The trip started with 12 hours of nonstop anxiety. I arrived at the Philadelphia airport with my mom and Hailey and at self check in, we were told that our flight was cancelled and rescheduled to 5am, the next day. We had booked with Expedia and my mom was furious that they hadn't bothered to mention the cancellation. We went to talk to a real person who was able to book 3 seats for us on a flight later that afternoon. The issue was that there was a stop and we had been taking a nonstop flight before. Because of that, my mom called Expedia to make sure that they would reimburse the difference. Unfortunately, the operator on the other line cancelled our entire flight which meant that we lost the three seats on the outgoing flight. She never got permission to cancel anything to begin with.
This wouldn't have been a big deal, but unfortunately we had paid $500 per ticket. When the order was cancelled, we lost that "credit". What that meant was that if we wanted to get on a Philadelphia flight, we would have to pay $3000. One way. Per person. When my mom demanded to speak to a supervisor, the conversation continued for a few minutes before the supervisor hung up on her.
At that point and for the next 3 hours, we had no way to get to California. We literally did not have the means to get there. For 3 hours. And Hailey and I had been looking forward to this trip for 7 months.
My mother just about lost it and she spent those 3 hours on the phone trying to fix something that she seemed to have virtually no control over. Eventually my mom was able to squeeze compassion out of someone on the other line and they started to help us. We couldn't get a flight out of Philadelphia so we had to go to Newark, New Jersey. And we had to take a train to 30th Street Station, then to Newark, to get there in time. And the train was leaving in 7 minutes. We were still in the terminal.
We all picked up our belongings as quickly as possible and hoofed it down to the train. Unfortunately we missed the first one and had to wait another 15 minutes for the next. Once it arrived, we had a fairly short ride to 30th Street where we bought tickets to Newark and went on our way. By this point, we had been going for about 4 hours.
The ride was nice because we sat in the cafe car and I bought the last personal pizza. My mom and I listened to Brick + Mortar's newest songs and we all ate and tried to calm down after all the stress. The only negative part about the train ride was that there was a woman giving us rude glances (as if she could possibly understand or sympathize with what we had been through) and talking loudly without stopping for air.
When we got to Newark we boarded a monorail where we laughed about how our suitcases (with Pillow Pets attached) rolled around the cabin. It had been 5 hours.
In the airport, we had a fairly stress free wait for our tickets to be assigned to us. It took a while but there wasn't any worrying involved. We all had a laugh about how my mom's suitcase weighed exactly 50 pounds, but when you lifted her luggage tag, it lost half a pound of its weight.
After we finished checking our bags, we went to security. It had been around 5 and a half hours and we only had half an hour to get to our gate and board. What this meant is that I was on the verge of angry tears for 20 minutes. I had to have film hand checked which only added to the anxiety. And once we finished, I grabbed my shoes and ran without bothering to put them on. (This might've been a bad idea because the moving sidewalks are pretty sharp.)
After 6 hours, we were finally on the plane and I cannot put into words how great that felt. There were a lot of celebratory selfies involved and I calmed down enough to finish The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien.
We ended up waiting for 2 hours, after already going through hell during the entire first half of the day. For the umpteenth time that day, I was about to be in tears. It wasn't fair for things to go the way that they did. Hailey sat and watched American Horror Story on her iPod while I read On Writing Well by William Zinsser. Once my mom made it to the front of the line, she met with an associate who understood the gravity of the situation and allowed us to choose our car. Our convertible. After everything, we got to rent a Mustang convertible and that alone made me feel much better.
Our first meal in California was at In n Out. Hailey had decided that she wanted this the second we thought about going on this trip. It was my first time getting food there and I was not disappointed.
We drove for an hour and a half to Huntington Beach. Our hotel was fantastic and then everything really started to be okay. Despite the hell we had faced getting to California, it had all started to look up. (Even if it was 2 in the morning by the time we were ready to sleep.)
