Oh boy. Driving.
If you’re a reader of the blog, you know what a tenuous grasp I have on driving. And that I have a love/hate relationship with it. I think the same can probably be said for sleep.
I stayed up all night on Saturday night, saw the sun come up, and eventually made my way to bed on Sunday morning. The brilliant plan was to sleep all day on Sunday, and wake up in the late afternoon/night. I’d be ready to stay up all night to get to the rental car place at the airport, and make my way down to Laguna Hills.
I woke up at 11:30am on Sunday, and couldn’t get back to sleep. When my body finally asked to go to sleep, it was almost time to make my way to the airport to grab a rental car.
When will I learn that that brilliant sleep schedule idea never works out well the day before a race? I’ve tried it before with similar results. At least I wasn’t quite as tired this time.
Laguna Hills is only about an hour away from downtown Los Angeles, so you wouldn’t think I’d need that much time to get there.
But you have to factor in the time it takes to get to LAX, get the car rental shuttle, rent the car, get on the road, get lost, get un-lost, get lost closer to the race, get un-lost again, drive in a circle a couple of times, find a parking spot, pull in crooked, pull out, try again, eventually park, and get my race bib. I ended up leaving my house around 2:30am.
Shockingly, I didn’t get lost (or park incorrectly) as I’d predicted in my plan. I had to plan for it, ’cause it is me, after all. But I think I might getting a little bit better at this whole driving thing.
I am pretty floored at how much I’ve been driving in the last couple of months. Just think, it all started when I got stranded at the San Diego Greyhound station on my way to Lake Havasu.
It never even occurred to me that renting a car could be an option, until I was basically forced to rent one.
I always figured if public transportation didn’t open early enough, I’d need to pay someone on TaskRabbit to drive me, or just go down the night before. After I survived a weekend with a rental car, it moved up pretty high on my transportation hierarchy.
(Of course, I’ll still only resort to a car when public transportation doesn’t open early enough to get me somewhere in time for a race.)
I will never understand how people drive all the time. Once every few weekends, in someone else’s car, I don’t mind. But everyday? I wouldn’t know how to survive. It’s so stressful. Merging. I can’t take it! And motorcycles! And bicycles! Oh the terrifying bicyclists.
Nonetheless, even through stress and my awful driving, I somehow I made it there and back without injury to me, or others, or any cars. Rad, right? (And I didn’t even get lost in either direction! What universe is this?)
Huh. I didn’t think I had this much to say about traveling/driving, but I suppose I do. I didn’t even get to the parts about this specific trip, such as possibly seeing a homeless man in the back of one of the rental car choices… I’ll talk about it tomorrow, then tell you all about the half marathon.