“Let’s have an adventure!” Hmmmm, OK. Not what I had in mind but It had been a different Sunday morning already so why not? I’d been up since 5:30, yet I took my time, then we took our time, then we had breakfast, skipping 7:30, 9:00, and 10:30 masses, strolling into church in time for the noon mass. (Side note: my dad always called the noon mass the “Alka-Seltzer” mass in tribute to those who had partied late on Saturday night and didn’t get out of bed for any mass before noon.) As were leaving hubby mentioned an adventure.
The beach. Let’s go do something by the beach. Sounds good. I love the beach and I had on sandals which would make digging my toes into the sand easy. We thought of Huntington Beach, then remembered they were having surfing championships. Hubby decides on Venice Beach, 40 or so miles away, and off we go. In the back of my head something is clicking away. No traffic and we are heading towards LAX when we think about just how to get to Venice Beach. I ask Google and we get directions, feeling silly as we hear the voice tell us that we are going the fastest way possible given the amount of traffic. Forty years ago we both lived fairly close to Venice Beach, but it has been quite a while . . . . wait . . . . . brain is clicking away . . . . . that’s it! Several years ago we decided to go for a walk along Venice Beach on a Sunday summer afternoon and couldn’t get near the place. Oh well, by this time we were off the highway and in Culver City. Might as well keep going.
Culver City? Oh, yeah, we realized that we had very little cash with us so we got off the highway and followed Google’s directions to the nearest credit union ATM. It was out of service. We checked Google again and started going further away from Venice. We checked wallets and pockets again and decided we would be OK. Why waste a nice day and fun trip looking for an ATM?
We were still driving in a bit of a circle when we saw Sony Studios – MGM back in our day – and realized that we were going east instead of west. U-turn off Culver and onto Venice Blvd. Five miles to the beach. Not much traffic. We reminisced about places we went to in the past – what had changed and what had not. Then we got closer and closer and drove slower and slower until we were just a few blocks away, and we were barely moving, and there was no place to park, and people and cars everywhere. Parking lots, what few there were, were priced at $25 and $30. No way!
We don’t mind walking and we thought about finding a side street on which to park, then we considered the heat, looked at the young crowd, the traffic, and we made an executive decision to head south towards Marina Del Rey, eventually stopping at the lovely, charming and delightfully air-conditioned and not crowded at the time California Pizza Kitchen.
“What’ll you folks have to drink?”. Me? Bloody Mary! Somehow Ms. Mary was just what my frame of mind needed. As we left Marina Del Rey we drove to the end of one of the streets. We caught a glimpse of sand and water. That was it. Our adventure!
Every Day Is A Good Day. VJ
everydaywithvj 