Scribble

Leftovers

This is Toph when we finally got up to Buzzard's Roost, she was so exhausted, after some water and small snacks, the first thing she did was try to find a cool spot on this rock and just chill.

Said the frog in frustration on his birthday.

For my note today I asked five of my friends to collaborate on a story. We took turns, each of us writing down whatever we wanted. This is what came from it. Maybe it wasn't the best idea...

The Shins- The Past and Pending

This is one of my favorite songs.

Joy

Spin Cycle

Going Home

April 23rd 2012

Today we woke up at 8 am, we got ourselves cleaned up and all ready to hit the road and head home. It was a funny contrast, I was really excited to go home, sleep in a bed, take a shower, and just be back. Adrien on the other hand was slightly sad to leave Santa Cruz and I understand why. It is definitely a really mellow town.

We decided to take the 5 freeway this time, the 1 was scenic and beautiful but we didn't want to deal with the freeway ending constantly and getting lost in small towns just for a scenic drive. Plus, we already experienced it once and both of us agreed that was enough already. We took some pretty cool highway/freeways to get to the 5. On the way, we stopped in Hollister for directions and one of my favorite memories from the entire trip was this man that worked at a gas station that we stopped at.

We needed to make sure we were going in the the right direction so I went inside to ask for help and this man behind the counter was talking to this customer in line about his family. His wife gave birth to their son not too long ago and he was such a proud father. He was smiling the entire time he was talking about his little one and the woman asked if he had a photo and he proudly pulled out a photo of his wife and son. It was so overwhelming to see that much love in that little gas station. That moment made this whole trip that much more beautiful.

On our way back on the 152 East to the 5 South, we caught this beautiful view of the San Luis Reservoir. We had to stop and get out to try and take in this awesome site. This reservoir is gigantic, oh and Adriens hat almost flew away, the winds were so strong over here. You can tell by the ripples in the water.

What a wonderful weekend, I feel so grateful that I had the opportunity to be a part of this trip. So grateful for my bosses for giving me the time off and so grateful that I could share this with Adrien and Toph. Vacations are cool.

Santa Cruz Pt. three

April 22nd 2012

This was our last full day in Santa Cruz. The day of White Fence and The Shins. We decided the night before that we were going to spend our day stress free and not worry about doing "something".

This is what the bed looked like, we just dropped the back seats down and put all of our things in the front seats. With floor blankets, it was actually really comfortable.

We had breakfast at ihop on this morning then parked by a neighborhood of one of the more populated beaches in town. All I did was just hang out in the back of the car and snack and catch up on writing.

I noticed Toph was whining and I looked behind me across the street and there was this marmalade cat just rolling around on the sidewalk. It looked really friendly so I went across the street and it greeted me  so warmly. Every time I went to pet this guy, it rolled over on it's back.

Living the life.

Adrien and I were only a few blocks from the boardwalk so all three of us went to check it out and I remember that I've been there before with my sisters and brother in law. I recognized the building names and streets. It was really just a tourist spot but it was fun regardless, it was fun just watching how much fun everyone else was having. We eventually were asked to leave the boardwalk because there were no pets allowed even though I was carrying Toph the entire time.

Later that night around seven, Adrien and I went to line up for the show. I felt bad for leaving Toph in the car because we were going to be gone for three or more hours but no dogs allowed. It actually started to rain around this time, as we were waiting in line I realized that there were a lot of younger people in line. This realization made me feel old even though I'm only twenty-four. It was strange, the first time I saw the shins was in 2006, I just graduated from high school and I was in that weird summer before college. That was nearly six years ago, and now I was in Santa Cruz, about to see them again.

White Fence put on an amazing show, they were really cool and it made me happy that Adrien got to see them because I know how much he admires that band and the writer/lead man in that band. Then the shins came on, and they put on a very cool show.

It was strange seeing the shins with a completely new line-up, I still don't know how I feel about it but I'm happy that I had a chance to see one of my teenage favorite bands one last time.

