We did the impossible…We actually got out of Sacramento…We all had a great
time…Could anything go any better?
Day 1, Leaving St. James
The minute hand reached 45, the last day of summer school…I had just
finished the final. I was finally FREE and to top it off, I was leaving for
LA in approximately 4 hours. Could life be any better? Yes, if I won the
lottery. But that didn't happen. Anyways, I got home and frantically drove around looking for a pair of swim shorts for Thierry and went over the list for the 5th time. Benite’s (my sister) only consolation was that she was having a sleepover when we were gone and I had just gotten her some DVDs to watch with her cousin. I finished making my OC tee-shirt and we headed for St. James, not even buying a pair of swim shorts…we used Thierry’s old pair. We thought we were late to arrive but came first among the 7 other people that were going to travel with us (except pat of course). After jumping through our own window in order to get into the youth room, the other LA enthusiasts came. We stuffed stuff into the car. As Thierry put his pillow into Pat’s car, he was reassured that everything was ok: “If something is broken, we can fix it.” It was 2pm and we were anxious to leave, instead we
took like 5 pictures. We said grace and left around 2:15. We had a long
drive ahead of us. The guys went with Pat and the girls went with Sam’s
mom. Becky and Lanye went together in a separate car.
Day 1, Getting There
Our joy was short lived. As we passed Richard’s Blvd., Sam’s mom said that her car was low on water. We hadn’t even been in the car for 10 minutes. We stopped by a chevron with Pat’s team alongside and got some water. Sam called Becky who was already long gone and she turned around only to lose us and spend the rest of the trip to Pat’s house catching up. 1 hour into the drive and I was already bored. Girls know how to pass timethough. We stuffed ourselves with snacks provided by Sam and her mom and we played UNO and B.S. In addition, we laughed at Ted whenever we passed Pat’s car, only to find out later that he had a fever. Traffic was at its worse. Cars stopped to look at a stalled car in the middle of the 2 lane freeway and there was a gas spill to go along. We took this precious time to
communicate with other humans that had 3 golden retrievers in their car. On
the way there, we stopped at a rest place, and got gas. Before reaching
Bakersfield, the girls could take it no longer. We all dozed until we made
our final stop at a gas station and got food to eat at subway, taco bell,
and starbucks. We finally woke up because the car bounced around. Sam’s
mom was horrified to find that she had spent 30 cents more on gas than Pat
did. Subway was great. The Veggie Gurlies (Chelsea and Grace) found good, filling food (they would have problems finding such good food later) and Thierry amused us by drinking two 48oz. cups of soda while saying that he was “taking it to the head” (you realize that that is like ¾ of a gallon of
soda!). Everyone was happy, until we got into the cars again. The
grapevine was as long as I remembered it and it took even longer to get to
Pat’s house because of traffic. However, the techno beats of LA satisfied
our musical needs as we passed by the famous citadel outlets. We finally
arrived at pat’s house around 11:00 and Ted made himself at home. He went
to sleep right away on Bret’s floor. The ride took about 8 hours, when it
should have taken 6. We met some of Pat’s family (Mom, Dad, brother Bret
and his girlfriend Estella, and Honey, the dog who was very good at chasing
those annoying jujube bugs…). After we were all situated, we took a look at
Pat’s high school pictures and went to sleep.
Day 2, Newport Beach!
