traffic and accidents
Day: Thursday
Time: Night
Event: I was invited to a Bahai event at a friends friends house in Hollywood so I decided to drive there that night in my friends beetle armed with some instructions that I wrote down from the net and a mobile that I decided to bring as an afterthought. I got a bit lost going there, and very lost coming back. Lost to the point of having absolutly no idea where I was or how I was going to get back. After a little while of asking people at servos and calling a friend, and lucky guesses I managed to make it home. And when I arrived home I hugged people and touched walls to make sure it was all real and that I wasn’t dreaming… I drove for over 3 and a half hours – truly an authentic way to see and experience LA – though I hope I don’t have to do it again.
Highlight: Asking two different service station workers and a homeless person how to get back to Santa Monica and getting given three different direction to go…This is when it started to really sink in that I was in trouble.
Day: Saturday
Time: 9:30am to 10:30pm
Event: Visiting Six flags (a giant theme park) with Ryan, Larry and Joe. There were the craziest roller coasters that I have ever been on, and also the craziest waiting times – one lasting 2 hours. But we filled the time in with much merriment. Joe was on crutches which was hard for him, but it helped us make some money. The queues were covered by shade cloth, upon which were many coins. We used Joe’s crutch to push $4.20 worth off over the whole day – enough to buy us a cookie and icecream sandwhich from Diddy Rheese on the way home.
Highlight: Joe had just bought himself an icecream as we were walking over to our next ride, but it was along way away, so I decided to carry him on my back. Ryan who was holding Joe’s ice-cream decided that now that Joe didn’t have any crutches, this would be an optimum time to offer joe a bite. Yet while Ryan was feeding Joe some spilt on his arm, Larry then offered to clean it up. It was here that a 13 or so year old boy walked past us and muttered ‘Well that’s not gay at all…” . Fair call we thought.
how much time do I have?
Last weekend I travelled to San Diego, Santa Barbara, went out for dinner and to a club, slacklined, attended a games night and got some midnight Thai food….and I was exhausted. By the time Monday came I was really crook and the whole week I’ve been craving staying at home having me time and catching up on odd jobs. This weekend rolled around, and with it came other opportunities to do things, and I took them up, even though I would have preferred not to. It’s hard to justify staying at home instead of going slacklining, or to a soccer game. I made excuses up, saying to myself ‘oh I can get it done later, it won’t take long to do my washing or change the cupboards over’. And all the activities were good fun and I enjoyed myself, but much of the time I was thinking of being at home, and what I would like to do next.
I’ve really wanted to follow the Carpe Diem idea. Sieze the day. Live for the day. Enjoy the moment. And these action packed weekends were not doing it for me. Actually my whole life right now seems to be racing from one thing to another – it’s very fast paced. I”m finding that in order to get things done I’ve got to schedule them in and every fifteen minutes in my life counts. And with this in mind I need to prioritise my agenda – socialising vs learning, keeping my relationships in touch vs unwinding. Perhaps this is something that I am learning about living in this environment – that it is very action packed, and that maybe I don’t enjoy it. I’m almost finding myself being a little stressed at times, and this manifests in me not being as easy going and friendly as I’d like to be. I guess this is all part of life so I’ll try to learn from it, endure it and make the most out of everyday.
Things that make me happy
Human curiosity is a marvellous thing, and at work recently I got to see it in it’s prime. Due to some construction, just ouside the TOMS doorway we have a wide diameter poly pipe sticking 30cm out of the ground with a brightly coloured yellow lever on it. The sort of yellow lever that says – push me and something will happen. And when this sort of lever is attached to a large poly pipe, it is pretty easy to guess what will happen. But you can never be too sure… Someone pushed the lever and water spurted 5 metres up into the air – it was very good fun indeed. Who would have thought?
Just as much fun as spontaneously seeing a fountain in your work place is slacklining on Venice beach. I’ve mentioned it before, but it really is the place to be. The slacklining itself is great fun – I’m learning many new tricks such as the Prince of Persia (jump and slide), electric slide (leap and 360 step), sitting on my knees and falling off on my face. But it is not actually the slacklining that makes the experience so much fun, it’s the people that you meet.
As slacklining has a bit of a wow factor, people watch and also come up and ask for a try. I don’t think there was fifteen minutes that we were in our spot when we weren’t joined by someone new. And the people that we met were really interesting, and we are likely to see them again down there as we exchanged numbers (and business cards). One of the people who I’m hoping to see again is a chap called Wyatt. He fell off his bike right infront of us and lay there passed out for about a minute. By the time we’d told the paramedics how to get here he’d regained consciousness, but was still a little shaky. He was new in town and looking for a job and some pals – hopefully we’ll see him next week!
I even got to star in not one but two videos: The first one with Joe promoting a not for profit organization( everywun.com ) for some people that hung out with us for about half an hour
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQda4mJnKTY
And the second for an organization that makes organic t-shirts. Apparently they work with TOMS which is a bit of a coincidence and they think I look a bit like our founder Blake.
http://thegreenloopblog.com/bctv-what-does-organic-mean-to-u/985
Culture – America has it!
I discovered a part of America over the weekend that I didn’t think existed. It was full of so many different cultures and activities all so densely packed – I could have stayed there for hours absorbing it. Venice Beach was where it could all be found and it really did have it all; graffiti artists, skateboarders, roller skate dancers, hand ball players, basket ball courts (the same ones used in White Men can’t Jump) complete with tough looking black guys like in the movies, Muscle beach gym made famous by Arnold and gymnasiam ring and bars. And all along either side of this stir fry of activity are street vendors and performers.
On Saturday Ryan and I set up the slackline near the bicycle path that runs passed it all facing the beach and on Sunday we were joined by Claire, Larry and Joe. Every fifteen minutes or so, someone would stop by and ask for a go, and it proved a great way of meeting new people. And the people that walk by here are fantastic, it surely must be one of the best places to people watch that I’ve been to. After several hours of slacklining we rode our bikes to the drum circle that was happening actually on the beach a few hundred metres away. It was fascinating. So many different characters from all cultural backgrounds – Black people, Mexicans, Native Americans, Cowboy hat wearing Americans and hippies. There must have been about 30 or 40 drummers in a circle with about 150 people surrounding them and 40 or 50 people dancing inside the circle. I got to try out all three positions, first standing around watching, then dancing, and then playing a bongo and a cow bell which a nice man with an afro lent me.
I would really recommend anyone who visits America to check this place out – it’s literally only about 150 stone throws from the LAX airport.