I almost forgot

And I almost forgot. When I woke up on Saturday morning I was walking Toph so she could pee and I saw this weird brown thing by a parked car and I couldn't tell what it was, I thought it might've been some sort of costume on a mannequin because it was completely still then a bus was pulling into the lot and started honking at it and I realized it was a freaking llama! Adrien and I figured it was a llama that lived right down the street that gets out of it's house pretty often because these three guys in blue jump suits came out of nowhere to bring it back to it's house right down the street. 

Santa Cruz Pt. two

April 21st 2012

Adrien and I woke up at 7 am this morning. I felt so refreshed, it took me a little longer than usual to go to bed the night before just because I was paranoid that we might be caught again but I eventually was too tired to even think. The car was pretty gross since we had the windows rolled up, we stopped at a gas station to clean the insides and outsides of the windows, brush our teeth, and we set off on our hiking adventure.

This was a pretty cool site, the famous "Banana Slug". Banana slugs are detritivores or decomposers. They process leaves, animal droppings, and dead plant material, and then recycle them into soil humus". I just looked that up.

It took Adrien and I awhile to find our trailhead but we eventually did with the help of some forest animals giving us directions. The name of our destination was Buzzard's Roost. It is the highest point in these mountains, a total climb of 1200 feet. The hike was moderately strenuous but it made it that much more fun.

This forest was full of redwoods, they are such a beautiful site, they weren't as big as the ones in Sequoia but they were still very impressive.  

A really nice thing about this trail was that it was completely unpopulated with other humans, which meant Toph could go off leash and do three times more hiking than both Adrien and I combined. She just runs back and forth whenever I take her on hikes, it's hilarious. This was supposed to be my intimidation pose if we encountered any Grizzlies!

This was the view from the top.

It was cool because it was a 360 degree view so no matter which way you looked, all you could see were the tops of the pines.

Toph hanging out before we headed back down. She found a cool little spot on this huge rock.

Found a dinosaur.

Even the dogs are chill in this city. This is the part of the trip where we didn't write anything down on the itinerary. And yes, that was a mistake because we did a lot of back and forth driving, there was a lot of miscommunication, and some stressed out brains.

We briefly attempted to make a fire at the beach to cook our canned soups and boxes of rice but we failed, we failed very hard. This is Adrien surrendering.

After we realized that we failed and we recognized our defeat, we accepted it and found a cool place to just hang out and eat the junk food that we had. I felt so gross at this point because I hadn't showered since Thursday night. Don't judge me. We settled in pretty late that night, and as we were setting up the car for sleep, we both decided that we weren't going to stress out over what we were doing anymore. We decided that we were just going to hang out, just find a cool place to park, and people watch the next day.

Since I was away from my computer I didn't have the chance to post my daily notes on my blog, this weekend was the first time I didn't post a note since March 1st. So here are my missing/late daily notes.

Santa Cruz Pt. one

April 20th 2012


After Adrien drove the entire night through, he decided he couldn't drive any longer and asked me to drive. Seeing as I only had one hour of sleep in this moving machine, we decided to pull over and sleep in the parking lot of a food 4 less. By the time we woke up, the sun was up and I felt energized enough to drive. This is when the 1 freeway started to be a great idea, there were so many beautiful sights, the ocean just to the left of us, the rolling hills on the right. The cool air, the winding roads.

We took a pit stop in the small beach town of Cayucos to get some gas and to stretch out our limbs. Toph was pretty anxious the entire trip, I figure it was because she didn't like being cooped up in the car. So whenever we had the chance, we would let her out.

Adrien Parker being a robot, a penut butter bagel eating robot.

I told Adrien, "Hey if you see anything cool off the side of the road, tell me to stop, we are in no rush", this was one of the first random stops we made. Adrien saw a cool dilapidated house by the beach and so we thought we would check that out. Adrien went first while I made sure Toph was protected by the pest she might be encountering. We were both so surprised to see a beach full of Elephant Seals. Those two hugging in the picture, well, they weren't hugging, they were fighting pretty violently.

