Our friend Dustin Shepard, who also owns an ITG2 dedicab, organized an amazing event at Venice Beach: bringing his machine to the beach boardwalk so he and his friends could play in public and get huge crowds like back in old dance game days! It was sort of last minute but we canceled our dental appointments and other obligations for the weekend and drove down for it. Worth it!
Just before leaving the house, we checked our mail and found our new contacts waiting for us! Hooray for being able to see .25 better just in time for the trip!
We left home just before 4pm but stopped for like 1hr 20mins in Barstow for restrooms and to look around.
Finally, we arrived in Studio City where we were meeting our friends Seth and Alex and their friend Chris for food at a ramen place called Jinya. They were making a commercial when we got there and had us all sign a release form to be in it. Cool! Sean and I shared a bowl of ramen, chatted with everyone about video game and other stuff, and then said goodbye to Chris and followed Seth and Alex to their place to hang out and spend the night. (Thanks again, guys!)
At their place, which was REALLY nice, we played with their tegu and their roommate's cute doggy. We were up pretty late just chatting and watching tv but we all finally went to bed around 2am.
Day 2 - 6/14/15 (Arrows on the Boardwalk):
We woke up at 8am and got ready for the day. After awhile, Seth, Alex, Sean, and I took a short walk to Starbucks for some caffeine and then went back to their place to wait til Dustin had set up at Venice Beach. It took awhile for him to get all set up though and Alex had to work so she didn't end up being able to go with us but Seth, Sean, and I finally headed out, managed to find parking, and walked a long way to finally reach Dustin's spot. On the way, we passed an outdoor workout area called Muscle Beach Venice! We decided we'd have make time to go back one day for a workout there as well as at the original muscle beach!
The whole beach front strip was really cool! Well, at least the huge portion we saw of it. Adorned with gift shops, snack bars, homes, vendor/exhibitionist stalls, people on all kinds of man-powered and wheely transportation, tons of tourists and local beach-goers, countless people walking dogs, and some extremely unique characters, it was a very happening, beautiful, thrilling place to be!
When we got to the stall where Dustin had set up (#119), he and several other friends were already there to greet us! (Well, technically they were there for ITG. :P) It wasn't long before we joined in and started beasting some ITG. Dustin had the machine running on a gas-powered generator which was surprisingly quiet and kept the machine running fine throughout the day. He had a gazebo over the machine but the glare on the screen was still really bad. We managed though! I think Sean, Seth, and I played up to 16s. Not sure about anyone else. Seth miiiight have even reached 17s but not sure. It was a bit of a struggle but we didn't care! We were just super stoked to play and motivated by the atmosphere, our friends, the occasional crowd,.. It was so fun! From the time we arrived at noon til they wrapped things up and started taking the machine apart at 6pm, several more friends, friends of friends, and newer dance gamers we'd never before met showed up, some trading off songs with us and others just watching and hanging out. It was truly one of the most enjoyable ITG sessions EVER and definitely an amazing workout!
Near the start, I was feeling really faint from lack of food, too much caffeine (coffee), and painkillers I'd taken for a headache I woke up with. Sean took a micro jog down to a nearby stall and got me a slice of pizza to tide me over. He had a little bit too and somehow that carried us til the end of our ITG session. Lol Healthy!
The old black guy in the stall next to us was kinda weird but pretty cool. He kept chatting with us, shared a bit of alcohol with us (discreetly), and had us sign some big, fabric sheets he had laid out. Lol
Sean got a little bored towards the end and went walking around. At one point, he walked out to the water and spotted a dead, rotting seal washing up to shore and being eaten by birds!
When they finally shut ITG down at 6pm, Sean, Seth, and I said our thank yous and goobyes to all our friends, prior and new, and headed back to the car, re-enjoying all the incredible sights along the way. Then we drove back to Seth's to hang out and wait for Alex to get off work.
Once she was off, we drove down to meet Alex at her favorite ramen place: a restaurant called Tsujita. She was there waiting with Nelson and his gf when we arrived. We had to order our food upfront and then wait half an hour before being seated inside the restaurant but once we were seated and got our food I was very pleasantly surprised. It was the best ramen EVER! Wow. Pretty sure it was terribly unhealthy but I LOVED it. Sean and I had been snacking before heading to the restaurant, he didn't like the ramen much, and I couldn't finish it but I took the rest with me for later! Mmm!
