Leaving San Diego
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"Oh shit, the van isn't done!"
"Oh shit, we just sold all of our worldly possessions for $50!"
"Do we really think we can live in that thing?"
"My friends are all going to have babies by the time I get back!"
But I had other thoughts, too, like:
"Unemployment rocks!"
"I love not working!"
"How can we drag this out for more than a year?"
"This is going to be the greatest thing we've ever done together!"
More than anything, I was excited to be starting something new. We spent the first couple of weeks after my unemployment began stressing about the van. Our goal was to finish it before leaving San Diego but we had no idea what that meant. Finally we admitted to ourselves that that kind of goal is better left to the gods to attain. We decided we would finish in Sacramento at my parents' house. After that decision was made, we felt a lot better and relaxed a little bit. Steve was the first one to become unemployed; I was next, and after Ed's last day we threw an unemployment party for ourselves. Many of our friends showed up to wish us well and we were able to share with them our plans.
There would be more pictures of our friends, but these are the only ones we took. If other people has got some pictures of that party you can send them to me and i'll slap it up on this page. It was a cool party. It went from about Noon till about 11pm. We partied, went skateboarding down the hill, went over to the VIP lounge next door (roof top), and just hung out around the house.
After the party we rounded up all of our stuff and had one big garage sale over the Easter weekend. Steve and I sold everything dirt cheap and made somewhere around $200 combined along with a lot of our junk that no one wanted. Ed was quite the entrepeneur and not only did he surpass our revenues, people wanted all of his stuff. He even sold his car that day, and the mechanic who came to inspect it ended up leaving with a handful of Ed's stuff. Ed is the garage sale king.
We had another small party and bonfire on our last night at Rios with some friends and neighbors. The highlight of that night was a paper hot air balloon that our neighbor, Glen, had bought some 15 years ago in Mexico and felt like this was the night to set it off. The balloon filled up and took off immediately, a big burning light in the night sky.
Yeah - big props to Glen for busting that baloon out. It was a nice night, very mellow, the fire was going good and Glen just out of the blue told us about this paper Hot air Baloon he has that he and his brother had from Mexico that they bought about 15 years ago. The directions were hand written and a bit cryptic, but John, Glen and I managed to figure it out and we lit it up and it just took off - it was sooo Rad.
Eventually the move out day came along and we had a lot to do. We had one incident where I thought the boys weren't going to do their share and was pretty peeved but they showed me otherwise and after a long day of moving and cleaning and a bad attitude from me, our work was done. Sorry Ed and Randy.
We spent that night next door at Randy's temporary pimp house and the next morning, after the boys had made their goodbyes and one quick trip to Starbucks, we were on our way to Sac.
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