Aurora's Blog

I went to the sort of mini-expo in the morning, instead of the actual expo, ’cause one of the many things that makes Surf City awesome is that they’ll mail you your bib and timing chip.

Don’t get me wrong, I love expos. I like hearing about races, spinning prize wheels, and meeting new people.

But sometimes it’s hard to get to an expo ’cause you live far away, or are doing a double-event weekend. Being injured, plus relying on public transportation in L.A., while living pretty far from Huntington Beach – I was quite happy to have my bib and chip mailed to me.

A note on how I got there – Public transportation wasn’t open in time to get me from downtown L.A. to Huntington Beach. So I tried this thing called TaskRabbit. Before you knew it, five strangers had already made a bid to drive me way out to the beach first thing in the morning (before the sun even came out). Nathan, this cool, fun, up-and-coming actor was awesomely amazing, coming to get me at 5:30am!

The Surf City expo was really well themed. There were surfboards everywhere and everything had a very “day-on-the-beach” feel. I walked in to get some bobby pins. They were conveniently right on the front table – which was manned by sweet, knowledgable Marcia, who effortlessly handled the tons of people coming by with different needs.

Then I went off to get my (super awesome) t-shirt from the other booth. The t-shirts came in these sweet (also very well-themed) bags. The expo tent seemed kind of like the “cool hang out place” for runners. Lots of people were in there stretching.

It was awesome that there was this huge enclosed area by the start line so that people could stay out of the “cold.” (It really wasn’t actually cold at all that morning (by the time I got there at least), but I’m sure this same idea would be appreciated at some other races.)

On my way out of the mini expo, I met Dennis and Lea, who were working a timeshares booth.

I walked up to the booth with my normal, “what’s the deal here? What’s happening?” attitude. Dennis said “well, you have to be 25 to sign up, and you look super young.” Yep. “super young.” I was giddy that someone thought I looked so super young.

(I know that in real life I’m always yelling about how much ageism sucks, and how we shouldn’t take joy or compliments in being young because all of that adds to the idea that younger is better – which it’s totally not, because people of all ages have sweet things to add. But, as someone who still wants to be super young and loved, and never get old, and is obsessed with taking care of her skin… I totally took tons of joy out of Dennis calling me super young. (I will become a better person! (Maybe.) I’m working on it…))

Anyway, Dennis and Lea were super nice to me even though I was too young to sign up to hear more about their timeshares. They said they’ll be at some more California events, so I’ll probably run into them here and there this year.

After that fun encounter, I hobbled to the start line. I’ll blog about the race itself tomorrow.