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Well, not really because come on, who would want to leave 80 degree weather to go back to ice and snow…not this girl!
Anyway, for our last day in California, we agreed we wanted to do two things: 1.) Sleep in and 2.) Enjoy as much of California as we could and that’s exactly what we did.
We were supposed to check out at 11:00, but the lovely people downstairs gave us until 3:00 since our flight didn’t leave until that night. We used every bit of that time and ended up heading downstairs right at 3 to check our bags and head out of the afternoon.
Poor Alex had woken up sick to his stomach and we just banked it on us not having anything to eat and being exhausted. We had spent most of the morning waiting on one of our friends to call us back since we had talked about having lunch together, but we didn’t get the call until we gave up and headed out.
Anyway, we decided we wanted to head to a beach and we found out that Manhattan beach was close by so that’s where we headed. It was a little too chilly to actual don bathing suits and actually ENJOY the beach, but seeing this view was enough for us.
We hung out on the pier for a while just enjoying the view (and wondering how people are in swimsuits!) I realized that my camera card had no more room on it so I sat there and deleted some old pictures to make sure I had plenty of room for the remainder of our trip (Remember this because it will come up again later!)
Then, I had to get a picture of us with that gorgeous view!
We then headed to a brewery that Alex had heard about to grab some lunch. I had a yummy chicken sandwich and Alex ordered a sandwich and a beer he really wanted to try (being a former bartender…he’s a bit of a beer snob!). Poor guy only took about two sips of the beer and a bite of the sandwich and he spent the rest of our lunch in the bathroom sick :(. I gobbled up my sandwich and started panicking because we had a lot of traveling to do and I was afraid I would get sick too.
After our, I mean my, lunch we got Alex some Pepto Bismal at a local grocery store and he drank it while I took in some scenery. This was by far my favorite store! The owner is a genius!
No, I did not go in because I had a sick guy on my hands and I probably would never come out :)
He was feeling a little better, but we decided it would be best if we just found somewhere to sit down. We ended up heading back to the pier just in time to catch the beautiful sunset.
How gorgeous is this?
Because Alex was so sick, I made the executive decision to head back to the hotel, grab our bags, and go ahead and head to the airport. If he was going to get sick, I wanted us to be in a set place and not trying to travel around the city.
This was probably a good idea because amazingly we made it through security at LAX without much waiting (if we had waited a little while longer, we would have been in trouble) and settled in to wait the 4 hours for our flight to board. Thankfully there were no ticket snafus this time around.
By this point, Alex was miserable. It was pretty chilly now that the sun had gone down and you know, it only makes it worse when you’re sick. So Alex claimed a row of chairs and laid down in hopes of sleeping off some of the yuckiness before we boarded our flight.
Since I was left to myself, I passed the time by hunting a wall outlet to charge my drained phone. I ended up finding one, sitting there for about 30 minutes and then realized, when my phone died, that the plug didn’t work. One of the flights at our gate took off so I stole the outlet that they were using (since apparently it was the only one that worked!). I hated to wake up Alex, but our area was filling up and he was three rows back from me so I wanted to stay close in case he needed me. I woke him up to tell him I was moving up next to the window and he decided he would just move up there with me. So, this is where Alex spent the next few hours!
From smashing his face in a bike accident when he was younger (a story for another time!), he has a deviated septum so he snores REALLY LOUDLY. He told me to wake him up if he started snoring, so I agreed and popped in my earbuds to drown out the French family talking really loudly with some Ocean’s 13 on Alex’s ipod. I obviously couldn’t hear if Alex was snoring, but a kid that was with the huge French family was sitting beside me. When Alex started snoring, the kid would look at him funny so I knew that was my cue so I’d softly nudge Alex with my foot and he would stop. :)
As I was sitting there, I decided I wanted to look back over all the pictures from the trip. I pulled out my camera and smiled as I looked at all of the pictures from our plane trip there and then, as I clicked to look at the pictures from game day, it immediately jumped to the beach pictures you see above.
I thought my eyes were deceiving me so I hit back and there were the pictures from our flight and then beach, flight, beach. My mind was racing trying to think what on earth could have happened. Then, it hit me. As I was sitting on the dock deleting old pictures (I’m talking like pictures from last summer because I NEVER delete pictures), I remember deleting one of the game pictures that someone got in my way (again, I NEVER delete pictures…I’m blaming this on my lack of sleep). My camera has this wonderful (sometimes) setting where it lets you choose to delete a single picture or all pictures in that date range and I bet you can guess which one I hit. Stupid, stupid me!
