The Journey of 10,000 Miles Begins with Falling on your Ass
We have two completely separate friends who had promised us that they were capable of providing 1) a place to stay on our first night out, and 2) a place to park the car for the month that we would be out of the country. Â So, confident of our place in history, we drove down to Los Angeles and had a California French bistro meal that couldn’t be beat, and drove off with a blood alcohol likely in excess of .08%, to discover that neither person could be reached, or had landlords who had any intention of honoring their intentions.
Eleven PM in Los Angeles on Fourth of July Weekend. Â Not good.
I think it will be OK. Â We have found the Ocean Park Hotel on Lincoln Boulevard in Santa Monica — and how? Â Tripadvisor, Yelp, Expedia? Â No. Â They are all way too slow. Â We drove past it. Â I am amazed that that approach still works. Â Mind you, I am still dedicated to the idea of planning every aspect of a vacation before leaving the house because even with plans, you still end up with a fair amount of improv, but — at least serendipity can sort of work. Dave is on the Internet on his phone looking for a place to park the car tomorrow before we get on the airplane to Tahiti.
This meal we had featured no ordinary alcohol. Â Our long standing friend Paul is a wine importer from France, and when we show up at his doorstep, as we did at 6:30 PM after a slightly convoluted drive from Woodside to Los Angeles (we had to stop at CostCo to pick up some photos for a friend in Romania to give to her neighbors, and also buy a small gift for a lad we met in Fiji in 2005 who has invited us to his father’s house for a kava ceremony), he habitually takes us to some stunningly trendy Los Angeles restaurant to which he deals French wine. Â Tonight we went to Church and State, in an ever-less-sketchy neighborhood (factories becoming lofts) east of downtown. The stunningly beautiful and talented people who work there invariably shower our table with amuses-bouche and charcuterie compliments of the chef and it really stretches out the $300 to have a plank of salami slices from various named villages and the chopped livers of various family pets, with awesome mustard.
Paul brings his own wine, usually. Â Tonight’s was from Languedoc. Â The lecture that went with it was that it really doesn’t matter how much Grenache a wine might have in it, what is crucial is where it came from.
He also sent it back to be chilled because it’s too warm.
After the check came I wrote a snide note to my friend Byron about how much better a time we were having than he is (he is flying to Nicaragua tonight at 2 AM and maybe ate at Burger King) and launched into an hour and a half of annoyed panic coupled with hating everyone who made promises to me that they couldn’t keep.