If you didn't know, I went to California this weekend. I flew down there to drive with Holly back to washington because there was no one that was available to do that with her. This trip was the best trip to go on right after finals. It was probably one of the best random things I've done so far in my crazy life. Basically, everything went opposite to plan. So many things went wrong, but it was funny wrong, not I'm afraid we're never getting to washington wrong.
The trip started with my getting to the airport at 8 in the morning. I checked in and everything and went and got starbucks coffee and a scone. I sat down at the gate and managed to spill my coffee and drop my scone. 5 second rule, right? Then I went into the bathroom and dropped my boarding pass in the sink. Luckily it was not the part that had to be scanned in and I got it out within two seconds.
I got on the plane and we were pretty much on time. The plan was to land at 1:45 and then Holly would pick me up around 2 and we would go straight from there to her friend Jason's house in Paradise California which was 8 hours from the airport. My phone was dying so I didn't want to leave it on. I called Holly and asked her when she was planning on being there and she said that her professor was taking a long time to let her out of lab. So she didn't get to the airport until 4. As I got in her car, she said that she had left two of her suitcases in her room back at APU. So we drove back the half hour to get to her apartment.
Finally, at around five or six we were on our way to Paradise. About an hour and a half into the drive, I was sleeping cause I had been up since 4 and Holly was in a hurry. We got pulled over. Holly got a ticket. California does their tickets weird. She won't know exactly what the penalty is until it gets mailed to her house. weird.
We continued to Paradise without too much going wrong. Jason was a little weird and was giving us confusing directions even though we had good directions from google but apparently he was confused. He thought we were coming from San Francisco instead of Sacremento. We got to Paradise around one or one thirty. We stood around in the freezing cold talking to Jason and he drops the bomb on us: He forgot to tell his parents that people were going to stay the night. He ended up buying us a hotel room, which was amazing of him, even though he forgot that we were coming!
We were planning on staying the next night as well, so we asked him where we were going to stay. He says, "You're staying more than one night?" We roll our eyes and he told us that we could probably stay with his friend Kevin. He invites us to his band practice the next morning and after sleeping in till 10 we went out to where his band was practicing.
We assumed he had told his bandmates that we were coming in, so we found a side door that was unlocked and walked in. They were in the middle of a song, and all of a sudden they stopped. "How did you get in here?" Holly said that we came in from the ceiling. They didn't get it was a joke. "Wait, how did you get in here?" We told them that it was through a side door. Then Jason goes, "Holly...Holly, is that you?" And Holly says, "Oh my gosh, Jason! wow it's so good to see you!" Jason's bandmates say "how did you know we were here?" and holly says "well, we were driving past and we heard music and I knew that Jason was in a band so I thought hey, maybe this is Jason's band." They still didn't get the joke. Meanwhile, Holly thought they were all in on the joke, but apparently only holly, jason, and I knew what was going on. At one point, Kevin (who was the one we were supposed to stay with) says "so where are you guys staying tonight?" Jason and Holly look at each other and laugh because obviously Jason hadn't asked Kevin yet if we could stay there. That was a little bit of an awkward moment, but we had already decided to keep driving and try to make it to lake oswego, oregon that day.
We drove to Chico that afternoon for some really good chinese food. We tried to decide how to describe it and we settled on "chinese barbecue served subway style." We got back to paradise around 4 or so and we started driving. Somehow we got turned around and we looked around and realized we were getting more and more into the middle of nowhere. We decided to pull over at the next house we saw. We saw a group of log cabin-like shacks. We pulled over and walked down the driveway. It was the creepiest place EVER! We both had really eery feelings about it but it was getting dark and we decided to just go for it and knock on the door. We felt a little better when we saw the christmas decorations because we assumed that people wouldn't put up decorations unless they wanted people to see them. We knocked on the door and the loudest, meanest bark came out on the other side. There was no movement other than that so we went to the next shack. We walked up to it and realized there was a paper that was shaped like a hand. All the fingers were taped down except for one: the middle finger. I said "Holly, we are not knocking on that door, because there's a paper hand flipping us off!" So we walked back to our car, glad to get out of there and we saw someone get out of their car across the street. We asked them how to get back to the 99 highway and he explained it. So we basically went an hour or so out of our way.
We finally got back to the right freeway and thought the rest of the trip was going to go smoothly. For the most part it was fine but there were still some hiccups along the way.
In Yreka, lights were flashing and we got pulled over again. Holly got a second ticket only 5 miles from oregon! We got into oregon and decided to get gas. We had a shell and chevron gas card and there was a sign for a shell station in ashland. We took that exit and the next sign said "shell, 3 miles." wow. Long ways off the freeway but whatever, we decided to keep going. We got the shell station only to find that it was closed. We were in oregon and we couldn't pump our own gas because it was against the law. So we went back the way we came. We got to the I-5 on ramp and realized that there was no sign for I-5 north, only I-5 south. We got on it because it was too late to turn around. The next exit was a whole 6 miles away. So all in all we went 18 miles backtracking out of our way. It was horrid! We stopped for gas and to switch drivers and I started driving.
I drove for another 2 hours but I was so tired that as soon as Holly was ready to drive again we pulled over and switched. She continued driving until we got to her roommate's family's house in Lake Oswego, Oregon at 2:30 in the morning. We recounted our ordeal to her two roommates (one of them was visiting the other one) and went to bed. We got up around 10, visited with the roommate's family and left around one thirty. I drove the whole way back and we got back by 5. And that ended our trip.
I think I might be forgetting some things...but that's most of the story!
