Passing Notes

I was sitting at the bar, alone, as usual.

I was busying myself on my phone, as usual.

But I looked up because I felt someone approach. I felt their eyes on me. I lifted mine to meet their gaze.

"Hi," she said. Her uniform's red bandana gave her away as one of the waitresses. I was curious to see her; I wasn't expecting any food.

"Hi there," I said.

She twisted her mouth. "See that guy over there?"

Without looking, I said, "The really drunk one against the wall?"

"The one in the white shirt?" she offered, seemingly sinking into herself even though she was standing.

"Yeah the one that just came and sat at the bar and then turned around and sat back at the table? That guy?"

The waitress winced. "He wrote you a note," she said, holding up a folded piece of paper.

"Oh yeah?" I asked, humored. "What does it say? Did you read it?"

"Yeah..."

"Well let's take a look!" I was always up for a little drunken hilarity at bars and restaurants, and this wasn't the first time that I'd been approached from across the room.

Scrawled across the white piece of paper was something about how cute sexy I am, and how he thought we should hang out later, and how he wasn't having a very good time on his date, because she just wasn't his type.

"Oh hilarious!" I laughed. "He must be drunk. How do I respond?"

Just then the waitress - who'd introduced herself as Emily as she was thanking me for being so cool about it - got pulled away, and I took a moment to consider my reply. He wasn't dashing. He was too drunk to be interesting. And he was on a date with another girl. So I wrote, "I'm sorry but I have to get up really early in the morning. Besides, I don't steal other girls' dates."

I folded it up, handed it back to Emily, and sent her back to his table. Later, she reported back that when he opened it up and recited it to the table, he punctuated it with, "Classy."

"That is classy!" Emily said to him, and to me later.

"The truth is," I confessed, "That's totally a lie. I totally do steal other girls' dates."

Soon thereafter, the guy - whose name I never got - sauntered by me at the bar on his way out, kind of poked me in the back a little bit, and walked out with his arm around his date, I shaking my head.

"He actually wrote you back," Emily said, "But I didn't want to give it to you."

"Oh yeah? What'd it say?"

"'It's meant to be.'"

And then, in unison, we said, "Ugh."

And then I thought about how he walked out with the girl, the same girl who was at the table every time I looked over, and who must've been there when he wrote the note to me, and when he read my reply aloud. My face fell.

"What's wrong?" Emily asked.

"I just realized, they must've been making fun of me."

"No, no, no, don't be silly..." she protested.

But it sure seemed like his date was in on the joke. And they walked out, laughing, while I still sat there, at the bar, alone, eyes welling.

Why did they decide to target me? Because they saw me sitting, eating, drinking, tweeting alone? Because they always see me there alone?

Because it's so absurd to think that someone might like the sight of me so much that they might actually write me a genuine note and send it to me with the waitress?

No one likes being picked on, and usually whoever is picking on you isn't worth the angst they create. But no matter how small, infantile, insignificant or idiotic the mocker is, it doesn't make the mockery sting any less.

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Photo Essay: Pasadena to the Mt. Lowe Alpine Tavern

I've been skulking around the periphery of Mount Lowe in the Angeles National Forest for over a year now.

This summer, I spotted the closed trails to Mt. Lowe from both Henninger Flats and Mount Wilson, but the 2009 Station Fire left a lot of those roads, fire roads, and trails closed for repair and rehabilitation. Last summer, I hiked up Echo Mountain to the old White City, to explore where the old Mt. Lowe Incine Railway used to drop folks off. At the time, I thought that was kind of it, but now I realize, just as you can hike farther up from there, the incline railway's passengers' journeys did not have to end there, either: they could take a trolley all the way up Mt. Lowe to the Alpine Tavern, and even stay overnight in one of the surrounding cottages.

The original path of the trolley is actually open to the public, but not to vehicular traffic. But last weekend, thanks to the Scenic Mt. Lowe Railways Historical Committee, a group of us got past the locked gate and drove up the old path of the trolley in an annual trip that occurs every December to commemorate the opening of the railway.

Flying Solo

I would rather sit in a crowd alone, surrounded by strangers
Than interject myself into a small group, surrounded by friends.

I'd rather buy one ticket to a concert
Than tag along with another couple.

I'd rather talk to no one
Than be asked why I'm not with anyone.

I like the company I keep
When I keep myself company

When I am the only wheel

But nothing makes me want to escape, flee, or retreat
More than being an extra wheel.

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Heatseeker

Ever since I moved to LA, I've been cold.

