the poo air smells. It just tickles my nostricles.
Me: ...
All tea is made from the same tea plant. The tea leaf becomes a white, green or black tea based on how it is processed after harvesting. A Pu-erh is a type of Chinese tea that is aged and fermented after it is initially processed. Pu-erh teas can be made from green or black teas and are aged anywhere from one to forty years. In IAG's defense, they smell amazing.
By six o'clock we were joined by a small balding man who had died his thinning hair a jet black, possibly to match his younger, Asian girlfriend. By sixty thirty our crowd had grown to include a weekly "regular," probably another poo-air expert, and a small cohort of Korean grandmothers.
All together, a very enjoyable experience.
