On to LA

I met up with my rideshare, Berta, at a bus station in Oakland. I was on the phone with her trying to figure out where she was but it was proving difficult as I have never seen her before. She had a very thick accent and at times was hard to understand the landmarks she was trying to describe to me. I finally parked and told her to just look for the white truck near the front of the lot. The moment she came around the corner I knew it was her. She was tall and slender with short brown hair that was shaved in some spots and left a little bit longer in others. She had a single braid behind her left ear. There were tiny black dots on each of her bottom eyelids and one on the top of her lip. She approached with a smile as I got out of the truck to help her put her enormous backpack into the back of my truck. We shook hands to formally greet each other and climbed in to start the long drive. Berta was a very fun road companion even though about two hours of it she spent sleeping. She was a photo journalist back in Lithuania and told me of jobs and stories she had covered and all the exotic places her work had taken her. I asked her what kind of music she liked and she said "I like...heavy music?" with a bit of uncertainty and followed that up with "But sometimes I like soft music" Heavy it is. The rest of the drive was pretty uneventful besides some good conversation. As we approached the Grapevine I told her it wasn't far now. It was dark now and once we peaked the hills you could start to see the vast amount of lights that start to make up the Los Angeles area.

"There it is." I said. We both sat silently for a moment looking at the sea of light. Not even an hour after I said that we were completely stopped in LA traffic. "Welcome to LA" I said, jokingly. We finally got off the freeway and I took her to her destination. I dropped her off and gave her a hug and thanked her for keeping me company and pitching in on gas. I'm really glad I got to meet her and hope to run into her again.

Luckily the place Berta was going was only 10 minutes away from my destination off of Hollywood Blvd. I was so tired of driving that I kicked it into overdrive and immediately could have competed in the National "LA Driver" competition. I eventually made it in one piece and called my friend Travis to let me into his buildings garage. I parked, grabbed some clothes and went upstairs where I laid on the couch that would eventually become my bed for the next long while.

Coming up next...

Living like a celebrity