I moved into my apartment in late January, in the middle of winter, into an apartment with no heat (and no air conditioning), and only a hot water bottle to keep me warm.

Back then, new in LA, it was enough. I wasn't that cold yet. LA still seemed warmer than New York to me.

But with the onslaught of winter in LA, a winter that really feels like winter to me, a winter that feels just as Christmasy as New York, I am blasting the heat.

I sit next to a space heater all day, while regularly turning the office furnace up. Sometimes I wear my coat.

I blast another space heater at night, placed on the hardwood floor, with a faux fur blanket draped across me, the hot water bottle tucked underneath. Sometimes I sleep all night like that, slowly toasting the night away, waking up in a dry, oven-baked room, the tip of my nose thankfully warm.

I seek the heat.

I didn't move to California to be cold; I moved here to be warm, to bask in the sun, to brown and burn and cook and boil and sweat and bake.

But for now, I'll have to do so artificially, as I sit here in my office, gazing out the window at the disappearing sun...

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Off to the Races, Part Two

...a continuation from Off to the Races, Part One.

And with the turn of a key, a press of a clutch, a push of a button and a pump of the gas pedal I was off...

But not for long.

I managed not to stall the racer when I was taking off, when it's most likely you'll stall, trying to get into second gear from first gear. I managed to take the first curve in second gear just fine, looping around the track with a scowl on my face, concentrating very hard. I had my right foot pressed all the way down to the floor. Isn't that what you're supposed to do?

I was focused on going fast, though the flag man told me I'd be fine if I just stayed in second gear the whole time, and if other racers needed to pass me, he'd just wave the blue and gold "Pass" flag. But I wasn't there to just drive; I was there to race.

I was the first to blast off, but by the time I made it to the final S-curve before the straightaway along the starting point, I was going too fast (even only in second gear), and with my tiny little steering wheel sized somewhere along the lines of a salad plate, I lost control of my racer and spun out, way out, off the track, into the gravel, around and around, and back on the track.

I stopped because I thought I'd be in trouble.

The BMW brought me rescue: technicians to spin me around to face the right way and get me started up again so I could return to the starting line, where they'd check my helmet and wheels. I kept apologizing. A bunch of racers were backlogged behind me, waiting for me to clear.

I was sorry, but I wasn't that sorry. After all, I'd warned them.

Back at the starting line, everything checked out OK, and to my relief, they sent me back out. Around the track another time, I returned to the scene of my first spinout, the harrowing S-curve, and did exactly the same thing as the last time, in exactly the same spot - only this time, when I stalled out, I got myself started back up again, turned around, and back on the track. I approached the straightaway trepidatiously, anticipating the red flag to bring me back in, but instead I saw the glorious green flag waving proudly through the air. In my delight, I shifted into third gear with my right hand, waved my left hand out of the open top of the racer, and tackled that first curve again.

I was out there on the track for probably about ten minutes, but it simultaneously felt like two minutes and an hour. I kept looking for the checkered flag to indicate the end of my run, but not seeing it, I just kept going, around and around those same curves, learning when to ease up on the gas, how to steer, and how to see what was going on despite being so low to the ground.

When I was finally waved in, I realized I'd been first to launch and last to land. The flag man returned, this time congratulating me: "Well! You spun out, you stalled, you off-roaded, but you got yourself going again! A+!"

"I didn't break anything!"

"No, you didn't. Anybody else would have taken you off that track, saying you couldn't do it, but I knew you could do it. And I let you stay out there because I wanted to see what you were going to do next."

He then pointed at my driving suit, covered in dirt, and picked a sizable rock off of it. "You roughed up our equipment a little bit and got it a bit dirtier than we expected-"

"-Sorry-"

"-But for doing bad, you did a great job."

Uh, thanks. I think.



This is a sport that really seems built for men, tall men with long legs and big heads, not short girls with sparkly sneakers and heads requiring small helmets. But I did not approach the sport with timidity, despite my trepidation: I shifted into full gear (though I never actually made it into fourth), put the pedal to the metal, and treated the impossible as though it were possible. I was tired of saying "I can't drive stick shift." It's such a minor thing, but common enough to have come up several times over the last several years.

I mean, I can't drive stick? Or I just hadn't yet? And hadn't been taught yet.

Getting back into my little tin can of a car, my left foot felt antsy, reaching for an invisible clutch pedal. My steering hands wanted to veer the vehicle to the far side of every curve and turn (a condition from which I still suffer several days later). I longed to feel the transmission settle into gear, the RPMs increasing with the roar of the engine.

