Friday, November 7, 2003
On the morning of my first vacation in 13 months, I receive a most interesting e-mail from a stranger from Italy named Maurizio (or Maurice) Bertolini. The subject of the e-mail is "Ratonneau Island"—which is the titular subject of Patrick's first novel, Second Island. Maurice says he's seen the photos on my website of Ratonneau and would like to know more about the island. I wait until Patrick wakes up because I can't remember if there are places to sleep on the island. My guess is no, but I confirm with Patrick before replying to Maurice. Shower. Abs workout. Patrick woke up and he agreed with me, so I replied to Maurice. We left for San Diego around 10:30 AM. This turned out to be a poor decision, as we ended up hitting L.A. at 5:30 PM. We should have left 3 or 4 hours earlier. L.A. and Orange County traffic added between 1 and 2 hours to our trip. Patrick still isn't all comfortable with the stick shift, so I drove for about 11 hours before we reached Tina's place. We ate Taco Bell ($7.48) and Wendy's ($1.07) along the way and stopped at a Starbuck's where we got a slice of banana bread and a coffee. Tina was excited to see us and had already prepared dinner: pasta pomodoro salad: pasta ribbons with grilled onions, garlic, basil, cheese. Somehow within an hour or two of our arrival we decided to play Lord of the Rings Risk. We played several rounds of turns and the game was turning slightly in Tina's favor before we looked at the clock (2:00 AM) and decided it was time to get some sleep.