Thanksgiving

Thanksgivings will, for me, be forever associated with long road trips to California to play soccer. Or to coach soccer. For the second year in a row, Jasmine and I will be several states apart on this holiday weekend. She in Colorado to show off her belly to her grandparents, and me in San Diego for the Nomads soccer tournament. It is my last such tournament with this group of boys, many of whom I've coached for over four years now. They are good lads...all of them. Last year I made the mistake of walking three of them around Tihijuana for an evening. We only had to reject 5 or 6 offers to go into the topless bars and 5 or 6 more for smoking hash and 10 or 20 for illegal firecrackers and switchblade knives. My first trip to TJ was also on the tale end of a trip to Nomads. My dad drove me and several teammates down in our old red and grey Suburban. We ate the buffet at Ceasar's Palace in Vegas on the way down and on the way home, the transmission dropped somewhere in the high desert between Victorville and Barstow. My Pops had to hitchhike back to Victorville to rent a car while we watched football and ate pizza. Sandwiched in between was a trip across the border, my first of any kind, and I was fascinated. Phil Snyder was our goalkeeper and was literally, not approximately, two feet and 80 lbs bigger than me. He listened to Rush, taught 30 year olds how to play the drums, had a brother in prison, and made me borrow some Andrew Dice Clay tapes that I was afraid to listen because I was fairly innocent then. PhiI smuggled switchblades and M-80's and other contraband back across the border. All I smuggled was a brown stain in my extra mediums from eating tacos and being stuck in traffic for three ours trying to cross. Phil's remarkable maturity in haggling with the street vendors only highlighted the embarassement of a kid who'd just crapped his pants. No matter. I tossed my drawers in the first gas station dumpster we passed and Phil acted like crapping your pants was the norm for a trip down south.

Next time on "Fun California Road Trips" we'll explain the picture of Jasmine and I walking on what we thought at the time was I-80 eastbound but was really just a campground at Lake Tahoe.