Antedotes

Em called me up a few days ago and decided that she was going to go hiking since the weather has been so beautiful lately and she is rapidly approaching dangerous levels of boredom after have been out of work for so long. So After a little research on my part and refinement on her part we came up with a nine-mile hike through Point Mugu Nation Park, 15 miles south of Oxnard, California. It's approximately halfway between Em's house and mine and situated on Highway 1, which makes it easy to access. So the trip was planned out, the destination set, and as usual nothing went quite as expected.

The start of my day began at the un-godly hour of 7:30am. I know that normally I've already been at work for 15 minutes by this time and that I normally like being up early, but this morning was the second day in a row where I'd gone to bed after the date had advanced once more. So 6 hours after my head hit the pillow, I received a text message from JoJo, a friend that I've just recently met. She wanted to see if I'd go fishing with her today. Seeing as I already had plans I just invited her along. She agreed. Then I texted back "Leave me alone, I'll call you with the details when I wake up."

After barely getting back to sleep for another 45 minutes, Em decided to call me and prattle on about sometime related to us meeting up 2.5 hours later. Apparently she had decided not to sleep in either and instead to take an energy drink that made her completely bubbly, hyper, and too cheerful for my lack of sleep self. After listening to an entire verbal conversation that contained no punctuation, I decided that sleep was apparently overrated and got ready for the hike.

Getting to the park was pretty easy and didn't contain any problems except that Em and Dawn (Em's friend who came along) decided to park on Hwy 1 instead of drive into the park to the trailhead. Not sure what their thought processes were on that one. After waiting around for 15 minutes I called them and told them to make their way the addition mile inland.

The hike that we were going to go on was a nine mile loop that went up a mountain/hill, through a plane, then looped around and came back. The problem was that it wasn't listed on the map and that the trailhead markers were pretty useless. We decided to just head up the main trail and then go from there. Southern California hasn't received a lot of rain in the past few years, and Point Mugu State park is no exception to that. So instead of hiking through what once was mostly lush, green vegetation, we were hiking through a graveyard of Joshua trees, withering cacti, and scratchy twigs that used to be living. It was still beautiful, but you could image what it probably looked like when water was present. The first major attraction on the trail was a waterfall that was missing the main ingredient, therefore reducing itself to merely a rock fall.

Up and over the fall we went until we found a couple of hikers coming back down the path and asked them where the road led. They told us that there was a fork in the road coming up and that left lead to the shooting range and right lead around the canyon rim and in a loop back to the parking lot. Right sounded like what we sought. A little further along we asked a few more hikers yet again where the trail led and what we should be looking for (this is what you're forced to do when you don't have a map and the park you're in doesn't see enough travelers for the Parks' department to deem it worthy enough for trail markers). We received a stick figure drawing and some directions that make a smidgen of sense for our troubles. But the trail was relatively easy and it was such a beautiful day that we didn't mind. As long as we knew the general way back, then it didn't really matter where we wandered on our hike.

Eventually, Em started to complain that her tummy was talking too loudly, so we began to look for a nice place to stop for lunch. Dawn was saying how a nice shady area with maybe a picnic table would be nice, and low and behold a copse of trees shows up 300 yards in front of us and hidden within it is a set of picnic benches and an outhouse. Ask and you shall receive.

After a quick stop to fill our tummies we set out for home. The second set of hikers that we'd encountered had told us to look for a small sign off to the left that said "Highway 1 3km, 2.3 miles." They also warned us that the path was slightly overgrown and that it got narrow at places, but that it would eventually loop back around and hit up with the main trail that we'd hiked in on.

Finding the sign was easy, determining where to go from there wasn't. The trail led up about 100 yards to a set of picnic benches and then upward from there. The problem was that there seemed to be at least six different paths at every intersection and the intersections were every 20 yards or so. So we'd follow one until it dead ended, then follow another until it dead ended, and so forth until Em decided to follow on that looked to be headed down into the dry creek bed. This particular path really wasn't a path at all, but more than likely a trail left over from a deer that had wandered through this area once upon a time. So we decided that Em could no longer play trail master and that dry twigs scratch a lot more than moist ones.

We hiked back up to the picnic benches and headed out along another path that I'd seen. My chosen path led us to the prairie. We headed out along this for a bit until we realized that we were headed nowhere near where we wanted to go. Em kept insisting that we keep going thinking that the trail would loop back around the mountain to the road, but if it did it would mostly have been a very long loop. Reluctantly we gave into common sense and went back to the original sign to start again and see what we'd missed.

