A Gallon of Salt Water

As me and Mason arrive after our long, long drive from lovely Bountiful to our first stop at being Wendy’s in St. George, its beyond death with how hot it actually is outside. It was so hot I think I spent over 10 dollars for a Frosty. So worth it. Back on the road for the city of free love, or, sin. We have no idea of where we are going, or what to even expect of our hotel that was so easily found on PriceLine. But it gets worse, the heat is even hotter than St. George and we’re lost, and there’s construction everywhere. Luckily I learned how to use my BlackBerry and navigated our way there. This is something that came in handy so many times that I’m thinking I’m next to awesome using a GPS on my phone.

We decide to hit the strip and see what actually goes down in this city. We walk, walk some more, then we finally decide that its time for Mason to spend some money. So he decides to gamble. Long story short, He won nothing, and lost everything.
The next day we set out to do something that Las Vegas had to offer, but something that we didn’t know they had to offer. Waking up late leaves room for only one meal a day, so we decide that meal should be Café Rio. The one we decide to go ends up being more than a half hour away which only leads to more bonding time while driving. On our way back, we decide to hit every discount clothing store we see. Yes, we went shopping. And we did it a lot that day. We went into the same store at so many different locations that I swore to myself we wouldn’t go to that store while on this trip, but somehow we still ended up shopping there.

Now that the week is just about half over, what better way to spend the day then to drive all day? So we did just that, drove all day to our promised land, Los Angeles. I don’t really know what made that last hour so long, its either I had to go pee so bad and refused Masons offer to go into an old Dairy Queen cup, Or getting lost on all the freeways and getting on every one, except for the right one. None the less, we reached our goal and found our way.

Fast forward to some traveling time and now to our hotel in Redondo Beach. To just park at our hotel was 18 dollars a day, and wifi cost 10 dollars for every 24 hours. This leads to parking a mile away and trying to find a spot that isn’t scheduled for street cleaning for the next morning and going to starbucks and paying only 5 dollars for a starbucks card for their wifi and another 5 for a frapacino and a muffin for 2 hours to update our lives on the internet.

Wednesday night we end up driving to Hollywood and went to the ROXY on Sunset to see Beardo perform. Met Beardo, Tony Potato, the sexy dancer from Whitestarr, shook Mickey Avalons hand during the Beardo show. Got weird glares from all the Asain fans from Far East Movement, and couldn’t believe someone actually knew who this crazy guy was on stage, let alone I knew all his songs. Mason can testify to our unfortunate luck with the crowd.

For our next day to ourselves after a surreal night from before, we decide to head to Venice beach. A place that dreams come true, or at least a place where you can dream. Upon arriving, Mason gets handed a pair of headphones by a homie and ends up paying him for his crappy rap demo from Atlanta Georgia. I guess its karma put out there, for every horrible crap CD bought some one buys a solid album and the right person gets their lucky break (insert your love for HEMA here).

Driving to LAX we see a fire hydrant break and shoot into the sky and into the power lines. While we were outside in the city you can hear the power lines buzzing from all the water and electricity. We get back on to one of the many free ways and head to pick up Ben from the LAX and got lost walking all the terminals, so we just ended up telling him to meet us. To our defense of how stupid we are and how we did everything the hard way, look who your reading about. Mason, Me and Ben.

Drove from LAX to Redondo Beach using all back roads and tried to find somewhere to eat, so we ate at Fatburger where Mason got the XL and it was gnarly gross and heavy. To burn all this off we decided to walk to all the bars/clubs at the beach. Walked the boardwalk and found a bar to go inside. Im not joking when I say we walked 2 miles both ways in the middle of the night.

We woke up so early the next morning to move our car from our parking spot for the street sweepers, its beyond mentioning what we are actually wanting to do. We end up driving 2 and a half hours down the coast to San Diego and walked into MEXICO. Mason, the only on with the passport is set on supporting every family with his donations to their pancho and blanket products.

In Mexico Mason and I being white, have tourist written all over us. We never knew we had so many friends, “eh, amigos! I’ve been waiting for you all day, come in, come in” We ended up buying 2 for 1 drinks with each drink costing an arm and a leg. First rip off of the day. In this club we are having drinks at, the host keeps trying to tell us we gets free complementary shots. We keep telling him no. No. No. Then he tries to sell his prescription drugs that he can get us a great deal on, and to the best strip clubs in the city, or whatever we want, he has it for us. The music is so loud in this club and this guy is getting so annoying that I am a jerk to him the whole time and he still bugs Mason and doesn’t leave us alone.

We finally leave the club and go eat some real tacos, finally my favorite thing that Mexico has brought into this country, TACOS. Awesome tacos, and great host at this outdoor restaurant in the center of Tijuana makes these tacos taste amazing.
After spending our money on worthless items in every store with the same product, we go into American Apparel. That’s right, a real American Apparel in Mexico. Kind of weird to be honest. No great deals. Exact same prices as the US, but in the middle of the Tijuana you would think you would get some kind of deal.

On our way out, we got some of the best churos I’ve had to date. 1 dollar for a whole bag of them. Awesomenessss. Walking back over to America, I was stupid enough to take a picture in the customs building which lead to having me grab the attention of border patrol right from the start. After they search my camera for my deleted pictures, they ask for what I don’t have, a passport. Awesome, First I’m in trouble for taking pictures, now I don’t have a passport to get out of Mexico. But it gets better, on my way out, since I don’t have any bags, I get patted down and searched because of suspicious behavior. Oh gosh, but fun none the less.

Our homeboy Ben, a brown skinned Spanish speaking Guatemalan native, didn’t have his passport either. So our friend that gets mistaken for a Mexican while in Mexico doesn’t even have a passport to get across. But, somehow he made it out the door before it did. Do I really look that suspicious? Honestly?

Waking up the next day in our hotel, Ben reminds us that he forgot it was the 4th of July. As we head straight to Beverly Hills to pick up Bens cousin, we notice everyone is outside our hotel. Must be the 4th. No parking anywhere and people everywhere. We find Ms. Megan Mark. She leads us our way around and we drive downtown Hollywood. For the rest of the day we just end up going to the Hollywood sign on the hill and going to check out the view of downtown LA. We saw Michael Jackson’s star and that was a feeling all of its own.

After a long holiday we start driving back to our hotel and we see a few fireworks here and there. We hear most of them while trying to find parking a 100 miles away from our hotel and right as we get to the front of our hotel where everyone is, we see the last 5 seconds of the finale. Awesome. As we’re going up the elevator in the hotel, we were accompanied by 2 ladies who are speaking another language. Ben asks if the language they’re speaking is something that he thought he knew, no answer, awkward, then it gets worse, our room was next to theirs, all the way on the other side of the hotel, so we followed them the whole way there and I am pretty sure they thought we were following them. That night we decide to let traffic die down before we head back home. It was midnight when I looked at the time, and we were in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the freeway. OMG. Traffic owned our life for the first time.

Driving thru the night was ok until Las Vegas where I think the water from the Lemon-Aid Mason drank in Mexico or all the gallons of salt water finally got to him. Every rest stop he had to go. And he had to go so bad, that he wouldn’t go in the same old Dairy Queen cup he tried to make me pee in earlier. Made that last couple of hours longer than I even thought possible. And we were so close, yet so far and home all at the same time.

The End.

Get Ben Out Of Mexico

Last week Mason, Ben and I went down to Tijuana. Unfortunately mi amigo Ben Lopez forgot his passport back into the USA and is now being held there until we can get him his passport. Please pray for him, as he is stuck in Mexico for who knows how long. Thank you.