Safely out of harm's way (and I don't think I was ever in any real danger that day at the raceway), I told my boss what I'd done, the reason I'd taken the day off from work. "Good," she said, "I'm glad you got that out of your system."

"Out of it?" I asked, knowing I'd received a fuel injection directly into my bloodstream that day.

Related posts:
Elegy for the Flightless Bird
Adventure at Full Throttle
Dangling from a Wire
For those about to trapeze, I salute you

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Six Words About Work

After years of winning contests and earning featured homepage placement, finally my work as an avid Six Word Memoirist has come to physical fruition:

Smith Magazine is publishing one of my Six Word Memoirs in one of their books.

You can find my contribution in their Six Words About Work, available exclusively at Blurb.com.

For all of my Six Word Memoirs on various topics (Love, Resolutions, New York, etc.), visit my profile (avoidingregret) on smithmag.net.

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A Proper Sunset

With the onset of winter, and the setting back of the clocks, I've been particularly mourning the sunset, which I've been missing altogether for the last several months, especially the last six months at my current job.

When I'm on vacation, I never miss a sunset.

But even when I was working in Venice by the beach, I never really saw a proper LA sundown. Since moving here in January, I've caught glimpses of some: pink clouds swirling, a residual glow rising above the palm trees in the west, light slowly extinguishing through the smog, the sun dipping behind a mountain while hiking in Runyon Canyon, but I only really saw it set once during a sunset hike in Griffith Park.

It was about time for another one.



This afternoon, I took a leisurely stroll up and down the various Santa Monica stairs, including those that lead down to the beach along the bluffs from Palisades Park.





And an added bonus: an empty swingset on the beach, the perfect perch from which to enjoy the sunset.



There's no sunset like a beach sunset, and after the weekend I'd had of climbing stairs, race car driving, and getting up at 5:45 a.m. to tour Mount Lowe (report forthcoming), I was happy to simply bask in the glow, and swing.

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Photo Essay: The Stairs of LA

In a country full of elevators, escalators, and moving walkways, LA is a town that climbs and runs its stairways for fun.

A friend of mine conducts walking tours mostly around Downtown LA and the city's easternmost reaches, focusing on the hidden stairways along the route, and taking each stairway that they pass (even if it means making detours of varying lengths).

But in LA, plenty of stairs have become tourist attractions, with their own Yelp pages. Case in point: Santa Monica Stairs.

Santa Monica Stairs is actually several different sets of stairs, including one off Adelaide Drive...







...the really well-known and heavily-trafficked one at 4th and Adelaide...





...a little spur staircase off the 4th Street one that leads to a creepy, overgrown sidewalk path behind the residences in the trees...



...and the Palisades Park stairs amongst the bluffs.







These stairways were built as necessary access points, but here I was, descending them and turning around and going right back up them. Is this form of recreation inspiring, or completely frivolous?

In my mind, it's an industrious way to get exercise. After all, it wasn't the first time I'd climbed stairs in LA for (supposed) fun.

See also:


Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook


Runyon Canyon

...and the ultimate...


Murphy Ranch

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Off to the Races, Part One

I'm not a follower of NASCAR or Formula races, but I've been wanting to drive a race car for years now. Maybe I'm just an adrenaline junkie. Maybe I just love driving.

I'd booked a trip out to the Chuckwalla Raceway out by Joshua Tree, and was supposed to do my first-ever racing excursion Halloween weekend, but then I got sick and had to cancel.

In truth, I was kind of relieved.

To be honest, I was really nervous.

But instead of canceling altogether, the traveling racing school let me reschedule for Willow Springs, another nearby clinic, this time up north by Edwards AFB, still in the High Desert but closer to LA, near California City.

As the day approached, I kept thinking something would happen again to make me cancel. High winds ravaged LA County last week, tearing down trees and power lines and keeping hundreds of thousands of residents in the dark for days. But in my nice little Beverly Hills nook, I was unaffected, as was the raceway.

And so, on Friday, I was off to the races.

I drove a couple of hours north and arrived for my 1 p.m. "class," which, much like with skydiving, doesn't really teach you anything. I raised my hand with a question, or rather, a warning: "Um, I'm not so good with manual transmission..."

When I initially booked at Chuckwalla, it seemed like if you don't drive stick shift, they say they stick you in an automatic race car of some sort - a Porsche, something like that - but when I arrived at Willow Springs, it pretty much seemed like a Formula 1 car was my only option. And I was worried.

