Tuesday, July 05, 2005

Happy 4th of July...Belatedly

Got back this afternoon from Big Bear Lake around three today. Lovely place, slow pace. Had a "Breaking Away" moment trying to cross the highway with Bean while I was there. If you don't remember, "Breaking Away" is a wonderful flick from 1979 starring Dennis Quaid and a handful of other now-recognizable faces. It was about a kid in a small town who was obsessed with cycling and wanted more than anything to become a cyclist himself. He and his buddies from the town would get into fights and altercations with the wealthy college kids from out of town. There was a lot of tension between the two groups. So as I'm waiting to cross the highway, a crappy car w/ some teens in it zooms by and I hear, "FLATLANDERS!" The kids were obviously townies giving LA tourists the business. It was great. I really felt like I was part of something bigger than me. For a brief moment in my vacation I was SOMEBODY. Aside from that one incident, I couldn't detect any tension between the locals and the visitors.

Went on a five mile hike on the Cougar's Crest trail and Bean is no longer interested in hiking anymore. It nearly killed her. She collapsed several times (on purpose, not heat stroke) and limped a good deal the last two miles. Next day we went to do a really short hike around the lake and she collapsed under a tree before we'd gone half a mile, as if to warn us not to even think of going very far.

All in all a lovely weekend. Watched the fireworks display from my car because it was cold out and I hadn't motivated in time to stake out a prime spot along the lake. View was fine regardless. I could hear everyone at the lake scream, ooh and ah everytime a nice one went up. It occurred to me that a good time to carry out a massacre of innocent civilians would be during a fireworks display because it would be hard to distinguish between squeals of approval or squeals of impending death. Just a thought.

There were red, white and blue banners everywhere; tourists carrying their little hand-held flags and a lot of patriotism. You'd think that we'd all be especially patriotic given that our troops are overseas getting shot at and killed on a daily basis. The patriotism lasted until people made it to their cars. Then they reverted to their impatient, a-hole selves and immediately started honking their horns, as if everyone in front of them had no place to go themselves and were just hanging out having a good ole time not moving.

That's my weekend report thus far. Next one will be more entertaining.

I hope.

1 comment:

Butternut said...

... which is why I drive a car made by the Luftwaffe. Well sorta.

Nice to see you made it to Big Bear after all, Laura! I haven't heard the term "flatlanders" in a while. I think that town went downhill after they put in a McDonalds next to the lake. Kinda ruins it.

Oh, did you get any beef jerky? There's a place in BB that makes the best jerky I've ever had. Little melt in your mouth steak nuggets. Mmmm... great now I'm hungry.