Feliz Navidad

Merry Christmas from Gail and Michelle!

Walk this way, baby.

You'd never guess it by our shoes, but Michelle and I both love to hike. Saturday afternoon, Michelle's brother, Matt, and our friend, Chris Shawl, took us on a hike through a beautiful Northern California riverbed. It was fittingly chilly, but we got rowdy to keep warm.

After about 3 minutes of trying different positions to navigate the passageway, Michelle wasn't taking any chances with the glass-like water and Chris came to her rescue. He was really quite compassionate, while I just stood there and laughed at her.

Dogs vs. Cats

Apart from seeing her family for Thanksgiving, Michelle was probably most elated to be reunited with her cats.


It has been a running joke since junior year that I'm the cat hater and Michelle, of course, is the lover.

Pavlov would be proud of me. Everytime I want to put Michelle in a good mood, I show her the most ridiculously sappy picture of a cat I can find and wait to hear her effusive coos and praises of the feline specie. Good grief and Lord have mercy. The problem is that Michelle's obsession is getting worse. She was in heaven when Michael Farr got her a notebook with cats on the front AND a cat plaque for Christmas. She and Jessica, our housemate, will get together and swap cat pictures and stories, as well as fill each other in on who else is a fellow cat enthusiast. Michelle even convinced the features editor for our campus newspaper to do an entire page about the cats on campus.

I on the other hand, am more inclined toward the consistently happy, loyal dogs--usually the bigger ones because the little ones are too much like cats. They're smart, they protect you and they can play fetch! I got to romp with a neighbor dog at Michelle's grandparents' place, so I guess we were both happy. Me with my dog and Michelle with her cat. To each her own. But the debate continues.

Carry On My Wayward Daughters

Michelle and I chatted it up in the front seat while these three sleeping beauties graced the back of Michelle's good ol' maroon Taurus. The evening before, as the sisters were taking their Volvo back up I-5 in the fracas of rush hour traffic, the car started inexplicably slowing down. Sure enough, the station wagon died in the midst of smog and taillights – and right in the middle lane.

Fortunately, we had just the antidote – three seats in a northbound Taurus. The girls had to wake up every hour to call the tow truck until it finally dropped the vehicle back at campus the next morning, so by the time they hopped in our car they were beat. They fell asleep before we even reached the Grapevine. But in all, it was a great chance to meet new people and split the gas bill.

Those who live in northern California know how monotonous the drive up the 5 or the 99 can be – it’s broken by little more than sprawling cattle farms and cities like Wasco and Coalinga. The selection of radio stations – which has a decidedly mariachi bent through a large part of the drive – also leaves something to be desired. By the time we pulled up to the house, it was 6 p.m. – 13 hours, a shopping trip and an In-n-Out stop after we got started. It was certainly more exhausting than taking what would be a two-hour plane ride, and it was made worse by some worn-out wiper blades that made it difficult to see in the rainy and foggy conditions.

Although there was no shortage of traffic, taking a road trip always will have its adventurous mystique. You can’t beat the bathroom break detours that accidentally lead you to a restaurant in the middle of nowhere where you can strike up a conversation with the owner. You can’t beat 20-plus hours of undivided attention from your friend. And these days, you can’t beat getting it all for about $50 in gas.

Driving at the Break of Dawn

1. Gas was cheap - it had just ducked to about $1.92 a gallon when we got on the road. That didn't, however, make it any easier to actually pump the gas (a skill I notoriously lack). After a few tries, a few mishaps with that Arco ATM, and a near-death encounter between myself and a taco truck, we were on the road.

This is what Stewart looks like at roughly 5 in the morning, when we drove over to pick up our three extra passengers

And finally, Gail is always prepared for the road with a nutritious snack. This time around, the dairy food group was represented with this family-sized bag of Cheetos.

Oh Roadtrip

Roadtrip music

Gail and I were ready for at least 9 hours of road monotony after a brief stop at the audio books section in the Biola library. C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce (2.5 hours), Willa Cather's My Antonia (9 hours) and Charles Dickens' Tale of Two Cities (13 hours) all made the final cut. (Fall 2008 chapel makeups, 20 hours, didn't make the cut, though they probably should have.)

But an audio book is a tricky little devil. Problem #1: They're on MP3 formatted CDs, which don't play in normal CD players. Problem #2: They're on CDs, not tapes, which makes it impossible to play on Michelle's antiquated tape deck. Problem #3: Michelle has an iPod adapter, which means we could load them on an iPod and listen via the adapter, but unfortunately, there never was and probably never will be an iPod to go with it.

Unable to listen to our library on the way up, we settled for the trusty fallback known as FM stereo. In order of appearance on the presets: KIIS FM, Latino 96.7, KOGO country 105.1 and the FISH.

Once we got to the FISH, Michelle pulled over to the side of the road and threw herself in a ditch.

By the time we reached the outskirts of LA, we were already out of radio range and then forced to re-hunt for passable tunes amid a sea of Central Valley mariachi signals. Nevertheless, we encountered some good theme music in "I'm a country boy (I got a 4-wheel drive)" and "Country Fried (Cold beer on a Friday night)" and Taylor Swift's "Love Story" (Michelle's facorite). Those would be our anthems for the rest of the trip.

Pre-roadtrip: Starting off on the right foot

We figured we would be smart about our 9-hour Thanksgiving road trip to Michelle's house by getting lots of sleep the night before. This plan was thwarted, however, with what we thought would be a short trip to CVS for foundation, eyeliner and (Gail's family size bag of) Cheetos. The majority of our time was spent in the men's deodorant section where we agonized over the best masculine scent, soon awarding it to Old Spice's Aqua Reef, followed closely by Arctic Force. Our search for the most manly musk was interrupted by a cellular phone call from our good friend Bethany, who begged us to stow her stranded friends in our backseat and hand them off Pony Express-style to their parents in NorCal. We agreed to the good deed and returned home where our housemates, Claire and Jessica, challenged us with "Miss Fullerton" pageant questions. We dazzled them with brilliant, spontaneous answers to deep questions like, "What would you do if your best friend was flirting with your boyfriend?" and "How do you feel about smokers' rights?"

We retired to bed at the bewitching hour with the prospect of only 4 hours of sleep. OK, not smart, but we had fun, ya know?