Matt’s birthday was a couple weeks ago and I’d asked him weeks before what he wanted to do. His response was something to the effect of “Eh, I don’t know.” Of course it was. The guy who never wants for anything married the girl with no creativity when it comes to planning things like birthday celebrations.
So with no ideas from him or me I figured we’d end up just doing dinner and a movie or something. 42 opened that Friday and he’s definitely a baseball guy. It seemed pretty likely we’d end up at that after a steak somewhere.
That was until I started writing again every day. When I blog I like to play Pandora or iTunes or some other music. It’s my favorite way to get inspired. Why I didn’t just think of that for planning Matt’s celebration in the first place is beyond me. But then I clicked to shuffle and the Barry Manilow station was still selected.
And then “Just Once” by James Ingram came on. I started laughing immediately and had a full twelve-year flashback of all the road trips we used to take. In the early days neither of us had a CD player in our cars let alone an iPod dock (um, yeah it was 1999, wtf was an iPod?). So when we traveled we were at the mercy of the local radio selections.
It’s pretty safe to say we heard our fair share of James Ingram over the years. And damn if I won’t car dance to just about anything. So when it came on that day I knew a birthday road trip was in order.
We ended up coastal, in Ventura. Enjoy!
Matt wanted to veer off the highway by way of Eagle Mountain. What, no tumbleweeds? |
Sadly however we were denied access and had to take that long lonely road back to the freeway. We drove for about 190 more miles and hit two walls... |
A wall of traffic and a wall of smog. Welcome to Los Angeles! |
Though the '50's be-bop wall-mounted jukeboxes were pretty cool. Exhausted from the eight hours in the car we made out way back to the hotel and crashed. |
And nothing would keep us from the beach the next day! Up and out early we rode the PCH up to Santa Barbara and cruised around taking loads of photos of interesting architecture and the ocean. |
Despite it being April the coast felt more like June gloom than sunshine spring. But we didn't care, it was all about having some salty wind in our hair, seaglass hunting, and relaxing. |
And the lazy moon laying on her back pushed us all the way home. |
Posted for April 2013 A to Z Blog Challenge R is for Road Trip
14 comments:
Wow, I am glad you got inspired to take a road trip...
It looks like you had so much fun, minus the dust storm.
And WOW, Los Angeles is smoggy... ewww
Thanks for the vicarious road trip. Hubby & I love to take them, & I enjoyed sharing yours.
Kathy @ Swagger Writers
Love road trips. It's been way too long!
this was BIG fun to ead and I love your pics- especially the dont dance on tables sign! ReallY? Just makes one want to break the damn rules!
Happy Weekend!
The dust storms are scary when on the road. I've seen those pileups on the news!
Phoenix to Santa Barbara. Quite a drive!
This sounds really awesome! It has been way way way too long since having a random road trip. Those were some of the funnest times back in the day with my friends.
That sounded like a great birthday :) Even with the dust storm. Though, my brief stay in AZ never exposed me to one, so I can't say how scary they are. Driving through one may not be the best.
I also listen to music as I write. I have individual playlists per project.
The very subject of road trips makes me think of two songs: "Open Road Song" by Eve 6 & "Great Escape" by Guster. If you've not ever heard them, I would suggest giving them a quick listen and let me know what you think :)
I barely have more than a 1/4 tank of gas in my car, and would end up stranded in the middle of no where attempting your road trips lol
With the way we road trip even the dust storm was fun!
Yeah LA was pretty nasty but I've seen it even worse here in Phoenix at times.
So much fun to get out & see the world isn't it Kathy? Enjoy your next trip!
Yeah it'd been ages for us too. So much fun :-)
Thanks Kathe! I can't say I was even contemplating getting up on the tables regardless of how much fun the music was haha
Yeah we kept seeing reports in Phx but never felt it was that bad because the worst always happens further south from us. Now I know what those people experience & it was pretty freaky!
I was happy to see my chiropractor that week let me tell ya!
I love that song by Eve 6, never really a Guster fan so I don't know that one but I'll try track it down & check it out. Love road trip so any open road type song sounds good to me!
Yeah we save up specifically to do road trips these days. In the old days when gas was under $2 we had a lot more fun traveling the country. Now its less random & more planned. Still fun though :-)
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