2 Years ago, sometime in December, being bored in the cold rainy streets of Vancouver, I decided to meet up with some friends in LA. Was going to be one short trip just a weekend away, away from the rain. Vancouverites often mention how great the city of vancouver is and how they will never need to venture out of the city. I agree Vancouver is a great city, however, there are a lot of great cities out there. It's not about being the best city but more about the differences of each city and how unique they are. It's about the experience of being in somewhere new. I have only taken baby steps to travelling. I will admit going to LA is not much of a remote exotic location but the experience is memorable mostly because of the company I kept on my travels.
When I got there, met up with a friend, a lovely nurse lady from Baltimore who was in LA for a nursing conference for her Phd at the LA Airport. She was as usual bubbly and fun. We drove over to Alhambra to meet our teacher friend who lived in LA. Met at a French restaurant there, funnily enough operated by an Asian owner, nhad some good salads there and our Seattle friend dropped by to see us. Being the only man there, he was awkward at first, but eventually started to follow suit and chat with us the girls.
Was nice and dry weather. Wonderful weather for hiking which is where we went. Not sure where we ended up but on some mountain hiking overlooking LA.
Later during the nite, our other music teacher friend met up.
Ended up in Korea town in LA, at some lounge eating spicy squid and noodles where everyone was dressed to their nines in club outfits and checking each other out. I was the odd one out being the only Chinese there, my friends nicely translated and ordered for us.
Many drinks later, as I was about to pass out...we went home, being driven by another drunk driver..yes yes that was wrong and very dangerous but I was probably too drunk to resist.
Stayed at my friend's aunt place, nice church lady, we sneaked into the room, slept like a baby to be awakened by this nice Korean aunt who spoke not much english preparing us fried fish, soup, rice and her lovely kimchi and banchans. If I could I would have asked her to adopt me..she had 2 fridges 1 entirely dedicated to kimchi preservation and kalbi marinated. Her house was like a Asian supermarket haha! When we left she even peeled some asian pears for our trip.
We took the car and left for Las Vegas after tha big meal. My dear friend was driving so i assumed we had enough gas...she says yes of course. We got lots of snacks and water for the trip, everything we need right. Guess what we forgot!
3 hours later, guess what the gas meter goes "Ding Ding Ding" and we were still about 1.5 hours away from Vegas. Yes there would be gas stations along the way why not, this is America, the land of gas guzzling vehicles. We passed 1 gas station drove into it, and the sign says "non operational". Well, must be gas at the next station, sure enough we see another gas station but it looks deserted as if the entire town had vacated from that location. This happens for every gas station we passed by some saying Running out of Gas Today...how how odd.
Our gas is running lower and lower..at this point we can't even stop, might use more gas if we stopped and try to reignite and drive the car again. What do we do..we start praying, please let us see the Vegas sign..my friend kept faith, and I was afraid, it was quite a hot day and i was sure that we could get the car towed even if we were in the middle of nowhere in the dessert but i could not really take another day off work just because I forgot to gas the car.
1.5 hour later, we see the sign..just as we ran out of gas. That's how life works..I believe. At times, we run out of gas and we need to refuel but the gas stations that fuel our life energy ran out, and as we keep going and going and preservering and keeping faith that it will be ok soon, or possibly in denial, in the end we do see the light.
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