File: The "Santa Monica" Incident
Involved parties:
[REDACTED], alias Kevak
[REDACTED], aka HugoLuman
I woke up at precisely 7:30 AM on the morning of December 6th, 2014, to ensure I had time to prepare for the meeting and catch the first bus on the long chain of transfers that would get me to my destination. After spending most of this time eating breakfast and checking the forums, my email, and my class schedules, I grabbed my meager provisions: the printed google directions, and for activities during the commute, some finals work and a couple of sociology books.
Embarking on the first of many buses, I let the relevant people (Kevak, family, a couple friends) know that I've safely embarked. Kevak was apparently up this early due to neighbors. The bus ride went well, though I was too nervous to do any schoolwork except reading my books for fear of missing stops. However, the succeeding bus rides and the whole trip go right on schedule. Until I got to the train station. Through a combination of trains being delayed due to "emergency maintenance" (as the voice on the station speaker announced) and my own inexperience with the metro, I wound up and hour delayed. Conversely, Kevak arrived at the agreed upon meeting spot an hour early.
After calling home to find the next bus from the final trainstop, since I certainly wouldn't be catching the planned one, I relaxed a bit and actually got some of my course work done. I disembarked from the train only to realize that, though I was not at this point as late as I feared, the bus stop was nowhere to be found. There was road work going on, and they'd all been temporarily relocated a couple blocks away. What's more, the area I wandered and waited in (until a very helpful stranger told me which bus I needed) turned out to be one of the sketchier areas of the great LA urban amalgam. Fortunately, I boarded the bus with no incident and was soon on my way. This final bus met with a massive traffic jam, resulting in me arriving a full one hour later than I had hoped.
Anyway, we finally meet on the green next to the famous pier, next to the "big-ass canon" serving as public statuary. At this point, I was starting to feel like I'd accomplished a moon landing, since the meetup had made so many efforts to en route to not happen. I think he spotted me before I spotted him, but I recognized him by the clothing description and greeted him with a pseudo-Fonz-esque "Eeeey!" as he approached. The first thing that came to mind was that he was shorter than expected, and I taller than he expected. I don't really know what I was expecting, to be honest, but nonetheless he was not as expected. Certainly didn't expect his vaguely English accent, though that subsided somewhat as the day went on. Either that or I stopped noticing it.
We walked and talked down to the pier, looking for some of the local activities; there was, after all, a little theme park. However, since neither of us really cared for amusement park rides enough to spend money on them, we went off to find somewhere shady to sit (since at that point it was after 2PM and even in winter that's too-goddamn-warm-hour in Southern California). He showed me the several notebooks he'd brought, which contained meticulously detailed notes on various games, both forum and tabletop, as well as several sketches and drawings. Said notes took either the form of graph paper diagrams or incredibly dense scrawls written at various angles in such a way likely legible only to him. I, on the other hand, had brought only my lecture notebook, a couple sociology books, and an incomplete storyboard/script for a 1-minute film (for uni class) that I didn't feel much point to showing off, so I spend a lot more time listening. We also exchanged IRL names. Kevak looks exactly like his, but he tells me I look more like an actual Hugo.
After that, we decided to wander about and explore town. We meandered inland, on the way noticing some people showing off trained parrots and exotic snakes. Not too much later, we reached a mall, and Kevak decided we should look for a candy store. Though I'm not really one for candy, I figured "why not?" since candy stores have a sort of ambiance about them and it's always nice to look at the absurd amount of candy they sell for low prices and imagine the possibilities. Cue us walking in figure eights up and down the 3-story mall before we finally asked for directions (though our rambling conversation was interesting.)
Since we'd only half-understood the directions, we wandered out of the mall in the direction indicated without paying much further attention to where we were going. In fact, we nearly walked into traffic twice - on the same street even (though the incidents were separated by several minutes: I'm not sure if that makes it better or worse). There was evidently some sort of festival going on, as that particular street was choked with people and street performers (and street preachers - who Kevak apparently likes to mess with) were doing their thing. The general noise (and the fact that I was wearing a Santa hat that covered my ears) meant Kevak often had to repeat what he said.
There were also vendors and promoters standing around, giving passers by free samples and/or coupons. When one approached us, I took the coupon without looking, since that usually ends the encounter and lets you continue on your merry way. "Wait, what kind of store did she say?" Upon examination, the item turned out not only to be a coupon, but an envelope containing, according to the label, a "free safe sex kit." Not wanting to trash it within site of the vendor who'd just handed it to me, I pocketed it and immediately forgot about it.
After wandering in a wide circuit for some time, and (third time's the charm!) avoiding walking into traffic on that one street, we realized the candy store had been right on the corner there the entire time, and we'd walked right past it at least twice. Kevak still wanted his candy, and at that point, since we'd been looking for it forever, I decided I was getting some goddamn candy, even if I wasn't going to eat it all. As might be expected, the store offered a generous "by weight" deal. I bought 1/4 lbs of some kind of chewy ring-shaped candy. Kevak bought an entire pound of all kinds, mostly gummies.
Now, having acquired sweets, we set off in search of somewhere to sit and eat them. Not content with the mere benches of other places, the mall we were at before had couches, so there was clearly no other choice. At that point we realized our respective rides would get there relatively soon, so we started heading back towards the pier, taking the street on the other side of the mall since we hadn't gone that way yet. It had gotten rather dark by then (About 5:00 or so), though, and since Kevak thought it more prudent to avoid unlit areas, we took a more direct route back.
After exploring the evening pier (which had become even more crowded) a bit more, we basically just sat down and traded the photos on our phones until our rides showed up. Once again, I didn't have much. Me in Death Valley before I lost the fight against my facial hair, some lorikeets at the aquarium from the time I biked the full 30 miles there (and my ears were savaged by lorikeets), my dogs, and a dalek from a convention years ago. He had several photos of cosplayers from another con, with some rather impressive examples, including an entire gang of Deadpools.
Our rides showed up at about the same time, and that was that. I'd called my folks for a ride because I didn't want to deal with public transit again today, and wanted to get back before midnight. All in all, it was fun, but next time (if there is one) we definitely need to plan activities ahead better, and probably bring more people along.
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Topic: [MILK] There were 12 eggs here what did you do with them? (Happy thread?!) (Read 16282209 times)