They seemed really friendly, and those eyes, they were pretty darn cute.

We made it to Santa Cruz around noon, after a stop in downtown Santa Cruz to collect ourselves (Adrien charging his dead phone), I took Adrien to a familiar beach that a dear friend once showed me. Right when we got down to the beach Toph found a friend to play with.

Happy dog.

It was so funny seeing Toph on the beach since it was her first time, she actually played fetch with the rocks along the shore. All she did was sniff sniff, bark bark, and run around like a happy dog.

Adrien coming out of the cave.

Towards the end of our first day in Santa Cruz, we ended up on the 9 highway north of the city. We thought it would be ideal to find a spot off the highway to sleep. Adrien and I came up with a story just incase we encountered a park ranger/cop telling us that we couldn't sleep in our car since we knew they were pretty strict about people sleeping in their cars, actually it's illegal in the city of Santa Cruz to sleep in your car which is... stupid. So our story was, we were driving all the way from Los Angeles, and we were going to camp at Big Basin Redwood State Park which was on the same highway we stopped on, and our car overheated so we couldn't make it up so we pulled over to let the car cool down and to get rest since we both were so tired from driving.

So that was our story, and as we set up the back of Adriens Honda crv into a bed, Adrien fell asleep right away. I was trying to sleep but I kept noticing the cars buzzing by and the lights that would shine into our windows. I kept noticing the lights until a light stayed on us and I didn't hear a car pass, then all I saw was blue and red lights. It was a park ranger, he asked how many of us were in the car, I said two, then I said three because of Toph. He told us we couldn't sleep off to the side of this highway, we told him our story and he told us he would just give us a warning. He was pretty cool.

Right before he left I asked him if he knew where we could sleep in our car and he actually told us of a pretty cool spot that was at the very bottom of the highway in Santa Cruz in a commercial area full of city buses. We ended up parking and sleeping there for the remainder of our time in Santa Cruz.

CA-1 into a wonderfully long weekend

About two months ago, I found out that The Shins were playing in Santa Cruz in late April with White Fence. The first person I told was Adrien, the second Xavier, and the third Daniel. Both Daniel and Adrien were up for it so we bought our tickets right away. Daniel ended up getting a second job and couldn't get the time off so Adrien and I were off on an adventure to Santa Cruz, oh and Toph the dog tagged along as well.

Adrien and I made an itinerary for this trip which for me is a completely new thing, I usually just go with the flow on trips but since both of us haven't spent much time in Santa Cruz, we figured it was a smart idea.

We left on Thursday night when I got off work and got home to pack up all my things. We left Pomona around 10:30 and got lost plenty of times because we wanted to take the 1 freeway up to Santa Cruz. It was well worth it, the sights were unbelievable. After a few detours and a couple of hours pulling over to sleep, we got to Santa Cruz around noon.

I was actually really happy that we made an itinerary because everything we had on there ended up being really fun for all three of us. I learned a lot about Adrien this weekend, and I feel like our friendship is stronger and we can understand each other better.

I'm really sad that I didn't get to see any of my friends in the bay area, I was only about an hour away from them but I didn't want to just see a few friends and not all of them. It might be messed up logic but I think I would've regretted it if I only saw one or two people because I miss everyone equally.

So I'm going to post some photos, hope you enjoy.
I'm really glad I'm home, I have a brand new perspective on my life, sleeping in a car for four days might've had a big part in that. I also learned that I don't always have to be doing something, sometimes just stopping and sitting, lying down, or just breathing is good enough.

AHHHHHHHHH!!!

Harmonizing

Feeling accomplished, experienced, exhausted and excited. 

Time for bed.

Shakey Graves- Roll The Bones

yeah so struggle all you like
yeah put up the good fight
they say someday everybody dies alone
yeah struggle all you like
put up the good fight
they say someday everybody dies alone
but hey
who knows
yeah hey who knows
yeah hey who really knows

Rainy Fridays