In the morning we celebrated mass in a chapel that was nearby Pat’s
church. Sadly, it had recently burned down. Thanks to the master GNS,
will, we all looked good after he did a swell job reading. Nobody even
noticed that we were in our swim/beach attire! After mass and a quick pit
stop at Walgreens, we headed out to Newport! We soon quickly learned
that the inhabitants of Yolo County don’t exactly fit into the LA picture. We all
cringed when we saw Mercedes-Benz in abundance and were ashamed to be
driving in a conservative Camry and an “experienced” Explorer. As soon as
we got onto the beach, I felt extremely out of shape. People well into
their thirties were kicking but playing beach volleyball. Although one teen
ventured to say that we could take them, it was obvious that we would be
beaten to the ground, literally, by their spikes. To get the adrenaline
running, some of us went on a beach run (like chariots of fire!), the good
swimmers did a “buoy swim”, and some of us got on boogie boards. It is nice
to know that we have aspiring artists in youth group. They turned Will into
a macho man! Well actually, he was just buried into the sand and they drew
in fake muscles. Some interesting sights to see were people poking at a sea
lion on the rocks and looking through tide pools. Although the beach is
nice and fun, I would probably never become a life guard because their job
is way too demanding. We went back to Pat’s house for some more
swimming and a mean game of Marco polo. We were very happy when
Pat’s dad graciously prepared a large repast which included hamburgers!
We also got to meet Lawrence, Pat’s youth group leader who hooked us up
with awesome tickets for Disneyland. We were all very happy because his
burgers were much better than those nasty tasting things that we got at the
snack shack at the beach. Before going to bed, we noticed that most of us
were sun burnt…some of us thought that we were well protected from the
sun only to find out that we had used Theresa’s 15spf sun block…it shouldn’t
even be called sun block because it doesn’t block anything at all...we should
have been using 30+spf! After dinner we went to an abbey for worship. It was
an amazing experience. Some of the monks were very young. It’s nice to see
that some young people are still very committed to their religion. During silent
prayer, we were all convinced that Thierry had fallen asleep but he insisted
that he was very “focused”, with his eyes closed of course! When Mr.
Pillion stepped outside for some fresh air, he noticed that some of the
monks had killed a snake, but being committed to silence, they couldn’t
explain what had happened. Before going to home base, Theresa called
David “dad” while trying to hand him the keys. When we got back to Pat’s
house, we played cards with Chelsea’s deck. The person on the ace is
totally a girl! However, some seem to think it is a guy. It is up to you to take a
look at the card and voice your opinion on the forum...Afterwards, we went
to sleep. Before going to bed, Bret tried to see if he could leap over Will
and land on his bed. However, he underestimated his super human jumping
abilities and slammed his head against the wall on the far side of his bed.
He didn’t think that anyone saw him while Thierry laughed at his stupidity
silently while he was sleeping with Honey. Nevertheless, we couldn’t wait
for an exciting day at what Pat calls Dismaland!
Day 3, Dismaland!
This was one really long day filled with tons of fun. When we got to
Disneyland, us girls got our shirts signed by Marry Poppins and Bert and
tried to get Woody’s (had too long of a line) and Esmeralda (who pushed us away). Throughout the day, we got tons of compliments on
our iron-on tees (some wanted to know if they could buy them in one of
the stores, some thought we were a cheerleading team, others thought that
we were a band…) The first rides that we went on together were Matterhorn,
Small World, Mt. Toad’s ride, Haunted Mansion, the tea cup ride, and Alice
and Wonderland. Thierry and Pat were spinning so fast on the tea cup ride
that I, who wasn’t even on the ride, felt like I wanted to throw up! We came to
the conclusion that riding on Small World hundreds of times would definitely
make you lose a ton of IQ points and David also pointed out that the people
who work at the Small World ride tend to have a high suicide rate. The guys
joked that David was “the guy” for Alice, which most of us girls didn’t get at all.
We all tried to scare each other by sneaking up behind someone and tickling
them. Ted and Thierry also made up jokes about Mickey mouse…which got
annoying after a while. For a while, we were split up into groups (Lanye
and Becky, Sam’s mom and the girls, Pat and the guys). My group went on
the Chip and Dale ride where we saw a little girl who was screaming her lungs
out saying “I don’t want to go!” and her mom made her go on the ride because
they had waited so long. I couldn’t blame the mom; we waited 20 minutes
just to go on a ride that lasted 33 seconds! Thierry being the bahumbugger
of rides, didn’t go on many at all. Instead, he played initial D. Why on
Earth would you have an initial D game at Disneyland? Anyways, why play it
in LA when you can play it at home? I will never understand… We also went
on Pirates of the Caribbean which is probably one of my favorite rides!
