The Low Family: Californ-I-A

After Aimee died we started planning the Aimee life celebration trip. It was wonderful. In pretty much every way. We had something to look forward to while we planned it. We got a fantastic trip. We spent time together without distractions. We did things together that we had never done before. And we made memories that will last forever. We gave all the credit to Aimee. It was completely her idea. And she paid for it.

Well, this time there was absolutely no warning of death. No one has ever been more sure they would live. My dad had relatively nothing in place in case he died. He KNEW he would outlive my mom. So naturally, there was no plan for what to do when he died.

But come on. We're educated. We're travel saavy. We can come up with our own trip. And after those few months of death, and birth, and spending every waking moment picking up the pieces that my dad left behind, there was NO ONE ON EARTH who needed a trip more than my mom. She had been through so much, I can barely comprehend it looking back. Notwithstanding the fact that our other family members were experiencing much along with her. And I was trying to raise four young boys, finish a basement almost singlehandedly (Dave did help, but he is always so busy it's hard to find time with him), and coach my mom through a large percentage of figuring out her new life. I spent 1-2 days a week in Bountiful helping her clean out her house, figure out finances, paint, plan, and just keep going. I was so proud of her, she worked so hard. And she would sit down and rest sometimes while I worked and then she would get back up and keep going when I told her not to. While I did coach her through lots of things, she spent a lot of hours figuring out things herself, which she had NEVER, EVER done before.

So amidst all the working we began to plan our relief vacation. Of course, while Dad didn't plan the vacation for us, we used his hard earned Marriott points and his hard earned money to pay for it. We enjoyed planning the vacation. We felt a small bit of relief amidst the craziness when we remembered we had it ahead of us. And when it came........ It.was.awesome!

Mari wanted to go to Phoenix for a few weeks to visit her friends, so she wasn't there. Josh went to visit his teacher who moved to St. George, and had a wonderful time, they spoiled him rotten. And we went to Californ-I-A.

Although we have lived in the West for 18 years, for some reason the Biada family still thinks they are East Coasters. The Biada family has never taken a trip to Disneyland. They always went to Disneyworld even when they lived in Utah. Our beach trips have always been tropical or Maine. We've never been on a California beach trip. Until now.

We packed up the Ford Taurus (still haven't sold Jessica's car :). We got in the Taurus with minimal belongings and drove to California. We enjoyed the drive so much. We could have driven there and back and had quite a nice trip just from the drive. We loved being together and talking and singing Indigo Girls.

We stopped half way, in Mesquite, NV. Lauren, showing off her fancy GPS, spoke to it and asked it to take us to the Virgin River. We started driving and within a few miles we really felt like we were headed to the middle of nowhere. We learned that Miss-Fancy-Pants-GPS was actually taking us to the river, you must specify the Virgin River HOTEL. We stayed at the world's BIGGEST dive there at the Virgin River Hotel for $24.99 a night. The tap was hot. Realllllllllly hot. There was no cold water option. So we brushed our teeth with hot water. Yuck. But we slept, woke, and drove on.

We got to our destination in Fountain Valley (Close to Huntington Beach) and went inside to check in. We had accidentally walked into the Courtyard Marriott instead of the Residence Inn. We drove next door to the Residence Inn and went to check in. Our reservation wasn't until the next night. Somehow my mom had gotten the dates wrong, which no one seemed to care about, we were just happy to be there. So we drove back over to the Courtyard Marriott, since it was cheaper. But after having gone in there already, we were a little embarrassed to go back in.

So I did what anyone would do, I disguised myself. I put on Lauren's big, thick, black glasses, put a cardigan over my shirt, pulled my hair up and put a big flower on the side, and walked slowly back in (Yeah, the glasses made me a little dizzy). We got ourselves a room, went to dinner at Macaroni Grill, (MMmmmmmm) and headed over to the beach.

