Royal Wedding Day Avoiding Tactics

Day 27  Friday 29^th April 2011 (Royal Wedding Day)

We managed not to wake up in time to watch the wedding and we were grateful for small mercies that we missed it all.  It was hot and sunny again – groundhog day – and we made our way over to MacDonalds so that I could use the wifi to make contact with Gina using Facetime on my ipod which I find works better than Skype. It was a good call. I managed not only to speak to Gina but also had a chat with Mum, daughter Rachel and granddaughter Immy who was intent on showing me my screwdrivers in my toolbox in the shed.

We rode out to the Naval Air Facility some 9 miles outside El Centro where Ian was waiting at the gate. The guard asked for ID and I gave him my passport but he wanted something with a picture in it, Confused, I looked at the page he was looking at and he was trying to ID me with my Russian visa page. I soon opened the right page (with photo) and we were waved through on to the base. We had a coffee and then rode further on the base to the bowling alley where I let father & son battle it out in the lanes. We left after a couple of hours agreeing to meet up for a bite to eat in the evening.

We got back to the motel and I walked to the nearby mall where I tried to get my hair cut in a hair salon but as soon as I entered the shop I realised it was a fancy women’s hair place and that a simple cut was going to set me back a few dollars more than I wanted to pay so I beat a hasty retreat. Back at the room we decided to take the bikes out and scout for somewhere decent to eat this evening because a recce yesterday only served to prove to us that there was not much in the immediate walkable vicinity.

Along Imperial Boulevard we found ourselves an Applebees restaurant and marked up as tonight’s scoff house. We about turned and went back the way we came and almost immediately Mark called over the intercom that he had just seen a barber shop. We made a swift exit from the highway and sure enough a barber shop was right there in front of us. I took my place in line and eventually had my locks shorn and felt 100% better for it in this heat.

We made it back to the hotel with only a few minutes to spare before Ian turned up in his taxi which we commandeered to take us all to Applebees where we enjoyed our last night in El Centro.