third try's a charm. the next night the 23:35 driver was Luis, a guy at least perfectly bilingual in both English and Spanish, but had an accent I'd place more as eastern european than Mexican. he gave me a lecture about offering cash, because it seems some people were disciplined or fired for pocketing it back in the days when they'd switch the tickets to a different day or time for money, but once I said I had a credit card he was cool with it. he had the baggage guy process the transaction while he wrote down the number so he could call it in and cancel it, and I was on the nice warm bus for the night.
from Anaheim, I got the day pass at the senior discount for $1.25 and was in San Clemente around 1300 or so after 3 buses. then my plans all went to shit.
the 395 is history. it still runs into Camp Pendleton from Oceanside, but no longer serves San Clemente. there are no longer any cheap or free options across that piece of land unless you can get a bicycle pass, and I'm not sure they always honor those either. that's seriously fucked, and needs to be fixed. so long as the 395 ran, it was bearable, but now it isn't. I might write more about this later.
anyway, the driver took me back to the coast and I waited for the Metrolink. when it came, I asked the conductor how much to Oceanside and he said "man, if you don't have a ticket...", sounding like I was out of luck, but then he added "if you're just going to Oceanside, come on, grab a seat", I thanked him and I was on my way. slept a few hours on the beach and caught one of the last 101s south for 75 cents, after getting ripped off at a liquor store where I bought a 99% vodka for 99 cents plus 40 cents tax. I realized it about 2 blocks away but that of course was too late. I'll catch the bastard next year maybe.
I got off the bus too early, thinking I was going to go my usual La Jolla to Misson Bay route, but then I saw the map and realized that wasn't the shortest way at all. I continued down Genessee to Clairemont and cut over at Clairemont Mesa going to take Clairemont Drive south, but stopped here at Jack in the Box, one of the rare 24-hour Jack's that has not only the drive-through open all night, but the inside as well, and ordered the 2 tacos for $1.19 plus 10 cents tax. sometimes that mystery meat tastes really, really good.
last updated 2017-11-02 05:44:24. served from tektonic.jcomeau.com