I immediately began panicking…I’m talking hyperventillating, crying, shaking…the works. I was so upset I shook Alex awake just bawling. Poor guy…what a way to wake up. You’re sleeping nicely on the floor, you already feel bad, and then you get startled awake by your girlfriend who is having a nervous breakdown…I’m pretty sure I shot his blood pressure way up! Once he was somewhat awake, he did the best he could to try and calm me down, but I was pretty much inconsolable. He took a few pictures on his camera, but with me having the better one, I took most of the pictures. Although the game pictures themselves could be replaced, the ones of us could not. Now you know why I was upset!He, on the other hand, was miserable thanks to his startling wake up call and had to leave me for a bit to rush to the bathroom.
Without my shoulder to cry on, I started researching “Accidentally deleted pictures” on my Blackberry to see if there was any hope of getting my beloved pictures back. Of course they said most pictures could be recovered as long as they hadn’t been written over by new ones. Great, I’d only taken about 30 pictures since then…cue more panic. I pulled the card out of my camera and put it in my case just so I wouldn’t be tempted to take any more on the card. I think the worst part was knowing I couldn’t do anything about it until I got home the next day.
anyway, Alex came back with this rolled up thing in his hand. He unrolled it and it was this teeny tiny fleece blanket that only looked big enough for a child that was covered in poker chips. I have to admit…he made me smile with his find. He said he had gotten cold and wanted a blanket, but didn’t want to pay a fortune for it so when he found this one for 12 dollars, he bought it. I should have taken a picture of it, but I was too distraught. It was quite cute him laying in the floor with the blanket only covering from his neck to his waist though.
Finally, it was time to board our flight. A sweet girl gave Alex her seat so we could sit together and good thing because we both slept the entire five hour flight from California to D.C. When we arrived in D.C., we were starving so we ate breakfast at this little pub thing. Alex had bangers, beans, and eggs and I had a yummy omelet. However, I started feeling sicky after we ate and was pretty miserable, but trying not to think about it. Thankfully we had a somewhat short layover and before we knew it, it was time to board our flight for Charlotte.
We had not been outside yet, but having to walk outside to get on our plane was a definite reminder that we weren’t in California anymore.
Yep, that’s ice on the ground…BRR!!
Alex slept the entire flight, but I was too sick to sleep. Luckily, this was a short flight so we were in Charlotte before I could worry too much!
We were both starving when we got to Charlotte, but neither one of us felt like eating. We debated getting a smoothie, but since we weren’t sick at the moment…we didn’t want to jinx it.
We were definitely excited about being so close to home. I couldn’t sleep on the last flight, but we didn’t even get off the ground before Alex was knocked out.
I was miserable. I was exhausted, not feeling well, and I desperately wanted a shower, pj’s, and bed, but when we landed in Huntsville, I sucked it up and smiled for Alex’s parents. They were so sweet and didn’t bat an eye when they saw me makeup-less and probably looking like I had been ran over by a truck, and even took us out to lunch at Cracker Barrell so we could get some food that would be “easy on our tummies”…that’s why I love his family.
Afterwards, we stopped by to see his grandmother since he was heading back the next day, and then Mom came by and picked me up from his house and took me home.
I, of course, wanted to hit the sack, but Mom had a few errands to run. When I finally got home, I was determined to see if I could get my beloved pictures back so about 30 minutes and 40 dollars later, all my babies were there (as you probably guessed since you got to see all of them ;)). After the happy dance, I took a quick shower then snuggled up in my nice warm bed with visions of National Championship memories dancing in my head ;)
Thanks for letting me share our journey with you and hopefully, next
year, I’ll be sharing a similar trip to Arizona ;)
To sum up our awesome season, I’m leaving you with one more video with all of the highlights from the season and of course one more ROLL TIDE! :)
If you want to check out the rest of the pictures from our California Adventure, you can see my Picasa album here.
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| 1/6/10 - 1/9/10 - National Championship Game |
Other parts of our adventure:
Part I: California, Here We Come
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