from the oven to the fridge and back again

last thursday evening, uncle Tom, aunt J, Stacey and myself, set off for Salinas. Stacey had a golf tournament early next day and uncle Tom decided it was better for her to rest the night there instead of waking up at an unearthly for the 3.5h drive. have i ever told you? i love long car rides. yes, long car rides put a disgusting amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, not to mention other pollutants as well, but i just can't help enjoying myself. outside the windows, i see the cars and trees whizzing past. i love the way the sun goes down shining on the hills and mountains, it coats them in a wondrous shade of gold and sends me on a daydream of squirrels and gophers scampering back to their trees and burrows before the day's end. of course, given the size of the hills and mountains, they don't "whizz" by as we go on our way. they seem to take their time to stroll serenely out of your field of vision. it's kinda like how humans stroll in a park while ants scuttle around at their feet.

anyway, a long car ride isn't complete without an iPod and a playlist of your fave car tunes. the moment we got out of the driveway, Stacey and i both reached for our lifesaving device and plugged ourselves in. ahhh, the sounds of soft rock music that are my road trip besties flowed into my ears and throughout my body. about an hour into the drive, Stacey and i started talking about world and american history. it was really interesting since i know so little of history. and i have to confess, it's a breath of fresh air compared to what our conversations usually revolve around. then while driving through an almost desolate, windy stretch of the road through the mountains, i could almost imagine myself as a mustang galloping ecstatically through open country. and for some unfathomable reason, even though everywhere around us was still as golden as when we started off, my aunt began discussing ghost stories and haunted locations in s'pore. i mean, huh?! k lah, decided to humour her. after all, i am dying to get home. we all had a good laugh when we reminisced the last time they were visiting us in s'pore and my dad had taken us to a certain traffic junction in Changi. there is supposedly this spirit of an old, white guy who holds the hand of a little girl and crosses that junction at a certain time in the night. even though we saw nothing supernatural, my brother got the scare of his life from another "sighting". we were driving slowly since we were looking out for ghosts right? then there were 2 pedestrians wearing very fancy dresses and my bro was like "whoa they're hot!" then when the one in white turned around, he went "ahhhh!!! Dad, speed up! WTF!" it turns out those 2 were part of the infamous tranny community in Changi. great bods, but with faces that make you go "holy shit!".

man, i do love to digress. with about 40 mins left to our destination, our surroundings started to look really grey and dreary. my aunt touched the window and realised that it was cold and my uncle clarified that what my aunt and i had taken for the Californian smog was actually coastal fog. Salinas is pretty close to San Francisco, hence the fog, windy and cool climate. the diurnal temperature range was 13-20 deg C, a lovely change from the 38 deg C daily max temperature in Porterville. -_-'''

i still haven't gotten used to the fact that the sun doesn't fully set till 9pm during summer. it was just about fully dark when we got into the motel's parking lot. the initial plan was to stay at Motel 6, but hey, after watching Hollywood movies, we're not really sure we wanna sleep on those sheets just to save a few bucks so uncle Tom checked us in at Day's Inn instead. after we lugged our stuff to the room, we walked across the street for a late dinner at Denny's. Stacey and i shared 2 grilled shrimp skewers and some kinda rice. it was pretty good and i was happy to discover that besides fried shrimp, grilled ones don't have that strange, shrimpy smell either. hooray! :D

back in the room, Stacey and i watched the Parent Trap on tv while letting the food settle. pretty soon, she turned in but i stayed up to chat with Ferdi <3 and Matt. i guess both conversations weighed pretty heavily on my mind, later on, i couldn't get to sleep no matter how hard i tried. it didn't help that the motel was so close to the freeway, i heard sirens, a guy shouting from the parking lot, and a whole lot of trucks. i literally got up every hour right down to the minute. i think i finally drifted off at 5am but before long, Stacey was up and about getting ready to go to the golf course for some practice. you could say i was really tired and tensed, cos i could detect every movement Stacey and her parents made. she went to their room, they went downstairs for breakfast, the came up, they went down yada yada. i could hear and sense it all. i finally gave up and got out of bed to get ready.

breakfast was pathetic. the motel provides "continental breakfast" but it's not what you'd expect. when i went to the counter, all they had were plastic-wrapped cookies and muffins, some apples and bananas, orange juice in a jug, coffee in those hot water flasks and styrofoam cups... so pathetic!!!!! i grabbed a cookie and filled a cup with coffee. as i was capping it with the plastic cover, the damned cup collapsed and the coffee went all over my hand and the counter! really felt shitty then, especially when i could feel my aunt's disapproving gaze behind me.

i gave up on the coffee and got orange juice instead, went back to the room, watched a lil Last Comic Standing while i packed and ate. when it was time to go, i lugged my stuff down, and we went to the golf course. when we found them, and i had just sat down on a bench, there was a loud crash from the parking lot. accident! i decided to stay and watch my uncle's backpack and let the other grownups check it out. my aunt came back and told me that some stupid fella in a truck tried to turn out of the parking lot just as a sewage tanker was going by. the poor tanker driver was injured and taken out in a stretcher. how stupid was that truck driver?! couldn't he see oncoming traffic? it's really not one of those accidents where people lose control of their vehicles you know.

anyway, when the tournament began, we just walked around like normal golf spectators, watching Stacey and the other girls in her age group play those 18 holes. it was pretty cold at first, but as the day progressed, we had to take off our jackets. Stacey was off-form the whole day. it's sad to watch her play so badly when she's usually pretty good. and watching golf really isn't fun unless you're watching pros. in the end, she still managed to get a trophy cos there were only 3 of them in her age group, lol.

on our way back to Porterville we stopped by a place called Harris Ranch for "lunner" (lunch + dinner). because it's a ranch kitchen, all the food there was grown and reared right on the ranch. the deco of the place was farming themed of course. they mounted all sorts of old, rusty, dangerous-looking farm tools on the walls above the dining booths, which made us feel a lil worried. we don't wanna catch tetanus or anything, or worse, lose our heads :P but hey, the food was excellent! Stacey and i shared a Caesar's salad and a Gorgonzola Burger. mmmm... the succulent patty, the fragrant melted cheese, the juicy tomato slice, the fresh veges. sadly, i don't think i'll ever be there again, at least not any time soon.

the rest of the journey home was pretty uneventful so i shan't bore you guys anymore. till the next post!