After that, we went to Volcano Tea across the street to get boba. Sean and I didn't get anything but we went for the walk. Then we said goodbyes to Nelson and his gf and Sean went with Seth and I went with Alex back to their place.
On the way to Tsujita, Seth had given me a new M1dy cd he said he didn't need anymore. Holy crap!!
Back at their place, Sean and Seth looked up PIU charts and chatted about dance games while Alex and I chatted about makeup and gave ourselves ridiculous, clown-like makeovers to troll our dudes! Lol Then we a relaxed just a bit longer before finally going to sleep at 2am.
Day 3 - 6/15/15:
We got up at 11am. Alex was hungry so she, Sean, and I went walking to a nearby restaurant called Eat. Seth didn't join us and Sean wasn't actually hungry so it was just Alex and me eating. I wasn't actually hungry either but they had cream of zucchini soup, which I'd never heard of before, so I tried it and it was pretty good, though not drastically different from other creamy soups such as cream of brocoli.
Back at their place after food, Alex got ready for work. Seth had left to visit his parents while we were out eating but he sent us a message saying he'd had a great time and would see us again soon! While Alex was getting ready, Sean and I had a quick shower. Then we all headed out one last time and said goodbye. :(
Sean and I started towards home then, stopping along the way at McD's briefly for a cold drink and wifi, getting some gas, running into Chase for a free coffee, and popping into a 99 Cent Store where we got lots of snacks and goodies we hadn't seen before in our local 99 Cent Store locations.
We ran into a traffic jam around San Bernardino but we weren't planning to get home right away and were definitely looking to do some sight-seeing so we detoured there and took a long, windy, mountainous route that reminded us of the drive from Merced to Yosemite. It added a lot of time onto the trip but it was worth it! Besides, a place we'd been curious about for awhile now, Big Bear Lake, was on the way! I'm almost sure neither of us had ever been this way before but we felt like we'd definitely been missing out! As we climbed elevation and and it got progressively cooler out, we couldn't believe a place like that was just a few hours away from our desert home in Vegas.
At 8:04pm, we got to a tiny mountain town called Running Springs (population ~5,000). There was a short stretch of businesses and we had a mini look around but didn't see much there. I think the most notable thing was a very expensive convenience store where we bought Sean one of the few normally priced things in the store-a $1 can of iced tea.
Just after Running Springs was Arrowbear (population 730). Not much there at all but a pretty adorable name! Haha
The area and towns in it REALLY reminded me of the Mariposa and Oakhurst area and various routes to and from Yosemite. Big Bear Lake (population ~6,000) was particularly like this with lodges and resorts all over the place and a big, cold lake serving as a sort of centerpiece for the town. We stopped at a place called Lakeview Market there, where things were much more reasonably priced than at the store we'd stopped at in Running Springs, but we didn't find anything we wanted.
The town was too cool not to explore so we spent a little time driving around for a look. It was small so it didn't take long at all to drive past half the places there but we spent some extra time and stopped here and there for a closer look. Most things there were closed for the night but a few places, such as a very crowded Denny's, were still open. They had a typical small town downtown there too and I was so tempted to explore the shops but couldn't justify staying til they opened the next morning. Instead, we just parked for a brief look. There, we found a place called Super Bear Arcade that'd been open since 1959. Upon closer inspection, however, we saw that it was now permanently closed down. With all games removed, the building was now empty and for lease. So sad!
Driving around town a bit more, we found a couple more potential music game places called Funplex and The Bowling Barn. Both were closed for the night so we couldn't really check them out this trip but we were able to peek through the glass doors at Funplex and see a wide variety of games inside. Hopefully next time we'll be there early enough to find out once and and for all whether either place had music games.
Leaving Big Bear Lake, we slowly made our way back out of the mountains and ended up driving through an extremely quiet, wide open stretch of valley. Just after 11pm, we got to a small place called Lucerne Valley.
The route slowly became more and more desert like, similar to route between Vegas and Barstow. There was a long stretch of nothing from 11pm til midnight. Then we got to Barstow and got gas, coffee, and tea at Circle K.