It turns out right at the beginning there was another path that we'd all missed because it looked like it had been created by water erosion from runoff. We set off down this and realized pretty soon that it was definitely the right direction. This path took us past the marijuana field (it really looked like one even if it wasn't), the cracked lake (no water for a long time), and the UFO landing site (an area of large weeds that had been completely flatten while everything around them was still standing up), and eventually hooked back up to the main trail just like the hikers had told us. So then we hiked home and made sure to point out that we really were in the middle of the Oldivai Gorge (Africa) or the Sahara Desert, or a number of other places. It was amazing how many different kinds of landscapes you could see when you looked around.

After a nice hike during the middle of the day, the best thing to do for a reward is to eat ice cream, obviously. So we piled in our cars and headed back to Oxnard in search of this delectable treat. Not knowing where an ice cream joint would be, I headed to the strip mall thinking that there had to be something there, even if it was only McDonald's. Turns out there were two McDonald's and a Dairy Queen. We opted for the latter.

As I was pulling into the parking stop I noticed that someone had left a shopping cart in the spot. I figured that it was far enough back that it wouldn't really affect me so I pulled in nice and slow. Of course as life would have it, I'd misjudged the distance by a few inches and perfectly timed my bumper hitting the shopping cart to the same time that the driver of the car on my right was walking in front of my vehicle to get into his car. The tap caused the shopping card to literally launch itself at the other driver. That's got to be a one in a million shot. In-between trying not to bust up laughing, I was asking the driver if he was okay. The look of shock when the cart flew towards him was so classic. Luckily he didn't hold any grudges and only glared at me before getting in his car and leaving.

Upon parking I also spotted a boba joint and feeling a craving from not having had any for a long time I went there. The thing about this boba place was that it appeared to be training day for everyone. There were a bunch of teenagers that didn't really seem to be aware of the customers (so much so that they kept leaving the register and disappearing) and worked in a semi-conscious stupor. I think that that might have been pod people.

With my zombie created drink in hand, I set out to find the others at the DQ. Sitting down to inhale our newly acquired goodies, Dawn realized that they'd given her the wrong order, chicken strips instead of a chicken sandwich. Since it was still chicken, we'd opened it already, and since we'd left the store (we had found a bench outside), we decided that it wasn't worth returning. The thing is that the store apparently didn't see it that way. Five minutes later, an employee walks outside, goes straight to Dawn, and asks her as she's putting a chicken strip in her mouth; "Did you get the wrong order?"

"Umm yeah," came the reply.

"Well then why didn't you return it?"

"Causing I'm eating it." With an eye roll from all of us, cause it's pretty obvious since Dawn's eating a chicken strip, as am I and Em is happily munching on the french fries.

"Why didn't you return it?"

"Cause I'd already left the store and most restaurants won't take food back if you've left the premises.'

"We would have taken it back."

"Ummm....okay" Seriously I'm not sure I want to be eating something from a place that takes back food that was taken a way already for a number of minutes. Who knows what could have been done to it.

"Well we have your order. Do you want it?" Continued the employee.

"No, I'm eating this."

A blank stare resonated back at us. It didn't seem to be registering with this chick that we were perfectly fine with our substituted meal. It seemed that the DQ wanted that particular chicken strip meal back and that they were not happy when a customer did not eat what they'd ordered. With one last attempt for us to return the mis-appropriated meal and take the newly made correct one, the girl disappeared back into the store. We looked back a minute later to see this older guy (most likely the manager) giving us the evil eye and pointing at us while talking to the employees of DQ. I think that we are forever on their shit list now. We later saw "Barbie" exist the store with her new order of chicken strips...like she would even eat that stuff.

JoJo later went to Taco Bell and got a taco where they gave her two shells. When finding out about this, she said, "I only ordered one shell, should I return this second one? I don't want it and I wouldn't want them to get upset since they counted wrong?" By this point we weren't sure how many of the clerks at these establishments were really pod people in disguise.

Lastly we entered Wal-Mart in search of a replacement devil for Em's car cause her first one was stolen (it's an antenna ball that she actually put on the antenna...and she wonders why it disappeared). The thing to note when going through Wal-Mart is that you need to look both ways before crossing aisles as shopping carts will come at you from all sides and their drivers are not good at watching the road. You can be mowed over quite easily. Although if you happen to pass away in this manner, I'm pretty sure we can get a tombstone that reads, "Here lies So-and-so. Their life ended so tragically when they were mowed down in aisle 8 by the mother seeking diapers for her crying two year old."

So that was my entertaining Sunday. Hope everyone else had a good Sunday and that maybe you'll get a laugh out of this.