Day 17

Day 17

I woke up about 6:30 and got the last of my things together.  I was starting to drive north for the wedding now that is in Oregon. That is about a 20 drive.  I wanted to give myself plenty of time to get there in the event that something went wrong, I would have a day or two extra to get there. On my way north, I decided I wanted to stop by Venice Beach. I love skating around and checking out the bowl, there are always good skaters there. While I was driving to Venice, I was sitting in horrible traffic for about an hour and my car started doing this strange idol shaking thing. It doesn’t like idol, it died on me twice, but it started right back up again. It must be some sort of airflow or spark plug thing. I’m not too sure, but it’s got to be air not getting to something. When its over 10 miles an hour, it’s fine.  Needless to say, it was a stressful drive. I was just glad it started up again. I kind of just pretended like it wasn’t happening… and every time it started to die at a stop sign or in traffic, I just talked to my baby and motivated her to keep going, haha.

When I got to Venice I decided to skate to the pier with the roller coaster on it (Santa Monica pier?) and back to Venice. I ate at a little café and had some bomb mahi mahi tacos. Mmm. Afterwards, I went to watch the kids skating the bowl. Some of those little kids are just amazing! They have so much confidence skating and fitting in like a little adult there. I love watching the dynamic of the two age differences skating, they all work together and I think that’s neat.

I was about to walk to the beach and a guy came up to me and said, “Hey! Where are you going?”

“To the beach.”

“Great, Ill go with you.”

I reply with a long “Oookay… your coming with.”

It’s funny how blunt and bold people are.  ‘Well alright, I guess your comin with then…,”  I was thinking in my head. I don’t mind company at all, so it was nice to chat. His name was Josue. He was a little taller than me with dark skin and brown hair. He had a great smile and a great attitude about life. We went and sat on the beach and watched the waves come in.  We talked for about an hour about all sorts of things. We talked about skating, health, working out, reading, 911, and ambitions in life. We also talked about how sometimes you have to quit hanging around certain people just because they are not benefiting yourself.  And not in the way that they are bad people by any means, but in the way of just being healthy or setting a goal for yourself; sometimes people get in the way and that’s a fact that no one wants to admit sometimes. That is how some people get sucked in and never get out. It is self control and being self aware.  Two girls and I, back home, Andrea and Angela, always say “Be self aware!" So many people aren’t and it really kind of blows my mind.  Some people are just oblivious to what’s going on right in front of their face.

Anyhow, it was a great variety of things in such a short amount of time. Its funny, too, how you can hangout with someone and you ask questions and try to engage them but they just don’t follow suit or ask back. Then you talk to someone you have never met before and you can talk for an hour straight about all kinds of things. It’s interesting to me how certain people feed off of each other. I wish I would have gotten a photo of Josue. Sometimes I just get caught up in the convo that I don't think to take a photo. That's odd for me right? 

Around four I finally got on the road. Time really passed me by. Well, I actually left around 2:30ish but traffic was so bad I didn’t get out of LA until four. I had 9 hours to go… My stopping point was in Northern California at a friend’s house. I didn’t get there until about 1am. In that time, I dropped my debit card at gas pump and didn’t realize it 200 miles later when I stopped to get a snack. You’ve got to be kidding me.. its that moment when you’re at the register and you go to get your card out and kind of panic, but try to play it cool. “Um hold on, let me check my car.” Then you check your car and your thinking, "No, no no. No way!"  I called the gas station to check on it- they had it, I told them to cut it up and I canceled it. I had one rushed to my friend’s address that I was stopping at. Way to go Deleigh… I have no clue how that happened. Good thing I gave myself a few days, because the card takes two days to get there.  Alright, long enough for today!