Since I was gone for so long I figure I should tell you something about my trip, but I don’t want to create the blog-equivalent of “hey, come over and see the 3-hour slideshow of pictures of trees I took while touring Vermont!” As such, I will do it thusly:
100 Things I learned while on a 1-week trip from Hippyville to Palm Springs for a family reunion.
OR
“what I did on my family vacation. By Femtastic.”
(OR “No WONDER August is the off-season time to visit Palm Springs. KILL ME!”)
1. if you set fire to a big chunk of a State, suck as California for instance, it makes everything super-smoky. I recommend against it.
2. You can’t really take cool pictures of things zinging by your car window while driving down the freeway. You can take pictures of the place that was cool three seconds before. It’s not the same
3. All firefighters are hot (no pun intended).
4. when you drive through California in the summer you’ll encounter packs of wild, roaming firefighters in every fast food joint you visit.
5. if they get there right before you do you’re going to have a long wait until you get to order
6. but at least you’ll have something nice to look at while you wait.
7. It sucks that there are no Sonic restaurants in Hippyville
8. but it’s very stupid that there are so many in California
9. because it’s so hot there that everyone has to sit there in their CARS with their AIR CONDITIONING RUNNING while they eat their food!
10. The milk shake was still super-fabulous, even with the side-order of guilt
11. When a fancy resort is charging the same amount for a night as a Stockton Motel 6 you know you’re there during the “off season”
12. this is your first clue that you should flee immediately
13. If you throw a street fair in Palm Springs in August you should start it at about 7pm, when the sun goes down
14. even though it’s still approximately 102 degrees
15. the booths, at such a street fair, who are selling hot Mexican food and burgers and kabobs will do decent business
16. but that’s nothing compared to the one guy selling fruity icees, who will have a line roughly 6 blocks long
17. which you will gladly stand in as long as there is cold, slushy, lemony drink goodness at the other end!
18. it’s impossible to tell which is a more sure sign of madness: that the strange street performer is a rock violinist with his own flashing lights and wind machine
19. or that his costume covers neck to toes, (in 102 degree heat, people!) with some suit-of-armor accents. (wind machine, by the way, is key)
20. either way, nobody is going to buy his CDs, but they will take their pictures standing right in front of him, which is tourist for “Dude, I think you’re totally wackadoo!”
21. if you step into a swimming pool at 9pm and the water is just as hot as the air, which is about 99 degrees, it’s completely appropriate to cry a little. Nobody will judge you.
22. it is not possible to turn your hotel room’s air conditioning up too much if the outside is still gonna be “I hate it here so much” hot at 3am.
23. people crazy enough to live in Palm Springs also think it’s reasonable to get up at 4:30am every day. To avoid the heat
24. even though it’s still hot at 4:30am, and even hotter by 5am
25. As such, all the bars close down around 11am because everyone goes to bed at 8:30pm.
26. you’d think that someplace that hot wouldn’t bother with outdoor seating at their restaurants, but you’d be wrong.
27. instead all the outdoor seating has fancy little misters over the heads of the guests, spraying a fine, and constant, cool ‘pffffsssstttt’ of water.
28. all outdoor seated eaters end up damp, either because the misters aren’t reaching them, and therefore the exertion of just sitting and eating have worked up a huge sweat that’s soaked their clothing OR
29. they misters are reaching them, and gently watering them like a bag of carrots at the supermarket.
30. either way you end up the same way: hot, wet and cranky. Check please!
31. Apparently your 12-pack of soda cans will explode both if they’re left in a very cold box, like a freezer, OR if they’re left in a very hot box.
32. like the trunk of a rental car
33. rental car places do not check the trunk for mysteriously sticky carpets when you return the car.
34. A can of Pepsi that has spent 2 days in the uber-hot trunk of a rental Honda is still pretty tasty, once you can get the bulging top open.
35. it takes more than 5 days to stop being constantly amazed at how hot it is in Palm Springs in August.
36. Nobody is too cool to have a monkey bank. Monkey banks are just that cool.
37. apparently my fear of heights is exceeded by my hatred of abundant heat
38. as I was motivated to take a dangly little tram car, suspended over a terrible drop of death, up to the top of a mountain by the promise of a 30+ degree drop in temperature.
39. sun screen comes in spf 70.
40. Which is the lotion equivalent of a flannel shirt
41. and feels like your coating yourself in a fine layer of cream cheese
42. but works super-good for keeping out the sun. (although next time I might just try using cream cheese.)
43. Some palm trees grow with ladders on their trunks and bags wrapped around their fruits
44. sometimes the fruits hanging off of palm trees are “dates”
45. an educational movie about how dates reproduce can be way more naughty than you might think.
46. according to the good people at Shields Date farms, there is no natural way for the male date to pollinate the female date, so the farmers do it by hand.
47. except then how did they ever exist in the first place?
48. no, I don’t think this is where the concept of 2 people “dating” originally came from
49. at the same time, I will forever think of the date mating video if ever I “date” again.
50. date shakes taste way better then you’d think they would, seeing as the actual fruit looks like shiny poop.
...it's late, I have to get up much too early tomorrow morning and I have a movie to finish, so I'll post this first half and complete the other 50 things soon. g'night!
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