Tarps and Trips to LA

I drove to LA last weekend to pick up some furniture. I took a jillion pictures on the way there and back, but I realized they’re probably not that interesting to anybody else besides me. Still, I figured I took the damn pictures, I may as well post some of them. I don’t seem to be posting much of anything else.

I wish the grapevine always looked green like this. I like it much better than the yellow-orange color it is the other 11 months of the year.

I’ve been trying to for a long time to get a good picture of the “air” you can see as you return home down the grapevine. It’s not easy to get a good picture when you’re driving a stick shift at 80 mph, talking on your cell phone, and adjusting the radio, and applying lipstick. (Okay – I wasn’t really doing that last part.)

I thought this one turned out okay.

The trip to LA turned out to be quite eventful. It was rainy and stormy on and off all day, but we managed to get to Ikea fairly quickly. I have never been to Ikea before. That place is crazy. From there we went to Santa Monica to pick up the furniture from West Elm. That was accomplished easily enough; the only problem was it was starting to rain pretty hard. The furniture mover guy suggested we get a plastic tarp to cover the boxes. But, not wanting to get all caught up in the LA traffic, we decided to drive to Valencia first. The whole way there it was raining like crazy. We spotted a paint store and headed towards it, but it was closed so my friend ran into a Ralph’s while I waited. She returned with a roll of clear, thin plastic and some rope. As we struggled to cover the boxes in the wind and rain, a very nice man walked by and asked how far we were going to be traveling. When we told him Bakersfield he said, “Oh, that’s not going to work. You need something heavier. That will tear right off.” We realized as he spoke he was right.

Next we headed to a Wal-Mart. Let me just add here that it was an emergency, other wise there’s no way in hell I’d shop at Wal-Mart. (My apologies to fans of Wal-Mart. *gag*) Once again I waited while my friend went inside. Ten years later when she finally emerged she shared the saga of her shopping experience at Wal-Mart, while we again struggled to cover the boxes with the thicker tarp. It wasn’t raining as hard by this time, but it was still wet and cold and our progress was slow. Its not easy to secure a tarp over a bunch of heavy boxes in the rain. Especially when you’ve never done it before. The whole thing reminded me of an episode of Laverne and Shirley. First the rope became hopelessly knotted. Then my friend started to secure one side while I did the other. I think we were actually working against each other. Of course the ridiculousness of the whole situation didn’t escape us. We stopped several times to laugh and make fun of ourselves. What would take most people a few minutes took us a full hour. We did a good job though. That tarp did not move one inch all the way home to Bakersfield.

Of course, by then it had stopped raining completely.