Until now I haven't really had a free moment at work or at home to post on here, but now my bosses are gone, and since it's Thanksgiving week the town is quiet enough that I can take a few moments to write about my various adventures.
I'll start with the road trip.
A couple weeks ago, Writress got a call from her best friend from college. Turns out that she and her boyfriend of five years (also a very good friend of Writress) just got engaged. He'd surprised her with a trip to Hawaii for their 5 year anniversary and proposed. It must be nice to get paid enough to do that kind of stuff. But anyways, that weekend they were planning an overdue housewarming party at their place in San Francisco, and it was becoming a "holy crap we just got engaged" party. As soon as Writress hung up, I said that we should totally drive up and surprise them.
Writress sent her friend an email, saying she was really sorry but wouldn't be able to make it up. Then on that Saturday morning, we got in Writress's car (the same kind of car I have, except hers had GPS) and started driving North. We took the fast way up, driving through the lack of landscape that is the central valley in California. Seriously, once you've seen it once there isn't much reason to see it again. But roadtripping is fun, so Writress and I kept each other entertained. The most memorable thing we saw was a lot of signs that said "Congress Created this Dustbowl" because the farmers were pissed that Congress wouldn't roll back environmental protections on the rivers that they wanted to use for additional irrigation.
I drove over the Bay Bridge into San Francisco around 12:30, and saw the city for the first time. We drove around, saw some sights, then went to Union Square to get lunch at Writress's favorite Thai noodle place from college. Then we caught up with a friend of mine from high school, and the three of us went over the Golden Gate Bridge, saw Saucilito, then walked around Fisherman's Wharf at night. We saw a bunch of smelly Sea Lions all sleeping on top of each other on these barges, and while I'm sure they are perfectly happy there, they were so crowded that it looked like that first shot of the inside of the spaceship in District 9.
Writress and my friend also tried to trick me into walking by "The Bush Man", but I got wise to their plan. For those of you who don't know, there's this guy who hangs out by the wharf in SF with a bunch of fake branches, so he looks like a bush. When people walk by, he stick a branch out to scare them. Then he collects tips from onlookers. We saw him get one chick pretty good, which was funny.
We then dropped my friend off at her place, and went in search of Writress's engaged friends. They live in the 23rd floor of this 42 story high rise condo, complete with a doorman (so unlike LA apartments). I guess the protocol is that people walk into the lobby, say that they're here to see so-and-so from unit such-and-such, and the guy calls up. We set up a plan to use the names of other friends of Writress if it came to it (although good thing it didn't because these friends had very asian names, and let's face it, I couldn't really pull that off). We walking in with a bottle of champagne like we were expected, and the guy let us up the elevator. We went upstairs, knocked on the door and covered up the peephole with a thumb. The groom-to-be opened the door, saw us, and exclaimed "HOLY SHIT!". The bride-to-be dropped the phone, and ran over excited like crazy.
We totally made their night, and it was great. The party was fun, hanging out with Writress's ballroom dancing friends. I showed them my, "spin the girl a lot and they think you know how to dance" tactic.
We went to get out stuff from Writress's car as the party was breaking up, as we were gonna crash on the couch. We sat and talked on a bench for a bit, and told each other that we loved each other. It was nice. I can genuinely say that about someone for the first time since college. We're really great together, and I'm very happy that I went to that writer's meetup 6 months ago and met her.
The next morning we woke up early (windows faced east, sun was like a laser beam). We drove over to Writress's college, so I got to see that. Then we started driving back. We drove to Monterrey/Carmel which was really pretty, then got on California 1 heading south.
It was breathtakingly beautiful, and the road winded back and forth which made for fun, if slow and tiring, driving. We periodically stopped to just look at the view and take a few pictures, and it was nice. We stopped at Hearst Castle, but when we saw how expensive the tour was and how long it would take, we got back in the car. We came upon Santa Barbara while it was already getting dark, so we didn't stop. We made it back to my place in LA by 6:40, and were exhausted for the rest of the night.
Now, on top of this story is the stuff that happened with my roommate, but I'm going to save that for another post. Stay tuned kids.
No comments:
Post a Comment