We still weren't ready to head straight home so from there we turned off onto the I40 to visit yet another cool place we'd never been before: Amboy Crater! There wasn't much at all on the way. There was somewhere called Newberry Spring but we didn't see anything there. There was eventually a vending-machine-free rest area where we stopped for a pee. Then, finally, we reached Route 66, running right next to the I40 for a bit and headed through Amboy, a little after 1am.
The section of Route 66 from where we got on to Amboy was SO creepy to drive through at night! It was really desolate and we didn't pass or even see one single vehicle other than ours on the way. It was exactly the setup you'd see in a horror movie. In fact, every bit of that night from starting Route 66 til the sun came up the next morning was like that.
When we reached Amboy, we looked for the road that turns off toward the crater (kinda hard to find in the dark) and found the sign for the crater. Then we drove 2.5 miles down that road to the parking lot at the entrance of the trail to the crater. Other than the crazy sky full of stars above, it was completely dark out. We saw a couple of trains passing on distant tracks but that was it. No other cars came or went anywhere near Amboy that night.
Sean and I had time to kill before it would be light enough out to hike to the crater so we put the top down on the car and cuddled up to each other for a lonnng time, lying down and gazing at all the stars we never see, trying (but mostly failing! Lol) to figure out the constellations.
It was so very quiet there. A few times, I heard a random noise in the distance and freaked out a bit so finally, after we'd had our fill of the stars, we put the top back up so we'd feel a little safer while hanging out and watching The Simpsons on Sean's laptop. Then Sean got in a quick 1 hour nap while I typed this up.
Day 4 - 6/16/15:
At 5:20am, the sun was high enough to see the trail and start our journey to Amboy Crater. No one else had signed the guest book near the start of the trail since 3 days prior so chances were we were going to be the first people on the trail since! As we started the trail, we were almost immediately greeted by tons of black, volcanic rock that'd poured over the land back when Amboy Crater was an active volcano. We spent about 2 hours and 10 minutes doing the trail to, up, and around the crater and back to the car. During that time, we A LOT of pics, some absolutely incredible views, and a few small volcanic rocks. Shhh! During our hike, we spotted tons of lizards running amok all over the place and on the way back to the car we managed to catch one! We didn't keep him but we did get a couple of quick pics of him!
Back on Route 66 after leaving the crater, the sun was now high in the sky and we were finally able to get a view of the few buildings that made up the town of Amboy. The only places left in business there were a post office and Roy's cafe/motel/gas station combo with gas starting at $4.99/gallon. There was also an abandoned school and a couple of other buildings, vehicles, misc. We were SO THIRSTY then. It seemed like the type of place it'd be easy to die of thirst in but fortunately Roy's was open and we were able to get a couple cans of Pepsi for $1 each inside the gas station's convenience/cafe area and quench our thirst a bit. Unexpectedly, that'd be the last liquid we'd find til we made it back to Primm.
Right after leaving Amboy, we spotted a random Chinese dragon just off the road to our right. Wtf
Just after that, we turned onto Kelbaker Road and drove up through the Mojave Desert, crossing over the I40 again. The road was a mess, with potholes everywhere, but we were excited to be driving through the Mojave. We didn't know what to expect but for the most part it was just the typical desert landscape we were used to with an occasional car driving past us every now and then.
A little before 9am, we got to and turned off headed through Kelso, CA, which had a couple of buildings including a visitors center and a super old looking, closed down post office.
Not far after that, we saw a sign pointing the way to several points of interest including Hole In The Wall, I believe it's called, which we'd wanted to check out for awhile. We were really thirsty and out of drinks at the time though so we decided to save it for another time.
We passed through an area dense with Joshua Trees next.
At 9:20am, the road ended with an option to turn left or right onto Ivanpah Rd. We took it left, headed towards Nipton, CA to take us towards home. 3 minutes later, the road did the same thing but we took the road left again towards the I-15 instead of right towards Nipton. Then we got on the I-15 and got to Primm at 9:35am. We stopped off to get some much needed drink refills at Chevron before continuing home. Around 10:40am, we were back in our driveway again.
