Boone needs to be on his game going through Del Mar, because there are plenty of side streets for Teddy to turn onto, but the doctor doesn't turn off toward the beach or up into the hills; he stays on the main drag and heads north, across the old bridge over the San Dieguito River, on past the famous old racetrack, then up through Eden Gardens and Solana Beach.
Now the road, old Highway 101, parallels the railroad track on its right, through the town of Solana Beach, and then onto the narrow open stretch of coastline at Cardiff, which is one of Boone's favorite places in the world, where the highway edges the beach and you feel like you could reach out the car window and touch the water. The whitecaps are already peaking, tall, but nothing to what they'll be this time tomorrow. Even from the van, he can hear the ocean getting ready to go off, the big swell starting to build, a heavy heartbeat that matches his own.
The big swell.
Sunny's shot.
Onewave, one macker, and it changes her life.
One great photo and she makes the net, the magazines. She gets the sponsorship she's been working for and it's her takeoff. She'll be all over the world, making the tournaments and the big wave contests. She'll surf Hawaii, Oz, Indo, you name it.
“Where did you just go?” Petra asks.
“Huh?”
“Where were you? You looked like you were a million miles away just now.”
“Nope. On the job.”
But aware that they're fast coming up on the funky old surf town of Encinitas and the great right break called Shrink's, arguably the best wave in SoCal, maybe the place to be when the swell rolls in.
If he weren't on the job, he'd turn in at the small parking lot on the bluff and take a look at how it's building out there. But I can't, he thinks, because I have to follow Dr. D-Cup to locate a stripper.
Teddy drives up through Leucadia, where the big eucalyptus trees line the road on the inland side and cheap motels, drive-thru burger/taco stands, and little shops take the ocean side.
Ocean side, Boone thinks… Oceanside. Isn't that where Mick Penner said that Teddy takes Tammy for their little matinees? Well, he thinks as he follows Teddy through Leucadia and across the bridge that spans the Batiquitos Lagoon into Carlsbad, we're on our way to Oceanside.
The road drops back down again and flanks the long stretch of open beach, with its promenade along the breakwater, then takes a right jog into the faux-Tudor village of Carlsbad, with its English shingled roofs. There's a store here where you can buy all kinds of English food, and Boone thinks of mentioning this to her, but then he figures that she probably already knows about it, so he keeps his mouth shut.
The route curves right again, then crosses Buena Vista Lagoon and takes them into Oceanside.
Heads up, Boone thinks.
Teddy takes a right, turning east onto Highway 76, drives all the way through town and out into the suburbs and developments that house a lot of the marines from Camp Pendleton, then takes a left into the countryside.
Where the hell is he going? Boone wonders. Boone drops back a ways because the traffic has thinned out so much.
Then Teddy takes a right and heads inland.
What the hell? Boone thinks.
There's not much out here now. It's one of the few even semi-rural spaces left in metro San Diego County, out here by the old Sakagawa strawberry fields.