The next day, Hailey slept in while my mom and I woke up and had breakfast together on our porch. The view was really incredible...
The two of us went to the US Open of Surfing, we had made it to California just in time for the finals. It was great to watch people surf on a professional level. And I got some really great shots with my nice camera. Hailey came and miraculously found us a couple of hours after we arrived. After the surfing was finished, we walked around for a while, got free hats, and left.
I also wore my Brick + Mortar shirt around that day, represent.
That night Hailey and I went to shoot photos under the pier when my mom urgently called us and told us to come home. That was incidentally the night of the riot and we were unaware until we got back to the hotel. I don't think anyone died but windows were smashed, tear gas was used, and people were very, very drunk.
But the next few days were really great. We went to the beach, hung around the hotel pool, and spent a lot of time on Main Street exploring. I went to an art gallery with my mom one day and I got to see the work of Anthony Ausgang, one of my favorite artists, in person.
Somehow, the gallery was actually closed when we were there. They let a few people in anyway but while we were walking around, they turned off the lights leaving the few people in the gallery in darkness. I really loved this painting, anyway.
My mom and I also met Timmy Turner (not the cartoon character) at his family's restaurant. He was a professional surfer who contracted MRSA. He was in a coma and it ate away 3/4 of his skull, apparently. He was never supposed to surf again. He did.
One day we went out to LA and we visited the Murder House from American Horror story. Hailey wanted to take pictures but forgot her memory card (it was okay because we went back).
We also went to Amoeba where I felt something akin to a spiritual experience. I bought a lot of CDs that I could never find at home, and some that I'd just been meaning to purchase. For example I found a Talking Heads best of/live CD in the Used section. I bought Mount Kimbie's physical Carbonated single release (such a score). I got Halfaxa and Geidi Primes by Grimes which I didn't knew existed in physical forms. I also found LP by Discovery and (of course) Born to Die by Lana Del Rey. And I bought the Come As You Are compact disc/maxi single by Nirvana. And they gave me Amoeba stickers. It was really beautiful.
We had plenty of other adventures in Huntington Beach but we left for VidCon in Anaheim on August 1st. Since VidCon is a separate post, I'll talk about it later. But while we were in Anaheim, we drove a while to see Awolnation and the X Games. Both were great. Although on AWOL's part, I prefer their previous drummer. Aaron sounded great, anyway.
We were meant to stay in Anaheim until we left but my mom couldn't bear the Double Tree for another day so we left for Dana Point which was absolutely lovely. I swear the bed at that hotel is the most comfortable bed I've ever slept in. It also had the softest sheets.
On our "off day" I rented a surfboard. We shoved it into the back of the convertible and strapped it in. And then we drove off.
We went beach hopping. It was amazing to drive down Route 1 with the top down, blasting Grouplove and Robert Delong. We went to Little Corona Beach where there was no riptide whatsoever and there were lots of rocks and tide pools to either side of the swimming beach. Hailey took tons of photos and we had a really good time looking at the tiny crabs and snails.
On the way to Doheny Beach (which is right next to the hotel) we stopped at a roadside Ruby's and I swear I might've been the happiest person alive. We got to Doheny Beach eventually and that's where I went surfing. It was crazy because the water becomes very deep, very quickly. 5 feet into the water, I could no longer touch the bottom. But I sat on the board in what felt like the open ocean with some other surfers. There weren't many waves but when there were, they were big and I caught a few.
I wasn't disappointed.
The next day was when we went home. We stopped at the Murder House again for a photo and Hailey tried to visit the bench from 500 Days of Summer but the park was closed. After that we went to UCLA and I fell in love. It's currently my top school. Then we went to In n Out one last time and returned our rental car. We got on a flight back to Newark and didn't get home until midnight.
The trip was excellent. VidCon was the best, I can't wait to talk about that. I also can't wait to go next year (to VidCon, and to California itself). A lot of people think California is special and I might have to agree with that idea. When I was in Huntington Beach I felt like I belonged there. Maybe someday.
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