"You're doing the ride-along, right?" our instructor asked, and I nodded. "OK, you'll see how it works when I shift. You'll probably be fine."

I gulped.



He then took me in his BMW street racer to show me the track and how a real racecar driver handles it. It wasn't an oval track in a stadium, the kind of thing I expected to see, but rather a winding track, undulating through the windy desert with hairpin turns, s-curves, and basically only one straightaway.



As I placed the helmet over my head, I heard one of the mechanics tell my instructor, "She says you can't scare her..."

"I don't fear death," I clarified. "I only fear being maimed. Please don't burn my face off."

And with that, we were off.

At first, it was an educational ride: I could feel the way he shifted into 2nd gear for a curve, then into 3rd, then 4th, then down into 3rd and back into 2nd for another curve. He took the curves FAST (80 mph?) and jolted us from side to side, veering to the left side of the track when turning right, and to the right side of the track when turning left.

Here's what it looked like from the passenger side:



In the end of the video, you can see us spinning around a bit - my instructor decided to give me a "special" ride, intentionally spinning out just as I'd turned my video camera off. I managed to get it out and back on just as his street acrobatics had begun to calm down. You can imagine what they were like when the camera was off.

Adrenaline rushing, I stumbled out of the BMW, struggling to get my helmet off, feeling again like I did after skydiving - a bit delirious, confused, exhilarated, and exhausted.

And I hadn't even driven yet.

I watched the prior classes take their laps, at intervals ten minutes in length each, and started to get nervous again. Could I bail now? It really was not safe for me to drive one of those Formula racers, with basically no manual transmission experience (save for moving Nicki's mom's SUV at the airport once).

"I'm just warning you, I don't really drive manual..." I reiterated, this time to the mechanics and engineers and photographers and receptionist and my fellow classmates, to whomever would listen.

And then one of them said, "Oh we've had a bunch of people today who don't do manual, right?"

And then another said, "How do you like charcoal as a color?" assigning me racer #25.



When my turn came, I climbed into my racer, reaching my legs straight out in front of me, settling in low to the ground. My feet didn't reach the pedals, and the dashboard looked less like a car and more like a cockpit. I looked around, confused. How do you turn the damn thing on?

The flagger then came over and asked me to press the clutch to the floor. I could barely reach it with my toe. After scooting down as far as I could go, with several cushions placed behind me, I finally reached it, and the flagger had me try shifting gears.

"OK, you're in first gear, move into second."

I shifted.

"Now into third..."

I shifted like a pro.

"Now into fourth..."

I shifted with purpose.

"See? You got it..."

"I played a lot of Pole Position as a child," I explained.

He laughed. "That's probably actually going to really help you here."

And with the turn of a key, a press of a clutch, a push of a button and a pump of the gas pedal I was off...

But not for long.

Stay tuned for Part 2.

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Photo Essay: Placerita Canyon

I'd been wanting to visit Placerita Canyon, a parcel of land surrounded by the Angeles National Forest but under the jurisdiction of LA County, for a while, but in LA traffic, it's a full day trip to get there, hike it, and get back home.

And I never seem to leave home early enough. As soon as I'm up on the weekends, it seems the sun is going down.

At least in the winter.



So last weekend I skipped the nature center and its family-friendly attractions (including an oak tree where apparently some people once struck gold) to save time and headed straight to the more remote Walker Ranch area, taking the footpath down into the canyon along the appropriately-named Canyon Trail....



...whose long shadows threatened the end of day.



The trail guides said to allow an hour and a half to hike the 2.35 miles along the Los Pinetos trail up to the Wilson Saddle peak. But as usual, I was in a rush. And according to my friends, I hike at a pretty fast clip these days...



The soft trail was surrounded by lots of lush, green grass. It's hard to believe this is winter hiking.











Soon the wide open spaces close in on you, and you technically traverse the border of Placerita Canyon, taking you into Angeles National Forest...



...where horseshoes have left prints, who knows how long ago...



...and you have left the desert-like climate of Santa Clarita and Newhall behind, trading it for the chill, shady woods.







The trail then opens back up...



...into the peak, Wilson Saddle.



I skipped the picnic and headed back down, skipping the waterfall trail in favor of turning the heat on in my car.

There weren't as many obvious indications of historical significance in Placerita as in nearby Pico and Towsley Canyons, but when it comes down to it, every trail in the LA area is different - whether it's within the same canyon (like Runyon), park (like Griffith), mountain range or forest.

For a person with a short attention span, always looking for something new, what a treat to live in a place whose outdoor attractions warrant repeat visits.

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