We got in the hot tub that night where we learned that the next day was the first day of a HUGE surfing competition at Huntington Beach. So we drove up to Sunset Beach the next day, and had a wonderful time at the beach. It was beautiful, we jumped in the waves, buried our legs in the sand, and then got absolutely mesmerized by the ocean and lay there in a half-sleeping stupor while we all sunburned various parts of our body (except Lauren, her face was burned, but not real bad...... NOT FAIR). I had sunscreen on, but I failed to properly apply it to the back of my knees and a 1" strip of skin on my back that hung out where my shirt and my shorts gapped. Yeah, it hurt.

On Sunday we went to church and then Lauren, Kate and I drove out to see the Hollywood sign. After our lesson on the GPS, we just told the GPS to take us to the Hollywood sign and it did it. That place is crazy. I thought we lived on the bench here in Utah. They live on a cliff with narrow, winding roads that can barely fit 2 cars. It's a death wish. We went and explored Hollywood BLVD a little bit and learned it's pretty much a trash hole. Every third store front is a tattoo shop. Who on Earth is getting all those tattoos? The two stores in between the tattoo shops most likely sell Hookah or trashy lingerie. I was appalled. But there were some awesome malls, so we decided to go back the next day.

I found the perfect dress for me. I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT, IS THAT CLEAR? Seriously, so I bought it and another awesome dress which I am saving for the cold weather. We did some other shopping around and then Lauren googled some places to go eat. She thought maybe there was a Serendipity in Los Angeles, so she asked her GPS to find Serendipity and was thrilled that there was one! We drove out to a rather odd location in the city, and tried to park. Most of the meters were broken, so I dropped them off and went all over the place looking for a working meter. I finally found one and made the long walk back to my family and we walked back to Serendipity. Yeah, well apparently "Serendipity" in Los Angeles is a drug store. Yeah. It was pretty funny. So we drove to the other mall we were planning to shop at and ate at the Cheesecake Factory, and how can you go wrong with that?

I was thinking that was pretty much the end of our story. We packed up and left the next day. The drive home was fairly uneventful.......

Um, not really. It was smooth sailing until we hit Provo. One minor detail about the Taurus. You see it is a 1999, but only has 60,000 miles on it. So it's quite a reliable car, but it is old enough to not have much value anymore. The gas gauge sensor is broken. So you never know how much gas you have in the Taurus. You can fill it up and the gas light will turn on. So we just filled up with gas approximately every 300 miles. We stopped about 100 miles South of Provo to fill up and we were hit with a ridiculous downpour/hail. No one dared get out of the car, so I braved the storm and filled up the car with gas. It was painful at first when it was hailing, but when I went out to put the cap back on, I got completely soaked in the quick run to throw the cap on, slam the little door and run back. I mean completely soaked, almost like I had jumped into a pool. I told my family not to expect the a/c on for the rest of the trip because I was cold, and if they wanted to be cool, they better hop out of the car for a second and join me in wetness. They didn't do it. I think it was a poor choice. They were probably pretty hot for awhile.

On the Freeway in Provo, in the midst of some nasty construction, the Taurus died. I was in the left lane, but even as I moved over to the right lane, there was no shoulder. Just barricades. Really close together barricades. The kind that tell you that they REALLY don't want you to ignore the barricades. As we approached to exit, we slowed down to 40 mph, and I knew I had no choice but to make my own shoulder. The barricades thinned out a bit by the exit and I pulled in between them. I was extremely blessed to notice the fact that the reason for the barricades was a 6 foot drop off, where the shoulder ought to have been. Yeah, not a hill. A perpendicular drop off. A 90 degree angle down. My front right tire was about 2 feet away from dropping off. We would have rolled.

We called a tow truck and found out very quickly that all rental car companies in Provo close at 6:00 pm. We were stranded. We called our friend Nathan Herbert, and he was so UNBELIEVABLY kind to pick us up and take us to West Bountiful.

We got a phone call the next day telling us that the Taurus ran out of gas. Yup. I guess in my rain-bucket-dodging haste I failed to notice that the gas turned off prematurely and we didn't get very much gas. The hail probably hit it and turned it off. All that trauma for nothing.

So that, my friends, is the end of the story. It was a wonderful trip, we loved it all, we got away from life, we were together. And here are the pictures: