Day 1 - 7/30/16 (Leicester City vs PSG):
We'd been planning to leave Vegas the day prior but I'd had surgery on the 27th and was feeling a little under the weather til this morning. I was okay today though so we ran some last errands, stopped by the gym (Planet Fitness) for a quick workout and shower on the way out, and then started driving to Socal.
Awhile back, I'd found a Groupon deal for a Leicester City vs Paris Saint-Germain soccer match at the StubHub Center (home of LA Galaxy) in Carson, CA (near Long Beach). As Leicester City was Sean's home team and I'd never been been to a professional soccer game before, we'd bought tickets and made the drive out!
Just down the road from the StubHub Center was:
Go Cart World
21830 Recreation Rd
Carson, CA
I can't remember exactly how I'd found out about the place but I'd made myself a note to pay the place a visit and see if they had any dance games. Maybe a friend had mentioned it to me, maybe I'd seen the place online and thought the might,.. Whatever the reason, we were already right in the area today and decided to stop in to check it out! Inside, we found a DDR Extreme machine with a Max 2 banner! There were 4.5 credits left in the machine then so we played through them and managed to get a mini workout. The pads were playable. Not amazing but could've been worse. The 2P side was somewhat better than the 1P. Volume was a little low but they had a machine!! And there was even a Pokestop (spot where you get Pokeballs and such in the new Pokémon Go phone game everyone's been playing lately if your phone's GPS shows you being close enough to it) accessible right from the DDR pads! Free Pokeballs the whole time we were playing. :D We had to head out after DDR but we had a quick look around the rest of the arcade, which was full of games probably almost all from around the era of DDR Extreme (I loved it!), and added the location to ddrfreak before going.
At the StubHub Center, parking was $20 and all of the closest neighborhoods were closed off to event parking. We sure as hell weren't paying so we just drove a little further and found a spot in a quiet neighborhood past the blocked off neighborhoods. Then we went for a jog to the stadium, catching Pokémon and hatching our Pokémon eggs (in-game eggs that you hatch Pokémon out of by covering varying distances of 2k, 5k, or 10k, usually on foot) on the way!
There were lots of Pokéstops and Pokémon to get at the stadium and we got a bit distracted and carried away with that and actually hardly watched the game at all. x.x Oops! We saw a bit though and had lots of fun! We got to see Sean's team and I got the gist of it. Got a bit of exercise running around too so all in all definitely worth it!
After the game, we got back to the car and drove to a nearby Starbucks to do a little work before heading to a Walmart to play some more Pokémon Go and finally get some car sleep.
Day 2 - 7/31/16 (Socal Bonfire & Pokémon Go running):
In the morning, we woke up and headed over to our second big event of the weekend: the annual Socal Bonfire with our old Socal dance game friends. This time, I'd organized it with the help of Tony Padilla but I think he and Ervin and a few others showed up before us to reserve the fire pit and get things going. We'd decided to have this year's bonfire at Huntington Beach just to mix things up but it was pretty much the same setup as Dockweiler. It was $15 to park there but we were staying all day so it was worth it to us to be able to get things from our car as needed. Once we were settled in, there was just way too much fun stuff to do and somehow not nearly enough time! Friends and new faces were coming and going all day as well. We played in the violent, crazy waves with a group of friends for awhile and got a few people to play some frisbee with us. We bbq'd, snacked, chatted, horseplayed, and soaked in the rays. We caught lots of water Pokémon and other Pokémon we don't have much of in Vegas. In fact, Pokémon is how we spent most of the day. We went Pokémon hunting, walking all around with Ervin first and went running EVERYWHERE for HOURS and covering quite a few miles around the area with Edgar later. By the time we made it back to the bonfire the last time, it was dark and everyone had left or was getting ready to leave. Oops! On the bright side, we'd spent a decent amount of time with a lot of people in the earlier part of the day, had gotten tons of exercise, and had gotten to explore the busy pier and all the other cool sights in the area there. I'd forgotten to wear shoes so my feet had been tenderized by the pavement and the lower halves of my legs were DEAD but it was worth it! We spent some last moments hanging around the parking lots with friends who hadn't gone home yet and then finally said our goodbyes and took off.
We did some driving back towards home then and eventually parked and got some sleep, if I remember correctly.. (Writing this two months later)
Day 3 - 8/1/16:
We'd been road tripping so much recently we welcomed any opportunity to break up the monotony of driving so, on the way home, we stopped for caffeine and to get work done at Starbucks and then made lots of stops to catch Pokémon and get Pokéstops on the way.
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