Last leg

--> We woke up by the sound of "lugie guy" hocking one out the window and once awake, we also noticed that it was raining.  We had talked about a possible “beach day” and Abby and I surmised that rain might get in the way of that option. We had also considered checking out Sequoia National Park, stopping on the way in Santa Barbara to say “Hi” to my friend, Skip.  So I decided to call Skip to see if that was an option.  Skip said that Sequoia was a pretty long drive but we were welcome to swing by Santa Barbara.  I decided to double check our return flight for Tuesday and call him back with a final decision.

Now, on this whole trip I was thinking that we needed to return our car in Vegas Tuesday night, just after midnight. After starring at the time,”12:30am Tuesday” for a minute, it gradually sunk in that 12:30am Tuesday was just after midnight on MONDAY.  And just like that we lost one whole day of our vacation.  Skip and Sequoia were both out of the question. We needed to pack up our stuff and be prepared to get out of LA and on our way back to Vegas by 4:00pm at the latest.

We let that sink in for a minute, called Skip with regrets, and waited for Alice who was already on her way over from Zack’s.  The 3 us of decided to try a new place for breakfast and check out Venice Beach regardless of the rain.  We’d been in Los Angeles for days and had not yet laid eyes on the ocean.

Abby, Alice and I had breakfast at an upscale place where all looked and tasted delicious. We managed to polish off what looked like way too much food.

It was a very cloudy day and we continued to encounter gray skies and rain all the way to the beach. Venice, California clearly is a beach town Mecca.  People who like the idea of living the beach life come here. We drove around for quite a while, looking for a free parking place(there were plenty of opportunities to pay $10 or $5 for parking) because that’s just the way we roll. Eventually Alice (our California driver) spotted someone pulling away from a meter with time left on it.  We added a couple of quarters and made our way to the beach. 

It was still very cloudy but we could see a band of blue out over the ocean. It was raining lightly (on and off) but this was nothing to stop 3 native Michiganders. A few skateboarders were showing their stuff at a small skate park but the beach itself was completely deserted. We walked out to a breakwater on the surf consisting of large boulders covered with clumps of mussels and small crabs skittering across the surfaces. Some gulls were engaged in beach-combing but other than that it was just us. After a few minutes, the sun broke through that slash in the clouds and we were bathed in solar rays. It was glorious.  Other humans began to trickle down to the beach and we walked along the surf for a while before returning back to our car.

We decided to drive up Highway 1 to Malibu and enjoy some road views.  And then it was time to turn around and head back to Alice’s apartment to drop her off and make our way back to Las Vegas. We had considered trying to make a 7:00pm performance of the Beatles LOVE, Cirque Du Soleil show in Vegas but we would be pushing all of our deadlines to make it there so instead we took our time saying goodbye and let that notion go. Zack came by to bid adieu. We made a feeble attempt to start Alice’s car, which had been sitting there through our whole visit with the inability to fire up but my “dad juju” was useless in this instance. It would need a tow.

Sadly, we double-checked our belongings shared hugs and with much difficulty I pulled out of the tiny parking spot that Alice had expertly parallel-parked into and we hit the highway.  It was raining and I had to figure out how to use the rental car wipers.  I also for the first time noticed a twinge in my throat that felt more like the beginnings of a cold than the sadness of leaving Alice. I had been bragging up my kick-ass immune system throughout the vacation as others all felt a bit under the weather and now it was time to pay for that arrogance.

It was a beautiful ride with all that big sky and deserts and mountains and rainstorms that could be seen from far off. Neither Abby nor I did much talking. We listened to music and watched the scenery,which would soon only be a memory. We stopped at a rest area on the California/Nevada state line and we photographed crows fighting over garbage. 

Had we still been trying to make the Cirque show, we would have been about 45 minutes late to pull it off.  It still got us there with several hours before we needed to return our rental car at the airport. But not having much love for Vegas, we decided on one last milkshake at a Dairy Queen in a strip mall; a peanut butter malt actually.  They had wifi and we did our last little bit of social networking before heading to the airport, dropping off our car and waiting out the last 3 hours in the concourse gate waiting area.  I picked up reading Roger Ebert’s book,“Life Itself”.

It was a redeye flight and Abby and I each picked up maybe 2 hours of sleep. A layover in Minneapolis gave us time for an overpriced, crappy breakfast at Chili’s before catching our connection back to Lansing.  All of our flights on this trip were uncomplicated and on time but regardless, it cemented my new hatred for flying with all the cost-cutting, the terrorism precautions and the germs floating around in the cabins. 

My trusty Saturn roared to life in the long-term parking lot and our last leg was uneventful; although we noticed that spring had sprung in our absence. The new season was here and the fact that we missed the cusp made us feel more like we had experienced time travel.  The cherry tree in our yard was in full bloom.