To give you a sense of Neb's personality (Note that "Neb" is "Ben" spelled backwards for your first tip), Neb is famous for asking feel-good kinds of questions at random times. One of my favorites is, "What's the best thing that happened to you this week?" (I hijacked that one for the introduction segment of my first lab section each year.) His goofy-happy sincerity doubtless contributes to his success and effectiveness as a pediatrician, but he's an easy target for teasing.
During our flight to California, I primed my daughters for their first interaction with "Uncle Neb" and told them that we needed to beat him to the punch by asking him the question "Uncle Neb, where is California's best burrito, and can you take us there?" I fully expected that he would explode with nearly endless possibilities in an induced frenzy . To my surprise, his response was "um, we're not really a big Mexican food family..."
Talk about a letdown.
When I asked him to give it his best shot, he said, "well, I've heard they have good burritos at Chipotle..."
"Dude, you have got to be kidding me," I said. "We're on a California RV adventure, we are NOT going to go to a chain restaurant for a burrito." Where was the Neb ingenuity when we needed it most?
When I pushed a little harder, he said, "Well, I don't know a great burrito place around here, but there's an AWESOME place in Santa Barbara. It's called Super Cucas."
Challenge Accepted. The Burrito Quest was on!
We were going to be driving through Santa Barbara on the way to our first campground at Morro Bay. I was now committed to delivering us to Super Cucas—in the middle of Santa Barbara—in the middle of a busy summer day. Our only only problem was that a 32-foot long Class A is not known for its maneuverability and ease of parking. However, since Neb and family needed to return to LA after 5 days, we were caravanning with their Honda Odyssey. Laura was driving the minivan (with Shih-Poo Cleo in the back). We hatched our plan to park the motor home on the outskirts of town and use the minivan as our "Super Cucas Shuttle." Brilliant!
Have you ever tried to stuff 7 people, a bunch of camping crap, and a shih-poo in a Honda Odyssey? Here's what that looks like:
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| Super Cucas Shuttle: Front View |
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| Super Cucas Shuttle: Rear View |
By the the time we got to the burrito quest destination, everyone was starving, and I'm pretty sure that everyone was ready to kill me forcing this ridiculous "adventure" on the whole group. In the end, though, the burritos were, indeed, awesome and everyone seemed pretty happy as we piled back in the Super Cucas Shuttle. To verify, I called for a happiness check and not a single person scored below 10 (out of 10--I guess there's happiness inflation, too).
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| Burrito Anticipation |
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| Keiko's Burrito Dance |
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| Post-Burrito Coma |
It was several more hours's drive up to our first campground in Morro Bay. We got there just before dark and Neb pitched his 45-person tent with the help of some headlights. The girls played some games and the adults enjoyed a cold one. Not a bad first day on the road.
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| Apples to Apples and Dust to Dust |
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