Wednesday

Got up at 4:15 am after a miserable night's sleep. I don't normally do expensive hotels, this time was not different. I have been in Motel 6's all over the country and never had any huge problems with them. Sometimes some minor issues, but nothing too serious.

This Motel 6 has 2 buildings: the first is the regular style Motel 6 with 2 stories, the other is a 4 story building. I have never seen a Motel 6 with 4 stories.

Anyway, there was nothing but noise all night long. I might have gotten 1 hour of sleep. I am a very light sleeper: doors slamming and people troucing on the floors above me will keep me awake. And that, they did. I could not beleive the amount of noise going on at 1, 2 and 3 am not to mention the hours preceeding it.

Well, the good thing about this hotel is that it's 10 minutes from the sportfishing company. We did all the precursory stuff, got on the boat and waited. About 25 people showed up. It was still dark as well. It was also cold out there - I forgot to bring my jacket and I paid for it. I had it out before I left for San Diego, in the kitchen with the other stuff, but I totally spaced it. With the wind chill, I was visibly shaking well into the day, but I mostly tried to ignore it.

We cruised out to a very long, floating bait hold. They loaded a LOT of fishies into the holding tanks and then away we went. Nice ride. Not a HUGE boat, but large enough for the amount of people present. Caleb and I just sat out on the starboard side of the boat, gazing at everything, taking it all in. Took an hour and a half to get to the first stop.

First stop was bass fishing. I hauled in 3, Caleb 2. By the time I had learned how to use the equipment and get those fish in, I was tired. I went down below and sat down in a chair to rest I had only had 1 hour of sleep as I stated above, I had no choice but to lay my head down and rest for a while. The boat started to move and we went to the next stop: pull squid out of the water to go use for bait for phase 3.

And pull them out we did. The captain found a spot with a lot of them suckers down there, all you had to do was stick the special hooks into the water, go down 20 feet and pull right back out. We did that for a while and then he decided we should fish there with that bait.

I didn't like that idea, there were already a kajillion of them down there, not great odds that we were going to hook anything.

The boat moved and we started moving around all over place, the captain was looking for a spot to anchor the boat and start some better fishing. After about an hour of that, he finally stopped and a lot of people started pulling in all kinds of fish. I only nailed one more and Caleb never did get anymore fish, but he was happy to be out there anyway.

It was a long ride back, I spent it talking with people and just looking at the coastline once in came back into view. The funny thing were the birds. Pelicans and gulls followed right behind the ship all the way back. Why? Cause' the crew was cutting up our fishies and throwing the fish waste into the water. Those birds were fighting each other for the food!

Got back to the dock, got our fish and left.

Got back to Motel 6 - no way was I driving home today that tired - and vowed not to spend tonight there if they weren't going to do something about the noise situation, namely, move us to another room, and more pointedly, put us on the top floor.

That was it, too, I informed the lady that I had gotten maybe 1 hour of sleep last night and either she was going to put us into a quiet room or we would be moving on. She put us on the 4th floor, said it was the quietest because no-one would be above us - indeed. She gave us 10% off, though I didn't ask. I have no clue whether it's going to pan out tonight or not, but I am going to bed early because I am wasted tired now.

That's it. There's more, but I really don't feel like writing.

ben