Becky and Lanye left early because they had to go to work the next day. In
the middle of the day, we left Disneyland to go to a Life Teen Mass at St.
Vincent, a church nearby Pat’s house. People of all ages attended the mass.
We all felt very welcomed (they gave us necklaces with seashells on them!)
and we participated in singing songs and doing hand motions. Even Bret got
into it! The funniest part of the mass was when they introduced a new
leader Mike, with the song from Rocky and Bullwinkle. I think that we
should have Life Teen at St. James because it is awesome! After mass, we
decided to go to a Mexican restaurant instead of Zankou (Pat’s favorite
place where you can order a whole chicken!) and had some amazing food.
Will ate a ton of chips. However, Grace didn’t have such an amazing
experience when she realized that they had put dairy into her burrito
(she’s allergic). Thankfully, she didn’t get sick. We all were talking very loud
at our table and the tables next to us had to talk louder in order to hear each
other. The restaurant got really loud very fast. For dessert, Theresa
ordered a syrupy drink which was much too sweet. After dinner, we went back
to Disneyland except for Ted who was still sick and stayed at Pat’s house.
We went on Star Tours, Autotopia, Indiana Jones, Pirates of the Caribbean,
and Splash Mountain. Bret told the guys a secret about the cars in
Autotopia. If you pull back on the accelerator, the car stops.
Consequently, all of the guys were stopping cars and people were crashing
into each other. One girl lucky girl got to ride with Mickey! After the
ride, some of us got autographs from Mickey and Goofy and some of us
interviewed Goofy. We found out that he would win in a fist fight and that
Mickey, the being the big cheese, is paid more than him. The guys went on
Space Mountain and told us that it had some cheesy techno music
(we love our techno!) Most of us went on Splash Mountain. I had Pat and
Chelsea on my boat and Pat tried to scare us by rocking the boat the
whole time. It was great and our picture was hilarious. During the night,
we referred to Pat as “Uncle Pat”, and made up your mom jokes. Before
we left, we went to some souvenir shops, Bret lost Estrella for a moment,
and we left the park at 1am. Bret and Pat had a competition to see who
could knock over as many parking cones as possible without getting caught.
I have no idea who won. Although it was late and most of us were tired, we
couldn’t go to sleep because we knew that waking up meant going home.
Will and I thought about putting shaving cream on Pat’s face while he was
asleep but we couldn’t bring ourselves to doing it. Instead Bret thought of
and even better idea. We all pretended to go to sleep and Pat went to sleep
outside on the lawn in a chair and his sleeping bag. Bret got out of his room
and all of us crowded around the outdoor table, hidden from Pat’s sight. All
of us were laughing in anticipation. When Bret turned on the sprinklers, Pat
yelped and ran out of his bag, turned the corner, and Will took a candid photo
which didn’t turn out well. Bret and Pat chased each other around for about
15 minutes and the chase ended up with a water wrestling match. After
being well entertained, everyone went to sleep.
Day 4, Going Home
Bret set his alarm for early in the morning (I think he only got like 4
hours of sleep) but Thierry had to wake him up because he slept through the
alarm. During our last hours in LA, we went to Downtown Disney for some
last minute shopping. We had some Jamba Juice, had glitter sprayed all over
us at Libby Lou, and looked at some awesome rastafari hats. After shopping,
we said goodbye to Will and Theresa who were staying in LA for a while
longer. Traffic was a bit better after going by another truck spill (cans
this time). Pat slept during our pit stops (we all felt kind of bad) and we
got back to St. James at 9pm. 7 hours is much better than 8. Chelsea’s
little, little sister was happy to see us and we were all happy to have had
such a great bonding experience. I can’t wait to see what we do next
summer!
