Escaping Huntington Beach
Since a week's worth of storms were lined up to hit the California coast causing massive swells, strong winds and, well, lots of rain, Stephen and I certainly weren't going to be surfing. Rain isn't the problem, by the way. I mean, you're already wet when you're in the water anyways. It's the monstrous, messy, man-eating, wind-blown unsurfable waves that were the problem. Almost no one would be surfing, so we decided it was time for a road trip. To Big Sur!
Maybe our thinking in this case wasn't so sound, I see in retrospect, but it didn't turn out badly. These west coasters are so soft and spoiled with their endless sunshine and perfect weather - rain is a major news event. People freak out. Ok ok, so they do have to worry about flooding and mudslides. And, we just learned, the occasional tornado.
Near the Huntington Beach Pier
By Friday, January 15th, there was nothing surfable and the rains had begun. We listened to a radio show by surf forecasters and the outlook was bleak. I don't know what we did over the weekend, but it wasn't all that much. A bit of surfboard repair. Home Depot and curtain construction for the camper. The final setup on that involves two medium-priced tension rods. Epoxy, hooks and nylon string didn't work on the fiberglass and the first set of cheap tension rods we bought were total crap. Fortunately we were still in the Home Depot parking lot when those failed and just turned around and went back in. They refunded us with no questions and we bought the next pair of tension rods up the price ladder.
After lots of hanging around over the weekend, we were itching to go by Monday, January 18th. Stephen wanted to finalize where he was going to be living before we left. After lots of deliberation, Adele's place seemed the best choice. He called to see if it was still available and if they would have him. My flight out of L.A. was on Sunday, January 31st, and Stephen's classes started the next day, so he asked about moving in a little early on Saturday. From listening to Stephen's end of the conversation I could see that there was some issue with where I would stay. After Stephen got off the phone he explained. Adele didn't allow overnight visitors. Especially of the opposite sex. After some pause she had decided it would be o.k. for me to stay the night if Stephen slept on the couch in the living room. After thinking about it ourselves, we decided to move Stephen's stuff over there on Saturday, but stay the night in our temporary rental which we had until the first of February anyways. Those sorts of restrictions on my living situation would be intolerable, and I am sure that in some states they are also illegal. As illegal as stating a discrimatory preference in housing, i.e. only renting to men. This was certainly not worth a fight, though, and didn't really impact me. Stephen would be renting on a month-to-month basis so would be able to keep an eye out for more tolerant options if this situation turned out to be unreasonable. At the very least it did seem that he would be afforded ample privacy in that studio-sized room upstairs.
The next day we stopped over at Adele's for Stephen to fill out paperwork and sign a rental agreement. The storms were really picking up and Adele had news of flooding up and down the coast. We had just heard earlier that a tornado had touched down within a mile of our temporary sublet, at the Huntington Harbor. Crazy! She seemed worried that we had chosen this as the day to leave on a road trip, but didn't try to dissuade us.
We headed out in the afternoon, on a schedule to make it to Santa Monica by dinner time to meet with an old friend of mine.
On the outskirts of LA:
Getting closer:
Stephen had been yearning for some good Bibimbap, a Korean dish of rice, vegetables, chili paste, a raw egg and, if you want, meat, served in clay pot and mixed together thoroughly just prior to eating. He had never had it before, or maybe had once but it was a disappointment. In one of those beautiful coincidences, Kevin's favorite restaurant was a Korean one within walking distance of his apartment in Santa Monica. He went there for their bibimbap. Perfect.
I hadn't seen Kevin in something like eight years and he was just as I remembered him. This was only from a very brief interaction over dinner, though, so who knows if my perception was simply wishful thinking. Either way it was really good to see him. It used to be that parting ways with people always felt final to me. Maybe it is that way with anyone growing up, certainly while you are still dependent on others and can't make independent choices about travel and where to live. As I've gotten older, and hopefully picked up at least some hints of emotional maturity, I can envision a longer time line in human relationships, with people coming and going out of my life over many years. The only true and final goodbye is death. Like a child delighting in peek-a-boo, I am finally starting to grasp that just because I am still covering my eyes doesn't mean they don't still exist.
We left Santa Monica that evening hoping to get in a few more hours of driving north before camping for the night. After a bit of snooping around near that famous right point break, RIncon, we settled on parking our truck on a dead end street in a decidely middle-class looking neighborhood. Stocked with unpretentious houses and a few campers here and there, we figured they would be less likely to call the cops on us than a ritzier neighborhood.
We didn't do the best job of leveling the truck that night, which made for not quite fitful sleep. Still, the spot felt like a score.
