(written on the 29th)
Remember that middle of nowhere spot that I chose?
Well, apparently, it wasn’t as middle of nowhere as I had thought. Certainly it looked like it, but apparently, it is a favorite shooting spot for locals. I woke up in the morning to cars all over the place and lots of gunfire. 🙃
I was feeling a bit worse than last night, so I was hesitant to try and reach out to my other cousin and her mom, my aunt, not wanting to get them sick, and also wondering if I had the energy for another reconnection while sick.
But my cousin really wanted to see me and didn’t care about my being sick. My aunt, on the other hand, is elderly, and being sick is not something she was wanting to risk, which I think is probably a very good thing.
Anyway, so I headed down to Irvine and visited with my other cousin, whom I don’t have a single memory of. She wasn’t at the grandparents funerals, so the only time that I would have seen her, I think, would have been at my grandparents 50th wedding anniversary, when I was just a little tiny kid.
Before I swung by her place, I stopped off at a Home Depot in a nearby town to use the bathroom and to buy some aluminum bubble wrap to cover my windows. I had left my fan door open all day at my dad and stepmom’s house, and I didn’t realize that the strong wind had blown out one of the sun shades from the windows on the side door.
So I grabbed another roll of aluminum bubble wrap reflection stuff, and next time I find a stopping place to hang out and chill for a while, I’ll set to cutting myself a new bubble wrap piece to cover my window.
That’ll also give me a chance to fix the ones in the back as well.
Anyway, so I headed down to my cousin’s place, met her for the first time that I can remember, met her husband for the first time for sure, and just like with my other cousin, ended up spending the entire day with them just talking and talking and talking and talking.
It was another really great visit with a cousin and her husband today.
We talked and talked and talked and talked and got to know each other, and it was just a beautiful, wonderful day together. 😊
We ate dinner, sat outside and talked a little bit more. I broke one of their nice glasses. 😬
Felt pretty crappy about that, but they didn’t seem to care. 🙏
Did the selfie thing again, and wished them well. I was starting to feel pretty crappy, worse than I have my other sick days, so I was fading fast and wanting to find a place to crash for the night.
So I headed out, somewhere around 7:30 p.m., I think, going hang rover’s nose North into Los Angeles, grateful to find that traffic was minimal.
There were lots of places I could have stopped that maybe normally I might have if I weren’t feeling crappy.
I think it could have been fun just because of the landmark that it is to have gone down to the Santa Monica Pier. Would have been nice to drive by the Los Angeles Temple just to see it up close. I saw it from the freeway.
Ended up driving all the way to Oxnard where I grabbed seven gallons of gas, because it was super expensive, and there was a gas station another 90 mi or so up the road that was significantly cheaper, so I grabbed just enough gas to make it that far, but I decided to crash for the night.
Headed over to the Walmart Supercenter, bought some food, and had hopes that maybe I would be able to spend the night in the Supercenter parking lot, as I saw another RV there. I wasn’t sure, so I just tried to doze a little bit, setting a timer to go off a little after closing time for walmart.
I never fell asleep, I don’t think, but I did those maybe just a little bit. Unfortunately, when I got up to see if the RV was still there, they weren’t, so I decided to head over to the Planet Fitness that was nearby, as I needed to fill up my water bottles, both gallons basically empty.
My head felt like a watermelon, and I was just barely starting to cough up crap out of my lungs. I had tried not to cough at all during the day the last couple of days because I didn’t want to spray germs all over everybody, so when I finally left irvine, I started trying to cough, and I’m at that stage where every cough hurts, and my chest is so tight that I don’t know if there’s much that’s going to come out, but I did have a pretty massive amount of Gunk come out, so that was good at least.
So I headed over to the Planet Fitness that was just down the road, and I was surprised at how many cars there were. At like 11:30 p.m., the parking lot was just about full. 😶
Unfortunately, right in front of where I parked was a big sign saying no overnight parking.
😕
And every parking lot I’ve been in in California so far has security patrolling the parking lot whether they have no overnight parking signs or not.
Definitely not a fan of the West Coast as a van life person. Definitely feel quite unwelcome.
I didn’t really know what to do, or where to go, though, and I was feeling just absolutely awful.
I filled up my water bottles and came back outside, and I laid down in the van thinking maybe I could get a couple hours of sleep before I was there too long for their comfort.
Don’t know if it was just a sinus headache or a migraine or both, but I had a splitting headache, felt like someone was pushing an ice pick through my right eye.
Head was badly congested. Nostrils just dumping snot, even the one that was plugged up still managed to use snot.
I think I also managed to have a fever. When I stepped out to get gas, I was immediately chilled and started shivering violently, and each time I would get out of the car, even though it wasn’t really cold at all outside, just the slightest breeze would send me into a shivering fit.
My joints were aching, my nerve issues magnified significantly.
Not so fun. 🙃
Started sweating pretty significantly, even just with my shirt covering my eyes, if I moved my shirt, I would be all sweaty underneath.
I was miserable.
That’s one of the worst nights I’ve had. I wondered if I had covid because I couldn’t smell much. In fact, I didn’t think I could smell anything, until I decided to really put my smeller to the test and opened Little John and stuck my nose in.
It wasn’t super strong, but I could at least smell it, so… 🤷
Anyway, I would fall asleep for a bit and then wake up and then fall asleep and wake up. Absolutely miserable.
I basically just decided that I was going to stay there until they kicked me out because I was so miserable that I didn’t want to move.
Sometime around maybe 4:00 ish in the morning, I found some decongestant pills in my drug bin and took some migraine pills as well.
Gratitude:
- I’m grateful that I was able to get at least a diesel night sleep last night.
- I’m grateful that my food hasn’t spoiled.
- I’m grateful to have had a wonderful experience getting to know my cousin and her husband.
- I’m grateful my cousin for taking care of me, getting me water and giving me a bag full of emergen-c and whatnot. 🥰
- I’m grateful no one has kicked me out yet.
- I’m grateful there is a cheaper gas station 100 miles or so up the road that I’ll be able to fill up at tomorrow and save probably $20 or so.
Success:
- As much as I wanted to continue feeling crappy for having broken their glass, I was able to I think mostly let it go.
Improvement:
- Not using my phone while driving is going to be a killer. 😅
Loves.
Lift the world.
Bring it on? 😅
~ stephen
Lift the World 