I am fascinated by Pacific Plaza.

Today I finally got around to doing something I wanted to do since I moved here to Oceanside.  I rode my bicycle up through Camp Pendleton.  Let me explain.  Camp Pendleton is a huge military - specifically, Marine Corps - base just north of where I live.  I really do mean just north, maybe 2 miles at most.  CP splits San Diego from the LA suburbs, basically.  And it is large; just the beachfront alone is probably 10-12 miles, at least, maybe more.  You would imagine that, as a Marine base, security would be pretty tight, and in general, you'd be right.  There are, presumably, some civilians that work on base, but you usually can't just stroll around in there.  One way that will get you onto the base is to ride up on a bicycle.  You have to "apply" in advance and show your ID, but basically they'll let you on to ride through the base.  The reason this is so is that CP goes all the way to the beach and then at least 10-15 miles inland, which means that if you're riding a bicycle up or down the coast, they basically have to let you through or you'd get stuck.  The only other way to get through the base for civilians is I-5, which bikes aren't allowed to ride on.  So they - somewhat begrudginly - let cyclists through.  Today I took advantage of this to ride up to San Clemente, about 55 miles round trip.  It was a beautiful ride through undisturbed countryside, but that isn't the interesting part.  The fascinating part, for me, is getting to see what a military base looks like from the inside.  And the funny part is that it looks oddly a lot like any other place in America.  Now, granted, they carefully route civilian cyclists through the least sensitive part of the base, of course.  But I rode past apartment complexes and houses that wouldn't have looked out of place in Oceanside.  There were little differences, of course.  Strange signage, odd displays.  A weird ad of sorts for Lincoln Military Housing.  The weirdest part of all, for me, was Pacific Plaza, which was basically just a strip mall.  It had a GameStop, a convenience store, a Panda Express, and a McDonalds.  All inside super top security, like some kind of weird parallel universe strip mall.  I wasn't actually allowed to stop at any of them, in theory; cyclists are supposed to basically just keep their heads down and bike through the base, and I'm not a fan of antagonizing the Marine Corps, so I did.  But as I rode through, I had so many questions:

Does the little fire department on the base use civilians or military firefighters?  Do they ever fight fires off the base?  What kind of fires happen on a military base?  (Isn't part of the point of the military to set things on fire sometimes?)
Can you work at the McDonalds on the base if you smoke pot?  'Coz a lot of McD employees look like they smoke some weed, in general.
If you get pulled over for speeding is it a federal crime?
Right up the street from one of the little apartment complexes was, I kid you not, a sign for tanks crossing.  So, when a tank crosses the street, do you wave to the guy driving it?
If somebody living on the base wants to have a party, how do they get the guests in?
Who lives in these houses, anyway?  The soldiers?  Their families?  Other people?
What if you have a car accident on the base?  
What if there's a video game I wanted to buy and only the GameStop on the base had it?  Could I go there and buy it?  I'm guessing not.  Would they just ship it to another GameStop?  Do the employees have to pass some kind of security check?  
What if you want to get your carpets cleaned?  Or your tree trimmed?  Or, you know, basically anything?
I saw this guy driving a really beat up old Dodge Charger, and he looked pretty scruffy.  You know, the kind of guy who would drive a beat up old Dodge Charger.  Was that guy a Marine?
Do they just, like, leave their house in the morning and drive over to some secret facility over the hill and practice - I don't know - dodging bombs?  Or killing people?
If I left the bicycle route by mistake (I'm sure as hell not doing it on purpose), how long would it take before I got killed by sniper fire?
 

So many questions.