California Dreamin

 God, I love California.

People who hate California, i.e. PNW dwellers, are the dumbest people alive.  I mean besides people that shoot off into the atmosphere in a giant dildo.

But, seriously, California is so beautiful and every time I go there I am, like, 'Screw you guys (PNW dwellers), I'm going home."  If you didn't read that in Eric Cartman's voice, please go back and do it again.  If you don't know who Eric Cartman is, please stop reading this and go do something else.  Seriously.

ANYWAY, Day 1 of the Waxed and Vaxed road trip came to a close after a rather lovely, pastoral trip through the Central Valley of CA at sunset, and we arrived in Sacramento.  

It was about an hour after dusk, the sun had set but was not done casting some light into the sky, so our setting was still pretty fucking fabulous.

 We checked into our room, I jumped on the bed for a bit, checked for bedbugs, almost broke my foot trying to jump on the mattress of Dale’s fold-out couch, and then got ready for dinner.

 EEEEK!

 Dinner in a restaurant was still pretty stressful to me.  I mean, I had spent previous weeks with M, wining and dining on bar patios in NoPo, but INSIDE??  With all the people and germs and Coronavirus just waiting to latch onto me in the enclosed space and suck me into Hades? 

I am a warrior, of course (translation; didn't want to look like a dork in front of my friends who know exactly how dorky I actually am), so I adjusted my mask, added Lysol wipes to the arsenal of hand sanitizer in my purse, and set out into the warm night with my friends.

We roamed around, dodging hobos and frat boys on those rent-a-bike thingies, put our name in at the restaurant, and then wandered through a groovy tunnel filled with art and discarded rent-a-bikes and then up an escalator, only to see this:

 

Thanks, Jimbo, for showing up.

Literally a jab from my buddy telling me, ‘Chill the f out and enjoy your night with your friends or I will give you bad tacos and food poisoning.”

 

So I did.  We sat down, ordered drinks, ordered food and I hanitizered (Harlowspeak for ‘hand sanitizered’) everything around me.  I looked around at all the unmasked, unafraid humans eating out in an enclosed space and thought, ‘I can do this.  I am with my friends and nothing bad is going to happen to me.”  As my shoulders relaxed, I looked around more and saw this:

Hi, cow!  <3

  

Like, WHAAAAAT??  Clearly the universe was in my corner and had placed my spirit animal and twin flame right behind me to watch over me as I ate and drank with my friends. 

(ISTG, if I ever get a tattoo, it is going to be cow-related!  Cows are everything!)

After dinner we went to our room and passed tf out, and while my roomies’ dueling snores did not keep me from sleep, they both went out of their way to let me know I was the quietest snorer ever when we got up in the morning.

Um, WHAT?  Pssshhhh!  I don’t even snore, so…

 

AND THEY WERE ASLEEP AND SNORING SO HOW WOULD THEY EVEN KNOW?

We left our room, making sure to commandeer a luggage cart for all the shit we brought in for our one night stand with Sac-Town.

There is an actual picture of a human taking a shit in this post, but this isn't it..I was just tired.

We wandered around the Downtown Commons, which was clean and gorgeous (City of Portland, you should probably be taking notes here) and full of plants and music, for a bit and then hit up Old Town where I found a stuffed raccoon and C took an extremely unflattering picture of me on the dock.

This is Chad the Raccoon, I did not buy him because his name was Chad and also because he can't sit on the couch and watch Game of Thrones and eat salami with me.

 

After a fantastic lunch out in the sun, we decided to hit up the Rose Garden at the Capitol on our way South, but there were too many gates and no parking, so we got gas and I took a picture of a random dude taking a shit in broad daylight next to a building and sent it to my child.  BYE, Sac-Town!

This is that picture...sorry, not sorry.

We put more miles on Sisu, talked an awful lot about Jeeps (owning a Jeep is, like, a way of life, BTW.  Like, seriously.  They wave or salute at each other on the road, duck each other – more on that tomorrow – and probably have bizarre pre-purchase initiation rituals that non-Jeepers are not privy to), danced in the backseat – ok, that was just me – and waved at all the wildlife and livestock.  That was just me as well.  Mooooooo!

On our travels south, we stopped at Fields Family Winery in Acampo for a tasting, where D and I proceeded to annoy the shit out of C by talking about wines’ top notes and berry flavors and acidity the way annoying people do on TV.  Also, she hates wine and there was no vodka so she talked a lot of trash while I got a buzz and then a splitting headache from the wine and sunshine combo.

D bought, like, ALL the wine at the end of our tour, and we hopped back into Sisu to roll South again, until we got to our hotel.

Southern CA sunset, Seen from Sisu.

 

I regret to inform you that no one saw fit to record what happened next, but I can assure you it was funny as hell.

We get to our room, 2 queen beds, and I notice that the window has a cushion in it, so I fling myself onto the window-bed-thingie and announce I am sleeping there for the night.

I get up to jump on the beds and check for bedbugs, and D proceeds to test the window cushion and declare it HIS space for the night.  He would not listen to any arguments in favor of him sleeping in a bed like a normal human (which he is soooooo not), and spent the night in the window sill.  I still maintain to this day that, had I clambered into the armoire and declared it comfortable, he would have slept in there instead.  Possibly upside down, like a bat.

 

I was so tired and so full from the IN N OUT BURGERS that I fell right asleep like a giant starfish in the middle of my queen bed and neither heard the Dueling Chainsaws, nor my own – practically inaudible – snores.

My God, I missed you!

Tomorrow: Day 3.  Or The One Where We Counted Jeeps, Cruised With the Vatos, and C and I Drank an Entire Bottle of Vodka and Lord Knows How Many (barf) Truly’s