thanksgiving '06

Wanted to post about this right after my trip, but I'm all kinds of late on it:

I drove down to San Bernardino for what was supposed to be a mini family reunion with my cousins and my own family, but my family wound up not driving down for some reason or another.

On my way down Hwy 5, I told myself that I would not let myself get caught up in the madness of speed racing and stressing out and dreading the 300+ mile journey. So I did myself good by staying most of the time on the slow (right) lane and watched others go past me, but at some point I caught up with them anyway because everyone wanted to avoid the trucks on the right lane. just goes to show that slow and steady "wins the race," er whatever. It really depends on the final destination, but I would call the trip somewhat "enjoyable." I allowed as many stops necessary, just to stretch or use the potty. Great strategy indeed!

I had a hard time getting to sleep the first night, so I took pictures of the shadow on the ceiling created by the nightlight behind a desk where some fake flowers sat. I figured the image could be useful at some point for a design project.

This trip also served as part of my homework because my final (research) project's subject was designing a logo and redesigning Leila Florentino's website, so on two occasions I drove to LA and back to SB. Wow, those SoCal folks sure do drive fast. It dawned on me that I guess they're so used to getting stuck in really severe traffic all the time that every opportunity they get to drive super-fast, they take. I don't blame them, because on Thanksgiving eve, I got caught in the madness driving back to SB. The route also happened to be on the way to Vegas or Palm Springs, and lots of folks headed that way. What a frikkin nightmare that 3 hour crawl was. But again, I pat myself on the back for staying calm and making the best out of it, by concentrating on the tunes from the iPod, connected to the tape player.

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The bathroom at my cousin's house looks out to the neighbor's chimney and this owl. At first I was like, wow, that's sooo cool, to see a real owl! But then I realized that they're nocturnal animals and this one seemed to stay put for a very long time, a real long time, like not move at all. Fake or not, it looked cool.


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My drive home was a drive. I always thought there was something romantic about this long stretch of highway. I dreamed since I was a teenager of driving the long road by myself; it gave me a great feeling of independence. I caught some of that "childhood" innocence during this trip.