My heart beats for California, Vol I
October 28, 2004 6:18 AM
I opted to break this into volumes instead of one huge post. See Vol II and Vol III.
So, California. It was a blast, as expected. My flight was at 8:55 AM on Friday, and since I had just worked at FedEx till about 3 AM (and had not really packed yet, heh) I just stayed up because I knew it would be hard to just get a couple hours sleep and drag myself out of bed for the flight. I figured I'd sleep on the flight, and sleep I did.
I got my rental car on hotwire.com for a pretty good rate, and since I selected “economy” I was figuring I'd get a little 2-door, 4-cylinder car, but I got a nice roomy 4-door, 6-cylinder Chevy Malibu Maxx. This made for fun driving in LA since it had those cool options like “get up” and “go”, not to mention “cd player”.
I was told that LA has the busiest traffic corridor in.. the world? Certainly in America at least. I didn't mind it much at all, though, it was actually kind of fun, perhaps it's just the different scenery.. palm trees, mountains, curves - all while driving on a 4 or 5 lane freeway. I drove to my friend Ryan's place in Hollywood, where I was staying for the weekend. It was pretty cool to get off the highway, make a turn, and see the Hollywood sign at the top of the hill. It was still a few miles away, I'm sure, but looked pretty close. Closer than I had ever been, for sure. I found Ryan's place without too much difficulty and buzzed him. It was funny, he kind of forgot it was Friday that I was coming, not that he wasn't prepared for me, he just has been crazy-busy lately with planning the Tandem Arts launch party (which was last night actually, hopefully it went well).
I caught up on a couple more hours of sleep, then headed back out into traffic to go visit Brian and Rachel. Rush hour in LA... yessss! (Again, I actually did not mind it. It wasn't parking-lot-traffic bad.) We ended up just hanging out at their place. Rachel cooked a really good dinner (raspberry chicken) and we played a derivation of Scrabble while catching up on old times and ... new times? They weren't too familiar with Homestar Runner, so I showed them some of the better Strong Bad emails, including keed's booook of course. They had this pewter picture frame on their table that didn't have a picture yet, so we decided to fix that. I suggested they put a picture of their computer in it because... you know, it'd be funny? [If you're lost, think 'puter = computer ... ?]
Yes, the three of us have similar senses of humor, so there were many instances of corny jokes like that...
Rachel: (from the kitchen) “how does chicken sound?”
gRegor: *pause* “cluck-cluck”
R: *pause* “ok-ay. and what's your reaction when you think about the idea of eating dead chicken for dinner?”
g: *pause* “mmmm”
And the evening and morning was the Friday.
Are you gonna live your life,
standing in the back looking around?
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Comments on "My heart beats for California, Vol I"
10/28/84 4:20 PM
woohoo-i can't wait to read Vol. II-? It was a fun time getting to meet you this weekend.
Patrick and I went to the Tandem Arts thing last night and had a happy time with Karla. I'm glad you invited her along to Gwyn's house. And I'm glad you made it home to Indiana safely of course.
10/28/84 6:28 PM
yeah.
i've never been there .
doesn't dcfc have a song about la ?
and traffic ?
heidi and babsy made fun of me when i called chicago traffic .
10/29/84 4:56 PM
LA is so big, I think it depends on where you are... I was worried the first time I drove there. I was driving a big box truck, at rush hour, into the sun! It was a bit crazy with like a dozen lanes of traffic, but it worked.
10/28/84 9:40 AM
Sheryl said:
I came close to going to California once. When I was in Arizona visiting my cousin, she mentioned the possibility of it, but we ended up just checking out Sedona instead. Oh well, maybe someday. It'd be easier if I knew a bunch of people out there like you do.