About two years or so ago a Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream opened in Carlsbad, and ever since I found out about it I wanted to go. Of course there are LA area shops that are much closer – none of which I’ve been to yet – but I’d taken a little trip down to Carlsbad in 2021 to visit the flower fields and have lunch at a restaurant that’s no longer there, so I don’t know, I just thought it would be a good excuse to revisit the town.
That excuse came a couple weeks ago when I drove down to San Diego for a writers festival. I was like on my way back, I’ll just stop off at the Jeni’s in Carlsbad. Now mind you there is a Jeni’s in San Diego too which would have been much more convenient, but I just wanted to make a little adventure out of it. With my money the way it is, this drive down to San Diego just may end up being my vacation for the year.
I have really cheap phone service so I don’t use navigation services because it uses up a lot of data and if I go over like one gig, I think it is, my wi-fi will start to slow down. So I try to only use it when necessary, or when I can hook it up to free wifi. Anyway, because of that I got a list of the directions instead of having it dictated. However, once I got on the freeway, I dropped my phone and it feel under my seat, and I couldn’t reach it. Thankfully I did remember the street I was supposed to exit on, so I just figured once I got off at that exit, I would pull into a gas station or a parking lot and retrieve my phone then.
The last time I went to Carlsbad, it seemed pretty city-like, you know urban, industrial – not country. Plus, all the Jeni’s I’ve been to (none in California) and seen online, seemed to be in urban areas. So I thought surely would be exiting the freeway into a suburban metropolis so speak. However, what I exited into quite literally looked like the country.
As I came up the off ramp I the choice of turn right or left, but I’d only remembered the street to exit on, not which way to turn. I noticed that there was only one lane to turn left but two lanes to turn right. Being the experienced driver that I am, I deduced that civilization must be off to the right since there were more lanes to go that way. However, as I was turning right it looked like I was driving into the back woods up ahead, meanwhile I glanced over to the left and it seemed like there was a more urban setting that way.
Immediately I was like, oh shit, I made the wrong decision. A short distance ahead there was a light and my plan was to make a u-turn there. It mean, it looked like I was driving into a mountain – surely I was going the wrong way. I approached the light only to discover that u-turns weren’t allowed there. Dratted! I kept going, deciding I would make a u-turn at the next light. However, it seemed to take forever to get to the next light, I was getting deeper into the country, only to finally arrive at the next light and see that there were no u-turns there either. Why must I always follow the rules?
I kept going some more for what seemed like miles before I hit another light and again no uturns. More miles, another light and finally I could make a uturn. This light had me pull up to a shopping center where I was able to park, retrieve my phone and discover that Jeni’s was in the shopping center just across the street. That’s when I was like what do you know, I was going the right way the whole time.
There were so many little lessons in that I just had to share. One of the main takeaways for me is that sometimes, it make look like you’re going in the wrong direction based on everything you’ve known before, but sometimes even when you think you’ve made the wrong decision, it was actually right. And there will be things that happen along the way, preventing you from turning back ( perhaps rejection) that in the moment you think are making things worse, when in reality they’re helping you get exactly where you want to go.
Ain’t it funny how life’s lessons can come from anywhere.
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