Tales from Down South

We went to L.A. for the weekend! Greg had a race there on Sunday, plus Friday was my birthday so of course that's the perfect excuse for a trip, and side bonus was the air quality in the bay area was crap thanks to some dumb schmoe whose illegal debris fire became a multi-day multi-acre monstrosity. See photo at right. Funny what makes L.A. seem clean and clear by comparison... but we were actually staying in the Santa Monica Canyon, which generally does have nice clean air.

I learned lots of cool things on this trip!

Thing 1: swimming "long course" is really really great. Long course means the lanes are 50 meters long, instead of 25 meters/yards or 33 1/3 yards (which is the length of the Temescal pool, where we swim here in Oakland). There is this really awesome outdoor pool at Santa Monica College that is set up long course at certain times and MAN was it nice. I didn't realize before how much a shorter pool breaks up one's rhythm.

Thing 2: puppies are also really really great.

Thing 3: but just because your boyfriend walks in with a puppy and it happens to be your birthday, it doesn't mean the puppy is a present for YOU! I truly did think for 2 seconds that Greg had gotten me a puppy, but in reality he belonged to our hosts. I had a great time sending photo text messages to my family telling them about "my new puppy i got for my birfday" and actually my brother believed it and told all his friends, which means I FINALLY got revenge for his little April Fool's joke...

Thing 4, last bit about puppies I swear: they can be endlessly entertained by their own tails. Chase and chase and chase in circles and then fall over in dizziness. Apparently, if you are a puppy, this is totally fun. If you are watching the puppy it's definitely fun.


Thing 5: despite whining and moaning (who me?! never!!) about the long ride I got sent on all by myself in the heat, uphill into headwinds, with no shade, in retrospect I actually had a good time and a great ride. But at the time I was making sourpuss faces at all the canyons I seemed to climb out of...

Thing 6: I saw hardly any chicks out riding, but tons of dudes. Brenda you'd better rally those LA women and get them on some nice Fuji bikes!

Thing 7: Yes I still suck at taking race photos. I wanted to get photos of Greg at the start and finish of the swim, additionally I wanted to ride down to the start at Venice Beach with him, I had no bike lock and no change of clothes and no backpack and at 6:40 a.m. I suddenly realized there was no way I was going to get my little spandexed road-cleated Serotta-saddled self down acres of sand to get photos at the ocean. So I snapped a shot or two of some random birds and the far-away start banner and left it at that. I missed the bike entirely for dumb reasons. I did manage a couple photos of Greg running, which was cool (and totally fortuitous, considering I armed myself with neither map nor compass nor sunscreen), except the photos were total-eclipse-of-Greg since I forgot about the whole sun-at-photographer's-back rule (incidentally, this "eclipse" photo turned out FAR BETTER than my lunar eclipse attempts). Nevertheless the spectating was tons of fun and he had a good race!

Thing 8: Beach time is great recovery time. We headed to the Santa Monica beach after the race and lazed until we felt too lazy. Neither of us is very good at true down time, but after losing a couple of Scrabble pieces to the puppy I stopped talking about earlier, we opted to play it safe and head to the ocean sans entertainment. I did, however, bring my phone...


Thing whatever-number-I-am-on-now: some things don't change, even 11 years after graduating from high school. Greg and I had lunch on Monday with my friends Paula and Tadia. We were all three great friends in school, and both of them currently are in LA doing entertainment industry stuff (don't ask me)(but they seem to be doing great). I see Paula once a year because she comes to my mom's for Christmas every year. Also Paula has a great blog, and I have a blog too, obviously.

Me and Paula: blah blah blah Blog blah blah blah Christmas

Tadia: UGH. If I hear the words "blog" or "christmas" one more time I am going to smack BOTH of you!

Greg: Um are you going to eat your corn bread?

It was fun. Also Paula teased me a lot, about legitimate topics such as my long-winded telling of how Greg and I met ("and then I emailed Jaffa, but the first time it bounced back, but then after that... etc."), and also about the fact that I have Juicy Couture sunglasses, a label that's TOTALLY not me but I swear they were the only ones that fit.


Anyway, after all this excitement, plus additional excitement but I think this is enough for one blog post, we drove home. The skies were beautiful and back to their normal mildly hazy selves.