Velvet Margarita and Van Sleepin's

This was the last day in the office. Tried to “tie up lose ends” – go through my gear to make sure that I had everything that I may need and picked through the “goodies table” – the table of abandoned gear that people ditched when they wrapped up their season, basically a gi-normous junk draw. With a my treasure-hunting skills (attained from attending numerous Midwestern garage sales) I was able to salvage some gems – a camp oven, some Frisbees, some board games to keep the pax busy, etc. Then I had a sit down with my boss in charge of all Mexican Trips. He briefed on all that he knew about my trip. Still have a lot of questions though and have sent out an email to a bunch of other guys that are down there right now and know more about the minutia (where to buy meat, who to talk to when crossing borders, who I should talk to about outfitting me for certain activities, good bars/restaurants, etc.) that actually make or break the flow of a trip. Since this is my first time in most of these places, I want as much info as I can soak up so that things run as smoothly as possible. After my sit-down I rounded out the end of my day by decorating my van for the holiday season. Since we’ll be traveling over Christmas and New Years, I hung up Christmas lights, garland, silver ornaments and even pinned up a stocking for each of my pax.
At night met up with my buddy Dave and his girlfriend Angela. They were in town for Angela’s company Christmas Party – apparently a real shindigger. They also had a couple of friends, Derrick and Chrissy, visiting as well. I met them at the Spanish Kitchen for dinner and then we shot to Hollywood to do up some bars. Popped into a couple of places: Velvet Margarita – looked like some creative collaboration between Diego Rivera, Anne Rice and Graceland’s interior designer. Red velvet draped everywhere, black velvet paint-by-numbers, huge picture frames used as screens playing old Mexican westerns, walls covered in ornate tin and glass brick and to top it all off animatronic marionettes. Next we went to Star Shoes for martinis. The gimmick, you can you’re your shoes shined whilst you sip expensive drinks. They were playing reel-to-reel videos – awesome choppily animated cartoons of surfing mice, rad! The grade school memories rushed back – cheesy, reel-to-reel health class docu-dramas with badly synced tape deck audio.
We all split early so that we could wake up and take advantage of the 80 degree weather that was forecast for the next day. I arrived back at the hotel only to find that I no longer had a room. I went to the lobby to try to figure things out only to find a line of about 100 people that weaved its way out the door and into the street (what the hell was going on at 1:00 am, I have no idea). Instead of waiting for an hour to figure out my spot, I decided to bench it in the van. I found a nice spot with minimal street light factor behind the hotel and crashed on one of the seats. After a night of van sleeping, it really feels like I’m back.