Day 5: Booties, burgers, and backhands

Greetings from Ontario (no, not that Ontario), where the breakfast at this Best Western will be getting a highly positive review on Yelp.  They even had sriracha for the hipsters.

Yes, that's ramen that Matt's eating.  And, yes, he's also drinking a beer.  At 8:30 in the morning.

Yesterday started in Oakland, where we left Tanya's around 10am to make our way down to Chino Hills.  Matt needed to be picked up LAX at 7:30pm (or 9:30pm depending on your perspective), which didn't leave Tanya and I enough time to drive down the coast along Highway 1.  Instead, we got on the monstrosity that is I-5 and headed south through the central valley.  The record drought you've heard about is real.  The entire trip consisted of nothing but dry, dusty fields punctuated by the occasional green tree or weed.  Tanya commented that it looked like a black and white movie except it was brown.

To pass the time, Tanya got me caught up on all the latest pop music and confidently declared it the summer of the booty.  And she was right.  Every song we heard talked about skin tight jeans and shaking hips.  Ariana Grande, Nicki Minaj, and some sensitive guy pleading with his woman to stay with him were a few of the ones I remember.  All in all, though, I was much less impressed with this year’s offerings compared to the pop songs Tanya educated me about last summer.

Having given up on the radio, Tanya thumbed through my CD collection and quickly declared all of it to be “white people music.”  Imagine her surprise when she stumbled upon my Stevie Wonder CD.  Imagine her surprise when she learned that he, too, was from Saginaw.  Imagine her skepticism when I tried to convince her that I – tone deaf and rhythmically challenged – taught him everything he knows.

It was sometime after this conversation that she decided to curate an exhibit of me stuffing my face.  I give you all 16 pieces:

I got my revenge by taunting her with my toilet sunglasses, repeatedly putting them in my mouth and reminding her that I haven’t washed them since the unfortunate incident in Wyoming.

It struck us both that despite being on the road for 3 or 4 hours, we still hadn't come across any tourist traps worthy of our attention.  That’s when she consulted http://www.roadsideamerica.com/ and found us this gem of a fiberglass animal, which she perfectly described as a mutant mix of a cow and a sheep.

Time was getting late, so we hopped back into the car and high-tailed it down 5 to 210 on our way to Chino Hills, hitting a few traffic back-ups along the way and seeing a few familiar sites in Pasadena.  We eventually made it to town, where Tanya took me to the courts where she developed her wicked two-handed backhand.  

We then made it to her parents’ house, where I was warmly greeted by her dad and two sisters.  They packed provisions for me for the road, including some Thai sticky rice and mango.  Thank God they didn't offer me any durian. 

We said our goodbyes and I made my way to LAX, where Matt kept me waiting for nearly two hours.  He finally stumbled out onto the curb, loaded his bags into my car Beverly Hillbillies-style, and we made our way to the hotel in Ontario, where the day finally came to an end.

Today’s activities include a drive through Joshua Tree National Park (that's the second boner joke of the trip for those of you keeping score) on the way to our first football game, Weber State vs. Arizona State at Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe.  More pictures and half-truths to follow.