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Original plans involved leaving the Bay Area at 10pm and
driving down to sunny Santa Barbara, to rough it out for the weekend,
living only on the beach for 3 days. But as life often has it, plans
were in no way similar to what took place: We left at 3am Friday night
(Saturday morning) and arrived in "sunny" Santa Barbara at 8am. This is
what that place looked like. |
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Seeing that pathetic excuse of a beach city, we busted out
the map and studied it for hours, attempting to figure out where to head
next. If we wanted to see sun, there was only one direction to keep
headin': South. |
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First stop: LA. However, the weather in the good ol' City
of Angels looked even lousier than Santa Barbara, so we kept driving
down south. If worse came to worst, at least we would have hit Mexico
(although that was a country none of us wanted to step foot in.) Driving
past LA we remembered an ideal place to end up...the city of golf
tournaments and old people: Palm Springs. |
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What was the first thing we spotted in Palm Springs? Old
people and cadillacs. OK, what was the second thing we spotted: Hooters!
Since none of us had ever step foot into this classy establishment, we
decided visit, and try out some of their famed buffalo wings. Inside,
we were surprised by the numerous chesty women walking around so we
decided to chat it up with them instead. After a few moments of
"conversation", where we learned from them that New Zealand is actually
an animal and that Africa is a country in South America, we thought that
we might have more fun inflating balloons with helium, which apparently
needed a 5-minute tutorial from the waitresses. So, we took those
balloons... |
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...and put them on our car. The GC'01-mobile was officially
complete! Off for more adventures...but now we were hungry. (The Hooters
buffalo wings didn't fill us up, so we left. That and the fact that they
weren't allowed to kiss the customers!) |
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Driving around looking for food, we saw a rushing river and
pulled over to try our hand at fishing. Luckily we found a fishing pole
and bait and net lying near the river bank so half of our battle was
already won, or so we thought. Baited up and ready to go, we cast the
rod and waited for a bite. And waited some more. After a few hours of
sitting around, and hungry enough that we were ready to eat our fingers,
we felt a tug at the line. We all jumped up and pulled at the fish. It
didn't reel in easily; it must be a big one! We pulled...and it pulled
back. We grew tired...it didn't. We yelled...and it...just pulled back
(they can't yell). Man versus fish. "Come on fish!" we screamed, but it
didn't care. More pulling, more yelling, more struggling, but this
aquatic monster still wouldn't give up. We begged it and sweet-talked
it, but with no results. Finally, finally, with one last desperate pull
from all four of us, the fish gave up and we reeled it in. It turned out
to be a little smaller than expected, but fortunately it fed all of us.
Moral of the story: some fish give you trouble. It's not a very general
or widely-applicable moral, but still a moral nevertheless. |
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We spent that night on top of a mountain in L.A. and slept till noon
the next day. Read on...
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Now it's just starting to get interesting. We had just finished
playing a few hours of soccer on the beach (that's "football" for you
Europeans types out there) and were very hungry and thirsty. We went to
Safeway and loaded up on small green grapes, super fat red grapes, and some
other stuff. Then, on the road again, on highway 405 going through LA, we
tasted the grapes and realized that they all tasted nasty: the green ones
too bitter; the red ones too dry. Next thing we knew was that they made
excellent little projectiles to throw at other cars. By the handful (see
picture!). |
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But nothing is too good to be true. In other words, you can't
expect to go around throwing fruit at other people at freeway speeds and not
get in trouble. What happened, the inquisitive reader might ask? Well it
goes a little something like this...we were out there on 405, throwing
grapes here, throwing grapes there, throwing grapes everywhere. One car we
threw some of those disgusting little round fruits at was filled with family
sound asleep, except for the driver. We decide to share some of our grapes
with them too, and then we zoomed ahead. A few minutes later they were hot
on our trail...with eyes fixed on our license plate and with cell phone in
hand! We thought nothing of it, until 10 minutes later when a California
Highway Patrol car was behind us, lights and sirens on. We pulled over and
after 30 minutes of 3rd degree interrogation by Officer
Loves-to-Spit-Tobacco, there were speeding tickets, reckless driving
tickets, misdemeanor charges, and suspended licenses flying around
everywhere. Needless to say, we don't like the CHP much. And if we ever see
that family again on the road, we're gonna bust their noses. |
